I understand the love of summer. There’s something wonderful about the long days, the warmth, and the expansiveness that comes with being able to spend so much time outdoors. But there’s also something about winter that I find equally beautiful, particularly those first few snowfalls when the landscape begins to change, the familiar colours disappear beneath a blanket of white, and the world seems to become a little quieter.

And I mean that quite literally.

Fresh snow has this remarkable ability to absorb sound, softening the noises that ordinarily travel through our environment. There’s a particular kind of stillness that settles over the land after a snowfall, when I can look outside my window and see everything covered in white, or step outdoors and experience a quiet that feels almost impossible to find at other times of the year. It’s as though the world has been wrapped in something that muffles the constant hum of life, and for a little while, everything feels different.

Of course, winter isn’t always peaceful. I’ve lived through enough snowstorms, bitterly cold days, and miserable drives on icy roads to know that snow can be anything but gentle. She can arrive quietly, drifting through the air in a way that feels almost magical, or she can come with such force that visibility disappears, roads become impassable, and the world outside demands our complete attention. Like everything else I’ve been exploring in this series, snow holds a duality that doesn’t fit neatly into one description.

But it’s the quiet that I keep coming back to. Because I wonder what happens to us when the world around us becomes quiet, particularly when so much of our modern lives seems designed to ensure that we rarely have to experience silence at all.

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We wake up and reach for our phones, turn on music while getting ready, listen to podcasts while driving, have conversations throughout the day, and perhaps settle into the evening with a television show playing in the background. There are endless opportunities to fill the spaces between the things we’re doing, and for many of us, we’ve become so accustomed to that constant stimulation that we barely notice how frequently we reach for it.

And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with enjoying those things. I love a good television series, I appreciate music, and I definitely love listening to someone else’s conversation or perspective through a podcast. But I have become curious about the moments when I’m not necessarily choosing those things because I want them, but because something within me seems uncomfortable with the alternative.

The quiet.

I think it’s interesting how much we romanticize silence while simultaneously finding ways to avoid it. We imagine peaceful mornings, quiet evenings, and opportunities to escape the noise of everyday life, yet when those moments actually present themselves, how often do we find ourselves looking for something to fill them?

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Perhaps we pick up our phones without even thinking about it, scroll through something that doesn’t particularly interest us, or turn on the television simply because the room feels too quiet. Maybe we begin making plans, finding tasks, or mentally organizing everything that needs to happen tomorrow, because allowing ourselves to simply sit in the absence of activity feels strangely unfamiliar.

And I wonder what that’s about. When I think about snow and the way it naturally quiets the environment, I realize that the quiet outside doesn’t necessarily create quiet within us. Sometimes it simply makes our internal world a little more noticeable. The thoughts that have been moving beneath the surface of our busy days, the feelings we’ve been carrying without giving them much attention, the questions we haven’t had the time or perhaps the willingness to consider, can become more apparent when there is less happening around us.

And sometimes what we encounter is beautiful. There can be an extraordinary sense of peace in allowing ourselves to exist without needing to respond to anything, accomplish something, or engage with the world beyond the moment we’re in. There can be comfort in the simplicity of watching snow fall, noticing the warmth of our home, or listening to the absence of the familiar sounds that ordinarily fill our surroundings.

But sometimes the quiet is confronting… in those moments that we become aware of how exhausted we actually are, how lonely we might feel, or how much of our lives have been spent moving from one responsibility to another without ever really considering what is happening within us. Sometimes we encounter grief, uncertainty, frustration, or questions about our relationships and the choices we’ve made, and perhaps those aren’t things we particularly want to sit with when we’ve finally found a moment to ourselves.

I think this is where the conversation becomes more complicated than simply suggesting that we all need to slow down and embrace silence. Because quiet isn’t necessarily experienced as peaceful by everyone.

For some people, silence can feel uncomfortable because it creates space for thoughts or emotions that have been easier to manage while distracted. For others, particularly those whose experiences have taught them that quiet can precede something frightening or unpredictable, stillness may not feel safe at all. And sometimes the noise we create around ourselves isn’t about avoiding anything profound, but about seeking companionship, comfort, stimulation, or a sense of connection.

I don’t think we need to make any of those experiences wrong. In fact, I hope we don’t. But I do think there’s something worth becoming curious about in the relationship we have with quiet, particularly when we consider how rarely we may actually allow ourselves to experience it.

And perhaps that’s what snow has been mirroring back to me.

Not simply the importance of rest, because I think we’ve all heard that message enough times to understand that rest matters, even if putting it into practice remains difficult. What interests me more is what happens when the external world begins to settle, when the garden is no longer asking for my attention, the trees stand bare, and the landscape seems content to exist without constantly producing something new.

There’s something fascinating about looking outside at a world that appears to be doing very little and recognizing how comfortable I am with that reality in nature, while also wondering how comfortable I am with it within myself.

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I don’t look at the snow-covered garden and worry that nothing is happening. I understand that beneath the surface there are roots, living organisms, and entire systems continuing their existence in ways that aren’t visible to me. The snow itself provides insulation, helping protect parts of that living world from the harsher temperatures above, and what appears to be a season of inactivity is actually part of a much larger rhythm.

But when that same absence of visible activity presents itself in my own life, I can find myself wondering whether I should be doing something.

And I suspect I’m not alone in that.

We have become so accustomed to measuring our days by what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve learned, what we’ve created, and what we’ve managed to move forward that simply existing within a quiet moment can feel strangely unproductive. Even our conversations about rest can become filled with expectations about how we should be resting, what practices we should be doing, and what benefits we should eventually experience as a result.

We meditate to become calmer, we journal to gain clarity, we spend time in nature to regulate ourselves, and we create routines designed to help us become better versions of who we are. While there can be tremendous value in all of those things, I sometimes wonder whether we’ve managed to turn even our quiet moments into something we’re supposed to accomplish.

What if the quiet doesn’t need to give us anything?

What if we don’t need to emerge from it feeling peaceful, restored, enlightened, or somehow more connected to ourselves?

What if we simply allowed ourselves to notice what happens when there is less noise around us, without immediately trying to change what we discover?

I think about how often we can become uncomfortable with the very things we say we want. We long for a quieter life, yet fill the spaces that become available. We talk about wanting more time to ourselves, yet sometimes struggle to know what to do when nobody needs anything from us. We crave a break from the constant demands of everyday life, yet may find ourselves reaching for something to occupy our attention the moment those demands disappear.

I wonder whether part of that discomfort comes from how unfamiliar it can feel to be with ourselves without distraction. Not the version of ourselves who is working, caring for others, responding to messages, making decisions, or managing the countless details of life, but the person who exists when all of those roles become a little quieter.

Who are we in those moments?

What do we notice?

And perhaps more interestingly, what do we find ourselves wanting to move away from?

I don’t think the answer will be the same for everyone, and I don’t think it needs to be. Some of us may discover that quiet is something we’ve been longing for, while others might realize that it brings forward feelings we’ve been working very hard not to encounter. Some might find it boring, some might find it comforting, and others may discover that the experience changes depending on the day, the circumstances, or what’s happening in their lives.

Much like snow itself, our relationship with quiet can hold more than one truth. Maybe that’s what I appreciate about living somewhere that experiences such distinct seasons, because the natural world is constantly offering opportunities to notice things about ourselves that we might otherwise overlook.

The arrival of snow doesn’t demand that I become quieter, and it certainly doesn’t guarantee that my internal world will suddenly become peaceful simply because the landscape outside has changed. But it does create moments when the contrast between the external world and my internal experience becomes a little more noticeable.

And perhaps that’s enough.

As I look outside at the snow settling across the land, I find myself appreciating the way it softens the world, how it seems to invite a different kind of attention, and how the familiar landscape can become almost unrecognizable beneath something as simple as frozen water.

There’s no expectation that I need to make something of that experience, and perhaps that’s the part I want to hold onto. I don’t need to turn the quiet into a lesson, a practice, or another opportunity to work on myself. I can simply notice what happens when the world becomes still.

And maybe, somewhere within that experience, I might become a little more familiar with the parts of myself that are easier to hear when everything else grows quiet.

So I wonder, when the world around you becomes quiet, what do you find yourself reaching for, and what might you be trying not to hear?

I’m grateful you’re here, exploring these conversations alongside me. Becoming a paid subscriber supports this space and invites you a little deeper through reflections and integration practices, including this week’s experiment with quiet. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.

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an experiment with quiet

For this week’s integration, I want to invite you into a little experiment.

Throughout this reflection, we’ve been exploring our relationship with quiet, particularly what happens within us when the noise of the world begins to settle. But rather than asking you to reflect on your relationship with silence through a series of questions, I’m curious about what might happen if you simply experienced it.

The experiment is simple: How long can you comfortably be with quiet before you feel the need to introduce noise?

Find a time and place where you can experience a little quiet without too many interruptions. You don’t need to create a perfect environment, and you certainly don’t need to wait for a snowfall. Just choose a moment when there isn’t something immediately requiring your attention.

Put your phone aside, turn off the television, music, podcasts, or anything else you might ordinarily use to fill the space around you. For this experiment, noise is anything we intentionally introduce to distract ourselves from experiencing the quiet, including finding a task to occupy our attention.

And then, simply be there.

You don’t need to meditate, practise breathing techniques, journal, or attempt to quiet your thoughts. In fact, I’m not asking you to create silence within yourself at all. Your mind might be incredibly busy, your body might feel restless, or you might experience a sense of peace that surprises you. Whatever happens is simply part of the experience.

As you sit with the quiet, become curious about what you notice. Perhaps there’s an immediate impulse to reach for your phone, turn something on, get up and do something, or fill the space with activity. Maybe you notice boredom, irritation, discomfort, sadness, relief, or an unexpected sense of ease.

There’s no need to interpret any of it.

What I’m particularly interested in is the moment when quiet begins to feel like something you no longer want to experience.

Perhaps that happens after thirty seconds, two minutes, ten minutes, or not at all during the time you’ve set aside. You might notice an increasing desire to introduce noise, or perhaps you simply recognize that you’ve had enough.

When you reach that point, allow the experiment to end.

This is not an invitation to push through discomfort, override your body’s signals, or prove how long you can withstand silence. If quiet begins to feel overwhelming or unsafe, you can stop immediately. There is no benefit in forcing yourself to remain in an experience that feels beyond your capacity.

And there is no prize for lasting longer.

The purpose of this experiment isn’t to increase your tolerance for silence, but to discover something about your current relationship with it.

How long did quiet feel comfortable or manageable for you? What did you notice within yourself as the experience unfolded? And what was happening when you felt ready to introduce noise again?

You don’t need to turn those observations into a story about yourself, uncover a deeper meaning, or decide that anything needs to change. Perhaps you’ll discover that you genuinely enjoy quiet, perhaps you’ll notice how quickly you reach for distraction, or perhaps you’ll realize that your relationship with silence is more complicated than you imagined.

Whatever you discover is simply information about your experience in that moment, not a measure of your progress, healing, or ability to be with yourself.

The experiment isn’t about how long you can remain in the quiet. It’s about becoming curious about what quiet is like for you.

And for now, that is enough.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

Because I wonder if one of the most fascinating things about the ocean is that what we see on the surface tells us so very little about what actually exists beneath it.

We can stand on the shoreline, looking out across an endless stretch of water, and believe we have some understanding of what we’re witnessing. We see the waves, the colour of the water, the way the sunlight dances across the surface, and we make assumptions about what lies before us. But beneath that surface is an entire world we cannot see, filled with movement, currents, ecosystems, life, and mysteries we have barely begun to understand.

And when I say barely, I mean barely.

According to ocean research published in 2025, humans have visually observed less than 0.001% of the deep ocean seafloor. Think about that for a moment. We have spent generations studying the ocean, developing extraordinary technology to understand her, and we have still directly witnessed only the tiniest fraction of what exists in her depths.

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I find that absolutely fascinating and it makes me wonder how much of ourselves we have actually explored. If the ocean can hold that much mystery beneath a surface we look at every day, what might exist beneath the surface of our own lives that we have yet to discover?

I think there’s something both exciting and terrifying about that question.

We often speak about getting to know ourselves as though it’s a beautiful, enlightening experience, and sometimes it absolutely is. But I think we overlook how uncomfortable it can be to discover something about ourselves that challenges everything we thought we knew.

What if we find something we don’t particularly like? What if we discover a capacity, a desire, a conviction, or a part of ourselves that doesn’t fit the identity we’ve spent years building? What if what we find changes the way we understand our relationships, our choices, or the life we’ve created?

And what if we discover something absolutely extraordinary? Something beautiful and powerful. Something that has been quietly existing beneath the surface all along, waiting for us to become curious enough to notice it.

I wonder if that’s part of why we sometimes prefer to stay on the shoreline.

Because sitting on the sand and admiring the ocean from a comfortable distance allows us to experience her beauty without having to encounter everything that comes with entering her waters. We can watch the waves, feel the breeze, listen to the water meeting the shore, and appreciate her magnificence without having to surrender the certainty of solid ground beneath our feet.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I wonder how often we approach ourselves in much the same way.

We become familiar with the parts of ourselves that are visible, understandable, and relatively easy to navigate. We know the stories we tell about who we are, the roles we occupy, the ways we tend to respond, and the identities we’ve grown comfortable living within. And sometimes, those familiar parts become the boundaries of what we believe is possible for us.

Not necessarily because there’s nothing more to discover, but because exploring further might mean entering waters we don’t yet understand. And that can be fucking terrifying.

In my work with survivors of gender-based violence, I’ve witnessed how complicated the idea of control can become. For someone who has experienced having their choices, safety, or autonomy taken away, even the relationship they have with themselves can begin to feel uncertain. Exploring what exists beneath the surface isn’t necessarily an exciting invitation to self-discovery when the unknown has previously been associated with danger.

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Sometimes staying on the shoreline is what feels safe and sometimes there are very good reasons we aren’t ready to enter deeper water. And I think that matters, because I don’t want this exploration to become another message about how we should all be digging deeper, uncovering more, or pushing ourselves into uncomfortable places in the name of growth.

That’s not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in our relationship with the unknown, and how often we mistake our desire for certainty as evidence that certainty is something we should actually have.

Because when I think about the ocean, I think about how much we love her when she’s calm.

We travel across the world to sit beside her. We photograph her turquoise waters, dream about floating in her warmth, and describe her as peaceful, restorative, and beautiful. We love the sound of gentle waves rolling onto the shore, the feeling of sand beneath our feet, and the way being near her can make the rest of the world feel a little quieter.

But what happens when she changes? When those gentle waves become enormous, when the sky darkens, when the currents become dangerous, and when the same ocean we were admiring yesterday becomes something we would never consider entering today?

