Our relationship with our mother shapes the foundation of our inner world. From before birth and throughout childhood, we absorb patterns around love, safety, nourishment, self-worth, and belonging—not only through words, but through the body itself. In this article, I explore how early childhood and ancestral imprints shape us, how they can be transformed through embodied practices and art, and why reconnecting to the Mother Archetype became an important part of my own healing journey.

Early imprints from your mother

Mothers shape our world - in a literal, physical as well as a deeply spiritual and subconscious way.

The mother imprint shapes how we experience being held in the world.
How safe we feel in our body.
How we care, nourish, and love ourselves and others.

For some, this connection feels steady and supportive.
For others, it feels complicated, distant, or even painful.
And often, it is both.

The Mother Archetype is not only about the relationship we had with our biological mother. It is an inner landscape that lives especially in how we respond to ourselves.
How we meet our own needs—or ignore them.
How we hold ourselves in moments of vulnerability—or abandon ourselves.

This is why the so called “mother wound” can show up in so many different ways.
Sometimes it is obvious. Sometimes it is subtle.

A difficulty receiving support.
A tendency to over-give.
A quiet sense of not being fully held.
A feeling of having to do everything alone.

These patterns don’t only come from what we remember.
They can be shaped early, before any conscious memory forms.

Research in developmental psychology and prenatal studies shows that the nervous system begins forming in response to the environment in the womb. The emotional and physiological state of the mother influences the developing child.

Experiences during the birthing process itself will also leave an imprint, and all too often a scar, on both, the mother and the child.

Then, after birth, attachment patterns are formed through touch, presence, and responsiveness—through the felt experience of being nurtured and cared for.

Before continuing, I just want to say that no matter what your birth and early childhood was like, you are not forever broken, and there are many ways to repair, re-parent, even rebirth yourself. The reason why I am writing this article is to remind you that you have the power to change and heal the patterns you inherit—and it can be very helpful to know what "assignment" you have been given for your human journey.

My first invitation is to ask yourself:
How do I experience love, nurturing, connection, or attachment?
Feel into your body for a moment and connect to the felt sense of it.
Observe the way you breathe and feel if you are holding any tension anywhere in your body. Make this a moment of quiet noticing and try not to judge anything that comes up.

Your lineage lives within you

There is another layer to this, one that reaches deeper and beyond your personal story.

When your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, the egg that would one day become you was already forming. Isn't that amazing?

Three generations—connected from the very beginning.

Research in epigenetics suggests that experiences, especially stress and trauma, can influence gene expression across generations. While this field is still evolving, many people recognize this idea not only intellectually, but intuitively.

Long before modern science began exploring prenatal imprinting, attachment theory, and epigenetics, many Indigenous and matrilineal cultures already understood that the mother line carries memory, identity, wisdom, and unresolved patterns across generations.

The Diné people for example are traditionally matrilineal: children belong to the mother’s clan, inheritance passes through the maternal line, and family identity is deeply rooted in maternal ancestry. You can learn more about matrilinear culture from the Diné perspective >HERE< (this is a native grassroots project).
You can find many other general examples to research >HERE<

In Indigenous frameworks like this, the mother is not only an individual caregiver but part of a living relational network connecting ancestors, land, body, and future generations.

This way of relating carries a profound truth: we do not emerge separate from those who came before us, and we carry not only our own experiences, but traces of what our ancestors experienced.

Sometimes as resilience.
Sometimes as patterns that were never fully resolved.

Mother Lineage - drawing by Antje Howard

My personal journey into Motherhood

My own journey into motherhood has taught me that there are many different experiences and layers to the Mother Archetype.

My first "official" Mother's Day was a day filled with deep grief and pain. In 2022, when I lost my son Lukas at 31 weeks pregnant, I became a mother without a child.
I felt disconnected from myself and unable to take care of, love, or nurture myself.

