Healing the Mother Wound: A 40-Day Course for Daughters

The Spring 2024 round is now open for registration! Scroll down for signup buttons.

The course will start on May 4, 2024.

Over the years of working with women all around the world, I’ve noticed a common source of pain and wounding around their relationship with their mother.

For some women, this shows up as the feeling of being enmeshed: not knowing where your mother ends and you begin.

For other women, it shows up for as a fear of abandonment, especially if you express a difference of opinion or try to establish boundaries and separateness.

For most women, it shows up as a combination of both.

And for all women it leads to a disruption in self-trust and a deep, abiding sense of shame – the feeling of not being good enough – not beautiful enough, not smart enough, not successful enough, not worthy of love and belonging.

What exactly is a mother wound?

A mother wound is a rupture of attunement where a mother, due to her own unmet needs, lack of fulfillment/sense of self, and/or narcissistic and judgmental tendencies is unable to meet the emotional needs of her child. The mother’s expectations and needs become paramount and the daughter learns to orient around those needs.

This isn’t about hating mothers or blaming for mothers for all our pain. The bottom line is that our parents will always fail us in some way; it’s the nature of being human. Just like there’s no such thing as a perfect partner or friend, there’s also no such thing as a perfect parent.

Many daughters are afraid to name and see the wound clearly because they’re afraid that they’re betraying their mother and are bound by an unwritten loyalty contract.

But we must name and see our wounds clearly so that we can heal them. And healing the mother wound is one of the most empowering and liberating journeys we can take for when we name the wound and allow our mothers to be fallible and human we can examine the old contracts, write new ones, and set ourselves on a trajectory that allows us to chart our own path, regrow self-trust, step into intrinsic worthiness and the fullness of our light, and receive nourishment from other sources of mothering.

In this 40-day course, I offer a roadmap for healing this wound. It’s a personal course and a collective course, for when we heal the mother wound we do so not only for ourselves, but also for the generations that come after us and before us.

It’s also collective in the sense that when you gather with a group of women from around the world and learn that your pain and struggles are not unique, several layers of shame fall away. We heal best in community.

I’m so excited to offering this roadmap to you. Like all of my courses, this one has been gestating inside of me for many years. And now it’s ready to be birthed.

Are you ready to heal from your mother wound? If so, take my hand and the hands of many other women as we sit in a circle in a sacred grove together and spiral into several layers of healing. I look forward to seeing you there.

When You Sign Up For The Program, You Will Receive:

– One email from me every day for 40 days which will contain a letter about the mother wound and a gentle action that you can take toward healing at the root.

– At least one video and several MP3s each week that will offer additional insight and information on that week’s topic and essential visualizations and meditations that will help you connect to and heal your pain, shame, anger, and longing while also growing new pathways of healing, hope, and joy.

– Access to a private forum specifically for this program. My private forums are exceptionally supportive communities where people feel safe enough to be vulnerable and do very deep work and, while participation is not essential, it can be a transformational part of the course.

– Group coaching calls where you will have the chance to ask your questions and bring your concerns directly to me. All calls are recorded.

– Lifetime access to all of the material

The Spring 2024 round of this course is now open for registration and will begin on May 4th, 2024.

I very much look forward to connecting with you there!

Pay in Full (save $35)

$299

Please note that there are no refunds.

Pay Over 2 Months

$167

split payment over two months
Please note that there are no refunds.

Responses From Past Participants

"With this course I found the path towards courage to transform how I relate to my own mother. A month after the course ended I can say that our relationship feels lighter to me and I have ways to work with feelings of anger and guilt. I have regained the hope and confidence that my mother and I heal our relationship from the inside out."

I have long had an inkling that my personal evolution lives in the age-old saying “ when the student is ready, the teacher will appear” . Upon discovering and experiencing Sheryl’s gifts and her most profound work, I can confirm that this is true. And what a teacher (spiritual midwife/mother/friend/guide/sister) Sheryl is! Every course of hers has come at an ideal time when a piece of my inner world was ripe and ready for the wisdom, space, expansion and ultimately return to my essence that these courses impart and facilitate.

