ReMothering with Clara Belize Wisner

The Earth longs to feel your feet in her soil.

She wants to feel your heart beating against her ground.

She wants to hold you while you cry, like a mother rocking her baby.

She wants you to swim naked in her rivers and lakes,

to float in her oceans.

The Earth wants you to remember where you came from,

How the thing that makes your heart beat is the same thing that makes her flowers bloom.

Nature is always a balm for our weary souls.

A slow walk through the forest can reset us.

Sitting and taking in the ocean waves or bird song can remind us who we are.

Mama Earth is a nervous system regulator on all levels.

Because she is our Mother.

I’ve heard people say that if we continue our incessant ravaging of our natural resources that humans may die, but the Earth will be fine.

And on one level that is true.

But when I drop in and commune with mama Earth I can feel the way she longs for her children to come home to her.

To visit Her with their hearts.

To watch Her sunsets and sunrises.

To tell Her of their travels and thoughts.

If humans were to go extinct it would be like a mother losing her child.

Earth would be grief stricken and heart broken.

She would heal.

Trees would grow.

Air would circulate.

Life will always find a way.

But humans are not simply animal, they are divine as well, and we share this our Earth.

Humans are creators, as is mama Earth. We are meant to be together, co-creating.

Humanity is still young. We have been taking from our mother for a long time. An infant, child and even adolescent take from their mother

It’s an appropriate developmental process, until it’s not true to take anymore.

We are at a turning point where humanity needs to grow up and start returning some of the love we’ve been given so freely.

This doesn’t mean to clamp down and get scarce and afraid. Or to run around like chickens with our heads cut off screaming about the sky falling.

Our earth is abundant by nature. She can and will provide for us.

The healing we need starts with reconnecting with Her.

Get back to the natural world. Get your feet on the dirt. Point your face to the sky. Talk to the trees. Let the grasses sing you to sleep. Plant a seed a watch it grow. Pay attention.

The earth loves you.

Let yourself feel her.

Come join us and go deep into your body through a self massage and guided shamanic journey into your body.

Get tickets here: https://buy.stripe.com/14k8wF6j8cui9pu4gp

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One of the things I have viscerally learned since becoming a mother is that my body requires my own touch. 

We hear a lot about how mothers can get “touched out.” And as a mother who has breastfed for over 3 years straight and tandem breastfed for a lot of that time, I understand how much touch can sometimes feel like another thing constantly pulling on you. 

However, touching my own body with love and attention has actually been the antidote. 

Gentle and attuned self massage and bodily touch has been the exact balm to my edginess and over stimulation brought on by mothering two small children.

When we touch our own skin lovingly we connect to our own tissues, bodily fluids, and regulate our nervous system. 

The key here is that when we slow down and connect with our bodies through touch we invite movement. 

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Movement of blood. 

Movement of lymph. 

Movement of emotions. 

Movement of nutrients. 

Movement of water. 

Humans are made up of seventy percent water.

We are, quite literally, a body of water. 

Our inner world is forever flowing and undulating. 

Our organs are supposed to gracefully slide and glide in tandem with our breath and each other. 

Our lungs taking in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide. Expanding and contracting. Lengthening and shortening. 

Our hearts pumping surges of blood that move throughout the body. Compression and extension. 

Fluid moving through the cell walls into the cell and back out again. Vitamins and minerals and cellular wastes moving to their appropriate places in or out of the cell. 

Our physical forms are not static. They are in constant and very dynamic movement. 

When we touch ourselves lovingly and start what I call a ‘physical touch conversation’ with our own tissue we are encouraging and freeing up space for movement at a cellular level. 

Just rubbing our hands together creating heat and then pressing one warmed palm to one of our own cheeks can start to encourage blood to move to the surface of the palm and cheek. Try it and notice the sense of aliveness and electricity in both hand and cheek afterwards compared to the opposite cheek that wasn’t touched. 

This is one of the cheapest, simplest, and most profound practices we can do for our well-being. From physical pain to digestive issues to emotional aches, touching our bodies and hydrating our tissues helps enormously. 

Our bodies crave and require our tending and love. All of our pain, emotional and physical, is our selves and our body crying out for our attention. 

Touching my own body with a willingness to go slow, be non-judgmental and with a care-fullness has allowed me to digest and integrate huge changes in my life with grace and compassion for myself. 

The physical and emotional are not separate. If we have big emotional waves moving through our lives we can be sure that our physical body needs support and space to digest those big emotional waves. 

Our lives happen in and to our bodies. 

Our bodies happen because of our lives. 

Our bodies and our lives are inextricably linked. 

We cannot have one without the other. 

As I went through the emotionally and physically uproarious process of becoming a mother, not once but twice in two years, and all the deaths and rebirths that come alongside motherhood, I started a practice of just laying in my bed doing nothing but breathing and letting my body speak to me about what it needed. 

The frequency that came to hold me through this process is what I now call HOME BODY.

Eventually this frequency shared with me a process of self massage, shamanic journeying and sound that became deep medicine for my body and allows me to digest and listen to myself in a way that bypasses mental ideas and connects me directly to my body and it’s needs. 

HOME BODY is a balm for exhausted and tight bodies. 

It is a remedy for overworked and overstimulated minds. 

It is a practice that allows me and you to drop in, connect, and allow movement where there has been stagnation.

