We all need to be mothered, and if we have failed to get it to a satisfactory degree, something in us is lacking. It’s akin to having a vitamin deficiency; our overall health is affected.

As a professional counselor, I hear many stories of abuse, neglect and abandonment. Some cases are mild; some are severe.

Being abruptly uprooted was a way of life for Marta and her siblings. Memories of her childhood include switching from one home to another.

“We were always moving in with one of our mother’s boyfriends,” she said.

Such arrangements were short-lived.

“It was just a matter of time before we’d be packing up and moving in with another boyfriend,” Marta said.

Some men were cruel to the children, but it didn’t seem to faze their mother.

“To her, the guy was always more important than us,” Marta said.

As she entered her teen years, she began to suspect that her mother was a prostitute.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “Who wants to believe such a thing about their own mother?”

But at the age of 15, after learning that she was the product of an affair, Marta could no longer find comfort in denial. She tracked down her biological father. They talked, and her suspicions were confirmed.

Numerous adults, like Marta, carry wounds from bad or inadequate mothering.

Sometimes, such mothering is the result of innocent blundering. Motherhood is a challenging role, to say the least, so no one pulls off the job perfectly. Many errors can be attributed to stress, naïveté and blindly following the examples set by their own mothers.

An article in the May 2003 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, titled “Make Your Own Mother,” offers a fresh perspective and practical advice.

The writer, Martha Beck, invites the reader to think outside the box regarding the word “mother.” Instead of perceiving it as a noun, she suggests viewing it as a verb.

Doing so, Beck writes, will help put an end to “focusing fruitless hope and blame on the woman who raised you.” That’s because mother as a verb means a mothering quality versus a particular person.

This is Beck’s advice: Instead of seeking “perfect parenting” from a particular woman, we should view our mother as anyone who provides maternal care.

That person can be anybody, she writes. In fact, the most suitable person might be a man.

The point is to seek people who can fill a specific void in our lives.

If you think about it, it’s a little naïve to imagine that any one person can provide all our nurturing needs. Someone might be good at providing unconditional love, while another is good at instructing us in certain ways. A friend might show us how to prepare healthy food, while a coworker might demonstrate how to be at ease in social settings.

According to Beck, the first step is to assess our “mother-needs” or become familiar with where we “could use more mothering.”

From there, she suggests we seek people who will fit the bill.

Perhaps we lack a sense of being valued, or maybe we feel inferior and not very smart. Beck suggests we seek people who, by their very presence, make us feel valued, capable and smart.

Beck explains how this approach has helped her personally: “Whenever I feel uncertain, inept, or desperate, I begin looking for a mother to teach and encourage me.”

Marta lacked proper mothering. Sadly, there’s nothing she can do about it. It’s in the past.

Moving forward, healing from her wounds, will entail taking the time to understand her mother. Seeing her as a fallible human is a necessary first step. Most likely, she’s a product of her own wounded past.

Then Marta must disentangle her sense of worth from her mother’s failings.

“Our less-than-perfect childhood doesn’t define us,” I assured Marta.

“Your true self is far grander than what happened or didn’t happen to you as a child.”

After grasping that truth, at the core of her being, Marta will be more receptive to what mother replacements have to offer. Feeling deserving, she will embark on the search for people who add stability to her life, who bolster her sense of importance and broaden her sense of who she really is.

There is hope for the motherless, because mothers are everywhere.

We only need to know to look for them.