http://motherhood.susannahrickman.com/

LivModer, Stockholm (2026)

02/03/2026

Nu finns kursbeskrivningen för nästa omgång av postpartumdoulautbildningen som jag samskapat och håller tillsammans med Julianna .se att ladda ned.
Vi startar 11 april.

Jag är oerhört stolt över denna utbildning som verkligen överträffat alla mina förhoppningar och förväntningar!

Om en månad finns det 20 nyutbildade postpartumdoulor som kommer göra en enorm skillnad för så många nyfödda mammor, bebisar och familjer. ❤️

Länk i kommentarsfältet.

02/03/2026

You are not the only one guiding your child.

I know it can feel that way sometimes.
As if every word you speak, every choice you make, will determine everything.

But you are not raising your child alone.

Your child is shaped by sunlight and gravity.
By friendships and teachers.
By books, stories, and culture.
By the land beneath their feet and the sky above their head.
By ancient spiritual forces that have guided children long before you were born.
By the same life intelligence that turns a seed toward the sun and grows a heart inside a womb without being instructed how.
By ancestral lines that stretch back through time.
By the unseen hands of the Great Mother, Great Spirit, God, Source — whatever name feels true in your bones.

There are many forces at work in a life.
You are one of them.
A powerful one.
But not the only one.

Allow yourself to soften into this fact.
You do not have to be everything.
You do not have to get everything right.
You are not solely responsible for orchestrating their entire becoming.

You are a guide.
A steady presence.
A source of love and orientation.

But life itself is also guiding them.
Spirit is also breathing through them.

Find comfort in that.

Let the ocean, the forest, the community, the teachers, the ancestors, and the ancient spiritual currents that move through all living things share in both the responsibility and the deep joy of caring for your child.

🩵 Art by "First steps", 2024, oil, canvas

-parenting

27/02/2026

I have drummed for many of the women I have supported through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, and recently I again had the deep privilege of drumming during a birth.
This time in the light of the fire and the moon, under the star filled sky, accompanied by the sound of the ocean - it was the most wonderful and powerful felt reminder for me of how ancient this practice truly is.

“Drumming for women during pregnancy and labour is a skill and tool to be reclaimed; this is something women have been doing for much, much longer than they haven’t.”
— Jane Hardwicke Collings

This particular drum in the photo holds a very personal story. I made it while pregnant with my first daughter, with the intention of playing it before, during, and after her birth, and of one day gifting it to her, perhaps when she herself is pregnant. It was the place where here placenta first landed - blessing it with the energetic vibration of her birth. It carries not only sound, but memory and lineage.

There are both spiritual and scientific reasons why drumming makes such deep sense in birth. In her wonderful book The Beat of Your Own Drum, Dr. Sophie Messager writes about how drumming during labour can help reduce pain, calm the nervous system, and facilitate an altered state of consciousness helpful to the process of birth.

At the beginning of labour, drumming can support the separation from everyday life, helping the mother leave the mundane behind.
It also subtly changes the atmosphere for everyone present, discouraging unnecessary chatter, inviting reverence, and drawing all who hear and feel it into a slower, deeper rhythm.

As a doula, my most powerful tools are not complicated or technological. They are my hands, my voice and my drum.

If you are interested in drumming during birth, I see that Sophie Messager has a course about this (I have not taken it myself, but I am sure it's good!)

25/02/2026

The other night, immersed in the intense heat and total darkness of the Temazcalli, Angela .paula.rosa said a few simple words that went straight to my heart.
I can’t recall her exact words, but I believe it was 'Ceremony is a training ground for life'.
They have been reverberating in me since, because they feel so true and important.

Ceremony is not about how devotional, surrendered, connected, or reverent we can feel within that specific, contained and sacred context.
It is about strengthening those capacities so that we can carry them into our ordinary lives from then on. Into our mothering, our relationships, our conflict, and into service of whatever we are here to do.

Insights may come during ceremony. Visions, clarity, and deep emotion. But they mean little if we do not integrate them through action afterwards.