It is heart and soul medicine served through the body.

I am offering a group HOME BODY session this coming Sunday, April 16th at 9-11am PST. $44. If you feel called but have questions send me a message. This is very gentle and soothing practice and ceremony. 

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I know in the marrow of my bones that the relationship between mother and child is sacred.And when I say sacred I mean: holy. divine. mystical.Our human minds cannot grasp the depth at which mother needs child and child needs mother.There is not one without the other.If you are a mother. You know. You can feel it. You have felt the totally unexplainable width and breadth of connection to and with your child.It is the most intimate bond that exists.When you start to recognize that something so commonplace and everyday as motherhood is actually wholly sacred you start to tap into the spot that I aspire to continually transmit with my work.The spot where we humans and our messy bodies are connected to divinity.Each and every human on this planet was carried by a Woman.

Each and every human on this planet was held in the pelvis of a woman.

Each and every human on this planet was birthed into this dimension by a Woman.This is not insensitive. It is a fact. It is the Truth.It is the way the human animal evolved. Human babies require love, touch, attention and nourishment to thrive.New mothers require close proximity to their baby to feel regulated. They require nourishment and support. They require love, touch, and attention. It’s just Truth. This is our humanity.We are divine beings having a human experience. This is part of the human experience.The divine part of us feels the true honor and privilege of creating and shepherding new human life.It all happens through the female body.The Mother feels both: the human and divine. She feels the generations backward and the generations forward that her very body is connected to and has influence over. She take responsibility for that.My teacher Perri Chase recently said, “There has never been a more important time for women to be responsible and embodied.”Being a Woman and a Mother who knows that she holds the power of creation within her very organs and tissues is my greatest legacy.Life is happening through me.What will I choose to create with my being-ness?

CURRENT OFFERINGS

HOME BODY - April 16th. 9-11am PST. A Group Online Ceremony Celebrating Your Body As Your Home. Get Tickets here—>

FED | A Group Journey into Feminine Nourishment. 6 months. Get on the waitlist for the next cohort.

1:1 Alchemical Journeys - Come get exquisite, loving and firm holding through the process of birthing your deepest self.

Nutrition Deep Dive - 3 sessions with me addressing your symptoms, nourishment, and well-being intentions.

**If you feel the pull to work with me but you’re not sure where to start message me and we’ll get on a call together to create the perfect entry into the work of the Mother, Matriarch, and Nourishment.

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It’s been said many times,many ways: how you do one thing; is how you do all things. How you live, is how you’ll die. As above, so below.. and on and on.

This principle and energetic law I’m pointing to is one of those truths that is paradoxical and seemingly too simple for the ego to fully grasp.

But it’s got the clunk and resonance of truth you can feel in your body and if you’re reading this I bet you can feel it. 

The truth is; it always starts with us. All of it. 

Can’t be present with your kids? How present are you with yourself? 

Feeling disconnected from your partner? How connected are you to yourself? 

Continuing to make choices that don’t serve your own nourishment? Have you stayed with yourself long enough to really know what it is you’re craving and needing? 

I am painfully learning how true this lesson is right now on my motherhood journey.

Learning how much my own willingness to attune to myself dictates how attuned I am to my girls and my family.

I am constantly exasperated by how basal the work of coming back to my own needs again and again is.

And yet, it's this chop-wood-carry-water practice that makes the biggest transformative difference for the true well being of my whole family.

But this isn’t just cliché “make sure to put your oxygen mask on first..” discussion. 

This is the longer game. The lifetimes-long game. The generational game.

The quantum legacy game of how much are you willing to take responsibility for?Getting a massage every month isn’t self-attunement if you just rush to and from the appointment and only really relax during it.

Eating organic food isn’t actually the thing for you if you spin out into a meltdown every time you don’t have any organic options or you can’t digest your food because of your nervous system dysregulation.

When you’re the mother of small children, being obsessed with getting enough alone time and being consequently victimized if you don’t, is not necessarily the most nutritive thing for you or a good use of your energy.

However, having spacious, family-centered time with no tasks to be completed or housework can be very generative and may be exactly what you actually need, but can you get your mind to sit down and stop listing the to-dos so that you can actually be present? 

This is where we start to connect the dots.

Where we start to really see and feel how much our own nervous system’s state influences our ability to actually show up in the way we want to for our family.

We see how much it truly matters to take care of ourselves before anything else.

If you feel something in this that calls to you reach out to me. I have space for 2 more one on one clients and this is the exact work I’ll guide you into. Message me to set up a call with me.

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In our current culture, there is a deeply underdeveloped understanding of what love and service are. 

Being of service is truly the deepest form of self love. 

It is saying, I have something to give the world with my being. I have something to offer. Who I am and the way I am, matters and is medicine for the world. 

But we have confused love and service with martyrdom.

We think to be of service we must put ourselves last. 

We think to love someone we must give to them until we are empty.

But these are the immature (and by immature I simply mean less developed) versions of love and service. 

The more developed, mature truth is that we all come from the same Source.

And when we all come from the same Source, loving me is loving you. 

I could not possibly be of service to you if I am not full myself. 

And yet, from an underdeveloped place we also assume that being “full” has some sort of rigid parameters.

For example, to be full I must have had 9 hours of sleep, a massage and time to meditate every day. If I am full I must not feel dysregulated, frazzled or frustrated. If I am resourced I must always be calm, collected, nice. 

