Bethany Webster on Healing the Mother Wound

me to record, very very very emotional. So put on your seatbelts because it's quite a ride, and I do think a lot of you listening will have some moments, maybe for the first time, we connect for a powerful and personal exploration of why this is a core wound and how healing it helps us grow and emerge as our full selves. On today's Holy Human. Yeah, Bethany Webster, Welcome to the Holy Human podcast. Thank you so so much for joining us today. Oh, thank you so much

for having me. I've had so many mixed emotions before this conversation. I've literally been so excited. I feel like we could do three parts on this right, so much to talk about, and all of a sudden, before, like an hour before, I started to get really somber about everything because I'm kind of in the thick of what

we're talking about right now. I mean, I've been in my whole life, but in the thick of kind of setting boundaries and all that good stuff, which we'll get into, but it's, um, yeah, there's there's a lot of grief that's coming up for me in this moment, so I do um, I'm going to warn everyone there will be tears. I'm almost positive. Yeah, Well, thank you for sharing that.

I really appreciate you being so like transparent and vulnerable because that is such a rich place to be when we're like really in touch with with what we're feeling and what we're experiencing. So I appreciate you opening with that absolutely. And by the way, feel free to ask me anything. I'm totally I am an open book pretty much. So yeah, I'm curious. How did you hear about my work? If I'm correct, I think I just found you over Instagram like somehow, Like you know, that's when the the

algorithm actually does it, does me, does me good. Um, is when I find people like you and I've heard about the mother wound and the work around it, and I know I've been inadvertently kind of doing my own work around it for a long time, a lot of inner child work, and recently it's gone from a concept, this kind of conceptualization of something to starting to be an embodiment of truly understanding these concepts. And it's taken years.

It's taken years and years. I'm so happy that your book is available and there's information about this work for people to get their hands on. And by the way, I've sent your book to like every friend of mine, every woman that I know, and I think it's just so healing. So I would love to hear from you. How you came to this work. Yeah. Absolutely, I came to this work kind of circuitously. It was never anything

I set out to do. Really, I thought I actually had a perfect family, and it wasn't until college where I started to have a lot of like symptoms that were telling a different story. And I was really lucky at nineteen to find a really brilliant therapist who worked with me. I'm still working with her. That's awesome. Yeah, her therapy it's it's called depth psychotherapy. So it's not like kind of run of the mill cognitive behavioral or anything.

It's it's actually about long term reworking your attachment bomb. Basically, but I avoided looking at my mother and that relationship for years because honestly, and I think I suffer from something that so many of us do in this culture, which is this like instant guilt right for anything that feels other than admiration for our mother's you know, I was kind of her caretaker emotional support from almost from birth. I felt really responsible for her, and I wanted to

She struggled, and I wanted to make her happy. I wanted to please her. So in the family, I just kind of play this role of like absorbing everyone's pain and trying to make everything okay for everyone, my dad, my brother. You know, I was just like this little sponge of like I'll just make everything better and that's kind of how I'm going to survive, you know. And then um, but then it all kind of fell apart

and I started getting support. But I think it was like five years into being in therapy before I actually said, Okay, I think I'm finally ready to look at this because I noticed that every area I looked at, whether it was like romantic relationships, which was repeating the same pattern basically what I had with my mother, I would show up in relationships as compulsively trying to be the healer, the mentor that you know, and so I'd attract these

potential partners in crisis or you know, starving artists types or whatever. And then um, then body image, so every area I had a piece of my mother in it, and I started to see it and be like, oh my god, you know, I actually do have to look at this because I could see that I was on a hamster wheel of the same patterns. So yes, I feel someone could see me right now. I'm just I keep shaking my head. Yes, yes, I know. Every your book. I was like, oh my god, I completely relate to

everything that you're saying. And you know so much about the emotional caretaking. And then how for me what I's been the most jarring as of recent is I thought I projected my daddy issues onto my husband, and I just recognized that it's not my daddy issues, it's my

mommy issues. That's a powerful moment. It's intense, and there's so much green, like you see all the ways in which you've used manipulation to get your needs met, and then you're like, holy shit, it's just an intense moment and it's a beautiful moment too, because you have the opportunity to choose differently and to be able to have these conversations. And I've just started having these with my husband.

It's like, these are some deep conversations and we almost have to stop for a moment, take a break, and I'm like, we'll come back to this. We'll come back to this. Yeah. But I mean, it's wonderful to have someone that is open to sitting down and talking to me and watching because he's he's been witnessed to this relationship that I've had with my mom for a long time, and he has seen how traumatic it has been for me. And it's not a new revelation that I'm coming to.

It's just that now I'm I'm understanding it at a deeper level. So and as we're talking about this, I guess we should define the mother wound and what that is for people so they can kind of get a better understanding of what we're really digging into. Sure, Yeah, so I define. You know, the word mother wound has been around, no one's really defined it. So I think I've been the first one to really like set a firm definition of what is the mother wound. And I

actually see it like the biggest one is the personal level. Right, there's the internalized beliefs and patterns that are self limiting, right, that we inherit from our mother's Right, So it's the unconscious ways that we limit ourselves, the way that we feel bad about ourselves, we feel guilt, we feel shame, um that originate with her and originate past that it's generationally passed down totally. It's like this inherited wound that

we all have to some degree. It's on a spectrum, right, for some people, our mothers are really more resilient and more healthy and high functioning, and some mothers are, you know, on the other side of the spectrum where there's even mental illness or addiction or other challenges. So we all fall somewhere on this spectrum. And outside of the spectrum, which has a big impact is the culture, which is this cultural atmosphere of patriarchy. I define patriarchy very broadly.

