The Mother Wound Healed Over

There’s a fire in me that came from my mother.

 Our relationship was tumultuous, challenging and sometimes charming with a mixed bag of a love I didn’t understand. At times, it felt like we were sisters in another life—laughing, bonding, and a wildly familiar knowing. And yet, the hurt that flowed through our relationship clung to me like a second skin. It lived in my body, my emotions, my decisions, until I was 46 years old.

This was around the time I went back to school. We were asked to choose one relationship to heal. This was to be a year long assignment, and one that would prove to be the toughest one. I couldn’t decide between this or that relationship. I was torn because we had to choose just one.

I sat with that question for three days. And when the answer came, it was clear and soul-deep. 

It had to be my mom.

This was no ordinary healing.

This was karmic. I felt it in my bones. I had spent my entire childhood learning this story and painfully, repeatedly — feeling my Mom was not the mom I wanted. 

As I started doing my own healing within my spiritual work, I began to wonder if our karma was tied together and if so  how many times have we done this? I believed if I didn’t heal our relationship I would have to come back to repeat it. This alone, was a darkness I had to fight to keep out.

Through my return to school for spiritual psychotherapy I would one day come to the realization that she had always been the mom I needed.

And in that deep, sacred revelation, I knew….

She was also the mom I wanted, in order to become the woman I am today. Yes indeed our life together was karmic. We had been circling around the dance floor together, for many lives. In truth it often felt like we were circling around the drain.

In 2010 I looked up, and I saw that my mother wound had healed. Not disappeared—but healed over. What once was an open wound had become a scar. Not just any scar—it was the scar I wouldn’t trade for the world. One I could finally nourish and I believe, so did she. My mother changed in that deep dive into the mother wound. Something shifted and I felt a love that seemed almost innocent. Innocent of all the hurt weaved within our story, innocent of her own recognition of her heart.

Then, in 2011, she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that would give her 4 to 6 weeks to live, and she survived for nearly 17. The first thing I did when I heard the news was to look up and say, “Thank you.”

It wasn’t the first time I had offered that kind of thank you though.

I had done it before—when my father passed away.

But the why behind those two gratitude moments were different.

Here is where the difference lived.

When I was 14, I said thank you to the Creator for taking my father early. He was 42 years old at the time and was struggling, haunted, and hurting. He brought pain to our home, especially my mother. And yet, I loved him fiercely. There was a part of him that I saw clearly, even when no one else could. 

When I said thank you for my dad’s passing, it wasn’t out of coldness or relief. It was because I knew, even at that young age, that his soul was suffering. That his departure as painful as it was, was also a kind of mercy for him. My dad was not a safe presence within our family. His pain, expressed through alcohol and harmful behaviours, brought deep hurt — some of it intentional, much of it born from his own unhealed wounds.

The thank you for my dad was a release. It was a release for all of us. It was a gratitude born of survival.

For the first time, my mother, and her childen could feel a sense of safety that had long been missing. His passing brought space for healing, especially for my mother. And yet, I could also see, that the world hadn’t felt safe for him, either. He carried his own suffering, and though it doesn’t excuse the harm, it helped me to understand the roots of his struggle.

The difference for me is that the thank you for my mom was a recognition.

With her, I got the chance to heal the wound before she left. With him, I carried the love and the ache with me until I was ready to understand it differently.

We were all released from a not-so-nice existence with him.

The thank you I offered when my mom was diagnosed was bathed in grace.

I wasn’t thanking the Creator for taking her—I was thanking him for the chance I had been given to heal with her. Heal before she left, before she was even diagnosed. I didn’t do the work because she was dying, I had already done the work. My school work with her, was of my own free will, and she finally chose to let me in. After years of resistance, years of me trying to crack the door open and being shut out — in 2010, she sat on that floor with me and she let me in. .

I believe she was healing too.

You see, she was brave.

Brave to sign up to be my mother.

Both my parents were.

My mom did not show the layers of unconditional love I so yearned for — but she shared the love that maybe only she could understand. I am certain it was real and I am also certain when she was dying she was learning what unconditional love felt like. My mother was blessed to be surrounded by all five of her children and many grandchildren.