Whereas, from a more mature place we can see that being full is simply about how we relate to our humanity. Humans don’t always get 9 hours of sleep. Humans get dysregulated. Humans get frustrated. Humans are not always nice. 

How I am with myself in the very human moments of increased pressure; determines my ability to be full. 

How much can I be within what is actually happening in my life? 

Can I stay with myself in these moments of dysregulation and touch into what I actually need, right here, in this exact moment? 

Can I meet my hungry, exhausted, activated selves with compassion and curiosity, asking them what they need right now? 

When my day doesn’t go as planned and I’m hungry and hurt, do I stop to take a breath, eat something and turn toward the hurt and see what it’s asking for or do I just push on ignoring my needs? 

And the beautiful nuanced truth of what happens in these moments of self-attunement is that we are practicing service and love towards ourselves.

This is what resources us. This is what fills us up. Our own attention, in the present moment. 

Life doesn’t need to be a certain way for us to be full. 

We simply choose to have a relationship with life built on service and love, starting first, with ourselves. 

Motherhood is the perfect practice ground to start to develop and mature these concepts because we are constantly being asked to give of ourselves and because becoming a mother infuses us with so much true love. 

If love is service and service is love, the mother knows them both well. 

Part of the threshold that motherhood invites us to cross is the growing up and maturing of these concepts of love and service. 

The mature feminine, the mother, understands that serving and loving her family begins with this mature service and love towards herself.

I have found this to be so true. The more I am attuned to myself and my needs, the more attuned I am to my children’s needs, because we come from the same Source. 

The more I’m in true service to my family, the better taken care of I am. 

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

Two nights ago I went to bed too late.

I have a pattern I’m well aware of that if I don’t get to sleep before 10:30pm I will not be able to fall asleep easily and my sleep will be more disrupted the whole night.

There is a very physical reason for this. Around 11pm our bodies have a cortisol (stress hormone) spike because of the energy our liver needs to preform its very important work while we sleep.

If we are not in a deep sleep by 11pm this cortisol spike can make it harder for our physical body to calm down and relax. This can even give us a ‘second wind’ where we maybe felt tired earlier, but now we don’t.

On a physical level my ongoing dance with insomnia is very much triggered by cortisol dysregulation making my sleep very, very sensitive to cortisol spikes and dips.

So all this being said; it’s very important for me to get to bed before 10:30pm and on this night my girls had trouble falling asleep and they didn’t get to sleep until 10pm and I was left with the decision to go right to bed or have some me-time and I chose the me-time.

Although, and this is a big one, if my me-time leaves me ultimately more depleted, is it really what I need?

So when I finally got in bed and turned the lights out at 11:15pm, I could feel the surge of stress hormones in my body and the racing thoughts start to spin. I could feel the swirling, airy, headiness and metallic taste of insomnia and a night of disrupted sleep about to take over.

After over a year of working with my severe insomnia I have developed a relationship to it. On my good insomniac nights I can simply accept the sleeplessness. I can watch my breath and my mind. I can stroke my body lovingly and give myself comfort. I can get up and drink tea, have snacks, watch a show. I can do facial and ear massages that help my body relax. I can take some Chinese herbs or homeopathics or tinctures or CBD. And on the good nights one these things will work a little and I’ll get some rest and make peace with having to have a slow and rest-filled next day.

On my bad insomniac nights I am in a torture chamber of my own mind’s creation. The what ifs and pits of hopelessness swallow me up and I feel like I’m on some terrible hallucinogenic trip gone very bad.

Most the time, on my insomniac nights, I oscillate between these two and the thing that sticks with me the most is this feeling of hyper-vigilance that I can’t shake. Like something is going to slap me any second but I can’t see which direction it will come from. I drift off into a light sleep only to jerk awake by some gut punch of a thought or feeling.

So on this night as the panic started to rise up along with the voice, “You KNEW you wouldn’t be able to sleep if you stayed up so late! Why do you do this to yourself?” I did a little face and ear massage and started breathing in and out through my nose rhythmically.

I started to turn towards myself and that tight hyper-vigilance sensation in my body. Not to change it or maneuver it, but to really ask it what it needs. To make space around it.

Throughout this past year plus of being an insomniac I have come at fixing it from many, many angles.

I have come at it from the angle of the physical body. Balancing blood sugar, hormones, minerals, organ function and nutrient deficiencies. I have done countless hours of body work, acupuncture, osteopathic adjustments, nuerofeedback, biofeedback, chiropractic, supplements, herbs, literally you name it, I’ve most likely tried it.

I’ve also come at it from the angle of the energetic, mental, emotional and spiritual. I’ve done many hours of therapy, somatic work, energy work, EFT, and spiritual work.

And my experience is every single session I had, thing I took, expert I talked to gave me a little piece to my own insomnia puzzle. Each one was a little breadcrumb along the path to healing.

At a more recent somatic therapy session I had with a clairvoyant guide, she said that before our session a young part of me came to her and told her that, “Clara cannot sleep right now. It isn’t safe for her.”

I had encountered this part of myself briefly before in past sessions and in my own personal practices. A little, young part of me that believes sleep isn’t safe. Rest isn’t safe. A part that feels very, very hyper-vigilant.