Suddenly, the language changes: she’s violent. dangerous. unpredictable. unforgiving.

And yes, she can be all those things. The ocean has an extraordinary capacity for destruction, and there is nothing romantic about the lives she can take or the devastation she can leave behind.

But here’s what I keep coming back to. She’s still the same ocean.

Her nature hasn’t become less worthy of respect because the conditions have changed and I wonder why we have such a difficult time holding that same understanding of ourselves.

Why do we seem to find it easier to appreciate ourselves when we’re calm, composed, productive, agreeable, and predictable? Why do we become so uncomfortable when something shifts within us, when our emotions become harder to understand, when our energy changes, or when we no longer feel like the version of ourselves we’ve become accustomed to being?

And how often do we extend that discomfort toward other women?

We celebrate the woman who is peaceful, accommodating, and easy to be around, but what happens when she becomes angry, uncertain, passionate, overwhelmed, or unwilling to continue being the version of herself that everyone else has grown comfortable with?

Do we remain curious about her, or do we begin wishing she would return to calmer waters?

I think this connects to something I’ve been exploring throughout this series, particularly in last week’s conversation about fire and the ways I spent years confusing healing with becoming calmer and more palatable. Because perhaps our desire to be consistently calm is less about our true nature and more about how much we have learned to value predictability.

We want to know what we’re going to get… from ourselves, others and life. We want to believe that if we understand something well enough, we can control what happens next. And yet, when we look at the ocean, we are reminded just how limited that control really is.

We can study her tides, monitor weather systems, understand currents, and become extraordinarily skilled at navigating her waters, but none of that gives us the ability to command her to remain calm.

In fact, we can prepare, pay attention, make informed decisions about when to enter her waters and when to remain safely on shore. But we cannot control the ocean… and good fucking luck trying.

There’s something almost humbling about that, because I think so much of our lives can become organized around the pursuit of control, even when we know, somewhere within ourselves, that much of life remains beyond our ability to manage.

And perhaps that’s another thing the ocean mirrors back to us…. the difference between understanding something and needing to control it. We don’t study the ocean because we expect her to become something other than what she is. We study her because we recognize her power, her complexity, her mystery and the importance of understanding the conditions in which we encounter her.

And what if we approached ourselves with that same curiosity? What if understanding ourselves wasn’t about becoming perfectly predictable, but about developing a deeper relationship with the things that move within us? Our emotions, our patterns, our fears, our desires, our capacity for love, our capacity for harm, and the parts of ourselves that may still be completely unfamiliar. AND not so that we can control every wave, but so that we can begin recognizing what is happening beneath the surface.

Because a calm surface doesn’t necessarily mean the water beneath it is still. There can be powerful currents moving through the ocean even when everything above appears peaceful, just as there can be extraordinary things happening within us that nobody else can see. I think about how often we make assumptions about one another based on what is visible.

We see someone who appears to have everything together and assume that life must feel relatively manageable for them. We see someone who is emotional or struggling and assume that something within them needs to be fixed. We see the surface and begin constructing an understanding of the whole… but we don’t know.

We don’t know what someone is carrying, what they’ve survived, what is moving within them, or what parts of themselves they have yet to discover. And sometimes, we don’t even know those things about ourselves.

Which brings me back to the mystery of the ocean. I find it extraordinary that we can know so much about something and still have so much left to discover. That we can spend lifetimes exploring and continue encountering things we never knew existed.

And perhaps that’s true of being human, too.

Maybe we are not meant to arrive at some final, complete understanding of ourselves where every mystery has been solved and every reaction can be explained. Maybe there will always be parts of us that remain unknown, not because we’ve failed to do enough work, but because we are complex, changing beings whose experiences continue to shape us.

And maybe there’s something beautiful about allowing that to be true.

I think about the ocean and how she connects so much of life on this planet, how her waters move with the gravitational pull of the moon, how she holds entire ecosystems within her depths, and how she can be both life-giving and devastating depending on the conditions.

She is not one thing… And neither are we.

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We can be calm and fierce, familiar and mysterious, deeply loving and deeply complicated. We can carry extraordinary beauty alongside parts of ourselves we struggle to understand, and we can continue discovering who we are long after we thought we had ourselves figured out.

Perhaps the invitation isn’t to become more like the ocean, because in many ways, we already are. We are bodies of water, living within rhythms and environments that shape our experiences, carrying far more beneath the surface than anyone could possibly know simply by looking at us. And maybe the ocean is asking us to consider something about the way we approach ourselves.

What would it mean to hold our own vastness with reverence rather than fear?

To respect the parts of ourselves we don’t yet understand without immediately trying to control them?

To recognize that exploring our depths is an invitation, not an obligation, and that we get to decide when, how, and whether we enter those waters?

Because I don’t think the ocean needs us to conquer her. I think she asks something much more interesting of us…

To recognize that her beauty isn’t limited to the days when she’s calm, that her power deserves respect even when it makes us uncomfortable, and that what we see from the shoreline will never tell us everything there is to know.

And perhaps, as women, we might begin offering ourselves that same reverence and not because we’ve discovered everything there is to know about ourselves, but because we haven’t. I wonder what might become possible if, rather than being terrified of what exists beneath our own surface, we allowed ourselves to become a little more curious about the mystery.

Do we love ourselves in all our vastness, or only the parts of us that feel safe and familiar?

Thank you for taking the time to explore these conversations alongside me. If something in my words resonates with you, I’d love for you to stay a little longer. Becoming a paid subscriber supports this space and gives you access to deeper reflections and gentle integration practices, like this week’s experience with water. A little more room for us to be curious, together.

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an experience with water

With exploring the ocean as a mirror for our own vastness, the mysteries we carry, and our relationship with the things we cannot fully understand or control - let’s bring the words into reality. But for this week’s integration, I don’t want to invite you to explore anything beneath your surface.

Instead, I want to invite you into an experience with water.

The next time you take a bath or shower, give yourself a little space to be there without needing the experience to become anything more than what it is.

Feel the water as it meets your skin. Notice its temperature, its movement, the way it flows around or over your body, and how your body responds to its presence. Perhaps you notice yourself softening, perhaps you feel energized, or perhaps there’s nothing particularly remarkable about the experience at all.

Allow whatever happens to happen.

You might find yourself wanting to adjust the temperature, change your position, or move away from the water for a moment. You might notice thoughts arriving, sensations changing, or your attention wandering elsewhere. There’s no need to correct any of it or bring yourself back to some ideal state of presence.

Water doesn’t need you to become calm, and neither does this experience.

For a few moments, consider what it feels like to be in relationship with something that moves, flows, and responds to the conditions around it, without asking yourself to make meaning from every sensation.

an invitation to stay a little longer

If you’re curious, when you turn off the shower or step out of the bath, consider taking a few moments before reaching for your towel, provided you’re comfortable and warm enough.

Notice the water resting on your skin, the droplets moving down your body, the feeling of your wet hair against your shoulders or back, and the way the air meets your skin now that you’re no longer surrounded by warm water. Perhaps you notice goosebumps, a change in temperature, the weight of your hair, or the sensation of water slowly evaporating.

What is it like to experience your body in these moments, without immediately moving on to the next thing?

You might even become curious about the impulse to dry off, get dressed, or return to your day, not because there’s anything wrong with those impulses, but because they’re part of your experience, too.

There’s no particular sensation you’re looking for and no right way to feel. You may discover something surprising, or you may simply notice things you’ve experienced thousands of times without giving them much attention.

Both are enough.

You don’t need to emerge feeling renewed, peaceful, connected, or transformed, and you don’t need to journal afterward or find something profound to take away.

Just allow yourself to have an experience with water, and perhaps with yourself afterward, without asking either experience to give you anything in return.

Perhaps that’s enough.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

There was this message that seemed to be everywhere, especially within wellness communities and across social media, that on the other side of healing was some kind of internal peace. You know… calmness, a quiet mind, a nervous system that no longer reacted and a version of ourselves that could move through the world without being so affected by it.

Let’s call it: Zen.

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And I bought into it… BIG TIME. Not only did I buy into it, but I perpetuated it because the intention was good. At least, I believed it was. I wanted to heal the anxiety and trauma that lived within my body, understand why I responded to certain things the way I did and I wanted to stop carrying what no longer belonged to me.

And somewhere along the way, I had decided that if I did enough healing, eventually I would arrive at this place of calm. So that became my destination and the vision of the healed version of me would be peaceful, unbothered, gentle, and steady.

And then, in 2020, something shifted. We were in the middle of the pandemic, and I remember having this realization that completely interrupted how I had been thinking about myself. I couldn’t tell you what sparked it. I don’t remember what I was reading or doing or what conversation might have led me there. I just remember the realization.

I am not Zen. I am fucking fire.

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And I don’t mean that in some performative, motivational, watch me rise from the ashes kind of way. I mean that when I look at the truest nature of who I am, I see intensity.

I am deeply passionate. I love fiercely. I have convictions and beliefs that matter to me, while also holding a deep curiosity about those beliefs and a willingness to have them challenged. I don’t believe life exists in absolutes. I live in the nuance of things, even when that nuance is uncomfortable. I am creative, energized and I have an enormous capacity to hold things, to create things, and to move things forward.

AND I can also burn something to the fucking ground in a moment. All of those things exist within me. And for much of my life, that intensity was something I was told I needed to manage, soften, or change… sometimes directly and others through the reactions of others and some from my own observations. Sometimes through the subtle messages that being passionate was acceptable, but being too passionate was not. That having convictions was admirable, until those convictions made someone uncomfortable. That being strong was wonderful, provided that strength remained palatable. And somewhere along the way, I began to confuse healing with becoming easier for other people to experience.

I thought that if I could just become calmer, softer, less reactive, and less intense, then perhaps I would finally arrive at the version of myself I was supposed to be.

But what if that version of me didn’t actually exist? What if I was spending years trying to heal myself into someone I was never meant to become?

That question changed something for me. Not overnight or in some beautiful moment of complete self-acceptance. It’s taken years… of looking at my intensity without immediately deciding it was a problem. Years of understanding where it comes from, what fuels it, and what happens when I don’t pay attention to it. Years of learning that I can accept my fire without allowing it to consume me.

Because here’s the thing. My fire has burned people. And I don’t want to pretend otherwise. There have been moments when my intensity has caused harm. When my passion has become overwhelming. When my convictions have left too little room for someone else’s experience. When I’ve reacted from something old and unresolved rather than from what was actually happening in front of me.

I have had to look at that. And I continue to because accepting my nature doesn’t mean refusing to take responsibility for how I express it. It doesn’t mean that because I am fire, everyone else simply has to deal with the heat.

That’s not what I’m saying. But I am also no longer interested in believing that the only way to prevent harm is to extinguish myself.

And this is where I keep coming back to Mother Nature. And today, fire. Because fire is fucking fascinating. We fear it, and for good reason. It can move with extraordinary speed. It can consume everything in its path. It can destroy homes, forests, communities, and lives. There is nothing romantic about that kind of devastation.

And yet fire is also part of the natural world.

In certain ecosystems, fire plays an essential role in renewal. It clears accumulated vegetation, returns nutrients to the soil, and creates conditions that allow some plants to regenerate. Some seeds even depend on heat or fire-related conditions to open or germinate. The same force that can destroy can also create conditions for new life.

And I find that extraordinary not because destruction is inherently beautiful or because everything that burns down needed to burn or because fire is more complex than simply being good or bad.

But because it has a nature with conditions and consequences. And the more we understand those things, the more thoughtfully we can live in relationship with it.

I think about the firefighter in my life and the things I’ve learned through conversations about fire. We don’t study fire because we believe we can convince it to stop being fire. We study it because understanding how it behaves matters.

What fuels it?

What conditions intensify it?

What causes it to spread?

What happens when it has nowhere to go?

How do we protect what needs protecting while recognizing that fire itself has a place in the world?

And I wonder what happens when we begin asking those same questions about ourselves.

Because what if healing isn’t about extinguishing our fire, but about understanding it?

What fuels my intensity?

What makes it burn hotter?

When does it become something creative, protective, passionate, or life-giving?

And when does it become something that harms me or the people around me?

What happens when I ignore it?

What happens when I shame it?

What happens when I try to force it underground and pretend it isn’t there?

And what might become possible when I stop being afraid to look at it?

I think there’s something important here about suppression because I know what it feels like to try to make myself less intense… to swallow something that matters to me, quiet a conviction, push down anger because anger doesn’t fit the version of a healed woman I thought I was supposed to be (because god forbid a healed woman feels angry).

But those feelings didn’t necessarily disappear because I refused to acknowledge them. In truth, they simply found another way out and sometimes that way caused more harm than if I had been willing to understand what was happening within me in the first place.

That’s not to say every expression of anger or intensity is justified. It’s to say that shame has never been a particularly helpful way for me to understand myself.

Curiosity has.

And perhaps this is one of the biggest shifts in my understanding of healing. I no longer see healing as becoming someone who doesn’t experience intensity, I see it as developing a relationship with that intensity and being able to recognize when my fire is asking for expression and when it needs tending. Knowing when something within me is being activated. Understanding when my convictions are creating connection and when they’re leaving no room for another person’s experience. Being willing to look at the impact I’ve had without immediately collapsing into shame or defending myself.

And perhaps most importantly, understanding the profound necessity of repair. Because sometimes, despite all our awareness and all our intentions, we still burn things.

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We say something that hurts, react in ways we wish we hadn’t, and allow something unresolved within us to spill into a relationship.

And then what?

For me, this is where the work becomes real.

Not in pretending I will never cause harm again or believing that enough healing will somehow make me incapable of hurting another person but in being willing to acknowledge what happened.

Then… to take responsibility, listen, understand the impact and make repairs where repair is possible. But to also recognize that sometimes repair doesn’t mean everything returns to what it was before.

Sometimes something has changed and trust needs time. And sometimes someone doesn’t want to stand near our fire again and that is theirs to decide.

I think there’s a tremendous amount of humility in that because I can accept that fire is part of my nature while also accepting that I am responsible for how I tend it.

Both can be true. Both ARE true.

And maybe that’s the nuance I was missing all those years ago when I thought healing meant becoming Zen. I was looking for a destination where the uncomfortable parts of myself would no longer exist… where I would no longer be reactive, my intensity would soften into some permanent state of peace and I could finally be the version of myself that everyone would find easy to love.

But I am not for everyone. And everyone is not for me. I don’t need every person I encounter to like me AND I don’t need to be universally understood. I certainly don’t need to keep abandoning the parts of myself that make me who I am in pursuit of being more palatable.

