The Mother Wound: Dan Hitz Answers Questions from Drew Boa

Dan Hitz is the Executive Director of Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc. He is a licensed professional counselor, an ordained minister, and an EMDR trained, certified clinical trauma professional. This article was inspired by questions from Drew Boa, Founder and Director of Husband Material, an excellent ministry that helps men overcome pornography. Drew sent Dan some questions to prepare for a podcast on the mother wound that was posted to the Husband Material website on June 21, 2021. You can see that podcast by clicking here.

Drew: What is a “mother wound”?

Dan: Mother wounds are voids that we have in our hearts as a result of not receiving the nurturing and love that God intended our mothers to give us. They may be intentional in cases of overt neglect, or unintentional in cases where our mothers loved us but were unable to care for us. Mother wounds may also be wounds we received because our mothers harmed us in some way, such as abuse. Mother wounds show themselves in deep emotional emptiness, codependency, self-sufficiency, and anger. Those with mother wounds don’t know how to comfort themselves appropriately. Since they feel a deep emptiness, they are susceptible to addictions and enmeshed relationships as they to try to fill up the emotional void. Some mother wounds are huge. Others are subtler.

Drew: Why is this topic so important?

Dan: Mother wounds rob us of our ability to have healthy relationships, and to take the necessary risks that allow us to embrace the challenges of life. Mothers lay the foundation for our emotional development. They are intended to impart a “sense of being” in us. That means we learn that we exist as a valued individual, our needs will be met, our thoughts and emotions matter, and we are capable thriving in this world. If the enemy can make us feel like we don’t matter, or keep us from developing a healthy sense of initiative, he can rob us of living up to God’s individual design for us.

Drew: How do you know if you have a mother wound?

Dan:  If you walk around with a sense of anxiety, or aren’t comfortable in your own skin, that’s a good indication that you may have a mother wound. If you have trouble feeling accepted by others, and feel unable to follow through on your goals, you may have a mother wound. One of the unscientific tests I have people do is to try to sit alone in their living room for a half hour or so with no TV, no radio, no smartphone. Just sit quietly and be aware of the present, without escaping to a fantasy world or finding some meaningless task to perform. People with mother or father wounds usually can’t sit still with no distracting stimuli for any length of time without getting antsy.

Drew: Have you been personally wounded by your mother?

Dan: Yes. I was the youngest of five children with a paranoid schizophrenic mother. Unfortunately, she sexually abused me throughout my childhood, yet was very over protective. I wasn’t allowed to do many of the activities that a lot of other kids could do. I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin and didn’t learn how to develop friendships as a small child. I learned how to comfort myself by jumping into a fantasy world. I was afraid to take appropriate risks in the real world.

Drew: In what ways did your mother affect your sexuality?

Dan: She was very aggressive with the sexual abuse. That caused a lot of confusion and made me afraid of women. I had some sexual encounters with males while I was growing up. Somehow boys seemed safer. I didn’t really know how to make friends and didn’t feel like one of the boys. When the sexual abuse from my mother reached its peak, I was devastated and made a promise to myself – an inner vow – that I would never get married. I was afraid my wife would turn out like my mother. At the same time, I wanted to have the classic life with a wife and kids. I was very confused. I spent most of my time in a fantasy world of having sexual encounters with men in my mind. My goal was to find the right guy and settle down with him, even though I wanted a wife and kids. I was an emotional mess.

Drew: When and how did God intervein? What began to change?

Dan: I grew up in the church, but didn’t know how to have a personal relationship with Jesus. I liked the idea of living for Him, but He didn’t seem like much help in the abuse. I can remember being in college and making the decision that God didn’t exist. From that point on things went from bad to worse. My sexual fantasies about guys and isolation skyrocketed. I turned to bulimia to try to fill the void. That lasted for about three or four years, and was a very dark time in my life.

When I graduated from college, I worked with a guy who was a spirit-filled, born again Christian. One day he witnessed to me and said that there would be a day for everyone when God would ask them if they would serve Him or not. The Holy Spirit was all over that statement and I was confronted with that question deep in my heart. I didn’t know what would happen if I said no to God, but I knew it would be bad. A few days later I said yes to God. Instantly my bulimia ended, and I assumed that God would take my same-sex attraction away just as quickly. He didn’t. I was devastated. I was hoping that He would take away my sinful sexual desires the same way He took away my bulimia… without me having to face the pain in my soul that was driving the desires. I was serious about living for Christ, but I didn’t want the Holy Spirit “messing” with the pain in my heart. I jumped into the Christian disciplines of prayer, Bible study, church, and even Bible school. I was hoping that if I did all the right external things, God would just fix me without having to look at the pain. He did honor the Christian disciplines enough that the terror of women reduced to a fear of women, and He brought me a beautiful wife a few years later. Even though we’re coming up on our 35th wedding anniversary, I learned that marriage doesn’t fix sexual brokenness. Only God does. God doesn’t fix sexual brokenness on our terms. He fixes it on His terms.

