Mindful Matrescence

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Mindful Matrescence Holistic Birth & Postpartum Doula
Prenatal & Postpartum Yoga

Registration for Summer Prenatal Yoga is now open!In this course we will explore pregnancy and birth as transformation. ...
21/05/2026

Registration for Summer Prenatal Yoga is now open!

In this course we will explore pregnancy and birth as transformation. Each week we use a tool from the practices of yoga and mindfulness to build out a specific birth skill to serve us in labor and beyond. Folks will leave this course with knowledge of what laboring positions and breathing techniques serve their specific, evolving body, ways to relieve common pregnancy-related discomforts, clarity on how they intend to feel about their birth, and how to align their choices and actions with that intention. Folks also have the opportunity to build lasting connections with other birthing parents walking the path to and through parenthood alongside them.

Here are the details:

🗓️Tuesdays, 7/7-8/18
đź“Ť Maple Street YMCA
đź• 6:00PM-7:30PM
đź’˛$35 for Y members, $65 for community members
🤝Financial assistance is available! Email Rebecca Lillie at [email protected]
đź”—link to register in bio or go to https://bit.ly/SummerPrenatalYoga2026

Questions, curiosities, or ideas? Email us [email protected]

You are willing to be transformed by birth.(Perhaps you already have been.)You approach thresholds with a deep sense of ...
18/05/2026

You are willing to be transformed by birth.

(Perhaps you already have been.)

You approach thresholds with a deep sense of self and a clear set of values that can anchor you at every turn of the labyrinthian journeys of labor, birth, and postpartum.

You understand the journey to and through motherhood to hold physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. You want someone on your team who can speak into each of these spaces with you.

You crave a wise woman to walk alongside you, not to give you answers, but to shine a light on the path you are clearing for yourself and your family.

You are not looking for someone to protect you. You are not looking for someone to save you. You are looking for someone who can hold the field of your experience with wisdom, compassion, and competence.

You aim to be embodied. You desire a connection with your physiology. You seek out tools and storytelling that can uplift your body, mind, and heart.

You want to know how and when you are being woven into a tapestry of women in our community who walk on the path of motherhood ahead of you, alongside you, following you.

You want someone who cannot only hold you but hold your partner, your family, your baby in every version of them that surfaces throughout these universal rites of passage.

You want someone on your team who believes the wounds of your past to be portals through which you can expand into motherhood.

You want a doula. The ancient kind. The soul-led kind. The kind that is beholden only to you, not an arbitrary code of ethics imposed upon them by a self-proclaimed credentialer of the field, not a medicalized system that prioritizes profit over empowerment, not a nationwide effort to constrain a role meant to be by and for one’s most local community.

You want what has always been your right.

You want a Mindful Matrescence.

–

If this sounds like you, let’s schedule a time to explore if we are a good fit for one another. (I also love making referrals to other doulas in the area if I sense an alignment outside of our connection.)

DM me here or email [email protected] to learn more.

(this photo is shared with the family’s informed consent)

As you move through labor and birth, you could “go with the flow.”You could also go with YOUR flow.Embody Your Birth is ...
14/03/2026

As you move through labor and birth, you could “go with the flow.”

You could also go with YOUR flow.

Embody Your Birth is a mind-body-birth prep workshop series for birthing people and their partners who aim to attune to physiology and one another. These workshops will help you cultivate presence, honor your instincts, and build out a practical and intentional birth-related skillset that can serve your family in the birth space and beyond. Together, you can create labor, birth, and postpartum experiences that reflect your family values and vision.

Together you can find your flow and embody your birth.

Check out https://bit.ly/EmbodyYourBirth2026 for more information ✨

A near week ago, twelve women gathered in the name of “Matrescence,” a term coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in th ...
07/03/2026

A near week ago, twelve women gathered in the name of “Matrescence,” a term coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in th 70s, revived by in the 2010s, and that has recently gone viral via and ’s campaign for it to be included in the dictionary.

These women and mothers dedicated the morning to recalling, discovering, studying, articulating, and drawing each path of their matrescence journeys to date. They then dedicated the afternoon to ceremonializing where their matrescence journeys may take them next, traversing a labyrinth in search of their Heart’s Question.

Perhaps you can already tell - this was not your typical retreat.

These women were not pampered.

There were no massages, face masks, or grazing tables.

Instead, these women were deeply (and willingly) inconvenienced by what many of us might call The Work.

They stepped into the parts of motherhood that are raw, complicated, and heavy with grief.

