Orienting to the Inner Mother: A Landscape of Mothers Map
Tending to our relationships begins with how we take care of ourselves
The Inner Mother helps us grow beyond our childhood family dynamics and befriend our own will.
The Inner Mother helps us grow beyond our childhood family dynamics and befriend our own will.
TWO OPTIONS FOR THE ONE-TIME WORKSHOP:
Friday February 6, 2026
4:00pm - 5:30pm Pacific Time
4:00pm - 5:30pm Pacific Time
OR
Sunday February 8, 2026
10:00-11:30am Pacific Time
Sunday February 8, 2026
10:00-11:30am Pacific Time
Cost: $35
(Recording of Workshop only will be available after the event, I will not record Q&A for participant privacy)
(Recording of Workshop only will be available after the event, I will not record Q&A for participant privacy)
Have you noticed that:
This workshop introduces Landscape of Mothers as a coherent foundation and map for navigating relationships. |
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And I suspect you're here because you want to have better relationships, including with yourself. And you want to be deeply and wholly yourself in those relationships. You want things to be better - more connective, less transactional. More love, less criticism. You may have been trying to learn new skills over the years, but things don't seem to change all that much.
I've been there. And I found out it was more than how I behaved in relationships... it was about systems, the unspoken rules and norms in my environment, as well as how my nervous system operated within them. That's why I'd been stuck for so long, and why I kept repeating old patterns.
I've been there. And I found out it was more than how I behaved in relationships... it was about systems, the unspoken rules and norms in my environment, as well as how my nervous system operated within them. That's why I'd been stuck for so long, and why I kept repeating old patterns.
So what do we do about it?
While it’s common in therapy to focus on behavior, there often isn't an interconnected map of the landscapes we must get familiar with to have healthy relationships.
And the thing is, relationships are the foundation of human experience. We share ourselves in our relationships so that we can be known, and we listen to others so we can know them in turn.
There are so many things that get in the way…
Our wounds come from interactions gone wrong, and our healing from interactions that go well. For some of us, there were so many terrible and even traumatizing interactions with other humans that we end up preferring solitude, maybe turning to books and the natural world for companionship (and even if you know all the best humans I still recommend books and the natural world!).
This is what happened for me. When I learned that people couldn’t help me, often didn’t listen, and couldn’t meet my needs, I started avoiding them. BUT, that also meant I missed the lessons on how to help, how to listen, how to take care of others–or myself.
I didn’t learn how to empathize with myself or others.
Relationships felt really hard, and I felt like I failed a lot.
And when I began parenting…. it only got worse.
I somehow (still mysterious to me all these years later) met my partner and we decided to have kids. But raising children brought up all of my old relational wounds!
For my kids, I had to do better.
Drawing on my education in conservation biology I realized there were three things about the natural world that made it a great teacher:
First: being in nature soothed my continuously wracked nervous system.
Second: nature had already solved every problem in service of the continuance of life.
Third: the natural world could reflect my reality without any extra assessments or judgments
Landscape of Mothers was born from there. It came from surveying the landscape of my motherhood and realizing that there were powerful parallels between the natural world and my social world.
Landscape of Mothers was about more than just my parenting, it was about relationships and relationship repair.
The Mothers soothed me the way that nature always has, and reflected back the wholeness that I had been missing. In fact, Landscape of Mothers prompts us to take steps to become what we are looking for. The vision we hold about how we'd like the world to operate often originates from a combination of our inherent constitution and the painful experiences we've had. But this isn't just personal growth, it's relationship repair at every level.
First and foremost that repair is with ourselves.
It's not just healing ourselves, though.
We're learning to create the conditions where others can heal too. We're building a framework for healing that extends beyond us, into our families, communities, and even through time in our ancestral legacy.
But how do we bring this world into being when we live in such a dehumanizing time and place?
And the thing is, relationships are the foundation of human experience. We share ourselves in our relationships so that we can be known, and we listen to others so we can know them in turn.
There are so many things that get in the way…
- being short on time
- not knowing how to respond or what to say,
- the fear of making things worse,
- the desire to fix it all,
- feeling the pressure of our roles as mother, daughter, friend, etc.
Our wounds come from interactions gone wrong, and our healing from interactions that go well. For some of us, there were so many terrible and even traumatizing interactions with other humans that we end up preferring solitude, maybe turning to books and the natural world for companionship (and even if you know all the best humans I still recommend books and the natural world!).
This is what happened for me. When I learned that people couldn’t help me, often didn’t listen, and couldn’t meet my needs, I started avoiding them. BUT, that also meant I missed the lessons on how to help, how to listen, how to take care of others–or myself.
