I don’t know exactly how. One minute it was in my pocket the next I leaned down to pick up our dog Yoda, who fell off the boat, and it wasn’t anymore and by the time I understood what had happened it was already gone. And so was any version of my week that involved a working phone.

I cut my finger not long after. Small thing. Didn’t need stitches. Just one more thing.

I ordered a replacement phone the following day, half-panicked, no screen to check anything against, credit card verification turning into a full marathon without two-step verification and hoping for the best. I ordered the wrong one. Obviously.

Swimming school was still on. Philipp’s practice was slammed this “after summer holidays” week: he isn’t walking through the door early, not once.

And Heinrich still needs me. Exactly as much as he needed me the week before, when I had a working phone and an uncut finger and nothing in particular had gone wrong yet.

He doesn’t know what it means when his mother loses a phone in a river. He doesn’t know it is the one thing that allows her to log into work, for example. He just knows I’m the one who shows up.

I want to be honest about what this week actually felt like, because I could tell it to you as a tidy story about resilience and I’d be lying a little. It wasn’t calm. Nothing about a lost phone and a cut finger and a full week ahead felt calm.

But somewhere under the chaos, something held. I didn’t snap at him. Not once, on days that had every excuse built in. I’ve had smaller weeks than this one where I lost my patience by Tuesday. This time it stayed.

I don’t know how else to say it except: something in me was steadier than the week deserved.

That’s the part I keep turning over. Not the river, not the finger. The fact that the floor held while everything on top of it kept sliding around.

I don’t think steadiness and calm are the same thing, and I think we talk about them like they are.

Calm is what you feel when the storm passes.

Steadiness is what lets you stay upright while it’s still happening.

I didn’t get the first one this week. I got the second, and it turned out to be enough.

If you’re in your own version of this right now, whatever your river is, I don’t have anything for you that fixes it. I just wanted you to know it’s possible to still be standing in the middle of it, and that standing is not a small thing. It might be the only thing that matters this week.

Keep rising,

Anna x

P.S. — If you’ve been wondering what actually held for me this week:

it’s Replenish (my own creation). Not as a fix. As reserve. Check it out here.

P.P.S. — If your own reserve is running low and you haven’t tried it

yet, your first pouch is here and you an use the code WELCOME10 for a discount on your first order.

They are quiet, insidious even. They are persistent. And they are keeping you from getting the support you actually need.

I’ll bet you haven’t named them yet.

The first one is guilt.

Not the ordinary kind, not the guilt of screen time or missed bedtimes. Not the traditional Mom Guilt we all know. This one comes as a thought, and it sounds like: I’m too old for this. I’m too weak for this. I should have known better.

It’s the guilt of finding it hard when some part of you believes that choosing this later in life means you forfeited the right to struggle.

The second one nobody wants to talk about. Because it’s not a pretty feeling, and we’re not supposed to have it.

It’s shame.

Mine started before my son was even born. Every complication I had during pregnancy was treated as obvious. Expected. As if the subtext in every consultation was: what did she expect, at 40? Nobody said it out loud. Nobody had to. The feeling was already there, that I had done something presumptuous by wanting this and that whatever came next was on me and on me alone.

And then perimenopause arrived on top of that.

When I stopped nursing Heinrich, the sleep started going. Waking at 3am became a pattern I couldn’t explain away. The mood changes were clear, to me and probably to everyone around me. And even then, I wanted to ignore it. I did ignore it, for longer than I should have.

Because getting older isn’t something our culture makes room for. And perimenopause is proof that you are. So you push the symptoms to the back of the drawer and wait for them to go away.

They don’t.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand, as a doctor and as someone living this:

When guilt and shame are running quietly underneath everything, of course you’re not looking for help. Help would mean admitting there’s something to need help with. And admitting that feels like confirming the thing you’re most afraid is true: that you were too old, too late, too much.

There is no protocol yet for what happens when matrescence and perimenopause collide. The research is catching up very slowly. The clinical conversation is almost nonexistent. And the emotional conversation, the one about what it actually feels like to be in this body, in this phase, raising a small child, barely exists at all.

So I’m starting it here.

Not because I have all the answers. I don’t. I’m going through this myself. But because I was the mother who couldn’t find this conversation when I needed it, and I know I’m not the only one.

If this is landing somewhere true for you, I’d like to hear about it.

Is it guilt, shame, or both? What kind of support do you wish had existed?

Tell me in the comments. I’m reading every one.

Keep rising,

Anna

P.S. If you’re looking for somewhere to start, not a protocol or an overhaul, just steadier ground, the Phoenix Mother Reset Guide is free and it doesn’t require a meditation cushion.

P.P.S. Replenish (creatine and glycine formulated for depleted mothers) is here. Founder pricing is still live.

No script. A few bullet points between us. And then just two doctors, one psychological, one physiological, who are also both exhausted mothers, talking about why our minds won’t switch off even when our bodies are desperate to.

Here’s some of what we actually got into.

Your stress response isn’t “in your head”: it’s measurably different from a man’s.

The HPA axis, the system that governs your stress hormones, is more reactive to psychological stressors in women than in men. Not busyness. Feelings. Guilt, sadness, feeling unsupported: these carry a real physiological load, not just an emotional one. Women are wired to feel the weight of “soft” stressors more intensely in the body. That’s not weakness or drama. That’s physiology.

Every mental tab you’re holding open costs real energy.

Ellie made a point I keep thinking about: switching between tasks requires energy we rarely account for, and mothers get interrupted what feels like every five seconds. Hold the to-do list, get interrupted, drop it, pick it back up, get interrupted again: that switching cost compounds across a day in a way that actually stacks.

Knowing you’re depleted doesn’t fix depletion.

This is the part I most wanted people to hear. Understanding the physiology is useful: it helps you stop blaming yourself. But your nervous system doesn’t respond to understanding. It responds to inputs: warmth, rhythm, predictability, physical cues of safety. That’s why a cluttered, unpredictable environment is measurably more stressful, even with young kids making perfect order impossible. Small, boring rituals do more for your nervous system than we give them credit for.

Coffee timing matters more than people think.

Two simple shifts: delay caffeine for the first 30–60 minutes after waking (you already have a natural cortisol spike then, so adding caffeine is gasoline on a fire you didn’t need), and stop caffeine after early afternoon. Caffeine has roughly a six-hour half-life and blocks adenosine, the neurotransmitter that builds up all day to create your sleep impulse. A 2pm coffee is still working against your sleep at 10pm, even if your sleep is already broken by a child waking you. Protecting what sleep you do get is still worth it.

Perimenopause adds a layer most people never explain.

Progesterone, the hormone that makes you feel soft, calm, relaxed, starts declining in perimenopause. It also works directly in the stress axis. As it falls, sleep architecture, already disrupted by chronic stress, takes another hit. This is the layer I keep coming back to: the toddler years and perimenopause aren’t two separate hard things happening at the same time. They compound.

Connection is regulation, not a reward for getting everything else done.

We both landed here independently: a weekly walk with a friend, a coffee with another mother nearby, a live call like this one and like the ones we’ve been getting within . Belonging isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s one of the most physiologically regulating things available to us. We evolved to need it.

We didn’t solve anything in 35 minutes. That wasn’t the point. The point was naming what’s actually happening in your body, so you can stop treating exhaustion as if it’s your fault.

The full conversation is live now. Ellie’s also sharing it with her community, so if you want more of her work on the psychological and very practical side of all this, she’s worth following closely.

Get more from Anna Luiza Boide in the Substack app

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If hypervigilance (that feeling of being switched on even when nothing is happening, the mind that won’t stand down even at 11pm) sounds familiar, today’s conversation is for you.

I’m going live with Dr. Ellie Hambly, clinical psychologist and writer of Where the F**k is the Village, to go deeper into exactly this.

We’re calling it Why You’re Exhausted But Can’t Switch Off.