It really isn't about men. It's actually the principle of power over and the ways that this manifests. And for many of us, it's like we just feel that we live in kind of an anti woman world where women are less sanned, so we get this message reinforced and millions of ways, and our mothers and grandmothers had to absorb that also in addition to their own family trauma whatever they received. So what I like to say is the most insidious forms of patriarchal oppression actually get passed

through the mother. And this is not to blame mothers at all. Actually it's to uplift them and respect them. But we have to see the ways that we don't want to look at this and it's very unconscious, right, It's about our blueprint of self. So the our mothers are extremely influential and how we shape our identity, how we see our bodies, ourselves, the world, partners, other people.

So it's like our identity is shaped with our mothers in the early days of our lives, and so becoming conscious of that, looking at what were the dynamics there is incredibly empowering in our healing liberal ration as women as a whole, especially for women, because like how to be a woman was really taught to us by our mothers, you know, the dues and the don'ts and what's okay

and what's not okay. It's such a significant impact our mothers have and so unfortunately we live in a society though that says if you don't have anything other than complete love and admiration, there's something wrong with you. So as women were shamed, we're shamed away from looking at our healing. So this is the conundrum that we face.

To be honest, like, I thought about having this conversation with you, and I'm like, oh God, I hope my mother doesn't listen to this in a way because and and also you know, it's been interesting growing up um as this kind of yeah, you know, I started out with a thirteen in front of everyone's eyes, and especially when your parents have played such an integrate role in

my career. At one point, it's like this respect and love, like you're saying you're supposed to have your family and this all American good girl, Like I just had it going for me. You did it did and so it was. You know, it's this interesting piece for me to even bring this up over my podcast because I think people have this idea of, you know, like you said, unless you have complete love and admiration for what my therapist calls the love object, which is you know, which is

the mother. Um and there's there should be so much shame around me wanting to to bring this to the forefront. And yeah, that shame keeps us locked into so many things, and can we just talk about that shame piece. Let's go there. I would love to go there, yes, because I feel like, for I know personally, like that shame has kept me so small for so long, and you know,

it keeps us from having this discussion. And I think that honestly, I feel like this work is probably the most important work that we're called to do in this lifetime because it really will shift everything, not just it was just shift as personally the culture. It will shift you know, the way we treat our planet. There's such a huge ripple effect from this work. So you know, how can we when we talk about shame, How does shame start to fit into this work outside of what

we've just discussed, Like, how is it so insidious? Yeah? I'm so excited that you went right to shame because it really is at the bottom of like you know, I've been thinking about it lately a lot, even in my own process. Now, shame is really the bottom, you know, it's it's really at the core of so many of the ways that we organize our lives to feel worthy and loved, like whatever, I call it the mother gap. So whatever we didn't get from our mother's you know,

there's always a gap. Our mothers are human beings, right, the gap between what we needed and what we got. And so often we can project that like gap outwards

to our partners, bosses, you know, you name it. Love me, make me feel valued, And on some level we're running from this um shame at the bottom of everything, right, And I like to think about shame in a context of developmental growth, right, Like for a child, if there's some kind of disconnecting the attachment with the mother, the child's gonna blame itself wrapped to preserve the connection with the parent, because it's too much for a child's brain to process that my mom is not safe right now.

So it gives it a sense of power and control um and a sense of safety to blame itself rather than see the mom. So it's basically we create an illusion.

It's very useful illusion in a way because it helps us survive, right, But unfortunately it creates this illusion that I'm bad, something's wrong with me, and there's a despair in that, you know, especially for those of us who experienced overt shaming, like many of us had mothers and fathers who were really shaming, like you're bad, there's something wrong with you. Get away from me, those kind of messages.

And sometimes it's just a subtle atmosphere of like it's not safe to speak my mind, it's not okay to have needs. Um, I should suppress my truth otherwise I'm going to get in trouble. So, like you mentioned manipulation earlier, that's also a great survival mechanism, especially for those of us who were women, you know, female children who it wasn't safe to say no for example. Um, So shame is it's like a useful survival tool that helps us

survive these really painful emotions as really young children. But it persists in the background, and if we don't address it, it can even into our adult lives. It can be impacting how we show up. Absolutely, you said something in the book that really blew my mind. You said, we hold onto shame in order to hold onto our mother because feeling shame makes us feel mothered. And I literally I was listening to the audiobook and I had to

stop the book. I was like, oh my god, that explains shame and the reason that we continue to hold onto it, especially for me having a relationship with my mom where I really don't have a close relationship. So it's yeah, how is that evolved for you? Um, I'm sure you've done a lot of work. I mean it sounds like you've really like been super conscious and aware and tried to do your best, which I admire. I have.

I have tried to do my best. Um, you know, there is a lot of emotional caretaking and you know, unfortunately there's a there's a need for me to fill a hole that is just insatiable and it's kind of I think, I'm sure you can relate to this as the emotional caretaker in your family. That was always kind of who I was in the family. Like the role I served, yes exactly was that you know, I was

born to fill a hole. Talk about pressure, right, And it's still there and that's still kind of the relationship that we've that's what it's been based upon, and I've really recognized recently that that is that's what it's been based upon. And I can't have that kind of relationship and it up to my mother to take care of her needs in order to be able to have a

relationship that's built upon anything other than that. And that's a really I just had this conversation and it was the It was so hard because I think, I see when I look at my mom, I see a child, and I know I see that I know the child because I've had that in myself. I've experienced that, and

I've been having to grow her up. I've been having to grow my own child up to meet and be with the you know, adult Leanne, and I've I'm still growing her up and so in a lot of ways, and so I can't grow my mother up at the same time. And that is the God that is the most heartbreaking conversation. After I had it, I cried for a day because I just I saw this helplessness and it's so hard to hurt someone, especially when they're your mother, and to have boundaries in that way. And so, yes,

so that's where I'm at. And it's been an up and down roller coaster ride of grief. Oh yes, which I would love to touch upon. Yes, all right, Loves, Before we dive any deeper into this complicated and personal dynamic, we're going to take a quick break. Welcome back, my friends. I'm talking to Bethany Webster about the complexities of our maternal relationships. Can we talk about how grief is such a intricral part of healing the mother wound? Absolutely? Absolutely,

thank you so much for sharing that. I just want to say that I really commend your courage, because thank you. I mean, I've been where I've found that path, and I've seen so many women as well I helped them through that process of you know, it sounds like what you went through is and this is so about grief is when we see the limitations of our mother's capacity. Right.

