Transformational healing work for mothers
We, mothers, feel guilty about a lot of things because of society’s expectations of mothers and because of our own expectations. Are we taking care of ourselves while we take care of our children?
Introduction
“Mom guilt” and “mental load” lead to increased stress levels in us. For this, we need to spend some time and resources into self-love.
Where do these expectations come from? What role does patriarchy play in this guilt? What blocks us from living our best life? Do we regret becoming mothers sometimes because of everything that we gave up in the process? Almost no one talks about this because we are expected to be grateful for our little ones and only focus on everything we have gained in the process and focus on our children, while ignoring our own wants.
But we all have moments where we hate our situations, where we would like to run away and leave everything behind, especially when we live in a foreign country and don’t have a support system so that we get some breaks from our children or can offload some other tasks to people around us.
These are questions and thoughts that occupied my mind, which is why I spoke to my friend Judith, who is a healing practitioner. This is what she had to say:
Heal Grow Love
As women who have children, we are plugged into the most tremendous power source on Earth: the embodied experience of the feminine principle. Surrendering, softness, flow. Sadly enough, this doesn’t seem to play out in our favour.
But most women experience exactly the contrary: going about life in this society as a mother is even worse than doing the whole life journey thing as a woman (or, more accurately: a soul, making the human experience of being ascribed a female identity). We are facing incredible hardship and challenges as we try to balance life, work, kids, partners. Mostly it feels impossible. We suffer. We worry. We worry that our children suffer. If we do manage to make our needs heard in the family framework we face shame and guilt on our way out to that one date night with our best friend. The whole mother thing seems like a bad deal on most days. We get to do all the work and get no credit. No, we aren’t celebrated, we are bashed! Show me one woman who hasn’t experienced in her face judgment of her body, her parenting, her lifestyle as a mother.
This whole motherhood thing sucks sometimes. For some of us, it sucks so badly that we wish we wouldn’t have embarked on this crazy journey and we are finding a safe haven in the #regrettingmotherhood bubble.
This is exactly where my work starts. I work with women who are sick and tired (often literally!) of having the circumstances suck their life force out. Women who cannot relate to their children, who are not finding fulfilment in their role as a mother. Who courageously challenge the reigning motherhood paradigm of the ‚selfless’ mother as toxic bullsh*t.
The women reaching out to me are from all walks of life and all sorts of family & personal backgrounds. Often times they describe themselves as highly sensitive. What they all have in common is this gut feeling: this can’t be it. This is too little. I am so much more than this.
And they are right!
What is transformational healing work?
Transformational healing work is about freedom. It’s about love. It is a political act because it is about transcending the borders of what is deemed possible and righteous in a patriarchal society (spoiler alert: we have been raised to believe we hold no power at all). Transformational healing work is about turning pain into power.
Healing work takes many forms and can be practice, enacted and delivered in many shapes. We all have our individual story of pain and glory, our individual journey so we are called to mix and match the methods and modalities that work best for us.
When it comes to healing work relating to a human person (and not animals, plants), we can figure out broadly three spheres. There is body work (ie. Feldenkrais, conscious dance, the whole field of the somatic, and trauma-informed methods like TRE) which uses the body as a primary vehicle to access consciousness. Then there is the whole field of mental-emotional work with all of the variants of coaching you can think of. Lastly, there is energy work which pertains to instigating healing through communication with the immaterial planes of being, with aura for example, matrix and the like.
Broadly speaking, healing is what happens when you move from a state of not-whole, separated, traumatised, in pain to a state of wholeness, happiness, healthiness and lightness of the heart. Healing work is consciously and intentionally bringing healing about – alone or with guidance of others.
Most all healing work has two chapters: to come to terms with that which cannot be changed (shadow work) and to resolve those issues that can be resolved (light work). Sounds simple, right? So why aren’t we all doing it? Why aren’t we all healed and healthy and fine?
The patriarchal reality flips the whole thing around. Most all of what we have been told we need to accept – the state of the world, the agency of who gets to say how things are done – is what we can and what we should change. It’s the misery of the modern world, wars, famine, ecological/social/political injustice. And conversely, everything we have been told to look out for, to better, to change – the way we look, do things, feel, relate – is what we are challenged to accept, to surrender to. It’s the journey of radical self love despite of all our inadequacies, ugliness, shamefulness.
My work with transformational healing
In my programs, I guide mothers through transformational healing experiences. We uncover the dynamics of guilt and high expectations. We build a new paradigm of what a mother is able to do and the superpowers a mother is bestowed with. In our patriarchal society the qualities of the feminine are ridiculed, pathologised, negated. I help women dig up their amazing size and beauty underneath the pretenses of how she is supposed to be and behave as a ‚good mother‘. The only way to get it right is to do it wrong. This is big! It shatters who you thought you were. The identity that has been ascribed to you. It takes nothing less than to completely deconstruct what we have been taught by our parents – and what they have been taught by their parents before them and so forth for many, many generations. So we are also working with the patterns of thoughts that we have inherited from our ancestors.
All of this work goes into liberating the mind, the heart, the consciousness. By removing all the false stories, all the blockades we make space for what is really there. Her beauty, her glory, her power, her light.
I am honoured and humbled to be doing this work. And I am proud to be doing what I came here for. It fills me with gratitude, humbleness, and pride to see women blossom, and grow fierce and strong and loving. Tigress, sorceress, lover.
Judith Uma Schunk (33) is mother to a 6year old, spiritual feminist and ThetaHealing© practitioner and is currently based in Berlin. In her work, she blends Eastern and Western teachings of body, mind and soul to serve women with kids in their empowerment journey. For more visit on Instagram or her website.
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