Dear Reader, Do you remember those last few weeks or months of pregnancy? Maybe there was some urgency to getting everything in place. Maybe there was some discomfort... waddling, needing 4 pillows to sleep at night, couldn't breathe or eat too much, but also perhaps a sense of stillness or closeness with your partner... But once baby came, all of that changed! In an instant! Your world upside down. Does anything feel familiar? I would like to offer something that may have resonance with your...
15 days ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, When I had my first son, I thought I knew something about the nervous system...I was a yoga teacher and all. 🧘♀️ But really, I knew nothing about MY nervous system. I didn't understand the nervous system in labor and birth, or the nervous system in bonding with our babies, and especially about this DAILY spiritual practice of mothering and how MUCH my nervous system directs this experience! Well, thankfully I've learned from some amazing women about embodied mothering - the birth...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, I'm going to cut to the chase: how was your birth? Beautiful? Ecstatic? Powerful? Traumatic? Confusing? Not the way you wanted, but you're still ok? Many of these together? Honestly, regardless of how your birth went, we ALL need some level of repair. Help recombobulating. Integrating. This is actually a vital part of the initiation of birth that our culture misses. One of the reasons we struggle so much in postpartum and mothering. MotherCircle is a way to close that gap - to...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Dear friends, Last week I wrote out and email and was almost ready to send it to you when I paused and said... "that's not right." The next day I rewrote half the email and was almost ready to send it to you when I paused and said... "that's not right either!" This is an intense time in life right now. The astrology is telling us. And probably something in your life in also telling you so. My summer was chaotic to say the least. Any moment in the past weeks and months that I've had the rare...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, I've gotta be honest with you: the stress of personal/family change and uncertainty, under the weight of world chaos is presently crushing me. I've got tools. I've got practices. I've got a few very special friends! But sometimes life is just going to be really f'in uncomfortable! I've been chanting the mantra to Kali and asking for her to show me how to navigate the dark and change. I've been to the underworld before, you would think I might know my way around more. But then...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, How is your summer going? For us primary caregivers, summer can be extra! Mine has been full of action - good, fun, social but also exhausting, traumatic and unpleasant. But I've endured, as we do. And I'm grateful that I have so many tools, practices, friends and support systems to move through the heaviest times. The tools and practices that I'm referring to are the skills of being present in my body, knowing how to move and release energy, the ability to recognize when I, as...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Reader, Happy Summer Solstice from over here at North Myrtle Beach! My annual snapshot of how the kids and their cousins have grown each year. Also a time of deep inner conflict: being gifted a week's beach vacation by my husband's family at a place that hurts my soul (the annual snapshot also reflects how many more forests have been cleared for development among the already obscene level of touristy schlock)... But it is still time away. Time off. A break from the routine and mundane. I...
4 months ago • 1 min read
Dear friends, These last few weeks I have sat at the precipice of the void for many hours. I have attended/witnessed/been transformed by the birth of a small human and the death of an old man. My father. And I'm writing it here as part of my process. Because death - and the witnessing of it - are as much of a rite of passage as is birth. And frankly, Western medicine fucks up death in very much the same way that it fucks up birth. Medical technology makes these processes convenient for the...
4 months ago • 1 min read
Dear Reader, If you missed us live, the replay of the childbirth prep class is available now on my website (scroll halfway down the page). I hope that the 3 tools I shared with you (movement, breath and sound) will carry you in your pregnancy, birth and motherhood. Are you ready to learn more tools and practices for birthing in your power? My full, 4-week, online childbirth education course starts next week! If you're ready to commit to going deeper into the process of preparing for empowered...
5 months ago • 1 min read