There were tears, an altar, filled notebook pages, tulips, and homemade soup.

A pair of bluebirds watched over these women as they descended into the labyrinth. Several women left an offering at the labyrinth’s center where they stood still. Breathed. And noticed.

Our time together continues to play on repeat in my mind. The stories, the connections, the deep inner work, it all plays on a loop as war unfolds, genocide continues, and predators are yet to be held accountable.

Let us choose to see these seemingly juxtaposing energies as purposefully synchronous. Let us mothers see our deep inner work ripple to our children, our community, our collective.

We do not mother in vain.

We ascend on purpose, with purpose.

And, to that end, when people ask “how are you?” or “are they sleeping through the night yet?” or “you’re still breastfeeding?” - tell them.

Tell them you are transforming.

Tell them your priorities, your goals, your relationships, your values, have all shifted.

Tell them when you birthed your baby you also (re)birthed yourself.

Tell them.

Use the word.

Tell them about Matrescence.

đź–¤

Registration for Spring Prenatal Yoga is now open!In this course we will explore pregnancy and birth as transformation. ...
05/02/2026

Registration for Spring Prenatal Yoga is now open!

In this course we will explore pregnancy and birth as transformation. Each week we use a tool from the practices of yoga and mindfulness to build out a specific birth skill to serve us in labor and beyond. Folks will leave this course with knowledge of what laboring positions and breathing techniques serve their specific, evolving body, ways to relieve common pregnancy-related discomforts, clarity on how they intend to feel about their birth, and how to align their choices and actions with that intention. Folks also have the opportunity to build lasting connections with other birthing parents walking the path to and through parenthood alongside them.

Here are the details:

🗓️Tuesdays, 2/24-4/14 (no class 3/31)
đź“Ť Maple Street YMCA
đź• 6:00PM-7:30PM
đź’˛$35 for Y members, $65 for community members
🤝Financial assistance is available! Email Rebecca Lillie at [email protected]
đź”—link to register: bit.ly/PrenatalYogaSpring2026

Questions, curiosities, or ideas? Email us [email protected]

You are willing to be transformed by birth.(Perhaps you already have been.)You approach thresholds with a deep sense of ...
23/01/2026

You are willing to be transformed by birth.

(Perhaps you already have been.)

You approach thresholds with a deep sense of self and a clear set of values that can anchor you at every turn of the labyrinthian journeys of labor, birth, and postpartum.

You understand the journey to and through motherhood to hold physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. You want someone on your team who can speak into each of these spaces with you.

You crave a wise woman to walk alongside you, not to give you answers, but to shine a light on the path you are clearing for yourself and your family.

You are not looking for someone to protect you. You are not looking for someone to save you. You are looking for someone who can hold the field of your experience with wisdom, compassion, and competence.

You aim to be embodied. You desire a connection with your physiology. You seek out tools and storytelling that can uplift your body, mind, and heart.

You want to know how and when you are being woven into a tapestry of women in our community who walk on the path of motherhood ahead of you, alongside you, following you.

You want someone who cannot only hold you but hold your partner, your family, your baby in every version of them that surfaces throughout these universal rites of passage.

You want someone on your team who believes the wounds of your past to be portals through which you can expand into motherhood.

You want a doula. The ancient kind. The soul-led kind. The kind that is beholden only to you, not an arbitrary code of ethics imposed upon them by a self-proclaimed credentialer of the field, not a medicalized system that prioritizes profit over empowerment, not a nationwide effort to constrain a role meant to be by and for one’s most local community.

You want what has always been your right.

You want a Mindful Matrescence.

–

If this sounds like you, let’s schedule a time to explore if we are a good fit for one another. (I also love making referrals to other doulas in the area if I sense an alignment outside of our connection.)

DM me here or send an email to [email protected] to learn more.

(this photo is shared with the family’s informed consent)

The Tenth Night of the The Twelve Nights of Birth:The Supported BirthThe Supported Birth invites both the birthing perso...
01/01/2026

The Tenth Night of the The Twelve Nights of Birth:

The Supported Birth

The Supported Birth invites both the birthing person and their partner to transform.

The birthing person will understand and receive this invitation almost immediately; watching their physical body change can open their heart up to emotional and spiritual change as well, and they have a whole nine months to get themselves used to the idea that everything will soon be different.

