You may have certain hidden misperceptions, which will hinder you in treating the mother wound as your yoga. One error in perception is thinking it possible to have been a child without having received wounding experiences. Learning to live life hurts all children. Some amount of wounding is inevitable and in a certain sense necessary. It is the severity of the trauma, the context of the wound, and how it is handled that determines whether the mother wound leads to strength and wholeness or ongoing trauma.

You may also secretly believe that your wound is ugly, something to be ashamed of. But ask, do the wounds of your friends make them any less attractive? Are you not inspired when they handle them in a courageous manner? Why would it not be the same for you? If there is some part of you that you find unacceptable, make it the object of your loving-kindness practice. Above all, watch for the misperception that without realizing it, you are wanting the past to be other than it was. This is the most insidious form of wanting mind; it is absolute delusion.

The Four Functions of Mothering
You can bring more clarity to your mother wound by reflecting specifically on what mothering means to you. There are four basic functions of mothering—nurturing, protecting, empowering, and initiating—and a trauma can occur in any of them. Although they are interconnected, it helps to examine them separately in order to clarify the trauma. Using inquiry into these four functions is most helpful in identifying what you are experiencing in the moments of your daily life as well as during meditation.

Doing inquiry as part of your yoga of the mother wound is not the same as psychological or therapeutic work. When you use reflection in this manner, you have to beware of getting caught in the story or lost in thinking, or embracing the idea of being a victim and assigning blame. Through practicing mindfulness, compassion, and loving-kindness, you develop the four mothering capacities within yourself. The practice of developing these inner capacities is slow, but the effect is strong and easily felt.

Keep in mind that "fathering" also involves these same four functions, with some differences. Ideally these functions are shared by both parents, with each compensating for the other's weaknesses. If you struggle with a trauma around the father, you can reflect on these same functions, and make your father wound your yoga.

Reflecting on these functions will also help you understand that no woman is only a mother and no man only a father; "mothering" and "fathering" are done by women and men who by their very humanness are less than perfect in what they can give. For many people, this understanding alone is liberating.

If you are a mother or father yourself, you may discover that reflecting on these functions allows you to be more fulfilled as a parent or that your own mother or father wound is healed through your experience of being a parent.

Mother As Nurturer
The first of the four functions of the mother is nurturing, the giving of care that allows for life (symbolized by the mother's milk), which encompasses meeting the wide range of physical and emotional needs a child has in order to grow and develop. You know about a child's needs for food, shelter, medicine, comfort, and relatedness; a child who is not held enough develops into an adult with a range of physical and emotional difficulties, just as an inadequate diet manifests as health problems later in life. But there is a more subtle aspect of nurturing I call "nurturing with joy," which celebrates the existence of the child as a source of delight for the one who is mothering and which manifests in the child and continues into adulthood as a sense of innate worth and spontaneous joy.

If you did not receive sufficient nurturing in childhood, as an adult you may feel an insatiable need, an inability to take joy in others, or a lack of self-worth despite your competency and confidence. These feelings may arise in your relationships as well as when you are alone or on the cushion. You may agonize over your behavior as a parent or in your romantic relationship because of these childhood wounds. You may feel it is simply too late, that you are forever stuck, broken, mired, or imprisoned in your inadequacy. You may believe your fear of being abandoned or devoured, or your unquenchable neediness will always define you. Never buy such a story or the feelings of despair or anger that come with it, for it is only a story that is being created by your mind.

As you develop mindfulness, you find your capacity to be in the moment includes the ability to nurture yourself and others. The practices of loving-kindness, empathetic joy, and compassion can feed your nourishing capacity. Finding teachers who nourish without creating the codependency of excessive mothering can furnish further inspiration and role modeling. Being mindful of the fear is in itself transforming. Observing the thousands of ways in which you are nurtured and nurture others in the greater community also break up the solidity and credibility of your wound's story. Nurturing, as with all the functions, begins with the mindful intention that this is a value, a particular energetic quality, or manner of relating to yourself and others that you wish to cultivate. By giving up clinging to your agenda that nurturing should be a certain way and instead simply staying with your intention, you slowly develop an inner nurturer. In so doing, you will change both your inadequate feelings and your story.