So in our culture, we're taught, oh, you know, if you love someone should work or like, you know, there's like no acknowledgment of the work it takes to have healthy, authentic relationships. And such a painful moment for an adult daughter is to realize that our mothers have a limited capacity of how they can meet us, and that ceiling is determined by the work that she's done in her own life to be conscious, you know, to take care

of herself. So whatever ways our moms feel deprived, owed, harmed and haven't worked on it themselves, they usually show up in some way with the daughter as kind of with a check, like you know, this is what I need, and they don't even realize they're doing it. Most of the time, as humans, we just kind of project, but we don't want to own, or we're not ready to own. We project outwards. And so it can be such a powerful moment to to have, and it takes resilience to

be in this position. Right, it took me so many years to do like exactly what we described. I mean, it probably took me ten years to be ready to actually have the conversation in a loving, respectful way, but you know, kind of like this isn't working and I'd like to shift the dynamic. And what happened with my mom was she was so non resilient that she actually attacked me and kind of created this conspiracy theory. It's so weird, wild, but she had a conspiracy theory that

my therapist was brainwashing me against her. So it was like, wow, I had that at one point. Also, Okay, yeah, it's more common I'm realizing than I when I realized at the time. But anyway, yeah, so the grief of realizing this is my best this is my mother's best. She's literally showing me her best right now, and it's not going to get better. And I need to kind of

sit with that. And that is painful because a lot of us carry this little inner child who's like, well, if I just do this or that, or if I explain myself better, or if I help her, if I give her books, or you know, my mom's going to get it eventually, right, the impossible dream. Right, if I just do X, y Z, she will change finally and then we'll have this great relationship. Um. So yeah, the

grief is really where the change happens. I think if we can sit with these feelings of sadness, even disappointment and rage, and I mean, there's a whole slew of things that can come up, and so getting support is really huge. But the good news is the grief leads to freedom because what's happening in the grieving processes where in a way our brains are reorganizing, right, so we're letting go of the old and we're making space for

something new to happen. And it's a whole I see grief as a really holy process that has its own timeline. We can't predict it. Or control it or make it end on a certain date as much as we might want to. But yeah, just being with it and has cycles and layers. It will deliver us to a new way of being right where we're not. We're no longer controlled by that dream aam of I need to be a good girl for mommy, to be good with myself. And what I see that happens in that process actually

is this huge shift. It's like a tectonic shift in our self concept where our sense of self validation and self worth is no longer based on the outside, it starts to be based on the inside. So I was actually just talking to someone this morning about this. She was like, I just realized my mother isn't going to change, and I'm going to start affirming myself first. Now I'm

not going to wait for her to affirm me. And I was like, damn, there, It isn't like in action right, When we can accept our mother's limitations, we can then embrace our own possibilities because they're no longer linked in the same way. It just makes sense. Oh yeah, completely. I just had an experience and that I wrote about

it on my blog. We were going to Father's Day dinner, and I knew I had to get ready, but though I really wanted to swim, and I jumped in the pool and allowed myself to swim, and if growing up, my mom woke me up an hour and a half early to do my hair for school. It was like the way she did things, and I so just didn't, you know, didn't want to be done all the time.

And I had to because when I was working, so I had to always get dressed and I had to avoid It was like Leanne can't go play because she has to go work and she has to be pretty and present herself to the world in a certain way. And I got my hair wet and I let myself swim and everything still worked out and I still looked fine. But it was in those moments I recognized I was mothering myself in the way that I needed to be mothered as a kid, or desired to be mothered as

a kid. And it's so simple, but I was asking people reading, like how are you how are you getting your hair wet? Like what are you not allowing yourself to do that? Your inner child is like so desperately longing for And those are where I feel like those embodiment pieces really start to to play into how we're rewiring our brains and how we're mothering ourselves and how we're changing our lives and allowing for freedom. You know, it's the moment it's like that there's such huge winds.

They really are. I love that example. I would like to know it can the men men out there listening to this. This is not just female piece, right Like, no, are there's also a mother wound there? How does that look for men? How does that manifest itself? Yeah? Absolutely, men definitely have a mother wound, and um, it manifests a little different for men, and it's usually the reason why it manifests differently is really because of these toxic

kind of gender expectations that we have. Right. So, um, there's a lot of different ways that can show up for men. But you know, in either parent, I just want to say, like either parent can be the patriarchal parent, you know, and I'm talking about patriarchy. It's more like whoever said or communicated to you don't feel, don't be too much or you know, don't be weak like I remember, like in my situation with my dad and my brother

witnessing that dynamic. My dad was very harsh with my brother, and he would say things like, don't be a sissy, or if he would get hurt, would be like the pain, don't cry, you just take the pain. You're supposed to sit there as a boy and just not admit a tear.

It's awful. But my mother never really stepped in, and so I think he developed a kind of misogyny and it comes from a legit anger about him not being protected, and so there was this kind of like lack of nurturing and lack of affirmation that he needed that he didn't get. And so that could be one of the ways that a mother gap can show it for men.