The partner might not realize or be open to this invitation to transform right away. For them, change is mostly theoretical until they’re holding their baby in their arms. They might not feel that there is enough space for them in this matricentric rite of passage. They might halt their contributions and instead defer to the birthing person for all decisions, opinions, and ideas. They might not realize that, given how pregnancy expands us, there’s increasing room for all.

In the Supported Birth there is space for the partner

the whole partner

as he embarks on his own parallel path

spiraling toward parenthood.

In The Supported Birth pictured here, the partner willingly rides the wave of transformation alongside his wife. He meets nearly every one of her surges with a hip squeeze or a back rub, and he whispers words of loving encouragement. As she journeys to that deep place in labor where spoken words are no longer relevant, his encouragement evolves into audible breathing, and they synchronize their inhales and exhales to bring their baby earthside.

In The Supported Birth

she ascends

so he does

too

-

This post is a part of a series called The Twelve Nights of Birth. I hope you will take your time and experience the posts that precede this one and follow along with posts yet to come.

The Ninth Night of the The Twelve Nights of Birth:The Vaginal Birth After CesareanAs we aim to make change, yogic philos...
31/12/2025

The Ninth Night of the The Twelve Nights of Birth:

The Vaginal Birth After Cesarean

As we aim to make change, yogic philosophy offers us the concept of Samskara: impressions left on the mind by experiences that influence our present-day actions + thoughts.

Samskaras are not inherently good or bad. Some Samskaras, like how having run a marathon can help us feel confident as we approach labor + birth, can lift us up. Other Samskaras, like how hearing our foremothers talk about birth as dangerous can make us feel fearful as the birth portal approaches, can weigh us down.

The Vaginal Birth After Cesarean is a Samskara-led journey. The birthing person turns over each stone of their previous birth along with every story or impression that they’ve absorbed, some in this lifetime, some in those past. They question everything they’ve ever known in their body + mind as they select what Samskaras they’ll carry with them on their journey and what Samskaras they’ll release.

The mother, like this one here, will narrow in on a specific Samskara from her previous birth. She will declare a moment in labor where everything changed. For many, this will be marked by a certain point of cervical dilation (for this mama it was 7 cm). Her team will rally toward this mark in her subsequent labor as if it were its own rite of passage.

Old stories will evaporate after bubbling to the surface with each surge. New patterns of thought will emerge as she softens in between. She reaches the Samskara in question, arriving at unknown territory with a deep sense of self + foresight.

She will replace one Samskara with a new one.

At 8 cm, just on the other side of said fork in the road, this woman, who’d had her eyes closed for hours, momentarily rejoined us in this realm. She opened her eyes, cradled her belly, and smiled.

“I knew I had it in me,” she said. “I knew I had it in me all this time.”

With 2cm + 2nd stage still to go, she already knew she’d done it.

The Vaginal Birth After Cesarean was here.

The Seventh Night of the The Twelve Nights of Birth:The Home Birth After Cesarean (HBAC)It’s tempting to put what confou...
30/12/2025

The Seventh Night of the The Twelve Nights of Birth:

The Home Birth After Cesarean (HBAC)

It’s tempting to put what confounds us on a spectrum. We assume that if we establish order to something that appears chaotic, we might be able to control it and wield its energy for our own desired outcome.

In birth, control might be what we initially seek, but I think this impulse to put birth on a spectrum expresses an even deeper human desire. We want to understand, deeply, where we come from and how we got here. We want to know our origin story, both our own and the one we share as a people.

Perhaps we compare births then not in an effort to categorize them or control them.

Perhaps we compare births to heal.

Sometimes in an attempt to heal, we place the cesarean birth opposite of the home birth. We hold these births, one in each hand, and spread our arms so wide that we are unable to see their similarities: the rituals, the surrender, the joy. If we folded our hands in our laps instead, we might see how one birth loops into the other, creating not a spectrum but a full circle that contains, not restricts, the entire world of birth.

The Home Birth After Cesarean allows mothers, like the one seen here, to hold the entire world of birth in the wisdom of her body.

She can hold all of that wisdom, no longer needing to dig into the past for it, so her children and their children and their children won’t have to either.

While reflecting on their own Home Birth After Cesarean, many mothers will say, “I feel complete.”

And maybe it’s not just because a wrong has been made right.

Maybe it’s not just because they found something they’d lost.

Maybe they also feel complete because now

after having traveled full circle

they know

they embody

it all

-

This post is a part of a series called The Twelve Nights of Birth. I hope you will take your time and experience the posts that precede this one and follow along with posts yet to come.

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