Faut-il pardonner à nos mères? The Question Beneath Mother Wounds
To forgive our mothers is one of those phrases that can sound peaceful from a distance and unbearably complicated up close.
Because mothers are not just people in our stories. They are the first climate. The first mirror. The first place where love, safety, approval, criticism, silence, closeness or distance may have been felt in the body before we had any words for it.
So when an episode asks, Faut-il pardonner à nos mères?, do we have to forgive our mothers, I do not hear a neat moral question. I hear the phrase forgive our mothers as a much tenderer question: what are we allowed to tell the truth about?
Table of Contents
What Forgive Our Mothers Really Opens Up
This episode of Le Cœur sur la table is part of the Docteure Love series, hosted by Naomi Titti. The conversation includes Chloé de Broca, connected with the podcast Le Mal de Mère and Claire Richard, author of Pardonner à nos mères.
The official episode description names a difficult truth: maternal love is often presented as the most unbreakable bond, but some mother-daughter relationships include ordinary violence, psychological violence, silence, control and pain hidden behind family and social taboos.
That is not light listening, and it is not a topic to turn into tidy advice. What I appreciate in the question is that it does not assume forgiveness is automatic. It asks whether forgiveness is necessary for healing, and what happens when daughters become mothers and fear repeating inherited patterns.
That is a real Heart question because it sits right in the messy place where love, loyalty, pain, truth and protection can all exist at the same time.
Forgiveness Is Not the Same as Denial
I think many people confuse forgiveness with making the story smaller. They imagine forgiveness means, “It was fine”, “She did her best, so I am not allowed to feel hurt” or “Other people had it worse, so I should stop being dramatic.”
But healing cannot be built on denial. If something hurt, it hurt. If something was missing, it was missing. If there was fear, criticism, emotional absence, control or humiliation, the adult child does not become kinder by pretending it was all love.
At the same time, I am cautious with mother-blame. Most mothers are also daughters of something. Their own childhoods, their own silence, their own lack of support, their own exhaustion, their own trapped choices.
Compassion can widen the frame, but it should not erase the child.
That distinction matters because denial can wear very polite clothes. It can sound like maturity, gratitude or being “the bigger person”, while the body is still carrying the truth underneath. If a person has to erase their own pain to keep the peace, that is not peace. It is silence.
A more honest forgiveness, if it comes at all, would have to leave the truth standing. It would have to allow both realities: she may have had her own wounds, and I may still have been hurt. She may have done her best, and her best may not have been enough. Holding both is uncomfortable, but it is much more real than forcing one simple story.
The Fear of Repeating Patterns
The part that always catches my breath is the daughter who becomes a mother and suddenly feels the past under her own skin, not because she wants to repeat it, but because she is terrified she might.
That fear can be heavy, but it can also be a sign of consciousness. If you are noticing the pattern, naming it and wanting to choose differently, something has already shifted.
Repair matters here. Not perfect motherhood, saintly patience or pretending we never snap, withdraw, over-control or get it wrong. Repair is the moment after the moment: the return, the apology, the “that was not your fault” and the willingness to learn. It connects with the same repair-not-perfection thread I explored in Mother Hunger, and it is where inherited patterns begin to lose some of their power.
This is why repair feels so important to me. Repair gives a parent somewhere to go after the imperfect moment. It says the story is not finished at the snap, the silence or the overreaction. There can be a return. There can be an apology. There can be a small explanation that does not make the child responsible for the adult feeling.
I find that deeply hopeful because it takes the pressure off becoming a flawless mother and puts the focus back on relationship. A child does not need a mother who never gets it wrong. A child needs a mother who can come back, tell the truth in an age-appropriate way and keep learning. The language of return – what to say and how to come back – is something I have been exploring in my notes on Nonviolent Communication.
The Notes from Soph Version
The Notes from Soph version is that forgiveness should not be demanded as a performance. Sometimes the next right step is forgiveness. Sometimes it is grief, distance, a boundary, therapy or finally saying, even quietly in a notebook, “That was not okay.”
I am interested in the place where truth and compassion can sit in the same room without either one swallowing the other. You can understand why someone was limited and still admit you needed more. You can love someone and still protect yourself. You can be grateful for what was given and honest about what was not. That is not betrayal. That is becoming an adult inside your own story.
The Notes from Soph version is that healing has to include truth and kindness at the same time. Truth without kindness can become harsh, brittle and full of blame. Kindness without truth can become another way of keeping everyone comfortable except the person who was hurt.
I want the middle path. The one where I can say, “This happened, it mattered, and I am allowed to understand it,” without turning my whole identity into the wound. That feels more useful than asking whether forgiveness has happened yet, as if healing were a box to tick.
A Gentle Note Before the Takeaways
This post is a reflection, not professional advice. If your family story includes abuse, coercive control, addiction, serious mental-health concerns, trauma or anything that still makes you feel unsafe, please do not try to solve it alone through a blog post or a podcast episode. Support matters, safety matters and you are allowed to need help.
I want to be careful here because this is not a topic for neat online advice. Some mother wounds are mild misunderstandings that can soften with time. Some are deep, repeated and unsafe. Those two things should not be treated as the same. Forgiveness cannot be demanded from the outside, and it should never be used to push someone back into a relationship that still hurts them.
For me, the gentler word is repair. Repair might happen with the other person, if there is honesty and safety. It might also happen inside the daughter, through naming what happened, grieving what was missing, building different support and refusing to pass the pain on untouched. That is still healing, even if it does not look like the family ending other people prefer.
I also think this is why the question matters for mothers who are trying to parent differently. The goal is not perfect motherhood, because that does not exist. The goal is consciousness, repair and the courage to say, “This pattern came through me, but it does not have to continue unchanged.”
Practical Takeaways
- Separate truth from blame. Naming what hurt is not the same as attacking someone.
- Do not force forgiveness before grief. Some stories need to be felt before they can soften.
- Ask what healing actually needs. It may be a conversation, distance, therapy, writing, boundaries or simple acknowledgement.
- Watch the inherited pattern with tenderness. Noticing it is already different from blindly repeating it.
- Practise repair with your own children. The return after the rupture can teach safety too.
- Let compassion include you. Understanding your mother does not require abandoning yourself.
Why This Belongs in Heart
Heart is where relationships become real enough to be honest, not idealised, sentimental or reduced to inspirational quotes about family. This belongs in Heart because the mother-daughter bond can hold love, pain, longing, anger, loyalty and confusion all at once.
The work is not to flatten it. The work is to make room for truth, while still leaving space for compassion, repair and the possibility of a different pattern going forward.
Notes from Soph | Learning, not perfection.
Et toi? Have you ever felt pressure to forgive before you had been allowed to tell the truth? Come and share gently in the Notes from Soph community on Skool.
Source Details:
Le Cœur sur la table – “Faut-il pardonner à nos mères ? | 2/2”
Docteure Love (Naomi Titti) feat. Chloé de Broca & Claire Richard | 2025
🎙 Listen on Apple Podcasts or search “Le Cœur sur la table” on Apple Podcasts / Spotify