Ellie will bring the psychological layer: the guilt, the difficulty asking for help, the inability to pause even when you desperately need to. I’ll bring what’s actually happening in your body when that emotional load keeps your nervous system stuck in survival mode.

We want this to be the start of finding real ways to support yourself through it, together, with both the mind and the body in view.

Wednesday 24 June, 10am BST / 11am CET.

Join us live → HERE

It’s free. Come as you are, half-listening with a toddler on your hip is completely fine.

With warmth,
Anna

Heinrich, my son, was still in daycare. I was parked outside, phone in hand, scrolling through content from some of the best-known doctors specialising in perimenopause and menopause.

Good doctors. Serious content. Genuine.

And something was bothering me.

The women they were speaking to weren’t the women I knew. They weren’t me.

The conversation (the entire conversation) was about women whose children were grown, or nearly. Women who had space to focus on themselves. Women for whom the question “what do I need?” was at least theoretically askable.

Nobody was talking about the mother chasing a two-year-old on four hours of sleep, whose hormones are also quietly, invisibly beginning to shift.

So I sat in my car one morning, and I said it out loud.

I just hit record on my phone. No rehearsal. No script. It just came out.

What I was trying to name is this: women are having children later. That’s not new. But the consequence is.

For a growing number of us, the physiological demands of early motherhood (the sleep deprivation, the cortisol load, the constant output) now land at exactly the same time as the first signs of perimenopause begin. It is well known that these can begin up to 7 years before the last period.

And these two things compound each other in ways medicine hasn’t mapped.

But what I didn’t fully name in that reel, and what I think is actually the heavier part, is the emotional load.

Perimenopause brings mood shifts. Stimmungsschwankungen, as we say in German: a word that captures it better than English does. It’s not just “moodiness.” It’s an internal weather system you didn’t choose and can’t always predict.

And then there’s the parenting layer.

Toddlers need emotional regulation from you, constantly. They need you to stay steady when they can’t. They need you to be the calm in the room multiple times a day, sometimes multiple times an hour. And all that while overstimulating you at the same time.

Asking a woman whose oestrogen is shifting, whose sleep is fractured, whose nervous system is running on empty to do that emotional work, day after day, with no recognition that she’s doing it under conditions nobody has accounted for, is, I’ll say it plainly, almost inhumane.

And then there’s the shame.

Mothers who had children “late” already carry the weight of that label. The raised eyebrows. The geriatric pregnancy stamp. The quiet implication that this was a choice made at someone else’s expense. I had my son at 40. I’ve lived all of this myself.

Now add perimenopausal symptoms: the brain fog, the irritability, the feeling of not quite recognising yourself, and tell me how likely that woman is to raise her hand and ask for help.

She won’t. Because the symptoms are something she also wants to hide. Even I, a physician, admit I also didn’t want to admit these as they appeared.

The comments on the reel were many.

Women wrote they’d been feeling miserable: mentally and physically, and at the same time felt guilty for it, because they wanted to be their best selves for their children.

Some said it had taken them a long time to understand that they weren’t failing as mothers. That they were going through perimenopause. Without support. Without anyone naming it.

That’s not a reaction to a video. That’s what it sounds like when a room full of women finally hears something said out loud that they’d only ever thought alone.

Medicine will catch up. Eventually. It usually does.

But the women living this right now don’t have time to wait for a protocol.

If you’re reading this and this is you: carrying the toddler years and the hormonal shift at the same time, feeling like you’re failing at both, not sure where the exhaustion ends and the perimenopause begins, I want you to know something.

You are not failing. You are doing something genuinely hard, in a gap that the medical system hasn’t acknowledged yet.

And I hope that naming it, even here, makes you feel slightly less alone in it.

You can watch the Reel here if you’re curious.

P.S. If you want simple habits that actually help: I put together the Phoenix Mother Reset Guide for exactly this moment. You can find it here.

P.P.S. If you want to know what I personally use to support my energy, cognition, and sleep during this phase, Replenish is here.

Heinrich was one and a half. He’d woken up again, as he did, as he always did and needed my presence to fall back asleep. So I held him. Right arm. Still. Because he is a sensitive sleeper and any movement would restart the whole thing.

And I sat there, in the dark, dozing in and out without actually sleeping, knowing that tomorrow would be hard again. Knowing I’d have to make it through anyway.

This had been my nights for over a year.

During the days, I was trying to fix it.

I signed up for EMS training. (twenty minutes, twice a week: I’m a doctor, I like efficiency and I had no time.) My trainer probably still remembers how I described it: like being a fly on one of those electric fly catchers. Not pleasant. But I had convinced myself this was the smart move. Maximum output, minimum time.

I also started dieting. Because somewhere in the logic of exhaustion, I had decided the problem was that I wasn’t doing enough. I actually believed I needed to somehow “bounce back”.

What was actually happening: my cortisol was already high. Not in a diagnosable way, in the way it runs high in anyone whose nervous system has been on alert for 18 months straight. Who hasn’t completed a full sleep cycle since before their child was born. Whose body has learned that rest is not available anymore.

And I was adding more cortisol. Deliberately. Because I thought the answer was to push harder.

Cortisol is your body's stress hormone, the one that gets you out of bed in the morning, keeps you alert, helps you function under pressure. In small doses, at the right moments, it's useful. But when you've been sleep-deprived for months, your body is already producing more of it than it should, just to keep you upright. High-intensity exercise (especially when it is linked to an unpleasant sensation), which is exactly what EMS training is, triggers another cortisol spike. So does severe calorie restriction. I was essentially pouring fuel on a fire that was already burning too hot, and wondering why I felt worse.

The EMS training left me feeling like a car crash. The coffee I was drinking to get through the day (too much, always too much) made the anxiety worse. Caffeine works by blocking the signal that tells your brain it's tired. But it doesn't touch cortisol itself, it can actually raise it. So every coffee I was using to compensate for the exhaustion was making my nervous system more wired, more reactive, more unable to land. I was managing the symptom while making the cause worse. I was scattered. I was re-reading sentences five times at work. I was drowning.

The moment I understood something had to change was not dramatic.

It was an early afternoon. I’d had too much coffee again. I was sitting at my desk unable to locate the beginning of a task, any task, and I thought: this is not lack of motivation. This is lack of discipline either. I felt so scattered it was painful.

My nervous system didn’t need more pressure. It needed support.

Those are not the same thing. I had been treating them as if they were.

My husband was taking creatine at the time. I was skeptical, I’ll be honest. The word carries a certain image. Men. Gym. Bodybuilding. Nothing to do with me.

But he’s a family doctor. And he told me: there are studies. On women. On sleep deprivation specifically.

So I went looking.

What I found surprised me, not because the evidence wasn’t there, but because no one was talking about it. Not for mothers. Not even close. There were one or two well-known female researchers writing about creatine for perimenopausal women and the studies on sleep deprivation were real and growing. But as a doctor, someone who should have known, I hadn’t heard any of it.

And then I found glycine. What it does to the nervous system. The steadiness it can bring. That one I had to search even harder for, because almost no one was discussing it at all.

That’s the gap I kept coming back to. Not that the science didn’t exist. That it wasn’t reaching the women who needed it.

I made Replenish because I wanted one thing that held all of this together: the creatine, the glycine, the ritual of taking something that signals to your body: we are not in an emergency right now. And I wrote the Phoenix Mother Reset Guide because the micro-habit matters as much as the supplement. What you do consistently, even in two minutes, is what actually changes the baseline.

Both are linked below if you want to start there.

But even if you don’t, if you’re reading this at 2am with a child on your arm, or during the day on your phone because you don’t actually know what to do with yourself right now, I want you to know the reason you’re struggling is not that you’re not trying hard enough.

You’ve been trying very hard. That might be part of the problem.

P.S. Replenish — the micro-habit ritual blend I made for exactly this is here.

P.P.S. If you want to start with the habits before the supplement, the Phoenix Mother Reset Guide is here.

