ReMothering with Clara Belize Wisner

As my girls get older and we move further away from that tender, tender infancy phase, to the phase where they can communicate, entertain themselves a bit, and generally need less from me, I am struck by how much less time we have together. 

I am struck by how the days fly by and blur..

..how leaving them overnight has become a little less heart wrenching

…how I work 8 hours days largely without seeing them three times a week. 

I am struck by how the identity of mother doesn’t feel as new and shiny as it once did. It’s more comfortable. It feels more like a broken in pair of Birkenstocks, instead of the new ones that you love but are giving you blisters and feel awkward. 

Not all days are easy by any means, but the physical demands on my body are most definitely less. I’m getting better sleep. I weaned Maya and have stopped breastfeeding after 4.5 years of my body nourishing little bodies that came from my body. I’m not always carrying a baby on my hip. Nowadays, the carriers only get brought out for hikes.

I read somewhere that there is a big decrease in how much a parent engages with a child around the age of 3. 

The ideals of that early parenthood stage start to slip. Most preschools start at age 3. Maybe another child comes into the family and attention is spilt. 

Age 3 is also when children do seem to reach a significant level of independence; they can walk, talk, go potty, and put their shoes on (for the most part). 

It makes sense that us, parents, would be ready to breathe a little sigh of relief.

It makes sense that we might shrug off our initial feverish sharp ideals of zero screen time and perfectly sourced nutrient dense food, as we have been sanded down by the years of interrupted sleep and the energy intensive reality of what it takes to raise kids and hold a family together. 

And so, this is where I am, really noticing the shift in gears on my motherhood journey. 

Motherhood is just watching a part of your heart walk further and further away from you and it is true and good on one level. 

This is what is supposed to happen. Time passes and children grow up. 

I can only imagine the heart breaking that must rattle your bones as your baby starts to drive a car or takes their first solo trip or moves away from home and goes out into the world, for good, without you. 

Even in writing that I feel a hollowness in the lowest reaches of my heart. 

I heard, again and again, from strangers and friends alike, “Oh! It goes so fast!” And I know it does. 

It has been my deepest intention from the beginning to not take a moment for granted. To really experience it all; the highs and the lows. The pain and the beauty. And when things are so fresh and you are such a green, new mother, it is all so much more sensational.

It’s like when you travel to a new country and everything is interesting and different and just going grocery shopping is an adventure. 

You don’t just birth your baby; you birth yourself into Mother. You get to watch their first times but you are also having so many first times; as a mother. 

Right now, for me, the sensation around motherhood has been turned down a smidge.

And this is when we look back at those massively formative times and think; “Oh! They were so sweet! So good!” 

Because we were really living. We were in it. It may have sucked at times but we persevered, and we were so blasted open by love. 

Hard times have a way of shaping us; forming us into something new and we actually really love that on the other side. We love to feel our strength. We love to grow and expand. We love a good challenge. We need them to keep life interesting.

We say we want all the money, ease and power, but really that would lead us into a pretty boring existence. 

A huge issue in our collective is the lack of initiatory experiences. We’ve got no built in grist, no whetting stones upon which to sharpen our character….except birth and motherhood. These are some pretty wild initiations built right in to the existence of the human race…if we choose to see them that way. 

It feels as though I am through my initial initiation into motherhood. Me, having chose to double down, with two babies born 14 months apart. 

It was not an easy time. 

But it was a real time. 

A raw time. 

An achingly beautiful time. 

I have found myself in the unfamiliar place lately of feeling… really good (knock on mothafucking wood). Good sleep. Energy levels coming back. Feeling really strong and fluid in my body. 

I am watching a part of me that wants to cling to the illness, the burn out, the story of “how hard it is” because it makes me feel closer to that blasting-open-intensity of becoming. 

I could so easily use the daily tasks of mothering, home keeping, running a business and serving clients, financial stress and uncertainty, cooking nourishing meals for my family, lingering smaller health stuff, to manufacture an intensity, but that’s actually not actually true. 

The true intensity of an initiation is one thing. That’s the fire of alchemy. The pressure required turn coal into diamonds. 

But manufactured intensity; that’s just avoidance of joy, avoidance of clarity, avoidance of slowing down and taking stock, avoidance of enjoying the fruits of your labor and the natural flow of the life and death cycles. 

Manufactured intensity is the static layer of life. It’s the noise that keeps you from the nourishing, calmer undercurrent of intentional living. 

It’s not actually true and you don’t need to live in it, but it does require a conscious choice not to.

Life in this day and age is always going to be busy, feel urgent, and keep you moving faster than the pace that’s true. But is that the reality you really want to give your power to? 

My deepest desire when it comes to my family and my girls is still to be present with them as much as possible. 

My desire is to get to know them deeply as they grow up into humans with gifts, skills, interests, and journeys of initiation of their own. 

As they grow and expand their worlds, I want to remember who they are and how much joy, connection, nourishment, and beauty they bring to my life just by being exactly as and who they are. 

I don’t want to collapse into the busyness of the everyday life and take for granted the role of mother and give up the intentional creation of my motherhood experience. 

I am seeing how it’s going to take a little more intention for me to stay conscious here as well as a little more energy to make sure I have the space and time with my girls to tend to and nurture the relationship I would like to have with them. 

This is a huge reason why I am holding VILLAGE | A Family Embodiment Retreat. I am creating and holding it because I can feel that it is actually what I desire and need most. 

I can feel that I need the space and intentionality that something like the container of a retreat provides. 

Our lives get so busy and it’s just hard to put down all the things that pull at our attention in a way that really allows us to be together. We could do it at home. 

Hopefully we do make intentional time to be together, to connect, and hear each other’s hearts, hopes, and dreams, but there is something about removing all other obstacles to this (work, cooking, cleaning, organizing, planning, logistics) for multiple days that feels so deeply needed and nourishing to me I feel tears well up and my heart filling.

Holding a retreat, of course, is not the same as attending one, but when I feel this level of tender desire, I know it is mine to create because it needs to be created. 

My family needs to create this, to bring our VILLAGE to others who are feeling this call so that we can all get that deep connection and alignment with each other that we are craving.

