Sweet Re-Mothering for Undermothered Women

By Soonja Kim

We modern undermothered women have striven to be independent, strong, resilient, sophisticated, astute, and assertive. In the process, we have tended to devalue the quality of sweetness as something meek or docile, uninteresting and not sexy. We do not want to be like our mothers before the feminist movement: dependent, striving to be sweet and nice, trying hard to please others at their own expense. So, instead of accessing genuine sweetness within ourselves and with each other, we seek sweetness in foods, such as chocolate, ice cream, drinks, and pastries.

A similar devaluing process has happened with our longing for mothering. To admit we need mothering feels regressive and immature to us, as competent, adult women. We are supposed to be able to take care of ourselves and not feel needy and helpless. We often turn to food, money, or material things for the comforting, the soothing, and the love that we have wanted, but could not receive from our emotionally unavailable mothers.

However, many undermothered women are still hungering for genuine sweetness, and for the mothering kind of love, whether they know it or not. It is no accident that the first food we are supposed to be fed, as we transition out of the womb, is mother's breast milk, which is naturally sweet and has all the nourishment a baby needs. A mothering kind of love needs to feel sweet. Some undermothered women are in touch with this longing for sweet mothering, but some are defended against it. To allow ourselves to be vulnerable to be loved feels very scary. To let go of control feels like we will not be able to survive and manage. To emotionally need and not to receive is an all too familiar story for undermothered women. Instead of honoring our wanting, many of us have tried to change, deny, or transcend it, or distract ourselves from it.

In my Visionary Re-Mothering Amae Therapy, I encourage undermothered women to tap into their deepest inner feminine wisdom. Deep inside of them, they know that their true needs and desires are good, and they will be met. If they still want mothering, even as grown women, it is available to them.

So what is it like to be sweetly re-mothered? Here are two terms that are important to understand. The word "amae" is a word in Japanese which means sweet dependency. Dependency is seen as a safe, close, emotional connection that we legitimately need. In the United States, where we work so hard to establish our separateness and independence, our hearts and bodies are left with a deep yearning to merge with one another and nature. In feeling safe to depend and count on another, we can tap into our primal sense of oneness and belonging that dissolves the tension of divisiveness and differences.

Amae, sweet dependency, is closely tied-in with the second term to be emphasized in the re-mothering process. That term is "passive love." Passive love is the kind of love where care is offered, without your having to do much to elicit it. It requires more intuitiveness and empathy on the part of the giver, and more receptivity of the taker. Receiving passive love can be deeply healing for undermothered women, who had to be so active in trying to earn love. They have so much shame around their emotional neediness, that to be given, without having to disclose their needs directly, feels extremely comforting. Also, implicit in this concept of passive love is that undermothered women can trust in the good will of the other, and in the abundance of the universe. They can take a break from active doing and surrender into receptive beingness.

As you feel your dependency and attachment needs sweetly embraced by a mothering figure, and allow yourself to receive passive love, there proceeds a gradual relaxation in your body, heart, mind, and spirit. In that relaxation, you may first go through the grieving period of not having the care and the sweet love you needed growing up. However, as you allow the grieving to flow and to be released, you can move to a deeper level of relaxation, where you can access who you really are. While being held in the holding environment of sweet re-mothering, you will feel safer and safer to claim who you truly are. You also may experience the truth of your interconnectedness with all beings that releases you from the deep sense of aloneness you have felt. Furthermore, there is the gradual remembering of the joy and abundance that is your birthright. Your life will reflect more and more of what you truly want. You can be re-born into a life that feels sweeter, more joyful, and more effortless.

This type of therapy may seem radically different from more traditional therapies, where one is encouraged to grow out of dependency and attachment needs, rather than encouraged to relax into them. Similarly, this re-mothering work emphasizes more of what one wants and dreams of rather than what seems practically possible in the present reality of our five senses. This work is obviously not for everyone, especially not for those who truly need more limits, structure, separateness, empirical evidence, and boundaries. But for those who found it impossible to give up their inner feminine wisdom, and their wish to merge and be mothered, this work offers the possibility of their dreams coming true.

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