Returning to the Well | Healing the Mother Wound
Course one
The Great Mother
The Guardian of the Well
Nurturing a Relationship with the Great Mother Archetype Within
This course is the first 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 program.
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
Honouring the feminine in our lives is to return to the wellspring of the body. For many of us, the Mother Wound lives as a quiet disconnection from our sensing, feeling, instinctual knowing selves. Often passed from generation to generation, this disconnection remains until someone is ready to meet it with care. In The Great Mother, we explore this archetype through depth psychology, Irish mythology and folklore, cultivating an inner source of comfort, presence, and protection. Here, we return to the language of the body and remember ourselves as instinctual, embodied, knowing beings.
Rooted in Irish Myth & Ancestral Memory
This work is rooted in Irish mythology, ancestral memory, and the living landscape of Ireland. In the Gaelic world, myth was not separate from daily life—it was a way of understanding the psyche, the land, and the soul’s unfolding.
Irish myth carries deep knowledge of belonging, loss, sovereignty, and return. 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.
In this course, mythic images of the well, the land, and the Great Mother guide a return to inner safety, nourishment, and the places where the psyche first learned to belong.
The Heart of This Course
Nurturing a loving inner mother helps us cultivate presence, instinct, intuition, and a deep embodied knowing. This is the sacred work of re-parenting — tending to the parts of ourselves that never felt fully seen, met, 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 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.
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.
Themes We Explore Together
Themes explored include:
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The Great Mother as a source of nourishment, safety, and inner holding.
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Reconnecting with the body as a place of wisdom and belonging.
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The Mother Wound and its impact on self-trust and self-worth.
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Enmeshment, differentiation, and the right to a separate self.
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Myth and image as doorways into the psyche and soul.
You are invited to meet these themes gently, listening for what stirs in your own inner world.
This course is for you if…
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You long to feel safer within yourself and to cultivate an inner mother who offers comfort, presence, and protection.
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You struggle with boundaries, guilt, or people-pleasing, and sense these patterns may stem from early emotional enmeshment.
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You feel disconnected from your authentic self, intuition, or embodied sense of knowing.
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You are drawn to depth psychology, myth, and somatic ways of understanding the inner world.
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You feel a call toward Irish mythology, ancestral wisdom, and the living spiritual landscape of Ireland.
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You are engaged in personal or therapeutic work and are curious to explore this mythopoetic lens.
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
Over 120+ Minutes of Immersive Video Content
35+ 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
The Great Mother online course is an immersive, embodied journey of soul and psyche, weaving sweeping images of Irish Landscape, myth, folklore, music, poetry and ritual to support a return to your inner world and soul self.
Begin here
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