Welcome to The Rise – your weekly dose of circadian sunshine, decentralised health wisdom, and actionable tips to help you live healthier, stronger, and more empowered.

Happy Mother’s Day to every beautiful mama in this community. 🌸 Whether you’re reading this with a quiet coffee before the house wakes up, or already surrounded by glorious chaos, today is yours.

This week’s issue is a little celebration of the joy, love and science of motherhood. We’re diving into:

• the ancient wisdom of co-sleeping and why it signals safety to your baby’s nervous system
• the invisible mental load every mama carries – now officially measured by science
• the extraordinary science that proves you carry your children with you, literally and forever
• a little self-care inspo just for you – and the dads who want some secret insights
• the fascinating, and slightly scandalous, history of Mother’s Day that nobody ever tells you

Have suggestions or something you’d love to see covered here? Help me better serve this vibrant community of health rebels and send me your feedback here.

Much love and sunshine, ☀️

Sandy xx

Issue #119 • 10 May, 2026

🌅 Rise Report

Safety To A Child: The Ancient Art of Co-Sleeping

A little boy was asked to draw “safe.” He didn’t draw a house with locks, or an alarm or gate. He drew three figures in a bed. Mum on one side. Dad on the other. Him in the middle, grinning – and one word written above it: safe.

He drew co-sleeping – the oldest comfort in human history.

In Japan, co-sleeping has a name as beautiful as the practice itself. Kawa no ji – it means the river. The mother is one bank, the father is the other, and the child between them is the water.

Across predominantly Asian countries, around 65% of families sleep this way, sometimes well into the teenage years. It’s been a Western push to put children alone in a dark room, and which is barely 200 years old.  And for most of human history, in most cultures still alive today, co-sleeping wasn’t a parenting choice to be made, it was just sleeping.

The Physiological Power of Co-Sleeping

Professor James McKenna at the University of Notre Dame’s Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory has spent decades documenting what happens to bodies that co-sleep. Heart rates align and breathing synchronises. By morning, even sleep stages begin to match. McKenna describes the parent’s body as a biological jumper cable for the child’s still-developing nervous system. And researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen confirmed it, babies who co-slept in their first six months produced significantly less cortisol under stress at 12 months. One simple act of togetherness, quietly rewires a child’s stress response for life.

The takeaway? That little drawing isn’t just adorable – it’s a beautiful representation of the safety, security and love a child feels through a simple act of connection. The world can be big, bad and scary enough. We don’t need to put that stress on our babies and children too soon. And every child who has ever padded down the hallway at 3am is simply trying to redraw the same picture of comfort and safety again.

Mothers Never Clock Off And Science Just Proved It

Every mama knows the feeling. You’re at dinner, supposedly present, supposedly relaxed, but somewhere in the back of your mind you’re quietly calculating whether there’s enough bread for tomorrow’s lunches, remembering you still need to read the updates from school, and wondering when you last booked the kids’ dentist appointments. Nobody reminded you to do this. Your mind just never stops.

And if you think it’s just you, think again. That invisible, relentless, never-clocking-off thinking has a name. It’s called the Mama mental load. And for the first time, researchers have actually measured it.

A landmark December 2024 study by the University of Bath and the University of Melbourne analysed data from 3,000 parents and found that mothers carry 71% of all household mental load tasks: the scheduling, the anticipating, the planning, the remembering, the co-ordinating. Not the physical tasks so much perhaps but the thinking ones. The invisible glue that holds an entire family’s life together, often while everyone else is peacefully asleep.

The cost of Mama Mental Loads

A lot of this Mama work may be unseen, but it matters deeply. But on the downside, it can lead to stress, burnout, and impact on a women’s ability to work and build careers. Working mothers are twice as likely as fathers to consider leaving their jobs, not because they love their work less, but because the mental load at home never, ever stops.

The takeaway? To every mama reading this, that hum in your head is real, and the work you do is invaluable. For decades, women were sold stories that suited a system, not themselves. They were told fulfilment meant a high-flying career, that you “can have it all” and that choosing to stay home was somehow lesser, somehow wasted.

Raising children, shaping little humans who will go on to shape the world, is the most important job there is. If staying home is your calling, that is something to be celebrated, not apologised for. If part-time works for your family, perfect. And if a career feeds your soul whilst your family thrives, wonderful too. But it’s time to stop making mothers feel guilty for putting their children first. You are not imagining the load you carry. You are not being dramatic. And on this Mother’s Day, I just wanted to let you know that you’re doing great.

Mums Literally Carry Their Children For Life

Mothers around the world say they feel like their children are still a part of them long after they’ve given birth. As it turns out, that is literally true.

If you have ever experienced the gift of growing a human being, some of their cells are still inside you right now. Not metaphorically but biologically, measurably and literally.

The phenomenon is called foetal microchimerism. During pregnancy, a small number of foetal cells cross the placenta and enter the mother’s bloodstream — and rather than disappearing after birth, they settle. Into her brain, her heart, her lungs and her bone marrow.

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center published their findings in PLOS One: foetal cells were detected in 63% of the women’s brains, scattered across multiple regions. The oldest woman in whom they were found was 94 years old. She had been carrying her child’s cells, quietly and faithfully, inside her brain for her entire adult life.

