Rooted and Rising By Rachel Barnes

A few years ago, I remember feeling this deep craving to get away. At the time, I thought what I needed was a girls trip. I wanted connection. Time away. Space to breathe. I had spent years deep in motherhood, raising three kids, juggling schedules, and working full time. We had also just experienced the loss of a family member and a very close friend only six weeks apart. Life felt heavy and loud all at once. So I started reaching out to friends. But everyone was in their own season of life too. Sports schedules. Pregnancies. Divorces. Sharing custody. Sick family members. Young kids. Busy careers. Full calendars. Heavy mental loads. No one could really make it work. And somewhere in the middle of trying to plan the trip, I realized something important: What I was actually craving wasn’t a girls trip. It was stillness. I didn’t need packed itineraries, restaurants, or nightlife. I needed quiet. I needed space to hear myself think again. I needed a nervous system rese...

There’s a season of life that starts showing up for a lot of women in their late 30s and 40s. A season where you start wanting more for yourself. More clarity. More energy. More alignment. More of *you* back. You start looking at your life differently. Paying attention to what feels good, what no longer fits, and what kind of woman you want to become in this next chapter. I’ve been in that season too. And looking back now, I can see those feelings for what they really were: Signs that I was growing into a better, stronger, more aligned version of myself. 1. You Start Craving Stillness You crave space to actually hear yourself think. To slow down long enough to figure out what you actually want — separate from what everyone else needs, separate from the schedule, separate from the noise. I was going from one thing to the next, completely burned out, with no real sense of what I even wanted anymore. I had been running on empty for so long that I didn't even real...

Mother’s Day gets a lot of hype. Brunch reservations. Spa days. Flowers delivered to your door. Picture-perfect plans that look beautiful online. And if those things genuinely make you happy, I hope you ask for them and enjoy every second of it. But a lot of moms need to hear this: You are allowed to want the version of Mother’s Day that actually fills your cup. Not the version that looks the most impressive. Not the version everyone else seems to want. The version that genuinely makes you feel happy, loved, relaxed, and connected. Because the whole point of the day is celebrating you. Your Family Wants to Love You Well A lot of people go into Mother’s Day trying to create what they think moms want. They want the day to feel special, thoughtful, and memorable. But sometimes what sounds good in theory isn’t actually what would make you happiest. That’s why it helps for moms to share what would genuinely fill their cup instead of quietly going along with a version of the day...

I didn't know what perimenopause was — and I was already in it. I had heard the word, but in my mind it belonged to a different season of life. A later one. I thought you had your kids, made it through the baby years, and then things were supposed to get easier. That's the phase I felt like I was finally entering. My youngest was around three or four. I had three kids, I had survived the thick of it, and I remember thinking — okay. This is where things start to feel lighter. And that's exactly when things started to feel off. When It Started It came on slowly. In ways I almost talked myself out of noticing. I couldn't think as clearly as I used to. Simple things felt harder than they should have. It was fog. Like I was trying to think clearly and just… not getting there. I was distracted in a way that didn't feel like me. The exhaustion was different too. Not the tired that comes from three kids and a full life. I know what that feels like. I've lived t...

Two weeks ago, I did something that felt equal parts exciting and uncomfortable. I joined a gym. A real gym — with machines I didn’t fully know how to use and a floor that felt completely new to me. And I’m really glad I did it. I’m not new to working out or even being in a gym environment. For years, I worked in an office that had a gym inside of it, and I used it consistently three to four times a week. I loved it. It was part of my routine and something I genuinely looked forward to. But that season of working out was centered around group fitness — structured classes where I was guided through the workout. Over the last couple of years, I shifted to working out from home. And somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing the results I was looking for. I was showing up, doing the workouts, checking the box — but I wasn’t being challenged. I wasn’t pushing myself. And I wasn’t in an environment that made me want to go further. I could feel that I was going through the motions, even ...