Earlier this month I went to a mother blessing.

We sat in a circle of women, soft under the dappled light of the canopy, hands on bellies, hands on hearts. Stories moving quietly, circling us. Not loud. Not performative. Just… right.

There was a kind of presence in that circle.

The kind where no one is trying to get it right.
No one is shaping themselves to be received a certain way.
No one is managing how they’re coming across.

Just… there. Together.

And I remember noticing how different that feels.

Because not every space feels like that.

—

I don’t always meet my own life like that.

—

On the drive home, my husband said, almost casually,
“She’s exactly like you.”

He meant our daughter.
I felt myself resist it immediately.
No, she’s not.

But then later that week, there was a moment.

She was loud. Fully in something. Taking up space in a way that didn’t check the room first.

And I felt something rise in me, fast.

Not about what she was doing, exactly. More like… a need for it to stop. To come back into something more manageable. More appropriate. More… familiar.

And underneath that, something quieter:

I don’t recognize myself in that. Not because it isn’t me.
But because I learned not to be that way.

Before I was a mother, I was a woman learning how to achieve.

I used my breath, my instincts, the intelligence of my body… to move forward, to create, to become.

And then motherhood arrived and rearranged everything.

My body became more than mine. It became home. A doorway. A place where life began.

And also… a place where things surfaced that I hadn’t met yet.

Motherhood didn’t make me who I am.
It showed me who I couldn’t not be.
It grew me up in ways I didn’t see coming.

—

I used to think the work was to get it right.

To respond the right way.
To be the kind of mother I imagined.

I also used to think… quietly, and not something I said out loud…
that motherhood asked too much of me.

That it took more than it gave.

That maybe I wasn’t made for it. That maybe it wasn’t… worth it.
I can see that time differently now.

But I remember what it felt like.

I’ve sat with enough women now to notice something.

In the quiet of breathwork sessions, in spaces where people are finally letting themselves feel what’s there…

I don’t hear a lot of blame. Not in the way we expect.

What I see, again and again, is something more complicated.

Women coming into contact with the truth of what they experienced.

The love. And the places it didn’t reach.
The care. And the moments they were alone in it.
The mother who tried. The mother who couldn’t.
Both.
Held in the same body.

—

And somewhere in that… something shifts.

Not because they figure it out. Not because they say the right thing or respond the right way. But because they stop trying to be a better version of themselves inside the moment…

and start staying with what is actually there.

—

I didn’t need to become a different kind of mother to meet my children.

I needed to learn how to stay.

Stay with what I was actually feeling.
Stay when it didn’t match the story I had about myself.
Stay when it was uncomfortable, messy, confronting.
Stay… without turning away.

—

I wish I had become a mother earlier.

Not because I was ready.

But because of how deeply it has shaped me. How it has softened me.

How it has asked me, again and again, to begin again.

—

Everything I teach now, everything I hold space for… I learned here first.

In the moments I didn’t recognize myself.
In the moments I wanted to correct, contain, make things fit.
In the moments I chose, slowly, imperfectly… not to.

This is why spaces where you don’t have to get it right matter to me now.
Spaces where nothing is being forced.
Where there is no script to follow.

Where you are allowed to be exactly where you are… and not be left there alone.

—

For all the mothers.

For all the daughters.

For all the women… the womanature… who create, who hold, who rebuild and begin again.

May you return to yourself with tenderness.

Remember that vitality is not a destination.

It’s a relationship.

With love,
include me,

Vanda

P.S. I decided to homeschool my older (!!!). More on that later if you want the full story. It’s shifted my days—and with it, my availability. I’ve opened some evening and weekend sessions for those of you holding a lot during the day and not always having space to be held yourselves. If that would support you, you can book here.