Mindful Matrescence

Registration for Summer Prenatal Yoga is now open!

In this course we will explore pregnancy and birth as transformation. Each week we use a tool from the practices of yoga and mindfulness to build out a specific birth skill to serve us in labor and beyond. Folks will leave this course with knowledge of what laboring positions and breathing techniques serve their specific, evolving body, ways to relieve common pregnancy-related discomforts, clarity on how they intend to feel about their birth, and how to align their choices and actions with that intention. Folks also have the opportunity to build lasting connections with other birthing parents walking the path to and through parenthood alongside them.

Here are the details:

🗓️Tuesdays, 7/7-8/18
📍 Maple Street YMCA
🕠6:00PM-7:30PM
💲$35 for Y members, $65 for community members
🤝Financial assistance is available! Email Rebecca Lillie at [email protected]
🔗link to register in bio or go to https://bit.ly/SummerPrenatalYoga2026

Questions, curiosities, or ideas? Email us [email protected]

A near week ago, twelve women gathered in the name of “Matrescence,” a term coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in th 70s, revived by in the 2010s, and that has recently gone viral via and ’s campaign for it to be included in the dictionary.

These women and mothers dedicated the morning to recalling, discovering, studying, articulating, and drawing each path of their matrescence journeys to date. They then dedicated the afternoon to ceremonializing where their matrescence journeys may take them next, traversing a labyrinth in search of their Heart’s Question.

Perhaps you can already tell - this was not your typical retreat.

These women were not pampered.

There were no massages, face masks, or grazing tables.

Instead, these women were deeply (and willingly) inconvenienced by what many of us might call The Work.

They stepped into the parts of motherhood that are raw, complicated, and heavy with grief.

There were tears, an altar, filled notebook pages, tulips, and homemade soup.

A pair of bluebirds watched over these women as they descended into the labyrinth. Several women left an offering at the labyrinth’s center where they stood still. Breathed. And noticed.

Our time together continues to play on repeat in my mind. The stories, the connections, the deep inner work, it all plays on a loop as war unfolds, genocide continues, and predators are yet to be held accountable.

Let us choose to see these seemingly juxtaposing energies as purposefully synchronous. Let us mothers see our deep inner work ripple to our children, our community, our collective.

We do not mother in vain.

We ascend on purpose, with purpose.

And, to that end, when people ask “how are you?” or “are they sleeping through the night yet?” or “you’re still breastfeeding?” - tell them.

Tell them you are transforming.

Tell them your priorities, your goals, your relationships, your values, have all shifted.

Tell them when you birthed your baby you also (re)birthed yourself.

Tell them.

Use the word.

Tell them about Matrescence.

🖤

Registration for Spring Prenatal Yoga is now open!

In this course we will explore pregnancy and birth as transformation. Each week we use a tool from the practices of yoga and mindfulness to build out a specific birth skill to serve us in labor and beyond. Folks will leave this course with knowledge of what laboring positions and breathing techniques serve their specific, evolving body, ways to relieve common pregnancy-related discomforts, clarity on how they intend to feel about their birth, and how to align their choices and actions with that intention. Folks also have the opportunity to build lasting connections with other birthing parents walking the path to and through parenthood alongside them.

Here are the details:

🗓️Tuesdays, 2/24-4/14 (no class 3/31)
📍 Maple Street YMCA
🕠6:00PM-7:30PM
💲$35 for Y members, $65 for community members
🤝Financial assistance is available! Email Rebecca Lillie at [email protected]
🔗link to register: bit.ly/PrenatalYogaSpring2026

Questions, curiosities, or ideas? Email us [email protected]