I have been trying to write this letter for a week. Not because I don’t know what I want to say, but because every version felt like it was performing something. And I made myself a promise when I started Amparo: no performing. Nothing here is to be adjusted to show anything that is not authentic.

So here is the honest version.

Four years ago I was in a maternity ward in Switzerland, in the early hours of a June morning, holding a person who had arrived the evening before and who I already loved so completely it felt like a physical law. I was 40. I was a physician. I thought I knew my body and I thought I knew myself.

I did not know what was coming.

Not the obvious things: the sleep deprivation in the first months, the feeding, the weight of a child’s entire existence resting on your presence, doing it while away from my family. You hear about those. You think you are prepared. You are not, but at least you have the category.

What I was not prepared for was the quieter thing. The gradual dimming. The way I started to answer the question “how are you?” with a version of myself that was easier to explain. The way certain conversations: about what I was thinking, what I was working on, what I wanted, started to feel like luxuries I was not entitled to anymore.

I am a doctor. I know what depletion looks like on paper. I did not recognise it in the mirror.

It happened in layers. First the physical: pregnancy takes what it needs and the body keeps the bill. Then the sleep, which compounds everything and in my case is ongoing even now, 4 years in. Then perimenopause starting, quietly, in my early 40s, while I was already running on reserves I had not rebuilt. And underneath all of it, the invisible stack: no village nearby, a career that does not pause for toddlers and the specific loneliness of being an expat mother who has been told, in every language, that she is doing a wonderful job.

At some point in year two, I stopped recognising the woman in the mirror. It was more like a fog that had come in so gradually I had not noticed I could no longer see. I felt like a shadow of who I had been before.

I felt I was weak for not coping better.

I asked myself countless times if I was just too old for this.

Here is what I have learnt in four years: the fog is not weakness. It is biology. It is what happens when output exceeds recovery for long enough. When the nervous system has been in low-grade activation for 1,400 days with no real off switch. When oestrogen begins its recalibration and sleep stops restoring and you are still showing up: doing laundry, making lunch, going to work, being present, regulating big emotions… on borrowed energy.

The question was not “what happened to me?” The question was: what do I actually need to rebuild?

Not bounce back. There is no back to bounce to. The woman before, she was real and I loved her, but she had not been through this. I have.

Replenishment, the real kind, is not returning. It is building forward from what remains.

That is why I built Amparo Naturals. Not from a wellness vision or a brand brief. From a specific morning at 5am, in the kitchen while the toddler ran around already, scared to grab my first coffee in fear of the anxious state it would only make worse, looking at a supplement shelf full of products designed for someone else and thinking: there should be something honest here. There wasn’t. So I made it.

Next Monday he turns four. He will ask for a chocolate cake and watermelon and a fire brigade party. He will be loud and joyful and completely himself in a way I am still learning from.

And I will be there. Not the woman from four years ago. This one. The one who came through it, who is still coming through it, who built something from the middle of it.

That is enough. That is, in fact, everything.

If you are somewhere in the middle of this: not through it yet, not performing okay, the Phoenix Mother Reset guide is free. Thirteen down-to-earth anchors. No routine required. No overhauling your life. Reply to this email with the word PHOENIX (or just put it in the comments) and I will send it to you directly.

— Anna

P.S. Replenish, the warm daily ritual I built from that 5am kitchen moment, is at founder price until Batch 1 is gone. Click here to find out more.

Sometimes quietly.

Sometimes surrounded by shame.

It sounded like this:

“I just don’t feel like myself anymore.”

At first, many of us assume this is simply part of motherhood.

You’re tired.

Your sleep is broken.

Your days revolve around someone else and this goes on for years.

Of course things feel different.

But over time, the feeling goes deeper than ordinary tiredness.

It starts to feel like something inside you is slowly fading.

Your patience gets thinner.

Your brain feels foggy.

Small things suddenly feel overwhelming.

And yet, on the outside, life continues normally.

You are still doing everything that needs to be done.

The normalization of exhaustion

One of the strange things about modern motherhood is how completely we have normalized exhaustion.

Broken sleep is treated as inevitable.

Constant vigilance becomes the background state.

Many mothers spend years waking multiple times every night.

And during the day, the nervous system never fully powers down.

You are always slightly “on.”

Always listening.

Always ready.

Always responsible for someone else’s safety and wellbeing.

The body was never designed to operate in this state indefinitely.

Yet millions of mothers do exactly that.

Why coffee eventually stops working

At first, most mothers solve the problem the obvious way.

Coffee.

A lot of coffee.

For a while, this works.

But caffeine is not restoring energy.

It is borrowing it.

And eventually many mothers notice something frustrating:

The coffee that used to help no longer does much.

You are still tired.

Only now you may also feel wired, anxious, or irritable.

The misunderstanding

This is usually the moment when something else happens.

Many mothers start blaming themselves.

Maybe I’m just not organized enough.

Maybe I need more discipline.

Maybe I’m just not handling motherhood very well.

I’m probably too old for this. Or too weak. Or my child is the problem.

But often none of that is true.

Many mothers think they are failing.
In reality their bodies are simply overdrawn.

Modern motherhood can drain energy faster than the body is able to restore it.

Broken sleep.

Constant nervous system activation.

Nutrient depletion.

Months or years of operating in survival mode.

Eventually the system starts showing strain.

The moment I started asking different questions

When I began looking at this through a physiological lens instead of a moral one, something changed.

Instead of asking,

“What’s wrong with me?”

I started asking,

“What does my body actually need to sustain this kind of life?”

Because the truth is simple.

Sleep is not always an option. It certainly hasn’t been for me over the last almost four years.

Rest is often limited.

And motherhood rarely pauses long enough for full recovery.

So the real question became this:

How can the body be supported even when life stays demanding?

That question eventually led me down a path of experiments that I’ll share in the next letter.

And if you know a mother who might need to read this, feel free to share it with her.

There is a version of motherhood nobody prepares you for.

Not the one in the lovely photos.

Not the one in the books.

The quiet one.

The one where you wake up already tired.

Where your brain feels slower than it used to.

Where patience runs thin, even with the people you love the most.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, a frightening thought appears:

What if this is just who I am now?

The Lie

Modern motherhood has normalized something that should never have been normal.

Exhaustion.

Not the kind that disappears after a good night of sleep.

The deeper kind.

The kind that accumulates quietly over months and years.

Broken nights.

Constant vigilance.

A nervous system that never truly powers down.

Slowly, mothers begin to believe something dangerous:

That the loss of energy…
the fog…
the irritability…
the feeling of disappearing inside your own life…

is simply part of motherhood.

But it isn’t.

The Truth

Your body is not weak.

It is overdrawn.

Modern motherhood is a system that takes energy faster than the body can restore it.

And most mothers are trying to compensate the only way they know how:

More coffee.

More pushing through.

More pretending everything is fine.

Sometimes overeating or even reaching for alcohol (I’ve seen it all).

Until one day you realise something strange:

You are functioning.

But you don’t feel like yourself anymore.

The Turning Point

For me, that moment came slowly.

There was no dramatic collapse. There couldn’t be. My son needed me.

There was just a growing awareness that the woman I used to be felt very far away.

I actually wondered if I’d ever feel like her again.

And yet something inside me refused to accept that this was permanent.

Because mothers are not meant to disappear.

They are meant to transform.

But transformation requires support.

Real support.

Not guilt.

Not advice to simply “rest more” or get a wellness afternoon.

The Experiment

So I began experimenting.

Quietly at first.

Looking for ways to support the body under real motherhood conditions:

Broken sleep.

Unpredictable days.

Little time.

What I discovered surprised me.

When the body receives the right support, something begins to shift.

Not overnight.

But steadily.

Resilience returns.

Energy stabilizes.

And slowly, something very important began to reappear:

Myself.

Why Amparo Exists

Amparo was born from that search.

Not as another supplement brand.

But as a small rebellion against the idea that exhaustion is simply the price of motherhood.