What I do need is to be able to live with myself - to understand, take responsibility for myself and to recognize the light and shadow of my own nature without deciding that one is worthy of love and the other must be destroyed.

Because I am both.

I don’t take it lightly that you choose to spend some of your time here with me, reading my words and perhaps finding pieces of yourself within them. Between Sisters is a space where we get curious, challenge what we’ve been taught, and explore the messy, beautiful, uncomfortable parts of being human. Becoming a paid subscriber supports this work and gives you access to deeper reflections and integration practices that bring these conversations into your own life. More than anything, it allows us to keep wondering together.

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We all have parts of ourselves that, under certain conditions, can become destructive. And I wonder how much more honestly we could understand ourselves if we stopped pretending that healing meant those parts would eventually disappear.

Maybe healing isn’t the absence of fire, but knowing what to do when we feel the heat rising. Maybe it’s understanding what fuels us, what consumes us, and what allows us to create warmth rather than destruction. Maybe it’s learning to recognize when we’ve burned something and having the courage to participate in repair. And maybe it’s finally allowing ourselves to acknowledge that our intensity can be one of the very things that makes us feel most alive.

Because fire doesn’t only destroy… It warms, illuminates, nourishes, transforms and creates the conditions for things to grow.

And I think about how much of my life I’ve spent trying to become something quieter and a little more like the version of healing I had been sold. And how much freedom there has been in realizing that perhaps I was never meant to become that woman.

I was meant to understand the woman I already am.

So no, I am not Zen. I am fire. And I am no longer interested in extinguishing myself to prove that I am healing.

Amanda Cook is a women’s trauma counselor and founder of Mother|HER. She works in private practice and within systems supporting women impacted by trauma and violence and is devoted to women’s evolution through inner child work, collective healing, and honest, compassionate presence.

This week, it’s the moon and I have a bit of a history with her.

When we talk about the moon, especially in conversations about women, we often hear about the full moon, especially around her illumination, brightness and fullness. There are endless analogies about stepping into our light, embracing our power, and allowing ourselves to be seen.

And I get it. Last week, I wrote about the sun and how she doesn’t dim herself for our comfort. About the ways we, especially as women, have learned to manage our own brightness so that we don’t make others uncomfortable.

But there’s something about the moon that I think deserves a little more attention, because she isn’t always full, illuminated sometimes, we can’t see her at all… yet she’s still there.

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In the second post of this series, I explored our cyclical nature and the ways our bodies and internal rhythms can mirror the changing seasons. And when we look at the moon, we see another rhythm unfolding right above us. She waxes, wanes, becomes full and then disappears from our view. And then she begins again. We can see her influence on the ocean through the tides. And for centuries, people have looked to the moon to understand time, seasons, fertility, and the rhythms of life.

There’s something fascinating about how much meaning we have found in her cycles, especially as women. But what I find myself most drawn to isn’t the full moon… It’s the new moon, her darkness and the part of the cycle when she is still there, even though we cannot see her.

Many years ago, I had business called MoonWell.. although, when we would explain what MoonWell was, we described her as a movement, which felt more true and authentic to our experience. My business partner, Lauren, and I gathered women in circles every new moon for five years, which was very intentional. We weren’t interested in gathering only when the moon was full and bright. We wanted to gather when she was dark. Lauren and I weren’t afraid of the darkness, we were curious about it.

We were curious about the parts of ourselves that lived there. The things we carried but didn’t necessarily have language for. The experiences, emotions, memories, and thoughts that didn’t always feel welcome in the light of our everyday lives. And we wanted to create a space where women could explore those places without feeling they needed to make them more palatable. There was no expectation to arrive with something positive to share, zero need to find the silver lining and no requirement to turn something painful into a beautiful lesson. And absolutely no need for someone else to jump in with advice, feedback, or an opinion about what you should do next. You could simply arrive as you were and whatever was sitting in the darkness could come with you.

I can still picture those circles. During the seasons when we gathered over Zoom, there would be these little squares on the screen, each with a woman sitting in her own darkness, sometimes illuminated but often nothing more than a single candle.

When we gathered in person, it was much the same: candlelight, darkness and women sitting together. There was something incredibly beautiful about that both visually and energetically. We weren’t trying to chase away the dark, but making room for it. And what I came to understand through those five years was how powerful it can be to have somewhere to go when you don’t feel particularly bright. Somewhere you don’t have to explain yourself, you don’t have to turn your grief into gratitude, your anger into forgiveness, or your confusion into clarity. Somewhere you can say the thing you’ve been carrying and have someone simply witness it.

Not fix it or interpret it or even make it better. Just witness.

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I think about how much those circles gave me. How much I learned about myself through sitting with other women in the dark and how much I learned about holding space without needing to fill it. I learned how much of our lives we spend trying to get out of the very places that might be asking for our attention. Because somewhere along the way, darkness became something we were supposed to overcome.

We talk about getting through dark times. Finding the light at the end of the tunnel. Moving out of the shadows. Raising our vibration. Choosing positivity. And while I understand the desire to move toward something that feels better, I wonder what happens when we become so focused on finding the light that we never allow ourselves to be where we actually are.

What happens to the parts of us that aren’t ready to be illuminated?

What happens to the grief that doesn’t have a lesson yet?

The anger we haven’t understood?

The uncertainty we can’t explain?

The parts of ourselves we’ve kept hidden because we aren’t sure how they will be received?

Do they disappear because we refuse to look at them?

Or do they simply remain there, waiting?

And then I look at the moon. She doesn’t stop existing because we can’t see her. She doesn’t need to be full to be whole. She doesn’t rush through her darkness to get back to being illuminated. She simply continues through her cycle and I wonder why we have such a difficult time allowing ourselves to do the same.

Why does being in the dark so often feel like we’ve lost our way?

Why do we assume that if something isn’t visible, productive, beautiful, or easily understood, something must be wrong?

And why are we so fucking uncomfortable with not knowing?

I think about the women who came to those circles over the years, and I wonder how many of us had spent our lives believing we needed to arrive as the version of ourselves that other people could comfortably receive.

The capable one. The positive one. The one who has it together. The one who can explain what she’s feeling and what she’s doing about it.

But what about the woman who doesn’t know?

The woman who is angry, grieving something she can’t quite name, tired of trying to make sense of everything, or simply wants to sit in the dark for a while?

Does she not belong too?

One of the things Lauren and I held close in our work was the idea that sometimes, to reach the light, we first have to be willing to dig deep into the ground. Not because darkness is some necessary punishment on the way to becoming a better version of ourselves and certainly not because everyone needs to dig into their deepest wounds. How deep we go, whether we go at all, and what we choose to explore must always belong to us but because there are things that grow beneath the surface long before anything becomes visible. And perhaps there are parts of ourselves that need that same kind of space: without an audience, an expectation and someone standing over us asking when we’re going to bloom.

I think this is what the new moon continues to mirror back to me. That there is something deeply powerful about allowing ourselves to exist without needing to be seen. That darkness doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong. That we can be uncertain, quiet, hidden, unfinished, and still be fully here. And that sometimes the most meaningful thing we can offer ourselves, or another woman, is the opportunity to be exactly where we are without insisting that we move somewhere else.

I don’t want to romanticize darkness, although it might sound like I am. There are experiences that are painful, frightening, and lonely, and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone. Sometimes what we need most is support, connection, and someone to help us find our way.

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But I also don’t want to keep treating every uncomfortable part of being human as something that needs to be fixed, transformed, or hurried along. Some things simply need room and need to remain unfinished for a while. Maybe there are parts of us that can only begin to feel safe enough to emerge when we stop demanding that they become something else. And maybe, just maybe, the darkness isn’t always something we’re meant to escape.

Sometimes it’s an entryway, not necessarily into something brighter, but into something more honest.

So as I look up at the moon, I’m less interested in asking how I can become as bright as she is when she’s full. I’m wondering something else entirely.

What parts of myself have I been so busy trying to bring into the light that I’ve never allowed them to simply exist in the dark?

If something in this has stirred your curiosity, I invite you to stay a little longer. As a paid subscriber, you’ll receive integration practices, reflections, and rituals that invite you to take what we explore here into your own life. This week, I’m sharing a simple candlelight ritual to explore what it feels like to sit with the darkness rather than fill it. No fixing or searching for answers. Just space to get curious about yourself.

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an evening in the dark

As we move further into autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere, the days are becoming shorter and the nights are stretching a little longer. Mother Nature is slowly inviting us into a season of more darkness. I wonder what might happen if, rather than resisting it, we allowed ourselves to move with her.

For this week’s integration, I want to offer you something incredibly simple: an invitation to spend a little time in the dark.

Not to find something, uncover a hidden part of yourself or to have some profound realization or transform the experience into a lesson.

Just to be there.

As evening arrives and the natural light begins to disappear, rather than turning on all the lights in your home, consider lighting a candle or two. Let the room become dark and the candlelight offer just enough illumination to see what’s around you.

And then, simply exist there.

Maybe it’s for fifteen minutes, an hour or the entire evening. There is no right amount of time.

This invitation doesn’t ask you to meditate, journal, reflect, or do anything particularly meaningful… although you can if this is what calls to you. However, perhaps, for a little while, you resist the urge to fill the space.

Acknowledge the urge to turn on the tv, reach for your phone and start scrolling. Notice the desire to have background noise while sitting in the darkness. The idea is you don’t need to make the experience beautiful or turn it into another thing to accomplish.

We all have our ways of filling the quiet. Instead, get curious about what happens when you don’t.

What does it feel like to sit in a room with so little light?

What happens in your body as the darkness settles around you?

Does it feel peaceful? Uncomfortable? Restless? Familiar? Strange?

Do you notice yourself wanting to reach for something?

Do you feel an urge to turn on another light?

And if you do, can you simply notice that urge without needing to make anything of it?

There is nothing wrong with wanting more light, noise, or distraction. You are not trying to prove how comfortable you can become with darkness. You’re simply offering yourself an opportunity to experience something you might ordinarily move away from.

And perhaps, as you sit there, you might remember the new moon. She is still there, even when we cannot see her. You are still here, too. You don’t need to be illuminated, productive, interesting, or doing something meaningful to justify your existence in that moment.

You can simply be.

And maybe that’s enough for this week. No answers to find or shadows to uncover or lessons to carry forward.

Just you, a little candlelight, and the darkness. Existing together.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

Isn’t that one of the fascinating things about words? Sometimes we can read something a hundred times and feel almost nothing. And then there are moments when we are ready to receive something - really receive it - and a sentence we’ve maybe heard some version of before suddenly cracks something open.

That was this quote for me:

“There’s nothing wrong with being a lot. The ocean is a lot. Fire is a lot Love is a lot. Nobody writes poetry about lukewarm fucking tap water.” - Pelle Martin (look him up on this platform- really love his writing.

Since reading this quote, it sparked a curiosity that I haven’t been able to put down.

Last week, I wrote about autumn and what she has been mirroring back to me about change, letting go, and our relentless desire to hold onto things that may already be trying to fall. About how easily I can witness a tree lose every fucking leaf and understand that nothing has gone wrong, while struggling to extend that same grace toward myself.

And now I keep thinking about light.

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Even writing that makes me hesitate a little because talking about “our light” can get preachy pretty fast.

Shine your light. Don’t let anyone dim you. Be the light.

You know the ones and that’s not where I want to go with this. I’m much more interested in getting curious about my own light. Specifically, the ways I have learned to manage it for the comfort of other people.

Because… I know how to dim myself.

I know how to read a room and determine how much of me will be acceptable there. I know how to pull back and be careful not to overstep. How to make sure I don’t take over, and to soften something I know because I don’t want to appear as though I know too much. I also know how to make myself palatable.

Be bright enough… but not too bright.

And I think, as a woman, I learned those messages from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

→ Be confident, but don’t intimidate anyone.

→ Be successful, but stay humble.

→ Have an opinion, but don’t be difficult.

→ Take up space, but make sure there’s still plenty left for everyone else.

→ Know what you’re talking about, but maybe soften your delivery.

→ Be powerful, but for fuck’s sake, make sure everyone around you is still comfortable.

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What fascinates me is that I can see this now…

I am 47 years old, been married for 20 years and have two beautiful children. I have built a career I am proud of. I have done a lot of work to understand myself, my patterns, conditioning, the things I carry and where some of them came from. AND I still catch myself dimming.

I still get tripped up by the thought that maybe I’m shining a little too brightly and I think that’s worth sitting with. Because we can accumulate all kinds of accomplishments and awareness and still have old messages woven into us. Knowing something exists doesn’t necessarily make it disappear.

So I’ve been wondering: why is women’s brightness so fucking uncomfortable?

What are we afraid will happen when a woman is fully in her light?

Why have women been taught that part of our responsibility is managing other people’s experience of us?

I can come up with plenty of explanations. I’m sure you can too. We could talk about patriarchy and power and gender roles and generations of conditioning. There are entire books written about this. But I’m less interested right now in arriving at the perfect explanation and more curious about why it is still here.

Why is it still in me?

And maybe, as you’re reading this, you might wonder where it still lives in you.

You don’t have to know where it came from OR maybe you know exactly. Maybe you couldn’t point to a single moment in your life when someone told you to dim yourself because no one ever actually said the words. And yet somehow, you learned. That’s the part I find fascinating.

Because then I look outside, there she is. The sun.

Completely uninterested in being palatable. On the days when she is beating down on us, she isn’t checking whether we’re comfortable with the intensity of her heat.

She shines.

And then it becomes our responsibility to decide what we need in relationship to her.

We find shade, sit under a tree, put on a hat, drink water and cover our skin. We still go inside and don’t ask the sun to negotiate her brightness according to our individual capacity to receive it. We adjust our relationship to the light.

And when the clouds roll in, she hasn’t stopped shining either. We simply can’t see her in the same way. She is still there, doing exactly what she does.

There is something about that I can’t stop thinking about because what if someone else’s discomfort with my brightness isn’t always information about me? What if it is sometimes information about their relationship with light?

That’s spin on perspective and it creates a different conversation.

And I want to be careful here because I don’t think this gives us permission to move through the world without considering our impact on other people. I don’t think “this is just my light” gets to become an excuse for being an asshole. We live in relationship with one another. How we show up matters. Our impact matters. AND accountability matters.

But there is a difference between being considerate of our impact and making ourselves smaller so someone else doesn’t have to experience their own discomfort.

I continue to learn the difference and I don’t always get it right. Sometimes I still can’t tell whether I’m being asked to soften because softness is needed or whether that old part of me has simply become afraid that I am taking up too much space. So maybe that’s why I keep coming back to the sun.

Consider a sunrise… have you ever watched a sunrise? Like, really watched one? There is no subtlety to it. She simply arrives with light breaking across the horizon and then through the clouds, reaching across everything it can touch.

