Healing the Mother & Father Wound: How Transforming Your Pain Sets You Free

Makena: Hello.

Gigi: Hello. Welcome.

Makena: Hello.

Gigi: Hello. Now you say welcome. Welcome.

Makena: Welcome.

Gigi: Welcome. Good.

Makena: We are back with another episode that I am very excited to talk about because this is something that, again, we’ve mentioned—I’m working on our book right now—and it actually became a chapter in the book. It’s really about what I call, in the book right now, “healing the mother wound” and “healing the father wound,” because that’s language that’s become more popular around this. 

But it’s really about those experiences from our childhood that hold us—or people often feel, as they dive into their healing, things that maybe hold you back or you go, “Oh my gosh, this is why I am the way I am,” or “My parents always told me this.” Something you really taught me, Gigi, which is the premise of this episode and why we wanted to share, is that it is possible to do your healing and then, ultimately, to be healed and be free.

Gigi: Yeah, it absolutely is. I’ve witnessed that from my own experience, and I’ve witnessed that through a lot of the people I’ve worked with throughout my career. And, Makena, you have done such an amazing job at really going into the healing and working on yourself in such a way—and to let go of things.

Makena: Yeah, it’s a lot of courage.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: And, like I write about in the book, it was a very different experience. I mean, I’m focusing on the father and the mother. It could be any kind of experiences from your childhood, but with my father, having a very different kind of relationship, or not having really a relationship at this point in my life by choice, and then with you being really in connection and communication the whole time—there was still healing I had to do around my relationship and things I had to forgive you for, or chose to, wanted to forgive you for and let go of. 

Or just things that I was unconsciously playing out—old patterns, or holding against you. It took years to kind of unwind all of that. The processes, like I said, were very different. We teach some processes with our clients around this. 

But really, again, it is just to say that both are really important: the healing part, and ultimately—I don’t know if it’s a decision that you’re free or it’s a place that you come to. I think in some ways it is a choice at some point that you are complete.

Gigi: It is a choice, from what I’ve seen with people, because I’ve worked with people on this a lot. And that’s what I say is, finally—and then for my own, too, with my parents, you know, in my early 30s—I didn’t have so much trauma or so many things, but the stories or the pain or the things where I felt my parents let me down or things they did, I let go of all of that. I made a choice early on in my life to just not replay those anymore and to let go. 

I wrote an article about it years ago, called “Give Your Parents a Break,” because, you know, I had no idea what my parents were going through when I had these different experiences with them. I had no idea about their movie. I chose to finally say it doesn’t mean I have to agree with what happened or maybe the things that hurt, but I chose to forgive and to let them off the hook and let go. And I just want to say, I know there are a lot of people out there that have serious trauma and a lot of pain and really terrible things that have happened to them, and we’re not downplaying that. 

We’re not therapists, and I do highly encourage people, if they come to me and they have a lot of things to work through, to go to a therapist and put that time in and really, really have a place where you can heal and have that time, because it’s so, so important. So it’s a conscious decision you have to make wherever you’re sitting. So we’re not downplaying that, and we’re really—you know, we might get some pushback on this. What we’re doing is to say, really dig down deep into it. 

And as you said, Makena, like you did—go on that healing journey, if you can. And then finally, I always tell my clients, I just had a client the other day, and I said, “How old are you now?” They were in their late 50s. I said, “Are you really going to keep on taking that story into the rest of your life? Because when you do, it holds you. It holds you from truly living, and it holds you back from living your life completely.” You know, and they were like, “You’re so right about that.” 

For me, I’ve had many, many people finally choose, “Okay, I’m done. I don’t agree, and I forgive. Of course, I don’t forget—I mean, it’s still in the patterns in me— but I do believe I’ve seen, and I’ve seen this in you, Makena (sorry, I’ll let you talk in a minute), but I see when people finally do make that decision or choice, all of a sudden things unravel in a certain way, that those stories don’t keep on showing up in you. You get glimpses sometimes, right?

Makena: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s so much in what you just shared that I want to touch on. I think one thing is, like you said, the trauma may be very real or the challenges, the terrible things that you went through or that your parents said to you or other people in your life. People go through a lot. We all have—to varying degrees, some more than others. 

And so I do think that there is this stage—call it the healing stage, and sometimes, like I write about in the book, you need to be angry, and sometimes you need to grieve. There are a lot of stages of grief, as we know. And so in that, you can absolutely go in and do that, have that phase. Find the healers, find the therapists, dig deep, let yourself be angry, let yourself feel righteous, or feel like you are the victim in the story. It just depends—there’s no set amount of time for that. But I think even when you’re going through that, there can be a sort of meta-awareness. 

