A 16-week guided experience for mothers whose birth did not go according to plan
Birth Story Journey
Explore the story you carry.
Reconnect with the voice that is yours.
Make space for the person you are becoming.
The Birth Story Journey is a six-module educational and reflective experience for mothers whose birth story still lives within them — in memories, missing pieces, grief, questions, meanings, or the person they became afterward.
Through guided teaching, writing, creative reflection, and live witnessing, you will be invited to meet your story with more space, language, compassion, and choice. You do not need a perfect memory. You do not need a trauma label. You do not need to tell your whole story before you are ready.
Begins the week of Oct 5, 2026 · Online · Intentionally small group · Sharing is always by choice
Who am I becoming because of this story?
What you carry
Sometimes the story returns in fragments: a sound, an image, a sentence someone said, a medical detail you still do not understand, or the feeling that no one ever asked what happened to you.
Sometimes the story has been reduced to an outcome: "The baby is healthy." "You survived." "At least everything turned out okay." Those truths may matter deeply — and they may not be the only truths.
You may love your child and still grieve how your child entered the world. You may feel grateful for care and still carry pain about how care was delivered. You may understand why something happened and still be affected by what it meant, what was lost, or who you had to become.
Your story does not have to be complete, coherent, or visibly traumatic to deserve care. What happened to the mother matters too.
A fragmented story is still a story.
A complicated truth is still a truth.
You matter within your own birth story.
The journey
From "I am not alone" to a guided relationship with your story.
The Birth Story Collective is the gathering place: a free monthly circle where mothers can be witnessed, belong, and remember, "I am not alone."
The Birth Story Journey is the deeper pathway. Across sixteen weeks, you will move through six thoughtfully guided chapters that help you notice the story you carry, honor the birth you imagined, explore the story beneath the story, understand the meanings you made, reclaim authorship, and choose how you want to carry the story forward.
This is not a demand for a silver lining. It is not a lesson in making pain worthwhile. It is an invitation to have a voice in the relationship you build with the story now.
Who this is for
This is for you if…
Your birth didn't go the way you expected — and you're still carrying that.
You feel like you should be over it by now, but something keeps surfacing.
You've been told to be grateful, but grief keeps showing up alongside the gratitude.
You want to understand what happened — not just medically, but emotionally.
You're ready to stop carrying your story in silence and start making sense of it.
You want to move through this work gently, at your own pace, in your own time.
Founder, Rooted to Rise Therapy
LMFT, M.Ed., MS
Your guide
I created the place I once needed.
I'm Melissa Gordon, a licensed marriage and family therapist, former special education teacher, founder of Rooted to Rise Therapy, and a mother whose own birth story changed the shape of her life.
In 2012, I survived HELLP syndrome while giving birth to my twins. I was profoundly grateful that we survived — and I also carried grief, missing pieces, and the feeling that something had happened to me that I did not yet know how to name.
A year later, my mother gave me the metaphor that opened the story: it was as if I had prepared for the prom my entire life and became too sick to attend. In 2014, I wrote the story. In 2016, it became part of a national maternal-health investigation. In 2018, that investigation reached mothers across the country. In 2023, I stood onstage in the prom gown and read my story aloud.
The Birth Story Journey grew from the process I had already lived: returning, witnessing, honoring grief, discovering the collective, reclaiming voice, and choosing how to carry the story forward. First, I needed someone to tell me I would dance again. Then I learned to dance with my own story. Now I am creating a place where other mothers do not have to dance alone.
This journey is not about finding the right way to tell your story. My hope is that you leave feeling more connected to your own voice, more compassionate toward the person you were within it, and more intentional about who you are becoming.
Melissa Gordon,LMFT, M.Ed., MS
What's inside
Everything You'll Receive
6 Chapters, 42 Lessons
Each chapter unfolds over two weeks with seven guided lessons following the Seven Movements framework.
Video Teachings
Every lesson includes a video teaching from Melissa — intimate, unhurried, and designed to be revisited.
Reflection Workbooks
Downloadable workbooks for each chapter with prompts designed to help you go beneath the surface of your story.
3 Live Integration Gatherings
After every two chapters, we come together live to share, witness, and integrate what has surfaced.
Lifetime Access
Move through the course at your own pace. Return to any lesson whenever you need it.
