When I learned that, I understood why lately, I’ve felt increasingly disconnected from many holidays. So many holidays have started to feel disconnected from their roots. So many sacred things become watered down over time. Traditions rooted in meaning become reshaped through capitalism, colonization, patriarchy, and systems that turn everything meaningful into something consumable, distorted and commercialized.

So this year, instead of focusing on flowers or curated images of motherhood, I found myself sitting in contemplation. Thinking about my own journey as a mother, and how motherhood has simultaneously been the most beautiful and most confronting experience of my life.

I thought about the last eight years of my life and how motherhood has transformed me in ways I could never have anticipated. Truthfully, I never imagined motherhood for myself. As a young girl, I didn’t dream about having babies one day. I actually felt uncomfortable around children for most of my life. The noise, the chaos, the crying, the messiness, the unpredictability of children simply being children. Children dysregulated me. At the time, I didn’t understand why my body reacted the way it did. I just thought something was wrong with me. Looking back now, I understand it differently.

As a childhood trauma survivor, my nervous system learned very early that loudness wasn’t safe, big emotions weren’t safe, unpredictability wasn’t safe. I learned very young how to shut down, dissociate, stay hyperaware, and survive. Those patterns followed me well into adulthood, and then eventually alcohol became another way to leave my body.

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The Moment I Realized I Needed to Heal my Inner Child

By the time my husband and I decided to start a family after nearly a decade together, I was already in recovery. We eventually felt the deep desire to start a family together. We had placed images of family, pregnancy, and parenthood on our dream boards for years. We imagined a full, vibrant home filled with children. But no amount of dreaming prepared me for what motherhood would ask me to face. Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum transformed me physically and emotionally, but toddlerhood opened an entirely different doorway. Watching my children experience big emotions for the first time, activated something very tender inside me. I remember the terror I felt watching them cry over something seemingly small. Watching them scream, melt down, throw themselves onto the floor in frustration. My nervous system would immediately shift into fight, flight, or freeze. Sometimes my own reactions frightened me. I love my children with every fibre of my being, I would never hurt them like I was hurt. Their emotions were completely normal, but my body did not know that yet.

I remember sitting with the realization that my children were expressing things that had never been safe for me to express as a child. Loudness had consequences. Emotional expression often led to punishment, shame, fear, or unpredictability. My nervous system had been shaped by those experiences long before I had language for trauma. Becoming a mother forced me to recognize that healing could no longer remain conceptual for me. I could not continue surviving through disconnection, numbing, perfectionism, or dissociation while raising children who deserved emotional safety and presence. I needed to understand why my body felt unsafe in ordinary moments of childhood expression. I needed to meet the younger version of myself with tenderness instead of shame, something inside me knew I needed to get curious.

That journey led me deeper into trauma recovery than ever before. I explored somatic healing, deep nervous system work, inner child healing/shadow work, ancestral healing, earth based medicines and ceremony, meditation, recovery spaces, and practices that helped me reconnect to my body. I started learning how deeply my childhood had shaped my responses to conflict, emotion, noise, mess, and unpredictability. I also began grieving in ways I had never allowed myself to grieve before. Part of becoming a cycle-breaker meant allowing myself to acknowledge painful truths about my upbringing while still holding love for the people involved. That duality has been one of the most tender parts of healing for me. I love my mother deeply. I know she loves me deeply. I also carry wounds from my childhood that profoundly shaped me. Even writing those words still feels tender in my body. Both truths live side by side inside me. Many of us who come from enmeshed or dysfunctional family systems where love and harm coexisted, where dysfunction was normalized, where gaslighting taught us to question our own reality. We were taught to minimize harm, protect the image of the family, and remain silent in order to survive. This is the complexity many cycle-breakers carry. Healing requires us to reclaim our own truth without losing our humanity in the process.

The Cycles I Am Proud to Break

As I reflect on motherhood now, I feel immense pride in the cycles I am consciously ending inside my own home. My children have never heard me criticize my body or theirs. They have never been shamed for expressing emotions. My sons have never been told that “boys don’t cry” or taught that tenderness makes them weak. We talk openly in our home about feelings, accountability, conflict, repair, and responsibility. We apologize to one another. We name harm when it happens. We practice making things right after conflict. I watch my children now navigate conflict with each other in ways that move me deeply. Sometimes I overhear them validating one another, apologizing sincerely, hugging after disagreements, or taking deep breaths when they feel overwhelmed. Sometimes I walk into a room and see one of them practicing EFT tapping because they watched me do it enough times to normalize emotional regulation as care rather than shame.

