Slow-Living as a Way Home

My mom told me today it's going to be a hard winter. She sees it in the squirrels, chunky and frantic, cheeks full, like they know something we don't. And maybe they do. The air is turning, there's a chill at the tip of my nose, and something in me is asking to gather in.

This week, we bring slow living into the season we're standing in. Slowness isn't only about doing less. It's about listening to what the Earth is already doing and letting your body follow. I share how fall has shifted for me as my children spread their wings, from an exhale into a ritual, and what the Mapuche people of the cordillera teach about gathering in autumn.

Autumn isn't asking us to grab everything. It's asking us to gather what feeds us.

In this episode:

Get the free Slow Living Guide: https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

Join us for Slow-Living Sunday Meditation Circle: Every Sunday at 11 am est Register Here

In this episode, I come back after a summer of fullness and loss. I share the retreat in the Scottish Highlands, three generations of women on the Isle of Skye, the Andes, and then the deaths of my closest friend and mi tío querido. My heart closed. I wanted to walk away from ceremony, from the plants, from everything I had built my life around. Because where were my gifts when I needed them most?

This is not an episode about having found my way back. It is an episode about the silence, and what happened when a friend handed me a change of clothes and Cacao held me again. I share what I have learned, not practiced, about how the Mapuche accompany their dead, and the three days of storytelling my family held without ever calling it ceremony.

Love doesn't get to keep only the sweet parts.

In this episode:

Receive the free Slow Living Guide: https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

In a few days I leave for Scotland. For the Highlands that sent me a clear message during the hardest season of my healing: slow down. And then, quietly, but without question, the Highlands will teach you.

I didn't analyze it. I just listened.

After the retreat, my mami and my daughter join me. She turns 17 on the Isle of Skye. Three generations of women on land that called us and one unbroken maternal lineage, stretching back thousands of years, making the journey with us.

This episode is what is alive in me before I go.

It holds an ancestral teaching on lineage and what it means when healing is not a room you enter alone, but a river that carries everything that came before you. And a gentle practice for calling in the women who carried you forward, even the ones whose names were lost.

This is the last episode before a summer pause. I will be back in the fall. Slower, fuller, more rooted.

The ancestors are always with you. They are always guiding you.

In this episode:

🌿 Free Slow Living Guide: https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

For most of my life, I thought Manzanilla was just a gentle tea. Nice. Soft. Helpful in small ways.

But this past year, she began weaving herself into my days, cup by cup, day by day, until I realized something: I was being held.

Not through one dramatic moment. Through presence that returned. Through the slow accumulation of a plant who showed up every single day.

In this episode, I share:

This isn't about how to use plants. This is about coming into relationship with them. About letting something small and ordinary teach you that being held is real.

If you've been surviving on your own for too long if you've forgotten what it feels like to be held, this episode is for you.

Slow-Living as a Way Home is a space to soften, to remember, and to return to the rhythms your ancestors trusted. If you're tired of rushing, this is for you.

[00:00] Intro: A plant has been holding me

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If something here touches you, feel free to share it with someone you love or post a part that resonates. Thank you for reading, hearting, commenting, and simply being here. Your presence truly matters. And if this work has nourished you and you feel moved to reciprocate, you can support it here with a cup of tea—> tesito. ☕

Ways we can walk this path together:

🌿 Sunday Gathering — Every Sunday, I hold a 30-minute meditation circle on Zoom. A small sanctuary for your nervous system. No experience needed — just your willingness to pause. Todos son bienvenidos. ——> Register Here

🎙️ Slow Living as a Way Home — My bilingual podcast where we explore ancestral wisdom, cultural remembering, and what it actually means to come home to yourself. Available wherever you listen. ——> Listen Here

🏔️ Slow-Living Retreats — Intimate, application-only gatherings where slow living becomes embodied. Multi-day immersions in beautiful landscapes — ceremony, photography, community, and the kind of rest that changes everything. Next Adventure: Slow Living in the Highlands of Scotland. —> Learn More

🌀 Sabiduria — A weekly newsletter I write alongside Juliet and Georgina, where we explore embodied ancestral wisdom — the kind that moves through the body, not just the mind. If that calls to you, come find us on Substack. —> Subscribe to Sabiduría

🌿 Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home → antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

In this episode, we sit with something many of us carry without naming it: the experience of knowing something deeply yet being unable to reach it.

I share a conversation from this week, and my own years of treating work as make-or-break, bracing so hard, preparing so much, that when the moment came, I could barely remember my own name. The knowing wasn't missing. The access was.

From the ancestral way of understanding life, we explore a teaching that has been arriving for me slowly: the body does not forget it becomes crowded. We sit with the heart as a center of knowing, and wind,  the inner wind that shortens when we live too long in survival. Fear narrows what we can hear. Slowness restores it.

The embodied practice is a slow walk without a destination letting the body, not the mind, choose the pace with rhythmic handwork offered as a second doorway for anyone a walk isn't right for today.

