Mother Love: The Feminine Love We Need But That Can’t Come from Just One Person

Christine Arylo
Thrive Global
Published in
4 min readJun 2, 2017
Image courtesy of Unsplash

When you read the words ‘mother love’ you likely go right to thinking about the mother who gave birth to you or the mother who raised you. And while that mother definitely has a role to play in our lives, she cannot be our only source of “mother love.”

Mother love is… a specific kind of love that every human being needs — we don’t outgrow the need for it, although we sadly forget how much we do need it.

Mother love is… the deep, all-embracing, all-accepting, nourishing, nurturing, warm, safe, supportive love that soothes the places inside our hearts that feel scared and lonely.

Mother love is… the strong love that we can fall into when we are stressed, stretched, uncertain, and feeling like we just can’t handle what’s happening in our life.

Mother love is… love we can retreat into, feel held by, move through our deepest fears with. It’s the love we can sink into and cry our hearts out until there are no more tears left, and then wipe off our face, take a deep breath and all of the sudden feel the courage within that same heart to stand up tall and meet the world stronger.

Mother love is… a specific kind of love, and while we can receive some of that love from the human mother that gave birth or raised us, no mother, no matter how great she is can be the sole source of this mother love that we all need.

And I say need with purpose.

The world is intense. You have a lot you are holding. If you are living and showing up for you life, you will feel stretched past your limits and fear will come up. Even if you have the most amazing friends and partner, there are places within you that their love can’t get to. The deeper places in your heart where the loneliness, fear, doubt, feeling of not belonging, not being enough, not knowing how live.

This is the domain of the mother love.

Wisdom Byte: There is a great mother love available that can act as the safe and soft harbor you need to stand strong + feel so supported. It will hold you, soothe you, and give you unstoppable courage.

Sourcing Mother Love is not something most of us were taught how to do. So we either look for it in places we can’t find it (like our birth mother or unhealthy relationship) or we cut off our connection to it all together (we suck it up, try not to appear soft, and try to be strong in the dominating masculine or distorted feminine way.).

It’s my deep belief and personal experience that to not embrace that we each need Mother Love AND then actively seek and receive it is one of the root reasons for the disease, domination and distortion we see in this world and in our lives.

I recently did a series on the Feminine Bond in my Feminine Power Time podcast in which we dove deep into the domain of Mother Love and the ways to source it. Here are three ways to both see the love you have received and open to receiving the mother love you need.

1. Release your human mother from being the sole source of the mother love. See what she was able to give, find gratitude for that, even if it is just the tiniest seed. And then choose to see that no one woman could be your sole source of mother love, and release her and you from the unrealistic expectation that even the greatest mother could not live up to. You can simple say the words, “I release you from being my sole source of mother love.”

2. Find evidence of the presence of mother love that did not come from your birth mother or parent. Recall a person in the past or present — woman or man — who gave you mother love — nurturing, embracing, compassionate, guiding, fierce, unconditional love. See and feel the love in your heart to acknowledge it as such. And stay open to receiving more of that mother love in healthy ways.

3. Receive some mama nature love and feel the affect it has on you. There is a reason so many of us feel more calm, supported, peaceful and nourished when we spend time in nature, or as I like to say “time with Mother Nature.” It is a kind of mother energy that touches us at the root level of feeling safe, nourished, cared for. It’s not just the fresh air. So make it a priority to spend time with mother nature and commune with ‘her’ as a presence of mother love.

I am invite you to explore the power of Mother Love + to experiment with the multiple sources of Mother Love available to you … and see how it impacts everything in your life from reducing overwhelm, to improving relationships, to soothing fear and uncertainty, to increasing your courage, to bringing you more support, to leading you to truly feel cared for, nourished and seen.

To learn more and go deeper, tune into the Mother Love Feminine Power Time episode here. http://christinearylo.com/2017/04/mother-love-feminine-power-time/

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Mother Love is part of a 4-part series on the Feminine Bond created and hosted by Christine Arylo, feminine leadership advisor and best-selling author. To subscribe to the Feminine Power Time series on Itunes, go here.

Originally published at christinearylo.com on April 20, 2017.

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Christine Arylo
Thrive Global

Re-Imagining & re-designing how we lead, work, live & succeed for our next era. MBA + Wisdom Teacher + Leadership Advisor with fresh insight, models & practices