Mothering With Light at the Threshold

January has arrived with a different kind of energy for me this year.

After what felt like a long, inward, cocooning season - much of 2025 spent tending quietly and listening deeply, I feel a subtle but unmistakable shift. A stirring. A readiness. The Year of the Horse energy feels apt: forward-moving, heart-led, charged with momentum after stillness. Not rushed. But awake.

And yet… we are mothering in dark and complicated times.

If you’re a mom, you probably know the feeling well: packing lunches, braiding hair, answering a thousand questions before 8am—and then scrolling your phone to see images and headlines that make your chest tighten. Back and forth we go between the ordinary tenderness of daily “momming” and the very real grief, fear, and outrage of the world we’re raising our children in.

All the while, we’re trying to stay regulated.
Because when we are regulated, our children have a better chance of being regulated.
And some days, that alone feels like a full-time job.

It’s a lot.
And pretending otherwise doesn’t serve us - or our kids.

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on why I was first called to this work.

It began when I was pregnant with my first child. Something cracked open in me then - an awakening that felt both ancient and brand new. I followed that call into Doula training shortly after, drawn by a deep desire to support families during threshold moments, when life as you know it is ending and something entirely new is being born.

Over the years, that calling has taken many forms: creative family programming, music circles, process art, parent coaching, community gatherings. And I love that work deeply. I always will.

But beneath it all, there has been a steady, quiet pulse - one that keeps asking to be listened to more fully.

A call to mothers.

Not just as parents.
But as women.
As humans holding immense responsibility, tenderness, grief, devotion, and power.

I feel myself standing at a threshold now.

I am being called toward creating offerings for mothers that are rooted in community, ritual, creativity, and ancient wisdom. Spaces where we don’t have to perform strength or positivity. Spaces where mothers can gather, be seen and heard, work with their hands, sing, make, remember. Spaces that honor the nervous system, the seasons, the body, and the sacred lineage of women who have always found ways to tend life even in uncertain times.

Mothering with light, to me, doesn’t mean ignoring the darkness.
It means choosing presence.
It means slowing enough to feel.
It means regulating together instead of alone.
It means remembering that we were never meant to do this in isolation.

It means letting our children see us care - for ourselves, for each other, for the world—without carrying it all silently.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about a new series of seasonal mother circles that will be emerging from this place. These will be small, intentional gatherings for mamas in our community who feel this resonance too - who are longing for connection that feels real, embodied, and nourishing.

If something in you stirred while reading this, trust that. Something is moving. And you don’t have to meet it alone.

With so much love,

Taryn