The Healing The Mother Wound course came down from the heavens at a time when I was at a true loss of how to relate to my mother in a more healthy manner. My inner relationship to her was pained, enraged, helpless, fraught and frozen in inertia. This course helped me gently enter this fragile landscape, with great care and guidance. Each of the 40 emails, every video, all of the MP3s, the beautiful group calls and the consciously led forum in community with other daughters gifted me an opportunity. Many opportunities in fact to starkly look at my past, hold the pain, behold the beauty, realize I have always been mothered and guided by forces greater than the mother who gave birth to me.

What I also valued highly was Sheryl’s approach of aiding me in seeing my mother’s limitations, their effects on my life but all without entering the blame and shame game. Her ability to return to our common denominator of being human and working towards compassion towards ourselves and hence others is such a great and essential skill. Using metaphor, historical examples and teachings from realms I was unacquainted with, Sheryl also opened new worlds to me that contribute to this healing. Her ability to teach us to hold the past with care, breathe into the present with love and inch towards the future with hope is a rare gift. A juggling act of supreme uniqueness, made accessible in Sheryl’s teachings.

With this course I found comfort and new tools to mother myself while healing deep, wild and untended wounds. I am learning to accept mothering from other sources. Most importantly for me I found the path towards courage to transform how I relate to my own mother. A month after the course ended I can say that our relationship feels lighter to me and I have ways to work with feelings of anger and guilt. I have regained the hope and confidence that my mother and I heal our relationship from the inside out. Most importantly, I have been able to assess how I was mothered while consciously deciding how I want to mother myself and in turn mother my own children.

A deepest and most grateful thank you, Sheryl, for creating this course, pouring countless hours into it and, once again, giving us the gift of love, compassion, understanding and hope.

– Regina, Frankfurt, Germany

"I've been wanting to write to you to tell you that Healing the Mother Wound has been my favorite course that I have taken from you."

I’ve been wanting to write to you to tell you that Healing the Mother Wound has been my favorite course that I have taken from you.

It was so beautiful to know that we were all daughters with a similar wound. It felt very connecting.

My favorite part was the forum. I absolutely loved that in the forum you or Ashley took the time to respond to everyone’s post. It was so personal, nurturing, powerful. It was such a gift to open my heart on the forum and always know that you or Ashley would respond, that you read it and saw my inner world, my pain, my longings, and you received it. That was really great.

The course felt smaller, more intimate than other courses. I loved that about it.

The material was really helpful too. I especially liked the part about shame (not that I LIKED writing about it but it was helpful to understand that’s a common byproduct of the mother wound). Another part that stuck with me is how there are mothers everywhere and how we can take the time to breathe into these wounds and offer compassion to the little girl inside that grieves.

So thank you for offering this course. I think it will be a gift to so many.

– Kristina, Austin, TX

"I loved this course!"

I loved this course! The part I connected to the most is my great mother. I have been so busy with life/mom life, and have felt disconnected from her. You really helped me stop and listen to the music of Mother Nature. To connect again. I have been taking these walks at my work in the mornings (plant nursery) now ritually. I have been graced with a Great horned owl (visited for 2 weeks), hawks, hawk taunting a blue heron are a few of the gifts of my great mother – nature.

Some other things I loved about this course was the support on the forum. I didn’t write, however, I read through a lot of it. The support is inspiring! The support came from so many angles, which I love. You, Ashley, other forum members. My small group still meets from the recent Break Through Anxiety course and 3 of the 5 of us took the Healing the Mother Wound course. This also felt comforting and beyond blessed to have such amazing support.

Thank you for all you do, Sheryl!

