International Women’s Day 2025

Reclaiming Our Power: The Truth About Women, Motherhood, and Trusting Ourselves

Today, amidst all the corporate slogans and tokenistic empowerment messages, I want to remind you that being a woman is not a trend. It’s not a brand. It’s not something that needs fixing. It is ancient, sacred, and complete.

And yet, we live in a world that has spent centuries convincing us otherwise.

After decades of working with women - through birth work, ayurveda, yoga, and feminine wisdom traditions, and in raising five children, I’ve seen the many ways the world tries to dull women’s power.

Today International Women’s Day 2025, I want to share what I know to be true. What I know not just from books or theories, but from birth rooms, from yoga mats, from thousands of conversations with women on the path of bhakti, from quiet moments alone at 2am, from my own body and heart.

Before We Begin: Acknowledging That Empowerment Is a Privilege

It would be easy to talk about reclaiming power and trusting ourselves as though it’s a choice every woman can simply make.

But the truth is, empowerment is a privilege, and not all women have access to it.

As I write this, women in Taliban-occupied Afghanistan are not even allowed to sing in public, get an education, or leave their homes without a male chaperone. Women in other parts of the world are being forced into marriage, denied medical care and stripped of their basic human rights.

Empowerment is not a universal experience. It is relative.

And if you, like me, have the privilege of choice, of voice, of autonomy, then we cannot waste it.

We must use it.

Not just for ourselves. But for those who cannot.

When one woman reclaims her power, it sends ripples out to the women who still don’t have that option.

Here is our call to action, our prayer …

May we not waste the power we have. May we use it wisely. May we be a voice for those who are silenced.

Here are five elements of womanhood I have come to know as truth:

1. Women are the keepers of deep, embodied wisdom.

I remember birthing my first child. I felt fully awake in my body. I knew what to do. My body knew. My baby knew.

Birth isn’t something that needs to be micromanaged. It is something that needs to be witnessed, supported, honoured.

The industrialised modern medicine culture tells us that our bodies can’t be trusted. That pregnancy is dangerous, that pain is bad, that medical intervention is always the safest path.

The same messaging applies to every area of our lives. We are told to second-guess ourselves; in birth, in business, in mothering, in health, in leadership. We are trained to look outside of ourselves for answers.

But your body is not a liability. Your instincts are not an inconvenience. They are ancient intelligence, passed down through generations. And when women learn to trust themselves again, everything shifts.

2. The world profits from women doubting themselves.

Whether it’s birth, postpartum wellness, menopause or self-worth, there is an entire industry built on making women feel inadequate - so we’ll keep consuming and buying. This is how capitalism works and it is closely linked to control from the patriarchy.

When I had my first baby, I trusted myself instead.

I breastfed on demand, I carried him in a baby carrier almost constantly, I never used a pram, or a cot (we co-slept), or a dummy.

I’ve followed a very similar protocol with all my five children and guess what? They are turning out beautifully.

But the deeper lesson is this: How many areas of our lives are we giving away our power, simply because we’ve been conditioned to doubt ourselves?

3. Women should be lead themselves, not controlled by systems.

I have been in far too many rooms where a woman’s voice was ignored.

This is why I do the work I do. It’s time for us to reclaim the radical idea that women get to lead their own experiences.

In parenting.
In business.
In life.

With our money, and our resources and our time we get to choose.

4. The feminine isn’t weak, it’s the missing medicine.

Somewhere along the way, we started equating strength with hardness.

But true feminine strength is soft. It is receptive. It is intuitive.

The world is running on burnout and overwork where productivity is the biggest marker of success. Women are here to bring back the balance. To show that there is power in flow, in nourishment, in devotion.

5. Women supporting women will change the world.

One of the things I most love about the retreats to India I run each year with my colleague Edwina Peden is that so far, it's been all women who have come. The fun of hanging out in a journey of discovery and travel with a group of women has been pure magic - so many belly laughs, so much shared wisdom, and the exact remedy I needed this year after a difficult relationship breakup (with a man!).

That said, I love men. I have four sons. But I am determined to raise them as respectful and women-centered in their thinking, words, and actions. Because if we truly want change, it doesn’t just come from women reclaiming power, it comes from men learning how to honour women.

And if we are lucky enough to have the ability to speak, choose, and live freely, then we have a responsibility, to uplift the women who still don’t.

Today on International Women’s Day (and every day), I celebrate women, I commit to using my voice for those who are silenced and I am grateful for all that I have and am.

The Buddha taught the Bodhisattva ideal which reminds us that no one is free until we are all free. The world doesn’t change when a handful of women are empowered. It changes when ALL women are liberated.

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