For other ways, it could be some mothers are really smothering with their sons, and it can be like they feel deprived of something in the culture and their their past, and the sun is supposed to be the one that makes it all better, right, almost like an emotional incest, sorry and spouse kind of thing. And so there's a betrayal there of the child, you know, the boy child, getting all this pressure on him to make his mother's life worth living, you know, to make her feel important,

to validate her role as mother. So yes, it really comes down to a lot of these expectations, and men have it just as severely as women do, just like I said, in different ways. So for men, I think it can be about discovering the ways in which you had to suppress your own female side, your own emotions. I mean, it's really harsh on men. You know, don't feel anger is the only permitted emotion. You know, our

sex is the only permitted like sensual things. So our families are the places where these patriarchal values get installed. And so I would ask men to think about that, like, how are these patriarchal values taught to you? Where were you taught not to feel, not to be yourself? Because I think what's happening right now is all of us

are realizing the status quo doesn't work. These messages we got our toxic and so we're feeling we're developing almost like growing pains, trying to develop our resilience to be outside of these lines that we were taught as the way that we're supposed to be. Um. So I have a lot of respect for men who are doing this work. Oh my gosh, absolutely leading women to this work has got to be an incredible challenge, but leading men to this work is got to be incredibly challenging and some

of the most important work I think men can do. Yeah, for sure, not only to be able to support themselves and heal their own wounds, but also to support the women in their lives in a in a new way. I think for both of us. Relationship is so important when it comes to doing this work, because you really, in relationship everything gets dug up, right, Oh, for sure, It's amazing. It's like, Yeah, I have been thinking about

that a lot lately. It's like the ideal situation is if both partners come to the table with some awareness of what they missed and the ways in which they can project those needs out, and then the couple can work together, like by each taking responsibility for their inner child rather than handing the child to the other one, Like make me feel important, worthy and special, you know, because that's never gonna work, right, no matter how much we try. Just like with our mothers, that feeling of

worthiness can only come be cultivated inside that person. No other person can can do that for us, but we have an expectation from childhood that it could, because back then that was true we did need an external person to help us feel valid. That was legit developmental stuff from early childhood. But now it's like the child and us still thinks that's the case, and so the inner

mothering work. Like you're saying, we can start to help the child see that she actually now has an adult woman or parent or adult man who's there to be with her and help her fill her needs that we don't have to look outside compulsively to others. It's such a beautiful process, like relationships that can do the work when both of people are like aware, have the capacity. Yeah,

that awareness is key, it really is. And I think it's challenging because almost like one part of your relationship, it has to die in ways, in a lot of ways, like the way that you've been getting your needs met from one another has to dissolve, and a new form of the relationship has to take birth. I was just talking to a friend of mine last night about this, and I think a lot of people get lost in this gap. A lot of times the relationships are just dissolve.

There's not a real framework around how to both come to this place and then grow together in a new form and not be two children trying to get your needs met from each other. But two adults that are actually feeding themselves, that are now meeting together in this incredible relationship, that are both sovereign and choosing to be there, um not from a wounded perspective. Yeah, absolutely beautifully said, Yeah,

there's something that I found really interesting. We hear a lot about the mother when we hear a lot about abandonment, which we talk about often, but we don't hear enough about the exploitation of a child. I was wondering if you could touch on what exploitation, what you mean by that and what that looks like. What I mean by that is any way that a child can feel used by a parent, And a lot of times this can happen because the parents themselves were objectified in some way.

And unfortunately, we live in a culture that even religions honor thy father and mother. So if you think about it, children are the most vulnerable humans. They don't have many rights down there with animals, you know, they don't have many rights, they don't have a voice, They're completely dependent on their caregivers. However, wounded our parents, those parents are that come to the table with a child if it's been severe trauma that those parents have experienced, they're more

likely to severely traumatize their kids. And wonder with the ways that can happen, is you know feeling used? Um? I know, like when I first started doing my healing work, you know, like really committing to it, I sesing myself all the time because I'm like, I didn't get bruises and I wasn't sexually molested or anything. So I was always like, why am I Why do I have such

strong symptoms? Like why I haven't been beaten? But it became clear to me that the emotional and the research tells us this, the emotional trauma is just as impactful on our brains as you know, the physical harm. So I think society is changing a bit to see that. And when I talk about used, used can mean many

different things. There's a term prentification that I use a lot in my work because I was a prentified daughter, and that what that basically means is the child is asked from a super young age to be an adult and to care for the parents. So those rules are reversed. So that's an exploitation and a lot of cultures and

places that's normal parenting. Right. I've talked to some students around the world who say, Yeah, in my family, you're supposed to take care of the parent, and then when you're an old person, then your kids are supposed to take care of you. And and not just like very minor ways, but like a major like they kind of become little children, they became like infants. Do you have to do everything for me? So that's it can really run the gamut the exploitation, right, And I think the

whole awareness around trauma right now is expanding. People are becoming more aware of what trauma is. And so I find this extremely exciting because I think we can start to look at child development and parenting in new ways where we need to be willing to be horrified a bit to do better. And it doesn't take much to unconsciously harm a child. So what that requires is that we do the work to become more conscious, because what

we're conscious of we can change, right. Yeah, And I think that there's, like you're saying, trauma is now being expanded upon where it used to be, you know, big T traumas were also now you know, understanding all of the little T traumas, the small things that that we may not have thought of as trauma, but it does affect us in the same way. And same thing with abandonment. It's not just about leaving a child. There's a there's many ways in which children can be abandoned emotionally, you know.

And also, like you're saying with the exploitation, I encourage people to go really start to expand their definition of these words, because they're they're not just the big things that we've been taught in the past. I know so many people and my husband is one of them that's like, nothing happened to me, Like yeah, I'm like, yeah, I know that. Definitely, it does in small ways, and a lot of times we we don't know what to compare it to, you know, like we just are in our

childhood homes. We assume that everybody else is the same exact childhood as us. And then we become adults, and if we're resilient and if we have support, we'll be able to say reach a point where we're like, oh my god, that wasn't normal. I need to support, and then we can start to come to terms with a magnitude of actually what we what happened to us that's another place where grief comes in is to get to it with that grief process. Absolutely, and we absolutely will

be right back after we take a quick breather. Welcome back, beautiful souls. I am chatting with the wonderfully wise Bethany Webster about grief and the mother wound. We've talked about being emotional caretakers in the family, and I think that's just across the board as women were kind of expected

to be the emotional caretakers of in any relationship. And you know, so, what was the most supportive thing for you when looking at the ways that you emotionally caretake tew you say that was the emotional caretaker in relationships?