Attending something like this will come in direct conflict with a lot of perceived static layer concerns. “I don’t have the time!” “We can’t afford it!” “Not this year, maybe next year!” 

Trust me, holding VILLAGE comes right against my logical mind (the money! the time! the vulnerability and possibility of rejection!) and comfortable ideas of who I am.

These can be compelling and maybe they are actually true for you, but my invitation, if you feel called to this retreat, is to really sit with the investment that something like VILLAGE would be in the deeper undercurrent of connection within your family. 

Money can be worked out.

Time isn’t as rigid it as it may seem.

Be willing to drop below the noisy layer of the daily tasks, worries, and routines and ask: Is this for me and for us? Am I ready to choose something that pulses a few layers deeper in my heart even if it isn’t easy to say yes to? 

If you are called, enrollment for VILLAGE closes at the end of August. Send me a message. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

Hello loves,

This is very special and near and dear to my heart email because I’m releasing a podcast I recorded with my husband during the celebration of our 10 year wedding anniversary!

We told the story of our relationship (highlights and lowlights) as well as answered the audience questions I asked for a couple weeks ago.

You can listen to it, or you’re also welcome to watch the video of us right here. (it’s part 2)

We got into all of the taboos: money, sex, and betrayal. Oh la la!

I trust that our story will serve you on on your journey in some way.

Most of all, I hope you feel seen and that you can take a little deeper breath knowing that no one has the perfect relationship because it doesn’t exist. Part of being in long term committed partnership is weathering a whole lot of storms together.

Ultimately, what I am taking away from this process for myself is that relationships are constantly evolving and transforming and as long as you are willing to stay connected through the process, you’ll both continually grow and transform as well.

The only constant is change, after all.

The questions we answered in this episode:

* “What was your practice of coming into your powerful embodiment of truth and holding that pole in your relationship? There is a spot where my damsel or inner brat comes in and wants the other to bring this in first/without me having to hold it myself. There’s a collapse in conviction, out of fear.”

* “How to hold the feminine and have her lead in a family? Just learning how to hold myself in this with my husband?”

* “Did you always trust your husband fully or did you get through a process? I’m finding it difficult to let go of projections from my parents/past relationships?”

* “How do you manage a sex life with little/s around?”

* “How do you guys navigate finances as a family? Particularly disagreements on how money should be spent?”

* “How did you create the financial stability to have the life you live?”

* “So curious what you mean exactly when you say orienting to feminine nourishment? Tell me more!”

I would love to hear what landed for you or what you’re taking away after you give it a listen or watch.

This question I answered on my instagram here and here. And Sean and I also talked about it in the first class we taught on Divine Union you can listen to here.

* “Do you see your husband as the “leader” or the “head” of your family?

Sean and I are so honored and excited to be holding a family embodiment retreat September 27-30th at Homestake Lodge in Butte, MT. Registration closes for the retreat at the end of August. We have 3 spaces left as of now. If you feel called to this work and being held by Sean and I and the VILLAGE we are creating, please reach out to schedule a connection call.

You can get all the details and information you need about it here.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

Hello love,

I’ve been talking a lot about family embodiment, intentional parenting and partnership, divine union on a practical level, orienting to feminine nourishment as a family, and the right relationship between the Masculine and Feminine over on my instagram stories today.

I've put a call out to my community to ask questions about these topics via this link (it’s totally anonymous if that makes it easier) and Sean (my husband) and I are going to answer the questions on a podcast episode here on Matriarch.

So, I thought I would share our first Divine Union discussion we held a few weeks as a podcast as a part 1, so that’s what this is!

I hope you enjoy it and I’m totally open to questions, comments, discussion as we prepare to record the part 2 of Q+A.

VILLAGE | A family embodiment retreat, enrollment ends at the end of August.

If you are feeling called to come drop in with your family, surrounded by nature, centering distraction free connection and deep nourishment. Intentional creation, together.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

This piece has been percolating for a long time.

I’ve been in active, conscious, non extractive participation with my creative process long enough that I know better than to rush something that is percolating and gestating.

But I’ve been watching this one take form.

When something wants to be created through me it starts to circle me. I’ll be shown other pieces of writing, conversations with friends, posts on social media etc that inspire and awaken the thing in my own experience. 

One thing that spurred to me to get to work on this piece was I saw a very well known influencer and teacher in the world of sexual health post pictures of her emaciated looking body saying she feels amazing at 10% body fat. 

“Is this what people think is sexy?” I thought to myself. 

Women need at least 13% body fat to bleed and need closer to 20% to be fertile. 

This complete disregard for the truths of female biological health is just so tired and old. Women are meant to be juicy. 

That doesn’t meant you can’t be very healthfully slim. 

But it does mean eating enough for a grown ass woman, eating properly raised animal products, and having enough muscle mass to be able to painlessly get around in the world. 

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Amber Magnolia Hill’s most recent substack, ‘Children v society’s views on their mother’s bodies’ struck this thing that I know deep down in my bones that our bodies, no matter their fat percentage are glorious and the perfect haven for the people who love us.

I also had a conversation with Dr. Suuzie Hazen where we spoke about the Chinese medicine concept that each time a woman gives birth she gives away most of her life force and therefore, she is eventually made anew postpartum. 

There is a new physical density that comes with motherhood. There is a coming into the body that just isn’t there before you have children.

It doesn’t mean that you are necessarily bigger but there is a presence, a thickening and rooting that’s there post giving birth and nurturing a child that wasn’t there before. 

On a shallow level a lot of women think about their less perky breasts or wider hips post birth and think of this coming into their bodies more as a bad thing, when really it’s just a maturation of the body.

A maturation as perfectly natural (and as awkward and uncomfortable sometimes) as going through puberty. 

Another ping related to this topic: I was at a mother-centric retreat with my friend and incredible yoga teacher, Jessica Cartwright, and I’m remembering a short conversation about mothers’ bodies we had as well. 

We were both admiring the beauty of a body that has been used for its purpose. 

This is generally thought of as a bad, demeaning, and shameful thing too; to be “used up.” 

However, I believe there is something deeply magnetic about a mother’s body. A body that has served a deep, primal and spiritual purpose.

