Hi Anita
I’ve been re-reading Clarissa Pinkola Estés ‘Woman Who Run with Wolves’ and read the following last night and thought it related to this topic.

For the woman who truly has had an experience of destructive mothering in her own childhood. Of course, that time cannot be erased, but it can be eased. It cannot be sweetened up, but it can be rebuilt, strongly, and properly, now. It is not the rebuilding of the internal mother that is so frightening to so many, but rather the fear that something essential died back then, something that can never be brought back to life, something that received no nourishment, for psychically one’s own mother was dead herself. For you, I say, be at peace, your are not dead, you are not lethally injured.

As in nature, the soul and the spirit have resources that are astonishing. Like wolves and other creatures, the soul and spirit are able to thrive on very little, and sometimes for a long time on nothing. To me, it is the miracle of miracles that this is so. Once I was transplanting a hedgerow of lilac. One great bush was dead from a mysterious cause, but the rest were shaggy with purple in springtime. The dead one cracked and crunched like peanut brittle as I dug it out. I found that its root system was attached to all the other living lilacs up and down the fence line.

Even more astounding, the dead one was the “mother.” She had the thickest and oldest roots. All hir big babies were doing fine even though she herself was botas arribas, boots up, so to speak. Lilacs reproduce with what is called a sucker system, so each tree is a root offshoot of the primal parent. In this system, even if the mother fails, the offspring can survive. This is the psychic pattern and promise for those with little or no, as well as those who have had torturous mothering. Even though the mother somehow falls over, even though she has nothing to offer, the offspring will develop and grow independently and still thrive.

Except from the Chapter on ‘the Ugly Duckling’ where Clarissa highlights the mother’s role in the story and uses that to explore the various kinds of mother experiences we have. I first happened on the book 20+/- years ago and it changed the way I relate to stories. Though not written specifically for my gender it very much helped in the task of integrating the masculine and feminine archetypes so highly recommended.