And so as I was working with the insomnia on this particular night, I started to call out to her and invite her forward to talk with me. And, to my surprise, I actually saw her, immediately and very clearly in my mind’s eye. She was about 3 or 4 years old. Brown hair messily chopped into a square around her face and chubby kid fingers.

She looked up at me through her hair and said, “Are you with me?”

I immediately felt this welling up of tears in my eyes and sobs in my chest and throat. The damn broke and I started crying.

“Yes,” I said through tears, “I am with you.”

“Can we rest now?” she said.

More tears and sobs leaving my physical body along with a deep yawn.

“Yes, we can rest now,” I said. “I won’t leave you again. Ever. I’m right here. You can rest.”

She looks up at me with a not-quite-trusting, inquisitive look, like she is deciding what to do and whether or not she can let her guard down. I can feel how much she wants to. She starts to soften.

I say, “It isn’t your job to keep me safe. It’s mine. It’s your job to laugh and play and imagine. I can see that you’ve been feeling like there is no one there to keep you safe, but I see you now and I will keep you safe. You can rest and play and imagine.”

I see her eyes light up. She smiles. More sobbing leaving my physical body.

“You’re not alone. I’m right here. I’m right here. You’re not alone….” I say, out loud in the dark bedroom, through sobs.

She walks over and curls right up into the crook of my arm, just the same way my toddler, Alma, does and goes…. blissfully… asleep.

And so do, I, deeply.

The next morning I remember the experience so vividly and clearly. I can still see her little eyes looking up at me through her messy hair. I can feel the way she just wants to know she isn’t alone. And it cracks me open again. I feel the same fierce and bottomless love for her that I feel for my children. And I know I will protect her and stay with her. I know she is back at home within me.

The last couple days since this experience I have been so bone deep tired. And I welcome it.

I have been tired a lot the last year, no doubt. But it’s always that wired and tired feeling. The exhaustion of body paired with the on edge, frazzled mind. Feeling like my life is a game of whack-a-mole. Even though I’m completely worn out I have to keep myself poised for the next thing to whack down. Always ready. Always watching. I wasn’t really able to nap or rest fully.

But, yesterday, as I was putting my youngest Maya down for a nap, I passed out. Completely dead to the world. I have never been a napper and when I had my babies it seemed like it just got harder to nap, even though I needed it more.

The tiredness I experienced yesterday is the kind of wholesome tiredness I welcome with open arms right now. The sleepiness. The dozing off. The heavy eyes. This feels like a breath of fresh air to me after spending the last year so physically exhausted but unable to sleep.

I’ve slept like a rock through the night the last two nights, cuddled up next to the little girl Clara I met.

Are my dances with insomnia over? Probably not. I’m wiser than to think it’s any one thing that makes all the difference. Insomnia, unfortunately, is probably going to be something my body uses as a communication method for the rest of my life. Maybe not, but that’s my sense.

My severe insomnia of the last year was a lot of pieces needing my attention all coming to head. And every single measure I took and continue to take toward understanding it better brought me closer to this moment where I have found a little relief and healing.

However, the answer in my world is always, as my mentor Coly Vulipiani says, complete and radical self acceptance.

All these breadcrumbs of the last year brought me to this spot of having the nervous system grounding that allowed me to see, welcome and integrate this little Clara into myself. To welcome her home.

If I hadn’t done the work on my blood sugar, thyroid, liver, and hormones would I have been able to hold the massive wave of grief that over took me when she came to me a couple nights ago? I don’t know for sure.

If I hadn’t seen glimpses of her in other sessions would I have been able to see her so clearly? I don’t know for sure.

If I hadn’t done the work to be with my body in the midst of huge emotional waves in other areas of my life, would I have been able to hold her? I don’t know for sure.

If I wasn’t doing so much work to be a more gentle mother to my own toddlers would I have been able to mother my inner toddler so well? I don’t know for sure.

What I do know is that all of these pieces of my journey brought me to this exact moment and that this moment’s medicine for me was potent and will forever change me.

It has made me a more whole, more soft, more loving and more integrated human. It has allowed me to accept myself in a new way that I hadn’t before. To see myself as sweeter and more supple. To feel more tenderness towards myself and others.

I also know that our ailments and health issues are deeper than they may seem. Our well being is so much more than just our physical body. It’s the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

There is a lot of talk in my community around the energetics of trauma and how it affects the physical body and I believe most of it. I think most, if not all, of our health issues have an inception point in the energetic realms.

However, when some distortion has come deep enough into our field to start affecting the physical body, like our ability to sleep, then we have to start there, with the physical body. We have to do the things we need to do to heal in third dimensional reality. But, as we do that work, we need to keep participating and work with and on all levels or we will just get another physical symptom or continue to have the same physical symptoms recurring again and again.

True healing requires a willingness to truly listen and take full responsibility for our multidimensional wellness.

Our bodies are the holders of our lives. They are our home. They are not broken. There are no mistakes. Each and every issue, tightness, constriction, ailment is a message, a sign, a breadcrumb to follow.

Our bodies are divine communication devices. The physical manifestation of our divine essence. This is the piece that we forget. Our body, the tissues, the flesh, the bones, the blood, are sacred.

Whatever our body is telling us, we must listen. Get curious. Bow down and be humbled at the altar of our bodies’ primordial wisdom.