It’s like you’re in the healing and you’re in the anger or whatever the emotions are, but there can also be a part of you that pops out sometimes and goes, “Okay, this is something I’m doing for a time, to really feel it, to express it if I need to, or do whatever I need to do around this. 

And there will come a time where I’m going to choose a different story or where I’m really going to let this go.” 

I think even just having that awareness can be really powerful, so you’re not fully collapsed into the story or the trauma or whatever it is. I said that to someone the other day—a friend of mine that I’m close to. I just said, “I get that where you’re sitting right now, they’ve done a lot of healing and a lot of growth around these kinds of things from their childhood.” 

Maybe you’re in a chapter where you’ve hit a new level—you have. At the same time, that’s great, but there will come a time where I think you’re going to want to choose a different story: to not be the victim of your story, but to actually instead have your story be the reason—or the things that you went through be the reason you are the person you are today. 

Or, if you really want to create something in your world, let’s say it’s a certain level of success, that your story or what you went through, you reframe it as the reason you created that success instead of the thing that stopped you.

Gigi: And I love that. I love that you said that. That is so profound. Because you said otherwise you’re giving your power away, and that’s such a great distinction. Every time we replay and replay and replay after we’ve done the healing, then we give our power away. We can’t fully—that’s what I said to this client—“You can’t fully live your life.” 

You’re living through this filter of “you’ve been done wrong,” and then there’s resistance, and resistance just creates attraction. Right? You’re going to keep on feeling it. To finally go, “I’m going to be at peace with this,” I do believe we all have the human capability to do that. I do believe that is our capability. It takes an enormous amount of courage to do that and just take ownership for who you are and how you’re going to live your life, but not in resistance. 

I know that with my kids, we lived in very—in many ways—unstable, all over the place, traveling, crazy life. That’s the reason why many of you are so grounded now, right? Because you chose something different. I could feel bad about that, and of course I had my times where I had guilt, and then I had to let go of it. That is part of the reason why I pioneered what I did. 

That’s part of the reason why you guys have a certain spirit that you have. For one kid it was amazing, for another kid it was traumatic. There’s no way for me to navigate that with five people—five children. So in that, you choose to make it, like you said, the reason why you are doing things differently. But not even in resistance—it’s just the choice of, you’re going to do things differently.

Makena: Yeah, absolutely. Because how many stories have you heard—you, the listener—of people who had terrible childhoods, who had all kinds of things happen to them, and they rose above it. 

Or that’s—they created in spite of it, or because of it. And then you hear the opposite of people who just spiral in that forever. Again, there’s no right or wrong about any of it, it’s just, what do you want to choose? Do you want to really choose to—and again, I will say there may be a time in your healing journey where it feels really good to be the victim. So I’m not making that wrong either. 

You may really need to go, “Yeah, this happened to me, it was terrible, this is why I am the way I am, this is why I haven’t been able to do the things I want to do.” Right on—feel that way for a time. But again, have that meta-awareness, or—even if you want to put a timeline on it—be like, “I’m going to take a year to really be doing my healing and to feel bad, and let this really kind of take me off track if it has to” or whatever, and then I’m going to make a different choice and create some sort of line in the sand, or you make a little ritual for yourself, or whatever that is that has you say, “From this point forward, I’m going to write a different story, I’m going to tell a different story, I’m going to see this in a different light.” 

One of our recent episodes was about the power of decision. I think this really plays into that—you can make a different decision.

Gigi: Yeah, you can. And even though it might feel really, really difficult to do, and that’s why we have an exercise—what’s the name of it now, Makena?

Makena: The releasing ritual, it was changed.

Gigi: So yes, we have an exercise and we can connect that to this episode, right?

Makena: Yeah. I’m going to look and see if I have the link and if not, we’ll put it in the show notes. We shared it in a recent episode. This is a really powerful exercise and it’s one that we also talk about in the book. Do you want to share a little bit about it?

Gigi: Yeah. So it’s an opportunity to look at all the ways you feel hurt, you have resentment, you have disappointment, you feel misunderstood, and all these things that are in your mind—I mean, the anger and everything—and to be able to purge it onto paper fully. We have a very clear process you go through to make sure that you fully, fully feel and let it all out, and then let go of it. We have a process and a way to do that. 

Again, this has been pivotal in our coaching over the years. When people do this and they come out the other side, it’s like this huge relief, this big weight off your shoulders. I said, in our last episode or in one of our episodes, when I went to Bali, part of my process was to practice this letting go. That was one of the things I did—an activity with a high priestess. I did this water blessing, and in that process, I felt I let go of so much stuff—things I was still holding on to, things where I felt anger or disappointment. When I left there, I felt like, oh my gosh, a huge weight came off my shoulders. 

