Stop waiting for your mother’s permission to become an adult.

Watching Black Swan made me think about the relationship between Nina and her mother differently. Nina is an adult woman, yet there is something almost childlike about the way she moves through her private life. Her pink bedroom, the stuffed animals, her mother monitoring her choices and the difficulty Nina has separating from her made me think about something much bigger than the film.

At what point do we stop asking our mothers for permission to become women?

Perhaps there is one love many of us spend our entire lives looking for: our mother’s love. She is the woman we want to support us, protect us and reassure us that we are making the right choices. Even when we become adults, there can still be something inside us that wants to hear her say: I see you. I understand you. You are going to be okay.

But our mother is a woman too.

Before she was our mother, she was someone’s daughter. She had expectations placed upon her. She experienced rejection, disappointment, desire, heartbreak and fear. She had dreams she fulfilled and perhaps others she had to leave behind. She was trying to understand what it meant to be a woman while eventually becoming responsible for teaching us how to become one.

And we were watching.

The Mother Wound

Our mother can become one of our earliest blueprints for womanhood.

We watch how she loves. How she responds to rejection. What she tolerates from men. How she feels about money. Whether she follows her ambitions. How she speaks about her body. Whether she takes up space or makes herself smaller.

We also watch how she responds to us. Can we disagree with her? Can we say no? Can we make choices she would never make? Can we become someone she did not imagine?

The mother wound does not always come from a mother who did not love us. Sometimes there is enormous love between mother and daughter.

But love does not prevent unresolved pain from traveling between generations.

Her fear can become our fear. Her disappointments can become our warnings. Her survival strategies can become our rules. We may follow directly in her footsteps. Or we may spend our entire lives determined to become her opposite.

Whatever we decide, she remains the reference point.

The Mother Inside You

Eventually something interesting happens. Your mother does not have to be in the room anymore. You already know what she would say.

You hear her when you consider leaving the relationship. When you want to change careers. When you spend money. When you move somewhere new. When you choose a man she would never choose. When you decide you do not want the life she imagined for you.

What will my mother think?

Sometimes that voice protects us. Our mothers can give us wisdom, standards, strength and instincts that remain with us for life. But sometimes the mother inside us becomes an authority we never consciously chose.

You are forty years old and still explaining yourself. You know what you want, but you are waiting for approval. You make the decision and immediately wonder how you are going to tell her. You confuse disappointing your mother with making the wrong choice.

That is when the question changes.

Is this actually my voice, or have I internalized hers?

Becoming an adult does not mean rejecting your mother. It means becoming capable of hearing her without automatically obeying her.

Stop Waiting for Permission

There comes a point when your mother cannot authorize your adulthood. You have to.

You are allowed to make a decision she does not understand.
You are allowed to become more successful than she was.
You are allowed to have a happier relationship.
You are allowed to create boundaries she never had.
You are allowed to enjoy freedoms she could not access.
You are allowed to choose differently without turning her choices into mistakes.

Her life is not the limit of yours.

And perhaps that is one of the most difficult parts of healing the mother wound. You stop waiting for your mother to become the person who finally gives you everything you needed from her. You stop waiting for the perfect conversation. The apology. The understanding. The approval. The permission.

You can love your mother and still become a woman she would not have chosen for you.
You can understand her pain without inheriting it.
You can honor her sacrifices without repeating them.
You can carry the beautiful things she gave you while putting down what was never yours to carry.

At some point, becoming an adult means recognizing that the mother whose permission you are still waiting for may no longer be standing outside you. She lives inside you. And now it is your responsibility to decide which parts of her voice you want to keep.

You no longer have to ask: Mother, may I? You are an adult now.

Give yourself permission.

With Love,
Mara Michels

Inside the Mother Wound