I want to make an invitation to my upcoming online two hour ceremony where we will be honoring our body as our home. It will be a beautiful shamanic experience where we will tap into our holy body and see what it has to tell us.

This event is this Saturday, 3.18.23, at 9am-11am PST. We will start with a short check in and teaching, then we will go into a guided practice involving self massage and lymph work, meditation, and sound healing, and then we will have a short digestion period. The energetic exchange is $44.

You must come to this event live. There will be a recording for the people who attended live to revisit for 2 weeks after the event.

Sign up for the event here. If you have any questions feel free to message me.

Other ways to work with me right now:

* The next cohort of FED has not been scheduled but if you’re feeling called to join the next 6 month deep dive into feminine nourishment you can sign up for the waitlist here.

* I have space for two more 1:1 long term clients right now. This is a big energetic and financial commitment. If you feel called to this alchemical work with me as your guide and doula, message me and we’ll set up a call.

* I am offering nutrition deep dives as well. This is a 90 minute session with me going deep into your symptoms and health history where afterwards I create a personalized plan for you to follow to meet your individual well-being intentions. You can book one of those 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

I’ve recently been touching a deep grief filled stillness within me that is related to motherhood.

I have been incredibly fortunate in my life. Growing up I never doubted I could be whatever I wanted to be. 

I remember in 4th grade we got an assignment to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote that I wanted to be the first female president.

I remember my parents chuckling a bit when they saw it, but I also remember distinctly feeling like they were proud of me. Like I had done something right. 

“My little girl is going to BE something!” 

My mother was the main breadwinner in our household. She has her doctorate. She was a full professor of computer science during the internet and computer explosion of the 90’s and early 2000’s. (She just retired last year). A more prestigious, accolade-worth profession I can’t really imagine. 

My mother, a woman in a man’s field, and I, a little girl who thought she could be president, are the traditional feminist’s wet dream. 

Growing up I had a picture of who I would be: a woman in a black pantsuit and stilettos, cellphone in one hand and luxury brand purse in the other, walking down the street of some big American city with the world in the palm of her hand. 

No where in that picture was there kids or even necessarily a partner. 

A woman who could drink, work, and f**k as much as any man, and look damn good doing it. 

That was what feminism made possible for us, right? 

Growing up it was my grades, my future profession, my ability to “contribute to society” that were always centered. 

The possibility of becoming a mother was a side plate. 

Becoming a mother was something that may or may not happen. It wasn’t the main course. 

In my teens and early 20’s becoming a mother wasn’t something I was remotely interested in. 

I wanted to make my mark on the world. I wanted to make something of myself. I wanted to make money. Have lots of fancy stuff. I wanted a life full of adventure. I wanted people to respect me. 

At this point of my life, my perspective was: becoming a mother would actually be a hindrance to the things I wanted for myself.

And this is what we are told by society; motherhood robs you, it wrecks your body, it’s hard, exhausting, and painful. 

They say things like: “You’ll never sleep again!” “You’ll never travel again!” “Your breasts will be flat and saggy!” “The stretch marks!” “Your dreams and money all down the tubes!” 

And for those of us raised by feminist mothers and a feminist culture, we had no other foundation or experience to lean upon. 

We believed that motherhood, if we did it at all, was just a little thing we’ll do on the side of the big thing we’ll do in our careers.

At worst we downplayed, rejected, loathed, and shunned the idea of motherhood and the softer feminine aspects of ourselves all together. 

At best we feel disconnected from our innate maternal instincts and were confused about how to integrate our softer parts; leaving them to shrivel.

Some of us may feel ashamed by our desire to stay home with our babies. Or we feel so victimized by the financial burdens of our modern lives we tell ourselves it’s not possible to stay home with our babies. We feel torn between our desire for a career and our desire to be a mother. And because of the way our culture operates, we cannot really do both as well as we believe should.

Not having the space or guidance to enter knowingly and gracefully into the invitation of transformation motherhood offers.

If we do have babies we are supposed to act as if it didn’t happen. Our bodies should bounce right back, we should go back to work after 6 (or less) weeks. If we don’t revive our pre-baby selves quickly and painlessly we are told it’s postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety or pathologized in one way or another.

Since becoming a mother, I have wrestled back and forth with my desire to be with my kids and my desire to be “productive.”

In a lot of ways, relative to the main stream, I have followed the deeper truth in me when it comes to my babies. 

I birthed both completely outside of the system and naturally. Neither of my babies have ever seen a pediatrician or had any unnecessary poking and probing.

I believed in my body’s ability and innate knowing through the process. That experience gave me so much confidence in myself and my ability, which is what the portal of birth is about, no matter how you actually ended up giving birth. 

Birth shows you what you are; a portal between worlds. 

I do ecological and extended breastfeeding. I co-slept initially. I trust my Knowing when they are sick or needing something extra. We eat a nutrient dense and whole foods based diet. I use herbal remedies on myself and them. I lead my family’s health care from my womb and my instincts first and foremost.

And yet, there is such a deep, deep programming in me around motherhood not being the central thing that I have put myself in a position where I have had an internal battle raging inside of me. 

This battle is around my productivity and being a mother. 

Productivity says: clean the house, organize the house, post on social media, respond to texts, make sure you’re making money, ‘contribute’ to the family, build your business, look hot, workout, meditate, make dinner, … and on and on.