A Gentle Container
This work is designed to be entered slowly. There is no pressure, no timeline, no right way to move through it.
The curriculum
Six Chapters, One Journey
Each chapter unfolds over two weeks with seven guided lessons.
Chapter 01
The Story I Carry
Acknowledging what is remembered, known, missing, and still present.
Chapter 02
The Birth I Imagined
Honoring hopes, assumptions, losses, and complicated truths.
Chapter 03
The Mother Who Was Born
Identity, body, safety, relationships, and motherhood.
Chapter 04
The Meaning I Made
Guilt, blame, strength, failure, control, and conclusions.
Chapter 05
Reclaiming the Narrative
Restoring voice, complexity, authorship, and agency.
Chapter 06
Who I Am Becoming
Choosing what to carry, release, create, protect, share, or transform.
What may become possible
The goal is not to create a perfect story. It is to create more choice inside the story you carry.
By the end of the Journey, you may have more language for what happened, more compassion for the mother who lived it, and a wider understanding of what the experience touched. You may begin to separate the event from the meanings that became attached to it, recognize the values beneath what you grieved, and decide what belongs in the next chapter.
You will not be asked to force forgiveness, gratitude, closure, or purpose. Growth is invited as continued becoming — not as proof that the pain was necessary.
You will be invited to…
- Acknowledge your story without having to explain, prove, minimize, or complete it.
- Hold gratitude and grief without asking one truth to erase the other.
- Notice inherited messages, identity meanings, and conclusions that shaped how the birth was understood.
- Explore what changed in your relationship with your body, voice, safety, trust, and motherhood.
- Widen the lens around guilt, blame, strength, failure, and control.
- Restore voice, complexity, authorship, and agency.
- Choose what you want to carry, protect, share, release, create, or transform.
- Be witnessed without being fixed.
The seven-lesson rhythm
Every module follows the same gentle pathway.
You will never be dropped into the deepest part of the story without orientation. Each module begins in the present, moves through teaching and reflection, and closes with a small integration practice. The rhythm stays consistent so you can spend less energy figuring out what comes next and more energy noticing what is available to you.
Arrive
Begin in the present. Notice your body, surroundings, support, and available capacity before approaching the story.
Listen
Receive a short teaching, story, or metaphor that offers language without telling you what your experience should mean.
Remember
Notice what is present — an image, sensation, fragment, fact, feeling, question, or missing piece — without forcing recall.
Explore
Write, map, draw, or reflect through a guided invitation. You may complete, modify, pause, or skip any prompt.
Shift the Lens
Widen the frame around the story while protecting what is true. Lens Shifting is not positive thinking; it is the restoration of context and choice.
Witness
Let one part of the story be seen privately or in community. Sharing aloud is always optional; listening and passing are participation.
Carry Forward
Choose one word, truth, practice, question, or next step to bring into the days ahead. Integration is small, present, and yours.
The full arc
How the sixteen weeks unfold
Each module remains open for two weeks so you can move through its seven lessons in shorter sittings rather than all at once. This is a suggested pace — you are welcome to move through the course at whatever rhythm works for you. After every two modules, the self-guided course pauses for a live integration and witnessing gathering. On live-gathering weeks, no new module content is released.
Founding Cohort Investment
Join Birth Story Journey
As a member of the first Birth Story Journey cohort, you will receive the complete 16-week experience at a special founding rate. This first group will be intentionally limited to 12 participants to protect the intimacy and care of the space.
$497
paid in full
$135
four monthly payments
- 6 chapters · 42 guided lessons
- Video teachings for every lesson
- Downloadable reflection workbooks
- 3 live integration gatherings
- Lifetime access to all content
If you complete the first two chapters and feel this course isn't right for you, reach out within 30 days for a full refund.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
You do not have to produce a perfect account.
You are invited to begin listening for the story already living within you.
Your birth story may be one of the deepest rings in your becoming. It may have shaped how you understood your body, your voice, safety, trust, motherhood, or yourself.
But no single ring tells the whole story of a tree.
The Birth Story Journey is a place to honor what happened, make room for what mattered, and begin choosing how the story will live within the life still growing around it.
You are the keeper of your story. You choose the pace. You choose the distance. You choose what comes forward.
Your story matters. You are not alone.