If you want to reverse a pattern of inadequate support, you need to first examine what your needs are and commit to building more support. You will also want to notice how well you take in support when it is offered. Often when we didn’t receive much when we were young, our ability to receive gets blocked by defenses that we developed.

“She is consistently warm and available, taking time to allow the child to satisfy his curiosity and share it. She praises his successes and applauds his discoveries. She creates opportunities for him to discover more than he could on his own and makes a conscious effort for these explorations to be fun and filled with laughter.”

A second fact that caught my attention was how often these mothers were untreated trauma survivors or the children of trauma survivors.

What descriptions have you heard about yourself as a baby and small child?

secure attachment to the father (or to another secondary caregiver) is the most important factor in children compensating for or overcoming an insecure attachment to the mother.46

It is important that they not be perceived as manipulative and not paired with requiring something of the child.

connecting with the Good Mother archetype, finding others who stand in for the Good Mother, and working through unresolved issues and unmet needs in primary relationships.

Sometimes the answer is to be mothered, and sometimes it is to become the mother. This is true on the human level, but it can also happen on the spiritual level. Ariel, who was very undermothered, turned to the goddess tradition to provide a positive model of the mother and the deep feminine, finding it healing and transformative.

In the timeless unconscious, the child continues to experience the original childhood environment as if it were the present. When current situations link back to that dysfunctional environment, the child doesn’t realize that he or she lives with you, now, in a different place.”76