On a biological level our bodies are made to reproduce. A woman’s body is made to create, carry, birth, and nurture her children. 

This doesn’t have to be enjoyable every single step of the way, but it should be deeply fulfilling. 

I believe that our collective beliefs about what constitutes beauty, “health”, sex appeal and its value, and the ways we place virtue on youngness only, as a society make the transition from maiden to mother much more of a struggle than it needs to be.

There is also this idea that men prefer young women and that once a woman has had children she is somehow not sexy. My experience has been quite the opposite. My husband far prefers my mother’s body as far as I can tell.

There is this idea that men primally want to procreate with multiple women, and I just don’t think this is necessarily true.

Men in committed monogamous relationships not only have more sex than single men, but also live longer and experience more joy in their lives. They are ultimately more satisfied with their lives on the whole and the legacy they’re leaving behind.

Men love to have something outside of themselves to serve. They think mothers are hella sexy and mothers are hella sexy. And all this BS about men wanting only young women is something you simply don’t have to experience or choose to play in to if you want to have a committed and deep partnership with a man.

These are caricatures of men and it’s insulting to perpetuate the stereotype of the “womanizer” man because men deserve better. We all deserve better.

Men are also just trying to find a way to feel loved and belong, just like most women. We all need to grow up, parent ourselves, and then we can all start building a life that our awake adult selves are proud of.

However, it is not secret that the collective doesn’t exactly value the work of mothering. [read this article I wrote in this]

We love the prospect and romance of pregnancy. We love a young beautiful woman getting pregnant for the first time.

But once that fresh faced young woman has had a child and gets pregnant again and again and has little inconvenient, messy, loud humans in tow, she becomes uncouth. If that pregnant woman is older than 35, a “geriatric” pregnancy, that’s even worse.

Once that woman has children that won’t sit still or quiet down, or her unruly body doesn’t acquiesce to tight jeans and crop tops or form fitting dresses and high heels, we deem her frumpy or plain and write her off as unwelcome or inconsequential.

Just another basic tired ass mom with a messy bun and sweat pants.

Nothing to see here.

In fact, side long glances and tight lipped fake smiles that say “get your s**t together,” are all she gets. 

If you do happen to be a woman who “bounced right back” after having kids, or you are one of those mothers who manages to look incredibly elegant at school drop off and running errands, I imagine (because this is not me) that you still feel the profound sense of transformation that’s happened within you. 

And when people don’t see or act as if your entire world has shattered and been remade it’s got to make you feel a little lost and empty inside. 

To not have a world that reflects back to us mamas the profundity of our internal experience is a recipe for feeling alone, isolated, and incredibly tender. 

This can then turn into rage, depression, apathy, bitterness, and anxiety. 

Humans need reflection and witnessing in the process of transformation.

We need to have our own internal experience acknowledged and mirrored or else we feel adrift, which in turn makes us feel scared and go into survival mode, and puts our mind into an uncreative state. 

My work is really about bringing women and mothers back into a creation orientation.

I want mothers to see themselves as the creators of their lives and families. This requires them to go through that epic transformation from maiden to mother in a way that leaves them in deep approval of their own transformational process.

That includes being in approval of the body and its changes.

I see so many women that are deeply spiritual, smart, talented, creative, and capable letting the shape or size of their bodies somehow determine their self worth. 

Or believing that because of their size they aren’t deserving of pleasure, feeling safe in their body, feeling sexy in their body, or feeling like they are not beautiful. 

This is insane.

The idea that there is ONE kind of beauty or one type of cheek bones, lips, eye shape, body shape that is the most beautiful and all the others are inferior is not your belief. 

This is a belief that has been programmed into you. 

Ask yourself: Do you, in your own self, actually believe that wrinkles are not beautiful? 

I’ve been asking myself this question with ideas of beauty I notice myself holding. And when I go really deep into the Truth of my being, I’m realizing that I actually don’t believe these standards. 

Collectively there is a belief about what is most beautiful, yes, and the collective ideal of beauty has changed significantly through the years.

But what do you think is beautiful? 

What do you find intriguing, mesmerizing, magnetic really, deep down? 

I see when I ask myself this it’s the uniqueness in people I find most alluring. 

As I’ve uncovered these programmed beliefs about what beauty is in myself I’ve been more able to access that which is truly my own experience of beauty, and it is everywhere. 

I used to see humans through the lens of collective programming. I was harsh, critical, and unforgiving when it came to appearances. Mostly on myself, but with others too. 

I find the harsher we judge others the harsher we judge ourselves. The less we judge ourselves, the less we judge others. 

But now I look at humans around me and mostly I see fascinating beauty. I am blown away by the gorgeousness of human beings. 

The intricacies and uniqueness of each face, like different sunsets or landscapes, impossible to say which was more or less beautiful, but all beautiful in their own way. 

I look at bodies and I might see a body that is fighting against gravity, or a body that looks like it is lacking energy or vitality, but it’s never ugly or disgusting.

It’s a marvelous, miraculous, breathtaking body. 

For me; it’s the bodies of mothers that are especially awe-inspiring and beautiful. 

The presence of them. 

The softness. 

The skin that’s been stretched or wrinkled by laughs and tears. 

The muscles that have held a whole world for countless hours. 

The eyes that are tired but filled with purpose.

The souls that would do anything to make the lives of their children safer and more enriching. 

Embodiment is the word that really comes to mind here. The more embodied, the more light that emanates from the very skin of a person. 

That’s what I see when I really ask myself what I believe is beautiful. 

Humanity that’s brought more and more of the light into its body is beautiful.

I want you to look in the mirror, into your own eyes, see what you have been through. The awful things you’ve done in the name of belonging and getting love. The courageous being you are to be on the Earth at this time. The ways that you’ve loved and lost. The lessons you’ve learned.

I want you to look into your eyes and see yourself for the holder of the light that you are. 

Now tell me you’re not beautiful, as you are. 

I hope that you cannot, because I know that I could not. 

Chasing some external ideal of beauty will never be it. Because you are you. You are on your path. It is yours and no one else’s.

The way you look is for you; it is through yourself that you will be awakened into the light of love. 

You are perfect. You have always been perfect. Whole and beautifully human.

