Today we’d like to introduce you to Tess Seipp.
Hi Tess, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Wild Rose Motherhood was born of the great initiation of motherhood when my daughter was born in 2018. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the healing I needed and the longings I had were intrinsic parts of me creating the types of services and spaces I offer to mothers and caregivers. In mid-2019, I was in a postpartum black hole, having serious PTSD related to unintegrated developmental and generational trauma. I was scared and confused about where to go and who could help me make sense of what I was going through.
I had been doing therapy for years, but my nervous system was so dysregulated. I tried homeopathy with little relief and knew that conventional medicine would only treat or exacerbate my symptoms. My therapist agreed. One day later that year, I kept coming across a paid IG ad for a motherhood guide, or a parent coach, who was offering scholarships for a 3-month Sojourn Through Sacred Motherhood.
Intrigued by how reflective this work seemed and with nothing left to lose, I signed up. For 3 months, I showed up every week for the zoom classes with a nursing baby on my lap. I did the homework after I put my daughter to bed, the inner-work during my waking hours and for the first time felt a sense of deep self-connection, inner-safety and belonging in this world but knew I had a long way to go. I was single, living in the country outside Austin during a pandemic. Things were really hard. I suppose I didn’t know how deep my trauma was until I began slowly making sense of it in my mind and my body.
The woman who wrote the course, Rebecca Lyddon, was also the Director of Education of The Jai Institute for Parenting. This really intrigued me, as I have always been a very creative person but also really interested in and respectful of science. Storytelling was important to me for healing but I wanted to be trained in nervous system science, brain science, secure attachment and to know the latest and cumulative research on how to raise healthy, resilient kids.
The healing and empowerment I found in the work I did with Rebecca as a coach was so profound, I decided it was the best choice for me to continue the inner-workings of self-healing through empowered or transformational parenthood and become certified at the same time. About 3 or 4 months later, I was signed up with the Jai Institute to become a certified parent coach, with Rebecca again, at the helm.
There were a lot of initiations along the way, but I graduated with my certification last February and set up my practice, determined to slowly and steadily fill the gap serving new and veteran mothers alike, knowing first-hand so many fall through the cracks of getting the care they need to thrive. I knew this care needed to be trauma-informed and that our medical system is set up in a way that conventional practitioners have very little information and awareness on how trauma is stored in our neurophysiology and how it affects more than just the mind or how to help patients integrate it.
During my training with Jai, I became immersed in the work of Dr. Gabor Mate and came across Dr. Ruby Gibson (Lakota, Ojibwe, Meztizo) watching them speak together on a panel about trauma, covid and Indigenous communities. I was very intrigued by what Dr. Ruby was doing and wrote to her to see if she offered training to native people, myself a tribal member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. I was determined to become a certified Somatic Trauma Integration Practitioner.
In April I began intensive studies in the Historical Trauma Master Class at Freedom Lodge, with my teachers, Dr. Ruby Gibson (Lakota, Ojibwe, Meztizo) and Kara Big Crow and a wonderful cohort of Indigenous women. Last week I graduated and am now certified in Somatic Archaeology©️. It has been a long road but the healing and empowerment I have found is beyond anything I could have ever imagined possible.
I always wanted to own my own business, I didn’t expect it to be something like this. It takes great humility, empathy and self-connection to do this work, and I’m honored and proud of how far I’ve come. This work is not just for me, my daughter and her children and grandchildren, but for other mothers, families, children and grandchildren. This work is for Mother Earth.
Parenting in this paradigm is hard enough – no village, systems of oppression designed for us to fail as mothers, pandemic, endemic, isolation. So many of us long for a guide, someone with a flashlight to help us look at all our unhealed, scared or wounded parts, so we can find it in our hearts to keep going, to reconcile the repeating stories causing us so much suffering and make room to write a new one for ourselves, our families, our world. We create a new paradigm and change the world when we heal, one moment at time.
Motherhood comes as a gift and an opportunity to heal some of our deepest wounds – some of us accept that and some of us don’t. Those of us who do will walk through our own fire, but transmute our stories and become our own inner-mothers, so we can show up for ourselves, our children, our world. The deeper we go, the softer we become, to ourselves and our young – the sacred dance of parenting and reparenting, healing generations forward.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Mmmm, it has not been a smooth road. There were many initiations, and lots of unearthed buried treasure. But it has been a beautiful, interesting road and I would not change the path. Learning to love the story is part of healing. It’s not linear but like a spiral moving and expanding out. Being single with no childcare was one of the biggest challenges and medicines of this journey. On those nights when my daughter was teething or fussy, (she is mostly a pretty sound sleeper), where I longed for my daughter to sleep so I could work on writing or homework or reading one of the dozens of books for my courses, I struggled. It was calling to go into those deepest wounds and rise.
What I found in those struggles was that they were the work. I was being called to surrender to the moment, to learn to hold myself, because there was no one else to hold me, so that I could hold my daughter. There were a lot of tears, a lot. But there was no giving up. The inner-work was the real homework and there was deep healing and de-conditioning I had to do to get there, but I did it, and that is how I know I can help others. Self-connection, secure-attachment and inner-safety is an inside job but we can’t always do it alone.
We also moved 7 times during the last 4 years – back and forth between Austin and the hill country where I live now on family land. Austin was our home but with rent hikes and so much coursework and healing to do, it was hard for me to make the city work. Some days I miss the city but I am dreaming forward for us to have our own little place a little closer to town soon.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
As a Certified Parent Coach and Generational Pattern Coach and Certified Somatic Trauma Integration Practitioner, I offer 1:1 Parent Coaching Sessions, 1:1 Trauma Integration Sessions, 1:1 Postpartum PTSD Support and 1:1 Somatic Flower Essence Sessions.
Clients can request single sessions but most clients choose to purchase a package of 6, as it takes dedication and commitment to make shifts that stick. For some mothers, this looks like a mixture of the different types of support I offer – I meet mothers and caregivers where they are at and we go at their own pace. Faster is not better in this work – healing happens moment by moment, drop by drop.
My intention is to guide mothers toward their own inner-safety so they experience regenerative neuroplasticity, trauma integration and a body/mind connection that allows them to show up for themselves in greater and greater increments. With time, commitment and tools, mothers move from crisis or negative patterns with themselves and their young to secure-attachment and can reach out for support as needed.
I also offer a 3 Month Empowered Parenting Course, where clients get lifetime access to the Jai Institute’s evidence-based curriculum and weekly coaching calls with me. Parents can choose to take this course solo any time but I also offer 3 times a year for those who want to spend a little less.
Once a month, on the New Moon, I offer an $18 drop-in group coaching hour – a time for anyone to drop in, be held, share, receive support and witness others. Deep healing comes in these group hours through personal reflection and interpersonal connection.
Partial course scholarships are available for BIPOC, Brown, Indigenous, AAPI and Single Parents and can be requested via email.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
Because of the load of childhood trauma I endured, I was mostly dissociated from a very young age, but I do have fond memories of growing up in Marfa, hanging out with my maternal grandfather. He was my safe place, and I spent a lot of time with him, doing flips, playing outside, watching trains, and learning to drive way too young. He rode dirt bikes in the International Enduros and I thought he was the coolest grandpa ever. I had a lot of fun with him and I’m lucky he is still alive and I’ve been able to share all of this with him.
Pricing:
- 1:1 Session $150
- Package of 6 Sessions $810
- 3 Month Course $1800
- 3 Month Group Cohort $1200
Contact Info:
- Website: www.wildrosemotherhood.com
- Instagram: @wild.rose.motherhood
- Twitter: @wildrosemother
Image Credits
Jacqueline Badeaux