Being a mother says, be here now, look into your daughter’s eyes, delight in her presence, include her, lay in bed with her, snuggle with her, play with her, keep her life consistent and predictable. 

Productivity says losing sleep at night is painful. Being a mother says, this is a phase, take a nap with them, be still and feel their bodies pressed up against yours. 

Productivity says you cannot not work. Being a mother says, these babies need you, not someone else. It is such a short season, you can figure it out. 

This battle has been raging in me since getting pregnant. 

I read recently that pregnancy is actually a very protective physiological state. We always hear about how stressful pregnancy is on the body, but progesterone is the most dominant hormone during pregnancy. Energetically progesterone increases a woman’s ability to assert boundaries, connect with something bigger than herself, prioritize her own needs, and makes her more resilient to stress.

Pregnancy and birth are natural states for a woman. 

Pregnancy, birth and motherhood are not inherently exhaustive states for women. It’s the expectation of how much else we should be doing that is exhausting. 

And this is where the grief starts to bubble up. 

The grief for myself, my mother, and all the mothers who have felt that the job of motherhood is not innately valuable in itself. 

There is something about becoming a mother that makes you see your own mother so differently. Since I became a mother my own mother has shared things with me; like maybe she would have loved to stay home with us; maybe she would have had more babies if she didn’t have to work so much.

I believe there is a soft and tender spot of longing like this in a lot of women going untended or ignored because of this belief that being a mother isn’t enough or isn’t important. That being a mother and doing the basic tasks of mothering isn’t contributing to the family, when, in fact, it is what makes a family. 

Imagine, if we saw and heard the stories of natural and empowering births from a young age? 

Imagine, if we saw women who valued their own role as mother as much as our culture values the role of a tech CEO? 

Imagine, if we shared the feminine arts of nourishment through generations and women of all ages felt their power and influence in the health and well being of the next generation? 

I wonder if we would feel that motherhood was so exhausting then? 

I feel so much grief for the ways I’ve not allowed the sweetness of being with my daughters to penetrate me because I was lost in thought or frustration about something else I thought I should be doing. 

But, I am done with this internal battle. 

I will be a mother that puts mothering back at the center for this short period of my life when that is where it should be. 

Motherhood is not something that happens to us. It is not something to be hidden and tucked away to the side. Motherhood is the main event of our lives. It happens for us. 

It can be the big initiatory event that brings us from maidenhood into adulthood. If we are willing to let it take us all the way down. So that we can rebuild ourselves anew; as the matriarch of our own family. Matriarchs shape our culture. 

It can be the thing that reminds women of the power that lives within them and how to allow the healing nourishment of the still and soft mundanity that is holding a family. 

Motherhood is the purpose we’ve all been searching for. 

It is the thing we were born to do.

Mothers who center motherhood. Families who center the family. This is what the world needs.

Under our stiff, rigid, and productive exteriors we are longing for the permission to melt into the role of mother and matriarch.

I will be that permission.

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I can definitively say 2022 was the hardest year of my life. 

2022 was our first full year as a family four (two under two for a littles less than half of it). There really isn’t any way to explain how challenging this is. If you’ve done it, you know. If you haven’t, you don’t know, although if you have any children, you can imagine. 

Starting in January 2022 I began having extreme and unrelenting insomnia, my nerve inflammation and pain increased, and my HPA axis dysregulation (aka thyroid and adrenal burnout) reached a whole new level, making me sweaty, exhausted, prone to breaking out in rashes, gain a lot of weight, very intolerant to any stress (think toxins, emotional stress, exercise, etc) whatsoever, and lots of other very uncomfortable, painful and inconvenient symptoms. 

All of these health issues are inextricably linked, of course, and come from the same root cause of my body simply not being able to handle the stress it was under anymore.

I recently learned that I had what they call a “calcium shell” which is when your minerals are so out of whack that your body starts storing huge amounts of calcium in the tissues, slowly turning you into bone. 

These are the type of health issues that are not easily treated by allopathic medicine, this calcium shell thing is not something that most holistic practitioners even know exists or how to diagnose. A medical doctor wouldn’t know what you were talking about.

I have not pursued any conventional treatments as I have no interest in getting on the hamster wheel of medication, specialists, and there-is-nothing-wrong-with-you’s, it’s-all-in-your-head’s.

I have chosen to truly go all the way to the very bottom of the root cause, look at all aspects of being (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) and work up from there.

In 2022 I also entirely dismantled my business as it stood and I fully reoriented to an entirely new paradigm of truly serving energy. 

No gimmicks. No unethical sales tactics. No discounts. No fake urgency. No ‘ideal client avatars.’ No ‘niche markets.’  No using my business to serve my ego. 

To be completely honest, I am still unwinding the threads of egoic grippiness around my business and the way I have used it to prop up my ego, but I am committed to this new foundation of having a Magic Led Business [my teacher’s Perri Chase’s work].

I am a representative of the energetic of Nourishment. That is what I serve. When you sign up for an experience with me, follow me on social media, or work with me in any capacity, this is what you are feeling and being transformed by, not me, Clara.

Nourishment is what I am transmitting in my work with students and in the world, always. It is the energy that permeates everything I create. 

This year was hard, but it was also full of lessons.

It was rich with wisdom.

It kept me grateful and close to the ground.