The first product, Replenish, is intentionally simple.

A daily ritual blend designed to support mothers who are running on very little sleep and a lot of love.

Nothing extreme.

Nothing stimulating.

Just something steady.

The Real Mission

But the deeper mission is bigger than a product.

It is to change the story mothers tell themselves.

Exhaustion is not a moral failure. It is not weakness.

It is not lack of discipline or poor time management.

And it is not something mothers simply have to accept.

It is physiology.

And physiology can be supported.

The Invitation

The first small batch of Replenish is now ready.

If you are reading this early, you are part of the very beginning of Amparo Naturals.

The mothers who support this first step are not simply customers.

They are helping prove something important:

That mothers deserve better support than they’ve been given.

And that a different kind of brand can exist.

One built by mothers.

For mothers.

Closing

Motherhood changes you.

But it should not erase you.

And sometimes, reclaiming yourself begins with something very small.

A pause.

A ritual.

A daily act of remembering that you matter too.

Over the next days I’ll share how this small experiment turned into the first batch.

And if you know a mother who feels like this, feel free to share this with her.

Our little universe is growing. We’re now 90 mothers on YouTube, gathering around shared experience and if you’re not there yet, come join us. You’ll also find me on Instagram where I share the more chaotic, behind-the-scenes side of it all.

Today, I wanted to write something simple, something from the foggy early hours when my toddler has kept me up half the night and I’m alone in the kitchen, holding a warm mug and trying to remember who I am.

If you’ve had nights like that, half-asleep, always alert, running on love and crumbs of energy, this letter is for you.

If You’re a Sleepless Mother: Come Reset With Me

If you’re a mom who spent the night half-awake with a toddler or a small one…
If you still feel tired even after a “full night’s sleep” (or something close)…
If you’re wired, foggy, and still showing up every day…

You’re not doing anything wrong.
You’re not failing.
You’re living the physiological and emotional reality of motherhood.

My Morning Reset Ritual (After Another Sleepless Night)

This isn’t perfect. It’s not what you see on Mom-Influencers profiles.
It’s just what I do when I need to come back to myself, even a little and it has become my daily routine to keep my energy levels steady.

1. Ease Up on the Coffee

I love coffee. I drink it daily. But after rough nights, I start slow.
Too much caffeine pushes me into that “tired and wired” state that makes me anxious and snappy.
So I begin with something gentler first: a warm, nourishing drink to actually replenish my reserves and avoid getting even more overstimulated.

2. Creatine + Glycine + a Stack That Helps

What really changed things for me was adding creatine (10g/day on rough days, in 2 doses of 5g).
If you’re new to it, start slowly (3g to begin with) and see how your body responds.

I also add:

• Glycine — calming amino acid, good for sleep + nervous system

• Tryptophan — supports serotonin for my “feel-good” brain chemistry

• Golden Milk spices — cinnamon, cardamom, ginger: comfort in a cup

• B Vitamins + C + D — foundational support for energy and immunity

These are ingredients I take daily and also the reason I’m building Replenish:
A single scoop. One warm drink. No prep. No stacking. And I confess I can’t wait to have it here!

3. Hydrate Like It’s Your Job

Depletion = low fluid, low function.
So I make hydration non-negotiable:

• Water

• Herbal tea

• Coconut water if I need a boost

Simple. But very necessary.

4. Permission to Be Human

If the night was bad, I will skip the workout. I still feel guilty, but I’m working on it.

I’m working on accepting my body the way it can be right now, not perfect, but healthy and as strong as possible for the high demand I’m facing with it.
Sometimes I do a little yoga instead. Most days I go for a walk. Sometimes not even that.

I let the house be messy on some days.
I don’t intermittent fast like I love doing.
I eat when I’m hungry and gently.

Because the real recovery doesn’t come from pushing harder.
It comes from meeting myself where I am and not making that look wrong.

This Is Why I’m Creating Replenish

After years of mixing my own powders and guessing what I needed or asking myself what I was doing wrong to feel so tired all the time…
After standing in the kitchen measuring scoops with one eye open…
I decided to build Replenish.

A warm, comforting drink that tastes good, feels good, and helps support:

• Mitochondrial energy (your body’s power supply): the one that is really running low during postpartum, stress and sleep deprivation.

• Nervous system softness: so I can show up with love for those who need me even if I haven’t slept.

• Calm focus and mood: for my work and the feeling I’m still alive, still me.

For tired mothers like me, not perfect ones.
Mothers who give so much and want something that gives back.

If that sounds like something you’d love too…
You can join the waitlist here.

And if nothing else, make yourself a warm drink today.
Sip it slowly. Let it matter.
Because you surely matter.

With care,
Anna

And still, you show up.
For your child. Your partner. Your job.
You give what’s left, often with no one noticing what it’s costing you.

You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re certainly not lazy.
You’re navigating a physiological reality of motherhood no one warned you about.

This is the hidden truth every mother deserves to hear.

In this article, I’ll share:

• The science of what’s actually happening in your body when you’re depleted after becoming a mother

• 6 subtle signs you might be ready to start coming back from burnout, even if you still feel exhausted

• Simple, practical ways to support your energy and recovery (that don’t require more sleep, more time, or more willpower)

  Amparo Letters is a free publication. Subscribe to receive new posts and support my work.

  ---

  The Burnout No One’s Naming

  We talk about postpartum depression. We talk more and more about postpartum rage.
  We talk about sleep and the lack of it.
  But we rarely talk about the mothers who are not clinically depressed, just totally drained and honestly, that seems to be the majority of us.

  The ones who say things like:

  “I got a full night’s sleep… so why do I still feel like I’m drowning?”
  “I keep snapping and then I hate myself for it.”
  “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to, but I don’t feel okay.”

  That’s not laziness or sluggishness. That’s also not failing.
  That’s depletion. And it has a name and a cause, a physiological one.

  ---

  The Science: Why You Still Feel So Tired

  I’m Anna, a medical doctor and a mother of a toddler who still wakes me up every night at three years old.
  My clinical training didn’t prepare me for what motherhood would do to my body. So I turned to the science.

  Here’s a simplified explanation for what our bodies go through:

  Inside every one of our cells are tiny organelles, little beings, called mitochondria — our body’s energy factories. They produce ATP, the molecule that powers everything (the chemical translation of energy): from focus to emotional regulation, digestion to movement.

  But here’s the thing:

• Pregnancy, postpartum, breastfeeding, and chronic sleep deprivation all deplete mitochondrial energy stores.

• Without proper recovery, your brain, muscles, and nervous system start running on fumes. Literally.

  The result?

  • Brain fog

  • Mood swings

  • Muscle fatigue

  • Emotional reactivity

  • That wired-but-tired feeling caffeine makes worse

  And yet we’re told to bounce back as fast as possible and boast about it, drink coffee or even alcohol to cope, go for a walk, breathe deeply and just push through.

  ---

  Watch for These 6 Sparks, They Mean You’re Coming Back to Life

  Recovery doesn’t always arrive in big, sweeping changes.

  For mothers it also doesn’t mean you have to feel like you did before motherhood (I’m sorry to break it to you, but you probably never will).
  Sometimes, it comes quietly, like a spark in the dark.

  If you’ve been feeling like you’re still deep in it… but something inside you has started to shift — even slightly — these may be the signs.

  1. You’ve stopped pushing through.

  You’re no longer pretending to be fine. You’re starting to listen to your body, even if it’s inconvenient.

  2. You feel angry.

  That sacred anger is awareness. It says: This is not okay. And it wants better.

  3. You’re questioning the system, not yourself.

  You’re starting to ask: “Why is this supposed to be normal?” instead of “What’s wrong with me?”

  4. You’re craving quiet.

  Not just rest, actual nervous system softness. Even a few minutes of stillness feels like gold.

