Letting Go of Our Children Heals the Mother Wound
The Moment the “Too-Good Mother” Begins to Change
There is a moment in many women’s lives that is rarely spoken about – not the moment we become mothers, but the moment when something inside the mother we have been begins to change.
Not the loving mother, the devoted mother, or the one whose heart aches deeply for her children.
The too-good mother.
The Mother Who Holds Everything Together
The one who believes it is her job to hold everything together.
- To anticipate every danger.
- To soften every edge.
- To prevent pain.
- To stay hypervigilant so the people she loves can be okay.
This mother is often praised, but she is usually exhausted because, underneath her, is a woman who never learned that love could exist without over-functioning, rescuing, shapeshifting, or making herself responsible for everyone else’s nervous system.
The Story of Vasalisa and the Inner Doll
In my Circle, we have been exploring the story of Vasalisa and the doll, which is an old myth about instinct, initiation, and learning to trust the quiet inner voice.
In the story, the young girl must enter the forest alone.
Her mother cannot walk the path for her.
All she carries is the small doll her mother left her—a symbol of instinct, inner knowing, and the wisdom that lives inside a woman when she learns to listen.
The forest 🌳 is where she meets life: Truth, challenge, fear, and her own strength, and in many ways, this mirrors something that happens in motherhood.
When Our Children Enter Their Own Forest
There comes a point when our children must walk into their own forest.
When they individuate, make choices we would not make, and move into lives that no longer place the mother at the centre.
It can feel like abandonment, but often it is something much deeper.
It is the initiation out of enmeshment and into healthy maternal detachment.
Not loving less, but loving more truthfully.
Trusting that our children have their own instincts, their own destinies, their own dolls (inner wisdom).
The Mothers We Carry Inside Us
But there is another layer to this initiation, because sometimes the difficulty in letting go does not only come from our love for our children, but also from the mothers we ourselves had.
Some of us grew up with mothers who could not let go, who held on through worry, guilt, control, or quiet emotional gravity, not because they were bad mothers, but because they were frightened women.
And without realising it, we can carry that same mother inside ourselves.
- The one who rescues.
- The one who over-functions.
- The one who believes love means responsibility for everyone else’s emotional world.
So when a woman becomes a mother herself, she is often trying to do something she has never actually received.
She is trying to become the mother she needed while also learning how not to repeat the patterns she inherited.
That is why this moment can feel so powerful, because the struggle to let go of our children is often connected to how tightly we ourselves were held.
or how much emotional weight we carried for our own mothers.
In other words:
Sometimes we cling to our children because our mothers clung to us.
Often times we cling because we never experienced a secure, trusting form of maternal love.
And sometimes we cling because we learned that a woman’s value lives in being needed.
So the deeper work is not only letting our children walk their own path.
It is also healing the mother wound inside ourselves, so that love can become steadier, less anxious, less controlling.
Healing the “Too-Good Mother”
That is the moment when the too-good mother begins to die, and something more grounded emerges.
A mother who loves deeply, but does not grip.
A Mother Who Loves Without Gripping
Sometimes, the most loving thing a mother can do is step back from the path and tend to her own soul.
Because our children do not need our panic; they need our steadiness, trust, and quiet permission to live their own lives.
Perhaps this is the deeper invitation in the Vasalisa story for us as women.
To allow the too-good mother to soften and die, so something steadier can live in her place.
A love with roots, a mother with spine, and a woman who finally has the space to tend to her own soul.
You might sit with this question today: Where might the too-good mother still be holding too tightly in your life?
And what might soften if you trusted the quiet instinct inside you—your own small doll—just a little more?
If this reflection resonates with you, we are exploring these themes more deeply inside the Circle through the story of Vasalisa—instinct, initiation and learning to trust the quiet voice within.
It’s a powerful conversation.
And you are always welcome there.
Have courage, dear heart,
Charli ♥️🦁
If you love to explore the archetypes, here is a link to the beginning of the 13 archetypes: The Winter Witch