I am here.

And then, hours later, she leaves just as magnificently. She doesn’t shine indefinitely either, which is also important. She rises, shines and sets. There is rhythm even in brightness.

Maybe being in our own brightness also means being honest about what that looks like. Because just as I wrote last week, this isn’t about blooming all the time. Being fully ourselves doesn’t mean constantly being visible, expansive, productive or turned all the way up. That’s just another expectation to perform.

Maybe being in our light is actually about being embodied enough to know when we want to shine and when we need to rest. Knowing when we want to take up space, turn inward, know the difference of when something inside of us wants to be expressed and when we desire quiet. The difference is where the decision comes from. One is rhythm, the other conditioning. Part of knowing ourselves is learning our light, not forcing ourselves to shine but becoming familiar with ourselves enough to know the difference.

It’s also about building the awareness with knowing that being fully in our light isn’t about being the brightest person in every room or constantly performing our power or making sure everyone sees us. That feels like another version of perpetual summer.

So here’s what I’m feeling… I don’t need everyone to be comfortable with my brightness. I need to be comfortable with my light. And I need to give others the space to navigate their comfort. They are allowed to find shade, move farther away, decide that the light I carry isn’t the light they want to stand in.

And I am allowed to notice when I am lowering myself to meet someone else’s dimness. Because perhaps the invitation isn’t for either of us to become smaller. Maybe I get to stand here, fully myself, and in doing that, someone else realizes they can too. Not because I taught them how to shine or I gave them permission. But because sometimes seeing someone else stop apologizing for their own light reminds us that we’ve been carrying light all along.

Ok. So. Maybe the question isn’t whether I am too bright… perhaps a much more uncomfortable question…

Who told me I needed to dim in the first place?

If this has stirred something in you, stay with me a little longer. Below, paid subscribers can move into a self-guided practice to explore how dimming - and being fully yourself - actually feels in your body. Less figuring it out, more getting curious about what your body already knows.

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Exploring your light

For this practice, we’re not trying to figure out where you need to be bigger, louder or brighter, but rather get curious about something much simpler:

What does it actually feel like in your body to dim? And what does it feel like to be fully in your own light?

Because sometimes we know we’re making ourselves smaller before we have words for it…. Our body knows.

Maybe your shoulders pull inward, your voice changes, you feel something tighten in your throat, you stop breathing as deeply, or your stomach clenches. Maybe you feel yourself becoming very aware of the other person and much less aware of yourself.

And sometimes what we call dimming isn’t dimming at all. Sometimes we’re quiet because we want to be quiet. Sometimes we don’t want to take up space and our body genuinely wants to pull inward.

That’s why this isn’t about deciding that bright is good and dim is bad. It’s about learning the difference in your body.

Begin with your body

Find somewhere you can sit comfortably and have a few uninterrupted minutes.

You can close your eyes if that feels comfortable, or simply soften your gaze.

Before trying to notice anything, allow yourself to arrive.

Feel whatever is supporting your body.

Notice your feet.

Your legs.

Your belly.

Your chest.

Your shoulders.

Your jaw.

Notice your breath.

You don’t need to change anything. You’re simply beginning to notice what your body feels like before asking it any questions.

Give yourself a few moments here.

Remember a moment you dimmed

Bring to mind a recent moment when you noticed yourself becoming smaller for someone else’s comfort.

Choose something relatively ordinary. This isn’t the place to revisit something deeply painful or overwhelming. Maybe you didn’t say what you actually thought or you knew something but softened your certainty. Maybe you wanted to contribute but held back. Maybe you changed your energy when you noticed someone else’s reaction to you.

You don’t need to replay the entire experience. Just bring enough of the moment to mind that you can notice what happens in your body.

Then pause.

Where do you feel it?

Does anything tighten?

Do your shoulders change?

Does your chest feel different?

What happens in your throat? Your jaw? Your stomach?

What happens to your breath?

Do you feel yourself pulling inward, becoming smaller or moving away from yourself in some way?

Don’t search for the “right” sensation. Just become aware of the sensations you’re feeling in your body. Being open to sensing tightness, heaviness, numbness or other.

There may be absolutely nothing obvious. You’re simply learning the language of your own body.

Stay curious and present with what is.

Now remember your light

Let that memory go and return to your breath for a few moments.

Feel the support underneath you again.

Then bring to mind a moment when you felt fully yourself.

Not necessarily a moment when you were loud or powerful or the centre of attention.

A moment when you didn’t feel the need to monitor yourself.

Maybe you were talking about something you love. Maybe you were laughing. Creating. Teaching. Dancing. Working. Sitting with someone who makes it easy to be yourself. Maybe you were alone.

Find a moment when you weren’t asking yourself: Am I too much here?

Bring that version of yourself into your awareness.

And notice your body.

Where does your light live?

What happens to your chest?

Your shoulders?

Your face?

Your belly?

Your breath?

Do you feel warmth anywhere?

Expansion?

Energy?

Softness?

Groundedness?

Maybe your light doesn’t feel big at all.

Maybe it feels calm, steady or like taking a deeper breath.

Maybe it simply feels like not needing to leave yourself.

Let your body show you rather than deciding what brightness is supposed to feel like.

Now notice the difference

You don’t need to analyze either experience.

Just hold them beside each other.

This is what my body felt like when I was making myself smaller.

This is what my body felt like when I was simply being myself.

What changed?

Where did you feel each experience?

What happened to your breath?

Where was there contraction?

Where was there space?

And most importantly, what felt like you?

There isn’t a conclusion you need to reach, you are building familiarity. Because the more familiar we become with the embodied experience of our own light, the more likely we are to notice when we begin moving away from it.

Take it with you

Over the next week, don’t try to stop yourself from dimming.

Just notice.

When you’re in conversation with someone, entering a room, sharing an idea, speaking about something you know, asking for something you need or choosing not to speak at all, occasionally come back to your body.

What is happening inside me right now?

And if you notice yourself becoming smaller, try asking: Do I genuinely want to pull inward right now, or am I making myself smaller to manage someone else’s comfort?

You don’t even have to change what you’re doing. Notice first.

Because sometimes the most important shift isn’t immediately becoming brighter.

It’s recognizing the moment we begin turning down our own light.

And perhaps, with enough curiosity, we begin to learn the difference between retreating because our own rhythm asks us to... and disappearing because we learned we should.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

For me, a huge part of understanding my own rhythm came through understanding my menstrual cycle and eventually seeing the parallels between what was happening inside my body and what I was witnessing outside of it.

I didn’t learn any of this when I was young.

Honestly, I don’t think I really started understanding my body this way until I was in my 30s, when I began studying nutrition through a more holistic lens. Until then, I didn’t have much awareness that there might be a reason I felt wildly capable one week and wanted everyone to leave me the fuck alone the next. I didn’t understand that my energy, creativity, desire to be social, ability to hold things, or need to retreat might shift throughout the month.

I certainly didn’t understand those changes as information. I think I mostly understood them as inconsistency… maybe even thought that there was something wrong with me. But when I began learning about the menstrual cycle through the metaphor of the seasons, something clicked for me.

Spring is that gradual return after bleeding. Energy begins to come back, there can be a sense of possibility again, of wanting to emerge and begin. Summer is associated with ovulation and, for me, that expansive energy - the part of my cycle when I often feel more creative, social, capable and outward-facing. Autumn begins the movement inward again and energy starts to shift. There can be more discernment, less tolerance for bullshit, a desire to finish things rather than start everything. And winter is the bleed. The most inward part of the cycle. Rest. Warmth. Quiet. Less outward output.

Not every woman experiences her body this way. Some women don’t menstruate. Some have irregular cycles. Some are moving through perimenopause or menopause. Some may not relate to this framework at all. I’m not interested in turning it into another rule women are supposed to follow. It was simply a framework that helped me understand myself. Because suddenly, I could see something happening inside of me that Mother Nature had been doing in front of me my entire life.

She cycles. And somehow I had learned that I shouldn’t.

I had spent much of my younger life trying to live in perpetual summer: Be productive. Make things. Grow things. Start things. Finish things. Be available. Have energy. Be social. Be creative. Be useful. Keep fucking going.

Bloom baby bloom… and then bloom some more.

And even now, with all of this awareness, I struggle with it.

I am a highly productive person. I like getting shit done. There are parts of me that genuinely thrive there. And the reality is that my life and my work require a certain amount of consistent output from me. I can’t tell everyone, “Sorry, I’m in my internal autumn, circle back in two weeks.” There are responsibilities with people who rely on me. Work that needs to happen. A family. A career. A life.

So this isn’t about burning everything down in the name of honouring our cycles. It isn’t about refusing to participate in life because our bodies are asking for something different. I think it’s much more subtle than that.

It’s about noticing.

What do I actually have available today?

What am I asking myself to carry?

Where am I forcing summer when something in me has already moved into autumn?

And what would it look like to honour that without abandoning the life I have built?

I keep thinking about this now because autumn is my favourite season.

As I write this, I can look out my window and literally see the leaves changing. There is something breathtaking to me about this time of year. The colours, smell, and coolness in the morning. There is a nostalgia that comes with autumn that I can’t entirely explain. It makes me want to stop, look around and breathe a little deeper.

And every year, I crave it. I think part of what I am craving is the permission it seems to offer.

You can slow down now.

Think about it… Mother Nature has spent months growing. Everything has been reaching outward with gardens producing, trees full, long days, and light late into the evening. There has been abundance everywhere.

And now the rhythm changes.

On our land, we begin pulling things from the garden. The things we planted months ago and waited for are finally ready to be harvested. And there’s something interesting about that too. We don’t grow something and then insist it stay in the ground forever simply because we worked so hard to grow it.

We take what is ready - we pull what is finished - we let what needs to die, die. What looks like death begins decomposing and becoming something else. The earth starts preparing for the long rest ahead. None of this feels like failure when I witness it in nature.

That’s the part that gets me.

I can stand outside and watch a tree lose every single fucking leaf it grew that year and never once think it should try harder to hold on. I don’t look at my garden after harvest and think, What a waste. Look at everything that isn’t producing anymore.

I don’t expect the trees to bloom in October. So why is it sometimes so difficult to offer myself that same understanding?

Why does less energy become something I need to overcome?

Why does slowing down sometimes feel dangerously close to falling behind?

Why does letting something go feel so different when it is my own life rather than a leaf falling from a tree?

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Maybe this is what autumn keeps trying to show me… Not everything is supposed to stay or keep producing or blooming. And letting something fall doesn’t necessarily mean anything has gone wrong.

There is a natural decomposition that needs to happen in our lives too. Ideas we have outgrown, identities that no longer fit, relationships with ourselves that have run their course, and expectations we have carried for years without ever stopping to wonder whether they still belong to us.

Maybe some things aren’t asking to be fixed. MAYBE they’re asking to be allowed to fall.

And yes, I struggle with this. I want to say that plainly because I don’t want to write about rhythm as though I have somehow mastered living cyclically. I haven’t. Even knowing my body’s rhythms, I still push, asking myself to bloom when I’m tired, mistake productivity for capacity AND sometimes believe that because I can carry something, I should.

And my life doesn’t always allow me to completely honour the season I am in, either. Sometimes I have to show up when I would rather retreat. Sometimes work requires summer energy when my body is very clearly saying, Absolutely fucking not. Nope. I am staying in bed.

Maybe honouring our rhythm isn’t about creating a life where we never have to push against it. Perhaps it’s about knowing when we are because that awareness alone changes something… because then… I can look for the places where I do have choice.

Like - don’t add another thing on the list of things to do or go to bed earlier or don’t turn an empty Saturday into an opportunity to accomplish seventeen things. Maybe even stop demanding creativity from myself when nothing wants to come and let something remain unfinished. I can allow myself to have less to give without immediately constructing a story about what that says about me.

There is something about autumn that makes this feel possible for me.

Mother Nature isn’t frantically trying to keep summer alive. She is naturally doing what comes next… without force or fight.

Changing. Shedding. Decomposing. Preparing. Resting.

So.. maybe the question isn’t how do I become better at slowing down? Perhaps we need to simplify.

What am I trying to keep blooming that is no longer in season?

Because really - what the fuck blooms all year?

If something in this stirred something in you, stay with me a little longer. Below, I’ve created a self-guided practice for us to move from reading about these ideas into wondering about how they might be living in our own lives. There’s nothing to solve or figure out—just a little space to slow down, listen, and get curious together. This part of Between Sisters is for paid subscribers, and I’d love to have you join me there.

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For this practice, there is nothing you need to figure out, need to release, change or make a decision about. You don’t need to walk away from this knowing what comes next.

The intention is simply to create some internal space.

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I came across a Note on this platform the other day…

It’s a simple one… but one of those things you read and then, for whatever reason, it follows you around for a while. At first, it had me thinking about muchness, specifically about women and our ‘so called’ muchness. About all the ways we have been told, directly and indirectly, that we are too much: too emotional, loud, sensitive, needy, opinionated, angry, ambitious, sexual, complicated… basically… too fucking much.

I’ve thought about this before, of course. I think most women have, whether we’ve called it that or not. We learn pretty early how to read a room, notice when our feelings make someone uncomfortable, pull ourselves back, soften what we really want to say, make our needs a little more palatable, and become less inconvenient. There is a whole conversation here about women and muchness, and I thought maybe that was where I was going.

But then I started thinking about Mother Nature.

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I use the word Mother intentionally because that is how I experience her. I feel deeply connected to Mother Nature. To her seasons and weather, the hours of the day and the changing light. To the moon and her cycles, the earth and the dirt and the things we put into it and the things that somehow come back out. To what she grows, produces, and what we eat from her. But also what we consume from her. I notice myself in relationship with her all the time, because she is not simply existing for us to enjoy being outside… she is a rhythm to exist alongside.

And also… Mother Nature is a lot. She is fucking excessive when you really think about it.

Stand under a sky filled with stars and try to comprehend how many there are. Stand at the edge of the ocean and feel how incredibly small you are beside it. Feel the heat of the sun on a day when it is relentless. Watch a storm roll in and turn the sky nearly black in the middle of the afternoon. Watch the wind rip branches from trees, a garden explode with zucchini faster than any reasonable human being could possibly eat it. Watch weeds take over everything despite your very clear plans for where they were and were not supposed to grow.

Nature is not particularly concerned with being reasonable. And yet, I don’t look at a field overflowing with wildflowers and think, come on!, could you tone it down a little? I don’t look at the stars and think there are simply too many. And I definitely don’t stand beneath a giant old tree and wish it had taken up less space.

We might complain about the weather. God knows I do. We might wish winter would hurry the fuck up and end. We might want more rain or less rain or warmer days or cooler nights. But Mother Nature doesn’t change herself because I would prefer something different from her.