That’s how people feel when they do this process. When you no longer give your power away like that, you become empowered. You have freedom to design and create your life the way you want to—not because you’re resisting the way somebody didn’t do or something didn’t happen that affected you as a child. That’s when you truly start to create and empower yourself in your life and design your life the way you want to.

Makena: Absolutely. Yeah. The releasing ritual can be done in different ways, but the way we’re talking about doing it here, around your childhood, is to really go back into all the old stuff—to really, as we describe in the video, in the worksheet that you’ll get, which you can get by the way at www.wayofthemuse.com/lettinggo. So wayofthemuse.com/lettinggo will walk you through it. 

It takes some time, you need to set some time aside to really do it, and get some privacy. We talk you through all of that. This version of the exercise would be to really do it around all the stuff from your childhood and all the old resentments and hurts and pains and everything that you’re holding on to. That is a huge one—it can be such a letting go for people. 

I will say that there are different ways you can use this exercise as you move forward. If you have a lot of frustration and resentment built up in your relationship, you could do it around that. If you had a falling out with friends, or if you just—some of our clients just do it once a year, to clear out anything. Yeah, I do it about once a year as well, to just clear out anything that’s built up, all those frustrations, again, like Gigi said, resentments, things that are—what would you say?—swimming around inside of us. To really make the conscious choice to first emote, as you call it, feel the emotion and let yourself cry and let yourself be upset about it all, and then to shift your perspective and to make a different choice. 

People often say, well, it can’t be that simple. What do you say to someone around that? Because again, we are saying, first, if you feel like you need therapy, if you feel like you need other modalities, do that too. This might be something you do toward the tail end of some of that work, to really kind of draw that line in the sand. I think that’s what this exercise is really powerful for. 

But, yeah, if somebody’s really done a lot of healing, let’s say they’ve been on their healing journey for five years or ten years, and they’ve been doing different things, and they come to this exercise and they go, “Well, you know, it can’t be that simple.” 

What would you say, Gigi?

Gigi: Can I say it on the podcast?

Makena: I don’t know.

Gigi: Yeah, I say, yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve watched—

Makena: It’s a choice.

Gigi: Tons of people do it. Yeah, tons of people do it. And it is a choice, finally. 

Again, you don’t want to feel bad if you’re not there yet. That is so okay. We’re just saying, if you are there or you’re a little tired of it, then this is a new way of trying to shift it. Maybe you’ve tried everything else, and now why don’t you try finally making a decision. 

When those thoughts come up again, set them aside, and instead, choose—what do I want to do in my life? Who am I? How do I want to create my life? Not from my pain, but because of my desires. What do I want now? How do I choose to live?

Makena: And this is not a forgiveness exercise necessarily, though forgiveness is very, very powerful, and it is something I talk about in the book. But I think a lot of focus is put on forgiveness, and like you said, that can be an important part of the healing journey. 

Forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean you agree or condone—it doesn’t have to mean any of those things. But the distinction I make in the book, I wrote at one point, is that forgiveness was only one step. Finally, the goal to me was setting my parents free and setting myself free. I don’t know how to describe that in any other way, but it was this letting go of, “Okay, I let that all go, now I’m complete with that.” 

Really, I did that for myself more than anything. Of course, it’s great to have that—in the case with my father, I did that without him being a part of the process at all; in the case with you, you were more actively in that. I had stages or times where I said, “Okay, I’m really consciously letting this go,” and some of it I did on my own, without you knowing about it too. So it doesn’t really matter if the other person is a participant in this. 

To me, that was more the goal—this feeling of freedom versus just forgiveness, which is also extremely powerful. The way that I knew, for example, that I’d done my healing around my father was when my husband walked into my life and was such a different kind of energy. 

So much of the time, we play out patterns—this is a cliché, but it’s also true. If we don’t heal and transmute or let something go, then we’ll play those patterns out in other places in our life, because we’re trying to get the healing, we’re trying to get the conclusion. That’s just, I think, again, to know that that’s possible—and it is a decision that you—

Gigi: Make, ultimately. I think it’s great for you to share that freedom for me in my early 30s just gave me so much space again to create the life that I wanted to create. I created a life completely different from my parents. 

Of course, I took on the things I loved about them and things that are me, that I loved, but it gave me this opportunity to—I mean, I always say “throw mom out from the brain,” or “throw dad from the brain.” If you’ve got this stuff constantly going—“Well, my father would think this” or “my mother would think that”—I had freedom to create what I wanted. 

