Mothers Circle -Birth Doula

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Mothers Circle -Birth Doula

Mother. Birth Doula (20yrs). Childbirth Educator. Writer. Circle-Keeper. Walking beside women through pregnancy, birth, and all thresholds of becoming.

I create spaces for truth, grief, rest and expression. Based in Aotearoa, working worldwide.

10/02/2026

I live in a house of women.
This week we bleed.
We carry our hot water bottles around, couch to bed to floor.
We drink iced ginger tea and nibble the sweet treats that have been waiting in the freezer for this time.

We crumble into heaps, tears fall, we get wild, we get sharp.
We spill a month of stories in the kitchen. We hold onto cupboard doors as we bend our bodies and howl the laughter from our bones.
We let everything fall apart. I’m so much better at crumbling these days.

My flatmates son follows her around chatting.
Motherhood doesn’t stop even for blood.
“Its only up from here” I say twirling her long hair in my fingers.
“It’s so much better together” she says.

03/02/2026

I’m surprised at 42.
At how wonderful it is.
At life’s embrace.
At the way happiness works.

You have to be emptied before you can be filled.
Hold your tears too tightly
and they find other ways to leak.

I’m surprised the path to joy is crying.

Lately I’ve been walking the beach,
feeling the joy of my sadness.
It’s a strange phrase, I know.
But grief, when it’s allowed, doesn’t flatten us.
It strengthens us.
Flexing the heart muscle makes life richer.

Tending to our grief keeps us vital.
It keeps us warm.
It is also intended to be shared.

In March, I’m offering a pop-up Writing Circle on Grief.
Thursday evenings, 7:30pm online.
10 women gathering with inquiry and curiosity.
$195.

If this speaks to you, you’re welcome.

Photo credit

28/01/2026

Pregnancy Soup is on the boil.
We begin next week, February 4th.

This is nourishing support for pregnant women who want more than information.
A space of ritual, communion, and sisterhood.
A place to arrive, to be met, to be held.

Pregnancy Soup is a four-month container that walks alongside you as your body changes, your inner world shifts, and you prepare for the profound rite of passage that is birth.

I come to this work as a birth doula of nearly 20 years, and what I know for certain is this:
your whole world is changing.
Not just your body.
Not just your plans.
Everything.

This space exists to honour that change, gently and intentionally, before the baby arrives.

There are two more seats at the table.
If you feel the pull, join us.

27/01/2026

Last week I wrote a post about violating s*xual energy-
in the bedroom
and in the birth room.

Respecting s*xual energy means NOT FORCING.
NOT MANAGING.
NOT RUSHING.

Surrender is not something that can be commanded.
It naturally arrives in its own time when the body feels safe.
This is true in intimacy, and it is true in birth.

Gathering information in the mind during pregnancy is one thing, but embodying relaxation as a skill is another.

Pregnancy Soup is a space to tend to the nervous system, to soften with awareness, to practice deep relaxation, to listen to the subtle language of the body. Join me for a 4 month online container. We begin next week. There are 2 spaces available. Send me a message for more information.

Sophia 🌱

*xualenergy

21/01/2026

I see the same violations in the birth room that I see in our s*xual culture. A culture shaped by violent po*******hy, casualised intimacy and epidemic levels of s*xual abuse.
A culture where power is taken, consent blurred and where speed and performance matter more than presence.

That same pattern walks straight into the birth room-
Misplaced authority.
Manipulation dressed up as “care”.
Gaslighting intuition.
Women spoken over, rushed, managed, overridden.
Rooms that serve systems and schedules rather than the woman labouring at the centre of them.

Birth, like s*x, requires safety.
Privacy.
Trust.
Sovereignty.

You cannot coerce life through force without consequence.
If we want different births, we must tend to s*xual energy differently.
In the bedroom.
In our culture.
In ourselves.
Supporting the sacred process starts long before labour begins.

*x *xualenergy

08/01/2026

“Pregnancy Soup”, born from the knowing that life is richer together.

A small devoted circle of women, walking pregnancy together- sharing stories, challenges, nourishment and rest. Space to drop in and be present with the phenomenal changes pregnancy brings.

Held online on Wednesday evenings 7.30pm- your mid-week rejuvenation. We begin January the 28th 2026. Send me an email for more information info@motherscircle.co.nz

What does Sisterhood mean to you?

02/01/2026

I spent most of 2025 working as a “live-in doula” —
living with families until their baby arrived. Often for weeks.

Joining their home space.
Sharing meals.
Being part of the real-time unfolding.

It was another level of connection — deeper, closer, a form of companioning that happens through presence rather than preparation.

This way of being alongside women during the profound transition of becoming a Mother is what inspired “Pregnancy Soup” — my new online pregnancy offering.

It’s a little bit of everything- breathing, writing, learning, sharing.

A rich, nourishing weekly circle, supporting you gently and steadily through pregnancy.

A small group of 10 pregnant mamas, meeting weekly for a 4-month deepening.
There are 6 spaces available.

We begin January 25th. 🤍
For more info, send me a message 🤰

30/12/2025

2025 -I thought I knew things,
but that was before.

2025 took my identity —
the one I liked.
It took all my stories
and said, these don’t count.
It said let go more
and took my hands ransom.

Death visited the young.
It took a baby,
and it took a woman younger than I.
It took my trust,
though maybe I hadn’t started with any.
I couldn’t find the floor
until at least October.