I learned how to truly surrender into letting people help me and to truly receive that help. And I am still deepening this lesson, as I am with all of these lessons, but I’ve come a long way. 

I learned how to do less. A lot less. 

I learned to truly rest. Not to crumple and fall on the floor in exhaustion after grinding tasks out. But to really let myself have the space I need simply because it’s true, even when I haven’t been remotely productive. 

I learned how to truly take life one minute, one hour, one day at a time. 

I learned about being present when my physical body is in searing pain and feels immoveable, exhausted beyond belief, and not preforming in any way shape or form that I expect it to. 

I learned to be grateful for my body even when it was unruly, messy, and unattractive. 

2022 was so beautiful. 

When I feel into the year the words that come to mind are: Family. Presence. Stillness. Rest. Wisdom. Power. 

My word for 2022 was HOLD. 

And it was truly all I could do to HOLD all of this. To just be with it. To just hold myself and my girls and my family while I was going through all of these huge unveilings and transitions. 

To HOLD myself through this health journey has given me invaluable embodied wisdom about how to serve my medicine of whole being nourishment in the face of extremely uncomfortable circumstances. 

I have not given my power away out of fear or desperation once throughout the whole process. I have stayed with and trusted the Truth and myself with every single decision. 

I have also worked with and sought out the experts that I trust and work with me as an equal. 

I am so proud of myself for how much I have held this year. 

I am so proud of me. 

And just this statement, “I am proud of myself,” shows how far this recovering self-punisher has come. I actually mean it and I feel it to my bone marrow. 

2022 was a year for the books, but let it be known that it is the year that I started to mother myself into who I am becoming.

For 2023 the word that came through is SLOW. 

And it’s so fitting, I’ve been holding. I’ve been learning to widen in place and hold more. To be still and present with what is. 

And now it’s time to move. Not quickly. Nothing fast. No huge expansion here, there will be a time for that, but not this year. 

2023 is about staying with every little piece, only moving as fast as I can hold it all. No bypassing. No rushing.

Feeling it all. Tasting every morsel. 

The SLOW life. 

The juicy life.

Like a slow back and forth of the hips; eyes closed, tongue wetting full lips, SLOW is real life sexy. 

SLOW is rare. SLOW is the speed of the body. SLOW is the speed of glaciers. 

SLOW is the medicine for me this year. I am here for it. 

One micro baby step at a time. 

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I thought I was built for speed.

I thought I was quick, smart, and good at everything that mattered.

My mind sharp.

My capability unrivaled.

My capacity huge.

I thought I needed to keep moving, keep doing, keep going, always.

Eyes on the furthest horizon.

This mindset and blind confidence will get you far in this world and you will be praised.

Marry this speediness and socially adept intelligence and you’ve got yourself a real winner.

I thought I was a winner.

Only, eventually, the race got boring and I got tired.

Eventually, a life run by ego will burn you up in one way or another.

And, in this lifetime for me at least, I am due for some repayment of karmic debut and True service is what is being asked of me.

It’s been a slow unwinding.

Letting the pieces of the facade of fastness fall when and only if they are truly ready to.

Because, the hardest part when you have a pattern of speeding through your life from one milestone to the next, is that you can’t speed through the unraveling of the pattern or else that would just be more of the pattern.

You have the let it fall off in whatever amount of time it takes.

The most recent layer sloughing it’s way off of my persona has come from a deeper embodied understanding of the phrase my teacher Perri Chase uses in many of her transmissions, “you can only go as fast as the slowest part of you.”

See, I did move fast, but the speed didn’t come from my body, it came from my mind.

I did move fast, but at the expense of the slower, younger, scared, hesitant, unsure and resistant parts of me.

My strong, confident parts were dragging my little, fearful parts along.

My headstrong, sassy inner teenager who thinks she has the big bad world figured out was dragging my wounded little girl along on her ride.

You can only drag something for so long before you get tired.

So tired.

I’ve realized that my inner teen has been the one parenting my little ones for a long while.

And teenagers are not good parents.

She’s basically like, “Sit down, shut up and get dragged along! No whining little twerps!”

So this last year, my wise adult self has been listening to these sacred, tired and slow parts.

I’ve been carefully watching, listening to, and caring for the parts of me that had been dragged along, stuffed down, dismissed and left alone.

I have been brought to a complete halt this last year.

My capability has been bare minimum.

My capacity very, very little beyond caring for myself and my family. I’m not saying caring for a family is a little thing, just that my capacity for anything beyond my household duties from a truly integrated place has been zero.

My word for 2022 was HOLD.

And that’s what I’ve been doing.

Holding myself, my Woman, as well as holding all of my little ones.

Holding my family.

Holding my frequency in the world and bringing my life into resonance with it through feeling my yes and my no and moving from that simple truth.

And what I’ve really integrated here is that nothing truly, really, sustainably moves or changes unless all parts are a yes.

Every single part of you needs to have a seat at the table and needs to be relatively on board with the way the ship is moving or else it’s not a true, fulfilling creation.

Sure, you can GO!

You can DO!

You can make a lot of shiny, pretty, dazzling things happen.

You can even make a ton of money and have a material life that 99% of the world might wish they had.

But, you won’t be happy.

You won’t be content.

You won’t be fulfilled.

You won’t feel whole.