And for all the mamas who’ve raised sons, yes, that means you are literally carrying boy cells inside you right now. The researchers detected Y chromosome DNA, which made the male foetal cells beautifully easy to identify. Female foetal cells are believed to persist in exactly the same way — they’re simply harder to detect since they share their mother’s chromosomes. Either way, your children left their mark on you at the most fundamental biological level imaginable.

And Those Cells? They’re Actually Healing You

And here is perhaps the most breathtaking part. Evidence suggests these cells don’t simply sit there. They appear to migrate to sites of injury or illness in the mother’s body, and help repair them. Her child’s cells, acting as tiny quiet healers inside her. Long after the umbilical cord was cut that first day of school and long after they grew taller than her.

How extraordinary is that?!

The takeaway? Science has confirmed what every mother has always felt in her bones. The connection between a mother and her child isn’t just love or memory, it is biological, cellular, and written permanently into her body. You don’t stop being their mother when they leave the room, or the house, or grow up. You carry them always. And now we have the science to prove it. Happy Mother’s Day. 💛

🤓 Smarty Pants

Mother’s Day: The Woman Who Invented Mother’s Day Tried to Cancel It

The woman who fought hardest to create Mother’s Day spent her final years fighting just as hard to destroy it.

Anna Jarvis never married and never had children of her own. But when her mother Ann passed away in 1905, she made it her life’s mission to establish a national day in her honour.

Ann Jarvis had been a remarkable woman. A community health advocate who organised “Mothers’ Work Clubs” to improve local sanitation and hygiene, and who famously brought Confederate and Union families together in 1868 for a “Mother’s Friendship Day.” A radical act of love and peace at the time, in a deeply divided post-war America.

A Daughter’s Mission

After her Mum’s passing, Anna took up the torch. She chose white carnations as the emblem, insisted on handwritten personal letters rather than printed cards, and lobbied tirelessly until President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first national Mother’s Day in 1914. She even placed the apostrophe deliberately: Mother’s, not Mothers’ signifying one day for each person to honour their own mother – not a collective celebration.

Then the greeting card companies got involved. And the florists and the chocolate makers, Anna watched in horror as her sacred “holy day” became a commercial free-for-all. She spent her remaining years trying to have it cancelled, publicly denouncing the very industries profiting from it.

Anna died in 1948, penniless, in a sanitarium. Her bills were paid by the greeting card companies and florists she had spent years fighting.

Source: Wikipedia Anna Jarvis

But It Started Even Earlier

There are some that say that Mother’s Day didn’t however start with Anna. It began in 1870 with Julia Ward Howe, a poet and peace activist, who issued a passionate “Mother’s Day Proclamation” calling for an international congress of women to end war. The original Mother’s Day was a call for world peace.

Somewhere between the carnations and the gift cards, we lost the plot entirely. But the original spirit and sentiment? That’s absolutely worth reclaiming. So, whilst it may be a little late for this Mother’s Day, perhaps over the coming 365 days you can create your own day to honour your Mum. Just you and her. 💛

A Mother’s Day postcard from 1916. Image: Wikimedia Commons

☀️ Sandy’s Sunshine 

What Does Your Mama Actually Need This Mother’s Day?

Whether you’re a mama reading this and nodding quietly, or a dad or partner, wondering what would actually make the special mum in your life feel spoilt today, this one’s for you.

Let’s look at life through Mama’s eyes. There wouldn’t be many of us who don’t love a little extra attention and being spoilt. That cup of tea in the morning. Those little faces coming to greet you with something small and carefully wrapped. The joy of seeing the people you love want to give love back – that’s priceless.

We know Mother’s Day can feel all too commercial, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t need extravagant gifts or over-the-top mixers. Being surrounded by the people we love and cherish most is the greatest present of all.

That said, and if you are looking for some little tips, one of the best gifts you can give your precious mama doesn’t last just one day. It’s the little things throughout the year. The things that help with that mental load that never stops, that fill her love tank when it’s running low. And for most mamas, that love language is beautifully simple.

If her love language is Acts of Service: Take the mental load off. Just for today handle the lunches, the planning, the organising. Let her brain go quiet, just for a little while.

If her love language is Quality Time: Put your phones down, enjoy a morning walk together, or simply sit in the sun. Let her feel like she has all your time and attention. Unrushed, undistracted, undivided just for now.

If her love language is Words of Affirmation: Don’t just say “you’re a great mum.” Tell her specifically what she does that holds your world together. Here are some starters…

“I love how you can make me feel better without giving me medicine.”

“I love how you are like a super-hero that just finds things.”

“I love how you give me hugs and kisses and how you smell so sweet.”

“I love that funny dance you do to cheer me up. How we cuddle on the couch and watch movies together and eat ice-cream.”

“I love how God made you out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.”  (Yes, this is a genuine compliment from a funny little one.)

If her love language is Physical: Shower mum with a long hug, a slow morning or perhaps a sleep in while you take the kids. Maybe she’d love the kids to brush her hair, give her a hand massage.

And if you’re the mama reading this? Give yourself permission today to rest, to receive, to let someone else carry it for once. You’ve been carrying it long enough. Today is yours.

🔢 Number Crunch

6: The number of years Mama’s suffer from sleep deprivation and how long it takes for a new mother’s sleep to fully recover after having a baby. (Sleep Journal)
I hope you got a little sleep in this morning. You’ve earned it!

“There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one.”– Jill Churchill