Our souls don’t come here empty. They arrive carrying wounds—Tikkuns, as the Kabbalah calls them. The journey we live shows us how to heal them. That’s our soul corrections.

My mom came into this world to help me with mine, just as she had her own soul work to do.

Now this is the story I had to finally let go of when the time came to heal my Mother Wound. Most of us have them and sadly many are not able to heal them.

For most of my life, I asked God why my mother—who had known me for 30, 35, even 45 years longer than my father —seemed to love me less than a father who had only been there for 14. I have felt my father’s love all of these years and yet my mother’s love ripped through me. This was raw, it haunted me. It created my deepest ache. And it became my greatest teacher.

For a long time, I told this story from the wound. Every raw detail. Every unanswered prayer. Every jagged edge. But now, I tell it from the scar. The one I lovingly call my beauty mark.

When I spoke from the “almost-healed” place, the story was still about what happened. But now, as I speak from the beauty mark, the story doesn’t need all the details. The story is the transformation. The story is the gift I carry in my heart every day. And every so often, when I’m sharing about healing, love, or lineage, the bigger picture of this scar rises up and reminds me…

I am grateful.

She was brave.

We both chose this.

And through it all, I learned…

Wounds shape us.

Scars soften us.

And beauty marks — they remind us we survived, we healed, and we loved anyway.

The night before my mom passed, I said goodbye — not knowing for sure it would be the last time, but feeling it in my bones. On the drive home, I wished I’d never left. That night, she slipped into her coma. By the end of the next day, she was gone. But in our last conversation, she gave me something that would take months to fully understand. She kept repeating, “You are me, Lu. You’re my mirror.” Over and over again. And I kept nodding, “I know, Mom,” while she argued “No, you don’t, you are my mirror.”  I stood there knowing with certainty our karmic debt had been served. I kissed her, told her I loved her, and drove off with my kids, tears rolling down my face.

The closing of our karmic debt didn’t look like a grand finale. It looked like presence. Surrender. Tears on the floor kind of finale.

Months later, my marked school assignments were returned to me. Among them were the final pieces I had handed in for the work I had done around my mom — our healing, our karmic closure. That’s when I realized her final words to me lived not only in my memory but also in those pages. Her soul had spoken. Our karma had been served. We made it—just in time. We slid in at the eleventh hour.

For years, I carried the dread that she and I would have to come back and do this all over again. But on her deathbed, I knew…

We had completed our soul correction.

We were free.

She was released.

And so was I.

My mother turned out to be my greatest gift.

That mother wound no longer holds me hostage.

Because now I understand — my mother loved me in the exact way I needed to be loved. Not in the way I dreamed of, but in the way my soul called forth. Because that’s what mothers do. They show up with what they’re given. My mother showed up, time and again — carrying the weight of her own mother wound — and still chose to meet me to do the soul work we came here to share.

In the end what I have learned is that my mom suffered just as much as I suffered. Chances are she may have suffered more because I too live in a mother wound — but this time I am the mother, and this time I got to name it, understand it, as well as work on healing it from the soul level.

This is why I love what I do.

This—this soul work—it’s not always easy.

It’s not always pretty.

It’s not always linear.

But it is the greatest gift you can ever give yourself.

This work doesn’t alway have to be hard, it can bring in fun.

Because getting to know you—all the layers of your past, present, and future—will be one of the most profound and beautiful adventures of your life.

Healing can be deep, yes — but it can also feel like a homecoming. The fun begins when we start remembering who you are at a soul level, and letting your light lead. That’s where the real beauty unfolds. And one day, you’ll look in the mirror and whisper, “We Made It.”

Because that’s how I feel.

As hard as my life has been, now that I’ve moved through this work—through this deep transformation — I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I know there will be more. There’s always more. But now, I walk with certainty.

The Creator placed this in my movie for a reason. And that can only mean one thing — this must be good.

With love and breath,

Patrice aka LuLu

___________

Founder of Odyssey Lighthouse