15/12/2025
This is beautiful 💓💫💓
THE RADICAL WORK OF RELATIONSHIP
Every one of us carries an ancient longing inside.
A longing for the archetypal “mother”.
Not the literal biological parent, but the loving Presence who sees us, knows us and holds us with warmth and safety. The one who gives our nervous system a sacred sense of home, and reminds us that we belong here.
Most people are not conscious of this wound, this longing for mother, this painful yearning for God. They only feel the ache, the emptiness, the restlessness. They reach for addictions or distractions or compulsions without realising what they are actually seeking.
When this wound is not met with Awareness, we often look to lovers and partners to fill a space they cannot fill and will never be able to fill. We reach for comfort and then pull away in fear. We judge, retreat, cling and isolate. We guard ourselves too tightly or open too much and too soon. Our relationships become cycles of seeking and running, connection and withdrawal.
This is where Presence becomes everything.
We must learn to turn inward and meet the very parts of ourselves we have spent a lifetime avoiding. The grief, the rage, the loneliness, the abandoned places within.
When we welcome these “ghosts” into the light of Awareness without shame or self-hatred, something begins to soften. The mother wound finally begins to unwind.
This is why relationship becomes a crucible for inner work.
A conscious relationship brings everything to the surface: all the needs, all the fears, all the unmet parts of us waiting for recognition. When both partners stay present, the relationship becomes a place where old wounds are not hidden but seen, spoken and held. Nothing needs to be pushed away. Nothing needs to be acted out in secret.
It becomes a space where two adults can heal and grow together.
When we take responsibility for our mother wound, we stop asking our partners to be the parent we never had. We stop imagining they can be that for us, and stop punishing them for not being that. We bring our whole heart instead of a frightened child. We become capable of real intimacy, real vulnerability and real commitment. We begin to love with Presence rather than punish, manipulate and demand with fear.
A person who refuses to face their mother wound will stay a child and repeat this cycle, endlessly.
A person who faces it can finally love, in an adult way.
This is the real work of relationship, and this is the work that transforms everything.
- Jeff Foster
