In my last blog I had mentioned that one of the major blocks to receiving the love of God and finding our being in God involves a breakdown in the early mother child relationship. A friend of mine came and shared with our Healing Path group last Monday night and told a story about something she had shared with one of her professors in the past. She told him my mother and I never bonded. She said he about jumped out of his shoes and told her babies are made to bond. It is your mother that didn’t bond with you. KABOOM!

What a powerful insight. This made me think about a friend of mine that is a Pediatrics nurse that works with newborns. Her job late at night is to go in and check on them. She says she walks in and the babies’ arms are stretching out, grasping, clutching for someone to bond with. It’s what babies’ do they bond!

Some of the blocks that bring about a rupture of bonding and being in childhood are mothers who suffered emotional or physical illness, postpartum depression, a refusal or inability to bond with the child, or the infant’s hospitalization. Some young infants who were placed into incubators and separated from their mothers often suffer severe bonding issues.

Depending on the degree of separation, this breakdown in mother-child bonding can render the child underdeveloped in its capacity to receive and contain love.

This was my great struggle for many year; receiving and containing love. I was like a sieve that couldn’t hold the love given to me. This maternal deprivation in me expressed itself in an inordinately powerful hunger for touch, which eventually became sexualized. It also fueled powerful emotional dependencies within me that were characterized by grasping, clutching, and infantile tendencies where I just wanted to be held. Touch was my love language but unfortunately it led to an addiction to sex. The anxiety of separation was overwhelming at times. I truly hated being alone because this would kick up all my deep anxieties. I had deep feelings of abandonment and an inability to emotionally bond in healthy ways. I over bonded to the point that people became idols. If this is you this should be a red flag that you might lack a sense of being brought on by a mother wound.

I believe this was a projection of my unmet childhood (infantile) needs and my present brokenness onto others. In my attempts to bond with others, I didn’t make friends I took prisoners. I was like a vampire attempting to suck the life out of others who would befriend me. I somehow thought my needy possessiveness of another person to be a manifestation of love. Anytime someone would make me feel absolutely wonderful about myself I would blurt out, “I love you!” After the afterglow of sex because it in a way makes you feel one with the other I’d say, “I love you.”

This was a symptom of the breach between my mother and I. This is not a healthy and mature love because I was using the words as a hook to evoke a response. That empty place within me that lived with the dread that you didn’t love me back wanted you to give me some sense of identity and worth through your reply. Do you hear the lack of identity and personhood that I lived with? Did you hear my insecurity about the love others have for me? This also affected my ability to receive and contain love from God. And made the loss of attachment sometimes cause within me “hysterical reactions.”

I was terribly underdeveloped in my capacity to bond with others. There was this two year old boy that lived within me that wanted to be nurtured, loved, touched, and validated. He was always looking for someone to notice him. I’m pretty sure its why I used humor all throughout my school years to get some attention.

More to come in a few days. Hope and pray this helps some of you understand the affects of the mother wound.