I prayed more sincerely.
I prayed with orange peels
and brass bowls of water.
I prayed with children in veils
and freshly opened mothers.
I prayed in the dirt with spiders
and in crowded airports.
I prayed with hamburger patties
and sweet walnut slice.
I prayed in desperation,
in disgust,
and in delight.

My hands grew back
to rearrange all the pieces.
And maybe it’s only now —
settled into a house with blue walls,
my daughter having found her sisters —
that it all makes sense.

That there’s space for the new,
like the orange tomatoes
in my mother’s garden.

I welcome you to write with me for 2026.
I have 2 online containers- Sunday evenings for The Undoing, and Matriarch Mondays for those who have written with me before. Send me a message for more info x

23/12/2025

As the Writing Circle comes into its 4th year, I have accumulated over 30 journals.
Full of stories, full of mistakes, full of human truth & human denial.
Pages of shame, pages of cringe.
Id like to say there might be a good piece or two in each book.
And when I say “good”, I mean, one I’d be happy to share.

But its the “not good stuff” that is the best.
The revealing of the covered, the unspoken, the “don’t say that” stuff.
Its the words I had to drag up from murky waters like a kingfisher on a line.
The words that got me sweaty.

I’m a believer in the glorious mess of life.
I don’t trust clean curation, or well put together anything. Cosmetic dreams of youth bore me.
Its all missing the messy point.
What’s true still lays dormant beneath- undiscovered.
Its in the disarray, the dirty and the dry skin on your heels.
Its in the drought that killed your flowers, the ones you planted from seed.
Its in the tears you still haven’t cried from the sweetest corners of innocence.
Its in the mascara you left on overnight because life wore you out and sleep didnt even rest you.
Its all there.
In the pages.

Join me next year-
“The Undoing” begins Sunday 25th Jan.
“Matriarch Mondays” begins Monday 19th Jan.
Bring your worst.

16/12/2025

I received a message from a mother whose daughter turned five on the weekend.
I was her birth doula.

She sent me a voice clip from five years ago — a conversation between us, recorded in the thick of late pregnancy.

It went like this:

“Sophia… I want to tell you something… I have the baby bassinet beside me, the baby clothes are ready, and I’m so scared. It’s such a huge thing. I’ve never done this before. I’m terrified. There will be a baby in there soon…”

I listened again to the words exchanged between us.
The softening that happens when fear is witnessed.
The relief of being met.
The quiet power of walking beside someone as they cross a threshold.

Pregnancy is an extraordinary transition.
Changing. Dreaming. Growing. Opening.
Surrender, over and over.
A dying.
A becoming.

In January 2026, I open Pregnancy Soup — an online sisterhood.
A warm, nourishing space for pregnancy.
A little of everything: relaxation, learning, sharing, preparing,creativity.
Four months of close companioning through one of life’s great transformations.

You don’t have to do this alone.

07/12/2025

Time is an hourglass.
I arrive at a new home and turn the timer.
We step into the darkness—
tears, blood, breath—
and eventually a new baby arrives.
The sand empties and I move on,
leaving behind the milky softness,
letting it all reshape me.
Then I carry myself to the next home
to flip the hourglass once more.

Time is taken, and time is given.
I can never wrap my fingers around it.
It is neither measured nor fair;
it falls to and from,
a rhythm we cannot hold.
We can sing you in and we can sing you out,
yet we cannot keep you.

We wait and listen and wonder
when you will arrive,
what the signs mean,
why the kingfisher came.
The tulips bloom in bold red,
the blood begins to break through,
and we light the fire
because tonight may be the night.

The truth is, we would wait forever for you, darling.
If the sand was a dune
willing to be carried across the world,
we would move it grain by grain
just to hold you in our arms
for a single moment.

Time stitches us together.
Time brings you through me
and into life—
but only for a lifetime.
Long and short,
full like the hips that held you.
Time gives and takes,
again and again,
all of us.

2026-
Enquire about Doula Services.
My next Writing Circle “The Undoing” starts January 25th.
Keep your eyes peeled for “Pregnancy Soup”, my new online pregnancy container for support, inspiration, education and deepening within- details to drop this week.
The Labour of Love Doula Training opens July 2026.

05/12/2025

This photo was taken this morning at our local Homebirth Community Meeting — a space I’ve been sitting in for over twenty years. A place where babies grow into children, mothers grow into elders, and wisdom is passed quietly from lap to lap.

There were a handful of children running and crawling around at today’s gathering whose births I witnessed.

Im reminded how much community shapes us — how being surrounded by women, stories, and shared experience adds a layer of richness to pregnancy and early motherhood that nothing else can replace.

It’s this same spirit I’m weaving into Pregnancy Soup — an online weekly space for sharing, learning, resting, laughing, and being held during a time of enormous change.

Because pregnancy was never meant to be navigated alone.
Community is one of our oldest medicines.
More details to come. If you are pregnant and wanting to be first to know the details for “Pregnancy Soup”, DM me your email address.

With love
Sophia

Address

Bethlehem
3110

Website

http://www.motherscircle.co.nz/

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Kia Ora!

I am Sophia, mama of two joyous beings, Childbirth Educator, Doula, Bath Connoisseur, Truth Seeker & Speaker!

For over a decade my work has been focused around empowering women to take ownership of their pregnancy, birth and Mothering journey, guiding them to discover, explore and trust their own inner knowing and innate capacities.

I am passionate about celebrating and valuing the rites of passage as women and fostering support and understanding instead of cheapening the experience with outside influences or competition.

These are sacred times for transformation!