Aisaba
1. How do you define “mothering” in your own life—and has that definition changed over time?
I would define motherhood as a deeply spiritual journey with GOD. The ability to see life through someone else’s perspective in a way. Also, motherhood for me is like a spiral, a continuum. I feel like my whole life, since the very beginning, has been like a rite of passage into becoming a grand multipara. I was raised in a very big family. I have many siblings and even more cousins and extended family members. Family has always been at the center of my world since I could remember. The house I grew up in was home to all the children in the neighborhood. My mother was the village mama to all that knew us. Seeing her flow in that role was an experience. My mother went from being a married woman to a single mother of four daughters, and it wasn’t easy to live through, but it was a blessing for me to witness, in that it showed me all sides and truths of being a mama/the primary caretaker.
2. What has mothering revealed to you about who you are, beyond the roles you play?
Becoming a mother revealed to me the more spiritual aspects of life. Also, in adolescence, I developed a selfish mentality in order to protect myself and get out of the toxic environment I grew up in. But becoming a mother grounded me, taught me balance, to see the value of interdependence and how we all need each other in life—how we are all pieces of one whole. I had to learn to set healthy boundaries without completely cutting people off.
3. What parts of your journey feel unseen, misunderstood, or unspoken—and deserve to be named out loud?
What feels unseen is the choices, the trials and tribulations, and all the things I chose to say no to in order to be the mother and wife God has called me to be. The journey it has been. I became a mother in 2013, and I didn’t get my first social media account until 2020, so most people connected with me once I already had certain things established in my life. But it took a lot to get to that point and still requires me to steward what God has blessed us with on a daily basis. Some people think because I am married everything is easy because I am not doing it alone, but the reality is that one person doesn’t replace an entire village of people that it ancestrally required to raise children, especially when a husband is working the majority of the time. God, the ancestors, and spirituality overall have played a major role in our journey as a family. I don’t have vices or addictions; I live very intentionally. I think from the outside looking in it can come off as easy, but the reality is that my husband and I have made major life choices and daily choices to create our life, to maintain our life, and to grow together through life. We are imperfect; we are still tweaking things day by day and season by season, and aligning with that which is in harmony with space and time for us. And so yes, I want people to know perfection is an illusion. We are simply spiritual beings having a human experience, striving to do more right than wrong in the world.
4. How has your experience of mothering been shaped by your lineage, your culture, or the community around you?
Growing up with a mother and grandmother who prepared two to three meals for us a day from scratch has definitely shaped me as a mother. I didn’t grow up on fast food—fast food was a treat in our house—so I always had that foundation. Preparing flavorful food for my family was ingrained in me and in how I would nurture my own family one day. Also, natural beauty! My mother looks like my sister, and I didn’t grow up with a mother who wore makeup. She instilled in me early in life, just through watching her, that I was enough—that being myself was a gift to the world. I have always been confident in my innate beauty.
Also, growing up in an underprivileged community on welfare motivated me to push through pregnancy as a college student, maintain my academic scholarship, and work really hard straight out of undergrad so that we could buy a home for our three children (at the time) in a safe and resourced community. The second we secured our home, I left my job, but I worked for almost five years for us to buy a quality home and invest in our family business so that I could stop working for someone else’s company, because we knew that wasn’t conducive to the big family we wanted or the way we wanted to live life.
5. What was your postpartum experience like—emotionally, physically, and spiritually? What kind of support (or lack of it) did you receive during that time?
I have had a full spectrum of sacred window experiences. I have five children currently, and so every experience has been different. The more children I have and the older I become, the more I prioritize the sacred window. The key components of all my postpartum journeys have been support, rest, and nourishment. The more support I have at home and the longer my support can be in my home, the better! My mother usually stays after I give birth for three to six weeks. She has been such an angel to us! She cares for our older children, cleans the house, and does what she can for me when she stays. For two of my children’s births (third and fourth child), my “Irish Twin” sister was living with us, and so that was very conducive to the transition into new motherhood again. My husband has always been really hands-on when it comes to family nourishment, so he takes good care of me with postpartum meals, tea, and protein drinks. There have been two times where I set up a postpartum meal train and the tribe showed up and fed me well.
Spiritually, I receive a lot of downloads through giving birth and after. I am very sensitive in the postpartum season, so it has been important for me to stay in a bubble and slowly transition back into the world and integrate the wisdom gained as I go. Physically, the more natural the birth, the better I heal and feel in postpartum. I have had one freebirth at home, one assisted homebirth, one vaginal (non-medicated) birth in the hospital, and two cesareans. The more medical the birth for me, the more traumatic it was, which made the postpartum season rocky.
6. If you could design the ideal postpartum care system, what would it look and feel like?
As a birth consultant, when I visualize a postpartum care system it has a lot of mamas, grandmamas, sisters, aunties, and friends—not professionals but loved ones/wise women in the community—alternating and being available to feed/nourish postpartum women three to five times per day, providing body work daily, holding the baby while women bathe, cleaning the home, managing the older children, and helping with all other things pulling at the postpartum mama’s energy. Never leaving the mama alone but also giving her space to rest because that’s an essential part of healing after bringing forth new life. Really sitting at her feet in a spiritual sense and being guided as to what she needs, and showing up to provide that.
7. Can you share a moment of deep joy in your mothering journey—one that lives in your body?
I have many moments of joy being with my children daily as a homeschooling mama. The most beautifully profound memory would have to be when I freebirthed Amenaukai Sebba (our fifth child) and all the children walked into the room at sunrise to check on me and fully realized I had given birth and that he was a boy. Although I eventually got overstimulated and put all the children out of our bedroom, it was so beautiful in the moment to see their faces—nothing compares to it.