I also see my own healing unfolding in ordinary moments that would have terrified earlier versions of me. I am learning to feel safe around mess. Around muddy clothes and scattered toys. Around noise and movement and children taking up space exactly as children should. I am learning to choose connection more often than perfection. As a mother navigating ADHD and CPTSD, this remains an ongoing practice for me. Some days still stretch my capacity. Some days my nervous system still feels overloaded. Healing has not made me perfect. It has made me more conscious, more compassionate, and more willing to repair.

One of the most healing parts of motherhood has been rediscovering play. Sometimes I tell my children that my inner child wants to come out and play with them. They always say yes with excitement and delight. So I dance with them. I color with them. I get messy. I laugh loudly. I allow myself softness and joy that once felt inaccessible. In those moments, I can feel something inside me slowly loosening and returning home to itself.

This Mother’s Day

This Mother’s Day, I am thinking about all the mothers who are parenting while simultaneously healing the parts of themselves that were wounded in childhood. I am thinking about the mothers who are grieving what they did not receive while intentionally creating something different for their own children. I am thinking about the women rebuilding emotional safety from the ground up without having a blueprint to follow. That work carries extraordinary courage. It lives in the small moments of everyday life. It lives in bedtime conversations, repair after conflict, honest apologies, deep breaths, patience, and presence. It lives in the decision to stay conscious when survival patterns would be easier.

I see us. I honor us. And I believe the sacredness of this work deserves to be remembered.

A Question to Sit With

What is one cycle you are consciously choosing to end…
through the way you love?

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When I first got sober, I was desperate to find her.

Someone who had gone before me.
Someone who looked like me.
Someone who came from the kind of life I came from — complex, messy, layered.

Someone who had walked a path that felt even remotely close to mine.

A woman in recovery…
who was also a mother.
who had survived trauma.
who was healing while still in it.
who was building a life, not escaping one.

Someone REAL.

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I searched.

In rooms.
In books.
In conversations.

And while I found incredible people…
I couldn’t find her.

Not in the way I needed.

Because I knew — even then — that my story was complex.

I’m a second-generation Latina Canadian.
Raised by immigrant parents who fought hard to survive.
I grew up around chaos, abuse, addiction, and moments of poverty.

I learned how to endure.

And when I found alcohol, it became my companion in everything.

It helped me numb.
It helped me cope.
It helped me not feel what I didn’t yet have the capacity to process.

Until one day… I removed it.

And everything I had been running from was still there.

Sobriety Wasn’t the Finish Line

Getting sober didn’t magically resolve my life.

It was the beginning of meeting myself.

The grief I hadn’t processed.
The trauma I had buried.
The patterns I didn’t even realize I was repeating.

It ALL came to the surface.

And I remember thinking:

Where are the women who have done this before me?

Someone who could show me what it could looked like to dream again.
To feel.
To rebuild.

To live.

To thrive in recovery as a woman of color.

And the truth was…

I couldn’t find her.

The Moment Everything Clicked

Recently, in a coaching session, one of my clients, said something that really landed with me.

She told me how grateful she was for my guidance.

And then she said:

“You embody the transformation I’m working toward.”

She spoke about how rare it felt to witness someone in recovery…
navigating motherhood…
healing…
leading…
all at the same time.

And something shifted in me as I heard her say that.

Not in a way that felt like recognition of achievement…

but in a way that felt like truth landing.

I Became What I Was Looking For

I didn’t set out to become a coach.

Or a speaker.
Or a guide.

I didn’t have some grand plan to turn my healing into leadership.

I was just trying to survive.
Then trying to stay sober.
Then trying to make sense of my life.

But over time…

By staying.
By doing the work.
By choosing truth again and again…

I became the woman I once searched for.

This Is the Work of Cycle-Breakers

Many of us come from backgrounds where we didn’t have models for what we are now trying to build.

We didn’t grow up seeing emotional safety.
Or healthy relationships.
Or truth spoken openly.
Or repair after harm.

We learned survival.

And for a long time, survival is what carries us.

Until it doesn’t.

Until we feel that pull toward something more.

And when we don’t have a blueprint to follow…

we start creating one.

We learn in real time.

We make mistakes.
We repair.
We choose differently.
We try again.

And without even realizing it…

we begin to embody something new.

Your Voice Is the Medicine

In recovery spaces, there’s a saying:

“You keep it by giving it away.”

And I’ve come to understand this on a deeper level.

The things we’ve lived through…
the battles we’ve fought…
the patterns we’ve broken…

They are not just personal victories.

They are medicine.

There are women right now
sitting where you once sat
looking for someone like you.

Not perfect.

Not polished.

Just real.

The Little Girl in Me

Sometimes I think about the little girl I once was.

