All About My M/other:on m/othering and the relational matrix

A wonderful film title, an extraordinary film, but right here, right now, as Mother’s Day approaches and we dare to speak about attachment, about needing to be nurtured, it is offered as a somewhat ironic statement. It isn’t all about our Mothers but nonetheless so much of it is. In this talk we will take some time to consider attachment and its contribution to the development of Self and to complex trauma, thinking about normal development and organized attachment and then disorganized attachment in childhood and then adult attachment and the role of attachment states of mind for the adult Self.  We will take a moment to think about losing one’s Mother at any age. We will then think a little more closely about the role in our lives of Mothers, biological and adoptive, about being mothered, smothered, and unmothered, and about being mothers and mothering and supporting mothering. In the strange world of psychodynamics and now a more postmodern world, sex is not the same as gender and we have all some important mothering and fathering to do at times in life and the therapy room, regardless of our sexuality. We will consider the Mater, the Matter, the Matrix, the Martyr, our Mother Earth and Earth Mothers, Mother Sea and the Mother within…and even allow Julian of Norwich a little word about God the Mother.