What God was really after was a deeper relationship. He wants to have honest conversations with us about our wounds. A deeper relationship with Jesus is what began to bring deeper healing in my heart. God brought me to the point of desperation where I was finally willing to let Him into the darker places of my heart. I was finally willing to admit the abuse, be honest about the pain I was still feeling, and let the Holy Spirit do His work. I also had to “forgive God” for “giving me” a mentally ill mother who sexually abused me. I know that last sentence isn’t theologically sound, but the pain in our souls isn’t going to make theological sense. The bottom line is that I had to surrender to the Father, and trust that He is good and truly does have a good plan for my life. The moment I surrendered to the Lord and accepted the fact that I had a sexually abusive mother – accepted that He is good and He really can work all things out for my good if I let Him – the Father spoke to me and said, “I always raise up Moses under the nose of Pharaoh!” I realized that no matter what happened in the past, God could redeem it, heal my heart, and empower me to help other people overcome the pain in their past. In other words, the struggle wasn’t in vain. God can use it for His glory, for my eternal benefit, and for the eternal benefit of others.

My deeper surrender happened around 20 years ago. That opened the door for a deeper relationship with God, and deeper healings from God, that are still happening today. He really does care about the pain in our hearts. He really can bring healing in the worst moments of our lives.

Drew: For men who want to deal with these types of things, what advice do you have?

Dan: The first thing we should do is surrender to the Lord and admit that we have emotional wounds. Ask the Lord to show you how your wounds have affected your life. It’s not just going to be the porn or sexual brokenness. Mother wounds affect how we see ourselves, how we interact with others of the same and opposite sex, and how we relate to God. They affect our ability to live the fulfilling life that God wants us to live. The second thing we need to do is find a healthy Christian community that we can be honest with about our struggles. God brought me into a Living Waters program. There are other great communities out there as well including Husband Material and Celebrate Recovery. Finally, we need to embrace the process and be gracious to ourselves. Transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. As we grow in our healing, we learn to grow in healthy relationships with others in the Body of Christ. As we learn to walk with others, we learn to live according to God’s unique design for our lives. Life gets a lot more fulfilling.

Great recovery resources are available from

Husband Material at www.husbandmaterial.com.

Questions Written by Drew Boa of Husband Material. Used by permission.

© 2021 Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc.  This article may be reproduced and distributed as long as no fee is charged and credit is given to Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc.

The Power of the Mother Wound

Dan has been the Executive Director of Reconciliation Ministries since 2003, and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the State of Michigan. He grew up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother, and has written articles about the mother wound in the past. Although this article talks about the mother wound, it is equally applicable for the father wound. For more information, you can read Overcoming the Mother Wound and When My Mother and Father Forsake Me in the archives section of the Reconciliation Ministries website at http://www.recmin.org/newsletter-archives/.

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
God in Isaiah 49:15 NIV

I remember hearing a song based on Isaiah 49 many years ago. I could feel some anger rising up in my heart as I heard the first sentence, “Can a woman forget her child, and have not compassion on the son of her womb?” I found myself thinking, “Of course a mother can have no compassion on her baby! My mother was able to have no compassion on me when she abused me!” I was actually relieved to hear the next sentence. God, Himself, was acknowledging that sometimes earthly mothers really do forget their kids, or treat them harshly. It brought peace to my heart as I heard Him promise that He will not forget us, and that He will have compassion on us. Verse 16 goes on to say, “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” It’s hard to forget someone that you have permanently engraved on the palms of your hands.

That moment actually came a few years into my healing journey. I couldn’t have experienced God’s heart in those verses in my early days. Of course, I had “head knowledge” that God loves us and is always there for us no matter what our earthly parents were like, but it didn’t translate into every day, experiential “heart knowledge”. I couldn’t live in the reality that God was safe and that He loved me deeply. I didn’t really want to let Him get close to the fortified, self-protective areas of my heart. Mother wounds can cause us to lock up parts of our hearts deep. So deep we think that even God can’t get to them. We even try to stay far away from those parts of our own hearts. Mother wounds are powerful!

We can see just how powerful the mother wound can be in the account of a vengeful mother named Herodias, her daughter, and the daughter’s step-father, Herod. By the way, Herodias was first married to Herod’s brother, Philip. Herod and Herodias were living in adultery. You get the picture – it’s a pretty messed up, blended family. You can read the account in Mark, Chapter Six. John the Baptist rebuked Herod for marrying his sister-in-law. She got angry and wanted to kill John, but Herod had an interesting relationship with John. He felt bad when John rebuked him for living in sin, but he realized that John was a holy man and protected him. It says that he liked listening to John. Interesting… Herod didn’t like being called out for his sin, but couldn’t shake his interest in hearing what John had to say. Seems he was torn between embracing the truth and holding onto his sin.