The one who didn’t feel safe.
The one who didn’t have language.
The one who needed someone to show her another way.

And I realize…

I became her role model.

Not because everything is perfect now.

But because I stayed.

Because I chose differently.

Because I never gave up.

This Is Why I Do This Work

I work with women who come from complex, layered backgrounds.

Women who have survived.
Who have done the work.
Who are sitting on lived wisdom they don’t yet fully trust.

Women who feel the pull toward something more…

but don’t see themselves reflected in the spaces around them.

This is why I do this work.

Not just for myself and my lineage.

But for what becomes possible because we chose differently.

For the children watching us.
For the women walking behind us.
For the version of ourselves who needed this.

We don’t always find the role model we’re looking for.

Sometimes…

we become her.

A Question for You

Who were you searching for…

that you might already be becoming?

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Hey, I’m Abigail Teixeira.

I’m a trauma recovery mentor, speaker, and founder of The Sovereign Woman Rising — a space for cycle-breakers who are ready to move from isolation and survival into leadership and legacy.

I serve women and femmes who have done the healing work and are now ready to embody their values, reclaim their voice, and build lives rooted in sovereignty.

Rather listen than read? Here’s the audio version of this piece.

Last week, I attended a beautiful event filled with powerful, brilliant women. Women talking about values they inherited from their families. Woman after woman spoke about integrity, honesty, and love modeled by their parents.

I sat there realizing I had spent most of my adult life unlearning mine.

The theme was branding.

The keynote speaker spoke with deep conviction about how her brand is guided by the values she embodies — integrity, excellence, consistency. She shared stories about watching her parents live these values every day. How their example became her internal compass. How those lessons shaped the leader she would eventually become.

Later, during a breakout exercise, we were invited to reflect on our cultural backgrounds.

What values were passed down to us?
What legacy are we carrying forward?
What shaped who we are today?

One by one, women shared.

They spoke about families where integrity was modeled.
Homes where honesty mattered.
Upbringings where elders embodied the very values they now lead with in their businesses and lives.

Family was sacred.
Values were visible.
Leadership had roots.

And as I listened, something stirred quietly inside me.

Because my story is different.

The values passed down to me were not guiding lights.

They were survival rules.

Family over everything — even when harm was present.
Silence over truth.
Loyalty over safety.
Obedience over authenticity.

Don’t question.
Don’t name what happened.
Don’t disrupt the system.

Those were the values that governed my early life.

And for years, I tried to survive inside them.

Fifteen years of addiction followed — an attempt to numb what could not be spoken, to quiet memories that had nowhere safe to land.

So when people talk about values, I sometimes feel the invisible grief of those of us who didn’t inherit healthy ones.

Because some of us didn’t receive a compass.

We had to build one.

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The Unspoken Reality of Cycle-Breakers

What about those of us who didn’t grow up watching integrity embodied?

Who never saw conflict handled with care?

Who didn’t learn emotional safety at home?

Many cycle-breakers didn’t inherit values.

We inherited wounds.

And our work has not been refinement.

It has been unlearning.

Deprogramming.
Deconditioning.
Burning inherited belief systems to the ground and asking:

What do I actually believe?

What do I want my children to inherit instead?

When I became a mother, I didn’t yet know what healthy values looked like.

But I knew — with absolute clarity — what I refused to pass down.

That became my starting point.

For a long time, avoidance of harm was my fuel.

I will not repeat this.
I will not normalize silence.
I will not teach my children to abandon themselves.

And slowly, through recovery, healing, and rebuilding my life, something shifted.

I stopped defining myself only by what I was breaking.

And began consciously choosing what I was building.

Becoming the Role Model You Never Had

Many of us grew up without examples of emotional maturity, truth-telling, or unconditional love.

So we became them.

We learned integrity by practicing honesty when it was uncomfortable.
We learned freedom by setting boundaries no one modeled for us.
We learned love by parenting differently than we were parented.

Cycle-breakers are often the first in their lineage to live values consciously instead of inheriting them unconsciously.

We are both the experiment and the example.

We are installing the blueprint in real time.

My children will grow up watching values embodied — not perfectly, but intentionally.

They will see repair.
They will see accountability.
They will see truth spoken aloud.

Not because it was given to me…

but because I chose it.

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The Quiet Grief — and the Power — of Becoming

As I listened to those women speak about the foundations they received, I felt both admiration and sadness.

Not jealousy.

Just recognition.

The understanding that my path has been one of unbecoming and becoming at the same time.

And I know I’m not alone.

There are so many of us building from scratch.

Learning values as adults.
Teaching ourselves safety.
Creating legacies we never witnessed.

