Spring Equinox: Embodying Balance

Dear Reader,

Here it WellMama HQ at Bryn y Blodau, spring is in the air!

The songs of the birds are sounding sweeter and sharper, and the first buds are beginning to burst from beneath the earth...

The apricot tree in the polytunnel is already flowering and the bees are buzzing to and from the hives...

The peach blossoms are just emerging and starting to turn pink...

The first salad leaves are being enjoyed, and the watercress by the ancient spring is growing abundantly at this time of year 💚

Our Mother's Garden is coming along really well, most of the beds are currently covered, although the garlic that we planted in the autumn is growing strong and will be ready for harvest just before Solstice. The rest of the beds are covered and mulched, ready for the growth of the new season to come. We had some communal times of working on the garden in February, just after Imbolc, where we began sowing the seeds for this year. We will continue tending to the garden together every month to sow the new succession of seeds, and then towards the beginning of May the seedlings will be planted out into the Mother's Garden.

We're really looking forward to growing an abundance of fruit and vegetables this year to be shared with our community, with pregnant and postpartum families and to be enjoyed by the participants of our events here on the land this summer.

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I (Samara) am cultivating and curating my next contribution towards tending birth, mothers, families and birth. And I'm excited to be launching this new programme: Body, Birth and Beyond.

This will be a four-week online birth preparation programme for pregnant women, beginning on the 8th of May. We will meet weekly online in an intimate circle, exploring pregnancy, labour, physiological birth and postpartum. Additional weekly modules will be available on our Teachable platform with background information, resources, exercises... If you're interested, you can join the waiting list here. Really looking forward to welcoming you in this new space!

Much love,

Samara x

We're excited to be with you all through The Wellmama 13 Moons 2026 Journey. What a gift it is to move through this year's circle, and rhythms, in relationships! We're grateful to have gathered and met for the first time with our new circle of women! 🙏🏾 This month, we're going to truly embark on the journey with our module on Preconception - The Cauldron of Creation. Next month, Samara and Tariqua are going to hold the Conception module together, followed by guest speaker and fellow birthkeeper Alejandra Dydzinski in May.

Maybe you are a Midwife, Doula, Birthkeeper, a Women's health practitioner or Community Leader and wish to expand, nurture and support your practice and be part of a worldwide web of wisdom weavers & community cultivators?

Please reach out directly via email (welcome@wellmamaworld.com) or DM on our Instagram, if you have any questions or feel called to join this journey ❤️

A message from Tariqua

It is always such a tender and meaningful thing to pause and write here, in this space we share together. If you find a quiet moment to sit with these words, I am grateful. There is no rush. That itself is a teaching.

As Spring moves slowly towards us unhurried, certain, faithful, I find myself watching the Earth with great attention. She does not force her becoming. She does not apologise for the pace of her unfolding. She simply arrives, in her own time, with her whole self. And I am learning from her. I am practicing the same. There is something about this season of new “faces and fresh eyes” that calls us gently back to beginnings not to erase what has been, but to look forward with an open and softened gaze.

I'm also truly and deeply moved by what has been growing since January in our course container Creative Collective Care | Tending the Roots of Community. Each month, guided by a creative practitioner or artist, we explore together how we tend to ourselves and to one another, and how and where we find belonging.

I am so grateful to hold space within this gathering. This is a profound transitioning of community, rooted in remembering in a decolonial context, in lived experience, making space for Global Majority and marginalised folks and their allies to create in right relationship with Earth and her expressions, reaching toward new ways of being for our shared future.

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This year, WellMama CIC is becoming her truest form

The WellMama team Samara, Caia, Isa, and I are working with great care and intention behind the scenes, transforming WellMama into the beacon of matriarchal wisdom, service, and support it is becoming.

We are part of something larger than any one of us. On a global level, we are remembering, recognising, and relearning how to shift into her truest form evolving with her as she becomes. This asks not only for organisational skill, but for our own personal transformation as well. The world, at this extraordinary moment, is asking all of us to look clearly at old forms and dare to imagine new ones.

