Greetings, dear Reader,

I'm so grateful right now for the sunshine, the buds and blossoms of a new season... The WellMama seeds and visions we sang to during the fertile darkness of the winter, have sprouted and are growing beautifully this spring here at Bryn y Blodau (Cymru, West Wales), the hearth and home of WellMama CIC. I'm really delighted that Caia and her family have come to live here on the land, and together we are cultivating a community garden, growing food and nutritional medicines for ourselves and pregnant and post-partum women and their families.

As a result of this collective work that we've quietly been doing, we're now launching a new project this month 🌸

We will begin to deliver free fresh produce boxes on the third Thursday of every month for the pregnancy group meeting at Nook and Noble Cafe in Cardigan and we would love your feedback and support on this! If this speaks to you, please respond directly to this email:

Are you interested to pick up seasonal garden produce from a central location in Cardigan?

Would you be willing to help us work on this project in our Mothers' Garden throughout the summer?

I feel honoured to have journeyed with Tariqua through those long, dark months of winter and into the sunny days of spring... I'm so grateful for her deep presence in my life, her jolly smile and the rooted wisdom she shares! I'm enjoying our continued weaving together as guest speakers on each others' courses. She recently joined me for this month's Conception module on our 13 Moons Journey, and I'm looking forward to joining her on her Tending the Roots of Community programme on May 18th for a session with the title "Where Land meets Body - Birth and Life's Thresholds".

In alignment with our vision of providing sanctuary, wellbeing practices, education and community-based care, Bryn y Blodau and WellMama are currently offering sanctuary to three women and their families who are moving through significant transitions and thresholds on their life journeys. Together, we are all dreaming into and practicing a culture of collective care - intergenerational, multicultural, regenerative, based on mutuality and reciprocity. ​

At the same time, other threads have continued to weave online: The WellMama and TrueMidwifery collaboration hub on Teachable is ongoing, offering online spaces and education to women, families and birthworkers.

Samara has just launched her new programme Body, Birth & Beyond, and Tariqua Rooted is continuing with her own online and in-person offerings - both of which you can read about below. 👇

Body, Birth & Beyond enrolment open

I'm delighted to share that the first Body, Birth & Beyond programme is now open and places are starting to fill! This season's group will begin on May 8th and go through 4 weeks of birth preparation together. The course will run again next season, when a new circle of pregnant women comes together.

I am dreaming of a re-matriated society with mothers and women rooted in body, instinct and innate wisdom. A collective culture where mothers, babies, and birthing families are centred, cherished, and surrounded by circles of support. Where birth is understood to be a natural, physiological threshold, rather than a medical event to be managed, and where the sanctity of that significant crossing is upheld by collectives and communities, rather than controlled by institutions.

I envision intergenerational wisdom flowing freely, elder to younger, hand to hand, heart to heart. Where obstetric violence is a thing of the past. Where love is at the centre of all things. My work contributes to this dream by cultivating spaces, places and practices that restore women's health and well-being, birth knowledge, skills and wisdom to the hands and hearts of wise women, mothers, families and communities, for now, and for the generations to come.

Beltane, May 1st 2026

A letter from Tariqua:

I jumped the Fire

When my children were small and we were living and moving across the land, Beltane was not something we observed from a distance. We jumped the fire. All of us. Together. Into the brightness and the unknown of a new season, leaving behind the soft, dark hold of winter that beloved cocoon of rest and deepening and stepping forward into whatever the light was calling us to meet. That jump was never small. It asked everything the winter had quietly grown in us. Can you bring what you learned in the deep and carry it into the light? Can you let it be seen? This winter, I felt the depths and the acceptance of the dark fully. And I am willing and glad to let what grew there come forward into the light. So I jump the fire now, with this message: I am stepping back from my active role on the WellMama directors team. I carry this with a full heart, not an empty one. WellMama holds something precious, something I helped tend to, and that helped tend me. The roots of that work live in my body and my practice, and they always will.

What is asking for my whole presence now is Tariqua Rooted, a practice and a path rooting itself in the soil of Scotland, in ancestral and earth-based ways of knowing, in the wisdom of the elder, the matriarch, the one who knows that to understand birth is to understand death, that to know light is to have lived in darkness.

I am that dark one. The one who translates. Who holds the threshold. Who tends the whole arc of human experience birth, death, becoming, grief, creativity, community through the weaving of ancestral practice, herbalism, somatic movement, traditional midwifery, and the slow, patient intelligence of the earth beneath our feet.

My work is a coming home. A tending of roots. A connecting of each of us back to the mycelium of deep innate knowing already whole, already ancient, already enough.

What is growing at Tariqua Rooted

Free community gathering: Summer Solstice · Saturday 20 June 2026

An all-day gathering in the spirit of tending the roots of community a day of creative care, collective practice, and nature-based ways of being together. Free and open to all. Come as you are.