Cycle-breakers don’t simply carry tradition forward.

We interrupt it.

We question it.

We rebuild it.

And that work is sacred.

Because every value we consciously embody today becomes inheritance tomorrow.

Legacy Isn’t What You Were Given

It’s what you choose to live.

Some people inherit a compass.

Others become one.

If you are learning integrity after betrayal…
truth after silence…
love after harm…

You are not behind.

You are doing ancestral work.

You are becoming the blueprint.

And somewhere in the future, a child — yours or someone else’s — will grow up believing these values are normal…

because you chose to live them first.

I’m curious:

What value are you consciously choosing to pass forward that you were never given?

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Last night was incredibly special.

The kind of night you know you’ll remember years from now.
The kind that shifts something quietly but permanently inside you.

I had the honour of hosting the very first opening ceremony of The Sovereign Seasons™.

Thirteen women gathered.

Women choosing to show up without performance.
Without perfection.
Without pretending they had it all together.

And what unfolded was simple.

We told the truth.

Not the polished truth.
Not the processed truth.
Not the “I’ve already learned the lesson” truth.

The raw one.

Grief.
Sadness.
Loss.
Anger.
Resentment.
Disgust.
Fear.

The heaviness of relationships that drained us.
The ache of years invested in something one-sided.
The rage of abandoning ourselves to keep the peace.
The exhaustion of being “the strong one.”

There was a season in my life where I was obsessed with collecting tools.

Breathwork to calm myself.
Mindset shifts to override emotion.
Somatic hacks to regulate faster.
Spiritual language to reframe the pain.

And while tools can be beautiful, here is what I now know, with every fibre of my being:

We don’t need more strategies to bypass our feelings.

We need spaces where we can name them.

We need curiosity instead of correction.
We need to be witnessed in our anger without being told to soften it.
We need to be seen in our grief without being rushed toward gratitude.

There is something profoundly healing about saying:

“I am angry about the years I lost.”
“I feel betrayed.”
“I feel foolish.”
“I feel sad.”

And having other women respond not with advice… but with recognition.

Last night, by popular demand, we incorporated a rage release ceremony using fire, a white fire limpia to transmute heavy emotion.

We wrote what we were ready to release.
We circled the words that felt hottest.
We fed them to the flame.

What happened next wasn’t dramatic.

It was embodied.

Relief.
Tears flowing.
Memories honoured.
Clarity landing in the body.

No one was trying to fix anything.

We were letting something move.

Afterward, one woman messaged me saying she already felt a deep sense of belonging. That she could feel herself stepping into healing in community, grateful to walk alongside women choosing this work at the start of such a meaningful year.

Belonging.

That word lands deeply in me.

Because so many of us, especially women who have survived trauma, betrayal, addiction, estrangement, high-control systems, struggle to trust other women.

We know how vulnerable it feels to show up open.
To let ourselves be seen in the mess.
To risk being misunderstood.

But here’s the truth:

Sovereignty is not emotional self-sufficiency.

It is truth in community.

Yesterday morning in meditation, as I sat with my ancestors and guides, I felt a nudge to connect with one of my favourite oracle card decks, Elder Animals by Asha Frost. I asked what animal medicine was I being invited to claim in order to thrive...

I pulled Elder Canada Goose: Invest in Community.

I burst into tears, it was such a clear, aligned and deeply validating message.

Geese migrate together.
They rotate leadership.
They honk encouragement.
When one falls behind, two stay with her.

They thrive because they move in formation.

That is what we are building.

Not hustle culture.
Not hierarchy.
Not spiritual bypassing.

But formation.

A circle where grief sits next to joy.
Where rage sits next to tenderness.
Where rest is honoured.
Where blooming is allowed.

Last night wasn’t just the beginning of a series.

It was the beginning of a formation.

And I am deeply, humbly, overwhelmingly grateful to be flying in it.

—

If you’ve been trying to “regulate” your way through something that actually needs witnessing…

I’m curious:

When was the last time you were held in your truth, without being fixed?

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For years, you’ve been reading my emails here.

And I’ve been so grateful.

But I’ve been craving something deeper.

Less algorithm.
More conversation.
Less broadcasting.
More community.

So I created a new home for my writing:

The Sovereign Woman Rising.
Lived wisdom for cycle-breakers building legacy.
Your voice is the medicine.

This is where I’ll be writing about what happens after survival — trauma recovery, ancestral remembering, feminine leadership, cyclical living, and building legacy from lived wisdom.

If you’re still here, still rising, still reclaiming…

I would love for you to subscribe and join me there.

This feels like the right next chapter.

And I’m just getting started.

With love,
Abby

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