I see the obsession with changing and enhancing our looks as a diverging away from this perfection as wholeness I am transmitting here. 

We cannot accept only certain aspects of ourselves and be integrated. 

We cannot really step into the next level of human evolution and be cutting into our sacred flesh to soothe our egos. 

It feels so entirely obvious to me that collective beauty standards around remaining forever youthful are not rooted in a world where the mature feminine is valued. 

Beauty standards that tell us our bodies and faces should not change from the time we are prepubescent teens are not based in a reality where women can love themselves and mature women are revered. 

If we want a world where mothers and older women are valued, we need to start standing solidly in the camp of loving ourselves as we are. 

This does not mean not taking impeccable care our bodies. 

I spend so much time feeding myself, moving my body in ways that are respectful to her, caring for my skin, my hair, my muscles, my movement, my eyes and on and on.

That’s one of the things that is so obviously backward to me.

We are encouraged to slice our tissue, prick our faces, wax our vulvas, all things that hurt in the moment and have serious negative long term consequences as a forms of “self care.” 

We are encouraged to paint toxins on our nail beds, slather chemicals all over our bodies, dye our hair, all of these which have known negative health effects, as a form of “having some me time!” 

But when we want to take the time to make our own scalp spray or spend time each night doing face yoga we are crunchy and hippie. 

Ok. I am calling out this collective programming and saying: No. No, I want no part of it. 

Will I never wear make up or paint my nails? When I do I’ll do it for me. No one else. I will be it for the joy of adornment and the enhancement of my own unique expression of self.

I will never cut my body’s tissue, prick myself, or harm myself unless it is for life saving reasons. 

Wake up to who and what is creating your negative self image. 

It’s not you. It’s never been you who believes you are ugly or unworthy. 

If you have the privilege of being around a toddler in your daily life you know this.

Toddlers love themselves and their bodies so innocently and genuinely.

It’s the most disarmingly delightful thing to see a toddler take joy in their new clothes or hair do or their completely chocolate covered face.

They don’t give a f**k and they love themselves deeply. They are masters at self expression without anything held back. 

We all were like that and we can be that way again (just with a little more myelination and impulse control, hopefully).

Express yourself; dress yourself in loud and crazy colors, wear red lipstick every day, buy sequined shoes, whatever makes you feel more you. 

Take impeccable care of yourself; feed yourself the highest quality food you can get, touch yourself lovingly, massage your skin with oils, look into your eyes and see your effervescent sparkling beautiful essence staring back at you.

You are a miraculous body. 

You are a wonderfully messy human.

You are beautiful. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

This last week I’ve been on what I am calling my “body love vacation.”

I took 6 nights to simply be with my body and listen.

The amount my body has changed and been through in the last 5 years is really mind blowing.

Two pregnancies and fully natural physiological births, co-sleeping with babies and toddlers, four years and counting of breastfeeding, gaining 80lbs over the course of this, completely redefining my identity on multiple levels, 1.5 years of severe insomnia, the stress of covid throughout this.. there is more, these are just the big ones.

And I can honestly say that these have been some of the best years of my life too.

I have never felt more well used, alive, and like it’s all for something bigger than and beyond me.

When I heard Lindsay Courcelle being interviewed on Amber Magnolia Hill’s podcast Medicine Stories a few years ago, I could feel the resonance in what they were discussing and I knew that part of my lingering health issues were related to my fascia and what it was holding on to.

When Lindsay shared that she offers week long intensives where people travel to see her for this myofascial release technique body work I felt the very familiar zing of “this is for me.”

So end of last week, I got on a plane to Vermont, leaving my girls for the longest I’ve ever left them, 6 nights, to be with my body and be held and worked on by Lindsay for 2-3 hours a day.

I also put everything else I have been holding down to simply see what comes up. No work. No house care. No cooking if I didn’t want to. No distractions or external obstacles to simply being with my body as the intention.

My work with Lindsay is still landing and digesting. I will say that I have never had such a clear experience of the “issues being held in the tissues.”

There was no doubt that an experience with an ex boyfriend I hadn’t thought about in years was stored in my diaphragm.

There was no doubt that there was sexual shame and repression from another experience I’d had being held in the left side of my pelvic bowl.

The work I did with Lindsay gave me a more visceral experience of this truth than I’ve ever had before.

I know releasing what I released this week is huge. Some things my body had been stuck holding for over 10 years, moved and changed. I feel I even moved emotions and patterns that may not have even been mine but were generational in nature.

I had a session a few weeks ago with Alee Reina and one of the nuggets that has stayed with me since is: “Receive, Don’t Carry.”

My system is big.

It’s wide.

And I can carry a lot.

I have always been able to.

My generational pattern and inheritance is to just take it on. Carry it. Hold it. Just because I can and I’m doing it on the level of the unconscious.

(this, carrying because we can, is also a manifesting generator thing in human design.)

My system is big for a reason. I was created this way because I have a lot to do in this lifetime.

I have a lot of energy I am designed to bring into manifested reality.

I am like lighting being grounded in the earth. (Come to the Magic of Minerals class on Tuesday for more on how every human being is actually light).

But if I’m not aware and conscious, I will take on everything. Just hold it. Because I can.

What I know for sure from my personal and professional experience with healing the physical body is that no one else can live inside you, but you.

The obsession with finding someone who is the “authority” on whatever subject and following them just because you are desperate for some outcome is not how we really heal.

It will never be how we heal.

Those parts that are so desperate to figure out your health issues are not the parts that bring healing.

As radical as this is to say: healing isn’t something we figure out.

I know, that is a big one.

In the way I work with the body; you cannot protocol your way out of your ongoing body issues.

You cannot yoga, meditate, restrict, or supplement, your way out of a belief about yourself or an unconscious pattern you are running.

It’s unconscious. It takes examination, a deep listening, and a willingness to follow threads and paths with no definable end in sight.

It takes a willingness to follow the nudges, the pings and the zings (because that’s the way the unconscious communicates).

Something I only recently have seen about myself is how subtly addicted I am to the next “healing” thing.

Maybe the new health tech health gadget will be my savior!

Maybe this supplement will finally be the silver bullet!

