By This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
As you read this letter, feel the steady, deliberate rhythm inspired by the sacred tradition of Navajo chants. The repetition you’ll notice isn’t redundancy; it’s reverence—an echo meant to ground, to restore and to carry each word deep into your spirit.
I write to you, my sisters, with a heart full of gratitude, reverence, and love. You, who carry both the stories of our ancestors and the imaginations of our children. You forge the mergence of all that is ancient and new within our children with your every word, every touch, and every prayer. Our motherhood experiences are shaped and intertwined in ways that make us stronger when we share our stories, recognize our power, honor our offerings, and commit to one another.
Motherhood has taught me that many things can be true at the same time. My mind, body, and spirit are gently easing into how dichotomies coexist in life: pain and love, exhaustion and strength, vulnerability and power, brokenness and transformation. Sisters, since that first missed blood, I, too, have felt both shaken and steady in this journey. My joy and excitement have been tangled with fear and uncertainty. The most beautiful life emerged from my broken body when the world slowed down in 2020. I lingered in physical pain and loneliness. It was the love of mothers that helped me heal. My mom was my comfort and strength. She nourished me and started my medicine bundle for our next generation. My postpartum doula sat quietly with me and my baby as my sisters took care of our Diné people as essential workers. My lactation counselor spoke words of encouragement and advice from our homelands that I desperately missed. Despite the distance and pandemic, we came together as Diné women to care for my body and my baby.
The womb is both a mysterious and sacred place. It holds our memories and our futures. When we celebrate our bodies, we heal and evolve. We contribute to a collective wisdom that ensures our children will live long healthy lives full of harmony and beauty, są’áh naagháí bik’eh hózhóó. Through us, language survives, through us, tradition lives, through us, our nations rise.
Our Mother Earth is vibrant and alive. She sustains us and offers us medicine. When we are aligned with her rhythm, we thrive and grow. When we honor Her, we are restored. Know that She holds us.
Sisters, I honor your courage—the quiet strength it takes to raise a child, the fierce love that keeps your families rooted when systemic storms threaten to pull the roots from the ground. To my sisters who hold their children in spirit—whose arms ache for babies born sleeping, whose wombs carried life that returned or were released to the stars—you are not forgotten. Your grief is shared. Your love is eternal. You are still and always a mother. My sisters, we are all matriarchs. We are warriors in gentle form.
As I walk alongside you, I carry a responsibility: to advocate for safe, sovereign birth spaces—places where your voices lead, where your bodies are honored, and where your sacred role is held with the highest care. I stand committed to protecting our birthworkers—the aunties, doulas, midwives, and healers who carry on ancestral knowledge with reverence and love. Because centering on the mother is centering on the baby. When you are nurtured, respected, and empowered, life begins in safety and love.
Together, we remember.
Together we reclaim.
Together, we rise.
May you always know how deeply you are valued, how far your love reaches, and how your presence shapes generations. With all my heart, I thank you. I walk with you. I honor you.
All photos courtesy of BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions
Explore videos and stories demonstrating the beauty and unity that accompany birth. Experience this sacred rite of passage through the eyes of birth workers and the families they serve in Alaska, Mexico and New Mexico.
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