We are sitting with that. Listening. Letting it land in our bodies, our minds, our spirits. I feel deep resonance and devotion to making these shifts real, practical and spiritual, grounded in life itself and in all that life is asking of us right now.

And I will say this honestly, with the full knowing, of someone who has walked her own long path: it is not an easy journey. I know with certainty that we need one another.

Warm wishes,

Tariqua🌿 xx

Other ongoing or upcoming offerings:

🌺 True Midwifery Study Spiral:

"Ancient Movement for Women's Reproductive Health" with Samara Hawthorn

Thursday, March 26th | 11am–2pm SAST
​Book here​

These monthly Spirals 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.

For centuries, mindful movement and Qigong practices have been used to support emotional balance, heart health, and nervous system regulation. In this special session, Samara will gently guide us through ancient movement practices that nourish the womb and heart while tending to the deep reservoirs of primal energy within the body.

Through slow, embodied awareness we will explore how these practices can strengthen our connection to ourselves and to one another, cultivating vitality, presence, and inner harmony throughout the seasons of womanhood.

A Space to Find Ground Supervision for Solo Workers

I (Tariqua) have created a container you may have seen on my social media or in one of our group messages. It is a supervision space for solo workers and self-employed people, anyone who hold others in some form of service or support. A doula, perhaps, a herbalist, a therapist, an artist, a community organiser, a facilitator. A creative being and I believe, at our deepest level, we are all creative beings.

If you need a space to find practical ground during these profound transitions of life, of Earth, of self - this is for you... If you want tools to feel more connected to what you do and who you are... If purpose and practice feel misaligned, or are searching for their alignment. This space holds all of that, and more.

Sessions are once a month. There is a Tuesday evening group, 7–9pm, and a Friday morning group, 10am–12 noon. There are still spaces available, offered on a sliding scale. Please feel free to reach out: Info@tariquarooted.org

Birth First Aid - Self-Study Course

This course by Ruth Ehrhardt is grounded in traditional midwifery, modern first aid, and deep reverence for physiological birth.

Enrolment for the current live course is now closed, but you can book this valuable course as a self-study option instead! An online learning space for birthkeepers from around the world where you can study in your own time. Prepare for the unexpected, gain practical tools, deepen your confidence, and learn to respond with calm and care when mother or baby need attention.

👉 Sign up here:​
​https://true-midwifery1.teachable.com/p/birth-first-aid2

Ongoing WellMama Community Care Survey

Receiving a diversity of feedback from different age groups and backgrounds really helps us in preparing our Impact report and securing future grants and funding opportunities, so that our WellMama offerings can benefit even more people in-person and online. That's why we invite you all to take a few minutes to fill in this short survey - whether you're a past participant of our events and you can share a story about your experience, or your a new subscriber and you can tell us what you would be most interested in.

We’d love to hear from more of you about your experiences and journeys with us over this past year! Thank you for being part of this journey with us! 💚

Upcoming events at a glance:

⭐ Essence Moving Meditations (Qi Gong, Tai Chi & TCM) - every Wednesday, starting again in April! (registration here)

⭐ Body, Birth & Beyond, an online birth preparation course with Samara, starting May '26 (waiting list open)

⭐ Birth Camp 2026 on the land at Bryn y Blodau, this summer (waiting list open)

⭐ B.O.O.B. breastfeeding support circle: online, starting Spring '26 (waiting list open)

⭐ Regular WellMama Community Care and Sensual Sistrins circles (waiting list open)

We're full of joy and gratitude to be part of all that is being woven here. We look forward to meeting you through WellMama and through our individual offerings. May this season of new light find you gently, may you give yourself permission to arrive, just as you are.

With gratitude and open arms,

The WellMama Collective - Samara, Tariqua, Caia and Isa

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Peace on Earth starts with Birth

Michel Odent (1930 - 2025)