Exploring Abandonment and the Mother Wound

Two tiny drops of water that landed on my desk when I was filling a little mason jar is where today’s art exploration of the mother wound began in a therapy session with a client today. I could have ignored these two tiny drops. I could have just wiped them away. But instead, I noticed. And with that noticing came curiosity and intrigue and a desire to dip a water-soluble graphite stick into one of the drops just to see what might happen. My inner child immediately joined the party and I found us both bubbling with excitement and bursting into the wonder of all that was very quickly coming alive.

This is it. This is how I help women come into presence with what weighs them down or keeps them from living the lives they so desire. Let’s be honest here—dealing with something as sensitive as the mother wound, abandonment by our own mothers, can be potentially heartbreaking and triggering. Diving into it too fast or too zealously can result in more trauma. So we simply don’t do that. And we don’t sit and talk it out for hours and hours on end. We don’t rehash old narratives. We don’t problem solve with words. We don’t seek out solutions.

But here’s what we do do: We show up. We open ourselves up to possibility. We roll up our sleeves. We give ourselves permission to let go. We get messy. We welcome vulnerability. We play. We stay curious. We unravel in the beauty of the beginner’s mind. We follow the art as it takes us on a wild adventure into a time and space that has no rules. We make peace with having no expectations. We make marks and movements with whatever catches our fancy. We make magic with the unknown. We forget, for just a while, the sting of what brought us here in the first place. And in that tiny fragment of feeling alive in the spontaneity of purposeful play, we discover the depths of whatever is seeking to know us. It might be an acknowledgment, a truth, a strength, a resource or even a question.

Whatever we find beneath the surface of our inhibitions, insecurities, and fears is our treasure; an unadulterated understanding of who we are and what we need in that moment. All of this from pausing and paying attention to two little drops of water or the like. Expressive Arts Therapy changes the way we see the world. It changes us.