AN 8-WEEK, IN-PERSON COURSE FOR MOTHERS • EAST BAY • JANUARY 2027
Freedom
in Motherhood
Break the cycle of depletion & guilt |
reclaim your peace and power
You love them. That was never the question. The question is why it has to feel this hard — and what becomes possible for you when you stop mothering from fear, guilt, and the bottom of an empty tank.
This is a rare opportunity to grow under the guidance of two experts in women's development and conscious parenting — mentors who don't just teach this work, but have been built by it themselves. Spots will go fast.
LET'S BE HONEST ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE
It's not that you don't love them.
It's that this is breaking you.
You snap over untied shoes, uneaten peas, unfinished homework. You lie on the bathroom floor after a fight with an eight-year-old, broken and sobbing, wondering how you got here. You give and give until there is nothing left, and then you give the empty parts too — and call it love.
By bedtime you are depleted, reactive, and ashamed. The patient, present, joyful mother you imagined keeps colliding with the one you actually are. And no amount of trying harder seems to close the gap.
Here is what nobody tells you: the way you were taught to move through the world is running your parenting. The fear. The people-pleasing. The perfectionism. The worth you outsourced years ago. It all shows up in how you speak to your kids, how you come apart when things go sideways, and how much of yourself you abandon just to get through the day.
- Maybe if someone had told you how hard this would be, you'd have chosen differently — and you hate that you thought it.
- You feel, some days, like your kids don't even like you. Like you don't like you.
- You've read the books, followed the accounts, downloaded the scripts — and still detonate by 7pm.
- You can't remember the last time you felt like a woman, not just a mother.
Changing the way you parent is one of the most direct paths back to your own peace. These were never two separate projects.
When you shift,
everything shifts.
This is not a parenting-tips course. It will not teach you to get your kids to behave. It is about you — your nervous system, your stories, your guilt, your wonder, your power.
Because the truth every mother discovers here is the same: the inner work that makes you a grounded, curious, sovereign parent is the exact same work that makes you a freer, more whole woman. You don't trade one for the other. You get both, or you get neither
THE OLD WAY
Parenting from fear
Reacting to behavior. Bracing for the future. Controlling what was never yours to control. Leaking your unprocessed pain onto the people you love most — then punishing yourself for it.
THE WAY HOME
Parenting from wonder
Meeting your child — and yourself — with curiosity instead of fear. Your most generous interpretation instead of your least. Connection over compliance. Peace, joy, and spaciousness that you get to feel alongside them.
This is for you if ...
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You love your children and you are exhausted by how hard this feels.
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You react in ways that don't reflect the mother you want to be — and the regret is its own exhaustion.
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You carry guilt and shame about your parenting more days than not.
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You've lost track of yourself somewhere underneath the role of mother.
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You know something has to change but have no idea where to start.
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You're ready to do real, raw, meaningful inner work — in community with other women who get it.
Mothers at any stage are welcome — if you have young kids, teenagers, or grown children. If you're partnered, single, co-parenting, or somewhere in between. Years in therapy or brand new to this. All that's required is the willingness to show up.
THE EIGHT-WEEK ARC
Part excavation.
Part toolkit. Part ceremony.
A carefully built journey — each week co-taught, drawing on Marisa's inner work and Tatiana's parenting framework. The emotional landscape and the practical map. The woman and the mother.
WEEK
01
Where You Learned to Mother
Awareness as the first act of change.
The stories, cultural messages, and family patterns you absorbed long before you became a mother — and how they quietly run the show today. We open with the grounding inquiry: Where Am I From? This isn't blame. It's waking up. You can't choose differently until you see what you've been choosing by default.
Marisa: How the stories we absorb about womanhood become the water we swim in.
Tatiana: The origins of fear-based parenting — and what becomes possible beyond it.
WEEK
02
What's Actually Happening Inside You
Naming what you carry — before it lands on your kids.
Most of us were never taught to identify what we feel, only to manage, suppress, or perform past it. This week you build the vocabulary and the practice of noticing — the rage out of nowhere, the grief with nowhere to go, the guilt that never leaves. What you can name, you can work with. What you can't name runs you.