  5. You’re doing one small thing just for you.

  Drinking water before coffee. Eating a real breakfast. Sitting down to pee alone. Listening to one favourite song in the car before going into the house. This matters.

  6. You’re here.

  You’re reading this. That means your spark is still burning. You’re not done. You are looking for clarity and hope. And the good news is, those who look are the ones who find it.

  ---

  When You Don’t Have Time to Heal, Start Here

  If you’re in the thick of it:
  Bone-tired. Overstimulated. Whispering “I’m fine” when you’re not…
  These are the things that helped me begin again.
  Not to fix myself or to bounce back, but to tend gently to what was left of me.

  Salt + Lemon Water or a Cup of Herbal Tea in the Morning
  Not to optimise anything. Just to tell my body: you matter.
  You’re being hydrated. You’re being held.

  ---

  Protein Within 90 Minutes of Waking
  Before the coffee. Before the chaos.
  Because even a nervous system on edge needs something to stand on.

  Two boiled eggs, a scoop of my favourite organic protein powder, some cottage cheese with spices: keep it simple.

  ---

  🫶 One Breath Before Reacting
  Not always. But sometimes.
  That pause became my way of saying: I choose presence, even in pieces.

  Bonus step: saying to myself “I am safe, we are safe” as a reminder that most of the stress and the anxiety lives in our minds only.

  ---

  🕊️ Dropping Guilt, Even Just a Little
  Every time the voice whispered “You should be doing more,”
  I practiced replying: “I am rebuilding. I am doing and being enough.”

  ---

  🌿 And Slowly, I Started Replacing the Things That Drained Me
  I still scroll sometimes. I still crave sugar. I still enjoy my coffee. I still want to escape sometimes.
  But I’ve learned: not all breaks are nourishing.
  Some things soothe the moment, but rob us long-term.

  I began asking: What actually leaves me fuller?
  What gives me back to myself, even a little?

  That question changed everything.

  No, this won’t solve it all.
  But on the days I couldn’t change my life,
  I could change how I met myself.
  And that was a start.

  ---

  The Next Layer of Replenishment

  Those small rituals helped.
  They gave me something to hold onto: moments of quiet in the noise, of nourishment in the emptiness.

  But there were still days when I woke up tired in my bones.
  When I could feel my nervous system fraying, my energy hollowed out and no amount of “trying harder” made a difference.

  I needed something deeper. Something that could run in the background, even when I couldn’t.
  And my cells needed something deeper than rest. They needed restoration.

  I went looking for support that was science-backed but still gentle and made for mothers like me: running on fumes, in bodies that never fully stop giving.

  When I couldn’t find it, I made it.

  I didn’t build Replenish to solve motherhood.
  I built it because I needed something that could meet me where I was: in the fog, in the fray, in the mess of loving and breaking and rebuilding all at once.

  I was tired of only coping. I wanted to feel like I was slowly coming back to life.

  And that’s how Amparo Naturals began: as a promise to myself, and now to others.
  A reminder that we don’t have to just cope. We can replenish.

  If that’s where you are too…
  This might be for you.

  You can join the waitlist here.

The Value Signal, as it has existed up to now, is officially dead.

I’m not closing the channel or deleting anything.
But I am laying a new path.

🌾 The Path Through the Desert

This new path is called Amparo Naturals.

The image that came to me this morning — during a meeting with the Creator himself — was of a path through the desert of sleeplessness and overwhelm, laid down for mothers who are enduring.

A path toward joy.
Toward life.
Toward vitality.
Toward sovereignty and dignity.

🕊 What Amparo Is

Amparo Naturals is a living ritual.

I’m creating supplements for mothers, because I couldn’t find what I needed anywhere.
I take these formulations myself every day. They have changed my life.
That’s the only reason Amparo exists — because it works.

Right now I’m sourcing the cleanest ingredients possible.
Some things are non-negotiable for me:

• Amino acids must be European-sourced and lab-tested for purity — no contamination, no heavy metals, no mystery origins.

• The spices (because Amparo is about ritual) must be organic, alive, real.

These aren’t just “supplements.”
They are rituals of care.
Moments that invite us to pause, to breathe, to anchor our day in love.

☀️ Replenish: the First Creation

The first product, Replenish, was born out of my own need as a sleepless mother of a toddler.

Coffee made me anxious. I needed something that would steady me and not hype me or stimulate me even more.
As an MD I went to the research. So I started combining creatine, glycine, and a few gentle, nervous-system-supportive ingredients, on my own.

It gave me my strength back.
My sovereignty.
My ability to rise again — even after another night of three hours of sleep.

That’s when I realized:
If it helped me, it can help others.
So here we are. There’s a waitlist and if all goes well, our first official batch will be ready in November.

🔥 The End of Division

I can’t tell you how relieved I feel to no longer split myself between two worlds — The Value Signal and Amparo.

I want one channel for all my creative flow, all my energy, all my devotion.
Amparo will carry both the content and the products — because they are expressions of the same thing:
Self-care as sacred ritual.
Sovereignty for mothers.
Joy in the chaos.
Release of control.

🌺 What Amparo Means

Amparo is a Portuguese word that has no true translation in English.
It means being protected, embraced, cared for, having all your needs met.
It’s how a mother holds her child — safe, soothed, seen.

That’s what I want mothers to feel.
Amparadas.
Supported. Loved. Held.

Through connection, through nourishment, through beauty and sovereignty.

💬 For the Mothers Who Find This

If you’re a mother who happened to find this: welcome.

If this resonates, please subscribe, comment, share your thoughts.
Every piece of feedback, every word from another mother, helps shape this creation. Let me know what you need!

We are building this together.

🌸 Closing

Amparo is for mothers who rise every day on love and exhaustion
and still find the strength to nurture life, art, and meaning.

I hope you’ll walk this path with me.

With love,
Anna

It was an ordinary Monday

Well, it started better than most.

Because my three-year-old son, who rarely sleeps through the night, finally did.

And so did I.

Which, if you’re a mother with a toddler and chronic insomnia, you know: that alone makes it a miracle.

We started the day rested.

I caught up on five days’ worth of piled-up work.

I stuck to my meal plan.

I got my workout in.

I walked the dog under the gray drizzle.

The day flowed.

Later, I picked my son up from daycare. We went grocery shopping.

He helped me pick things, load the trolley, scan the items at checkout.

It took twice as long as it would have on my own.

But it made him so happy.

He played his j-horn in the car (his newest obsession) while listening to brass music.

(Yes, my three-year-old adores brass bands and now has started to keep the pace with his favourite songs).

We got home. He was melting down.

He asked me to build something out of Lego, and everything I made was “wrong.”

I could have snapped.

But today, I didn’t.

I comforted him.

I named his feelings.

I stayed soft.

We had dinner.

He fell asleep peacefully.

And I sat with the stillness and thought: That was it.

Just an ordinary Monday.

No breakthrough.

No Instagram-worthy glow.

Not even a bit of sunshine.

But I’m declaring it a pocket of perfection.

Because here’s the truth I keep learning:

Perfectionism never delivers what it promises.

But presence does.

When you stop chasing the ideal, you start noticing what is.

And what “is” — as rainy or gray as it may look — is sometimes exactly enough.

I heard David Ghiyam in his podcast today say:

“Remember that this day was created for you.”

And I felt that at my core.

So if you’re in the middle of your own gray Monday,

let this is your reminder too:

Perfection lives in the ordinary.

Not when you chase it.

But when you allow yourself to see it.

This day is for you and it can be a pocket of perfection.

Even the most stable love gets tested when a baby arrives. Parenthood will take you to the edge of yourself. And when all your energy goes into your child, your partnership often becomes the place where the cracks show up.

I’ve shared here before how motherhood brought me to my knees. What I haven’t shared much about is how it tested my relationship with my husband. Not because he isn’t supportive (he is the most supportive man I could have wished for) but because the work of rising again after motherhood had to be mine.

