Returning to the Well | Healing the Mother Wound
Kindling the Fire
Reclaiming the Ancestral Story
Embodying Sovereignty & Agency - Honouring the Ancestral Lineage
This is the final course in the four-part Returning to the Well series.
It can be taken as part of the course series or standalone.
This is a self-paced, reflective online course
You are invited to move slowly, to pause when needed, and to return to the material in your own time.
The work is offered with care, spaciousness, and respect for each person’s pace and inner world.
An Invitation
In many lives, the Mother Wound carries more than personal pain—it carries ancestral patterns, unspoken traumas, and silences passed through the maternal line. These inherited stories shape how we move, speak, and claim our place in the world. Kindling the Fire invites you to meet this ancestral terrain with courage, tenderness, and clarity. Here, we explore how inherited wounds can affect your sense of self, especially as you begin to differentiate, step into your own ground, and claim your personal agency. This course honours both the beauty and the sorrows of what came before, holding space for healing that is gentle, rooted, and real.
Rooted in Irish Myth & Ancestral Memory
This work is rooted in Irish mythology, folklore, ancestral memory and the living landscape of Ireland. In the Gaelic world, myth was not separate from ancestral and cultural structures—it was a way of understanding the collective psyche, the land, and the soul’s unfolding.
Irish myth and folklore carry deep knowledge of ancestral wisdom, generational trauma, personal agency, and sovereignty over one’s life. The stories of the land—its goddesses, rivers, wells, and thresholds—offer a symbolic language through which we can meet inner experience, inherited patterns, and the places where healing asks to occur.
Rather than using myth as metaphor alone, this work approaches myth as a living presence—one that helps us listen more deeply to the body, the imagination, and the ancestral layers of the psyche.
The Heart of This Course
This course explores the Mother Wound through an ancestral lens—examining how we inherit not only strengths but also the wounds of those who came before us. By understanding and reclaiming both the ancestral story and your own inner authority, you begin sacred healing and restoration of your personal sovereignty and agency.
You are guided to meet the guilt, grief, fear, and self-sabotage that can arise on the path of differentiation. This is not about blame, but about awareness, compassion, and reclaiming the quiet power within you.
Through a journey inward, you deepen your connection to ancestral story, learn to trust your intuition, and awaken creativity, inner wisdom, and a grounded purpose.
Join Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin in your very own returning to the well. Together, we will explore, through the work of Psychotherapy, Depth Psychology and Irish Mythology, and Folklore where we can begin to meet what was hidden and reclaim your inner wholeness.
Themes We Explore Together
Themes explored include:
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Recognising and understanding ancestral patterns, unspoken traumas, and emotional burdens passed through the maternal line
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Reclaiming sovereignty by establishing healthy boundaries and releasing what is not yours to carry.
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Stepping into personal agency and assertiveness, grounded in somatic awareness and inner trust.
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Sitting with guilt, shame, or discomfort as you grow beyond inherited roles or expectations.
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Noticing and steering self‑sabotage as it appears, especially when forging new ground.
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Honouring both strengths and sorrows of lineage, weaving ancestral wisdom into your path.
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Growing appreciation for Irish myth, folklore, language, poetry, and the wisdom of ancestors as enriching, soul-guiding presence
You are invited to meet these themes with clarity, compassion, and steady presence.
This course is for you if…
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You feel the echoes of ancestral pain—unspoken grief, inherited patterns, or emotional burdens—and wish to bring them into consciousness to begin healing.
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You are navigating the tender path of individuation and seek to step into your own ground of being, even amid resistance, guilt, or fear.
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You sense creative gifts, inner wisdom, or intuitive voice that were silenced long ago, and you are ready to reclaim them in the quiet rhythm of your soul.
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You are drawn to Irish myth, folklore, landscape, and heritage and wish to root your healing in cultural and spiritual inheritance.
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You wish to honour both the strength and sorrow of those who came before, so you can walk forward with greater clarity, agency, and compassion.
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You are engaged in psychotherapy or personal development and are curious to explore myth, ancestry, and soul through a depth psychological lens.
You will learn…
In this course, you will explore your ancestral story and uncover the intergenerational patterns that shape your life. With courage and compassion, you’ll begin to reclaim your sovereignty by establishing healthy boundaries and releasing what is not yours to carry. Through embodied practices, you’ll strengthen your sense of agency, navigate guilt and shame as you come into a more separate sense of self.
What is included?
This course is educational and reflective in nature and is offered as a supportive complement to personal or therapeutic work.
A Self-Paced Online Course you can return to at any time
120+ Minutes of Immersive Video Content
45+ Page Companion E-Workbook for reflection and integration