Marisa: The noticing practice — recognizing dysregulation and what it costs.
Tatiana: The neuroscience of the triggered parent — amygdala vs. prefrontal cortex.
WEEK
03
Learning to Stay
Be moved without being swept away.
Hard feelings don't disappear when you avoid them — they get louder, embedded, sideways. This is the most essential skill in the course: staying with a difficult feeling long enough for it to move through you. We work the RAIN practice and the neuroscience of why 90 seconds of presence begins to loosen any emotion's grip. This is the hardest, most important reps you'll ever put in.
Marisa: RAIN in depth — working the hardest feelings without collapsing or bypassing.
Tatiana: Desirable difficulty and neuroplasticity — how capacity literally rewires the brain.
WEEK
04
Accepting What Is
Radical acceptance — of reality, your child, your own humanity.
Suffering has an engine: wanting things to be other than they are. This week, radical acceptance — not as resignation, but as the most powerful clarity available to a mother. Accepting your own imperfection as worthy of love. And releasing your child from the weight of who you need them to be, so you can meet them, in wonder, as who they are.
Marisa: Real acceptance vs. self-betrayal — standing in what's true without losing yourself.
Tatiana: Releasing the arrogance of control; depersonalizing your child's reactions.
WEEK
05
Knowing Your Own Ground
Values, integrity, and the sphere of influence.
You can't mother from groundedness if you don't know what grounds you. We do the values work — a living orientation to how you decide, hold limits, and show up in the hardest moments. Where do you end and your child begin? What's yours to influence, and what must you release? Boundaries not as walls, but as acts of love that make everyone safer.
Marisa: Values as compass, self-trust, and the power of the loving no.
Tatiana: The sphere of influence; rules of engagement that keep a family safe.
WEEK
06
Releasing Guilt and Shame
Guilt is data. Shame is a verdict. Learn the difference.
Two of the most universal — and most misunderstood — experiences of motherhood. Guilt tells you what you value and want to change. Shame tells you that you are the problem. One is useful. One will flatten you. We separate them, and build the self-compassion that makes every other piece of this work possible. A mother at war with herself cannot hold anything steady.
Marisa: Guilt and shame as a pathway to accountability and tenderness — not damage.
Tatiana: Owning your side of the street without collapsing into self-blame.
WEEK
07
Parenting from Wonder
The full wonder-based framework, brought to life.
This is the week it all comes together as a new way of parenting. Wonder isn't a technique — it's an orientation: curiosity over fear, your most generous interpretation over your least, inquiry over demand. We explore what it actually looks like on the defiant days, the falling-apart days. And what connection over compliance produces — for your kids, and for the genuine joy available to you inside even the hardest relationship.
Marisa: The wonder-based toolkit in full — how to offer your most generous interpretation, and lead from inquiry over demand.
Tatiana: Why wonder is the natural expression of the six weeks of inner work before it.
WEEK
08
Agency, Sovereignty & Integration
Reclaim it in yourself. Foster it in them. Same movement.
When you reclaim your own agency — your right to decide from your values, to trust yourself, to be the authority on your own life — you naturally begin to foster it in your children, and free yourself from controlling what was never yours. We return to the opening question — Where Am I From… Now? — and mark who you've become. This isn't a graduation. It's a beginning.
Tatiana: Fostering agency in children — practical tools for self-trusting humans.
Marisa: Emotional sovereignty — your center is inside you.
Together: Co-facilitated closing ceremony and integration.
WHAT YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH
Not a new theory.
A different life.
A map of your patterns
A clear understanding of where your parenting reactions come from — and the ability to interrupt them in real time, before they land on your kids.
Tools for hard feelings
Practical, body-based skills for working with the hardest emotions — yours and theirs — without being hijacked or swept away.
A values compass
A framework for making decisions, holding limits, and trusting yourself — so you stop outsourcing your authority to everyone but you.
Freedom from guilt & shame
The end of letting guilt and shame run the show — and the start of using what you feel as fuel instead of evidence against yourself.