He could help me create time for myself. He could support me in practical ways. But the inner work of finding myself again, of not letting motherhood reduce me to a shadow of who I was before, that was mine to do.

And while I was deep in that process, our relationship also struggled. We never discussed divorce, but there were seasons when our bond felt heavy, tired and endangered.

Many times I felt like I was disappearing as a person and also that we were disappearing as a couple.

I want to share five things that helped us: practices that saved not only our marriage, but also the love and respect between us.

1. See Your Projections

For a long time, I carried a constant feeling of being desamparada. In Portuguese, that word means abandoned, unprotected, unsupported… a deep ache of not having your needs met.

I kept projecting this onto my husband. Even though he was working hard to provide for us, so I could spend time with our son, I felt he wasn’t “there” for me.

Until one day, I realized: this is not about him. This is my wound.
It was a childhood wound I had carried for decades. And no matter what he did, he could never fix it.

The moment I saw this clearly, everything shifted. I could hold myself responsible for my healing. And in that clarity, the projection started to dissolve.

Before you blame your partner, ask: is this really about them, or is it my own wound asking to be seen?

2. Stop Complaining

Complaining feels natural when you’re exhausted. But it never builds intimacy.

Every complaint pushes your partner further away, locking them into a role where they feel powerless and criticized. And it leaves you stuck rehearsing the same story of lack and victimhood.

The truth is: complaints don’t communicate what you actually need. They just dump frustration into the space between you.

So here’s the shift: when you feel the urge to complain, pause. Step back. Ask yourself, what do I actually need here? Then come from the heart and voice the need directly.

3. Communicate Without Accusation

There’s a tool from non-violent communication that changed everything for us.

Instead of accusing: “you never help me, I have to do everything”, try this structure:

I feel [emotion]… because I need [need].

Example:

• “I feel anxious because I need rest.”

• “I feel sad because I need more time for myself.”

This language shifts the whole conversation. Instead of triggering defensiveness, it opens the possibility of understanding. You’re no longer attacking; you’re revealing.

And believe me, most times your partner is probably not being very helpful because you didn’t state your needs in a way that they’d understand.

4. Respect Their Movement

This one was hard for me. My husband smokes. I don’t like it. As a doctor, I know the risks and as his partner, I hate the smell. For a long time, I thought: how do I make him stop? How do I make him feel guilty enough to quit? How can I teach him a lesson?

But then I realized something radical: I don’t actually know what’s best for him.

Of course, rationally, quitting would improve his health. But maybe quitting suddenly would raise his stress, harm him in other ways, or trigger something I can’t predict.

The truth is, I don’t know. Only he knows, in his timing.

Respecting his movement gave him back his power. It freed me from trying to control, and it gave us both space for acceptance.

Stop trying to control your partner “for their own good.” Trust their path.

5. Recognize Their Effort

This one is simple but transformative.

When you’re tired, you only see your own exhaustion. But the truth is: parenthood is hard for both.

Recognizing their effort changes the lens. It invites compassion. It reminds you that you’re not opponents, you’re allies.

Remember that you are on the same side, always.

Parenthood doesn’t have to destroy your relationship. But it will test it. It will bring it to the edge.

The question is: will you meet that test from a place of victimhood and blame — or from a place of clarity, compassion, and love?

Here’s what saved us:

• Seeing projections for what they are

• Stopping the cycle of complaints

• Communicating needs without accusation

• Respecting each other’s movement

• Recognizing effort, even in exhaustion

These shifts gave us back connection. They helped our love not only survive parenthood but grow deeper in the fire of it.

💬 I’d love to hear from you:
What has tested your relationship the most in parenthood? And what has helped you through it?

I’ve been there. I know that cry.

But I also know something else: if I had stayed in that place, I would have lost myself. I almost did.

Because motherhood isn’t just a burden to survive. It’s resistance training. It’s the work that forges adulthood.

It’s the path where joy, courage and selfhood are rebuilt inside the chaos.

Motherhood is not a death sentence. It’s a beginning.

Victimhood Is the Trap

There’s a posture many of us fall into without even noticing: victimhood.

It feels justified. It even feels protective.

Look how hard my life is.

Look how unsupported I am.

Look how much I give and how little I get back.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: victimhood doesn’t free us. It keeps us pinned to the floor.

The complaints may be accurate, but they are not empowering. They turn motherhood into something happening to us instead of something happening through us and, above all, for us.

Resistance doesn’t disappear when we complain about it. Resistance dissolves when we move through it.

Motherhood as Resistance Training

When I became a mother, I thought I was already a grown up.

I had studied, worked, earned, achieved, travelled solo, married and divorced, moved countries more times than I had planed.

But nothing had ever demanded my whole self the way holding a tiny life in my arms did.

Suddenly, resistance was everywhere. Sleepless nights. Endless needs. A nervous system stretched thin. My own ambitions whispering from the corner.

And in that resistance, I had a choice: complain… or rise.

Every diaper changed, every night survived, every small act of clarity: they weren’t just chores. They were weights. And like a muscle under load, I was breaking down to grow stronger.

That’s the sacred discipline of motherhood.

The Art of Rising Inside Chaos

Rising doesn’t mean pretending it’s easy. It means finding the soft spot in the middle of the hardness, the place where you can breathe, choose, pause and act again.

• It’s chasing a dream in the cracks of nap time.

• It’s finding joy in the messy kitchen and scattered toys, not waiting for silence.

• It’s rebuilding your sense of self while still rocking a child who needs you.

That tension, between demand and beauty, chaos and clarity, is art. This is where mothers do the work.

And like any art, it takes practice. The practice of refusing to collapse into complaint. The practice of creating a spine where none existed before.

Why Complaining Steals Our Power

Complaining can feel good in the moment. It’s a release. But it rarely creates movement.

In fact, it locks us deeper into the role of the powerless mother, the one always waiting for help to arrive.

I had to tell myself: No one is coming with the remote. The channel doesn’t change on its own. If I don’t like the version of myself I’m living in, I have to get up and tune into another.

This is where motherhood becomes rebellion: not in rejecting the role, but in refusing to live it passively.

Living Mothers, Not Dead Ones

So many mothers say, “I would die for my kids.” And while that’s noble, it’s not the point.

No child needs a dead mother. They need a living one. A mother who shows what courage looks like in real time. A mother who dares to keep a dream alive. A mother who doesn’t just collapse under the weight of resistance, but lets it carve her into someone stronger.

The question isn’t Would you die for them?
The real question is Will you live for them?

The Soft Spot

Living doesn’t mean grinding harder. It means finding the soft spot where your humanity breathes.

For me, that looks like:

• Eating to nourish myself instead of punish myself.

• Building tiny rhythms so the day stops feeling like quicksand.

• Letting gratitude anchor me when resistance whispers, you’re failing.

• Writing, creating, moving my body, not as luxuries, but as oxygen or hygiene.

• Allowing my husband to care as he will (dropping the critic and letting him parent his own way, which might be different to mine)

These are not escapes from motherhood. They are the art of living inside it. The art of forging the self I want to be for my kids and my family as a whole.

Invitation

If you are overwhelmed and unsupported, I won’t tell you to stop feeling that. But I will tell you: don’t camp there. Don’t make victimhood your home.

Motherhood is hard, no arguing against it, but it’s also the forge.

Let the resistance shape you. Let the weight make you stronger. Find the soft spot and rise inside it.

Allow yourself to feel gratitude for the support you do have, however little it may be.

Because doing the work as a mother isn’t the end of you.

It’s the beginning of your real adulthood. It’s the rebellion of choosing joy, courage, and clarity inside the chaos.

And that, to me, is true art.

You follow it. Even if it’s inconvenient and out of plan. Even if it interrupts the system you were carefully building. Even if it doesn’t seem to “make sense.”

Because some ideas carry truth.
Some ideas carry urgency.
Some ideas arrive like birth: they don’t wait until you feel ready.

Amparo Naturals was like that.

I had no intention of creating a supplement brand. None.
But this idea? It didn’t whisper. It howled.

