Do you have a mother wound? Here's how to heal it
Fri 8 May 2026 at 8:55am
Evelyn and Joy have a rather strained relationship in the film Everything Everywhere All At Once. (Supplied: A24)
It's not hard to find examples of dysfunctional mother-daughter storylines in pop culture.
Think Pride and Prejudice's marriage-obsessed Mrs Bennet, Matilda Wormwood's neglectful bingo-addict mum, and the protracted mother-daughter battles of Everything Everywhere All At Once.
The vexed bonds and painful rifts in mother-daughter relationships are rich fodder for creative work because they persist so acutely in everyday life.
This is the mother wound — the yearning ache that comes from reckoning with the imperfect human mother we get, against the idealised fantasy version we wish for.
And as many of us celebrate Mother's Day this weekend, that feeling can surface in painful and uncomfortable ways.
"The mother wound is … the gap between what you wanted, what you imagined, what you fantasised about, what you longed for, and what was. That's the wound," Dr Zoë Krupka, psychotherapist, author and senior lecturer at The Cairnmillar Institute in Melbourne/Naarm, told me recently on ABC Radio National's Life Matters.
"Part of the mother wound is that I need to be able to go, 'Oh, actually that lives with me. I have to do those things for myself that she didn't do for me.' And that's really the hard part, I think."
Sahra O'Doherty is a Sydney-based psychologist and president of the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc. She says while the mother wound is not a diagnosable condition, it is often the result of unmet needs.
"It can be things like the mother or the parent figure dismissing and diminishing the experiences of the child or focusing on their own experiences or their own expectations," she explains.
So, what's the state of your mother wound, and how do you begin to heal it?
Here's what Life Matters listeners shared about theirs.
Filling in the gaps
After losing her mum at the age of 13, Maryanne says family friends stepped up.
"I only had a childhood relationship with her, but … that mother-daughter wound got filled in through attending different functions as I grew up," she says.
"I found that my mother's friends would approach me and seek me out at those functions and then share with me insights about my mother. So that gave me way more information about who she was and the type of person that she was, because I didn't get to experience that as I grew up and became an adult."
Mothering each other
Anne has identified mother wounds across three generations of her family.
After her sister died in childhood, Anne says their grief-stricken parents withdrew.
"My mother carried this terrible wound that she didn't ask for," Anne says.
"In those days there was no emotional language for hacking stuff like that. There was no therapy … I spent the rest of my life as a parentified child with Mum, trying to make Mum's world good again and trying to win their — both of their — acknowledgement that I was worth something.
"I was carrying that wound right through until she died and we never unpacked it."
Unable to achieve closure with her mum, Anne turned to her much younger sister for healing.
"I said to her, let's mother each other now, let's unpack everything, because she had the same sense of abandonment."
When it comes to her relationship with her adult daughter, Anne says: "I'm constantly working on her mother wound with me."
"I think it's just a very long journey where you spend time trying to be another kind of mother, and healing from your own mother wound — doing the things that your mother didn't give to you."
'Hell on wheels'
Suze was 54 when her mother reappeared in her life after nearly 40 years of absence.
"My mother was an actress and … she was really mythical in our family for the drama and all the rest of it. But what was less mythical was the amount of neglect we'd all been through," she says.
"She was nearly 75 and I hadn't lived with her since she went away to get on with her life, when I was 15 or 16.
"The situation was she had to live with me for nearly a year. And it was hell on wheels to start."
She says patience and boundaries were key to creating a new relationship with her estranged mother in adulthood.
"The main thing for me was seeing my mother as just another human being. Another human being with all kinds of losses and grief and problems of her own."
"I can't say that it was easy, but it was transformational and it remains one of the things that I'm most proud of in my life."
Curiosity, empathy and forgiveness
Dr Krupka says Suze's story is "a perfect illustration" of the work that needs to happen to achieve healing.
"When you're a child, it's not your job to be curious about your mother's life, but if you want to heal that wound, you have to be curious about it, and she was," says Dr Krupka.
"So, she set those boundaries, she had that curiosity, and that … much deeper understanding of who her mother was."
Ms O'Doherty acknowledges that for many adult daughters, starting these conversations with their mothers is difficult because of pre-existing dynamics and the fear of being dismissed or diminished when bringing things up.
"It's incredibly difficult to ask for accountability from someone who isn't used to giving it, because it means admitting that 'hey, I wasn't perfect, but I did the best that I could'," she says.
She agrees that patience, empathy and a willingness to listen are key.
But if a conversation isn't possible, there are other paths towards repair.
Something she's observed in her practice is "millennial and Gen X women … parenting their children in ways that is healing for themselves. So, they have learnt the lessons of how they were parented and they are choosing to parent in a very different way".
"Forgiveness isn't about the other person. Forgiveness is about finding peace for ourselves."