At the Root of it.

Our mother. She is the one who carried us for nine months, give or take. We received our first bits of life from this connection, our first taste of love. No matter how beautiful or traumatic this relationship turned out to be, we can be assured it’s formative. And as we continue into adolescence and adulthood, we will see this first relationship with our mother continue to play out throughout our other relationships. Although we may not always be aware of it, this connection to our mother will have its influence on us in one way or another. 

More than likely you have stumbled upon this blog because your relationship with your own mother was less than perfect or did not meet your expectations. Some call it a mother wound or simply an unhealed mother daughter relationship. But what is a wound? A wound is an injury to a living tissue caused by a cut, blow, or some other impact. Each time our mother did not meet our expectations of how we wished for her to love us, no matter how small or minor, this chipped away at our heart. Any unhealed or painful parts of herself or her past, that she was not conscious of, we also inherited. This eventually created a deep and complex wound on our heart.

There is an energy center at the base of our spine, called the Muladhara, sometimes referred to as the Root chakra. This is our connection to the earth and our grounding point for all of life’s experiences. This energy center holds many of our childhood memories, and more specifically this first human connection with our mother. It is from this root that we have a lens of safety and security in ourselves first, and later in relation to the outside world. This is our home base.

Imagine an old beautiful tree for a moment. Without its roots, a tree could be easily taken down by the elements, in the harsh setting of a storm. It is the roots of the tree that make it so difficult for a tree to come down. And even when a storm or fire does take down an entire tree, or forest for that matter, the roots are what are left over in the ground. The roots connect and ground the tree to the earth. No matter what, they will survive, even if they endure severe damage. You can think of this root as our own connection with our mother. Even if we did not have much of a relationship with her or a painful one, the root will always exist. This root is what first connected us to life on this earth. It is not going anywhere, no matter how much we try and avoid it.

In the system of our life, it is the root chakra that also connects and grounds us to humanity and the earth. It is the foundation of this root connection that extends to almost every aspect of our life and gives us the stability to meet others in relationships. With our mother being our first real relationship, this is where our root chakra began to form. If our mother gave us a sense of security and safety when we were a child, we will feel safe and secure in our other relationships and life experiences, even if they have some element of the unknown. But if our relationship with our mother gave us an insecure of unstable feeling, then this will extend into our other relationships and we will operate from a place of fear when things are unstable.

Growing up, my mother had extreme emotional mood swings; one moment she would be laughing and singing a made up tune, and the next the door slammed loudly and she was locked in her room for the entire day. This led to a chaotic environment for a young child. It also led to me talking on many of her emotions, whether it was sadness, shame, or guilt. For me, “feeling” her negative emotions was safer than feeling my own. Plus nobody ever taught me how to notice or experience what I was feeling. This was secondary to what my mom was going through. I needed to survive, and in order to do that, it was important for me to help her through these tough emotions, and not to worry about my own. When I think of my root, my relationship with my mother at the core felt a sense of lack; I could narrow it down to a lack of trust. I had an intuitive sense that something was off from the time I was really young, ever since I can first remember. I could just feel it in my gut.

Now that I am older, I realize looking back, what I was feeling was that my mother lacked her own sense of stability and self esteem. Her root chakra was imbalanced. She was operating from a place of instability and fear, rather than one of connection. Her low self worth was unconsciously spilling over into her relationship with me as her daughter. Perhaps from her own unresolved trauma with her mother, or the abandonment of her own father. She was young, in fact only eighteen herself joining the league of motherhood. She hardly had time to begin adolescence, let alone with a heightened sense of emotional awareness. I do not hold it against her, but realizing and accepting this has been the most challenging aspect of our relationship.

I realize what I needed at the root of our connection. I needed nurturing- an unconditional love that was unwavering and could be counted on. I needed protection- to know that when things were scary or chaotic, Mom would be a solid foundation to fall back on. I needed a role model- to show me how to be courageous and strong, rather than fearful, when facing the unknown. I needed autonomy and independence- to learn that I am strong and capable in my own right, apart from my mother. Only recently, have I discovered that I am actually fully capable of giving myself all of these things- nurturing, protection, modeling, and independence- through my own conscious work at deep healing.