In ceremony we receive spiritual sustenance. We fine tune our connection to our own spirit, to Great Spirit, to Mother Earth. We remember who we truly are.

But ceremony is not the destination, or something to be ticked off a list.
If we get too distracted by the the experience itself (no matter how beautiful, interesting, pleasant, or challenging), we risk turning it into something consumable rather than transformational.

Ceremony, to me, is a technology for anchoring deeper into our purpose. Into the most heartfelt intentions we hold for ourselves, for all of our relations, and for the world we want to help shape, by the way we oursleves choose to move through it.

I do believe ceremony can change the world for the better. But only if it changes (however slightly) how we live when the fire has burned out, the songs have ended, and no one is watching.

🔥Video: the fire from the other night's ceremony with Angela, smoke still rising two days later... A gentle reminder that the effect of the ceremony continues after the flames are gone.

28/01/2026

.
To give attention
is to give life force.

Our attention is our most precious currency,
which is why whole industries are built around trying to capture it.

Choosing to redirect our attention,
according to our own values and beliefs,
is both a return to ourselves
and a way of shaping the world we live in.

Where our attention goes,
our life flows.

And when enough of our lives flow in a certain direction, the world changes with it.

Art by 💧🙏

📝 Want to read my longer text about Attention and Motherhood? Sign up to my mailing list by following link in profile.

27/01/2026

“Life is a short episode between two great mysteries which are one and the same.” (Jung)

Recently I had the honour of celebrating a respected elder here where I live, a man turning 100! The very next day, I found myself at the birthday party of a one-year-old.

The contrast, and the deep similarity, between these two thresholds touched me profoundly.
It also made me very aware of my own age. Mid-forties. Not the beginning and not the end, but quite literally the middle and the liminal quality of this phase where the old identity no longer fit, but the new ones have not yet fully taken shape.

Jung suggested that a meaningful passage through midlife isn’t about rejecting the first half of life, but integrating it. Carrying forward what has been lived, loved, learned, and lost, and allowing it to ripen into wisdom.

Unlike birth, adolescence, matrescence, or even death, midlife is rarely ritualised or honoured.

I had my last two children in my forties, and like many women of my generation, I find myself deep in the tender, messy, exhausting work of nurturing young children right in the middle of life... This means the usual midlife narrative doesn’t quite fit. Instead of turning inward because my children no longer need me (so much), motherhood constantly calls me outward, at the very moment my body is asking for something else.

This past year, Jane Hardwicke Collings gave me language for something I had been sensing. As oestrogen (the hormone of accommodation and self-sacrifice) begins to decline in perimenopause, often described as many women feel less willing to give endlessly and to override their own needs.

I feel this in my mothering and in how I want to develop my work in the future. And yes, it can feel confusing, even guilt-inducing.
But what if this shift isn’t a failure of timing, but an invitation into a different kind of mothering? One that models discernment, self-respect, and embodied truth.

Matrescence is often described as lasting two to three years. For me, it has taken more than a decade. And now, I sense another word on the horizon: sagescence. I’m not there yet, but I can smell it.

Hardwicke Collings has also introduced me to another beautiful word: sagescence.

I am not there vet, but I can smell it. The return from any rite of passage is meant to bring gifts in the form of earned life experience (and eventuallv wisdom to be passed on through guiding or mentoring others. I sense this as a natural next phase of my life and it is a path I have already tentatively begun walking, but now it is starting to make more sense to me.

I can see how my own way of navigating the beginning of this new passage has been through framino motherhood itself as a path of personal development and a spiritual practice. A place where tending to deeper questions of meaning and purpose has been my wav of turning more toward mvself not to distract from mothering, but to find greater fulfilment and depth through it.

✨️ If you are mother in this middle passage of life, does any of this speak to you?