Herodias remained bitter and finally seized her opportunity to “get even” with John. Herod threw himself a big birthday party and invited a bunch of government big shots. His step-daughter did a beautiful dance. So beautiful, that Herod offered to give her anything she requested, up to half his kingdom. This is where we see the unbelievable power of the mother wound come into effect. I don’t know about you, but if someone were to offer me half his kingdom, I think I’d be going after the expensive stuff. Instead, the girl went to her mother and asked Mom what she should ask for. The mother – who could have made sure her daughter was set for life – tells her to ask for the head of John the Baptist. The girl follows Mom’s instructions. Really?!! She could have had riches beyond belief, and the girl chose to get some guy’s head on a platter? That’s the power of the mother wound. The void is so deep, that it can motivate us to do things that defy logic and common sense to try to get a place in our mother’s heart. Mother wounds hurt and we’re desperate to make the pain go away.

Andrew Comiskey, author of Living Waters: Pursuing Sexual and Relational Wholeness in Christ, likens the mother wound to having a heart like a strainer, no matter how much love is poured in, there’s no capacity to retain in. No level of compromise will ever fulfill the deep pit in our hearts. I can’t imagine what the girl must have been thinking a few days down the road after her vengeful mother’s delight wore off. Was she full of regret as she was thinking about all the riches she sacrificed for a few moments of grasping for her mother’s approval? Compromise doesn’t fill the void. Compromise deepens the void. Always. Yes, always.

I doubt that any of us will ever be stuck in the position of choosing between compromising in a vain attempt to gain our broken parent’s approval and gaining half a kingdom. Sometimes compromise with a parent brings worldly riches our way. Sometimes compromise merely brings us temporary approval. In the end, we find the riches are hollow and our parent’s haven’t really changed. A broken parent’s attention can be pretty fleeting. It is never worth compromising our Biblical convictions to gain our broken parent’s approval. We are living for eternity. Only deepening our relationship with our eternal Father can fill up any voids in our hearts.

Mother wounds have other consequences. Shame is a big one. Codependency is another. They seem to feed off of each other – compromise, codependency, and shame. Sometimes the condemnation is so great that it keeps us from embracing our Heavenly Father’s precious promises in Isaiah 49 and Psalm 27:10, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.” We might even tell others that the Lord loves them and will embrace them, but deep in our hearts we fully expect Him to reject us. After all… Mom did…

Don’t let anything keep you from your Heavenly Father. The truth is that Jesus Christ allowed wicked, evil men to torture and murder Him to pay for our sins. He sacrificed His life for sin stained, messy people like us; so that through His resurrection, we can experience redemption and transformation. We can see Jesus’ heart towards pretty nasty people in Luke, Chapter Seven. Here Jesus was having dinner at Simon the Pharisee’s house. Today, many of us might figure that Bible school students or pastors must be pretty holy and special since they’re Bible school students or pastors. In our hearts it’s easy to feel like Jesus would rather hang out with them than us since we’ve done some pretty awful things. In the middle of dinner at the Pharisee’s house, a sinful woman with a bad reputation came in and started anointing Jesus’ feet with some expensive perfume. Something about Jesus broke her. She wept and wiped his feet with her hair. Jesus loved her, honored her, and accepted her. This bothered the religious guy who made some wisecrack about Jesus’ supposed inability to recognize what a scuzzy woman she was. Jesus heard the comment and corrected the religious guy. Then He turned to the woman, acknowledged her love in a holy way, and told her that her sins were forgiven. He even acknowledged that she had sinned much, but that she was forgiven anyway. No matter how much we have sinned – the amount of our sin is really irrelevant because we’re all pretty disgusting in our fallen state – Jesus will always receive us as we turn to Him for help. By the way, Jesus also received the religious guy and seemed to acknowledge that his sins weren’t as bad as hers on a human scale. This just reemphasizes that horrific sin doesn’t disqualify a repentant person from receiving God’s love. Jesus said whoever is forgiven much will love much.

As we turn to the Lord and receive His forgiveness, He gives us the ability to love. As we love Him, He transforms the deep recesses of our hearts and becomes the mother – and father – we have always longed for. He truly does take us up when our mother and father have forsaken us.

Photos courtesy of Jordan Whitt and Ben White via www.unsplash.com.

© 2018 Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc. This article may be reproduced and distributed as long as no fee is charged and credit is given.