I didn’t learn how to empathize with myself or others.
Relationships felt really hard, and I felt like I failed a lot.
And when I began parenting…. it only got worse.
I somehow (still mysterious to me all these years later) met my partner and we decided to have kids. But raising children brought up all of my old relational wounds!
For my kids, I had to do better.
Drawing on my education in conservation biology I realized there were three things about the natural world that made it a great teacher:
First: being in nature soothed my continuously wracked nervous system.
Second: nature had already solved every problem in service of the continuance of life.
Third: the natural world could reflect my reality without any extra assessments or judgments
Landscape of Mothers was born from there. It came from surveying the landscape of my motherhood and realizing that there were powerful parallels between the natural world and my social world.
Landscape of Mothers was about more than just my parenting, it was about relationships and relationship repair.
The Mothers soothed me the way that nature always has, and reflected back the wholeness that I had been missing. In fact, Landscape of Mothers prompts us to take steps to become what we are looking for. The vision we hold about how we'd like the world to operate often originates from a combination of our inherent constitution and the painful experiences we've had. But this isn't just personal growth, it's relationship repair at every level.
First and foremost that repair is with ourselves.
It's not just healing ourselves, though.
We're learning to create the conditions where others can heal too. We're building a framework for healing that extends beyond us, into our families, communities, and even through time in our ancestral legacy.
But how do we bring this world into being when we live in such a dehumanizing time and place?
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What would it look like if...
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This workshop might be a perfect fit for you if:
- You have been working on your childhood wounds and it feels like you still need a coherent framework for locating your inner strength
- You want to befriend your own will and agency, but that feels wobbly much of the time
- You're curious about how the natural world can be a support system for inner work
- You have the Landscape of Mothers book and you've been wanting to be in conversation with others about it
Landscape of Mothers is useful for Inner Mother Growth because...
1. Growth can feel safer and less edgy.
We don't have to come to our struggles with the story that we're a failure from the start. The nature metaphors and archetypes offer us a psychological distance so we can come at our healing with curiosity.
2. The Landscape of Mothers map reveals the hidden wholeness we are searching for.
Most self-development focuses on optimizing our strengths, but healthy relationships require competence across all these domains. Someone might be brilliant at River Mother's organization but create relational havoc because they never learned Island Mother's self-awareness or Forest Mother's collaborative skills.
3. We can see how our gifts can become our blind spots.
Each of the Mothers have a strength that naturally creates its own struggle. That's why "being your best self" often doesn't get the results you want. The person who's amazing at Wind Mother's joy and letting go might wonder why they can't sustain commitments (Mountain Mother territory).
Landscape of Mothers offers a developmental map, not just personality typing.
Unlike systems that tell you who you are, Landscape of Mothers shows the specific capacities you can cultivate. Desert Mother isn't saying "be more like a desert person" - she's teaching the learnable skill of healthy boundaries.
And, as always, it's easier to do complicated and difficult things together. So join me for the workshop and we'll get our bearings with this task that lies in our hearts. After that I'll invite you into a deeper look at Landscape of Mothers through a Personal Lens and we'll go through each Mother and her area of expertise in turn.
We don't have to come to our struggles with the story that we're a failure from the start. The nature metaphors and archetypes offer us a psychological distance so we can come at our healing with curiosity.
2. The Landscape of Mothers map reveals the hidden wholeness we are searching for.
Most self-development focuses on optimizing our strengths, but healthy relationships require competence across all these domains. Someone might be brilliant at River Mother's organization but create relational havoc because they never learned Island Mother's self-awareness or Forest Mother's collaborative skills.
3. We can see how our gifts can become our blind spots.
Each of the Mothers have a strength that naturally creates its own struggle. That's why "being your best self" often doesn't get the results you want. The person who's amazing at Wind Mother's joy and letting go might wonder why they can't sustain commitments (Mountain Mother territory).
Landscape of Mothers offers a developmental map, not just personality typing.
Unlike systems that tell you who you are, Landscape of Mothers shows the specific capacities you can cultivate. Desert Mother isn't saying "be more like a desert person" - she's teaching the learnable skill of healthy boundaries.
And, as always, it's easier to do complicated and difficult things together. So join me for the workshop and we'll get our bearings with this task that lies in our hearts. After that I'll invite you into a deeper look at Landscape of Mothers through a Personal Lens and we'll go through each Mother and her area of expertise in turn.
If you already know you're interested in the deep dive because you just know this is for you,
you can register for the Growing Your Inner Mother series here.