Welcome to The New Sophia
Feminine
Returning
There is a longing in every woman’s life to pause, to rest, to still down to hear the Voice of her Soul.
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself to this world
so worthy of rescue.
“Clearing” by Martha Postlethwaite
There is a longing in every woman’s life to pause, to rest, to still down to hear the Voice of her Soul.
Everywoman, as I call us who identify as female, is so often everything to everyone.
We are the goddess with many hands, doing the work of mothering and career, the caring of family and the team at work, taking care of the home and the office. The independent woman, the lover, the wife, the partner, the mother, the daughter, the friend, the leader. And then, somehow, in the midst of all that, we are also meant to find time for our own life.
Our Soul, an emissary of the Divine Feminine I call Sophia, calls us again and again to return to this inner work, but Her Voice becomes more distant in the clamour of multiple demands. Somehow we rise to the occasion, fulfilling the promises we made to so many others, and yet we slowly forget the promises we made to ourselves - some even made before we were born.
To remember who we are and why we came, we need to create a clearing in our lives.
A time and a sacred space to reflect, to contemplate, to create a chalice of deep listening to steep ourselves, like a fragrant tea, in our inner knowing.
Te Ngahere Whetu is that clearing. A space and
a time, sacred for
you and your Soul.
We walk in the forest, stopping to listen to the birdsong, or to notice the light coming through the canopy, dappling our skin. We sit by the Ruamahanga River and look at the long-legged nymphs riding the current on the meniscus of the moving water. We watch the trout rise to the surface looking for those nymphs, their surfacing creating ripples of slowly widening circles.
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In this sacred time and in this space where silence sings, we begin again to listen to what is calling you forward. What you yearned to create, or write or do.
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We look back, before the voices of all those you love and all the things you now do clamoured for your attention. You offered these gifts of your time and attention and care because you love, but they caused you to set aside or forget your own true self. To become beloved to yourself again.
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Softly and slowly, we begin to feel again. Sometimes that feeling burns with regret or sorrow or doubt. Sometimes it’s what we’ve avoided, and why we have continued to rush, and to do, and to say yes to everyone but our own Soul. We listen as Sophia speaks.
Who is Sophia? And why is She New?
“Become who the Divine meant you to be,
And you will set the world on fire.”
St Catherine of Sienna
Sophia is Wisdom Herself, and She is The Feminine Face of the Divine. She is you, embodied, Divine. And She has dwelled within you since you were in your grandmother’s womb,
tucked inside the growing foetus that was your mother.
You are a living Matryoshka Lineage of Love, stretching back to the Goddess Herself. And Sophia rejoiced as you experienced your first menstrual blood. She cradled you in Her arms as you became a new mother, and as you held your own newborn one.
You have Always been Nested in Her Love. She walks with you now as you step into the perimenopausal fires. Through the heat and the sweat and the anger and the pain, the forgetting, the fog, the sorrow and She is the Power growing inside you.
She is with you when you reclaim your Power — the distinct tone and timbre of your voice. Her Voice.
She is with you as you reclaim your life. As you give birth, through menopausal fires, to your One True Self.
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This is where I write about the sacred transmutation of a woman’s life at Perimenopuse
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Here is where I rewrite the narrative, at least a little, of what the brain fog really is. A wild wise wyrd woman’s brain and body rewiring to the cosmos.
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Here is where I rewrite what it means to be a crone - the wise wild elder woman, the Kuia of her family and her community and the world. As Elders we are the crowning glory of our lineage. Our task is to be the Mothers of the World to come. To care for seven generations before and after us.
The invitation
“I am not afraid
I was born to do this.”
St Joan of Arc
Whether you’re beginning the swings and sweats of Perimenopause,
Or you’re feeling the call of your Queendom on the other side of Menopause,
Or you’re stepping across the threshold into the most sacred power of all…your Wise Woman Elderhood, the Work of The New Sophia is for you. She and I will meet you here.
As a woman born of a woman, womb to womb, reclaiming Sophia, is your birth rite. She is your inherent divine wisdom, your authentic voice, your unique truth and your radiant power. She is your whole and Holy Offering to the World.
I’m here, and Te Ngahere Whetu is here, to help you move through this sacred rite of initiation. For that is what is truly is. I walk with you through the fires of Perimenopause and Menopause. I offer clarity, compassion, and soul companionship, and I offer it from the lived and embodied wisdom of one who has walked this path just a little ahead.