Maybe this class or book or knowledge will be IT!

And, I also love my insatiable desire to get to the bottom and my willingness to keep learning and always try new things. This is also part of my human design. I’m a 1/3 profile. The seeker of truth and knowledge.

I’ll always follow the thing I’m interested in to the very bottom.

But when this seeking is done with this idea that IT is the thing! Then it’s just a desperate part of me looking outside myself for saving. When this quality of seeker I have is used by my mind seeking a solution to something I am off on a ride that will never bring anything truly nourishing or healing.

There is nothing outside of us that can save us. We are only ones who can save us.

Constantly looking outside and thinking we need to find the answer is actually inherently stressful and activating.

It is the opposite thing most of us need to heal.

There is so much focus on fixing and eliminating symptoms. And I’m not saying that all our symptoms are fun or that we shouldn’t want to be comfortable.

But most of us want bigger lives, yes?

Most of us want to grow and stretch and expand.

If we are constantly thinking that if we get rid our symptoms that’s the solution AND THEN we can get bigger, I’m here to tell you, the thing you think is your hindrance to getting bigger is actually the way you get bigger.

It’s asking you to become.

You don’t become by avoiding. You become by going through, not through force. Not through “figuring it out.”

You become by surrendering to the guidance of the body.

If your body is consistently telling you things through symptoms, maybe it’s time to listen to those symptoms instead of trying to figure out how to get them to go away.

Do you feel the difference there?

One of the experiences in my healing journey I get victimized by is how the more I tune into my body; the more kindly I treat it, the more sensitive I and my body seems to be.

For example, as a kid I ate all sorts of junk food and fast food, no issues. Now; I eat junk food once in awhile and I am laid out. I feel awful.

There could be a piece of metabolic health here (again, see Magic of Minerals class) but I think it’s also just that I am way more IN MY BODY now.

I am attuned to myself in a much deeper way. Which means I feel the negative at a much deeper level as well as the positive. I have far more access to pleasure now too.

I have been changing the way I’ve been thinking in that I’m saying to myself: the body will never be free of symptoms, it shouldn’t be. Symptoms are how my body communicates to me.

They’re just all communications. They are not something to fear.

It takes time to be with the body. It takes slowing down. Getting curious.

It takes coming at your symptoms with an openness and reception versus anxiety and worry or attack and a desire to destroy.

I believe people with unique and pertinent-to-our-issues gifts, skills, and experience can be wonderful guides on our healing paths.

I know, personally, I need holding to access the deeper the spots. It’s just something about my system.

Those who hold me are sometimes people who know me in my personal life really well and sometimes they are long lost soul friends with a very specific gift.

The healing experience always requires that I am willing to open.

It requires I am willing to surrender to the cues of my body.

It always requires me to follow the destination-less path that only shows me a tiny bit of it at a time.

Here is to building a new relationship with our bodies.

One of curiosity towards our symptoms.

One of trust in the fact that we are the only ones actually living in our bodies and therefore the ultimate authority over them.

One that honors our bio-individuality and the differences between you and I.

A relationship where we can walk with ourselves through our health challenges instead of exacerbating them with a desperation to solve, figure out, and fix.

You don’t have to go on a 6 day body love vacation. I know that ain’t in the cards for everyone.

You just have to stop; slow down, feel your body and get curious about your aches, bloats, sensations, emotions. Let yourself be open to them.

You may need to move while you do this, sometimes being still creates a lot of agitation for people. Take a short silent walk before and after work and feel your body moving.

Roll around on the ground and stretch while brining your awareness inwards.

I’m a big fan of bowspring classes with Amanda Cepeda for coming into your body and listening and becoming aware in an open way.

I heard the other day to just take 10 breaths in between each time you switch tasks.

Just start to bring more awareness to your body and its communications. See what happens to your symptoms.

I find the more acute symptoms dissolve or release as I turn toward them with love and attention.

The ongoing chronic symptoms are more mysterious. I’m in all honesty still figuring out how to listen to my body when it’s repeatedly not feeling the way or doing the things I think it should.

However, I would bet my life that listening to them more deeply and with more openness is always the best course of action.

Questions to sit with, write about below in the comments or send me a message about:

* What are the symptoms my body has over and over again?

* If I came at these symptoms with curiosity and openness, what is my body trying to tell me?

* What does my body need to heal?

There are two offerings I have right now that are related to this subject of listening and being with:

* Magic of Minerals | A 2 hour free class exploring minerals as root cause and solution to our health concerns. Tuesday May 21, 8-10am Pacific. If you can’t come live, register and you’ll be able to watch the recording for a week after. *I know this doesn’t sound like it’s about being with your body, but you’ll see, it is on the same thread here. Register here.

* HomeBody practice. First Saturday of the month 9-10:30am Pacific. June 1st. If you don’t take the time to be with your body, feel confused about what that would look or feel like, or just want a container to experience a deep connection to the body and its wisdom, HomeBody is an embodiment practice for you. Get more info and register for the June 1st practice here.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

The programming to be a good person runs deep.

Our parents were programmed and they programmed us with things like “Be polite!” “Be nice!” “Include everyone!” “Don’t stare!” 

In my childhood and even still in a lot of ways, it’s, “Don’t be so opinionated, big, inconvenient, needy.” “Don’t take up so much space.” “Don’t be so assured of yourself.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “How can you be so sure?”

Maybe your programming was slightly different, but the thread that all these programs come back to is: don’t be you. 

Don’t show all sides of yourself. Be more predictable. Less wild and unruly. Be nicer. Be good. 

What does it mean to be good when you’re a child? 

Basically, it’s to have less needs and be more manageable. To be happy and go with the flow. To listen to authority without too much push back, because (and those of us who are parents know this) it’s way easier to parent if your kids listen to you. 

So we all have some variation of programming around good equals only acceptable parts of myself, not all parts of myself.

It seems very obvious to me that the ‘light and love’ teachings and veneers I see in a lot of spiritual teachers and coaches is just this same only good is ok programming dressed up with feathers and palo santo. 

If you are actually going to undergo or hold people through true alchemical transformation you are going to need to get dirty and go to dark places. 

