The goop Podcast: Untangling the Adult Mother-Daughter Relationship

Episode Date: August 19, 2025
Host: Erica Chidi Cohen (for Goop, Inc. and Audacy)
Guest: Kelly McDaniel, Licensed Counselor & Author of Mother Hunger

Episode Overview

This episode explores the complex and deeply-rooted dynamics of adult mother-daughter relationships through the lens of "Mother Hunger"—a term coined by guest Kelly McDaniel. Drawing on her latest book, Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal From Lost Nurturance, Protection and Guidance, McDaniel and host Erica Chidi Cohen discuss how unmet maternal needs manifest in adult life, relationships, and self-perception, while offering insight into the pathways for healing intergenerational pain and shame.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining “Mother Hunger”

• Origins of the Term

  • Kelly McDaniel coined "Mother Hunger" while writing about love addiction, observing that many women’s deeper issues traced back to an unmet longing for maternal love, care, and guidance ([05:45]).
  • The term resonated widely, revealing how many adult women quietly wrestle with this yearning.

• Primitive Roots & Basic Needs

  • Mother Hunger emerges from early deficiencies in nurturing, protection, and guidance ([08:22]).
  • These are fundamental, biological needs wired into every child—“We need mostly to be held, touched, looked at with delight, responded to, attuned with, and we need to feel safe.” ([08:22], Kelly McDaniel)

• Distinguishing Mother Hunger from the “Mother Wound”

  • Hunger implies a primal, persistent need that motivates us to seek fulfillment, often with desperation and energy ([26:24]).
  • Wound is more passive and less indicative of the drive many feel to fill the maternal void.

2. Mother Hunger’s Real-Life Impacts

• How It Manifests:

  • Adult relationships: Often seeking romantic partners, friends, or mentors to fill unmet needs for nurturance, safety, and wise guidance ([14:30]).
  • Work and friendships: Re-enacting patterns learned from attempts to earn a mother’s affection or attention.
  • Food and self-care: Issues with eating, intimacy, or self-esteem frequently arise as substitute attempts to fill the void.

• Unconscious Repetition:

  • Many are unaware they're operating from these unmet needs—“Mother Hunger generally, until someone hears the term, goes under the radar... we just know we’re hungry for something.” ([14:30], Kelly McDaniel)
  • Behaviors are often pre-verbal, rooted in formative years, and can be compulsive or automatic.

• Shame and Frozen Grief:

  • Daughters internalize unmet needs as personal failings, leading to a pervasive sense of shame and immobilization ([12:11], [14:11]).
  • Grief for lost maternal care often goes unspoken and “freezes” in the body, contributing to mood disorders and physical symptoms ([21:43]).

3. Barriers to Healing

• Pathological Hope

  • A core concept where adult daughters repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) seek different outcomes from their mothers, continually hoping for change ([18:02]).
  • “What I call pathological hope is the continually going back to the mother ... hoping for a different reaction, hoping for a different mom, hoping we will finally have the mom we want, not necessarily the one that we have.” ([18:37], Kelly McDaniel)

• Disenfranchised Grief

  • Describes grief for unmet maternal needs that has “no cultural awareness or permission to feel, no place to go.” ([21:43])
  • Because discussing maternal shortcomings is taboo, many suffer in isolation.

4. Pathways to Healing Nurturance Deficits

• Naming the Experience—The First Step

  • Recognition and naming “Mother Hunger” offers instant somatic relief and permits the healing process to begin ([26:24]).
  • “The minute the body hears a name that feels truthful or feels resonant, there’s a recognition almost in the gut, in the belly. ... Then as soon as the body has that name, the body does what it’s designed to do, which is heal.” ([26:24], Kelly McDaniel)

• Tailoring the Healing Process

  • Healing focuses on the three pillars: nurturance, protection, and guidance ([26:24]).
  • Strategies depend on which needs were unmet: identifying them allows targeted inner work.
  • Severe, “third degree” Mother Hunger (lack of all three) may require professional support and is often accompanied by deep shame and more severe mood challenges.

• Audiobooks as an Entry Point

  • For those struggling with reading about Mother Hunger due to emotional reactions, McDaniel suggests trying the audiobook: “...they hear my voice instead of their mother’s and they can get through the material that way.” ([33:33])

5. Cultural Shift and Prevention

• Systemic Change Needed
  • McDaniel calls for a cultural paradigm shift—better education on early attachment, targeted support for mothers, and inclusion of these topics in mainstream education ([31:58]).
  • “Most of us don’t even know what mothering is. If you look it up in the dictionary, it says to care for someone as a mother would—that’s really not helpful.” ([31:58], Kelly McDaniel)
  • Her goal is to break intergenerational cycles of maternal deprivation through awareness and support.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Mother hunger emerges from lack of maternal care. But specific kinds of care, first being nurturing, the next being protecting—the things we need the most as vulnerable babies and toddlers.”
  — Kelly McDaniel ([08:22])

• “Mother Hunger generally, until someone hears the term, goes under the radar. No, we don’t know we have it. We just know we’re hungry for something, and we go about trying to find a way to fill that hunger.”
  — Kelly McDaniel ([14:30])

• “The minute the body hears a name that feels truthful or feels resonant, there’s a recognition almost in the gut... and then as soon as the body has that name, the body does what it’s designed to do, which is heal.”
  — Kelly McDaniel ([26:24])

• “What I call pathological hope is the continually going back to the mother that we have, hoping for a different reaction, hoping for a different mom, hoping we will finally have the mom we want...”
  — Kelly McDaniel ([18:37])

• “The grief of what you lost, of that first heartbreak, freezes in the body, causes all kinds of problems from physical pain to autoimmune problems and concentration problems. ... Disenfranchised grief is grief that has no cultural awareness or permission to feel, no place to go.”
  — Kelly McDaniel ([21:43])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:22] – Introduction to the topic and origins of “Mother Hunger”
• [08:22] – Explanation of the three core needs: Nurturance, Protection, Guidance
• [14:30] – How Mother Hunger presents in adult relationships and daily life
• [18:02] – Pathological Hope paradigm
• [21:43] – Disenfranchised Grief explained
• [26:24] – The healing trajectory and first steps
• [31:58] – Societal changes needed to shift mothering culture
• [33:33] – Audiobooks as a healing tool for “third degree Mother Hunger”

Tone & Style

The conversation was candid, supportive, and deeply empathetic. Both the host and guest maintained a compassionate tone, normalizing the exploration of maternal lack while encouraging listeners to accept their experiences without shame.

Conclusion

Kelly McDaniel’s Mother Hunger reframes the universal longing for maternal bonding, offering language and a map out of shame, addiction, and loneliness. By naming the hunger, normalizing the grief, and shifting the blame from self to wider cultural patterns, the episode provides not only validation but practical steps toward healing for adult daughters—while encouraging a broader cultural reckoning with early maternal needs.

Recommended Next Steps:

• Consider reading or listening to Kelly McDaniel’s book if the episode resonated
• Reflect on the three pillars in your own maternal history
• Seek out supportive communities or therapy for continued healing