It has been a profound initiation and deep healing journey to reconnect and regain trust in my own body, my intuition, and my path. On the way, I had to open myself to support from many different directions and I committed to doing the work, to sitting with the pain, to exploring the lessons that I needed to learn.

Because I still wanted to bring a child into this world.
And I knew that I didn’t want to carry my experiences forward unprocessed and unhealed.

In 2024, I welcomed my daughter Lily into the world.

A rainbow baby. A deeply intentional invitation.
And the beginning of a completely new story.

Now, Mother's Day has two faces for me, and my personal journey is to hold all of it true, to enjoy the love and joy in gratitude, and at the same time honor my grief.

Also, I quickly realized that there are more layers to uncover beyond my experience of loss.

Motherhood and caring for a baby brought up patterns that I hadn’t been aware of before. I began to see more clearly how much of this healing work is not only personal.

It is relational. And it is ancestral.

My relationship to my own mother is impacting how I can relate to my daughter.
And beyond that, my lineage leaves imprints as well.
They all matter.

When I talked to my grandmother, who grew up with her grandparents, I learned that she still carries a wound of abandonment and a hidden resentment towards her own parents.

These stories don’t disappear.
They move quietly through generations—until someone becomes aware of them.

Moving through layers that words cannot reach

Many people try to approach these patterns through talking, reflecting, understanding.
And while that can be valuable, there are layers that live deeper.

In the body. In the nervous system. In the subconscious.

This is why embodied practices and creative processes can be so powerful.
They allow us to access and shift what we cannot always name.

My own experience with moving through these hidden layers was one of learning to see myself in a new and deeper way, with more compassion.

My first anchor was art.
It became a way to meet myself in the process of healing.
It helped me express what I could not put into words or understand.
And allowed me to see what was happening inside me until I could slowly start moving from there.

I created images that held what I was feeling—sometimes including my body directly in the work. These drawings became my mirror.

Art gave me a way to document and witness my healing journey, to watch myself change and grow through the pain.

I also returned to practices that allowed me to slowly start feeling myself again: movement, dance, QiGong, energy work. I was determined to build a new relationship with my body, to gently grow a new conscious awareness of myself.

I had always been connected to my body.
I was a dancer. Movement had always been a language for me, a way of being in relationship with myself.

When I lost my son, I suddenly lost that connection and it was extremely disorienting, felt unsafe, and like I lost all grounding.

I needed to return to my body to fully integrate and transform my trauma into wisdom.

Rainbow Pregnancy - drawing by Antje Howard

The Mother Archetype

Now, let's shift the focus.

From what you may or may not have received and what you may or may not have experienced and healed, to how you relate to yourself today, how you relate to your own children, and what you want to pass on—or not.

This is where the Mother Archetype becomes a profound teaching and can support your life journey in a very tangible way.

It is the part of you that knows how to:
hold yourself and others
care for yourself and others
respond with presence instead of reaction

Not because everything is resolved.
But because something new is being built and nurtured from the inside.

What if healing didn’t mean endlessly revisiting the past?

What if it meant:
meeting what lives in the body
allowing it to move
giving it form
and gently reshaping the pattern from within

This is the approach I take in my work.

My creative invitation

If this speaks to something in you—whether your experience with your mother or your own children feels loving, distant, painful, or complex—there is space to explore it.

Gently.
Through the body and through intentional, guided, intuitive creation.

The Mother Archetype journey is a self-paced course that brings together embodiment and art to support this process.

Not to fix the past.
But to transform your relationship to yourself and help you see your own capacity for creation, nurturing, and relating.

Begin in your own way and become the one who changes the pattern.

Mother Archetype - an embodied creative journey
Intuitive Neuro Art™ with Antje Howard
5 guided sessions (including the Mother Lineage Ceremony)
each designed as a deep ~2-hour process you can return to anytime
Mother's Day SALE (May 10 through 13)
$111 with code: MAMA26

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