You are going to have to open up all those basement rooms of yourself you’ve locked away and pretended you don’t have in the interest of being good.

You are going to have to face your shadow and your unconscious.

You are going to have to admit you take stinky s***s, get rashes, and have body odor.

You’re going to have to feel the ways you’ve been wounded and how that wounding has hurt other people, maybe even people you love.

You’re going to have to come to terms with the parts of yourself that don’t fit into a spiritual love and light groove. You’re going to have to come to terms with the parts of yourself that have ulterior motives and want to look cool, be wanted, and belong at all costs.

We are no longer living in the age of the guru.

We’ve seen venerated spiritual teacher after venerated spiritual teacher be brought down to the level of imperfect humanity.

Sex scandals. 

Cult accusations. 

Priests and altar boys.

Spending money on private jets, hookers, and drugs.

Using their power and influence for their own personal gain.

Ultimately, we’ve seen how even the most respected good people icons of our collective society have done some very seedy and sleazy things.

Ghandi slept naked with his teenage niece. Martin Luther King cheated on his wife regularly and was known to be a womanizer. These are just examples.

To me, I just see all this as a reflection of how far we’ve gone off track when it comes to placing one human being at a higher level than another. It points to how much distortion there is in collective spiritual communities, in general.

It points to the fact that when we exalt our “goodness” at the expense of our “badness” we inevitably create toxicity. When our darkness gets squeezed and locked away, it putrefies.

This is the age of The Mother. The age of interdependent wisdom. The age of the mycelium network. The age where we see that from the dark comes life itself. That light and dark aren’t so different and that one begets the other.

This is the age of integration and brining light into the darkness and seeing that they are two sides of the same coin.

This is the age of understanding that the soil under our feet is made of death and decay. And it is the only thing from which new life springs. 

New age spirituality and the idea that we need to go through some sort of ascension process is one giant bypass over the Truth which is every single one of us is holy and every single one of us is human. 

Doing our spirutal practices just right will not get us to some destination where we will then sit around and eat berries and live in peace and happiness the rest of our days.

We aren’t going to do plant medicine enough times to finally see the meaning of all life. That meaning is here, right inside us. You don’t need anything special to see it.

Practices are meant to keep energy moving. To keep our attention focused. My practices do not make me better than you. Your practices do not make you better than me.  There are no superior practices. There is no getting in any of it.

I have done everything from yoga to plant medicine to living for years with no running water or electricity, but my greatest practice is cooking dinner for my family. It is by far the most challenging thing to stay open and present with. 

That’s what I’m interested in now. A spiritual practice that brings me deeper into communion with my everyday, boring and very human life.

Sure; doing ayahuasca in the jungle may give you some deep insights into where your programming and grief comes from, but if you can’t go back to your most monotonous, frustrating life moments and apply those insights, plant medicine is nothing more than another way you’re searching for the jewel that lives within you, outside of yourself. 

We don’t need all the extra. We don’t need the crystals, plant medicine, feathers, spirit guides, or whatever. They can be fun and help us to focus our energy, but my spirituality doesn’t require any of it. In fact, all of it just becomes a distraction from the Truth that is so simple.

To find the jewel inside yourself, you must be willing to traverse the wilds within.

You must be willing to feel the pain you would do everything to avoid.

You must be willing to go to the places where you hate yourself and love yourself there. No substances. No distractions. 

That is where real Feminine power lies. Not in trying to change anything about yourself but in being with yourself in the dark corners.

You could bring me anything about yourself, any of your deepest darkest most private thoughts, any awful, unforgivable thing you’ve done and I will hold your gaze, steady, and with so much love. Because I know those spots in myself and I have stayed with them, when no one else would. 

A teacher guide cannot bring you to places they have not gone themselves. 

So choose your teachers wisely if you wish to actually transform and awaken. 

If you’d rather stay asleep and in the programming that good is better than bad, light is better than dark, then please by all means continue to search outside of yourself for the answers and be a good person. 

I will stand by my statement that the world does not need more good people, it needs more real people. 

Real people have all sorts of diametrically opposed and subtle differences within themselves. They cannot be sectioned off into neat categories.

Real people are multifaceted; mean and nice, beautiful and ugly, loud and quiet. 

Poet David Whyte says, “Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts, most especially the ability, despite our many griefs and losses, to courageously inhabit the past, the present and the future all at once.”

All my writing and teachings here revolve around calling forth the mature feminine frequency that lives in us all, the Matriarch, and a real person attuned to that mature feminine frequency will be able to hold multiple contexts and versions of herself all at once. 

That is what the world needs; maturity, authenticity, and realness not a facade of light.

What comes up for you reading this?

Where are you focused on being a good person where you need to be more real?

Would love to hear in the comments. 🧡

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

I wrote the lower part of this quickly on my instagram stories yesterday during the times I had to wait for the dentist to come in and check me at my appointment.

I like to share how real-life my expression is. I am deeply committed to cultivating my creativity daily. I journal pages and pages. I record voice notes to myself in the car. I write plenty of things that never get published. I am always reading at least three books at a time (mostly fiction these days).

I sing. I color and paint with my kids. I dance. I walk. I spend a lot of time in nature. I do a lot of creative things for no reason other than I enjoy them and they feel good.

I think of creativity as an internal fire that needs to be stoked and tended. It needs to have kindling, small sticks, and sometimes a big log that burns slow for a long time, put on it.

You don’t have to force yourself to write every day, but you do have to be tending to the fire in some way. Blowing some air on it. Observing it and feeling into what it needs.

I am pretty much willing to write and express most days and always being in process and practice with my path, I have a good burning fire of creation that I am always tending to.

Most of what actually gets shared publicly comes from a big flare of that fire and something just comes through like a lightening bolt and needs to be written down and shared at that moment. A lot of times if I wait and try to come back to it later; it won’t land.

If you don’t have these lightening bolt moments I think this means your creative fire may need some tending. You can’t have a roaring fire without some small burning twigs initially.

I also have pieces I work on for months that need to simmer and bake.

So I am always writing on my phone in between appointments, squeezing it in while my kids are entertained for a few minutes, or asking my husband if he can be with the girls while I pop up to my computer to get something out.