✨️ And if vou are earlier in the cycle, what does it stir in you? Curiosity resistance, longing, relief?
Wherever vou are, I hope motherhood feels meaningful and alive for vou

🌀 I have been pouring myself into the continuing creation of the postpartum doula course I teach (in Swedish), but I am now finally able to turn my attention back to offerings for mothers who want to explore motherhood as a path of personal development and a spiritual practice. A new invitation for these offerings will open in the coming months.

25/01/2026

When I moved to Serra Grande, Bahia, in Brazil, one of my personal intentions was to immerse myself even more deeply in ceremony.

I love how ceremony here is alive and thriving — a necessary ingredient of life fully lived, rather than an optional add-on.

In Sweden, I have often held the role of teacher, and I was longing to learn from others. To be the beginner again. I do feel much more of a beginner here, and at the same time it has been deeply affirming to recognise that the medicine I carry is as valuable and needed here as it has been elsewhere.

This past week, I’ve had the honour of co-creating four very different ceremonies.

I feel myself both expanding outward and rooting downward — growing wider in my capacity, and deeper in my trust that ceremony speaks a language older than borders, and that we are always both teachers and students, simultaneously, in all that we do.

Photo: thank you so much for the trust, shared presence and chance to learn from you .matriz .art.natura 🤍

18/01/2026

“Life is a short episode between two great mysteries which are one and the same.” (Jung)

Recently I had the honour of celebrating a respected elder here where I live, a man turning 100! The very next day, I found myself at the birthday party of a one-year-old.

The contrast, and the deep similarity, between these two thresholds touched me profoundly.
It also made me very aware of my own age. Mid-forties. Not the beginning and not the end, but quite literally the middle and the liminal quality of this phase where the old identity no longer fit, but the new ones have not yet fully taken shape.

Jung suggested that a meaningful passage through midlife isn’t about rejecting the first half of life, but integrating it. Carrying forward what has been lived, loved, learned, and lost, and allowing it to ripen into wisdom.

Unlike birth, adolescence, matrescence, or even death, midlife is rarely ritualised or honoured.

I had my last two children in my forties, and like many women of my generation, I find myself deep in the tender, messy, exhausting work of nurturing young children right in the middle of life, and it means that the usual narrative doesn’t quite fit. Instead of turning inward because my children no longer need me (as much), motherhood constantly calls me outward, at the very moment my body and spirit is asking for something else.

This past year, Jane Hardwicke Collings gave me language for something I had been sensing. As oestrogen (the hormone of accommodation and self-sacrifice) begins to decline in perimenopause, often described as many women feel less willing to give endlessly and to override their own needs.

I feel this in my mothering and in how I want to develop my work in the future. And yes, it can feel confusing, even guilt-inducing.

But what if this shift isn’t a failure of timing, but an invitation into a different kind of mothering? One that models discernment, self-respect, and embodied truth.

Matrescence is often described as lasting two to three years. For me, it has taken more than a decade. And now, I sense another word on the horizon: sagescence. I’m not there yet, but I can smell it.

Collings has also introduced me to another beautifu word: sagescence.
I am not there yet, but I can smell it.

The return from any rite of passage is meant to bring gifts in the form of earned life experience (and eventuallv wisdom to be passed on through guiding or mentoring others. I sense this as a natural next phase of my life and it is a path I have already begun walking, but now it is starting to make more sense to me.

I can see how my own way of navigating the beginning of this new passage has been through framing motherhood itself as a path of personal development and a spiritual practice. A place where tending to deeper questions of meaning and purpose has been my way of turning more toward myself - not to distract from mothering, but to find greater fulfilment and depth through it.

✨️ If you are mother in this middle passage of life, does any of this speak to you?

✨️ And if you are earlier in the cycle, what does this stir in you? Curiosity resistance, longing, relief?

Wherever vou are on the journey of motherhood, I hope it feels meaningful and alive for you ❤️

I have been pouring myself into the continual creation of the postpartum doula course I teach (in Swedish), but I am now finally able to turn my attention back to offerings for mothers who want to explore motherhood as a path of personal development and a spiritual practice. A new invitation for these offerings will open in the coming months 🌀

Art by Lucy Pierce 🙏

16/01/2026

I have held so many ceremonies for women at the threshold of birth.
Some are tender and quieter, others celebratory and full of joy — all of them, without exception, are beautiful and meaningful.