Mother As Protector
The second of the four functions of mothering is protecting. This is the instinctive and cultivated impulse to see that no physical or emotional harm comes to one who is vulnerable. It is symbolized by the warrior or guardian spirit. A child needs to be protected from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and from the threat of all three. Ironically, the first persons a child has to be protected from are the mother and father and their destructive impulses. These destructive impulses might take the form of excessive anger or emotional instability, for instance.

There is a subtle aspect of protecting energy that gives the child the incredible gift of feeling intrinsically safe, a feeling of trust in life. Unfortunately, quite frequently a child must try to flourish in a home environment that does not feel safe, even though no overt harm is done. As an adult the individual will often be at a loss to explain the unsafe feelings that plague them.

If you did not receive sufficient protection as a child, as an adult you may feel that there is "no one in your corner." You may have a memory of some traumatic event or environment that recurs during meditation. You may have developed an elaborate compensatory behavior pattern for your anxieties. You may be confused about the discrepancy between your family's "factual history" of your childhood versus the feelings you remember having as a child. For these reasons, in making the mother wound your practice, you focus on the feelings arising at present. They can be worked with, released, and transformed. The past is not so easy to work with. It is comprised of outer and inner events that are now immutable, hazy in recollection, or maybe even inaccurate.

There is no "magic bullet" that will dissipate all your past trauma or create instant feelings of safety. But if you continually bring attention to feelings of fear, loss, and confusion as they are arising and receive those feelings with compassion, they will begin to lose their grip. Gradually you will discover that they come less often, with less intensity, and stay for shorter periods of time.

Mother As Empoweror
The third of the four functions of the mother is empowering the child, encouraging and teaching independence and self-confidence. It is symbolized by the queen, who elevates her subjects and facilitates the beginning of their coming into their own power. The mother uses her royal power over the child with fairness, patience, generosity, and a commitment to preparing her child to become her equal or even to surpass her. The ability to perform this function comes from the mother's own self-confidence and love and from embracing the view that it is her sacred duty to empower her young. Empowering is achieved by encouraging self-reliance and providing education, discipline, and learning opportunities for the child. You are empowered to try, therefore to make mistakes and still be fully accepted. Your interests are met with enthusiasm; the importance and joy of hard work are recognized and encouraged. Failure is treated lightly, while curiosity and integrity are held in high regard.

In fairy tales, when the queen neglects or is afraid to allow the young their power, the kingdom becomes ill and languishes. In real life, this is seen in the mother who neglects or is even afraid of her child becoming powerful, so that a host of problems develop through neglect, constant criticism, or creating dependency.

Sometimes because of over-identification, the mother is willing to empower but insists that her child be like her or succeed in ways that satisfy her own ego. This is a false form of empowerment, a subtle form of enslavement.

You may not realize that there is a difference between the functions of nurturing and protecting and that of empowering, but the difference is crucial. With nurturing and protecting the mother is doing for you, whereas the empowering function allows you to find your own power through doing for yourself. With your mother's blessing, you become independent and self-confident.

If you struggle with empowerment, then you may lament your anxiety and ineptitude, your perfectionism, or your unwillingness to try new things. Struggles with self-confidence will be visible in your meditation. It is as though a blessing was withheld, and it is debilitating. Slowly, through your yoga of being fully mindful of the wound, you learn how to give yourself the blessing of unconditional acceptance. By practicing being with things as they are, you may discover that all your life you have secretly been demanding that things be other than they are, and it has stopped your growth. You may discover that the empowering mother you have internalized is always critical, fearful, filled with aversion. Meditation teaches you that this voice is mere thinking, characterized in Buddhism as Mara, the one who erodes one's power through doubt, fear, and greed.

As your self-acceptance grows, you will discover that what needs to and can change about you will do so. This happens both because you have acquired the power to initiate change and because you have the capacity to respond to life in a manner that allows the ensuing experiences to reshape you. Those things that cannot change then become your yoga. In time you realize that when consciously worked with, the limitations in your life can become the gateways to freedom. You start to discover that dis-identifying with the drama of your own story leads to a state of happiness and peace that is not dependent on the conditions of your life being a certain way.