I never have glamorous or perfect conditions to write. Ever.

So this is just an intro to what I wrote while at the dentist yesterday that just felt like it needed to be put out and shared immediately. I have spent a few moments with it to flesh it out a bit more.

I want to talk about the victimized mother. She is the mother who feels resentful of her partner or other people because she feels they don’t support her or help her. 

She is the mother who constantly feels bitter, spiteful, annoyed, and dissatisfied with her partner’s ability to show up for fatherhood or partnership. 

The Victimized Mother and the Martyr Mother are actually the same.

You cannot be victimized if there is a choice. And there is always a choice.

[I wrote about this in this piece: The Victimized Mother and the Well Used Mother]

Believe me, one of my core stories is that I have to do everything, that other people won’t do it so I’ll just do it.

And this story took me to full on burn out in early motherhood. 

I know the story of “I have to do it all..” very, very well. 

I am also well aware that we live in a time when mothers are expected to be super human.

But that’s actually the place where we have a choice and a responsibility to choose another way.

If we want to change the way mothers are seen in the collective we have to hold the pole in our very personal lives of the full and fed mother.

We, in our very personal lives, have to be committed to not perpetuating the story that women have to do the lion’s share of the parenting, have impressive careers, be super hot, take great care of themselves, be perfect attuned gentle-parenting mothers and and and and….

We get to create our own experience of Motherhood. 

You can create whatever motherhood experience you would like to have.

For me to have the experience of being a full, fed, and revered mother, which is the experience I want to have, I have to take responsibility when it comes to knowing what I need, asking for help with I need, being clear on my priorities, and valuing myself.

It requires me to back the story that I am a creator and that I have influence over how my reality arranges around me.

Being able to create our own experience of motherhood requires us to value our role as Mother enough to not play into collective narratives about what a mother should be or the collective narrative that mothers are undervalued.

Mothers are not undervalued in my home. 

In my home the mother is revered and respected and treasured for the shepherd of life and the future she is. 

I have invited my husband into his role as co-parent and papa since day one. 

I have played the long game and thought about how each time I soothed the baby for him or took over to keep him more “comfortable” in regards to parenting, I would be taking his experience of becoming a father away from him.

So I chose to do that only minimally. 

I let him struggle with the babies. I trusted his journey into fatherhood.. and he has shown up with flying colors. 

So many men don’t even get a chance to ripen into a good father because of the martyr mother and the programming that men can’t or shouldn’t be with babies. 

So before you’re quick to assume your man can’t handle it.. ask yourself if it’s really that you can’t handle his discomfort and struggle? 

Ask yourself if you’d rather have the fake power of the martyr, the power that resentment makes you feel like you have, instead of allowing yourself to take up the space you take up and being responsible to figure out and ask for what you need that would make mothering less depleting.

This goes with parenting and it goes with telling our men the Truth. 

We are the oracles.

Say the thing you Know that he needs to hear with a lot of love. This is what real partnership looks like. Invite him into his power.

This is what real Divine Union means, trusting each other and trusting your path. 

You don’t get a King if you’re not willing to hold what a Queen holds.

And we don’t get a society that values mothers until mothers value their fullness as mothers. 

One last thing: do not emasculate your men.

Assuming they cannot handle the Truth you see or the portal of fatherhood or your feelings or tough love is emasculation.

Assuming they only care about physical looks and sex or that they are incapable of controlling themselves around their physical urges is also emasculation.

Men are just as multifaceted as women. They want so much more. They are so much more.

Invite your men into their power.

Hold your attention on his power with everything you’ve got and see what happens in your relationship.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

For me every day is earth day.

She is my greatest comfort and my greatest inspiration.

We are all cells within the being that is Gaia.

This may sound woo woo or esoteric but to me it actually feels like the real-est thing I’ve ever known. 

She is our Mother.

We are her children.

The very matter of our being made of the same star stuff that She is. 

Her beauty is our beauty. 

Her waters our waters. 

I am a human living in a collective time where we do not respect our Mother.

This is evident everywhere from the way we treat the Earth to the way we treat the female body; really all bodies, to the way we collectively exalt logic and reason over feeling and intuition. 

The Earth speaks in feeling and sensation, just the same as our precious soft bodies. 

When I tune into the Earth and Nature itself I feel two things as it pertains to humans:

1. We think we are so separate and we matter so much, but to the Earth we are just a small piece of such a vastly larger whole. We believe our minds have it all figured out and that we need to “save” Her. But to Her, this is like a teenager telling his parents he knows how to take care of a family or run a household. There is no wisdom in it. No maturity and reverence in the idea that we small humans know what is best for a billions of years old being. 

2. There is grief in the Earth when it comes to humans. I feel it when I tune into the trees around my home or the soil under my feet. She says; how could you believe there is not enough for you? Like a mother whose child has lost their way a bit, She feels a deep sadness in our disconnection. But she also trusts us. As a mother needs to trusts her children to find their way. 

I don’t have a message of doom and gloom for our Earth.

I don’t have any call to action.

I just feel a heart opening and womb landing gratitude for our Mother today and all days and the being-ness she provides. 

The unconditional love we all are so desperate for is available to us, right here, right now. 

Go find a piece of grass or ground and let yourself remember your original Mother is here.

She never left you and she will never leave you.

If you would like, please listen to this guided 11 minute guided meditation from my land to you on this Earth Day.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

*I shared this on Instagram a couple days ago and am resharing here because it’s gotten a lot of action and I’m announcing a free class I’m teaching tomorrow.

I got a question from a follower yesterday, “why are we still fat when we eat well and move our bodies?”

This question has been the source of so much inspiration for me since yesterday because it’s actually a question I have been asking myself for almost two years now.

I have been deep in the practice of trusting and loving my body. I wrote this piece when the bulk of the weight gain started.

I have been asking myself: if I trust my body and I love my body and I know I am providing my body with what she needs on a regular basis, why would my body put on weight and keep the weight on?

I have had many tender moments, lots of confusion, lots of looping thoughts about what if I’m all wrong and I need to just commit to a diet and exercise routine.

I have thought to myself many times that I need to DO something about this!