​Monthly supervision groups · places available: Decolonial peer supervision for practitioners

Two monthly circles for liberation-focused practitioners, Tuesday evenings and Friday mornings, offered on a sliding scale. A container for honest reflection, mutual support, and practice rooted in collective liberation. Both groups currently have spaces available. Further offerings including full-spectrum, thresholds, cradle to grave, mentoring and teachings, supervisions, consultations and facilitations, community containers are held at www.tariquarooted.org​

Roots still reach each other underground

The WellMama team and I are not parting. We are like the roots of different trees that have grown through the same earth. We will always find each other beneath the surface. We will collaborate, celebrate, and continue to support the practices unfolding in each of our paths. What changes is the form, not the love. Welcome to all of creation. Come as you are. You are always welcome.

With roots and with this Beltane fire,

Tariqua

​www.tariquarooted.org insta: @tariquarooted @tending_roots_of_community mail: info@tariquarooted.org

For enquiries, curiosities, or simply to say hello, reach out through any of the above.

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A letter from Caia:

Beltane blessings and spring sensations to us all...

I trust everyone is feeling the energy that is moving through this year so far, and rooting down ready to rise and reach tall towards the potential growth and change that is unfolding... Grief, Grace and Gratitude always. We at Wellmama are listening deeply to the undercurrents and responding accordingly as we are learning this is the key to evolution... Tending to what arises to make space for the next... As we begin to see the shoots of the seeds we have planted and move towards setting them into the ground, we marvel at Nature's magic, and grow excited to share the nourishment once full bloom has arrived...

I'm learning so much and acquiring such wisdom from working beside Samara and Tariqua as they show me the way, and I hold so much love and gratitude towards them as friends, sisters and guides.

We're taking things slowly with beginning the Sister Circles, and I would love to receive feedback on interest from you as my core circle is ready to begin again, so here are some questions for you to contemplate and respond to: •Are you looking to sit in online circle with women from different places and weave a web of nourishment, wisdom and connection? •Would you like to do this monthly or fortnightly? •Would you like a themed unfolding, session by session like a journey, or an open space with more freedom to flow with what might be alive for each of us in each session? •Would you like an end-of-year retreat in person with this circle? It would be wonderful to hear back from you either by responding to welcome@wellmamaworld.com or on my Instagram (@sensual_sistrins_circlesofwomb)! In our next newsletter we will share further details and information on how we intend to go forward.

Much love,

Caia

Our other upcoming offerings:

Essence ~ Movement Meditations

Our regular Wednesdays sessions are open to join anytime! On our Teachable course page you can also read more about the benefits of the Qi Gong, Tai Chi and Daoist meditation practices that Samara shares and the content of the weekly live sessions (Wednesdays at 9am UK time). ​If you're new to Essence, you're welcome to come for a free taster session! Simply enter your email address h​ere, and we'll send you the Zoom link for your first online session. ​​Looking forward to sharing with you this space of nourishment and profound healing from within! Join Essence

Tending Birth ~ Tending Life women's gathering

A reminder of this rare opportunity to gather in person with Samara Hawthorn and Ruth Ehrhardt, held in a beautiful setting at Trefacwn (Pembrokeshire), this September. A circle of women is forming who are going to sit together, to share stories and wisdom, to remember the deep threads that connect birth, womanhood, ceremony, and community....

If you feel called to contribute to this and to be one of the 13 initial investors who will make this retreat possible, you can find all the details here on our event page.

​Holding the Bones: 2 day in-person workshop

Join us for a nourishing and potent two-day workshop: a tender hands on and heart-led, pelvic and community care practice, born from the work of Kimberly Ann Johnson and carefully carried forward by Samara Hawthorn. Details and registration here 24th-25th October 2026 Taylor Hall - Cobham Village Hall

🌺 Upcoming Study Spiral with Marta Busquets:

"Claiming Space: Women’s Rights and the Legal Terrain of Birth"

Thurs, May 21st| 11am–2pm SAST / CET ​

You are invited to dip your toe into the warm and nourishing waters of True Midwifery by joining these monthly study spirals. These monthly gatherings are a safe space for birth keepers from around the world to gather, share, study, discuss and learn in a non judgemental and oxytocin rich space.

Samara also offers 1:1 coaching and mentoring sessions to mothers, families and birth keepers.

These can be sessions throughout the childbearing year from conception through pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and closing of the bones as well as miscarriage and abortion support. She also offers couples' Shiatsu for birth preparation, integrative counselling and elemental constellation services. To book a session with her, follow this link, and specify what guidance you're looking for, or the time can be used to simply explore what's coming up for you!

As always, we would love to hear from you, if you have any questions or ideas for collaboration - please email us directly at welcome@wellmamaworld.com or message us on Instagram.

With love,

The WellMama Collective

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Tending a Hearth of Maternal Health and Wellbeing

With Heart and Hands