The wonder toolkit
Curiosity, inquiry, connection over compliance, and fostering agency — a parenting orientation you can actually sustain on the hard days.
Yourself, back
A grounded, reclaimed sense of who you are — not only as a mother, but as a woman with peace, spaciousness, and a life that is also hers.
INCLUDED WITH ENROLLMENT
Two private 1:1 coaching calls — one with Marisa, one with Tatiana.
Every mother who enrolls receives two 50-minute private sessions — one with each of us, in our respective areas of expertise. A place to bring your own situation, your own kid, your own stuck point, and get direct, personal guidance you can't get from a room of thirty.
A combined $600 value — yours inside the course.
THE FORMAT
Eight weeks.
In a real room. Together.
Eight consecutive weeks of in-person teaching and facilitation — 90 to 120 minutes each — co-led by Marisa and Tatiana, holding both the emotional and practical dimensions of this work in the same room.
Each week is supported by an online module:
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A written summary of the week's teaching
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A workbook with reflection prompts and practices
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Guided meditations and somatic tools
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Curated resources for that week's theme
YOUR GUIDES
The woman and the mother.
The excavation and the toolkit.
Marisa Belger
Coach · Mentor · Guide through transition
Marisa is a coach and guide for women navigating life's biggest transitions — from the dissolution of relationships to the reshaping of identity, from the chaos of motherhood to the reclamation of self. She draws on her own hard-won journey as a mother of two, her work with the postpartum classic The First Forty Days, and years of study in somatic practice, mindfulness, and emotional resilience.
Her work moves through five core areas: emotional regulation, building the capacity to feel without collapsing, accepting reality without self-betrayal, releasing guilt and shame, and reclaiming emotional sovereignty. She works with women who are done surviving and ready to be built by their lives.
Tatiana Guerreiro Ramos
Co-Director, Classroom Matters · Transformational Coach
Tatiana is an educational advocate, consultant, and certified Transformational Coach with over a decade of experience working with families navigating learning differences. A deep expert in ADHD, ASD, twice-exceptionality, and other neurodivergences, she brings both professional rigor and profound personal experience — as a mother of three neurodivergent children who did her own work of moving from fear-based to wonder-based parenting.
A three-time National Memory Champion, polyglot, and sought-after speaker, Tatiana is known for an honest, compassionate, and fiercely practical approach to helping parents find their footing — and their joy.
IN THEIR WORDS
What women say
about working with Tatiana and Marisa
The work we've done with Tatiana has been transformational for our family. Following her techniques and suggestions we have seen a significant decrease in our child's struggles. New tools, tactics, and scheduling changes have enabled our daughter to better self-regulate and socialize. There have been lots of helpful changes for us as parents too, we recommend Tatiana to anyone with a sensitive child who has big feelings!
M & D
Working with Marisa was such a joy. She has a way of creating a safe, non-judgmental space, which made it easy to share whatever was on my heart and express whatever feelings came to the surface. Since working with her, I feel lighter and more free, and it has become easier to hear (and actually listen to) that voice inside of me calling me to take action and trust that it's leading me in the right direction.
Emily P.
I am forever grateful for the guidance and support I received through my work with Marisa. She has enriched my experience as a mother and my family will feel the gift of her wisdom for generations to come. The way she offers support with deep respect for my own sovereignty has allowed me to become my most authentic self and therefore know myself well beyond the noise I face in both my internal and external worlds.
Morgan C.
ENROLL NOW
You don't have to keep
parenting from the bottom of the barrel.
THE FULL 8-WEEK COURSE
$2,970
In-person course · online modules · two private 1:1 sessions
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8 weeks of live, in-person teaching & facilitation
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8 online modules — summaries, workbooks, meditations & tools (yours to keep)
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A 50-minute private 1:1 coaching call with Marisa
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A 50-minute private 1:1 coaching call with Tatiana
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A small, intimate cohort of women doing the work alongside you
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Light nibbles & drinks each evening
This is the first time we've taught this together.
Spots are limited. You don't want to miss it.
* Payment plans available upon request. Please reach out directly to Marisa at marisa@marisabelger.com