8. What grief, loss, or transformation has shaped the way you show up as a mother?
I witnessed my cousin’s murder in the projects of San Francisco as a sophomore in high school. That experience really taught me to appreciate life and how we never really know when we’re going to take our last breath. It reminded me how transitory it all really is and to just make the best out of any situation. As a mother of many, having a positive mindset and a flexible energy has been important—allowing space for the unknown variables because we can’t control everything, you know?
Also, I grew up very close to my father who was unfortunately incarcerated in prison for several years of my childhood. That experience really showed me the value of having a healthy father in the home and how valuable that father-daughter connection is. I was close to my father, but he missed a lot of my major milestones in life. Seeing my children be guided and loved on by my husband has been healing for my inner child.
9. How do you access healing—emotionally, spiritually, or ancestrally?
I tap into healing through meditating and breathwork. I grew up with asthma, and my respiratory system has always needed extra care. Once I changed my diet to a plant-based vegan one, I no longer had asthma attacks or skin issues. I am a food healer; I make medicine through food, and that’s been very healing for me personally and for those I am blessed to nourish. I also love to dance, and I go into trance moving my hips and creating food, baking, making teas and smoothies. I don’t use recipes to do what I do; I allow spirit to guide me through creating, and it always works out beautifully.
10. Are there any rituals, practices, or traditions that keep you grounded?
I take at least one bath every day—that has been essential to every aspect of my life. Water therapy and meditation are a real thing! Our home is in a neighborhood surrounded by trees. GOD guided us to buy this house for a reason seven years ago, and now I get to walk around barefoot, talk to trees, and take in all this good air. It feels like I don’t live in the city even though I do. That has been good for me as someone who appreciates intentional living. I am also big on journaling—writing has always been an outlet for me to express myself. I meditate, I chant, I do chi gong and yoga. All of this helps me stay grounded.
11. What does community care mean to you—and how do you invite others into your mothering journey to help bridge gaps of support, understanding, or visibility?
Community care to me means women being held in the ways in which they personally value. Community care continues to transform in terms of what it looks like for me. I am continuously shifting the more children I birth and the more my family changes, in terms of some of my children getting older and having their own friends, my interests evolving, our family business shifting season to season. In my younger motherhood days, I craved more intimate and consistent/daily interaction with women raising children. I had less responsibilities and more time on my hands to connect with tribe. These days, my time is spent very intentionally, and things have to make sense for me to invest my life force into them.
We have a part-time nanny (which became necessary once we went full-time as a restaurant because it pulled my husband away from the home to a level we weren’t used to). Having a nanny (who is also a long-term friend) has been beautiful, even though I mainly work or clean the two days the nanny comes. It’s created a healthier balance for the children. They love her so much, and she has a son who is besties with my son. We are also part of a homeschool community co-op, which has been beautiful, and we have been able to nurture lifelong relationships through that. We spend one rising each week at our neighborhood library, and that has been medicine. We often sit in the library’s garden, read books, and eat lunch. I used to be interested in communal living, but the older I get, the more I realize how much I appreciate solitude. My children are a good time, but once the day ends, I deeply crave relaxation and to spend time with my husband. I’m an extrovert-introvert; I can do people in moderation.
12. To mother within systems that weren’t made for you is an act of resistance. How do you navigate, push against, or reimagine those systems in your everyday world?
Homeschooling and entrepreneurship have been major ways that I own my sovereign journey as an Afro-Indigenous woman raising children in America. We have always been conscious parents, but we have grown in our understanding as the years go on. We decided early on that in order for me to be a divine steward for the beings coming into the world through me, I would need to own my time, be intentional about how I journey through pregnancy, childbirth, and the path of raising them, have more influence on their learning journey, and really be able to hold space for their individuality and paths as divine beings.
So, from how I journey through pregnancy, birth, postpartum, extended breastfeeding, choosing not to vaccinate, using plant medicine to care for the family, homeschooling, and nourishing them daily—it’s all part of resisting mass agendas and government control by ushering back into the world a more simple, natural, and intentional way of living and being in right relationship with all living things, not just humans.
13. What do you want the world to understand about mothers like you?
I want people to understand that we are all unique. What is intuitive for me isn’t necessarily how someone else is being guided inwardly. There are basic practical things that just make sense in motherhood, but then there are a lot of nuances in the journey as well. I think life and lived experiences are the best teachers. I believe mothers are the knowers of their own journey—they just gotta get real quiet and tune into themselves and their children, and the answers will come. Also, instead of leading with judgment when we see something in motherhood that doesn’t align with our own personal values, we should lead with curiosity and hold space for growth, because we are all always evolving and going through things to learn lessons from different perspectives.
14. What do you hope your child—or future generations—inherit from your story?
I want them to inherit unconquerable peace and joy. I wasn’t a sheltered child; I was exposed to a lot. I saw the atrocities of the world growing up, yet I still held so much light and I chose to indefinitely see the brighter side of every circumstance. I do believe in the law of attraction, learned optimism, karma, and ancestral guidance. My ancestors have been guiding me since I was a little girl. I have always talked to spirits, and I have always had powerful dreams. I also believe that that which you invest life force into grows. I want my lineage to know that no matter what cards they are dealt in life, they have the power to transform their circumstances into what they feel is in alignment with their highest potential. There is always choice!
