Jasmin Lee Cori, M.S. - Author, Mind, Body & Spirit

“Jasmin Lee Cori’s long experience as a therapist is evident in the way she expertly guides those who were ‘under-mothered,’ providing a much-needed structure for the powerful process of healing. She starts by helping you to create a safe space to do the work and then offering up-to-date therapeutic tools to use when overwhelmed. As you work through the pages, you’ll find help moving past your understandable denial to achieve a more accurate picture of your mother and the damage you experienced, discovering the parallels between how you tend to treat yourself the way your mother treated you, and finding ways to protect yourself from your mother today. I strongly recommend this workbook to my clients who’ve experienced emotional neglect from their mothers.”—Beverly Engel, LMFT, author of Healing Your Emotional Self and The Emotionally Abused Woman

"Many people with an emotionally absent mother feel more confused than ever when they try to describe their experiences. Family members deny she was ‘really like that,’ while friends may say, ‘No mother is perfect.’  Not only does Jasmin Lee Cori show that such responses echo a parent’s denial or dismissal of their child’s problems, she provides an accessible, reassuring workbook to help adult children name and tame the harms inflicted by a parent’s emotional absence."--Terri Apter, author of Difficult Mothers

"Warm and knowledgeable, it is a transformative resource for those going through the difficult journey of healing the mother wound." --Sarah Peyton, author of The Resonant Self  Series

"This new workbook by Jasmin Lee Cori is an indispensable resource for those on the path of healing the Mother Wound. I cannot recommend it strongly enough!"—Bethany Webster, author of Discovering the Inner Mother

The mother wound is one of the deepest places you touch when engaging in the healing process. It is often a raw and vulnerable place filled with shame and grief. This wound can be hard to address―especially when it is the result of the absence of an affirming and nurturing presence. Jasmin Lee Cori’s book provides wise guidance for recovering from this lack, helping you mindfully trace the impact of an emotionally absent mother while teaching you to compassionately nourish yourself. I highly recommend this book.

― Arielle Schwartz, PhD, founder of Resilience Informed Therapy and author of The Complex PTSD Workbook

The Promise of Healing

Healing early childhood wounds is one of the longer journeys you can take in life.  It’s long because this wounding occurs before you have built a healthy foundation for your self, so they are at your very core. When these childhood wounds are the result of what Mother didn’t provide that you needed, or of harmful elements in your relationship with her, we call them “mother wounds.” 

You might think healing should happen a lot quicker—and some people will try to convince you that it can. But you can’t just yank on a seedling and make it grow, and you can’t force the growth involved in healing. It doesn’t help to have expectations that frustrate you and make you feel bad. Let’s be honest: Healing takes time and involves hard work.

At different stages in your healing journey, you might find yourself thinking:

• How the f*** did I get here?
• I don’t know if I can make it. I don’t know if I am strong enough.
• I’m afraid of my anger.
• How can I survive this depth of hurt?
• I’m tired of working through this. 
• I’m starting to feel better. Can’t I be done now?

There is a path through this, but it’s not a path anyone can lay out in a linear way. It’s much more individual and organic than that. No one can tell you how long it will take, and no professional can credibly say, “I can get you there in ten sessions.” No book can cure you. What this workbook can do is support you in your work. 

Healing from childhood emotional neglect is like putting together a 1500-piece puzzle. There’s no one right way to put it together. You work where you can or where you most need to. Often, life puts in front of you the next piece for you to deal with. 

Because there is not a specific map to follow or a picture of the destination, let me give you a few benchmarks for what might feel different as you heal your mother wounds. 

The biggest marker of healing is that you won’t feel like you did as a child. The world outside won’t feel the way it did for you then, and you won’t feel the way you did when you were going through all that. You will be different. You will be a bigger you. 

Won’t that be nice! That’s what growing up is supposed to be. Being an adult involves more than making your own decisions and being responsible for yourself. Growing up is growing. Upward. Outward. Bigger. Happier. Becoming your own person. That’s true for all of us, but it’s especially true when you haven’t had a good foundation laid down by Mother.  

This growing requires you to set down the load you were given to carry (we are all given something to carry), unpack it, and take a good look at what’s in there. As you are looking—if you do it carefully and with as much courage and honesty as you can—it begins to sort itself out. You find that you no longer need to carry the grief (which for much of your life, you didn’t even know you were carrying). The heartache lightens. You let go of impossible hopes—for instance, that Mother will become something she is not.

As you do your work, you’ll begin to fill up with the things you needed earlier but didn’t get: people liking you, seeing you, enjoying you, holding you when you are sad. You’ll feel encouraged—by those you surround yourself with, but also by the results of your own efforts. You’ll learn to take really good care of yourself—and even enjoy doing so. You’ll become stronger and more empowered. You’ll no longer be the scrunched and scraped-up you that you’ve felt like all these years. Rather than that small, lonely child, you’ll actualize the potential you brought into this life. You’ll become who you were meant to be.  

This is the promise of healing.

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