And chances are you’ll end up feeling really burnt out at some point.

Because you made those things happen at the expense of other parts of yourself.

You punished, coerced, manipulated, strong armed and dismissed yourself to get the external goal.

And, at the end of day, self abandonment is the most painful thing.

We’re not afraid of other people leaving us.

We’re not afraid of not getting what we want.

We’re not afraid of looking stupid, silly, ugly, pitiful, etc, we’re afraid of what we’ll do to ourselves after those things happen.

We’re afraid of how much we’ll abandon ourselves.

When our inner teenagers, punishers, success chasers, external validation seekers, are dragging along our fearful, slow, resistant parts there is no wisdom leading, there is no unconditional love.

Self holding is the answer to all of it.

We mother ourselves into true transformation.

We love ourselves into who we are meant to become.

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 have been sitting with the word and energetic of integration.

The last three years for me have been hugely transformative. I wish I had a word with even more gravity to describe it, because transformative doesn’t really hit the spot.

Metamorphosed.

Revolutionized.

Completely and totally remade, may be more accurate.

I was pregnant twice and birthed, completely naturally and in my power, two babies.

I became a mother for the first time.

I became a mother of two.

I was in one the deepest feminine containers that exists with my teacher Perri Chase and fifteen other women for over two years exploring our individual medicine and what we came into this lifetime to serve.

There was a global pandemic.

These are just the highest level changes. I could list pages and pages of smaller but no less monumental changes in my life.

These changes are gifts.

Every single one.

It was three years of me learning to turn toward Truth [the resonance of Truth, not the mental idea of truth] and say, “I trust you. I will follow you. I am willing.”

It was three years of me taking off layer after layer of egoic identities to feel what was underneath.

This past few months there have been a lot of endings as well.

The container I was in with Perri Chase ended and we all graduated. I will continue to be engaged and present in her community but this particular container and iteration is over.

The yoga studio, Our Yoga, that held me through both pregnancies, postpartums and provided deeply needed community for me as a new mom in the middle of a pandemic closed their doors.

I signed away my doTERRA account. Meaning, I do not have any ties to the company of doTERRA anymore and do not collect commission or any money from it. I didn’t write much about this process or ending previously, but I’m sure a lot of you reading this knew or got to know me in that phase of my business and life. doTERRA is just no longer true for me, and it really is that simple. My gifts are being called to be used elsewhere.

My insomnia has largely dissipated.

My youngest, Maya, is about 1.5 years old and I can feel weaning coming in the next six months or so and even now, she nurses only about three times a day. This is a huge ending of my body being entwined and constantly connected to my baby’s body and the slow transition to my body being entirely mine again.

With all these endings hovering around the end of the calendar year I feel ripe and ready for the next level and the next phase.

This is where, before all this transformation, I would have rushed. I would have tried to bulldoze and run to the next level. I would have powered through to the next level.

But, what’s required for actually moving into the next level sustainably is a period of integration.

To do the work of transformation we have to take things apart.

We have to unpack.

We have to disidentify and separate.

To clean out the closet we have to pull all its contents onto the floor.

We have to go through everything and decide what we want to keep and what we want to give or throw away.

Then we need to put the things we want to keep back in the closet. Hopefully, in a more beautiful, organized, and accessible way.

This is integration; taking the time to intentionally put the pieces back together in a new and more true way.

Allowing yourself to come back together as a whole new being.

Then we need to take ourselves for a spin in the world.

How do we feel as this new being? How does this new being react to this or that type of situation? What does this being value?

We have to be willing to get back out there and get dirty.

Maybe the new organization of the closet doesn’t actually work that well and we have to reorganize a specific corner.

This is integration as well. It’s having patience with this process and approval for the mistakes we have to make as we go.

And so that’s where I am right now.

Allowing myself to be awkward and under-devloped in certain places that are new for me.

Allowing myself to feel raw and exposed in certain places and loving myself through it.

Part of this new integration of Clara is that I love myself in the all places I am and this changes my entire experience of life.

My wounded little one gets lots and lots of space and love, in all conditions.

I do not brush her away or dismiss her.

I listen to her, just like I would listen to my toddler Alma if she was crying out for me; down on one knee, direct eye contact and my full attention.

As I parent myself better, I find myself being a better parent.

Which really shows me how true it is that the way we become more attuned and compassionate humans isn’t really about what we do or don’t do, it’s about how we tend to the parts of us screaming for our own attention.

Integration is about how we take what we’ve learned through our lived experience and put it into practice in our lives and actually embody the lessons we’ve learned.

Integration is a piece so many people want to skip over, but you can’t skip it if you want your life to change.

It’s the final piece to how transformation actually solidifies into tangible and real change.

Ways to Work with Me:

* I have a few spaces for 1:1 Alchemical Journeys available. These are a one year minimum and a big energetic and financial investment in yourself and your transformation and integration. These are for people going through big changes (motherhood, death, divorce, spiritual awakening) in life and needing some guidance, teaching, and doula-ing into their next level.

* The next round of FED will be starting end of January 2023. This is a 6 month group container where we explore deep feminine nourishment together. This container brings in my gifts around nutrition, female physiology, hormone balance, minerals as well as exploring how to feed and nourish yourself emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

If you feel called to either of these please just reach out to me and we’ll get on a zoom to explore the details and make sure it’s a good fit.

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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