And I think you should share too, Makena, doing that, what has that freedom done for you in your life? Let me do—I’m going to say one more thing: it let me love my parents in such a way that I had such a great relationship with my parents in a way that I accepted them and enjoyed them. 

They were funny, fun people. I didn’t constantly go in with the story about them, and it was just a great way to then relate to my parents through my life for the rest of their lives. When they passed, I have no regret or bad feeling about my parents at all.

Makena: Yeah, absolutely. It definitely gives you a sense of peace and a settled feeling around all of that. It’s like, I don’t feel triggered—of course, we trigger each other, sometimes, we’re in a relationship with each other and we are mother, daughter, and we’re in business together—but I just mean old stuff doesn’t come up so much anymore to trigger me. It’s more in the moment; if something happens, I’m not holding those old stories. 

So freedom is partially just not having those triggers coming up all the time in the same way, because I’m not holding an old story or thinking, you should have done something different or whatever. What else has it really given me? I think, like you said, it’s this kind of feeling of space—almost a blank canvas. 

I get to create my life both in spite of and because of the way that I was raised or the things that happened to me or whatever it might be. So it is that feeling of ownership and that there’s no one else to blame, but there’s also huge power in that. What I create and when I create is, yes, I honor where I came from, but it’s also like I’m creating that. I have—I’m the one taking charge and taking the power to really move things forward. 

There was something you said, Gigi, about your parents that reminded me of an exercise. It’s so funny, because I remember you and I did this exercise almost around the same time. I’m pretty sure you told me, and we completely came to it separately—we have no idea how that happened. 

But a couple of years ago, one of the things I did was a writing process where I said, “Here are all the things that I love about you, my mother, or my father. Here are all the things I want to carry forward with me. And here are the things I’m complete with and I’m not available for.” That was really powerful. 

Similar to an exercise we shared in the episode about decision making: What am I no longer available for? That, too, was like, okay, I’m honoring the parts that are great and that I really want, and then I’m drawing this line in the sand to say, I’m not available for this in my life moving forward. I’m going to choose a different way. Not from a place of resistance or, “Oh, I don’t want to be like my mother,” but really from this place of ownership and clarity in myself about what I’m choosing in my life.

Gigi: So funny, when you’re talking about—I remember that now. I remember I journaled about it. I remember I have it in a journal. We did it literally within a matter of weeks of each other. I brought it up, and you brought it up, and we were like, how did we come up with the same—

Makena: Yeah, absolutely. We’re on a similar wavelength there. So again, the healing can happen while you’re in a relationship with your parent. It can happen if they’ve passed. It can happen with other people in your childhood. There’s a lot of different lenses on this. 

Anything else you want to share, Gigi?

Gigi: No, I don’t think so. I just think, as we said here, get curious about it and know that the heaviness you feel can be lifted off. It can no longer be a burden in you, and it can actually—on the other side of it, like Makena said—it can really be a freedom, and you get to choose your creating. 

As a parent, I made a lot of mistakes with my kids. On the other side of that, I think it’s so important as a parent, too, because I had a lot of guilt and a lot of things to clean up, especially with five kids, as you can imagine, and the life I’ve lived. To finally also process and get through my guilt and to be able to let that go—and it rears its head every once in a while—but mostly I choose not to have that guilt anymore. I think that’s also very important, too.

Makena: I would really recommend on that note—if that strikes a chord for anyone listening—if you are a parent, we have an episode on mom guilt that we did a while back and we will link that in the show notes as well. 

Or you can look back for it. That’s a really powerful one to talk about the other side, which is what happens when your kids are probably grown, or maybe not even grown yet, and they’re bringing all this stuff to you and saying, “Well, you did this and you did that,” and probably a lot of it’s true, because we’re all human and we all make mistakes. 

I’m about to have my baby and I’m sure she’s going to have all kinds of things. How do you navigate that as a parent and yourself is the other side, because you were probably doing the best—you were doing the best you could do at that time.

Gigi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So thank you. Thank you all for listening. We so appreciate you coming back, listening to us, and hopefully this can be of service to those of you who are out there that maybe are carrying things. We’d love it so much if you get the relief—share it with us. Tell us what happens.

Makena: Yeah, yeah. You can email us at support@wayofthemuse.com—or, Gigi pointed out to me, I didn’t know this was possible—if you listen on Spotify, or YouTube (I knew), but Gigi—Spotify, you can comment! 

So that’s why she’s always talking about commenting. I’m like, “What are these comments we’re talking about here?”

Gigi: Share the great things you got from the episode.

Makena: Yeah, we’d love to hear from you. Thank you so much for being with us and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Gigi: All right, thank you.