Where because I know, for me, I'm at a point where I'm starting to see I mean not that I didn't know that, but I'm starting to to really understand and all the ways in which I try to I'm hyper vigilant and and wanting to make sure that everybody is okay because then I feel safe and I feel comfortable and I don't have to deal with all the emotions that come up. You know, So, for sure, where do we begin to reframe that for ourselves as women such a great question. I think a couple of things.

Um One, I would say anger has helped, and I'll get into that, and then the other piece before I lose it is about looking at manipulation. So anger first, like, I think getting in touch with how angry I was that I was basically not allowed to exist on my own, you know, with boundaries and a skin and a voice and needs that so kind of like oh you just touch yeah, like yeah, yeah, and exhaustion as well, like

I'm fucking tired of doing that, you know. So seeing getting in touch with my real emotions about what it feels like to be an emotional caretaker and how that was kind of an exploitation of me as a child, like I didn't really get to be a child. I actually never identified as a child. I realized this a few years ago. I was like, I've always felt like an adult and and so getting in touch with the

betrayal at the heart of that. So I think that really set a fire in me to kind of fight this impulse a bit and like kind of fight to be a and I lose fight in like a mild sense, just hold my ground. I get to have different needs, I get to be at a different pace than other people. I'm not everyone's emotional slave, you know, And that's kind of how I felt like my mother's emotional prostitute. There was a dirtiness. I felt like dirty and used. I

wasn't a person to her, I was an appendage. So this getting in touch with a rage around not being able to be human, not being able to be separate, help me a lot to try to get to that

place where now. And this is a lot of what I teach women is how to feel the legitimacy of your sovereignty, like you get to have a separate reality and help that little girl inside of you that might feel like, oh, I'm going to be left for dead if I actually say no or you know, so it's kind of like helping that child and you feel safe with sovereignty. That's how we begin to trust our our

relationship with ourselves. I think we've learned to because we have been taught like we can't have our own sovereign selves and experience. We always question our own experience, and so getting in learning to trust that whatever is coming up for us is valid is such a huge piece because when you're emotionally caretaking all the time, it's like, oh I must be crazy, there must be something wrong with me. Why am I making that person feel that way?

It's that piece for me is my anger. I mean now I'm just starting to really get in touch with healthy anger and allowing that to promote a separate self and it's intense. Yeah right, Yeah, I'm psyched for you actually, because this is a powerful place to be in the journey, because it's like our anger is a part of our power. When we're ready to own it, you can start to feel this life worse. Yeah, just like, oh yeah, I feel the life force. That's so powerful. And I like

to teach women to that you are the authority. You're the authority on what's right and best for you, no one else. And so many of us, like you said, have had to kind of disable that signal inside that says I'm I'm done, like I want to do something else now, or just whatever our needs are. As little girls, we had to muffle that signal in order to always be at the whim of other people. So I think as women, we have to learn how to recover and listen to what are my limits, what do I really need?

And to hold space for that for a long time, I had to learn to say I don't know, I'll get back to you. I would always immediately say yes to people, you know, immediately, immediately, and then I had to question that and literally slow down because there's a part of me that felt like death to not say yes. Yes. I understand that feeling. I understand that, and I love that I don't know, I'll get back to you. I love Okay, everybody please remember that. I think that's such

a huge piece. It's like, if we don't feel comfortable with saying no just yet, right, I don't know, I'll get back to you is a great and it is a great way to segue into it now totally. I

think you know that manipulation piece. I think that leads so well into the manipulation piece because instead of manipulating and saying yes, well we mean no just to keep the peace or whatever it may be, we're no longer abandoning ourselves, and that that's basically what we're doing when we say yes, and we know we're abandoning ourselves, and so when we say I don't know, I'll get back

to you. I find that a beautiful middle ground in a way, to grow into saying no with with love and being able to connect back to our own self and not just jump immediately into abandonment, which is basically when we say yes to the things we mean no, you know, want to say no to That's that's all we're doing is abandoning self totally, totally, and in that moment we might not even know what we want do

I want to do? That took a long time for me to admit to myself, I don't want to hang out with that person or I don't want to do that thing, and it's so it was so empowering for me to start to actually say, yeah, give yourself that male ground of I don't know, let me get back to you. And then that gives you also time to kind of form an empowered no and practice that when in your own time, at your own pace, because it

that anger piece then can come in. For me, I've noticed that I can just jump right to anger and like let that drive my no sometimes and it's like, wait, the empowered no is the anger can inform that, but it doesn't have to be the way in which we express it. And sometimes the little one and me just get starts to get angry wants to just jump to the expression of it comes out as as anger, and I know that there's a better way that I would

like to express that No, that feels more empowered. Yeah, beautiful, thanks for sharing that. That is so true. I mean, I it's very natural as we get in touch with those true feelings for the inner child to we kind of blend with her. We might all of a sudden blend with our inner child and see the world or other people through that the lens of her wounds, which is I'm trapped. I have to say no quick because

I might get hurt. So it's powering to slow that down and so that that no is like a calm choice. It's like a calm, respectful choice. Some of the things I invite people to think about to see if you're blended with your inner child, urgency and like a reaction, like a reactivity or desperation. Those are signs that we

are blended with the inner child. And so it can be good to take a step back and like say, little Bethany, I see that you're super angry right now, tell me all about it, or let's you know, have a conversation or like a connection with her and then when you feel calmer, then you can approach it as your adult, right, And this is just kind of a learning curve like working with our inner kids and then eventually being able to have interactions always as our adult,

so that we don't get overtaken by the inner child, which can create all kinds of problems. It definitely can. Yeah, well, I mean, I think a lot of us are living lives that are inner children, are running, are inner wounded children. And where you know my example the other day of letting myself get my hair wet. I love when my inner child can actually play and run the show from the place of feeling safe. That's when life can become fun.

