SA
You’ve written this incredible book called Discovering the Inner Mother and you’ve been doing so much research, well individual research on yourself for upwards of 20 years it seems, is that correct?
B
Yeah, I think it’s been 24 years now. Dedicated time. Its crazy
SA
It’s crazy because I actually really relate to you in that sense, I think there are actually a lot of parallels between our stories, and that’s another thing, I’m just so moved that I get to connect with you about it all. How are you today?
B
Ahh thank you for asking. I’m kinda in this dreamy space today. I don’t know if it’s because of Jupiter in Pisces or what’s happening, but I just kinda came off of a lot of teaching, so I’m kinda feeling this combination of exhaustion but such powerful inspiration. My book just came out in Russian recently.
SA
Wow
B
And I’ve just been doing research on all these things like Pussy Riot and all the things that are happening in Russia right now. I’m really moved by it. Russia was the first country that wanted a translation of my book because women there have it pretty rough, with domestic violence recently becoming decriminalized. And its illegal to be, well I’m not sure if its illegal, but it’s very unsafe to be openly LGBTQ so I’m really moved by the fact that women in Russia are gonna get access to this book because it’s really about how to dismantle patriarchy within ourselves and the insidious ways patriarchy gets passed down from mother to daughter and the ways we learn to oppress ourselves and oppress one another. So I’m feeling really honored and happy and also sad, a mix of emotions, but I’m feeling really connected with myself and the world and what’s happening. So I’m really excited to talk to you today from this place.
SA
What a beautiful answer. I mean we’re all existing in this hyper liminal space right now. And it’s exactly what you just said about being able to hold the multiple dimensions of this very complex time and all the things, every single day, in this sort of rapid shift of emotion too, and then to put out, I imagine, a life’s work, out into the world during a pandemic, and having to both sit with the pride, I imagine of doing this, though I wonder if that’s a very complex feeling.
I put out a book after 18 years of working on it last year, also during a pandemic, and so, no one was really asking about the grief that i was feeling, and I wonder if that’s something that you’ve been feeling as well, you know this is not an easy book to write, nor is it to live, and to synthesize all of these things and then, as you just said, having to contend with the different worlds that women exists in to this day in different countries and the access to what they have and what knowledge they can seek and all of that is so boundaried in the way it isn’t for us. So I guess there are a lot of complex feelings and then of course also youre talking about the mother wound, and you’re talking about something that is so visceral a feeling, that for me personally, is very tied to war. And a sense of worthlessness. So i’m wondering, in a broad sense how have you been feeling now that this book is out?
B
Yeah thank you so much for voicing all that, voicing that there is so much complexity there to hold and it feels exhilarating because it has this joy and deep extenstinstenal kind of grief, there is this sense of wow, this is what it means to really be alive and feel it all. Which feels like a victory for me because so many of us grow up with our worth being contingent upon our ability to suppress ourselves. And to self-abandon as a way to survive. So it’s redefining my relationship to my emotions. Which I think is the biggest thing I’m proud of. Even beyond the book and finishing it, it was such a massive birth process which I’m sure you know.
Despite that conditioning and the pressures to be complicit with my own self-abandonment, I’ve managed over time with support to create a new default which feels increasingly more default by the day. Learning how to lean into the discomfort, the mess of it, and finding again and again treasures there. Reclaiming and pivoting towards the self rather than away from it. Every time I do that, it feels like a win. So the book is the product of fighting for myself, fighting for my own life, and yeah, I feel like no matter what happens with it, I’m really happy with where I’m at now with my life. I feel really grateful for all the support that I’ve had from various people, and people I’ve met, people I haven’t met. You know, books I’ve read, people, random strangers even. And also the close people. So there’s so much there, and it’s been so worth it, I think you know.
SA
This reminds me of a paragraph in your book. I’m actually gonna read it outloud, it just struck me so hard and I’ve been thinking about it all week:
“What constitutes a harmonious relationship with an authoritarian mother will also involve some loss of self. This is because this style is inherently disinvested in cooperation and mutual growth. Mutuality is actually seen as a defeat and loss of power for mothers of this style. What makes it even more confusing is that the mother can unpredictably take on an authoritarian tone when she is triggered and sometimes, when in a more positive mood, comes from a place of mutuality which the child cannot predict. This results in an intermittent reinforcer, the most powerful form of reinforcement in which the mother is sometimes empathic and loving, but when triggered, becomes controlling, hostile, or cunning. This constantly shifting dynamic keeps the child on a`never ending rollercoaster of emotions and fosters a sense of instability within her.”
And I wanted to say that because i think it’s really important for people who are reading or listening to this interview, or even just as an archive, to start here. A place where people are able to understand this context youre talking about. This sense of abandonment and loss of our mothers. I think for me it was very much understanding the mapping of my own body, and really sort of tracking disease, tracking my lack of wellness, I was very unwell kid, constantly having allergies, being sick, I have IBS, I was always navigating these parameters of being very very uncomfortable in my own body. And I think that at a certain point, I couldn’t look away anymore. My journey also started with an abortion at 19…
B
Really??
SA
Yeah. So when I read that in your book I was like holy crap. Like you, I was a very good girl, and that’s how I still function. I’m a very good girl, I’m a very good person, I’m a perfectionist, I like being very kind to people. I’m very nurturing, caring, and I got the same sense in reading you, this articulation that I really felt so alien my whole life, because I have, time and time again, felt very naïve in social settings because I am “good” and I find most people don’t prioritize that.