I will help you find your own Wise and Wild Wisdom path, with true Beauty, more ease and the promise of miraculous Grace.
Come find your New Sophia…
The New Sophia Offerings
The Resurrection Retreat
The cocooning
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The Wisdom Walk
The communing
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The Circle of Women
The covening
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The cocooning
The Resurrection Retreat
About the cocooning
In the busyness of your life, have you forgotten yourself?
Here, at Te Ngahere Whetu, you cocoon under a forest of stars, and with a regenerating native forest surrounding you. We walk and talk about your journey through Menopause, your most brutal and yet most beautiful, final initiation into your own wise and wild and Wyrd power. And you remember and reclaim it.
We remember your body’s wisdom and your Soul’s directive. This is why you were born - to resurrect from the dying of a monthly bleed and the symptoms you are experiencing, to the realisation that your Soul is directing your hormones, your womb, your mind and your heart to reorient away from other-care or mother care towards your own fullest life.
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
“Sleeping in the Forest”, by Mary Oliver
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You unpack, soften into sacred sanctuary, and then we speak over a lovingly prepared dinner about your particular experiences and the stage of the journey you are at. We discern your deepest need and most urgent desire. And then sleep in forest silence after bathing in beauty and scented and petalled water.
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We move gently and intentionally all day, discovering what your body and Soul want you to remember, as we alchemise the old pain, regret, disappointment, the anger and the confusion… We walk and rest in the Ngahere - the forest - and by the Awa, the river. We talk, we go quiet, and we listen to what is calling. And we begin to see through this cocoon, into the emerging pattern of your own wings.
Another bathe, another sleep, another deep release and remembering.
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On Sunday morning you wake with new clarity for what your life has been, and what is calling you now.
We anoint that knowing and we celebrate that remembered Wisdom, and the way She, your New Sophia, is calling you forward into your power, purpose, crowning gifts and your immense strength. To lead, to guide, to counsel, to keep blooming.
You will have resurrected into the life that has been calling you from birth… the one where your gifts can be shared with all the people you love, and where, in your work, your Wisdom’s rare essence can be planted in hearts and in the world.
You will emerge from the cocooning, a creature newly formed… A New Sophia, and you will walk into your second spring.
The communing
The Wisdom Walk
About the communing
Over six months, through 13 sessions, we find the gentle pace of a slow and steady walk home to yourself.
Whether you visit me here at Te Ngahere Whetū every two weeks, or we meet online, you will be held close by me and this land in deep and loving reverence and remembrance. It is an honour to walk with you, getting to know you in this way.
Your perimenopausal and menopausal journey is unique to you. And your story is your own - it has wended through pain and joy, both. It’s been threaded with the darkness of sorrow and yet emerged into the light - perhaps many times, or perhaps only intensifying now as you stop bleeding and begin to remember the grief and trauma your womb still holds, which the increasing fire within you is striving to burn through.
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“This place below human consciousness is the underworld of our being, and the place that the heroine must enter. Whilst the hero puts on armour and goes out into the world for his journey, the heroine takes her armour off as she descends into her body, unprocessed trauma and life.”
From the book, Descent and Rising, by Carly Mountain
The covening
The Circle of Women
About the coven
This is a contemporary covening - where a circle of 13 women from around the world gather for two hours to honour each others’ stories and journeys through perimenopause and menopause.
We share our wisdom and together create ceremony and celebration to honour what it means now to be women of wise and wild and Wyrd power.
Circled and gathered women know power is held between us, with and for all. Our monthly covenings will bring back this inherent wisdom held within each of us, holding space for the intrinsic beauty in all of us and all of creation to emerge.
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“A circle of women may just be the most powerful force known to humanity. If you have one, embrace it. If you need one, seek it. If you find one, for the love of all that is good and holy, dive in. Hold on. Love it up. Get Naked. Let them see you. Let them hold you. Let your reluctant tears fall. Let yourself rise fierce and love gentle. You will be changed. The very fabric of your being will be altered by this, if you allow it. Please, please allow it.”
Jeanette LeBlanc
The calling
“A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform.”
Diane Mariechild
If any of these offerings call to you, please book a free, one-hour conversation with me so that I may help you find which New Sophia path is right for you.
This is my free gift to you — I will listen deeply to your story and what in your life has led you here. The wounds and the joys, the intimations and inspirations.
I will help you discern how we can understand and move with grace through your journey through perimenopause and menopause … to what is waiting for you… your one wild, wise and liberating life.