But then I come back to what to I know to be true. I come back to the truth that my body loves me and I love her and there is actually no way that what she undergoing isn’t the most intelligent thing for her to be doing with what she has and where she is.

Our bodies are of the unconscious realm. They are the results of our maternal lineage; the matter and the Ma. The weight that I have gained and continue to hold is not just a result of my choices in the last couple years, it’s the result of the choices I made in my 20’s and the choices my mother made in her 20s, and the choices her mother made in her 20’s.

Our bodies are our karma.

The way our body looks and functions now is the result of so much more than just what we eat and how much we move.

Most women who are overweight actually under eat which leads to a down regulated metabolism. So much of my weight gain has been the result of a constricted relationship with food for most of life and constantly trying to make myself smaller.

Our bodies are wise. Women who are fat are not less worthy of love and do not have something wrong with them. Our bodies are neutral. They are doing their best and always have been.

Being overweight is just a sign that our energy utilization systems are not functioning well.

In my experience, it is a result of our bodies giving us signs to slow down and listen and us choosing to not listen again and again, until our body believes it needs to put on a whole lot of extra cushion to pad sweet selves from the harshness we subject ourselves to through crash diets, brutal exercise regimes, starvation/binge cycles, substances, harsh inner critics, and living lives that do not respect our feminine physiology.

The solution isn’t going to be simple and it’s going to require a lot of self love, trust, and true mental and physical rest along with beautiful, joy filled movement.

It’s going to require changing how we view and enjoy food, movement, life and our bodies themselves.

Come to class this Friday, April 19th, 11-1pm PDT (if you can’t come I will send out a replay that will be available until the following Friday) where I will be unpacking this further and sharing more of my story.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

Current beauty trends strike me as some of the best examples of the collective’s loss of the ability to think from a place of commonsense. 

Someone who is willing to inject their body with “fillers” or poisonous substances on a regular basis or slice into their precious tissue for any reason that isn’t life threatening, strikes me as someone who either cannot listen to their body or is willingly acting against what their body is telling them in the interest of an external ideal. 

I do not believe in telling full grown adults what they can or cannot do with their bodies. I obviously have a judgement here, but I would never shame someone for their choices. I don’t necessarily judge the individuals but I definitely judge the trend. I don’t think I should have a say into what you chose to do with your body, but I do want to point out some very basic facts about these beauty trends that have become so popular. 

Botox 

Botox is a drug made from a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. It's the same toxin that causes a life-threatening type of food poisoning called botulism. It has been explored for its use a biological weapon. 

Botox paralyzes facial muscles so that they do not move, which means less “wrinkles.” The tissue stops moving as much and doesn’t create creases. However, tissue is designed to move. So much of what I, as well as any human who works closely and with reverence for human tissue, teach about is how important it is for there to be flow in the lymph and the fascia. From a physical perspective of tissue health to an emotional perspective of energy moving through.  I don’t know about you, but voluntarily paralyzing anything on my body innately does not feel like a good idea. 

Fillers 

Fillers are made from synthetic hyaluronic acid. Yes, your body makes hyaluronic acid, but the form that is used in fillers is synthetic. Your body treats this synthetic hylauronic acid as if it is a foreign object.

That’s why you see all those horror stories with lips the size of footballs. This is the body mounting an immune response to isolate and remove the foreign object. 

Your body sensing a foreign object within it will impede lymph flow, proper blood circulation, and creates fascial restrictions, all of which mean less flow, more stagnancy and less nutrients getting to the tissue. All of this will, paradoxically, cause tissue to age faster as well.

Plastic Surgery 

It totally depends on the type of plastic surgery but going under the knife is always going to create scar tissue, fascial restrictions, and issues with lymph flow.

Your body will identify anything put inside it as a foreign object (because it is) and this has a lot of possible side effects. It defintely creates a huge energy loss in your body because your body is trying to fight something and heal from something unnecessarily and it could continue this fight for years or even decades.

Plastic surgery can be a source of disconnection from yourself and the deep wisdom of your Soma eg felt sense. It could be truly life threatening infections or breast implant illness.

Your tissues literally need to move to keep energy, blood, nutrients, etc circulating. Our tissues hold memory, deep wisdom, and millennia of information in each and every cell. To think that we could cut into our tissue or inject it with toxins and make ourselves better is preposterous.

The fascia of our chest is connected to the fascia in our feet. The fasica in our lips is connected to the fascia in our lower back. It is the living matrix of our being and when you slice into it in one place that shock will have repercussions in other places. Not to mention the scar tissue in the location of the injection or cut.

The idea that we can get away with botox, fillers, and plastic surgery and not experience serious repercussions to our health is the same energy that has us extracting resources from Mother Earth without any reverence or care for what it took for them to get there or their finite reserves. 

This is the same energy that has women afraid to birth their babies without a man in a white coat present. 

This is the same energy that says it’s more important how we look than how we feel.

This is the same energy that says be a good little girl, look pretty, be nice and one day you’ll be rewarded. 

This is the same energy that says you’re worthless when you’ve lived your life and are at your most wise.

One more thing, men are not asking women to do this. It’s, collectively, other women. All the men I’ve asked about this subject have said they prefer the real thing to anything fake, from boobs to asses to lips. We all want to be with men who love us for more than they way we look.

To assume men only care about physical appearance is one dimensional. To assume all men want is sex with hot young chicks is similar to objectifying a woman. It comes from the same place. Humans are so much more than that. They want and need so much more than that.

Let’s be honest about what this is. 

If you love your botox or fillers or plastic surgery, great. We need to start thinking of it like smoking. It might be glamours and cool initially, but in the long run it’s very, very bad for you.

Beauty is something that radiates out from within. We all know this, deep down. 

No matter how much “work” you get done, you’re going to age. You’re going to be old and wrinkly and frail, if you’re lucky. 

Trying to stop aging is in vain, my love. 

Get in touch with your inner radiance.

Spend your money, your time, the appointments you book on cultivating your internal lifeforce and energy, and watch your internal value and beauty grow. 

Come to HomeBody this Saturday [4.13] from 1-2:30pm PDT and listen to what your tissues are telling you. Come recieve a transmission of tissue and body reverence. $33 for a drop in. Get tickets and more info here.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe