In my outpatient visits, I often find myself meeting with people three or more times before they feel ready to even consider medications. I have a deep understanding that their nervous system might need time to build enough safety and trust in our relationship to even be able to hear about the options. And that time is not wasted, it’s essential.

As Judith Herman reminds us in Trauma and Recovery:

“The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery.”

🌿 Choice Comes First

For anyone who’s lived through trauma, having their treatment dictated to them can echo the very powerlessness they’ve already survived. Recovery begins with restoring choice.

That means:

• If a person says “I’m not ready,” then we wait until it feels right for them.

• If they want to start a medication on day one, we start that day — because it’s their choice.

• My role is to offer information, options, and support — we collaborate and ultimately the decision is theirs.

💊 Medications as Tools, Not Directives

I see medications as one of many tools one might use at various points of their trauma recovery journey. They are only helpful if the person chooses them because they wish to, not because they feel pressured to by their doctor.

When someone decides, “Yes, I want to try this,” it often works better — not just because of chemistry, but because their nervous system feels safe enough to receive it.

🌺 The Wisdom of the Body

I believe the wisdom for healing is already within each person. What people experience as problems or symptoms - panic, insomnia, dissociation, even hopelessness - are the body speaking its wisdom. They are messages from a nervous system that has carried too much.

My role is not to silence those messages, but to help people listen to what their body is saying and learn what it might need. Medications can support that process, especially when there is a level of instability that makes it challenging to even survive the day to day, but they are never a replacement for the body’s wisdom.

✨ Practicing Psychiatry Differently

I don’t measure success by how quickly someone starts a medication. I measure it by how safe they feel in my presence as I walk along side them, and how deeply they begin to trust their own inner wisdom.

Sometimes that looks like five visits of grounding, breathing, and storytelling before we even talk seriously about medications. Sometimes it looks like starting a medication at the very first appointment. In both cases, the principle is the same: your voice matters, you are the expert in your body and your body holds the wisdom.

Because true healing doesn’t come from what I prescribe- it comes from restoring the power of choice and learning to listen to the wisdom that has always lived in your body.

With Deep Care,

Dr Nubia

Opening Reflection

One of my past clients once told me:

“Your approach is instrumental in the outcome.”

That sentence has stayed with me. It captures what trauma-informed psychiatry is all about: not just what we ask, or even the treatments we recommend, but how we respond in the most tender moments.

The medical model trains psychiatrists to focus on diagnosis and treatment: what questions to ask, how to rule diagnoses in or out, which medication to prescribe, and which therapy or lifestyle recommendations to suggest.

But what I noticed early in my training is that very little guidance was given on the how.

How do we respond when someone shares their deepest truths — often something they’ve never spoken aloud to another person?
How do we make sure they feel honored, seen, and affirmed in their worthiness?
And how do we prevent a disclosure itself from becoming disempowering or retraumatizing?

These questions haunted me. Most of my supervisors in medical school and psychiatry residency were trained in psychoanalysis, and I was encouraged to follow the blueprint of neutrality, to be a “blank slate.” But it never felt right. I didn’t want to hide behind detachment. I wanted to hold space. To meet people in their pain with compassion and presence.

The most validating trainings I’ve completed have been those outside of the medical model. Shout out to The Embody Lab’s Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy training and Transcending Sexual Trauma Through Yoga’s Trauma Informed Yoga Certification were foundational. In her trauma informed yoga training Zabie teaches about invitational and affirming language as a pillar of trauma-informed space holding.

That’s what my client meant when she said:

“It’s not what you say, but how you say it. Your approach is instrumental in the outcome.

🗣️ Clinical Vignette

Imagine you’re in the middle of a new intake with a 65-year-old woman.

When you gently ask what she thinks is at the root of her current struggles, she pauses for a long time. Finally, she discloses her history of childhood sexual abuse.

The air in the room feels heavy.

What we do next is instrumental in the outcome.

💬 A Trauma-Informed Response

Here are some things not to do:
✘ Don’t rush into detailed questions or screeners
✘ Don’t minimize or skip over it
✘ Don’t focus only on pathology

Instead, respond with validation, affirming their courage and agency:

“I’m so sorry to hear that you went through that. No child should ever have to experience that. Thank you for trusting me with this. I believe you, and you don’t have to share more than you want to.”

🌬️ Grounding in the Moment

Sometimes, just speaking the words can be triggering. I might ask permission to pause, normalize the reaction, offer options for grounding practices we could do together. In that case, I might say:

“Would it be okay if we pause for a moment? Sometimes just speaking about a past trauma can bring up strong emotional or physical reactions that feel overwhelming. If you’d like, we could try a grounding practice together. For example, you might notice your feet on the floor as we take one slow breath, or we could look around the room and name three things we see. You can choose, or let me know if you’d rather keep going.”

This simple practice reminds them: your body is safe enough here, now.

🪞 Why This Matters

These responses may seem small, but they are powerful. They:

• ✅ Validate the person’s suffering.

• ✅ Restore a sense of agency (“you don’t have to share more than you want”).

• ✅ Model collaboration, safety, and containment.

• ✅ Open the door to collaborative treatment planning later.

This is where trauma-informed psychiatry departs from the traditional medical model.

It’s so much more than diagnoses or prescriptions. It’s about the micro-moments of connection that can either deepen shame or plant a seed of healing.

🌸 My Approach in Practice

Here’s the general structure I follow when a patient shares a painful part of their life:

1. Initial empathic response: validate their bravery, separate their identity from the trauma, and return a sense of agency.

2. Gentle follow-up questions: always centering their choice and pacing.

3. Grounding statement: reorient to the present and affirm their worthiness.

4. Psychoeducation: on the neurobiology of trauma to foster self-compassion

5. Brief grounding practice: breath, movement, or grounding through the senses.

6. Seeds of hope — affirm that healing is possible, that their story matters, and that survival itself is a testament to courage.

🌸 Takeaway

Trauma-informed psychiatry is so much more than diagnosing or prescribing.

It’s about how we listen and respond.

Every disclosure is an opportunity to reinforce shame — or to create safety, connection, and dignity.

✨ This post is part of my series on Trauma-Informed Psychiatry, where I share scripts, vignettes, and reflections to reimagine psychiatry as part of a healing ecosystem for trauma support.

💌 If you’d like to receive the next one in your inbox, hit subscribe below.

Lately, I’ve been noticing a buzzing in my chest, tension settling into my neck and shoulders, and a heaviness deeply present. I notice it while scrolling social media, walking into work, and settling into stillness.

The water we’re swimming in—this moment in Southern California—feels like a current charged with movement. Those of us connected to migration, whether directly or ancestrally, may feel especially attuned to the changing tides.

There’s a rise in immigration enforcement raids, militarized responses to protests, national guard deployments. It’s easy for those farther from migration to just keep swimming, but for those of us closer to it, that isn’t really an option. Our bodies are too wise—they sense the stormy waters. They remember our ancestral stories. They remember separations, crossings, borderlands. The threat lives in our collective nervous systems, in our collective spirit.

This might show up as disrupted sleep, trouble focusing, irritability, grief, disconnection. Please know: whatever your reaction, it is not a sign of pathology or weakness. It is an intelligent embodied response to systems of oppression.

When I notice these responses in my own body, I try not to push them away. I slow it down and return to what helps me feel rooted, what offers an island of safety in turbulent waters. Here are a few gentle tools for collective care that I find myself returning to:

🌿 Rooted Practices: As always, listen to your body as you are the expert in your needs.

• Resting intentionally: Rest is deeply personal. You might consider lying with your back on the floor while resting your legs on the couch, in supported child’s pose, or on your side with pillows. Let your body tell you how it needs to feel supported.

• Self-holds: I invite you to place a hand on your forehead and a hand on your chest while applying gentle pressure. Allow your breath to flow. Let yourself feel your own presence.

• Butterfly hugs: Gently cross your arms and gently tap each shoulder, alternating sides. A rhythmic, regulating practice.

• Stand against a tree: You might consider resting your back on a tree and feel its grounded strength support you.

• Earthing: I invite you to place your bare feet on the Mother Earth- grass, dirt, sand. Allow Mother earth to hold some of the weight you’re carrying.

• Keep routines simple: Our routines hold us. Wake, get sun exposure, avoid screens for 30 minutes, nourish, work, take breaks, walk, rest. Small rituals can become anchors.

These offerings are ways of tending to our bodies with compassion and care. I invite you to honor the your pace in these muddy waters.

If you’re feeling the weight of this moment, know that you’re not alone. The waters are rough - and naming it can be a first act of care. Honoring what our bodies know is a step toward collective healing.

With you in the stormy waters,

Nubia

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would take to truly practice with integrity—
to offer care that aligns not just with the “standard of care” in psychiatry, but with my personal values.
Values shaped by trauma-informed principles, anti-oppressive commitments, and my own

lived experience.

This reflection was sparked by the story of the Selkie, as told in Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted—
a mythical seal-woman whose skin is taken, leaving her cut off from her life in the sea.
Eventually, she begins the journey back to herself. One that is not linear, not easy, but deeply necessary.

A journey toward reclaiming what was lost—and remembering who she truly is.

This story made me wonder:

Is my old skin still viable?
Or has it served its time—worn thin by systems that were never built for care?
If it’s no longer mine to return to, then what does it mean to find a new one?
What does that journey look like—for someone who still wants to offer care, but refuses to abandon herself to do so?

I find myself in a moment of transition—brought on by the challenges of working in psychiatric systems of care that push clinicians past their limits.
I used to think my inability to keep up meant I was broken.
Now I see clearly it’s a sign that the system is what’s breaking me.
A system that was never neutral— rooted in the soil of hierarchies, oppression, and coercion.

This series is my way of making sense of it all—out loud.

What to Expect

Because this is too much to say in one sitting, I’ll be sharing a series of posts exploring:

• What integrity means to me now—and how I reclaim it daily

• Why trauma-informed care must be anti-oppressive

• The history of psychiatry, and how we got here

• How medical training normalizes burnout and disconnection

• Personal reflections on burnout, medical leave, and working with accommodations

• Nervous system care, embodiment, and how I’m finding my way back

My Lens

I write this as a medical trauma survivor, trauma-attuned psychiatrist and budding somatic therapist navigating the tension between professional expectations and personal truth.

I’ve been both the clinician and the patient.
I’ve seen how systems that claim to care for us can also silence, erase, or retraumatize us.
And I’m committed to finding another way—one rooted in sovereignty, relationship, and nervous system wisdom.

If This Resonates…

If you’ve ever felt the cost of staying in systems that ask you to betray your body…
If you’re reckoning with burnout and wondering if the problem is not you…
If you’re searching for ways to live, practice, and offer care without abandoning yourself…

I invite you to join me.

This series won’t offer a blueprint.
But it will offer a mirror, a moment of pause, and a reminder that you are not alone.

We’re not meant to do this in isolation.
We’re meant to root together—and remember what we know.

With care,

Dr. Nubia

Most days, I feel like a tangle of contradictions. I’m a psychiatrist—trained in Western medicine—who turns to embodiment practices to cope with the very disconnection my role still demands. I’m fighting to return to my body. To reconnect with myself. And I still often wonder: where do I fit in?

I’ve come to understand that I don’t fit into the medical model’s approach to healing. I don’t believe medications can save us. Can they play a supportive role in moments of crisis or transition? Yes, absolutely. But they are not the whole story.

What we truly need is to do less. Rest more. Connect—deeply—with nature, with our people, with our cultures. We need less doing and more being.

And we need structures that support this—not systems that demand we override our bodies to survive. We need less oppressive structures that keep us from resting, from connecting, from remembering who we are.

As I journey toward the reclamation of my story and my body, I’m tracing my disembodiment for clarity. Because storytelling is medicine—and because I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. All our stories matter.

Dissociation as Wisdom

I don’t remember much of my childhood. When people talk about early memories or fond moments, I often go blank. I’ve learned through trauma trainings that this is common in complex trauma—our brains don’t always store overwhelming experiences in linear, accessible ways.

This absence of memory isn’t a flaw. It’s a reflection of my body’s wisdom.

When we can’t fight or flee, our nervous systems protect us by disconnecting us from what would be too much to bear. Dissociation is that protective, embodied intelligence. My body was doing everything it could to keep me safe.

I’ve spent years questioning my own experience—telling myself, “It couldn’t have been that bad.” But part of this reclamation work is learning to believe my body’s story.

Dance as My First Medicine

From age five through college, I danced—ballet, tap, jazz, modern. Dance was both my outlet and my mirror. It wasn’t always easy—especially being the only melanated girl in ballet class or having my belly pointed out by instructors. But eventually, I found myself in forms of movement that felt expressive and free.

It’s no coincidence that my ancestry is from the lands now called Nicaragua and Honduras—places rich in rhythm, percussion, and embodied practice. Movement was in me. Dance became my language of connection.

In college, I joined a hip hop dance team (shoutout 220), and everything shifted. I wasn’t dancing alone anymore—I was moving in community. And it felt like home.

Dance got me through life in ways I didn’t realize until much later. It allowed me to feel, express, and stay grounded. It was my earliest form of embodied healing—my lifeline to the body before medical school.

The Collapse of Connection in Med School

When I entered medical school, I stopped dancing. I thought it was normal—expected even—to give up “hobbies” in the name of education. I didn’t know I was giving up a form of survival.

When I stopped dancing, something shifted.

I became a young woman on a path of disconnection: suppressing needs, numbing feelings, pushing through. Not just to survive—but in the name of medicine, in service of others.

Overnight shifts. 24-hour calls. Reading on 4 hours of sleep to prep for morning rounds. My body could no longer keep up—and so depression arrived.

Depression as a Message

It was dark, heavy, all-consuming. I didn’t recognize it at first. And when I did, I thought something was wrong with me.

I blamed myself for not being able to keep up. For feeling this way when I “had everything”—friends, a partner, a supportive family, and academic success. I thought I was failing.

Now I see: it wasn’t that something was wrong with me—it was that the system was hurting me.

My body had been whispering, and when I didn’t listen, it yelled—through insomnia, emotional numbness, and thoughts of not wanting to be alive.

Finding My Way Back to My Body

At the time, I didn’t have the language for embodiment. But my body still sought it.

I found myself drawn to yoga asanas, rock climbing, and breathwork. These practices helped me reconnect and stay present—just enough to survive.

The truth is, the medical model never made space for embodiment. How else do you endure overnight calls and trauma-filled shifts without numbing out? Without tools for healing, we’re trained to disconnect—from our patients and from ourselves.

It’s taken years of unlearning for me to understand what I do now: embodiment isn’t optional—it’s essential.

Practicing Psychiatry in a New Way

Our bodies hold grief, wisdom, and memory. Healing must include it.

I’ve often practiced psychiatry in disembodied ways—honoring others’ needs before my own, pushing past my limits in the name of care. But I’m learning that to truly practice trauma-informed, embodied care, I must include myself in the circle of care.

How do I stay in my own body while holding space for others? How do I honor my needs without overriding them? These are the questions I sit with daily.

Now, I’m learning to practice psychiatry in a new way. One that honors the nervous system—my patients’ and my own. One that listens to the wisdom in the story and the symptoms of the body. One that moves at the pace of the slowest part of my nervous system.

This isn’t a finished journey. It’s an ongoing return.

And I share it with the hope that others feel less alone as they begin to listen to the quiet truths their bodies already know.

A Gentle Invitation

If it feels right, I invite you to pause and reflect:

• What might your body be trying to tell you today?

• When did you first learn to leave your body behind?

• What helps you feel safe enough to come back?

• How might you offer yourself curiosity—rather than judgment—as you listen?

There is no rush. No arrival. Only an ongoing return to the quiet wisdom within.

✨ Note: This post was originally written in July 2023. I’ve recently revised and expanded it to reflect what I’ve learned since—personally and professionally. If you’re navigating a trauma anniversary, I hope this updated version meets you where you are.

This one is for anyone who’s lived through something so overwhelming that it exceeded your body’s capacity to cope.

Our bodies hold memory. This is a gentle offering of nervous system wisdom, shared from both lived and clinical experience, to help you move through trauma anniversaries with more care.

A Story from My Body

A few months before my son’s birth day, I found myself caught off guard by the muck of a trauma anniversary. It started gradually—sooner than I expected—and it wasn’t until I was deep in a state of flooding that I could finally piece it together: my body was remembering.

For me, in past years, it’s looked like a variation of: trouble falling asleep, nightmares, my body on high alert, jumping at unexpected sounds. I’d feel disconnected, like I was moving through dense fog. Focusing became hard, I got overwhelmed more easily, and I felt like I was struggling to stay afloat.

Then the self-judgment would roll in—frustration that I was having yet another trauma anniversary reaction. The parts of me that criticize would get loud, and my curious, caring Self would slip away. Until, eventually, something would click and I’d realize: Oh… my body is remembering. My body is trying to keep me safe.

🧠 The Body’s Response: Why This Happens

Leading up to a trauma anniversary, our brilliant bodies and nervous systems may begin reacting to perceived danger—sometimes long before we realize what’s happening. The fog rolls in, distress runs high, and those all-too-familiar sensations return: gut-wrenching fear, numbness, disconnection. The legacy of trauma shows up through emotional echoes and body memories—hyper-vigilance, sleepless nights, a body that just can’t seem to relax.

And while all of this can feel overwhelming, I’ve found that one of the most powerful ways to meet it is with understanding. Because the truth is—these responses are adaptive. They make sense when we understand how the brain and body store traumatic memories.

After trauma, the brain’s “smoke detector”—the amygdala—records every detail: sights, sounds, smells, time of year, temperature, types of people, location. It does this to protect us. It’s hardwired for survival and wants to keep us safe.

And afterward, the amygdala becomes highly sensitive. It fires in response to anything it associates with the trauma—even things that may not actually be dangerous. Over time, it can “over-couple” neutral experiences with threat. So if your trauma happened in a hospital, your body might react to any medical setting. The alarm sounds, even when there’s no fire.

This is why trauma anniversaries are so common and so intense. The time of year itself can act as a trigger. You might feel like everything is fine—and then, seemingly out of nowhere, the symptoms flood back in. It can feel disorienting, exhausting, even shame-inducing.

But here’s the thing: it’s not your fault. Your body is doing what it was designed to do. And the more you can understand that, the more you can soften into compassion—for yourself, and for the parts of you still holding that story.

One of the most supportive things you can do is plan ahead—ideally 1 to 3 months before the anniversary—because your body may sense it long before your mind catches up.

But there are ways to move through this time with more gentleness. One key is to plan ahead—ideally 1–3 months before the date itself—because your body may sense it long before your mind catches up. Below are 7 ways to care for yourself during a trauma anniversary.

✨ 7 Ways to Care for Yourself

1. 🫶 Tend to Connection

Let your people know what you may experience around this time. Resist the urge to isolate—being alone with trauma reactions can amplify distress and stir the loneliness trauma often leaves behind.

Reach out and make space for connection in ways that feel safe and nourishing:

• Schedule a FaceTime or go for a walk with someone you trust

• Spend time with pets —connection doesn’t have to be verbal. Let yourself be held by those who ask nothing of you, but still offer presence and love.

• Tend to your garden & connect with plant allies

• Ask your therapist for an extra session

• Attend a support group

• Sign up for a volunteer shift

• Connect with your ancestors — build an altar

Let your nervous system feel held—in community, in nature, in gentle relationship.

2. 😴 Prioritize Rest

Trauma reactions often bring spikes of stress hormones—no wonder we crash after being stuck in survival mode.

This is a time to slow down, not power through.

• If possible, schedule a day off or lighten your load around the anniversary

• Ask for support with childcare or meals

• Rest from screens and draining conversations

• Rest in solitude, but not in isolation

• Take a nap in the sun, lie under a tree, breathe in the earth

Rest is not a reward to be earned it is your birthright. Rest is productive and necessary part of tending to the body in a survival state.

3. 📺 Choose Gentle Distractions

Engage with things that soothe your nervous system—not drain it.

• Watch shows or movies you’ve already seen and love

• Re-read a comforting book

• Listen to a playlist you find healing

• Ask a friend to create one for you

• Skip scrolling and news when possible—your system deserves peace

Let familiarity and softness be your guides.

4. 🗓 Create Structure with Love

Trauma can distort time. Routines help re-anchor you in the now. Their predictability helps contain the sense of timelessness that comes with trauma.

• Maintain daily rhythms as best you can (wake, meals, movement)

• When planning ahead, schedule at least one nourishing activity per day
  Ideas include:
  – Visit a community garden
  – Read or listen to music at the park
  – Make a your favorite go-to recipe los frijolitos
  – Paint or do crafts with friends
  – Dance to your favorite song
  – Try a Qi Gong or yoga nidra class

Predictability isn’t boring—it’s a balm.

5. 🌍 Find Solace in the Natural World

Mother Nature is one of the most powerful co-regulators we have. Even short moments matter.

• Walk barefoot on the grass

• Sit under a tree and feel the earth holding you

• Watch waves or clouds

• Tend to your plants

• Gaze at the moon or stars and remember you’re part of something ancient and alive

Let the land remind you: you are not alone, and you are never too much.

6. 🧘🏽‍♀️ Ground in the Present

The amygdala doesn’t keep time in the way we live in time —it just detects threat. For anyone with childhood trauma - it still thinks you are the 8 year old kiddo in a dangerous home. That’s why anniversaries can feel like time travel.

Gently remind your system: I’m here now. I’m safe enough. It’s different this time.

Try this:

“Today is [insert date]. I am [your current age]. I am here, in [your home/city]. I feel my feet on the ground. I see light coming through the window.”

You can also:

• Journal what’s changed since last year

• Write down wins or growth moments

• Keep a visual marker nearby (a candle, photo, or grounding object)

7. 🧰 Lean on Your Coping Tools

Make a list of what works for you—body, mind, and spirit. You might need to stack more of them than usual right now, and that’s okay.

• Breathwork

• Vagus nerve stimulation

• Cold water or temperature shifts

• Gentle movement

• Touch (head holds, tapping, grounding hugs)

• Music, prayer, shaking, stretching

• Being with animals and Mother Nature

Practice them regularly while you’re calm. Build the pathway before you need to walk it.

💌 From Me to You

From someone moving through an anniversary reaction as I write this, I want you to know:

There’s nothing wrong with you.
You’re not starting over.
You’re not failing.

Your brilliant body is remembering & doing exactly what it’s meant to do to survive.

I hope this season is a little more easeful than the last.
Be slow. Be held. Take good care of yourself.

With love,
Nubia

P.S. If you’d like to revisit this each year, you can bookmark it or save it as a seasonal ritual. Healing has its cycles, and you’re not alone in yours.

It’s close to two years since you created my magic, my Elián. I write this in honor of your protection—

You made a new organ inside me and through this organ you nourished, housed, and nurtured Elián’s life.

You filtered toxins out of fluids traveling through Elián and protected him fiercely as you cushioned him in a sac filled with water.

You did your best to fight the toxic stress brought on by a culture that values productivity over rest.

Your brilliant attempts to maintain balance as the stress took its toll on us will not be overshadowed.

Your efforts were labeled as a disease — severe pre-eclampsia - this was done without honoring your efforts to fight off the dysfunction created by toxic stress.

My blood pressure rose, the headaches set in, my kidneys became unwell, this was not your failing.

I repeat, this was not your failing.

Your brilliant attempts to keep me and my son safe kept us alive.

You brought on contractions much earlier than expected, you knew it was time for the birthing process to begin.

Your inhales and exhales sustained us, your heart beats protected us until the very last moment we were tethered as one.

You stood strong through the first unexpected surgery, you maintained this strength to help me fight a hospital algorithm meant to protect me but was instead killing me as it kept me from meeting my son — kept me from our first skin to skin contact — for 12 grueling hours.

You stayed alert and raised my temperature to fight off infection —103 F — the first external sign telling people to listen to me when I said that something felt off and I didn’t feel right.

You fought through our toughest moments as you endured a pain so intense you immobilized me for protection.

As I write this I feel the fear set in, the neck stiffen, the throat tighten, the immobilization set back in. I breathe, I rock, I contain the distress as I honor you.

Thank you body for carrying me through, for holding these stories, I honor your efforts I honor your strength. I promise to care for you as you care for me.

Con amor,

Nubia

To the mamas who are not able to birth your own children, for reasons out of your control, may you experience softness as you navigate the grief of a vision you so clearly hold in your heart.

To the mamas with no children of your own, who serve as nurturing mamas to the kin in your community, may you recognize the power of your stable presence in a child’s life.

To the mamas early in your journey of trying to conceive, may you gather strength as the grief sets in with the arrival of each cycle.

To the mamas deep into the journey of in vitro fertilization, may you experience moments of pause to honor the strength you channel to get through the uncertainty of the process.

To the first time mamas who are navigating your first pregnancy, may you find space to rest as your body creates a new organ to sustain the creation of life within you.

To the mamas who choose to have children, while knowing the unjust reality of birthing in America, may you channel ancestral strength for your journey through a medical system with roots steeped in colonialism and opression.

To the mamas in the postpartum period, may you open your hearts to receive gentle support from those dearest to you, so you may recover from your birthing process while also nurturing the new life you’ve created.

To the mamas returning back to work after a maternity leave dictated by capitalism, may you be gentle with yourself through the transition back into a culture that values productivity over rest.

To the Black, Brown, & Indigenous mamas who must navigate the muddy waters of systemic oppression, while also carrying the burden of historical and intergenerational trauma, may you gather strength from mamas who came before you, mamas who will come after you, and mamas you are in community with.

To the mamas of culture, those native to the land and those who immigrated onto these lands for search of a better life, may you find opportunities to celebrate your culture in a safe way.

To the mamas who are carrying the heavy load of parenting without a partner, may you be held up by the caring web of a community who values connection over individualistic ideas of parenting.

To the mamas who’ve experienced the loss of a child, may you find ways to alchemize a pain that will never subside while being gentle with yourself as you travel through grief.

To us mamas who endured birth trauma at the hands of a medical system that’s not meant to protect us, may we heal our wounds in community, and follow the light of our child to illuminate the path through.

To all mamas, may we channel our collective wisdom and strength to reimagine and create a world where those who come after us have equitable access to opportunity for dignity, safety, and belonging.

To all mamas, may we move forward together with love.