Your Baby is Your Shaman

I’ve been laid out with a megacold for the last six days. And today — the first day I felt better — I walked around my garden with my son.

He walked slower than he usually does, making sure he wasn’t going faster than I could handle.

He’s two, not 22, but he has spent his entire life in lockstep with me. In reciprocal relationship.

“Come, mama” he beckoned softly leaning toward me and gesturing trepidatiously, as though he didn’t want me to go beyond my edge.

Like an act of encouragement, the same way I gestured to him when he was learning to walk. “Come, baby” I’d say softly.

He stuck out his hand, asking for mine.

“Sorry, mama” he said as I coughed for the 50th time today.

“Here!”, he walked back to me, held my hand, and tried to guide me to his new red wheelbarrow.

I crouched down to his level and kissed his head.

“Thanks, baby, I love you” I muttered through my inflamed vocal chords.

“Sit, mama. Rest!” he urged.

I could keep going and tell you how last night he asked his father for matcha supplies to “make mama a drink” only to then sit on the ground and literally make it himself or how he proceeded to walk a lukewarm matcha to the bathtub where I laid half-awake.

I could tell you about the way he yells, “mama, car coming!!!” every time we cross the road, shielding me with his body as though he’s big enough to block me.

I could tell you how he runs his hands through my hair and looks at me with a love bigger than my body can contain, but I don’t need to.

Because you already know if you’re a mother.

You already know that our babies come in unconditioned to give their love freely. They don’t know hate. They only speak the language of love.

Love without conditions. And all they ask of us — literally all they ask of us, fundamentally — is that we give it back, unconditionally. That we don’t reject, abandon, neglect, dismiss, and miscue.

Not that we’re perfect. But that we’re in it. That we remain in reverent reciprocity. That we do the dance.

Like all of nature. Like all of life itself.

Babies don’t need coercion, threats, bribes, time-outs, punishments, and timers. They don’t need training. They are already trained in the only thing that really matters: to give and receive love, unconditionally.

It is *us* who needs to learn. Our babies are the ascended masters.

Our babies will lead us back to love even if we err. Especially when we err. They’ll lead us back time and time again, but we have to let them.

We have to listen. We have to be willing to meet them in relationship *without* dominion. Without the painful power dynamics of patriarchy. If you move too fast, if you read too much “parenting advice” and outsource your relationship with your baby you’ll miss the magic. You’ll miss the medicine.

You’ll end up stuck in the hallways of intellectualism. Disconnected. fragmented. You’ll end up out of relationship. Locked out of your heart, Locked out of the eternal garden of eden our babies are inviting us into.

So will you stay? Will you stay in relationship with your baby even though western culture begs you not to?

Will you listen to the wisdom of your baby? Of your body, begging you to soften? To resist the overculture’s cries of callousness?

This is the work. This is the work of modern motherhood, in a culture in crisis – To look to our babies as our shamans.

To remember. And to let the remembering change you.

To let motherhood change you. To let it rearrange you.

Let it soften your hard edges. Let it release your rules and rigidity. Let it unravel you.

Let go. Let it go. Let go of what you thought motherhood would be like and be present to the unfolding of what actually “is”.

Be with it. Sit with it. Hold it in. Feel it, breathe it in.

Your baby isn’t here to hurt you. Motherhood isn’t trying to destroy you. It’s trying to transform you.

So let it. Surrender. There’s an ecstatic, electric place awaiting your arrival.

Awaiting your remembering.

P.S. Motherhood is the ultimate spiritual initiation. It’s an indescribably trip to other planes of consciousness, other fields of vision, other heart spaces. And often, it’s an encounter with the underworld. The depths. The places we don’t dare to go in our culture; places we don’t even dare to speak of. Go there. You don’t have to go there alone, but go. It’s not there to hurt you. It’s there to remind you of your feminine power. To wake you back up. It’s a temporary pass-through — a portal — so that once you ascend back above you know in every part of your being that you are unstoppable. Formidable. A knowing you’ll carry with you eternally. I’m leading a 9 week mind-body-spirit medicine for motherhood group called Sacred Sleep starting May 12th, 2026. You can read about it here (and join at a super steep discount here). Much love to you all.