It's the innocence and that when we're looking at the world through our wounded child, which most of us are, and I'm for many many years have done it. Now I can recognize what I'm there and when I'm the awareness around the piece of when I'm there and when

I'm an adult and what's going on. But thank God for the awareness of that because now I've learned how to and like you're saying, this a learning curve, learning learn how to step away and be like I can't have this conversation right now, or I need to I need to take a break because where I'm coming from is not the place I want to come from. That's powerful. Yeah, it's such an empowering thing to be able to have the resilience to do that exactly you say resilience. It

is exhausting, it is, right, it is. So I was just going to mention one other thing because you would ask me such a great question about how to move out of a commercial caretaking and the other the second part was going to be about integrity, Like I noticed I was manipulating people because I wasn't being really honest. So I was also motivated by how can I be

really true? And I think so many of us are feeling this desire, like we want to be true, we want to be have authentic relationships, we want to be authentic people, We want to embody what's true and important to us. And starting to see that emotional caretaking was

a manipulation of other people. With my ex partner, I remember I had this total moment of recognition where she would ask me something and I would be like yeah, sure, yeah, yeah yeah, And then I dissected a little bit more later and I was like, oh, it was kind of it was a total mimic of what I had with my mother, Or was like feed her before she feeds on me. So what do I understand? Oh my god, it was like because that's what I had to do with my mother. And my mother was basically a ravenous

in her child. She was a ravenous little girl, wounded little girl in an adult body, so she could be a bully, she could be a tyrant. So it was I had to navigate that as a little girl, like I need this person for survival, but she is harmful.

So I think we also when we look at manipulation as women, we need to have compassion for ourselves because that manipulation was a real legit survival strategy and it was empowering when I realized it, Like I was feeding her quickly so that her needs wouldn't become so big that she would feed on me. That's so well said. Painful, it's painful, but I know I, like I said, I'm just kind of coming to that place of understanding how

I manipulate. And because of that reason, and there's this cringe, there's like like that far because it because I'm thinking. You know, it's of course as an adult woman, I don't want to manipulate my really in my relationships. But the piece of me that's manipulating is this child that

is exactly what you're explaining. And there after that comes up, Oh, you know, like you're saying, I think there's such it's so important that we do slow down and give compassion to these pieces of ourselves and be the witness of it without judgment, because if we just if we keep judging this part, we're never going to be able to look at it either, like with clear eyes and with that open heart and shift something. If we're constantly judging

this piece of ourselves that just is icky. It feels icky. Yeah. One of the most liberating insights for me lately, especially when shame, is realizing that there's nothing actually shameful. We're all just trying to survive. We're all innocently trying to survive inside of the conditioned patterns that we developed as kids. That's what's happening. And all of these strategies, as icky as they are, came from pain, right, Yeah, And so it's so liberating to start to look at myself without

the shame lens. Oh, this is what you needed to do. You were so scared you had no other option but to manipulate her, you know, give her what she wanted so that you could be safe. And you did the right thing at that time, you know. So I think it's as adults we have to the real responsibility is about integrity and not trying to be as conscious as possible so that we don't replicate. Absolutely, Yeah, that's all

we can do. Really. Yeah, it's very true. I know you went for a long long time without talking to your mom, and have you had any contact with her? No? I have. It's been actually, let's see two thousand of it's ten years. Um, she did show up occasionally, you know, as a troll on my website and occasionally trolling with these like horrendous statements all in caps. So but she stopped doing that. So yeah, I haven't heard from her in years. Some nasty letters. But wow, I'm so sorry.

I UM, that's okay, thank you, But I'm I feel really liberated now. Oh I can tell I absolutely and I understand, but it's it's still you. When you hear that, You're like, oh, I'm so sorry you had to go through that at the end point, I want to talk about an estrangement because I I feel like, you know we're talking about first off, this whole conversation, you can be very shame inducing for a lot of people, and then to be estranged from family. I know we live

in this culture where it's like they're your family. You're supposed to just deal with it, you know, and love them for who they are. And yes, there's a piece of I can love you for for who you are and accept your limitations, but that also might not mean that I can be around you. And and that's such

a talk about shame inducing. And in a society where it's like love the love object, love the mother, how do we begin to well, I guess it's kind of like having these conversations that we begin to normalize it. But for anybody out there who is estranged from their mother or thinking of even setting that boundary of I can't have that connection with you. And we will unpack that loaded question right after we pause for a quick break. Welcome back everyone. I have just asked Bethany Webster about

the best way to set boundaries while navigating the mother wound. Yeah, great question. I think I would just say your feelings are valid. The part of you that says I can't do this anymore is a part of your truth. For many of us going estranged, I don't even like that word really, but yeah, you know, it's kind of a

weird word. But yet to go no contact is can be one of the hardest things that we have to go through as as humans, I think, because everything in our bio aology or physiology is to connect, right, so things have to be quite bad. And I have such a respect for people who are contemplating this because I almost see it like part of our evolution, like we have to learn how to do this. Our parents are not entitled two relationships with us. They have to earn that.