– Elizabeth Sperry, Palm Beach, FL

"It’s been such a wonderful safe container for letting go and listening in to the feelings of grief, loss and abandonment that can be held inside for far too long without a place to go or release into. "

As the course with you and our current group comes to a close I just wanted to write and thank you.

I’m so glad to have taken this journey with you and feel blessed by many aspects of the course that have supported my current self care practices and understanding of the Great Mother.

It’s been such a wonderful safe container for letting go and listening in to the feelings of grief, loss and abandonment that can be held inside for far too long without a place to go or release into.

The joy and calm of acceptance and understanding brings hope of change.

Transformation requires letting go and most of all trust in ones self and nature which we are not separate from.

Life winds it’s way, as connection and truth shed light into our world.

I am excited to see how things unfold in my creative life and will continue my self care with greater trust and depth.

Sending much love to you,

– Jan, Australia

"You remain one of my greatest teachers and I am so grateful."

“I want to thank you for the Mother Wound course. I’m sure the work I’ve done in the course will work in me for a long time. I wanted to take a minute though and tell you what has stuck with me so far is the idea of reciprocity you introduced at the end. This concept wasn’t new to me but the way you shared it has left an imprint. I am also taking things in more slowly and making greater efforts to discover the roots of my triggers and re-mother myself through them. You remain one of my greatest teachers and I am so grateful. Thank you.”

– Nikki, E, California

"I did this course right before a trip I had planned to visit my mother. I stayed with her for two weeks."

“I did this course right before a trip I had planned to visit my mother. I stayed with her for two weeks. I could notice and appreciate the things that she did that were nurturing. I also noticed the things that were not nurturing. I saw her more as a person with good and bad qualities and that was okay.

“It was a great trip then halfway through she did something that upset me and I was able to support myself through those feelings. I asked the tree for support in the moment. Later, I journaled. I shook the angry energy from my body and showered. I was able to mother myself in the moment. Now that I have the imaginal mother to hold all the archetypal mother qualities for me I don’t need to expect it from her and be disappointed.

“The course was filled to the brim with helpful information and tools. I could probably take a year working through that course with the amount of content in it and how big the topics of each email were. I liked that numbers-wise it was small and intimate.

“THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THAT YOU DO!”

– Morgan, Los Angeles, CA

Frequently Asked Questions

My mother is no longer in my life, either because of estrangement or because she’s deceased. Is this course still applicable?

The course is applicable to anyone struggling with a mother wound regardless of levels of contact. So if your sense is that the pain around your mother-loss and the ruptured relationship still looms large and affects your well-being and your other relationships, I encourage you to take the course.

I’ve done a lot of work around this wound through therapy and other places. Should I still take the course?

As I often say in my work, we heal in layers and spirals. If your sense is that there are still more layers that need attention, the course will help you gently spiral into those unhealed places.

I don’t live in the U.S. Will I still be able to access the group calls?

Yes, we either use a bridge line, which has local access numbers, or we meet over Zoom.

I have more of a distant relationship with my mother than an enmeshed one. Could the course still be helpful?

Yes. While many daughters grew up enmeshed with their mothers, many other daughters grew up feeling pushed to the side, neglected and ignored. In either case, there’s a rupture of attunement where the daughter’s needs aren’t acknowledged and tended to, and this is how a mother wound is formed. If you look closely enough, there’s often a fear of engulfment and abandonment in both types of relationships.

Is the content geared toward repairing my relationship with my mother, who I know is toxic?

No, the content is NOT geared toward repairing a relationship with a toxic mother. The course is about healing the mother wound, which for some daughters means staying in relationship with their mother and for others means severing ties. I acknowledge throughout the course that if your mother is abusive in any way and on the far end of the Borderline/Narcissistic spectrum, it’s probably not loving for anyone to continue the relationship. However, some daughters with Borderline/Narcissistic mothers do find healthy ways to remain in relationship with their mother. As always, there are no formulas; there’s only what’s most loving for you.