Growing into a matriarch
On ancestral water, the wisdom of the maternal heart, and what it means to become the one who carries.
🌕 FULL STURGEON MOON IN PISCES | AUGUST 2026
Tonight's Full Moon is in Pisces, a water sign, deep in eclipse — nearly the whole moon folded into shadow before it returns. Water meeting water, and the moon nearly gone before it comes back.
I went to the lake with my hands ready.
I put them in the water and sang — chandram prabhasam, the fifth mantra of Sri Sukta, an ancient song to the Divine Mother, cool and radiant as the moon herself. Not so much to release but rather to give the water something to carry. Though my grandmothers taught me nothing about this practice directly, my hands still knew what to do.
Two weeks ago I stood at this year's Global Matriarch's Gathering — the fifth one hosted by Sherri Mitchell and the LandPeace Foundation in Monroe, Maine and added my own thread — a strand of kelp, actually — to a large community Earth Loom, one prayer woven into thousands of others already in that soil. I didn't know yet what I was standing inside.
Then last week, Sherri published a substack that named it for me. She writes that in her tradition, a matriarch is the one who holds the thread — the one whose kinship stretches backward to the ancestral dead and forward to the unborn, wide enough to hold the plants and animals as relations too. She writes that the thread was and never has been actually broken. It’s been left on the ground, waiting for someone to pick it back up.
I read that and thought about my own ancestors — the ones who were among the first white settlers on that exact land where I'd just stood weaving prayers into soil. That thread runs both directions through my blood.
What was severed on that land runs through me. So does whatever small part I get to play in helping it knit back together.
This is the exact terrain I will be back in this fall, to open our next ✨40 Days of Ancestral Gold practice ✨ — picking the thread back up, together. Ancestral dead. Unborn descendants. The more-than-human family who've been holding the word "relation" open for us this whole time. Save the date: we begin Friday, October 9, and close on Friday, November 20.
🌕 PRACTICE FOR THE FULL MOON:
Find a body of water — a lake, ocean, river, or bowl.
Take a few slow breaths and arrive.
Whisper, speak, or sing your prayer onto the water
Offer a mantra, sacred verse, or intention through your breath and voice.
Give the water something to carry — a petal, name, word, or intention. Place it gently on the surface.
Watch it drift and allow yourself to release. Trust the water to carry what you’ve entrusted to it.
🌱 THIS FULL MOON ASKS:
What do you want the water to carry for you?
What thread got left on the ground in your family — and what would it take to pick it back up?
With you in the fullness,
Stephanie Chee Barea
Sacred Sound Teacher | Mantra Practitioner | Spiritual Guide
Subscribe and receive the Fearless Heart practice 💪🏽
Join my WhatsApp Community
These letters land in inboxes every New Moon and Full Moon. If you'd like them delivered directly to yours — along with Mantra for Courage, a free video tutorial and practice guide — subscribe here.
