Mother Hunger

How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance

By: Kelly McDaniel

Narrated by: Kelly McDaniel

An insatiable need for sex and love. Periods of overeating or starving. A pattern of unstable and painful relationships.

Does this sound painfully familiar?

Trauma counselor Kelly McDaniel has seen these traits over and over in clients who feel trapped in cycles of harmful behaviors - and are unable to stop.

Many of us find ourselves stuck in unhealthy habits simply because we don't see a better way. With Mother Hunger, McDaniel helps women break the cycle of destructive behavior by taking a fresh look at childhood trauma and its lasting impact. In doing so, she destigmatizes the shame that comes with being under-mothered and misdiagnosed. McDaniel offers a healing path with powerful tools that include therapeutic interventions and lifestyle changes in service to healthy relationships.

The constant search for mother love can be a lifelong emotional burden, but healing begins with knowing and naming what we are missing. McDaniel is the first clinician to identify Mother Hunger, which demystifies the search for love and provides the compass that each woman needs to end the struggle with achy, lonely emptiness, and come home to herself.

This audio product contains a PDF with supporting material, and the PDF is available to download.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2021 Hay House (P)2021 Hay House

A much needed book for every woman.

Your book has helped give language to parts of me that had no vocabulary for so many years. So much so that when I came across a sculpture by Chukesart of a mother holding her child in a solid embrace, I was able to identify the kind of nurturing embrace I had missed. The protection I yearned for and the guidance I so needed. Thank you Kelly. I appreciate you 🙏🏾

My life makes sense for the first time

If you have suffered from any type of abuse growing up I highly recommend you read this book.

A Life Saver In Challenging Times

As soon as I saw the title, I knew I had it— Mother Hunger— but I had no idea how profoundly I would be affected by reading it.
Reading Mother Hunger as a 67 year old survivor of extreme neglect and abuse by my mentally ill incompetent deceased mother while simultaneously raising my adult child with both autism and bi- polar disorder, opened doors to compassion and self healing I didn’t even know existed!!!

Profoundly enlightening!

I highly recommend this book to anyone who struggles with feeling states that seem to be recurring and without apparent cause. The author eloquently describes how our unmet mother/child attachment needs as a child manifests as feeling/behavior issues in adulthood and she offers resources to grow and break what is often an intergenerational maternal pattern. This book is life changing!

You should read this book

I found this book to be very helpful. I definitely helped me understand and put a name to these feelings emotions and behaviors. Learning to heal mother hunger.

Invaluable

Aloha Reader! The information shared in Mother Hunger is essential for EVERYONE who has a mother, wants to become a mother, or already is a mother. Too much of what passes for "normal" is overlooked as UNHEALTHY, INAPPROPIATE & DAMANGING leaving the cycles to expand as they continue. Kelly McDaniel labors to remove stigma while educating you on the differing levels creating Mother Hunger. If you, like nearly everyone I have met and worked with over the decades, have any wounds hovering around your childhood, be kind to yourself by sitting with a friendly cup of tea, a comfy blanket, a pillow, and a box of tissues in a quite place where you can listen to Kelly's soothing voice for the first few chapters. It helps to have your confusing dilemma of why you do, think, and behave as you do as if you are in a session with someone who, finally, really gets you and is pointing out things you knew were off, but couldn't quite put a finger on it. I removed one star, because it only focused on mothers and daughter as opposed to children. While her focus is specifically on mothers versus both parents, which would be a lot to cover in one book, the book would benefit to a salute to fathers and how invaluable they are as well. A child, male or female, needs both parents to provide for their emotional and physical needs period. Often, because we live in a society where we can substitute money to pay for therapists, other service providers, technology - from smart phones & televisions to computers and sex robots - and other things to surrogate for actual human interaction, we forget the basics that only a parent, close family member, real friends, and supportive community were always intended and created to provide. In her writing, she illustrates much of it without calling out the underlying damage we do to ourselves and one another here in the west, and in America in particular, as we assert everyone "ought" to be independent and capable of handling existance, needs, nurturing alone through the use of surrogates. The other reason for the subtraction is that, while comforting, and soothing, she doesn't change it from that pace for the entire book, even when you're "out of the woods" and could benefit from the conversation taking a positive uptick as she relates resources, studies, etc, or at other moments earlier in the book as appropriate. This is an excellent book I will be coming back to listen to again, and I'll make sure to have the tissues within easy reach, just in case. God bless you all. Aloha.

Whispering

Overall I enjoyed this book. It helped make me feel confident about changes I’ve made parenting. But most importantly. It identified issues in many mother daughter relationships. While this book doesn’t have all the solutions it’s a good step to feeling seen. It’s a great thing to include in an overall healing plan.

Great book for healing

Loved it! Also love the work exercises in between chapters. Really goes into detail about trauma cause by your mother. Great book to start your healing journey.

A must read for daughters wanting to heal

McDaniel’s research validates the voids and provides practical hope to mother yourself. It’s kindly narrated and although it’s a heavy read … it’s full of compassion.

Prepare your hearts and dive in with an open mind. Happy healing.

Wonderful book

I’m a therapist, myself, and the daughter of a horribly abusive mother. I have two sisters who committed suicide. This book integrates much of the new brain science of the last 25 years and shines a light on how misunderstood the nature of mothering has been from the male, dominated world of medicine and neuroscience. There are so many good points to be made and I don’t have time to make them now. I’m recommending this to all of my clients.all of my female clients anyway. I’m dictating this and I don’t have time to edit.