And honestly, I didn’t discover it on my own.

It was Philipp, my husband and also aa fellow MD, who looked at me one day, saw how depleted I was, and said:
“You should try creatine.”

I was skeptical. I thought it was for gym bros.
But I was also exhausted enough to try anything that might help.
And when I did… something shifted.
Not dramatically. Not instantly. But quietly and after a few days undeniably.

I could think again.
Enjoy my mornings again.
Feel like me again.

That’s when the MD in me kicked in, of course.
I wanted to understand why this was working so well and if it was safe to keep taking it.
So I went deep into the research.

And what I found shocked me.

Creatine is one of the most studied supplements in the world
and one of the safest.
It’s safe in pregnancy, safe while breastfeeding, and it’s been shown to protect the brain, regulate mood, and support hormonal balance.

And I thought:
“Why didn’t I have this three years ago?
In pregnancy. In postpartum. In the thick of the dark.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me about creatine before?”

Not for muscles.
Not for weight lifting.
But for me.
A mother. A woman. A nervous system fraying at the edges.

That’s when the name came.
Amparo, from my mother tongue: protection, shelter, grace.
And with it, a formula.
And with that, a mission.

Because this is not an energy drink or a stimulant that causes just more tiredness in the tiredness. This is restoration.
Made for the women who are still waking at 2am and still rising at 6.
Made for the mothers running on three hours of sleep and a lot of love to give.
Made for the ones who give their all… and finally deserve something back.

🌿 What is Amparo Replenish?

It’s a real support formula for sleep-deprived mothers.
Creatine-based. Caffeine-free. Breastfeeding-safe.
Gentle on the body, fierce in its support.

Replenish rebuilds what the night took.
It supports cellular energy, hormone balance, and nervous system resilience —
without stimulants.
Without crash.
Without pretending you're not exhausted.

And no, it’s not available quite yet.
But the first mock-up batch sold out overnight just from a soft test page and word of mouth.

Now I’m building the next steps. Slowly. Soulfully.
And you’ll be the first to know.

Because sometimes…

✴︎ An idea breaks your to-do list in half and hands you your real mission.
✴︎ An idea reminds you who you are and leaves your other projects waiting.
✴︎ An idea claims you, cracks you open, and starts your next chapter.

This is mine.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for being here at the beginning.

With love,
Anna

🌕 P.S.

We launched this campaign on the Full Moon Eclipse in Pisces.
Because this one felt cosmic.

Join the waitlist here →
Follow Amparo Naturals on Instagram →

Your next scroll just gave your power away. You feel exhausted, anxious, overstimulated… so your thumb finds the screen. Again.

I know, because mine does too.

You want to rest. To feel grounded. To be present: with your child, your thoughts, yourself. But instead… you scroll.

It's not that you're lazy. It's because you're exhausted. Because your phone feels like the only place that still belongs to you. The only space you can reach without being needed, like your only "private" space left.

Because somewhere along the way, your time became occupied. And it wasn't by your values, but by the loudest notifications, by dopamine traps disguised as inspiration, by endless updates and by someone else’s agenda.

Every time you unlock your screen, you’re unlocking someone else’s agenda for your time.

I know this because I live it too. And lately I started saying no. To scroll. To numbness. I found a better entry point and it wasn’t willpower. It was something simpler. I chose to return to my space, the real, physical one. To a different kind of attention.

Stopping the Scroll as an Act of Sovereignty

We don’t talk enough about scrolling as a ritual. But not a ritual of rest, one of submission.

Every time you open your phone out of habit: when you're tired, overwhelmed, waiting or unsure what to do next, you're entering someone else's agenda for your time, your mind, your nervous system.

Your phone becomes a portal for external programming. In it you'll find urgency, comparison, the need for performance or created needs that you didn’t know you should have (and you’ll believe them).

Stopping the scroll isn’t just a tactic, it’s an act of quiet rebellion.

It's not just self-care… but a political act of personal sovereignty. Think about it.

It changes how you mother.

How you rest.

How you relate to your space, your nervous system, your purpose.

You deserve this sanctuary.

Because children are always watching.

They will see you on your phone and interprete it as "this is what adults do".

It primes them to the addictive scroll even if they are not on the phone themselves (and they shouldn't be at all).

There’s no healing in busyness.

"Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your perceptions need you, your feeling needs you. The wounded child in you needs you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it." — Thich Nhat Hanh, Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child

How I Reclaimed My Evenings and My Sanity

Step 0: I Chose Sleep, On Purpose

The reason I started this at all? I was not sleeping.

I’m a perfectionist and an immediatist.

I’m building something I believe in with all my heart (a system I want to see help thousands of women now). Not months from now. Now.

But my body doesn’t work that way.

It doesn’t tolerate nonstop effort. It doesn’t run on pressure or late-night urgency.

So I made a decision: Sleep is non-negotiable.

Not because it’s a productivity hack or even biohack, but because it’s essential to my health, to my sanity, to my work and my relationships.

I had to stop working. I had to stop the scroll. I had to allow myself to wind down like it mattered, because it does.

Action step: set your phone in Airplane Mode 8 (or “do not disturb”) at 8pm.

Prepare for it. Do it and let your phone rest.

Your sleep pattern will thank you quite quickly as your sleep hormones start regulating again without the light stimulus of the screen.

Step 1: I Decided What My Time Is For

I committed to two hours of focused work a day (on the computer or on the phone) with one or two short runs (15-30 min) in the afternoon when possible.

Outside of those hours, I stopped checking email, social media, or anything online.

That boundary alone changed how I show up as a mother.

I became more available not just physically, but emotionally. There's no "anxious pull" in the background of what I ought to, should or need to be doing instead.

I started listening better.

And I noticed the silent permission I was giving my child: to be present, not distracted.

Action step: define your "screen time windows". Write them down or say it out loud as a commitment to yourself.

Step 2: I Let Chores Become Presence

When I learned Bashar’s formula of following your highest excitement with no expectation on the outcome, at first, I thought: "But what about all the tasks? The laundry? The cleaning? The kitchen?"

We think those things will never get done unless we force them. But it’s not true.

When I stopped consuming during chores in the evening something shifted. In this moment there is no podcast, no audio, no multitasking.

Tidying up after the day.

Folding laundry.

Wiping the table.

All of it became mindfulness. It became a way to wind down, to close the loops of the day. Not performance. Not productivity. Presence.

And it’s in that presence that I found something surprising: peace.

Notice the care and attention you can put into these tasks, the love, the dedication.

Generate gratitude for taking back your own time your own rhythm.

See it for what it is: a gift.

Your time is a gift.

Action step: make a "no screen" to-do list and start with the one that is "most exciting" in that moment.

Step 3: I Replaced Consumption with Ritual

• Writing on paper.

• Chatting with my husband in half light.

• Drinking tea in silence.

• Reading a real book (even a novel!).

• Doing nothing at all. Letting thoughts breathe.

No screens. No noise. Just ideas finding space to bloom.

You will notice this on the very first night: your system begins to come down. Your body breathes.

Your mind softens.

You sleep better.

And you wake up in your own presence, not someone else's algorithm.

I even noticed that the urge to reach for my phone in the morning has subsided.

Action step: choose your read (on paper) and set it in a space where you'll find it ready.

Final Thought: Your Time Is a Spell

Every night you reach for your phone, you’re casting a spell.

Every time you scroll past your own intuition, you’re deepening the trance.

Tonight, break it.

Wash the dishes. Fold the clothes. Light the candle. Read the book.

Stop the scroll. Reclaim your rhythm. Rewrite the ritual.

And when you do, pay attention to what returns:

· Your clarity

· Your creativity

· Your child’s eyes meeting yours

Because nothing is as urgent as you believe it to be.

Your time is a spell.

Busyness is not growth.

It’s not what will make a difference.

Not in the long run.

Your mental health will. Your presence will. Your rhythm will.

