When we start the journey of healing the mother wound, one of the most challenging yet liberating lessons is this: two truths can exist at the same time.

You can love your mother deeply and still acknowledge the ways she hurt you.
You can be grateful for the sacrifices she made and still grieve the love, nurture, or safety you didn’t receive.
You can forgive her and still hold her accountable.
You can see her as both your mother and as a woman who had her own wounds, limitations, and unmet needs.

This is called embracing duality, and it’s a necessary part of the healing process.

✨ Why is this so important?

Because so many of us have been taught that we must either put our mothers on a pedestal or carry resentment and blame. That it has to be either/or.
But healing rarely lives in those extremes.

When we only see our mother through one lens — either as the “perfect mother” or the “villain” — we deny ourselves the opportunity to heal fully. We stay trapped in black-and-white thinking, either carrying guilt for being angry or staying stuck in resentment without room for compassion.

This black-and-white lens often sounds like:

• “She did the best she could, so I shouldn’t feel this way.”
• “She ruined my life, and that’s all she’ll ever be to me.”

Neither of those stories will set you free. Healing happens in the gray space — when we allow both realities to exist without canceling each other out.

One of the biggest shifts in my own healing journey was realizing that my mother wasn’t just my mother — she was a woman first.
A girl who once had her own hopes, dreams, fears, insecurities, and wounds.
A woman who lived her own unhealed stories before she ever became “Mom.”

Your mother or maternal figure was a girl once.
She had dreams, insecurities, fears, and wounds that shaped who she became.
When you start to see her as a woman first, mother second, you begin to understand that some of the ways she showed up (or didn’t) had more to do with her own unhealed story than with your worthiness.

This doesn’t excuse the pain — but it helps you stop carrying it as your identity. You stop defining yourself by the ways she fell short, and you start reclaiming who you truly are outside of that story.

Here’s the truth that will set you free:

You don’t have to choose between accountability and compassion.
You don’t have to choose between holding your mother responsible and softening your heart toward her.

You can say:

• “You hurt me.”
• “You did the best you could.”
• “It wasn’t enough for what I needed.”

And all three can be true.

This is emotional maturity.
This is how you reclaim your power.

By allowing two truths to exist, you free yourself from the exhausting task of picking a side.
You give yourself permission to feel grief and gratitude, anger and love, disappointment and understanding.

You stop living in survival mode.
You stop feeling like you have to choose between protecting her image and protecting your heart.

And that, my friend, is how you begin to break the cycle.
That is how you reclaim your story, your voice, and your power — by holding space for the full picture without being swallowed by it.

Love

Lydia

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🌍 Website:​ https://breakthecyclesnow.com ​

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