We close with the both/and: the ancestral path, and the modern voices Gabor Maté, Lissa Rankin's Sacred Medicine arriving at the same doorway. We don't have to choose one. We can let both be true.

This episode is for anyone living in survival mode, over-functioning, over-preparing, bracing, who is ready to remember that what they're looking for was never lost.

Slow Living as a Way Home is a bilingual podcast rooted in ancestral teachings, nervous system healing, and embodied practice. New episodes every week.

If something here touches you, feel free to share it with someone you love or post a part that resonates. Thank you for reading, hearting, commenting, and simply being here. Your presence truly matters. And if this work has nourished you and you feel moved to reciprocate, you can support it here with a cup of tea—> tesito. ☕

Ways we can walk this path together:

🌿 Sunday Gathering — Every Sunday, I hold a free 60-minute meditation circle on Zoom. A small sanctuary for your nervous system. No experience needed — just your willingness to pause. Todos son bienvenidos. ——> Register Here

🏔️ Slow-Living Retreats — Intimate, application-only gatherings where slow living becomes embodied. Multi-day immersions in beautiful landscapes — ceremony, photography, community, and the kind of rest that changes everything. Next Adventure: Slow Living in the Highlands of Scotland. —> Learn More

🌀 Sabiduria — A weekly newsletter I write alongside Juliet and Georgina, where we explore embodied ancestral wisdom — the kind that moves through the body, not just the mind. If that calls to you, come find us on Substack. —> Subscribe to Sabiduría

🌿 Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home → antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

In this episode, I share something I haven't named directly on this podcast before, and I share why this Monday's release came late.

I've been on a healing journey with chronic exhaustion and inflammation for over a year. The teachings I share with you here are not something I learned somewhere ahead of you and now teach back. They are the medicine I am living on in real time, in my own body as we walk this together.

After coming home from the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (which became Episode 18 Whose Voice Is This, and Is It Mine?), my body asked me to rest. Not at the edge of burnout. Not after collapse. Just because she asked. And I listened.

I want to tell you what that actually looked like because there is a difference between hearing a teaching and embodying it.

In this episode, you'll find:

— The pendulum swing of unlearning self-abandonment, and why going to the extreme is sometimes how the pattern breaks

— An ancestral teaching on the body as a living bridge

— between you and your ancestors, the land, and the unseen

— Why illness in the Mapuche worldview is understood as disconnection, and healing as a return to alignment

— An embodied practice called Listening to the Bridge

— for letting your body speak without interrupting it

— A reflection on reciprocity with community: the trust that you are walking with me, not waiting for me to perform

Peawkayal.

If something here touches you, feel free to share it with someone you love or post a part that resonates. Thank you for reading, hearting, commenting, and simply being here. Your presence truly matters. And if this work has nourished you and you feel moved to reciprocate, you can support it here with a cup of tea—> tesito. ☕

Ways we can walk this path together:

🌿 Sunday Gathering — Every Sunday, I hold a 30-minute meditation circle on Zoom. A small sanctuary for your nervous system. No experience needed — just your willingness to pause. Todos son bienvenidos. ——> Register Here

🎙️ Slow Living as a Way Home — My bilingual podcast where we explore ancestral wisdom, cultural remembering, and what it actually means to come home to yourself. Available wherever you listen. ——> Listen Here

🏔️ Slow-Living Retreats — Intimate, application-only gatherings where slow living becomes embodied. Multi-day immersions in beautiful landscapes — ceremony, photography, community, and the kind of rest that changes everything. Next Adventure: Slow Living in the Highlands of Scotland. —> Learn More

🌀 Sabiduria — A weekly newsletter I write alongside Juliet and Georgina, where we explore embodied ancestral wisdom — the kind that moves through the body, not just the mind. If that calls to you, come find us on Substack. —> Subscribe to Sabiduría

🌿 Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home → antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

In this episode, I share what I brought home from two weeks at the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues — and the question the Abuelos have been asking me ever since.

I sat in rooms with Indigenous siblings from territories I have never visited, speaking languages I will never speak. And my body kept recognizing them. The same grief. The same medicine. The same pulse. And what I understood — slowly, then all at once — is that the lines drawn between us were never ours. The Abuelos are tending sacred fires in every direction, across every Indigenous territory in the world, and those same fires are rising in our chests, surfacing the patterns and voices we have been carrying as if they were ours.

Today we work with two plant relatives — Ruda for fierce discernment, Manzanilla for soft receiving — and we ask the question the grandmothers are asking:

Whose voice is this? And is it mine?

In this episode:

This is for the woman who is finally done carrying what was never hers.