Space for journaling, contemplation, and embodied listening
Instant access with unlimited lifetime availability
CPD Certification for Irish Professionals
A Depth Psychology Experience Rooted in the Irish Mythology
+ bonus gift | Inner Child Meditation (30 minutes) interwoven with the Irish language
Kindling the Fire Online course is an immersive, visceral, odyssey of the soul and spirit with sweeping images of the Irish landscape, music, myth poetry and ritual to support you to connect to your inner world and soul self.
Continue the Journey
What Returning to the Well Participants have said...
FAQ
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In depth psychology, every archetype carries both life-giving and shadow expressions. The Mother archetype can nurture, protect, and sustain — and it can also overwhelm, enmesh, or suffocate.
The term Mother Wound describes the impact of receiving physical care without consistent emotional attunement or support, a pattern often carried across generations.
This series explores the Mother archetype in both its light and shadow, inviting conscious engagement with how it shapes our inner lives, relationships, and sense of self.
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This series may resonate if you experience chronic self-doubt, difficulty with boundaries, people-pleasing, or a sense of emotional responsibility for others. More detail about who this work is for is shared above.
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You will be invited to:
Explore your relationship with the Mother archetype, gaining psychological insight into how the Mother Wound may shape patterns, beliefs, and emotional life.
Understand the intergenerational roots of the Mother Wound, tracing how its shadow moves through family lines, culture, and society — and how it may be consciously engaged and transformed.
Support yourself in reshaping relationships by cultivating healthier boundaries, greater self-compassion, and a more rooted sense of self.
Engage with the mother figures of Irish mythology, folklore, and poetry, drawing on ancestral stories in an embodied and imaginative way.
Tend your symbolic inner well — a sacred inner space of rest, restoration, nourishment, and emotional renewal.
Cultivate an embodied connection with intuition and inner knowing, awakening creativity, self-trust, and instinctual wisdom as living guides.
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This series is grounded in depth psychology and psychotherapy, including somatic approaches, and shaped through a mythopoetic lens. It draws from Irish mythology, folklore, cosmology, language, literature, and the living heritage of Ireland.
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The live workshops offer a shared, time-bound experience rooted in presence, dialogue, and community. They allow for collective reflection, witnessing, and the aliveness that emerges when we gather together in real time.
The courses translate this work into a carefully crafted, video-infused format that can be revisited and re-engaged with over time. You can move at your own pace, return to practices and teachings as needed, and begin whenever you feel called to enter the journey.
While the formats differ, the heart of the work remains the same. Both draw from mythology, poetry, and the ancient Gaelic Celtic world, and invite connection with the body and the deeper symbolic, soulful dimensions of the self.
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All workshops, courses, programs, and products are intended to support personal growth and self-reflection. They are not a substitute for medical, psychological, psychiatric, or therapeutic diagnosis or treatment.
By engaging in this work, you agree to take responsibility for your own wellbeing. If you require professional support, you are encouraged to seek guidance from a licensed and qualified healthcare professional of your choosing.
About
Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin
BSocSc, MA Social Work, MA Psychotherapy, Dip Supervision, Dip Jungian Psychology, Certified Coach (WCI)
I am a Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapist, Supervisor, and Personal Development Coach with over 20 years of experience. I work internationally and am dual-located in the US and Ireland (in Northern Nevada and on the West Coast of Ireland, in Connemara). I work from a Jungian and depth-oriented perspective, integrating Jungian Psychology, Psychodynamic and somatic therapies.
I grew up in Connemara, a wild and rugged landscape on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. Oscar Wilde famously said of the region, “Connemara is a savage beauty”. I grew up in a small, rural Gaeilge (Irish) speaking community where Gaeilge is my first language, and is still spoken today in people's homes. This area was a major centre for the work of the Irish Folklore Commission, recording endangered folklore, mythology, sean-nós (old-style) songs, and oral literature. I have been greatly influenced by the wild physical landscape and immersed in those ancient songs, stories, customs, myths, legends, and music since childhood.
My work interweaves the Gaelic (Irish) World and Otherworld with Jungian Depth Psychology. The Gaelic world, with its symbols, language, myth, folklore, literature and heritage, becomes a doorway through which you can enter and explore your own inner landscape. I desire to share with you a felt sense of that ancient culture and spirit and, as a Psychotherapist, support how that connection can nourish and guide you on your personal development journey.
Returning to the Well Online Course Series
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The Great Mother
The Guardian of the Well
Nurturing a Relationship with the Great Mother Archetype - Embodying your Sensing, Intuitive, Soul Self. -

The Dark Mother
Entering the Sacred Grove
Encountering the Shadow in the Mother Wound -

Blessing the Waters
The Inner Child
Embracing the Inner Child - Cultivating the Great Mother Within -

Kindling the Fire
Reclaiming the Ancestral Story
Embodying Sovereignty & Agency - Honoring the Ancestral Lineage