Finding My Birth Mother at 25: What I Learned About Love, Loss, and Lineage.

Finding My Birth Mother at 25: What I Learned About Love, Loss, and Lineage.

The Other Side of the Wound: My Story of Mother, Truth, and Becoming

Last weekend, I led a Father Wound Healing Workshop, I went through the journey with the group. It wasn’t just about facilitating. It was a soul excavation. And oh, the gold that surfaced. The kind of revelations that shift timelines.

One thing I’ve come to trust as a gift is this: I can take people into deep, embodied experiences using breathwork and intuitive meditation. It’s not scripted. It’s channeled guided by the energy in the room and the intention of the work. Every time, it feels like life working through me.

Let me share one of the biggest truths that landed for me:
The men I attract mirror the relationship I have with my own inner masculine energy.
That energy, my ability to take action, trust my choices, lead with confidence was shaped by my early relationship with my father. But more than that, it reflects the individuation work I’ve done in maturing my masculine within. It’s not about who my father was. It’s about how I’ve healed and grown in my own self-mastery.

So I leave you with this question:
How much do you trust your own actions and decisions in life?
Because that is your masculine energy speaking.

Today, we are shifting the spotlight to the other side of the coin. If the father is the sun, the mother is the moon. Each powerful. Each sacred. Each essential.

This is a story I’ve never publicly told before.
A story about my mother or rather, my mothers. Because yes, I had two.


When I was in high school, I learned the woman who raised me wasn’t my biological mother.

It was my aunt who told me. One quiet afternoon during summer vacation, I sat with her in her little grocery store, a place I always loved to visit. I was a quiet girl back then timid, afraid to make mistakes, walking on eggshells at home, holding my breath more often than I knew.

My aunt asked why I always insisted on spending summers with her. I told her it was because she combed my hair, praised me even when I was just sitting in silence, and made me feel safe. I told her I felt loved with her and that at home, the woman I called mom didn’t have time for softness. She pulled my hair when she was having bad days. She never really held me.

That’s when my aunt looked me straight in the eyes with a gaze I’ll never forget tender, firm, sorrowful. And she said:
“She’s not your real mom.”

(if only I can insert an emoji here) the one with wide eyes opened.

I didn’t blink. My vision turned gray. My body went numb.
And then she whispered, “Don’t tell your father I told you.”


I didn’t say a word for the rest of that trip.

When my father came to pick me up, he asked how my vacation was. I stayed silent. His voice grew more anxious. On the third ask, I whispered:
“Papa… Auntie said she’s not my mother.”

His face dropped. His world shattered. He never expected I’d find out.

We went straight back to my aunt’s house, and I heard them arguing. I felt like I’d done something wrong. My aunt told him, “You can’t keep this a secret forever. She needed to know.”

I heard the truth echo again, and it landed deeper the second time. Still, I couldn’t speak. I just felt… lost.

On the drive back home, my father explained.
My real mother couldn’t raise me, he said.
He told me not to look for her that she wasn’t part of my life anymore.
With stern conviction, he said,
“Joanne, don’t ask me about this again. You already have a mother. Focus on her and your studies. This conversation is over.”

We arrived home and acted like nothing happened. But inside me, something broke.


That night, I pressed my face into my pillow and cried the most silent cry of my life. A scream muffled in cotton.
Who am I?
Where is she?
Is she still alive? Did she ever think of me?

There were no pictures. No name. Just a secret that lived in my body like a ticking time bomb. And I locked it away.

Years passed. When I turned 18, I requested my real documents. That’s when I found my original birth certificate. My father had altered my identity my school records used my stepmother’s family name. But on that birth certificate was her name, my biological mother.

And so I began my search.

Late at night, I messaged strangers on Facebook with the same last name. I followed digital breadcrumbs like a detective of my own origin.

Then one day, January 2012, a woman messaged me. She said she was my mother’s cousin.

I booked a flight the next morning.


And then, there she was.
The woman who gave birth to me.
Tiny, soft-spoken. I was taller than her. Her hug felt foreign.

I asked her why she never looked for me.

She said my father had more resources to give me a better life.

We stayed in touch, but the bond was distant. I saw her not as Mother, but as a woman who birthed me.

Months later, I asked if she ever had a dream before she married my father.

She said, “All I ever wanted was to meet a man and get married.”

I paused.

Imagine that. Being someone’s dream come true only to become a closed chapter before the story could even unfold.


And me?
I grew up thinking:
There must be more than this.
More than finding a man.
More than changing your last name and bearing babies.

I am the first generation of women in my line to choose freedom.
To choose self.

Is that an accomplishment?
Or am I carrying the unspoken pain of my mother’s unfulfilled life?

Maybe it’s both.


There is a wound in every lineage.
But inside the wound, there is also a door.
A threshold.
And when we walk through it, we don’t just heal, we rewrite the story for those who came before and those who will come after.

This is mine.
And if it stirs something in you, maybe it’s yours too.


The mother wound refers to the emotional, psychological, and sometimes spiritual pain or unmet needs that result from a complex or dysfunctional relationship with one’s mother either through absence, criticism, emotional unavailability, control, enmeshment, or neglect. It’s not about blaming the mother, but rather recognizing generational patterns of trauma and unmet needs that get passed down unconsciously.


What is the Mother Wound?

At its core, the mother wound is the inherited pain of not feeling fully loved, seen, or accepted by the woman who brought you into the world. This wound can arise from:

  • A mother who was emotionally unavailable or overly critical
  • A mother who projected her own pain or insecurities onto you
  • A mother who was too self-sacrificing, teaching you to abandon yourself
  • A mother who feared your power, beauty, or independence and tried to dim it

Often, the mother herself was wounded by her own mother and so the cycle continues.


How It Affects a Woman’s Adult Life

For women, the mother wound can show up as:

  • People-pleasing and chronic self-abandonment
  • Feeling not good enough, no matter how much is achieved
  • Difficulty setting boundaries
  • Suppressed feminine energy, creativity, or sensuality
  • Competing with or distrusting other women
  • Shame around rest, beauty, success, or visibility
  • Internalized guilt for wanting more than your mother had
  • Fear of becoming like your mother or rejecting parts of her in yourself

A woman may carry an invisible weight of guilt for outshining, separating from, or disappointing her mother.


How It Affects a Man’s Adult Life

For men, the mother wound may appear as:

  • Emotional repression or avoidance
  • Attracting emotionally unavailable or overly nurturing partners
  • A subconscious desire to be “mothered” in romantic relationships
  • Anger or resentment toward women that masks deeper pain
  • Fear of commitment or being dominated
  • Seeking external validation to prove worth
  • Difficulty trusting women or being fully vulnerable with them

Some men may stay entangled in mother loyalty, unable to fully individuate and take up their masculine role.


The Path to Healing

Healing the mother wound requires:

  • Grieving the mother you never had
  • Re-parenting your inner child with love and boundaries
  • Allowing your full expression especially the parts that felt unsafe around her
  • Reclaiming your own values, voice, and truth
  • Forgiving without bypassing the pain
  • Creating new relationships rooted in respect and wholeness

It’s about becoming the nurturing presence you needed, rather than continuing to seek it externally.

If this message stirred something in you… Then it will be in high service to you to read this post:

"Healing the Father Wound: Why You Struggle in Relationships and Don’t Even Know It."

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