Mothering Sunday

During the Middle Ages, the custom developed of allowing people who had moved away from where they grew up to come back to visit their home or 'mother' churches, and their mothers, on the fourth Sunday of the Christian festival of Lent.

At the time, it wasn't uncommon for children to leave home to work when they were as young as 10 years old, so this was an opportunity for families to meet up again.

This became Mothering Sunday in Britain. As the dates of Lent vary each year, so does the date of Mothering Sunday.

Our mother is our first form of nourishment, care and devotion. In the best situation our mother feeds, supports and loves us unconditionally. She comforts us by holding and caressing us. By taking in nourishment from our mother we gain stability. Of course no mothering is perfect and even it was, we need at one point to connect to our own ‘inner mother’ to learn how to take care of and nurture ourselves.

I find it common in my practice to find people unable to find their own ‘inner mother’.  That is, they have all the time in the world to look after others, but never enough to look after themselves. The root to not being able to mother oneself is complicated of course; it is an obstacle course of shame and pain, and any prolonged emotion will eventually have a negative effect on the physical. People who have not been mothered well and are unable to allow themselves to take in nourishment on any level and be supported, generally present with common symptoms of weight gain, digestive and bowel problems, exhaustion and depression.  In this modern world, we mother ourselves with TV, food, sugar, alcohol, drugs, shopping and even doom scrolling.

So, how do we refresh and look after our ‘inner mother’? Find a loving voice in your head that doesn’t ‘tell you off’ or shame you into going to bed early but guides you in a gentle but clear way. Treat yourself just as you would want your mother to treat you. Be kind to yourself. Eat well and get plenty of rest. Put your phone down. Treat yourself to something nice, but free of guilt. Exercise for fun, not because it is expected of you.

If you feel you’ve lost touch with your ‘inner mother’, why not book in for a treatment with me and bring self-care back into your life.

Alternatively, you could buy a gift voucher as a present for your Mum this Mothers’ Day.