It seems you had this aesthetically perfect family. And so it was easier to play that role. I don’t know, I would love to hear about it, then the transformation that came from that, and the sort of unfolding it’s very relatable and the fact that you’re doing it just so moving to me. But yeah, talk to me a little about your childhood.
B
Yeah totally, um, so I thought that I had a normal childhood for like you know, for my whole childhood, it wasn’t until, at 19, when things started to fall apart and I started to discover more, but yeah, I didn’t realize, but what had happened was, my parents got together, they were like childhood sweethearts, so they both came from really troubled families, my dad was from an Irish-american family, very working class. A lot of alcoholism and illness there and then my mother’s side was a little more well-off and so they got together basically to escape their families and then they had children young, and then they never did any work on themselves, they were just like ‘I hope we don’t fuck up our kids’ you know, bu that was the extent. but then they both struggled with their own traumas, and alcoholism and things and I mean there’s all sorts of things that happened, and they were very unconscious about it. So I was a perceptive sensitive child and I think I just fell into that role of a family buffer and sponge. I was in a lot of fear. And I realized something that I’m really excited about thinking about more was that my mind became my mother. I had this voice inside of my head, in fear of being a mother, so I was just hyper vigilant, and I would just be on top of everything, because it felt like nobody was at the wheel. I became the mother hen, like trying to hold my own psyche together, and that’s just how I survived, and that was reinforced by my parents who were very much wounded children in adult bodies. So they of course benefited and were falling into that, so they reinforced that role for me, and I thought that was normal and natural.
I definitely thought of myself as a very kind, loving, generous, giving person. But inside of that mask, I was terrified basically all the time. I’m a Cancer, so I’m very much loving nurturing humans, by nature, but I wanna rinse that true nature of these oppressive, you know, dynamics, because, to be truly loving can’t be authentic if it’s just a knee jerk reaction to fear. So I’m interested in learning more about this part of myself, how do I embody that in a truly authentic way. And I think for me, the whole journey of discovering my true self underneath all these layers of accumulated patterns of things, from patriarchy and my own family, I developed a hunger around that 19. Around that 19 years old, early 20s, there was this hunger for something real. I started to see that the mask I was wearing was useful, and helpful, in one way, but that I was dying inside of that.
That was not real. I started to really hunger for like, what is real? No matter what that cost is. And I think that’s been a lifeline for me, just trusting that, and I think in all the years of my life, just following the intuition of what feels right, what feels true, and following through on that, just like a cell following that path of warmth, you know, just intuitively going towards what feels real and what doesn’t feel real and learning to pivot towards that, even when all the other goodies appear to be around the fake and the false, and that kind of false nourishment.
SA
Not having listened to yourself for 19 years, what made you shift?
B
I think it was when I was a freshman in highschool, I could finally be out of the house. So I was able to escape, and so I basically was not home much my entire highschool life, and I was lucky because I found a community of artists and writers and you know, older people in my community really creative people, and there was a really vibrant art scene and I basically hung out with them. Like skateboarders and graffiti artists, and things, and I was able to flourish a bit. And I rebelled. And that rebellion really helped me and I’m actually right now, I’m befriending this protector part of my psyche who has combat boots and doesn’t listen to people. Someone who has their own opinion and says fuck off. and I think she helped me, and it’s really interesting because that was also a defense against the traumas. She did bond with the oppressors, so there’s a part of her that still believes in that complicity and conformity, by kind of feeding me the narratives of my childhood as the true route to my safety. So I’m working on that part of myself to really help direct her rebellion to the true place it needs to be. You know, instead of repeating the narratives of my childhood. My mother had a sadistic side, so there was a part of her that really got off on seeing me suffer. So I do have the ability to run a tape in my head that goes, you’re alone, you’re gonna die a bag lady, no one really likes you, these are things she would say to me. And sometimes if I’m in a fearful place, those records will start to spin, so that protector part of me was trying to protect the really young part of me, because there were no adults to. So I’m working with that part to see, to direct those combat boots towards, you know, the fear, rather than repeating the fear. So I think just generally, helping to have that space to get away, to be a teenager, helped me to see theres other ways of being, there’s power in vitality, in being different, and saying no, and I did get some support as a teenager that helped me kinda feel that visceral feeling of I’m safe when I protect myself. so… I have that side as well as the good girl, so that was kind of a saving grace.
This is the first part of our conversation with Bethany Webster, the second will be coming via our new podcast.
In early 2014 Bethany Webster published an article entitled “Why it’s Crucial for Women to Heal the Mother Wound” based on a body of work she had been developing in isolation over the course of 15 years. Overnight, the article went viral as women around the world shared it on social media, discussed it with their friends, and began referencing it in new blogs and podcasts. Since then, Bethany has built a global community of thoughtful women who are committed to ushering in a new, internally-driven era of feminism.
Bethany Webster, Mother Wound expert, is the author of the book entitled: “Discovering the Inner Mother: A Guide to Healing the Mother Wound and Claiming your Power,” that was recently published by William Morrow on January 5th, 2021. Bethany speaks, consults, and mentors around the world, sharing her growing body of work that is raising the standard of women’s leadership and personal development.