Orienting to the Inner Mother: A Landscape of Mothers Map
Learning to mother ourselves with care
DETAILS FOR THE FREE ONLINE WORKSHOP:
This free workshop will be offered three times in August 2026. Choose one that best fits your schedule.
We learn to take care of ourselves in the same way our parents took care of us.
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And if they weren’t able to meet needs for attunement, connection, and care, we don’t learn those skills either.
The Inner Child needs an Inner Mother - one who tends, cares, protects, and nourishes. The Inner Mother is built on the behaviors of our caregivers and their expectations of us when we were children. As a result, we may start to think of ourselves as awkward, as outsiders, and we might feel like we don’t belong. We may feel unworthy, that we’re not allowed, or we worry what others will think. It can be hard to ask for help, invite people to celebrate with us, or to share ourselves in relationships and through our work. |
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We feel these things, not because we don’t belong or we’re odd or broken, it’s because we’re still operating with an old voice in our heads. One that is probably a mix of messages received from our caregivers, our peers, and the expectations and cultural narratives about good mothers and bad mothers.
We can develop an Inner Mother who is more capable of meeting our needs. One who can support our desire for community, expression, healthy relationships, and intimacy.
We can develop an Inner Mother who is more capable of meeting our needs. One who can support our desire for community, expression, healthy relationships, and intimacy.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
- Carl Jung
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This workshop introduces Landscape of Mothers as a coherent foundation and map for navigating our inner world.
If, in childhood, we had to exile certain parts of ourselves in order to get our basic needs met, we learned to partition our sense of self. We create inner spaces in which those unmet needs still live, and we push them deep in the hopes that they won’t show up in our everyday life. To begin with a strong and wise Inner Mother we lead with our strengths, our compassion, and our understanding. We begin with Sun and Moon Mother so that we always lead with what we know takes care of our nervous system. |
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In this workshop...
We will begin by locating our Inner Mother and noticing her current condition. We can build the skills and tools and stories that we need to care for ourselves. We reclaim the ability to act on our own behalf instead of prioritizing or deferring to others.
From this place we can be clear about what is important to us. We can stand for what is correct, we can choose right relationship, and we can advocate for others who are more acutely vulnerable.
This is how we claim our power, our belonging, and our connectedness.
We can find a narrative that supports our inherent belonging and build a framework for healing that extends beyond us, into our families, communities, and even through time in our ancestral legacy.
From this place we can be clear about what is important to us. We can stand for what is correct, we can choose right relationship, and we can advocate for others who are more acutely vulnerable.
This is how we claim our power, our belonging, and our connectedness.
We can find a narrative that supports our inherent belonging and build a framework for healing that extends beyond us, into our families, communities, and even through time in our ancestral legacy.
This workshop might be a perfect fit for you if:
- You have a strained relationship with your mother or primary caregiver that feels like it never gets resolved
- You have been working on your childhood wounds and it feels like you still need a coherent framework for locating your inner strength
- You're curious about how the natural world can be a support system for inner work
- You want to be discerning about helping others; helping those who truly need support and care while not being taken advantage of by those who are not taking responsibility for themselves.
- You want to feel more at the center of your own life and less at the mercy of other people’s needs
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.
This free workshop will be offered three times in August 2026. Choose one that best fits your schedule.
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 10-week series here.