She just keeps being what she is.

And something about felt like a mini explosion in my mind and body.

Because what if instead of only talking about our own muchness, we started wondering about what Mother Nature mirrors back to us about being human?

Right now, we are moving into autumn. The leaves are beginning to change, mornings feel different. The light and air is different. Everything that spent the summer growing and producing is beginning to shift. My garden is reaching its end, and soon I’ll start pulling out what was growing there, the leaves will fall and I will mostly leave them where they land. Things will decompose and return themselves to the earth.

Everything starts to go to sleep. And I can feel it in my body too.

There is an impulse in me to wind down. To do less and turn inward a little more. Summer carries this energy of doing and going and growing and being outside until late because the sun somehow convinces us there is still more day left. And then autumn arrives and something in me knows before I consciously name it that the rhythm is changing.

I want to follow it. And this new rhythm feels like home in my body - like an inner knowing of what’s about to arrive.

AND… it makes me wonder why we have built lives that so often require us not to follow but to keep moving at the same pace we always do. Nature has seasons, but somehow we expect ourselves to exist in perpetual summer.

Grow. Produce. Create. Accomplish. Go. Keep going. Do more. Become more.

Bloom, bloom, bloom.

But what the fuck blooms all year? Actually.

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There are people I know who are thrilled that autumn is arriving. They can’t wait for the cool weather and sweaters and darkness coming earlier. There are others already dreading what is coming. They want the heat to stay. They want long evenings and bare feet and gardens and green trees. Neither is wrong. Neither is right.

And Mother Nature doesn’t give a shit either way. She doesn’t stop because we aren’t ready.

The leaves don’t cling to the branches because I’m sad to see summer go. The ground doesn’t refuse to freeze because someone hates winter. The darkness doesn’t wait until we have emotionally prepared ourselves for shorter days.

There is something strangely comforting to me about that. She changes without asking permission, rests without explaining herself, sheds what is finished, becomes barren, and then abundant. She destroys things and grows them back (though never the same way). She can be soft and warm and glorious, and she can also be brutal and inconvenient and completely indifferent to the plans we made.

And all of it belongs.

Maybe that’s the part I keep circling.

All of it belongs.

I wonder what would happen if we began looking at ourselves with some of that same wonderment.

Not using nature as another fucking self-improvement project or looking at a tree and asking what five things it can teach us about productivity OR trying to turn the moon cycle into another way to optimize ourselves.

Just noticing…

When you look at the stars, what happens inside of you?

When you feel the sun on your face, what does your body do?

When a storm rolls in, are you afraid of it? Energized by it? Do you want to run outside or hide under the blankets?

What season do you resist?

What season feels like home?

What does darkness stir in you?

What does growth mean to you?

What happens when something dies?

What do you believe about rest when there is nothing visible to show for it?

Maybe our relationship with nature tells us something about our relationship with ourselves.

There’s another layer to this that I can’t stop thinking about…

→ we aren’t actually separate from any of it.

We talk about “going into nature” as though we are leaving one world and entering another. We talk about “connecting with nature” as though connection is something we need to manufacture. But our bodies are nature. We eat from the earth. We breathe because of it. Our bodies respond to light and darkness. We need water. We grow and shed and bleed and age and heal and eventually die. We are living inside the same cycles we stand outside admiring.

So when the fuck did we decide that nature was over there and we were something else? And maybe an even more uncomfortable question: when did we decide we were above her?

Because our relationship with Mother Nature isn’t only one of awe and beauty. It is also one of consumption. We take from her constantly. We take what she grows. We take her water, her trees, and what is beneath her soil. We take and take and take, often with very little thought about what is being returned.

And I can’t help but notice the connection to the Mother and… maybe even women all together. The expectation that she will continue to provide simply because she always has. That her resources are ours because we need them. That she will feed us. Hold us. Sustain us. Give to us. And we rarely stop to ask what the relationship asks of us in return.

I don’t quite know where that thought leads yet. I don’t think I want to know yet. I want to stay curious about it.

Maybe that is what this next series is going to be about. Not lessons from Mother Nature because that feels far too neat.

I want to wonder about her and look towards the sun and the moon and the stars and the dirt and the weeds and the weather and the seasons and see what they stir up in me. I want to notice what I resist and what I am drawn toward. I want to wonder about what Mother Nature mirrors back to us (me) when we stop trying to make her mean something.

And maybe, somewhere inside all of that, we will remember something about ourselves. Because Mother Nature has never apologized for being too much. Maybe she never understood the question in the first place…

If this kind of wondering speaks to you, I’d love to have you here. A paid subscription supports the work of Between Sisters and allows me to keep creating a space where we can question what we’ve been taught, get curious about who we are underneath it all, and explore the messy, beautiful, sometimes uncomfortable parts of being human together. Not because we need more answers, but because sometimes the right question changes everything.

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Amanda Cook is a women’s trauma counselor and founder of Mother|HER. She works in private practice and within systems supporting women impacted by trauma and violence and is devoted to women’s evolution through inner child work, collective healing, and honest, compassionate presence.

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I think there are very conflicting messages out there that can confuse us, especially as women. One of those messages is: choose yourself… and while I understand what sits underneath that message, I also think it can be such a simplistic view of what life really asks of us.

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Because it isn’t just about choosing yourself. The reality is that the majority of women are carrying a boatload of responsibilities. Children. Partners. Parents. Work. Homes. Friendships. Communities. The invisible things we remember and anticipate and hold for other people. And it doesn’t mean that a woman can’t carry a lot. I know many women who can. I am one of them. But what it does mean is that somewhere within everything she is carrying, she has to prioritize herself too.

Underneath all of this, I think, is a much deeper conversation about the ways women are given badges of honour for choosing everyone else over themselves. It’s this ideology of selflessness and how commendable that is.

I’ve been facilitating and creating workshops for survivors of gender-based violence for years, and in these conversations I’ve often challenged the idea of what selfless actually means. So many women find themselves in very dangerous situations not only from their own programming and what they’ve experienced, but intergenerational programming… so far back, that it’s hard to trace.

And somewhere within all of that programming - wherever it comes from - we find ourselves being given a badge of honour for being self-less.

And I keep coming back to the word itself.

Less of self.

For others.

What does it mean when this is what we have been taught to aspire to? It conveys the message that to be a desirable woman… she needs to give more. Needs less. Handles it. Keeps going. Makes sure everyone else is okay. Sacrifices. Accommodates. Understands. Forgives. Carries.

And then we celebrate her for it.

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I believe some of this is etched so deeply into us - into our families, our histories, the messages we’ve absorbed, the ways our brains have learned to think - that we may not even recognize when it’s guiding us.

Which is why I don’t think the rebellion here is about now choosing ourselves over everyone else. That doesn’t feel like the answer to me either.

So… maybe the rebellion is learning to include ourselves, while asking questions like…

→ How do I integrate myself into the equation?

→ How do I consider myself while still carrying the responsibilities I have and caring deeply for the people I love?

→ How do I remember that I don’t have to be eliminated from the conversation or from the thought process?

Here we start to consider… I am part of this process too.

Maybe that’s the distinction I’ve been trying to find throughout this whole series. It’s not them or me. It’s not caring for others or caring for myself. It’s learning to notice when I have disappeared from my own consideration.

I use the term mothering in the work that I do because I want to reclaim the idea of what it means to mother. I think our understanding of mothering has been distorted by generations of conditioning around what women should give, what we should sacrifice, how much we should carry, and how little we should need in return. And I wonder what we continue to pass on to our daughters when we don’t challenge that. Because if mothering is to guide, nurture, protect and support another person as they become more fully themselves, isn’t that also what we deserve?

Regardless of our age.

Maybe we don’t ever outgrow the need to be mothered. Maybe the difference, as we get older, is that some of that mothering has to begin coming from within us. Not indulgence or choosing ourselves at the expense of everyone around us. But learning to guide ourselves… nurture ourselves, to listen when something in us says, this is too much and to support ourselves through hard choices. To allow someone to be disappointed in us without immediately deciding we’ve done something wrong. To recognize when our capacity has changed and question the identities we’ve built around being needed. To consider what we need alongside what everyone else needs from us.

Perhaps that’s where this whole conversation has been leading. Not toward becoming less caring or carrying nothing… only choosing ourselves. But toward refusing to continually remove ourselves from the equation.

Perhaps this starts individually, in the smallest moments, by asking:

Where am I in this?

Not What should I do?

Not Who needs me?

Not even What is the right choice?

Just… Where am I in this?

Because maybe mothering ourselves begins there with remembering that we are here too.

For paid subscribers, this week’s integration stays with the word selfless - exploring what it has meant to you, where you learned it, and where it feels aligned or asks you to become less of yourself.

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Understanding what selfless has come to mean to us matters because we can’t question what we don’t recognize. When we begin to see what we’ve inherited or what we’ve simply learned to carry… we create space to decide what still belongs to us.

the shadow of selfless

I want to stay with one word from this week’s reflection: Selfless.

It is a word we often use as a compliment… She is so selfless.

It can speak to generosity, kindness, compassion, sacrifice, and our willingness to show up for the people we love. There are parts of selflessness that I deeply value and don’t want to lose. But I also want to get curious about its shadow because when I separate the word, I can’t help but see it differently:

Self-less.

Less of self.

And I wonder what relationship each of us has developed with that idea.

For this integration, I don’t want you to decide whether being selfless is good or bad. I want you to explore what the word has meant to you - where you learned it, what you witnessed, what you’ve been rewarded for, and how those messages may still be living within you now.

Start by writing the word SELFLESS in the centre of a page.

Then begin with: What does being selfless mean to me?

Write whatever comes forward, even if your answers contradict one another.

Then go back a little further: How was selflessness role modelled to me?

Who showed you what it meant to be a “good” woman, mother, daughter, partner, friend or caregiver? What did you watch them give? What did they go without? What did they tolerate? What were they praised for? And perhaps, what happened when they chose themselves?

You don’t have to look only at what you were explicitly taught. Consider what you simply absorbed by watching.

Then bring yourself into the present: How does selflessness show up in my life now?

Look across the different parts of your life—mothering, relationships, friendships, family, work, caregiving, community.

Where do you give without questioning it?

Where do you naturally consider someone else’s needs before your own?

Where does doing that feel deeply aligned with who you are? AND… where does it not?

I invite you to resist the temptation to make selflessness the problem because maybe there are places where giving generously feels beautiful. Maybe there are sacrifices you would make again without hesitation. Maybe caring deeply for others is a part of yourself that you genuinely value.

The question isn’t whether you should stop being selfless.

The inquiry is whether you know when it is aligned with you - and when it requires you to become less of yourself in order to maintain it.

So perhaps divide your page into two:

Where selflessness feels aligned with me | Where selflessness feels misaligned with me.

Let yourself notice the difference.

What does each feel like in your body?

What does aligned selflessness give you?

What does misaligned selflessness cost you?

And when you look at the two sides together, is there anything you can see now that you couldn’t see before?

Once you’ve explored, I leave you with one final question to sit with:

What would selflessness look like if it didn’t require less of me?

Perhaps the work isn’t to become less giving, nurturing, loving or willing to show up for one another. Perhaps it’s learning that we can be part of the care we give.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

And yeah, it’s not always out of obligation - although sometimes that’s there. Sometimes it’s conditioning: the caregivers in our lives, the role modelling, what we think we should be doing without it ever actually being told to us.

All of these things can lead us to crossing our own line. But maybe even deeper than that, it’s identity.

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When we do something enough, when we cross our own line enough, it becomes reinforced through the actions we take and the feedback we receive. Eventually, it can start to feel like this is simply part of who we are.

→ We are the capable one.

→ We are the one who sits and listens.

→ We are the one everyone calls when they need something.

… Maybe we’re the one who anticipates the needs of others. The one who remembers. The one who has repeatedly been told, directly or indirectly, you can handle it. And so, you carry it all.

I’m not here to tell anyone that any of this is wrong. Some of these traits are, in fact, beautiful and powerful parts of who we are. But I think what’s important is knowing where this identity comes from and how it informs us now…

Is it, in fact, serving us? Is it supporting us in the goals, aspirations, and things we want in our lives? Or is it getting in the way?

I’ve recently been going through a change in my career, stepping into a larger leadership role. And part of what this role requires of me is to be more mothering from a distance - giving people the information they need and allowing them to do what needs to be done with that information. Not helicoptering, but mentoring through the lens of empowerment.

As I’ve been reflecting on this, I’m noticing that some of my identity is wrapped up in being needed. And that has made me wonder how I might, without even realizing it, be giving messages to the people I lead that they do, in fact, need me.

That brings me right back to the lens of mothering.

Because the whole idea of mothering is not to create needy, dependent individuals. The hope is to support and empower individuals to make choices for themselves. To help them understand who they are so they can make hard choices themselves - even if they don’t always make the right choice - and to have compassion for them through the choices they’re making.

And yet, when part of our identity is connected to being needed, how easily can that interfere with what we are actually trying to create?

That’s what I find so interesting about identity. It’s really connected to a belief about who we are, and those beliefs can quietly overshadow the desires of what we’re trying to accomplish. Of course, my intention is not to mentor people into needing me more. In fact, it’s the opposite.

I want them to need me less.

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I want them to experience themselves in their positions with the utmost autonomy. I want them to think critically for themselves, trust what they know, make decisions, make mistakes, ask questions, and figure things out. And yet, if some part of me has learned that being needed means I am valuable, capable, important, or even connected to others, then I have to be curious about how that belief might show up - even when it is completely contrary to what I consciously want.

I explore this a lot in my private practice: the roots of these core beliefs… what lives in the shadows that we cannot yet see. Those moments when we are doing something and we don’t entirely know why we’re doing it because it isn’t aligned with our intention. We know what we want to do differently, and yet somehow we find ourselves sitting in the same patterns, becoming frustrated with ourselves for being there again.

To be clear… this is never about blame. And it’s definitely not about accusing yourself of something or turning another part of yourself into a problem that needs to be fixed.

Rather, I think it’s about becoming curious about the roots.

What have I learned about who I need to be in order to feel valuable, loved, capable, safe, or connected?

And how might that identity still be informing the choices I make today?

Because maybe being needed has served us. Maybe being the capable one has served us. Maybe being the listener, the caregiver, the one who remembers, anticipates, fixes, carries, and shows up has become a part of us that we genuinely love.

We don’t necessarily need to give those parts of ourselves up. But perhaps we do need to know when they are choosing for us…

And maybe that’s the deeper question underneath all of this:

Who am I when I am not needed?

And what might become possible if the people I care for, lead, support, and love don’t need me quite as much as they once did?

follow the root…

For paid subscribers, this week’s integration is an invitation to follow one thread a little deeper and explore what being needed gives you, and what might be waiting underneath the roles you’ve learned to carry.

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Understanding what sits beneath our patterns matters because when we know what is driving us, we have more choice in how we respond. The goal isn’t to change who we are, but to become more conscious of what we’re carrying… and why.

These practices build awareness that can result in moving towards a life we really desire… and be beautifully surprised to create one we never thought was possible.

Before you consider this practice, I want to be careful and clear - being needed is part of our humanity. We all want to belong and feel accepted, so before you explore the idea of what ‘being needed’ gives you, it’s important to consider the nuance of this topic. Because we can accept the humanity of wanting to be needed while also exploring what it gives you, even through the shadows parts of ourselves.

In reality, there are parts of ourselves that we come to know so well that we stop questioning where they came from. This practice isn’t about taking those parts of ourselves apart or deciding there is something wrong with being needed. I think there are parts of our identity that have served us beautifully, that we genuinely love about ourselves, and that we want to continue carrying.

But I also think there is value in getting curious about what sits underneath them. Because when something becomes part of our identity, we can stop recognizing that it is informing the choices we make. We simply think, this is who I am.

So rather than trying to change anything, I want to invite you to follow one thread and see where it takes you.

Think about one place in your life where you are accustomed to being needed.

Maybe it’s with your children, your partner, your parents, your friends, or within your work. Maybe you’re the person who remembers everything. The person people call. The listener. The organizer. The fixer. The one who knows what to do when things fall apart.

Choose just one.

Then begin with: People need me to ______________

Write whatever comes forward.

And then ask yourself: What does that give me?

Write your answer.

And then ask it again… And what does that give me?

Keep following the question.

Maybe being needed makes you feel capable. If so, What does feeling capable give me?

Maybe it tells you that you have something valuable to offer. What does being valuable give me?

Maybe it tells you that you have a place. What does having a place give me?

Maybe somewhere underneath all of it is belonging. or safety… or connection… or purpose… or love.

Or maybe you arrive somewhere completely different.

There is no answer you are supposed to uncover here.

Keep asking “And what does that give me?” until you reach something that makes you want to stop for a moment. Maybe you feel something in your body. Maybe you’re surprised by what you write. Maybe you feel resistance or emotion. Maybe you simply reach an answer that feels different from the ones before it.

Stay there.

You don’t need to figure out what it means or decide what to do with it. Just notice what you found and then, when you’re ready, sit with one final question:

If I no longer had to be needed in this way, what might I have to learn to give myself instead?

Maybe that’s where we begin to understand the difference between the parts of ourselves we consciously choose to carry and the identities that have quietly been choosing for us.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

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But that’s not always the season I was in. I’ve been in so many seasons where people’s disappointment about what I didn’t or didn’t do would crush me.

Perhaps it’s wisdom that I’m feeling or gained through enough experience and inner exploration that I’ve come to understand what is mine and what is somebody else’s. I mean, the reality is that one of the hardest things is disappointing the people you love.

Please know that I’m not saying that I have somehow figured this out perfectly. Literally the week prior, I was feeling guilt around my children’s disappointment about me having to work.

What feels true is that the line moves. Constantly.

The line moves within seasons, and the line can move within a day. Sometimes within an hour. Sometimes we feel the line and think to ourselves, Oh, I’ve got this. I’m in a place where I have enough capacity that I can navigate this.

And then the line moves. And suddenly you think, Oh, I don’t have this at all. I actually have zero capacity to deal with this.

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I don’t really want this to be a conversation about boundaries - although, really, it is about boundaries. But I think the confusing thing, and the thing that had me stumped for a very long time, was that I thought boundaries had to do with other people.

When, in fact, boundaries had to do with myself… my season, state of being, current level of capacity, what’s going on in my life, depth of caregiving, what’s being demanded of me within my relationships, my work, and my community.

I find I do a lot of reflection at the end of the day, when things start to quiet down. I think about what I’m carrying and what I can handle… and also what I can’t.

For someone who tends to want to do all the things and carry many things at once - and who can actually be quite good at it - it’s really important for me to check in with myself and think about what I can and can’t carry. And maybe this is another part of it that I’ve had to learn: what I can carry is not a reflection of who I am.

I think this can be hard when you’ve spent a lot of your life being someone who can carry a lot. When you’ve been capable, when people have relied on you, when you’ve relied on yourself to just figure it out. There can be something almost confronting about realizing, I actually can’t carry this right now because I think we can very quickly turn capacity into a judgment of ourselves.

I used to be able to do this… Why is this so hard for me now? What’s wrong with me that I can’t handle this?

But maybe nothing has gone wrong. Maybe the season has changed and there are things being asked of you now that weren’t being asked of you then. Maybe your capacity is being used somewhere else. And maybe acknowledging that isn’t failing to be the person you once were and being honest about the person you are right now.

I am endlessly fascinated by the idea of boundaries. I’m also endlessly fascinated by how we tend to hold so strongly to old agreements we’ve made with ourselves and how completely woven together the two are… old contracts, agreements, and of course… conditioning. All of it directly relates to the boundaries we have within ourselves. Maybe the agreement was that you could always handle a lot or you became the person who could be counted on. Or maybe you decided a long time ago what being a good mother, partner, friend, daughter, colleague - or simply a good woman - looked like. Maybe some of those agreements still fit but maybe some of them were made by a version of you who was living in an entirely different season.

So I’m curious about you.

Where does your capacity sit in this moment?

What are you carrying right now?

And of everything you’re carrying, is there any of it that maybe needs to be re-examined?

Not because it was always too much or because you were wrong for carrying it. But simply because the line moves.

And maybe you have too.

a Story and a Mirror

Usually in these integration spaces, I’m leading you into yourself to reflect. This week, I thought I would do something different. Instead, I want to share a personal story. Maybe it holds a mirror to a similar experience you’re having or have had. Perhaps it even brings forward a memory from the past...

For paid subscribers, I’m sharing a personal story that helped me see what I’d been carrying without realizing it. Maybe you’ll see a little of yourself in it too.

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One of the things I used to do when we were having people over was panic clean. The fear would drop into my body that people were coming over, and I would get extremely anxious where I would clean all the spaces that anybody had the potential of seeing.

And not only would I be anxious within myself, but I would become anxious toward my direct family members. I would snap, get short and insist that people help me clean or not walk into spaces that had already been cleaned.

I was almost trying to cultivate the illusion that I had my shit together. And the anxiety of that would, at times, make me spiral, because guess what… I don’t and never did.

When I think about conditioning, this is one of the places I can see it so clearly. This is what my mother used to do. She would panic clean and take it all on herself, making sure our house was spotless when people came over. But the reality is, we didn’t live like that normally. But God forbid anybody were to walk into our house if it was dirty… and not even dirty, because our house was never dirty.

Untidy.

There was something about someone seeing our home untidy that felt like it meant something. And somewhere along the way, I carried that forward too.

Over the last few years - the last two for sure - I’ve found that my capacity for cleaning when people are coming over is very, very small. In fact, there have been times when the only thing I’ve cleaned is the toilets. In some ways, I’ve just surrendered to the fact that this is how we live.

We are busy people, and I’m not going to apologize for the way we exist in this home together. This practice has been equally liberating and, at times, terrifying in its own way. Especially when I first started to tidy less FOR others, there was still this concern about the judgment that might come forward. What would someone think when they walked in? What would they see?

At first, I think I stopped because I simply didn’t have the capacity anymore. But now, it feels like something else too. I can pivot the story and say:

I’m so proud of how I live my life. Deeply imperfect, but very purposeful.

And so, if I invite someone into my sacred space, my home, then I have to trust that how they view it is not a reflection of me. This is simply the season I’m in.

And maybe that’s what has changed most. The house can be untidy, someone can see it and I can still be okay.

a question to sit with…

What feels true for you in this story?

Maybe it’s not about your home or cleaning at all. Just notice what came forward as you read - the memory, the recognition, the discomfort, the oh, I do that too.

You don’t have to do anything with it. Just notice what your own story might be trying to show you.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

What feels like generosity in one season of our lives can feel like depletion in another. What we once gave easily may eventually cost us more than we have to give. A boundary that once made sense may no longer fit the woman we are now. And perhaps most complicated of all, sometimes we don’t know we’ve crossed the line until we’re already standing quite far on the other side of it.

I’ve been noticing this in my own life lately. And, as these things often do, it showed up somewhere very ordinary…

In mothering.

guilt.

There have been times recently when I’ve had to miss things with my family because of work. And I don’t like missing them, I REALLY want to be there. I want the memories and the ordinary moments and the stories that get told afterward. I want to be part of the things happening in my children’s lives.

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But I also work. And more than that, I love the work I do. I feel deeply committed to it. That doesn’t always make the missing easier, but it does make the truth more complicated than I wish I could be there.

Both things are true. I want to be there. And I want the work.

Recently, one of my children started making comments about the things I was missing because I was working. Their words weren’t particularly dramatic. But enough that I noticed myself absorbing it. AND I started feeling guilty.

Not simply sad that I was missing something.

guilty.

As though working meant I had made the wrong choice and their disappointment was evidence of something I had done wrong.

And for a while, I swallowed it because isn’t that part of the story so many of us have inherited about motherhood?

You should be there. You should want to be there. And if you aren’t there, you should probably feel bad about it.

but then I started wondering

At some point, something in me pushed back. At first is felt quietly… like, Wait. Why am I carrying all of this?

My child is allowed to be disappointed that I’m not there. Their feelings are real. I don’t need to convince them otherwise…

But their disappointment doesn’t automatically mean I’ve done something wrong.

And that distinction felt important. Because somewhere along the way, I had started confusing caring about how they felt with taking responsibility for making sure they never felt disappointed by my choices.

Those aren’t the same thing.

So I had to speak up to my own child and clarify and course correct. Which, strangely, felt like its own kind of boundary.

I had to say, in essence: I hear that you wish I were there. I wish I could be there too. And I also need you to understand that my work matters to me. Not instead of you or more than you. BUT alongside you.

I could honour their feelings without making myself wrong and maybe that sounds obvious when I write it here. It didn’t feel obvious when I was standing inside of it.

maybe this is part of mothering, too

I’ve been thinking a lot about what we mean when we talk about mothering. Because I don’t think mothering belongs only to women who have children.

Women mother in so many places.

We guide, tend, anticipate, remember, and hold space. We care for parents and partners and friends and siblings. We care for communities. We care through the work we do in the world.

There are so many ways women become responsible for tending to the lives around them. And I genuinely love that part of myself. I don’t want to become someone who doesn’t care deeply. I don’t want the answer to self-abandonment to be caring less.

But I wonder whether, somewhere in all that mothering, we have forgotten that we are also someone who requires our care. Because I can see the ways I’ve quietly moved myself to the background not because anyone necessarily demanded it, but sometimes because it simply felt like the natural thing to do. And even through this work that I am exploring daily… how easily it creeps up on my without realizing. There is always someone needs something or is disappointed, uncomfortable or needing support. And almost instinctively, my attention moves toward them.

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Maybe yours does too. But then where do we go in that moment?

the line isn’t always obvious

I think this is why conversations about boundaries can sometimes feel too simple to me.

→ Set the boundary.

→ Choose yourself.

→ Protect your peace.

Okay. Sure. BUT life with other humans is rarely that clean. Sometimes love asks something of us… caring for another person means giving when we’d rather not. Sometimes motherhood means putting someone else’s needs ahead of our own… we make sacrifices willingly because the relationship matters to us.

That isn’t necessarily self-abandonment.

So where is the line? Honestly, I’m not sure there’s one answer. I think the line moves depending on who we are, what we’re carrying, what season we’re in and what we actually have available to give.

But perhaps there is a question we can begin asking.

Am I choosing to give something of myself here, or am I disappearing without noticing?

Because those can look remarkably similar from the outside and they can feel remarkably different inside.

nothing I do is ever enough…

There is another layer underneath this that I am still exploring: The feeling that nothing I do is ever quite enough. There always seems to be somewhere else I could have been, something else I could have done, someone else I could have given more to.

I wonder how many women carry some version of that… And I wonder how often guilt steps in precisely because there is no finish line.

There is always more care we could give. Which means, if we aren’t careful, there is always another reason to believe we haven’t given enough.

But lately I’ve been challenging that story in myself, not by pretending I get everything right. Because, I don’t. And not by declaring that I never need to reconsider my choices. Because, I do. But rather by allowing myself to say something that feels surprisingly vulnerable:

I do a lot. I care deeply. I show up. I love my children. I love my work. I give to the people around me. And I don’t need to diminish any of that simply because somewhere, someone wanted something more from me.

Maybe this is part of mothering too. Not only seeing everyone else… Seeing ourselves by acknowledging our own experience before someone else validates it for us. Recognizing when guilt is telling us something important - and when it is simply an old story asking us, once again, to make ourselves smaller in service of someone else’s needs. And perhaps even learning to speak up when the person asking us to abandon ourselves is someone we love very much.

What’s also very nuanced through this exploration is to not to make their feelings wrong but to stop making ours wrong too. That both are true, which makes this process complex.

So this is where I want to further this exploration, not with better boundaries or choosing ourselves over everyone else, but with curiosity about the line.

→ Where is yours right now?

→ Where can you feel yourself willingly giving because you want to?

→ And where have you started disappearing?

Integration is where insight begins to become something we can actually live. We can recognize ourselves in a story, understand something differently, even have that oh, that's me moment - but awareness alone doesn't always change the ways we move through our lives. Integration asks us to stay with what we've noticed. To get curious about how it lives in our bodies, our relationships, and our everyday choices. Not so we can immediately “fix” ourselves, but so we can begin to know ourselves more deeply. That is the work we do together in this space.

A Space for Integration

If you’re someone who reads these words and often finds yourself thinking, Okay, but how do I explore this in my own life?… this is the space I’ve created for that.

Paid subscribers receive the deeper integration practices that accompany these reflections: guided questions, embodied practices, journaling invitations, and tools to help you move beyond simply understanding something intellectually and begin exploring how it lives within you.

This space is for women who want to know themselves more deeply, not because there is something to fix, but because there is something worth listening to.

If you’re craving a place to slow down, get curious, and bring what you’re noticing back to yourself, I’d love to have you here.

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Where Is My Line Today?

There is a temptation, when we begin noticing the places we may be abandoning ourselves, to immediately ask:

What do I need to change?

• Where do I need a better boundary?

• What do I need to say no to?

• Who do I need to have a conversation with?

But I don’t want to start there. Because before we change anything, perhaps we need to become more familiar with ourselves inside of the caring where we notice what we’re giving. What it costs us. What we willingly choose. What we’ve simply become accustomed to carrying. And where guilt may have become so intertwined with love that it’s difficult to tell them apart.

So for this week’s integration, we’re not trying to fix the line. We’re simply going to look for it.

The Care Inventory

Take out a piece of paper and write: Who and what am I caring for right now?

Try your best to not overthink this but use these categories to consider while also adding your own.

• Children

• Partner

• Parents

• Friends

• Work

• Your home

• Your community

• Someone going through a difficult time

• The emotional temperature of your family

• The things you organize, remember and anticipate

… Include the invisible things too.

Then, beside each one, ask yourself: What am I giving here?

Time? Attention? Emotional energy? Money? Physical care? Problem-solving? Listening? Planning? Remembering? Anticipating?

Then: What does this require from me right now?

And: Does this care feel chosen, expected, obligatory - or some combination of all three?

There doesn’t need to be anything wrong with what you discover. You may look at something requiring an enormous amount from you and still know, Yes. I want to give this right now. That’s important information too.

Finally, look at everything you’ve written and ask: Where am I on this page?

Not metaphorically… but where is your care for you? What are you receiving? What are you tending to within yourself? And just notice.

Guilt or Information?

Now choose one place from your inventory that has some charge around it. Something that brings up guilt, resentment, obligation, frustration, sadness - or that familiar feeling that you should be doing more.

Bring yourself back to a recent moment connected to it, then explore:

→ What actually happened?

Try to separate what happened from the story you’ve created about what happened.

→ Who was disappointed, uncomfortable or affected by my choice?

→ What am I telling myself their feelings mean about me?

• I’m selfish

• I’m letting them down

• I should be doing more

• A good mother wouldn’t...

• A good daughter would...

• A caring friend should...

Whatever is there, write it down. And then ask yourself something I have been asking myself: Did I actually act against one of my values - or did someone simply not get what they wanted or needed from me?

There is a difference.

Sometimes guilt contains information or we recognize that we acted in a way that doesn’t align with who we want to be. We repair, reconsider and choose differently next time.

But sometimes guilt arrives simply because someone else is disappointed. And those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

So try one more question: If I removed guilt from the equation, would I still believe I made the wrong choice?

Sit with that one for a while.

Someone Can Be Disappointed in Me

This may be the hardest part because intellectually understanding that someone is allowed to be disappointed in us is very different from being able to stay with ourselves while they are.

Find somewhere comfortable to sit.

Take a few breaths.

Notice your body before you begin trying to understand anything and then slowly complete these sentences:

Someone I love is allowed to feel __________ when I __________.

Their feeling does not necessarily mean __________.

I can care about their experience while also __________.

What I wish they understood about my experience is __________.

And finally:

What I am allowed to need here is __________.

Notice what happens in your body as you write.

• Where do you tighten?

• Where do you immediately want to explain yourself?

• Where does guilt appear?

• Where do you feel relief?

You don’t need to do anything with what comes up - nothing. This is about staying with yourself long enough to hear yourself because maybe that’s where the line becomes visible. Not through a list of rules about what we should and shouldn’t tolerate, but through relationship with ourselves.

Through noticing…

Through allowing someone else’s feelings to exist without immediately making them our responsibility.

Through recognizing that caring deeply for another person and remaining loyal to ourselves can exist at the same time.

So as you move through this week, carry one question with you: Where is my line today - not where do I think it should be, but where is it actually?

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

We’ve been exploring rupture, disconnection, and the parts of ourselves that seem to leave when something becomes too much. But I’ve also been wondering about the part that stays - the quiet part of us that remains present enough to notice.

This short meditation is an invitation to slow down and spend a little time with her. No fixing or searching for answers. Just noticing what is here.

Find somewhere you can be undisturbed, press play, and let’s get curious together.

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If this practice gave you a place to pause, Between Sisters offers more spaces like this - honest letters, curious conversations, and deeper integration practices to help you find your way back to yourself. Subscribe for free to join us, or become a paid subscriber to go a little deeper.

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Amanda Cook is a women’s trauma counselor and founder of Mother|HER. She works in private practice and within systems supporting women impacted by trauma and violence and is devoted to women’s evolution through inner child work, collective healing, and honest, compassionate presence.

Wondering about how aware I was in the exact moment I disconnected from him. Wondering where I went. Wondering about what it took to come back. And maybe most of all, wondering about the version of me who was somehow able to witness the whole thing happening.

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Because that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

For much of my earlier life, checking out was familiar to me. I was highly dissociative. There are stretches of my life that exist in fuzzy fragments and others I don’t remember at all.

Yes, I understand why.

There are ways we learn to protect ourselves that make perfect sense when we understand what our bodies and minds were trying to survive.

Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring this part of myself. I’ve practiced being present and learned strategies that help me stay connected to my body. I’ve become curious about where I go when things feel uncomfortable rather than simply disappearing into wherever that place is.

And I continue to practice.

Maybe that’s why what happened in Quebec has stayed with me. Because there we were, in the middle of an otherwise beautiful day, and something happened between my husband and me.

A micro moment… and I felt the switch - a shutdown or cord being cut. I knew I was leaving and I couldn’t stop it.

That’s such a strange thing to write because awareness is so often spoken about as though it automatically gives us choice.

Once you become aware of the pattern, you can change it.

Can you?

Because I was aware. Painfully aware and still, something inside me had already decided that we were going somewhere else.

That’s when I experienced the void. That’s the best way I can describe it.

A liminal space inside myself that felt empty and numb. I knew I was disconnected from my husband, but what I hadn’t understood until that moment was that I had also disconnected from myself. And for almost twenty-four hours, I couldn’t simply decide to come back.

I wanted to and I knew what was happening. I was actively trying to find my way back but awareness wasn’t a magic doorway.

I couldn’t think myself through it or tell myself that everything was okay and suddenly feel connected again. It just had to be what it was for a while.

But here’s the part that feels extraordinary to me - I was still there. Somehow, inside that disconnection, there was presence.

I could feel the void and notice myself feeling the void.

I could recognize that I had checked out without completely checking out of the experience of it. I could hold the disconnection and the awareness of the disconnection at the same time.

Maybe that doesn’t sound particularly remarkable.

To me, it was.

Because I’ve known another kind of leaving where experiences become fuzzy or disappear altogether. This wasn’t that.

In this experience, I remember all the details… the forest, my husband, the sadness. I remember wanting to return and not knowing how. I remember the cry that eventually came. And I remember slowly feeling myself come back online.

I was gone. And somehow, I was also there.

Isn’t that wild?

I keep coming back to that.

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Because after years of doing this work, both within myself and alongside others, I could easily convince myself that I understand what presence looks like. And then an ordinary moment in the middle of a trip with my husband comes along and rearranges what I thought I knew.

Maybe presence doesn’t always mean staying fully connected. Maybe sometimes presence is the tiny part of us that remains when everything else needs to retreat.

Maybe growth isn’t that we stop having the responses that once protected us. Maybe sometimes it’s that we can witness them differently.

I don’t know. I’m still wondering.

What I do know is that I don’t want to turn this experience into another thing I need to fix.

I don’t want to look at that twenty-four hours and decide I should have returned faster. Nope.

I don’t want to tell myself that after all these years of doing this work, I shouldn’t still be able to disappear. Nope, not doing that either.

Because perhaps that’s another form of leaving myself.

Instead, I’m curious about the woman who stayed. The part of me that could sit beside the emptiness and say, I know you’re here. And although this part didn’t know how to get us home, she stayed close enough to notice that we’d left.

Maybe that’s what has changed. Not that I never leave myself, but that somewhere along the way, I’ve learned how to leave a light on.

And I think that’s what feels transformative. Not because I’ve figured something out…quite the opposite. This experience reminded me how much there still is to discover about ourselves.

How extraordinarily complex we are. How an ordinary moment can reveal an entire landscape within us that we didn’t know existed. And how, even after years of knowing ourselves, there can still be parts of us waiting to be met for the first time.

So I’ve been sitting with a different question since coming home.

When you notice yourself disconnecting - shutting down, going quiet, pulling away, becoming numb - is there any part of you that stays?

And what might change if, instead of immediately trying to bring yourself back, you simply noticed the part of you that never completely left?

The Part That Stayed

There is something I’ve continued to sit with since writing this letter.

If part of me could disconnect while another part remained present enough to notice the disconnection, then who - or what - was the part that stayed?

I don’t have an answer. And for this practice, I don’t think we need one.

Instead, I want to invite you to become curious about the part of you that remains when other parts need to retreat.

You don’t need to bring yourself back to a difficult memory for this practice. In fact, I don’t want you to. Think instead about the smaller moments when you notice yourself pulling away.

Maybe you become quiet, your body goes numb, you stop making eye contact, cross your arms and lean back into your chair, you suddenly feel very far away from the conversation you’re having, you become incredibly busy, you reach for your phone or maybe you say, I’m fine.

Whatever leaving looks like for you, simply begin there.

Take a moment to settle somewhere comfortable. Feel whatever is supporting your body beneath you. Let your eyes move around the space you’re in and notice a few ordinary things.

Nothing needs to change.

Then bring to mind a recent, manageable moment when you noticed yourself pulling away.

Not your biggest rupture or your deepest wound.

Just a moment.

And rather than asking yourself why you left, ask something different: What part of me stayed?

Maybe it was the part that knew you had gone quiet.

The part that noticed your shoulders tighten.

The part that wanted to say something but couldn’t.

The part that knew you weren’t actually fine.

The part that quietly thought, Something is happening here.

Stay curious about her.

What did she notice?

What did she know?

What was she trying to protect?

What did she need?

And perhaps most importantly: What would it feel like to simply stay beside her?

Not to pull yourself out.

Not to regulate perfectly.

Not to make yourself reconnect.

Just to stay close.

Leaving a Light On

If it feels supportive, take out your journal and finish these sentences:

I notice myself beginning to leave when...

When that happens, I can still sometimes notice...

The part of me that stays seems to know...

She doesn’t need me to fix...

She might need me to remember...

And then one final question: What could leaving a light on for myself look like?

Maybe it’s feeling your feet against the ground.

Maybe it’s saying, I need a minute.

Maybe it’s placing a hand somewhere on your body.

Maybe it’s stepping outside.

Maybe it’s crying.

Maybe it’s doing absolutely nothing except recognizing: I’m still here.

I think sometimes we make healing another place where we demand something of ourselves.

Return faster. Regulate better. Know the trigger. Understand the pattern. Do the work.

But I’m beginning to wonder if there are moments when the work is simply staying close enough to ourselves that we don’t have to find our way back alone.

Perhaps that’s the part that stayed.

The one who leaves the light on.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

Between Sisters is a space where we practice sharing without self-erasure. This is part of that practice.

My husband and I recently returned from Quebec after celebrating our twentieth wedding anniversary… twenty years. Yes, even writing that feels surreal.

Quebec has always held a special place in our relationship. It’s where something between us deepened years ago, and for a long time we’d talked about returning to celebrate this milestone together. We dreamed about it for years, imagining what twenty years of choosing one another might deserve. So that’s exactly what we did.

We planned where we would stay every night, leaving the days open to exploring. We are not stay in one place kinda people, not because we don’t want a relaxing vacation, but because that’s who we are.

My husband and I aren’t particularly good at sitting still. We like to explore and wander and see as much as we possibly can.

Over seven days, we drove more than 1,500 kilometres through Quebec, stopping in little towns, walking unfamiliar streets, hiking through forests, eating incredible food, and simply being together… It was wonderful.

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I think it’s important to tell you something about us. We aren’t one of those couples who slips away for regular weekends together. Nope. We’re raising children, building a homestead, and cultivating careers. We’re deeply committed to our family, and many days it feels like we’re simply passing the baton in the hallway as one of us is off to drive this kids to a sporting event while the other is tending to something else home or kids related.

We’re workhorses - partly because that’s how we’re wired AND perhaps partly because that’s how trauma taught us to survive.

Our children have always been at the centre of the life we’ve built together, and while I wouldn’t change that, it also means there hasn’t been an abundance of time that’s belonged only to us.

Twenty years isn’t simply something we celebrated, but something we’ve lived. Through exhaustion, joy, ordinary Tuesdays and through seasons where connection came easily and seasons where we had to fight for it.

What surprised me most about this trip wasn’t how connected we felt, it was how quickly I could lose it.

For the first week, everything flowed. We were in complete rhythm together - laughing, exploring and in alignment with where we wanted to go and see and do.

And then something happened. Nothing catastrophic, just one of those ordinary moments couples experience. A rupture.

But inside me, something much bigger happened. It felt like someone had unplugged me. One moment I was fully there with him. The next... I wasn’t.

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I could actually feel myself shutting down, as though a cord connecting us had been cut. I don’t even know if that was my husband’s experience and truthfully, I don’t think it was. But it was mine.

And what startled me most wasn’t that I shut down but how aware I was of it happening while simultaneously feeling unable to stop it.

He reached toward me, attempting to repair and I wanted to meet him there… I truly did. But I couldn’t. It felt as though I had disappeared somewhere inside myself, watching the moment unfold without knowing how to return.

That was the hardest part, not the rupture - the inability to come back.

And it took me almost twenty-four hours… a long, deep visceral cry and a variety of gentle somatic work.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, something became incredibly clear - I hadn’t only disconnected from my husband, I’d disconnected from myself.

For years I’ve understood trauma responses intellectually, somatically and within my own body. I’ve helped other people make sense of them, pursuing on-going studying, all while witnessing trauma responses in myself and others.

But this felt different for me. It was like I’d been hit with a new awareness while also being caught in its grip. It was now a new lived experience and evidence for something new to be explored. It was evidence that when something in me perceives enough threat, I don’t simply retreat from another person, I retreat from myself.

And if I’m disconnected from myself... How could I possibly reconnect with someone else?

That realization has stayed with me. Not because I think it’s true in every relationship or every rupture. I have had experiences in rupture where I have never felt more connected to myself and my truth where I am steady and unwavering.

But this was different and it was a new truth. And sometimes our own lived experience teaches us something no textbook ever could.

I’m still sitting with this, still wondering what it means, learning how to recognize the moment before I disappear, and learning what helps me return.

Maybe this is what healing actually looks like. Instead of trying to prevent trauma responses or never disconnecting, perhaps it’s more about becoming curious enough to notice what’s happening while it’s happening, which helps us understand ourselves a little more deeply each time. Here we can gather our own evidence through our lived experience instead of someone else telling us what healing should look like. From this space, we can pay attention to how it unfolds inside our own bodies.

So now I’m curious about you.

Have you ever noticed that in certain ruptures you don’t just disconnect from the other person but also disconnect from yourself?

And if that’s true for you, too... What helps you find your way back?

Amanda Cook is a women’s trauma counselor and founder of Mother|HER. She works in private practice and within systems supporting women impacted by trauma and violence and is devoted to women’s evolution through inner child work, collective healing, and honest, compassionate presence.

Are we manifesting... or are we bypassing?

The question didn’t come from skepticism, but came from recognition. Because if I’m honest, there have been seasons of my own life where I confused hope with avoidance, believing that if I focused hard enough on what I wanted, the difficult parts would somehow dissolve on their own.

I’ve told myself that story… AND if I’m being completely honest, I’ve even told it to people I love. Especially my husband.

“Just think positively.”

“Focus on what you want.”

“It’ll come.”

At the time, I believed I was offering encouragement (while also avoiding his feelings of worry and concern). Looking back, I can also see the ways I was asking both of us to step around what was uncomfortable instead of through it.

That realization has stayed with me not because I think manifestation is wrong (because I don’t) but because I think somewhere along the way, many of us were given an incomplete story. This has been a complete unlearning process for me.

As this series unfolded, I expected to keep writing about manifestation (truly!). Instead, we found ourselves talking about clarity, grief, intuition, the quiet ribbons life leaves behind, and self-trust.

I didn’t plan that. In many ways, I think the series was leaving clues for me too. And here, at the end of it, I don’t think I’ve arrived at an answer but I have arrived somewhere different.

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Here’s what I believe:

• mindset matters

• our thoughts shape the way we move through the world

• hope has the power to change us

I also believe that’s not the whole story.

Because no matter what life you’re longing for... you still have to participate in it by asking difficult questions, learning to sit with uncertainty, notice the ribbons, make decisions before certainty arrives, repair relationships, begin again after disappointment and show up on ordinary Tuesdays when nothing particularly magical seems to be happening.

I ALSO believe this deeply - the life we’re hoping for isn’t built in extraordinary moments, but built in ordinary ones.

→ a single conversation.

→ one boundary.

→ an act of courage.

→ one honest decision.

→ an apology.

→ an afternoon spent resting instead of proving and doing.

→ a quiet moment where we choose to listen instead of rushing toward the next answer.

Perhaps that’s what participation really is, exiting in spaces where we are striving or hustling or controlling every outcome but fully existing inside the life we’re already living.

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The hardest and real truth is… none of us knows what’s coming. We don’t get that certainty and as unnerving as that may feel, maybe we were never supposed to. Maybe the invitation has never been to predict the future or control the path forward, but it’s been to become more present inside the life unfolding right in front of us - not because we know how the story ends but because this page, this moment, deserves our presence too.

When I think back to where this series began, I realize I wasn’t really asking whether we were manifesting or bypassing - I think I was asking something much deeper.

How do we come home to ourselves after spending so much of our lives searching for the answers somewhere else?

I don’t know that there’s one answer. I suspect it’s a lifelong practice and one that asks us to pay attention, stay curious, meet ourselves with compassion and to participate wholeheartedly in the beautiful, fragile, unfinished lives we’ve been given.

Maybe manifestation was never about thinking your way into a different life. Maybe it has always been about participating in the one that’s been waiting for you all along.

I’d love to leave this series with one final question.

As you look back over these letters - and perhaps over your own life - what does participation look like for you right now?

Not next year, not when everything finally makes sense… Today.

Amanda Cook is a women’s trauma counselor and founder of Mother|HER. She works in private practice and within systems supporting women impacted by trauma and violence and is devoted to women’s evolution through inner child work, collective healing, and honest, compassionate presence.

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But eventually those whispers ask something of us… they ask us to choose and that’s where I find myself wondering... What does it actually mean to trust yourself?

It’s one of those phrases we hear all the time: “Trust yourself.” AND “The answers are within you.”

Beautiful words, but if you’ve spent years questioning yourself, abandoning your needs, looking to everyone else for reassurance, or learning that your instincts couldn’t be trusted... how exactly are you supposed to wake up one day and simply start trusting yourself? No one really explains that part.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if we’ve misunderstood what self-trust actually is. Maybe we’ve imagined it as a feeling or a moment where certainty arrives and suddenly we know exactly what to do. But what if that’s not it at all?

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The other evening I found myself standing in the kitchen trying to decide what to make for dinner… not exactly a life-changing decision and yet I realized how much happens before we ever choose.

I thought about what we’d already eaten this week, what my body was craving, how much energy I had left after the day, what ingredients were already in the fridge, how much time I actually had before everyone would be asking when dinner was ready.

Only then did I decide.

It made me smile because even something as ordinary as dinner isn’t really about the decision, it’s about the process that leads us there and I started wondering if every decision works this way. Not because they’re all easy but because every choice asks us to notice something.

• What do I need?

• What matters here?

• What feels honest?

• What am I making room for?

Perhaps self-trust isn’t found in making the “right” decision. Perhaps it’s built through the practice of paying attention before we decide.

The truth is, I still make decisions that feel risky. I still wonder whether I’m choosing wisely and I still question myself.

Building Mother|HER didn’t come with certainty, neither did changing careers or saying yes to opportunities that made absolutely no sense on paper but felt quietly alive in my body. There wasn’t a moment when I suddenly became someone who trusted herself. There were simply moments when I chose anyway. And then another. And another.

Looking back, I don’t think those decisions proved I trusted myself. I think they helped me build trust and maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

Self-trust isn’t a destination we eventually arrive at. It’s a relationship.

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One that’s strengthened every time we pause long enough to notice what feels true, every time we honour our own experience, make a choice that reflects who we’re becoming rather than who we’ve always been.

AND… Will we always get it right? Of course not. But perhaps trusting ourselves was never about guaranteeing the outcome because I don’t think that’s the point. Perhaps it’s about believing that whatever happens, we’ll be able to meet ourselves there.

With curiosity and compassion and the willingness to keep learning.

I’m still practicing this and still have days when I look outside myself for reassurance, wishing someone would simply tell me what the right answer is. But more and more, I’m learning that certainty isn’t what I’m actually looking for but rather a relationship with myself that feels honest enough to keep choosing.

So now I’m curious about you.

When you look back over your life, is there a decision that helped you trust yourself a little more not because you knew it would work out, but because you chose it anyway?

Building Trust One Choice at a Time

If noticing the ribbons was about recognizing the quiet invitations life has been offering you, then perhaps this week is about something different.

Responding… because eventually every ribbon asks us to choose.

Today, I want to invite you to become curious about your relationship with self-trust - not as something you either have or don’t have, but as something that has been quietly shaped by every experience you’ve ever had.

Remembering

Close your eyes for a few moments and allow yourself to settle into your body.

Take a slow breath in. A longer breath out.

Now think back to a decision that felt significant at the time. It doesn’t have to be life-changing.

It could be leaving a relationship. Starting a new job. Moving to a new city. Speaking up. Setting a boundary. Or saying yes to something that scared you.

As you hold that memory, ask yourself:

• What did I know before I made that decision?

• What did I not know?

• What part of me was afraid?

• What part of me already knew?

Notice where those memories live in your body, not to judge them. Simply to witness them.

Meeting the Decision-Maker

Choose one decision you’re currently sitting with.

Instead of asking yourself, “What’s the right answer?” try asking different questions.

• What am I noticing?

• What story am I telling myself about making the wrong choice?

Allow yourself to answer without editing. Sometimes clarity arrives through writing what we didn’t realize we knew.

Evidence of Trust

We often look for evidence that we can’t trust ourselves so today, I’d like you to look for the opposite.

On a fresh page, finish these sentences.

I trusted myself when...

One decision that changed me was...

Something I once thought was a mistake eventually taught me...

I am learning that trusting myself means...

Take your time… you may be surprised by how much evidence already exists.

A Gentle Practice for This Week

For the next seven days, before making even the smallest decisions, pause for one breath.

Whether you’re deciding what to wear, what to eat, whether to say yes or no, or how to spend your evening, simply ask yourself:

What am I noticing right now?

Not what you should do.

Not what someone else would choose.

Just... What am I noticing?

Self-trust isn’t built through one courageous leap… Perhaps it’s built through hundreds of small moments where we practice listening before we respond.

And maybe that’s enough.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

But there’s another piece I’ve been sitting with: What if clarity doesn’t begin with certainty? What if it begins with noticing?

I think one of the greatest losses many women experience isn’t that we’ve lost our intuition, it’s that we’ve stopped hearing it. Not because it disappeared because somewhere along the way, we learned to trust almost everything outside of ourselves before we learned to trust what was quietly happening within us. We ask other people what they think, search for the right book, podcast, teacher… the right answer.

And while there is beauty in learning from others, I sometimes wonder if we’ve become so practiced at looking outward that we’ve forgotten to ask ourselves what we already know. Not the loud knowing, the whisper. Because I don’t think intuition shouts… I think it whispers. And whispers require us to come closer.

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The more I reflect on my own life, the more I realize there was never one defining moment that led me here. There wasn’t a bolt of lightning that suddenly revealed Mother|HER or this work or the life I wanted to build.

Looking back, I can see something much quieter. It was conversation after conversation and the work that kept pulling me toward women. It was the years in counselling and studying nutrition. Sitting in circles and facilitating workshops. It was the questions I couldn’t stop asking and the ideas that kept returning, even when I tried to set them aside.

At the time, none of them seemed particularly significant, but rather just moments. Some tiny ones. But when I look back now, I can see they weren’t random, they were clues.

These clues were not instructions or guarantees, just gentle invitations pointing me in a direction I couldn’t yet fully understand. And I wonder if that’s how intuition often works. It doesn’t usually arrive with certainty… it arrives with curiosity:

→ A conversation you can’t stop thinking about.

→ A book that seems to find you at exactly the right time.

→ A place that feels strangely familiar.

→ An idea that refuses to leave.

→ A quiet pull toward something that doesn’t yet make logical sense.

We’ve been taught to dismiss these moments because they don’t always fit neatly into a plan. But what if they matter more than we think? What if your life has been leaving you clues all along?

Sometimes I imagine life as walking through a forest. None of us are handed a map, we’re simply asked to take the next step. In these steps, sometimes the trail feels obvious and sometimes it disappears completely. Sometimes we wander so far from the path that we’re convinced we’ve taken a wrong turn.

But what if the forest isn’t trying to confuse us? What if, all along, there have been ribbons tied gently around the trees?

Not enough to show us the entire journey, just enough to reveal the next few steps. Maybe the ribbons are the things that keep calling your attention through conversations that leave you feeling more alive, work that gives you energy instead of only taking it, in moments your body softens instead of braces and through ideas that return over and over, asking to be noticed.

Maybe intuition isn’t asking us to predict the future → maybe it’s simply inviting us to notice what is already here so we can become more intimate with ourselves and trust that quiet doesn’t mean absent… perhaps it means close. And perhaps this is why clarity isn’t something we find once and hold forever, it’s something we continue cultivating by paying attention to the ribbons and noticing the breadcrumbs. By choosing, again and again, to turn inward before searching everywhere else.

I’m still learning how to do this. I still miss the clues and still question myself. I still wonder whether I’m imagining things or whether something deeper is gently asking for my attention.

Maybe that’s part of the practice… not becoming someone who always knows but becoming someone who notices.

So now I’m curious about you.

When you look back over your own life, can you see any breadcrumbs that only make sense in hindsight?

Were there conversations, experiences, or quiet nudges that you didn’t understand at the time but now realize were gently pointing you toward who you’re becoming?

I’d love to hear about one of your ribbons.

Following Your Own Ribbons

If the free portion of this letter invited you to wonder whether your life has been leaving you clues, I’d like to invite you into something a little different now.

Here will will start to build space to simply notice…

Perhaps intuition isn’t something we need to strengthen as much as it is something we need to become quiet enough to hear.

Before you begin, find a place where you won’t be interrupted for 20–30 minutes. Bring your journal, a pen, and if it feels supportive, a warm cup of tea. There is no right way to do this. Trust whatever comes forward.

Returning to Your Body

Close your eyes for a moment.

Take a slow breath in and an even slower breath out.

Allow your shoulders to soften.

Notice where your body is making contact with the chair, the floor, or the bed beneath you.

Without trying to change anything, ask yourself:

Where do I feel most alive in my body today?

Not energized.

Not productive.

Alive.

Stay there for a few breaths.

Upon returning to your space with your eyes open, gently ask:

• What has been asking for my attention lately?

• What keeps returning, even when I try to ignore it?

• Where do I feel expansion?

• Where do I feel contraction?

Rather than answering from your mind, notice what your body offers first. Sometimes the body recognizes the ribbon before the mind understands it.

Looking Back at the Trail

Turn to a fresh page in your journal and draw a simple line across the middle of the page. Think of it as a trail through the forest.

Now, without worrying about dates or chronology, begin writing down moments that stand out to you. Again, not necessarily the biggest moments but meaningful ones.

Perhaps...

• a conversation you still remember years later

• a book that seemed to arrive exactly when you needed it

• someone who believed in you before you believed in yourself

• work that made time disappear

• an unexpected opportunity

• a difficult ending that quietly redirected your life

• something you couldn’t stop thinking about

• a place that felt strangely familiar

• a dream you set aside but never truly forgot

As you look over your list, pause.

What patterns do you notice? Are there themes that have been returning throughout your life?

Try not to look for conclusions. Stay focused on noticing patterns because those patterns may be some of your ribbons.

Listening for the Whisper

One of the reasons intuition can feel so difficult to access is because we’ve been taught to look for certainty. But whispers don’t sound like certainty, they often sound like curiosity.

Choose one area of your life that feels unclear right now.

Instead of asking: “What should I do?”

Try asking: What feels gently alive here?

Notice how different these questions feel. This isn’t about trying to predict your future, you’re simply listening for the next ribbon.

A Letter to Your Future Self

Finish today’s practice by completing these sentences.

Lately, life has been trying to show me...

The clues I keep overlooking are...

The part of myself I want to trust more is...

This month, I will practice noticing...

My next honest step is...

Fold this page into your journal or tuck it somewhere you’ll come across it again in a few weeks. You don’t need to force clarity, just keep walking, and noticing. The forest rarely reveals the whole trail at once.

But if you learn to recognize your ribbons, you’ll almost always know where to place your next step and perhaps that’s all intuition has ever been asking of us.

With love, care and curiosity,
Amanda
Mother|HER

However, a lot of the things I read always brings me to a lot of questions, a lot of questions I don’t feel like I have answers for, so when I started my first of this series Is it Manifestation or is it Bypassing I didn’t realize where it was leading me and in fact, it’s been leading me somewhere really unexpected…

XO Amanda