Mother’s Day can be especially difficult for those with lived cultic experience. Rather than a day of celebration, it may bring complex feelings of grief, longing, regret, or ambivalence. This Mother’s Day, we want to acknowledge the experiences of mothers and children affected by coercive groups and environments.
We acknowledge mothers who may currently have children inside high-control groups and whose contact with them has been severely restricted or cut off entirely.
We acknowledge mothers who once raised children inside coercive groups and who may feel shame and regret over the protection, care, or emotional safety they wish they provided while under the influence of the group. We also recognize those grieving fractured or irreperably damaged relationships with their children because of this history.
We acknowledge second-generation adults who were born or raised in these groups and experienced layered forms of abuse, neglect, control, or developmental trauma. For many, this day brings conflicting emotions toward their mothers, including anger, betrayal, and resentment, compounded by ongoing grief and yearning for the relationship they wish they had.
We acknowledge the second-generation adults who are now parents themselves and who may struggle with guilt and fears of inadequacy while working tirelessly to prevent generational trauma from being passed on to their own children.
We acknowledge mothers whose experiences of reproduction and motherhood were not freely chosen, but shaped by leaders who controlled decisions around conception, pregnancy, unions, childbirth, and parenting. The long-term emotional impact of these experiences can be profound and enduring, both for the mother and the mother-child bond.
We also acknowledge those who chose not to become mothers because they did not feel they had the capacity to overcome the lasting effects of their experiences in the way they felt they needed to. That decision may also carry its own form of grief.
The negative impacts cultic and high-control groups can have on the mother-child bond can be devastating, and we commend those who are actively working to process and heal from these experiences while building healthier and more meaningful relationships.
We hope you take care of yourselves during this period.
For those needing extra support, please see our Service Provider Directory for a list of cult-informed professionals in your area. For more reading, ICSA has published a variety of articles that address the complexities of mothers in cultic and coercive environments.
We’ve published a special summary version of an academic article written by Alexandra Stein, Mothers in cults: The influence of cults on the relationship of mothers to their children (first published in the Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 14, Number 1, 1997). Her academic article offers an exploration of how cults manipulate reproduction and the mother-child bond, featuring harrowing personal accounts of control, resistance, and the eventual path to maternal recovery. Read the full academic article on the ICSA Online Library, and the summary here.
