by Janelle Legge | Jan 11, 2016 | Wild Woman Archetype Series |
When you’ve been raised by a mother who was ambivalent, collapsed, or unmothered herself, you can’t bond with yourself in a relaxed way. Your instincts become disturbed. So you’re always searching out there, you don’t grow from your inner core. – Janelle Legge
Women who have been impacted by poor mothering, or who were unmothered growing up, constantly slip under the radar. Society has a massive whopping blind spot when it comes to acknowledging this. Particularly today where in Western culture being a mother is totally on-trend. Motherhood is constantly held up as the ultimate female success and achievement symbol in the media and socially.
This all makes it even harder if you’ve been raised by a mother who just couldn’t be there for you in significant ways whilst you were growing up. For whatever reasons. The societal blindspot around when mothering falls way short, or there’s no mother on the scene at all, makes it almost impossible to receive the validation, acknowledgment and support you desperately need as a child and later as an adult to repair this. No one seems to want to see what’s really happening to you, or do anything about it. Because all mothers are good, right. Or people just blank out and can’t even imagine what it’s like for someone who has suddenly lost their mother and how this impacts them every single day.
If this happened to you, you don’t need to keep carrying these wounds for the rest of your life. Your mother’s emotional baggage doesn’t belong to you. It’s not your fault if your mother was absent during your childhood.
You can heal the past and learn how to re-mother yourself. This then puts an end to patterns like people pleasing, doubting your feelings and instincts and numbing them out, getting stuck in indecision, toxic relationships and a whole range of other dysfunctional impacts from poor mothering.
So how do you start to heal the impacts of poor mothering?
Goddess of Water by Ronnie Biccard
You need to have your pain, fears and disappointments listened to. Deeply. There’s a young part of you that’s so wanting to be heard and acknowledged.
Align with the powerful aspects of the feminine. That’s about embracing good things like yoga, self nurturing and quality personal development.
Poorly mothered women often reject the feminine, seeing it as insubstantial or weak because of what they experienced growing up.
Don’t do this. It’s faulty thinking. The feminine is powerful, strong, and wise. Embracing these aspects of the feminine is key to healing your disappointments and wounds.
Connect with women who are grounded, have good instincts and are willing to really listen to you and support you.
I call these kinds of women modern day Fairy Godmothers. Because they can be there for you in ways your own mother never could be. They just know when to step in and guide, nurture and help you in thoughtful and constructive ways. At first this might even feel odd if you’ve rarely had someone support you in such an attuned and feminine way. Every woman needs at least one Fairy Godmother in her life. Hopefully you’ll have several.
The good news is that these women usually turn up in your life when you’ve set out on the path of self discovery and personal growth. That’s when you’re able to recognize and connect with these important women when they do appear.
Janelle Legge is a Psychotherapist, Leadership, Mindfulness and Wellbeing Consultant and Coach who specialises in Relationships, Career Success, Work-Life Integration and Wellbeing. Janelle sees clients in person in Sydney and works with clients around the world via Skype. To book a skype session with Janelle click here.
by Janelle Legge | Dec 11, 2015 | Wild Woman Archetype Series |
“There is no greater blessing a mother can give her daughter than a reliable sense of the veracity of her own intuition. Intuition is handed from parent to child in the simplest ways: “You have good judgment. What do you think lies hidden behind all this?” Rather than defining intuition as some unreasoned faulty quirk, it is defined as truly the soul-voice speaking.
Intuition senses the directions to go in for most benefit, it is self-preserving, has a grasp of underlying motive and intention, it chooses what will cause the least amount of fragmentation in the psyche.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The Power of Intuition
It’s easy to get tripped up and ignore the power of intuition when someone who you think knows more than you suggests something that just doesn’t feel right. For whatever reason. When this occurs press PAUSE and give yourself some time to make a decision that feels in total alignment with you.
Don’t just override that little voice inside that instantly responded “No, I’m not too sure about this” and let someone else make a decision that impacts you. Ask yourself “Are they in autopilot and not taking all of me into view? Is this more for their benefit or convenience than what’s best for me?”
Always pay attention to that powerful little voice and check in with yourself first. Then ask more questions until you’re satisfied you’re heading in the right direction.
Intuition is powerful. It’s often underestimated. Yet that powerful, quiet little voice inside that is so easy to ignore or override is 9 times out of 10 ALWAYS right. The more you pay attention to it the stronger it gets. Understanding the power of your intuitive guidance keeps you in the correct flow of decision making for you and your life.
Janelle Legge is a Psychotherapist, Leadership, Mindfulness and Wellbeing Consultant and Coach who specialises in Relationships, Career Success, Work-Life Integration and Wellbeing. Janelle sees clients in person in Sydney and works with clients around the world via Skype. To book a skype session with Janelle click here.
by Janelle Legge | Sep 28, 2015 | Wild Woman Archetype Series |
“In the parents’ fantasy whatever child they have will be perfect,
and will reflect only the parents’ ways and means. If the child
is wildish, she may, unfortunately, be subjected to her parents’
attempts at psychic surgery over and over again, for they are
trying to re-make the child, and more so trying to change what
her soul requires of her.
Though her soul requires seeing,
the culture around her requires sightlessness.
Though her soul wishes to speak its truth,
she is pressured to be silent.
…When this happens, a girl begins to believe that the
negative images her family and culture reflect back to her
about herself are not only totally true but also totally free of bias,
opinion, and personal preference. The girl begins to believe
that she is weak, ugly, unacceptable, and that this will
continue to be true
no matter how hard she tries to reverse it.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Were your ideas and ways of expressing yourself and responding to things totally different to your family and tribe growing up?
The journey of self-actualization in adulthood helps repair and positively reset the impacts of not feeling heard, seen, or understood as a child. Of being a red ant in a black anthill growing up.
It’s about learning to take your feelings, sensory impressions, and intuitions seriously. Having a voice. Unconditionally loving and accepting yourself – the REAL and natural version of you with your shoes off, relaxed, at home when no one else is around. And finding kindred spirits that ‘get’ you and value your ideas and presence.
Nourishing the wild woman archetype is about you showing up for YOU. Loving yourself. Embracing and honouring how you look, how you think, and taking your passions and creative ideas seriously. It’s about going for what you really want, regardless of what other people may think.
Image by Romain Briaux
by Janelle Legge | Jul 27, 2015 | Wild Woman Archetype Series |
“Within the wild psyche are a woman’s fiercest instincts of survival. But, unless she practices her inner and outer freedoms regularly, submission, passivity, and time spent in captivity dull her innate gifts of vision, perception, confidence … the ones she needs for standing on her own.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Having to sneak off to pursue your passions, or hide and suppress your feelings, opinions, and personal truth are all red flags. They come at a cost. Ongoing suppression of your real self shuts down your vitality, and your ability to see things for how they really are.
Perceptive discernment comes from real life experiences, reality-testing and learning from mistakes so that instinct-numbing patterns don’t get hard-wired into your brain and nervous system.
When you catch yourself hiding essential parts of your being, or denying your gut-feel and inner knowing, read this as a red light signal to step back and review what’s really going on.
Image by Jessica Polar
by Janelle Legge | Jul 21, 2015 | Wild Woman Archetype Series |
“I believe that all women and men are born gifted. However, and truly, there has been little to describe the psychological lives and ways of gifted women, talented women, creative women. There is, on the other hand, much writ about the weakness and foibles of humans in general and women in particular. But in the case of the Wild Woman archetype, we must be more interested in the thoughts, feelings, and endeavours which strengthen women…”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves
Image by Josh Felise