And this is a new concept for many people, that parents are entitled to relationships with their kids, their adult children. They are not. You don't owe anyone, You don't owe your parents anything. I'm a strong believer in that. What I'm crying because it's well, it's just I think there's a relief in just hearing someone else say they're not entitled to you, and that is a new way of living and of being in this world. For so many

of us. It's a cultural shift that is really deep, and like you're saying, by biologically, I just talked to my nervous about this the other day. It's like I wish I could cut out this piece and be a biology that's like I need a mom, because I'm like, you know, there's for so long I've understood, you know, my mom's limitations, and I feel like I've let go of the dream of having it differently, but there's still biologically,

there's still something that's like I need a mother. And I think that just hearing you say that, I mean, it brought me to tears because I think is relief for anyone who's challenged with these relationships in their lives. Um to the extent that you know, you and I have been um, there's just relief and that so thank you for thank you for saying that and giving people permission, because ultimately it's up to us to give ourselves permission for this, but I think there's so so much support

in hearing it from you. Yeah. Absolutely, thank you for asking the question because I think we have to get here as a culture because otherwise what we're doing is saying that people get to abuse me, and that can't be true anymore, whether it's blood or friends or primary relationships parents, nobody is entitled to your time and energy,

and we have to feel worthy of that. I feel like people who go no contact are important in the culture because we carry a torch for a higher standard for human relationships and that it's possible to have chosen family right who who do nurture us and support us. It's like kind of creating a new model for family UM where we're not stuck with people who abuse us

and we have to accept that as normal anymore. I don't think we can um and and so yeah, yeah, so I honor all the we're warriors, those of us who have had to go this is a warrior path. It's a very spiritual path, I think, because in the process you actually can develop a profound sense of self worth and a solidity in yourself that few people have the opportunity to develop. Up. Yes, I completely agree with you, and it's not for the faint of heart, absolutely at all.

But I wanted to talk about because I know we've been talking about a lot of heavy stuff. I wanted to talk about what's on the other side of this work, because when when you begin to peel back these layers. And you know, healing we talk about is kind of it's a spiral, and there's layers to it, and I feel like this is a lifelong process in a lot of ways, especially since we are the first kind of generation that's peeling back the layers of the onion of healing.

You said something in your book which I wanted to touch upon because it's so beautiful and I had the same experience when it comes to innocence. I actually wrote a song on my new album called Innocent. You were talking about on the other side of this what you got to where you came to with your truest essence, with your innocence and recognizing it's not gone, Like we haven't lost something. And I think that's one of the biggest lies that we're told that were made to believe,

whether it be from abuse or whatever. You know, however, we feel like we've lost our innocence. For me, it was, you know, starting so young and not having a childhood and all of those things. But all of a sudden, when I heard you talk about this in this book, I was like, oh my god, she's had the same experience. It was like recognizing that that innocence and the pure essence of who we are that's untouched by trauma is

still there and we can access it. And I think this work is the direct line to being able to

access that piece of us. I would I would just love for people to hear your experience of what that innocence and being, you know, touching upon that piece of you is like, yeah, thank you for this like kind of bringing us here to this kind of place in the conversation, because I feel like this is where this work goes to a really profound, kind of spiritual place where it is truly like the tectonic plates of life shift from the shame based identity which most of us have.

Two we can live in a more of a place where it's like feeling, yeah, your life force come back to you, right. So, Like in my experience, one of the most profound realizations was that my mother had this thing with me that was just like I know who you are, and you're bad. It was really her own shame that she was projecting onto me because she fell out of control. And then realizing that none of that, none of what happened to me actually had a flick

to do with me. None of it, and I think I knew that conceptually, you know, through doing the work, but then there was this place where it was just everything opened up and it was just like on a visceral level, I could feel it. I could feel the reality of my goodness that is indestructible and there's a lot of vitality and energy, like almost a playfulness. It's like recapturing, you know, underneath the gunk and kind of the accumulated crap and illusions that we have to take

on to survive. We start to feel like, oh my gosh, that wasn't me at all. And I know who I am. I'm the expert on me, and I can feel my goodness and that that has a right. I have a right to exist. I don't have to prove it. I don't have to earn it, I don't have to strive for it. I just am. You have a right to exist within that emotional experience of goodness and joy and

like playfulness. And I think that's one of the biggest pieces for me is you know, and I oscillate kind of back and forth between trauma and pain and then joy and play, and it takes a long time where it has for me at least, I'm still learning how to exist within that playfulness and that joyous space because that wasn't That wasn't safe as a child like joy joy wasn't safe for me, And so it takes a

while once we start to touch upon that. At least for me, it has to allow myself to wake up every day and go, oh, I can exist in a different space even though my trauma is still here. I don't have to exist there today. Yes, I love that totally, And thanks for emphasizing. It's like rebirthing ourselves. It is like a birth, like it does. We just stretch, and the more joy and resilience we have, then we can

handle a little bit more pain that might come up. Right, So it's an interesting progression where it's not like everything gets super easy, but we might actually have more pain to come up as we get more resilient to handle it. But then there's a time where we I'm going through it a little bit of this right now myself where I just recently moved and I'm there's so much beauty. It's coinciding with all these different things. But my inner child is like I can a teen part, not my

youngest part. But a teen part who had to protect me as a child with combat She wore combat boots, you know, surfer skateboarder girl. She's like, I can just exist and see all this beauty and like the sun comes up and then it goes down, and it happens every day and I can just enjoy it. Interesting. Sometimes I kind of feel high, almost like my senses are are actually becoming more cute. The more that I heal, the more I can see the wonder and the awe

of just ordinary existence. Absolutely, I totally understand everything that you're saying right now. Uh, And I love that you just brought that up. Thank you for that's just a personal thing. Thank you for saying this team part of me, because I think that's kind of where I'm at right now, is like this connecting with this the teenage self that had a lot of coping mechanisms, you know, and had to in a very public way. Yeah, thank you, just on a personal note for for validating that, because it's

it's where I'm currently hanging out. I think I've I've a lot of my younger self. I've I've been able to get in touch with. But it's interesting in the

