Honoring Our Mothers
Jun 09, 2021
To honour our mother is to honour life itself. We are all born of a woman who nurtures us in her body and births us forth into this life. This physical and biological reality of literally being part of another human being, our mother, is our primary life experience from conception onwards. No matter how good she is at mothering after the baby is birthed and umbilical cord cut, the fact remains that Mother gives the precious gift of life, which can never be repaid. Our life is literally in her hands from conception onwards. Once we are born into this world, the quality of our attachment and ensuing relationship with our mother, is synonymous with our relationship with Life itself and the flow of abundance in our lives.
Our mother is the very rock and foundation of our existence in this life. Biologically, psychologically, and spiritually, our bond with our mother is crucial to the quality of our life. Psychologists, beginning with Freud, have emphasized the essential mother-child bond as crucial to healthy human development. The plethora of research and writing about Attachment Theory today, corroborates the significance of this primal mother-child connection. Bundling baby on Mum’s stomach during the day, keeping baby in room with parents at night and of course breast-feeding, are all significant in allowing baby to feel the comfort, safety and security of its mother outside the womb. The importance of this first bond makes sense when we remember that mother and child were one from the beginning.
Psychological research confirms that our primary experience of life is of unity which explains why physical separation between mother and child after birth is a universal trauma for all human beings. Up until the age of 1 1/2 to 2 years old, children are literally self-centered and believe that they are a part of the mother or mother a part of them. The idea of separation and independence is foreign and therefore psychologically a dramatic life change for baby, which must be handled with care and attention. This psychological understanding provides another perspective to balance the anthropological contention that children cling to parents and especially mother because connection with caregivers and group interdependence are necessary for survival. Psychologists agree that baby’s experience of bonding in the first year results in fundamental “trust or mistrust” in the benevolence of life.
Recent research in cell biology, epigenetics and neuropsychology have not only proven the importance of these psychological precepts but corroborated the fact that along with DNA, an ancestral legacy of unresolved experiences, traumas and debilitating patterns of behaviour, is also passed down from mother to children though cell memory. Of course, the fetus carries the genetic download from both mother and father. However, nine months inside Mother’s womb have the added impact of absorbing her experience of life from conception through the gestation period. Mother’s experiences of life leave an ongoing and direct imprint on the developing baby. Separation from mother in the first 5 years of a child’s life, even in understandable circumstances, is still experienced by the child as rejection and/or abandonment and leaves a psychological imprint which is lived out in the individual’s life and relationships.
