Healing the Hidden Wounds: How the Right Kinship Relationship Can Restore What Childhood Left Behind
A partner cannot heal childhood wounds, but symbolic role-play of the ideal mother or father can finally fill those gaps, offering lasting healing
I’ve been thinking – about love, about longing, about the things we hope to find in another person, and how sometimes those things are never quite fulfilled. As one client, Peter, said, “I wonder if I expect too much of him, my Jonathon. He says he loves me, and I know he does, but sometimes it feels like there’s something missing, something he doesn’t give me. I am never satisfied, no matter how hard he tries.”
In truth, this client was waiting for something that was not given to him as a child. He was asking for something his partner, no matter how deeply he loved him, simply couldn’t provide. Because Jonathan was the wrong person to fill that gap.
Al Pesso, co-founder of the Pesso Boyden System of Psychotherapy, speaks of how we unconsciously hope the ones we love will fill the gaps from our childhood, to heal what was broken. But how can one person – no matter how much they love you – undo the lack that comes from early childhood?
Pesso explains that healing must come from ‘the right kinship relationship, at the right time, and in the right way’. This is something a partner, no matter how deeply they love you, simply cannot provide. A partner is a companion, not a parent. While their love is important, it cannot replace the nurturing or guidance that was missing in childhood. What Pesso discovered is that true healing only happens when someone can step into the role of the mother or father you needed back then, providing the care, approval, or support you never received. It’s in this symbolic act, not in your partner’s attempts to fill that gap, that the wounds begin to heal. And this is where Pesso Boyden therapy works: it offers a way to heal deficits that may have been present for decades.
This particular client had a mother who avoided physical contact, and didn’t give appreciation or validation. She didn’t hold him. She never said he mattered. He didn’t feel important as a child. In truth, it was his mother’s arms he longed for, even though she had been gone for years. As he put it, “And though Jonathan tries to hold me, to comfort me, there is still this ache that doesn’t go away.”
The touch and the words from Jonathan “You are beautiful. You are enough. You matter to me,” were going into a leaky bucket and never quite filling it. Because they were spoken by his partner, the wrong kinship relationship, those words didn’t land. The client was left wondering, “Am I truly worthy?” Left doubting if he deserved that love. But when he had a Pesso Boyden therapy session, it all changed. And that change has lasted.
We are so lucky to have found a way to heal these early wounds. And one that doesn’t burden Jonathan with the impossible task of being Peter’s mother, his father, his lost caregivers all at once.
In a Pesso Boyden session, having someone role-play the Ideal Mother, or perhaps the mother-you-needed-when-you-were-five, can make all the difference. In the group Peter chose a woman to play the role of his Ideal Mother. By taking on the role, and speaking as if she had been there when he was a child, the healing could start to happen. She was the right kinship relationship, saying things to him at the right age, in the right way (whilst holding him).
The chosen woman cuddled him as a parent would cuddle a child, looked him in the eye, and said. “If I’d been your Ideal Mother, when you were five years old, I would have said to you, ‘I’m so proud of you. I love you so deeply, and you matter to me so much. You are such a lovely son, and I am delighted you are my child.” It began to fill that hollow space in Peter. It may seem like magic, but it’s not magic – it’s the truth. And once that emptiness is filled, it lasts. And thousands of people have experienced this healing in a Pesso Boyden structure.
Peter says the feeling has lasted, and it has changed his life. He no longer feels hollow. “That is what it means to be truly healed: to finally hear those words I never did hear, and to feel them sink into my bones, like sunlight on a cold winter morning.”
Juliet Grayson
December 2025
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