Yesterday’s ceremony touched me in a particularly profound way.

It was an intimate initiation ceremony held only for the mother-to-be, the father-to-be, and the grandmother-to-be on the maternal line (with the grandfather-to-be on the paternal side also present and contributing from a distance).

Rather than placing all the focus on the pregnant mother and the baby, I wove a ceremony that honoured multiple parallel journeys, each one unfolding in its own right, and all of them interweaving and influencing the others, as well as the new family member about to arrive.

With every pregnancy and birth, a portal opens, with the potential for deep healing, rippling both backwards and forwards in time, and touching both the mother- and father-lines, moving through the wider ancestral web.

Yesterday was a beautiful reminder of just how potent this threshold can be when people are ready, open, and willing to meet it with presence and intention and to do the inner work it invites.

I feel the deepest gratitude for the trust placed in me to hold space for this, and for the privilege of being gifted the opportunities to offer this as part of my work.

The Elements gifted us a reminder of the uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of all rites of passage, and of how grace unfolds when we offer our trust and surrender.
After very heavy rain and raging stormy winds, by the time we walked down to the ocean, the world had grown still. Twilight held us as the pregnant mama navigated the labyrinth I had drawn in the sand. And as we finally sat down to light the fire, the sky opened into a vast, silent canopy of stars, as if the night itself had come to witness and bless us ✨✨

02/01/2026

As a ritual to mark the turning of the year, I felt called to create something that would continue to remind me in the coming year, of my capacity to gather and recycle elements, objects, and memories to make something new that offers me meaning and beauty.

So I made a new drumstick (been wanting to, ever since our dog got hold of my old one and chewed it quite a bit).

I used a branch of the cacao tree that grows in my garden, and a piassava seed I found in the river that flows through the Tupinambá village I visited not long ago, the same kind of seed which my pipe was crafted out of from one of their elders.

Inside the seed, I placed a small piece of dried umbilical cord from each of my three children, along with a small lock of my own hair, to honour the bond that will always exist between us, and my own ability to nurture new growth.

As I looked for something to wrap around the seed, I found the small leather purse my partner made for me many years ago. Inside that purse, I have until recently carried a chestnut seed for over a decade, from the tree beneath which my grandfather’s ashes were spread. It was the exact size to hold the seed. My daughter eagerly helped me thread a string through it, and together we wrapped it with a crochet ribbon I picked up once in a Swedish charity shop.

I cleared out my fireplace and set the stones anew, marking the eight directions. I lit a small fire, sang my intentions for how I want to lead my family in the coming year, and burned the papers on which I had written what I am ready to leave behind. I prayed with my pipe, blessed my new drumstick, and then drummed and sang until my youngest woke up. Just as she joined us some friends arrived and ritual flowed naturally into play and hang-out.

✨️ I'm curious to hear if you marked the turning of the year with any ritual, or other activity that felt meaningful to you?

02/01/2026

✨️
The year has just begun.

It’s so easy, right now, to turn toward planning, mapping, doing.
To ask: What do I need to make happen this year?

Before the lists appear.
Before the plans take form.
Before the familiar pull toward doing…

What if you let yourself turn toward receiving?

Receiving through your senses.
Through beauty that meets your eyes.
Through sounds that soothe your nervous system.
Through touch, warmth, scent, taste, movement.

Receiving asks for a different posture.
Not reaching, or striving, but softening into availability.
And this often requires laying something down,
whether it's over-commitment or old expectations and beliefs.

Receiving is not passive, but rather an intentional opening.
A choice to welcome what nourishes, and to lovingly but firmly decline what does not.

May this year meet you with all that you want to receive.

✨️Art by Jungsuk Lee

LivModer

02/03/2026

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27/02/2026

25/02/2026

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