Tonight, break the spell. Find yourself again.

This New Moon on August 23rd arrives at 0º Virgo: a special place bringing the first breath of a new rhythm.
Not a sprint. Not a plan.
A pulse. A pause. A chance to begin differently.

And maybe that’s the most radical thing we can do now:
Stop chasing.
Stop optimizing.
Stop proving.

What if your value didn’t live in what you produced…
but in the signal you protect?

I’m sure almost all mothers will relate to this. The greatest value in the world, raising a human being, and it’s not “productive”.

I’ve been reworking my own rituals lately.
Not to call more in, but to release the tight grip.
Not to manifest harder, but to become softer.

I became tired of the chase and of the need for control. I decided to tune into relaxation and gratitude instead.

And this Virgo New Moon felt like the perfect time to offer something back to you: a small anchor for your own rhythm.

It invites to you to think and say “ I love myself”, everyday. Isn’t that just refreshing? “I am complete”, “I am whole”… ahhhh, it’s a real out breath!

What This Is

This is not a productivity ritual.
It’s a presence ritual.

It’s a 5-minute meditation and a grounding ritual you can do in your body, your home, your garden, your breath.

It’s for women who are tired of earning worth through exhaustion.
Mothers, makers, healers, creators, system-builders, bridge-holders.
Those of us rebuilding our lives from the inside out without asking for permission.

This is part of what The Value Signal is here to do:
Remind us that we don’t need to hustle for the sacred.
We just need to become quiet enough to receive it.

✨ Included in This Post:

• I No Longer Chase – A 5-minute guided meditation to stop chasing and start allowing, to be held.

• A ritual to ground this Virgo New Moon in your body, your space, and your signal

• A printable version if you want to repeat this over the next 7 days

Excerpt from the Ritual:

“Creator of All Light,
I come not to chase, but to allow.
I no longer prove, I receive.
I no longer perform, I become.
This body is a vessel.
This time is a portal.
I open to the life I already contain.”

Click below to listen or download the ritual (I recommend using both).

Listen to the meditation

📝 Download the Ritual PDF

💠 Why Now?

In my own chart, this New Moon falls in my 2nd house, the house of embodied value, earned worth and rhythm.
And lately I’ve felt the exhaustion that comes from trying to outrun my signal instead of sitting inside it.

So this is me pausing.

Resetting.

Letting my nervous system, my womb, my Vagus nerve…
become the place where my next phase begins.

I’m turning from “manifesting” and “attracting miracles” to simply: relaxing, being grateful and tending to my body’s rhythm of cycles and also sleep.

If you’re craving a reset that doesn’t demand more of you,
but instead offers structure for your soul,
this is for you.

📺 Watch the Meditation on YouTube

Click here to watch.

Or download the ritual below and do it your own way, in your own rhythm (spoiler: AI-prompts to personalise the ritual exclusively for you are included :)

🕊 Final Note:

This New Moon isn’t asking you to do more.
It’s asking you to remember who you are when you stop proving.

It’s asking you to build a new rhythm, one that is yours.
A rhythm that honors your worth, not your output.

You don’t need to chase the signal.
You are the signal.

With presence + radiance,
Anna

If you're a woman holding space for work, motherhood, family logistics, creative projects, and maybe even your own sanity, you know the mental tabs never close.

You forget priorities. You lose threads. You sacrifice clarity for survival.

I know, because I was there. I didn’t need another productivity hack. I didn’t need another morning routine. I needed mental spaciousness. I needed a system that remembered me for me.

So I built an AI assistant. But not the bro-tech kind. One that mirrors my tone, holds my projects, and helps me come back to my signal when life gets too messy for comfort.

This isn’t about outsourcing your thinking. It’s about amplifying it.

AI as a Mirror, Not a Machine

Most people approach AI like a robot or task slave.

But if you train it like a mirror, one that reflects your best thinking, even when you're tired, scattered, or stretched thin, you unlock something powerful.

This isn't about replacing your brain. It's about reducing cognitive clutter, so your mind can rest and focus.

You can use AI to:

* Remember your current priorities

* Reframe spirals when you’re emotional

* Suggest minimum viable actions when time is short

* Hold ideas until you’re ready

* Summarize, simplify, and structure your thoughts

Your assistant can become a grounded, nonjudgmental collaborator.

How to Build Your Own AI Assistant in 3 Steps

• Step 1: Turn On Memory (So It Remembers Who You Are)

In ChatGPT (or whatever tool you’re familiar with using): Settings > Personalisation > Toggle Memory ON

Without memory, your assistant is Dory from Finding Nemo. It forgets everything.

• Step 2: Define Your Voice and Their Role

In the Custom Instructions:

* What should the assistant call you? (e.g., your name, My Queen, Chief Alchemist)

* How should it speak? (e.g., warm, assertive, poetic, blunt)

* What tone, boundaries, and style do you prefer?

Example (from what I might say):

> "I’m building The Value Signal, a platform for overwhelmed but visionary women. I create videos, write essays, and build systems that reduce burnout. I’m juggling motherhood, creative work, a startup and a remote job. I need structured, non-generic support."

Tip: Open a new chat and write:

> "Here's what you should know about me. Help me summarize this clearly for my settings."

Then paste the result into your settings.

• Step 3: Give Personal Context

In the second Custom Instructions box, add real context:

> "I’m currently working on X. I struggle with Y. I want help doing Z in a more grounded, intentional way."

Be honest. This isn’t about impressing the machine. It’s about giving it the right material to reflect back something useful.

Prompts That Actually Help

Now that your assistant knows who you are, try asking:

* "I have 30 minutes. What’s one meaningful task I can complete right now?"

* "Help me reframe this spiral I’m in: …."

* "Here’s a voice memo, please summarise it into bullet points."

* "What’s one minimum viable action for this project today (or in the next 15 minutes)?"

* "Remind me what I said my goals were."

You’re not delegating your brain. You’re building a better mirror.

Bonus: Use AI to Learn AI

Ask it:

* "Give me 5 use cases I haven’t thought of yet for AI can help me in my daily life (or in achieving my goals)."

* "Help me design a workflow that connects ChatGPT, Notion, and my calendar."

* "What are the limitations of using AI as a decision-making partner?"

* "Here’s an idea, please guide me step by step to build it into a system:"

You don’t need more courses. You need better questions.

Want Help Setting It Up?

I’m offering a few founding spots for a guided setup experience:

* My personal prompt library for work, rituals, and daily clarity

* A personalized walkthrough to build your assistant

* Optional 1:1 call to refine it live

🎯You can sign up here.

The future isn’t just AI-powered. It’s you-aligned. Let’s build the mirror that reflects your best thinking back to you.

You’re not behind. You’re just ready for a system that helps you amplify your signal.

Begin now.

What if it could help you share your daily load?

Over the past few months, I’ve been quietly building my own, one that supports my creative rhythm, helps me focus, and takes decision fatigue off my plate. I now have three different ones.

Now I’m opening a small number of founding spots to help others do the same.

This is not another hustle tool.
It’s structure for your soul in the chaos.
Real support.

No shame.

💡 What You’ll Get

✅ My personal prompt library: for work, content, clarity, and daily flow
✅ Guided setup support: I’ll help you shape your assistant to sound and think like you
✅ Optional 1:1 call: to walk through your setup together
✅ A soft, sacred system that doesn’t punish you for being human

🧪 Why Beta?

This is an early-stage, co-created offer.
I’ve tested pieces of this with a few people in my circle, and now I’m ready to expand gently. Your feedback will shape the full version.

If you join now, you get:

• Early access pricing

• Extra support from me directly

• Lifetime access to all future updates of this assistant system

🎯 How to Join

Fill out the early access form here

or just hit reply and say “AI Assistant” and I’ll send you the next steps.

Let’s build something different.
Not more noise. Not more hustle.
But clarity and care translated into tech that honours all that you’re holding.

With love,
Anna