Returning to the Well | Healing the Mother Wound
The Great Mother
The Guardian of the Well
Nurturing a Relationship with the Great Mother Archetype Within
Honouring the feminine in our lives is to return to the wellspring of the body. Often, with the mother wound, we are disconnected from our sensing, feeling, instinctual, knowing selves. This disconnection is frequently passed down from generation to generation until someone is ready to meet and heal it. We will explore the archetype of the Great Mother through the goddesses of Irish mythology and how we can begin to cultivate the Great Mother within. Here, we can return to the language of the body and re-member ourselves as our instinctual, knowing embodied selves.
Nurturing a loving inner mother helps us cultivate presence, instinct, intuition, and a deep, embodied knowing. This is the sacred act of reparenting—tending to the parts of ourselves that never felt fully seen or safe to be.
In this course, we journey alongside the great mother goddesses of the Irish landscape—sovereign figures rooted in earth and myth. They will guide us as we come home to our own ground of being, reclaiming agency, embodiment, authenticity, and the right to our own voice and separate self.
A core expression of the Mother Wound is enmeshment, where the child’s sense of self is blurred with the parent’s, often through unconscious patterns of over-attunement or emotional vigilance. Rather than growing into a separate self, the child becomes an extension of the mother’s emotional world. In this space, saying “no” can feel like betrayal, and boundaries feel shameful or dangerous.
In healthy development, differentiation allows the child to become their own person. But when enmeshment takes root, autonomy is laced with guilt, and love feels conditional on staying merged. This deep pattern can block our full expression in the world. Together, I invite you to soften these bindings and begin to step into your true, separate self.
Join Eileen Ní Shuilleabháin in your very own returning to the well. Together, we will explore, through the work of Psychotherapy, Depth Psychology, Irish Mythology and Folklore, how we can begin to reclaim our sense of agency, authenticity and find the Great Mother within.
What is included?
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We will begin by Crossing the Threshold—the Opening Ritual that guides all of my Deepening the Senses Programs, Courses, and Workshops. In this space, we create a container for our work together and set our individual and collective intentions.
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We begin by introducing the themes of the course in a 30-minute immersive video presentation to explore ideas, images, and reflections from the world of Depth psychology, philosophy, literature, Irish folklore, and poetry. We will explore the emotions that are stirring within the theme and how this learning can be a rich source of knowledge to support us in developing a relationship with our inner world and soul self.
After the seminar, there will be a time for reflection, a space for you to note your experience through awareness, journal invitations, and personal reflection.
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In this section, we will deepen into story and mythology with a visual meditation of sweeping footage of the Irish landscape. You will hear stories from mythology or Irish folklore to deepen into myth, ancient customs and practices of the ancient Gaelic world, drawing on somatic practices throughout to support you in your body, to enhance this visual experience. For our ancestors, the world of storytelling, poetry, songs, and folktales shared around the hearth at night provided an escape from a harsh existence—an escape that brought them into the unseen world of imagination, psyche, and spirit. We will become curious about what images are stirring our own imagination from these ancient stories and images, and deepen our relationship to our soul selves.
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This second seminar deepens into the theme and is a visual meditation incorporating poetry music, art, literature, with sweeping images of the visceral beauty of the Irish landscape. This seminar continues the exploration through the lens of Depth Psychology, supporting you on the path of discovery and self-development.
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Here, we sit at the symbolic hearth to create a pause and space for reflection. I share insights with you on the key themes, from my work with clients and those who attended live Gatherings over the years. This is designed to support you in your own integration of the learning thus far.
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This is the final video module, where we capture the essence of the course's learning, sharing rich reflections, images, and lessons from the collective experience. We explore how you will apply this learning to your daily life.
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We will cross back over the threshold again, returning to our initial starting place of ritual, the container of our work together, where we will close this work again in ritual. From here, we return to our everyday lives, inspired and curious about what new perspectives, new understandings, and awareness we can bring with us, from the Deepening the Senses experience.
This course is for you if…
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You long to feel safe within yourself and are ready to cultivate an inner mother who offers comfort, presence, and protection to the parts of you that feel unseen or emotionally abandoned and not in your own separate solid sense of self.
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You struggle with boundaries, guilt, or people-pleasing, and suspect these patterns may stem from emotional enmeshment, over-attunement, or a childhood where saying “no” felt unsafe.
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You are seeking a deeper connection to your intuition, body, and soul, and feel called to reawaken your instinctual wisdom through myth, ritual, somatic practices, and the ancient Irish and Celtic spiritual landscape.
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You feel the Mother Wound in your life— a sense of disconnection from your authentic self, chronic self-doubt, or the belief that your worth depends on keeping others happy or emotionally regulated.
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You are drawn to Jungian Psychology and feel a deep pull toward Irish mythology, ancestral wisdom, and the Irish language, and want to explore how folklore and the Gaelic Irish culture and the living landscape of Ireland can guide personal and collective healing.
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This offering is particularly relevant for you if you are engaged in psychotherapy, or if you are interested in your own personal development and you are curious to learn more of this mythopoetic approach, as a lens into your inner world and soul self.
Purchase the Course
✓ Over 120+ Minutes of Immersive Video Lessons
✓ 35+ Page Companion E-Workbook
✓ CPD Certificate for Irish Professionals
✓ Instant & Unlimited lifetime access
✓ A Depth Psychology Experience Rooted in the Irish Mythology
Listen to a short excerpt…
Seminar #1
Mythology
Seminar #2
You will learn how to…
Through guided practices, depth inquiry, and gentle embodiment work, this course will support you to:
Gain insight into your relationship with the mother archetype and deepen your understanding of the mother wound and its impact on your life.
Explore the dynamics of enmeshment (personal and intergenerational) and begin the vital process of differentiation by cultivating healthy boundaries and stepping into your own ground of being.
Reconnect with your body and develop a felt sense of safety and presence through somatic practices that attune you to your sensing, feeling self.
Cultivate a relationship with your instinctual, embodied knowing, strengthening your capacity for differentiation without losing connection through somatic awareness and inner attunement.
Engage with the mother figures of Irish mythology, folklore, and poetry in an embodied way, deepening your intuitive connection and enriching your relationship to creativity, inner guidance, and self-trust.
Grow in appreciation for the Irish language, stories, and ancestral wisdom as part of a rich, soulful experience of personal and cultural reclamation.
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Depth Psychology and Psychotherapy theories and practices, somatic psychotherapy, Irish mythology, folklore, language, literature and Irish Heritage.
This course is an immersive, visceral odyssey of the soul and spirit, a journey to the metaphorical well of wisdom that flows through Irish myth and memory. You will see sweeping images of the Irish landscape, experiencing the music, poetry, myth, folklore and language, interwoven with insights from Depth Psychology and Psychotherapy, to support you in connecting to The Great Mother Archetype and healing the mother wound in your life.
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