Welcome to healing mother hunger: a gently-guided book club and yoga class course

In Kelly McDaniel’s groundbreaking book, Mother Hunger, the author identifies the serious injury of lost maternal nurturance, protection and guidance. Kelly explains how not receiving these key elements of maternal love adequately, does not cause us to love our mothers less – but it can cause us how to not learn to love ourselves.

While you may not have a clear, conscious memory of those early days, your body does remember the maternal love that was not received at all, or not in the ways your young, developing heart and brain deeply required it to be. As Kelly explains, “when fear isn’t soothed and happens regularly, a baby stores the fearful sensations in her cells, building a body and brain poised for danger – hungry for love but wary of human connection.” Even well-meaning mothers can produce this in their children, if they themselves struggled with unhealed childhood trauma and missing maternal love. 

As we grow into young children, teens and eventually adults, this hunger for maternal love does not decrease. It intensifies as we try to understand and fill the growing absence of maternal love. We may not be aware that this is missing maternal love, but we often can feel that something is missing. We may find ourselves reaching for “surrogate” mothers. Overeating, alcohol and substance abuse and drama-fuelled relationships are just some of the examples of this. 

In our 6 week book club and yoga class course, we are going to gently work our way through Kelly’s insightful and profound book, and through our yoga practice we are going to practice repairing, nurturing and embodying the elements of maternal love that we may not received at all or not adequately: lost nurturance, protection and guidance. It is our hope that this program provides compassionate and nurturing support as you seek to heal mother hunger.  

Whether you identify with wanting to heal mother hunger, work with others who are struggling with this, or are just simply curious about the topic – you are more than welcome to join us.  

Program overview:

• We begin on Friday, 5 April ’24 and will journey together for 6 weeks. 

• You will need to have purchased a copy of Kelly McDaniel’s book, Mother Hunger.

• Once we begin, you will be invited to join our community what’s app support group. Within this group, you will receive guidance on chapters of the book to read through each week and be encouraged to share any quotes or insights you have in reading. There will be no pressure or expectation to share, this is purely an opportunity to connect with and support other group members as they journey with us. There will also be a broadcast-only group provided should you prefer. 

• We will meet weekly for our yoga class, on Fridays at 8am – 9am SAST for the 6 weeks. This will be online, via Zoom. The yoga classes are designed based on the chapters we are reading that week.  

Live attendance to this program is free, recordings can be purchased here (8 weeks – ZAR 590 before we begin on 5 April ’24, ZAR 890 thereafter). Alternatively, sign up for our monthly library subscription (ZAR 390 p/m, cancel any time) which will include recordings access to this program and 70+ hours of other workshops, yoga classes and courses! Bookings close on Tuesday, 2 April ’24.

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