If something here touches you, feel free to share it with someone you love or post a part that resonates. Thank you for reading, hearting, commenting, and simply being here. Your presence truly matters. And if this work has nourished you and you feel moved to reciprocate, you can support it here with a cup of tea—> tesito. ☕

Ways we can walk this path together:

🌿 Sunday Gathering — Every Sunday, I hold a 30-minute meditation circle on Zoom. A small sanctuary for your nervous system. No experience needed — just your willingness to pause. Todos son bienvenidos. ——> Register Here

🎙️ Slow Living as a Way Home — My bilingual podcast where we explore ancestral wisdom, cultural remembering, and what it actually means to come home to yourself. Available wherever you listen. ——> Listen Here

🏔️ Slow-Living Retreats — Intimate, application-only gatherings where slow living becomes embodied. Multi-day immersions in beautiful landscapes — ceremony, photography, community, and the kind of rest that changes everything. Next Adventure: Slow Living in the Highlands of Scotland. —> Learn More

🌀 Sabiduria — A weekly newsletter I write alongside Juliet and Georgina, where we explore embodied ancestral wisdom — the kind that moves through the body, not just the mind. If that calls to you, come find us on Substack. —> Subscribe to Sabiduría

The grandmothers are particularly present in this season.

This week, the storm arrived in the middle of an ordinary conversation. Not dramatically. The way the grandmothers always work in the smallest moment. A face. A silence. The music turned up.

And I sat there and recognized something older than me moving through my chest. The wound that was passed down without words. The belief that your fire makes you unwantable.

This episode is about that fire. Where it came from. Why we learned to turn it down. And what this season of life, perimenopause, the storm, the grandmothers arriving loud  is asking us to do instead.

After photographing and interviewing over 2,000 women from age 14 to 101 for my project Real Beauty: Uncovered, I witnessed something I couldn't unfind: every decade carries its own distinct worldview about worth, about fire, about who gets to take up space. The maiden years. The threshold years. And then — the years where the body stops cooperating with the performance and calls forward the woman who is done asking permission.

That is the abuelita. The elder woman. The one your grandmothers were always trying to become.

In this episode:

What you'll need for the ceremony: A candle if you have one. Your hands on your heart. Your voice even a whisper. If you didn't have a relationship with your grandmother, that is okay. We are working with the invisible. The energy of the grandmother exists in you regardless of whether you ever sat at her table.

This episode is for you if you have ever turned yourself down so someone else could be more comfortable. If you felt your fire rise and then watched yourself quiet it. If you are somewhere in the threshold years and something in your body is burning away what no longer fits.

The grandmothers are here. They have been waiting.

One question to carry this week: Where am I still turning down my own fire so someone else is more comfortable?

Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home: A Guide to Remembering Your Natural Rhythm → https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

Scottish Highlands Retreat, June 17–24, 2026 — seven days of ceremony, slowness, and the land. The grandmothers are loud there too. Learn More Here.

Something has been moving through me for weeks. Not as a thought. As a dream. Water arriving night after night, insisting on being received.

And I have learned slowly, the way you learn things that matter — that when something comes that persistently, you don't analyze it. You sit beside it. You listen. You let it teach you.

In this episode, we explore Ko — water as a living presence in ancestral wisdom. Not as symbol. Not as resource. As a relative. As the womb that holds all transformation before it takes form in the world.

This is not an episode about water. This is a ceremony with water.

In this episode:

What you'll need for the ceremony: A bowl of water. A stone if you have one. A seed or flower petal. A candle. Your hands and your breath are enough if you have nothing else.

This episode is for you if you are carrying grief that hasn't finished. If something is ending and something hasn't revealed itself yet. If you are tired of swimming toward wholeness and ready to be held instead.

Ko (Water) is holding what you cannot hold alone.

Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home: A Guide to Remembering Your Natural Rhythm → https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

Scottish Highlands Retreat, June 17–24, 2026 — seven days of ceremony, slowness, and the land. Learn More Here.

Something is stirring. You can feel it in the air — that restlessness, that pull toward movement, that voice saying now, now, now.

But what if spring isn't asking you to run? What if it's asking you to listen first?

In this episode, we explore the East, the direction of spring, new light, and the breath that returns to the body after winter. Through the teachings of dreams (the dream as living guidance) and the spirit that moves through all living things, we sit with the idea that before anything blooms in the Earth, it is first dreamed.

This episode was born from a dream about an olive tree, roots thick and moist in a dry place, green fruit already forming, and a conversation in circle about feeling fire rise while still wanting to go slow. If that tension lives in you too, this one is for you.

We close with a breath practice rooted in the spring air of the east, an invitation to receive what the season is carrying before you decide what to do with it.

In this episode: — What the east teaches about spring and awakening,  the dream as a space of guidance before form, how spirit moves through breath and air. Why spring begins with listening, not doing. A breath practice for receiving what the season is carrying

Free guide: Slow Living as a Way Home: A Guide to Remembering Your Natural Rhythm → https://antupewma.kit.com/3f81139283

Scottish Highlands Retreat, June 17–24, 2026 — seven days of ceremony, slowness, and the land. Learn More Here.