teenagers because all of a sudden, the rebellion. Just to touch upon this, you just mentioned this kind of like harder piece of you that was protecting you, but the the rebellion can be exhausting in itself, and you know, been learning like what what rebellion I want to keep when that can serve me, and when it's you know, not served me in the past, and when that's been a when that's been a protective mechanism, and it's just such an interesting ride. That's that piece totally. It sounds

like it's for you. My team was definitely the most hyper vigilant part, so she would be like a scanner soldier, like you know, when everything's fine actually felt scarier because it means something bad is going to happen at any moment. Yeah, it's interesting that lives in ourselves, right, that's just part of our brains and nervous system that is wired to look for that. It's been a lot just through loving, reaffirming to her every day and multiple times a day

that you don't have to worry about anything. I've got you. I'm your big b and I'm looking out for you, and I've got so much support and you can just enjoy living in the beauty. And so it's taken months and months and months since this part has arrived, and she's so awesome, like there's so much love and beauty inside of her that's not hard, Like the hard part was just like the shell. But underneath is this like flower that's blossoming. And I love that. I love that

for you. I love the friends because I think that's one last question before I head over to the music side of things. What do you envision when you see a world where we've all done this work? What do you see as you know the what do you see the world looking like? What do you envision for for us as a culture, as spiritual beings, as this planet? How do you see this rippling out? I see that as more of us do this work, and I'm sure it's going to take many, many generations, but I think

we can have a culture based on connection. The more I do this work, the more I realize that attachment is really about love. It's about coming into the world feeling safe, feeling loved, feeling that we can trust life, trust our bodies. So as more of us do this work, we pass down less harm, we model we feel comfortable being connected. There's less of a push or fight or less defensive. So I think we can ultimately build a

culture around attachment. I get excited by thinking about what society looked like if we based everything on a secure mother child relationship so that each child gets everything here she needs. That would be amazing. It would mean like clean water, universal basic income, healthcare, everything. And I think more creativity. I think I see like a renaissance, like we think at the Renaissance of sixteen hundreds and you know, Florence, Italy and Europe. I think that's just like a speck

of what could happen with our creativity. Because to be a creative, you look at human development. To be creative, a child needs to feel safe and actually feel a little boredom in order to actually start to you know, really engage the imagination and stuff. We need time to day dream, we need we need time to play. I don't come up with ideas at my desk. I come up with ideas on walks and travels and staring at clouds,

you know. Um, So I think it would just be this amazing outburst of creativity and fun and human connection, like a whole renaissance. And I love that you think about, you know, when children were kind of basically raised within community, like years and years and exactly I've been thinking that

about that a lot lately. Here we are and the mother is supposed to be you know, five million things at while while trying to raise a child, and here, you know, the first six seven years of a child's life is so important, and we have women who are just completely absent because they're trying to create a career and all these different things. And it's three jobs exactly, everything everything trying to be a wife, you know, a friend,

and work in the community, whatever it may be. There's just so many things pulling us away from this real connection that we need to give to children. And I think the community piece is so important. And I think of you know, you're saying that we could be connected and in community, and I think that I I see when you say that, us almost going back to this way that where we have more people that are able to help us raise children in the right way to

that connection. So yeah, it's not amazing to think about. I could literally I could talk to you for days. So I feel the same. Thank you, Thank you so much. I always ask my guest, they're holy five, as I call it, their top five songs. This could be like over your lifetime or like what you're listening to now, but um, I would love to hear what you're five are.

Thank you for this question. By the way, I've been working on it very diligently and come up with many revisions, but as of last night okay, um, yeah, so I would say I was thinking I'll start quickly. Dirt is a song by the Stooges nine seventies album called fun House. It was my first introduction to punk music when I was a teenager, so that's perfect to talk about the team so representing her, representing her number one yea. And then I would say Banita apple bum by Tribe called Question,

Oh nice, I love it um. And then let's see back to Life by Soul to Soul back to yeah um. And then another one I love is in God's Country by You Two Do I the Joshua Treep. Yeah, okay, I love that so good, so good um. And then another one is um. There's this song called Rhodes by Porta's Head. It's an album called Dummy that came out in Like Or Or something and every time I hear it. I was in Budapest once and the whole entire album came on and I was just like, oh my god,

this album is so good. Um Roads, I'm gonna go check that out. Roads. It's a slow, kind of like electronic, dark, beautiful song. Okay, did I do five yet? That was five? That was good. I know. It's so funny people. Everybody that comes on here, it's like, this is the hardest question anyone ever answered. Well, thank thank you so much. It's been so fun to chat with you, Leanne. I appreciate you and the work that you're doing and what

you're bringing to the world. It's really remarkable and magnificent and it's really fun to be part of it. So thanks for inviting me. Thank you, Sam, Sam, and I look forward to continuing this conversation with you. I think, yes, it's really important. So we love that. Take care bye bye who And that wraps up this episode of Holy Man. Thank you all so much for spending this time with me. I think this episode was so so so important. Take care of yourselves. If this brought up anything for you,

because it is a very tender topic. I know it can bring up a lot of different emotions for each and every one of us, So just treat yourself with care and compassion. And I so appreciate you being here and would love to hear your feedback, especially on this episode, so please full free to reach out in the comments wherever you're listening. Please be kind. We're all navigating this life in our own way, and I know from myself I definitely shared a lot of personal deeper information on

this episode. So let's treat each other with kindness and compassion. And if you think this episode might help someone you know, please pass it along while I go check my phone for my mom's text just about now. I love you all. Bye. On the next episode of Holy Human, I'll be welcoming my dear friend n Kate Horseman, an integrative healer with a unique holistic approach to utilizing nutrition, breath work, and energy work to navigate trauma and attain more enter peace.

I hope you will join us. I'll see you then. Holy Human with Me Leanne Rhymes is a production of I Heart Radio. You'll find Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes on the I Heart app, Apple podcast or wherever you get the podcasts that matter most. To you,