MELISSA AMBROSINI OPENS UP ABOUT MOTHERHOOD, LETTING GO AND THE SEASONS OF BECOMING
By Nicole Fuge
Melissa Ambrosini has long inspired women to listen to their inner wisdom, and in this heartfelt interview, she shares the seasons of life that have shaped her most. From the tender unraveling after the birth of her second child to the profound lessons of matrescence, Melissa opens up about slowing down, trusting her body, and letting go of what no longer serves her. She reflects on the challenges and beauty of change, the power of presence over productivity, and the deep sense of alignment that comes from honouring her own rhythm.
How would you describe your own “becoming” right now?
Right now my becoming feels like a soft unwinding. After so many years of chasing, proving and doing, I notice myself craving more pauses than sprints.
I'm learning to let silence stretch a little longer before rushing to fill it. And that is sometimes uncomfortable, but exactly what I need right now. I'm in such a different season of my life with two beautiful little children, and it's just so beautiful to be on the floor with my kids playing instead of checking my phone.
And it just feels beautiful and spacious. An old part of me, that really driven, chasing, time poor, people pleasing part, still sometimes tries to knock on my door, and she wants me to say yes to everything and measure my worth in output. But each day I return to a softer rhythm, a loving rhythm, a family rhythm.
I trust that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. And by not overscheduling myself and not jam-packing my calendar, that this is where I'm meant to be. And my nervous system loves me for that.
So this is a season about listening to my body, to whispers of creativity, to the voice that says, I already have enough. It's a change, but it's a powerful one.
Has there been a season in your life where change felt more like an unravelling than a blossoming?
100% yes. After the birth of my beautiful son, my second child, life felt like one long unraveling. We were between houses, boxes everywhere. Nothing was grounded.
My body was still tender from birth. My hormones were wild and yet work and daily life did not pause. Everything that usually felt certain, home, rhythm, energy was in flux.
I remember nursing through the night, then trying to hold meetings and coaching calls the next morning with a newborn in my arms. I remember longing for roots while living out of bags. It wasn't pretty and it definitely didn't feel like blossoming.
It felt like being stripped of every layer of control and asked to surrender again and again. But in that unraveling, I learned to release perfection. I learned that home is less about four walls and more about the love we cultivate in the beautiful chaos.
I saw how resilient my heart is, how my family could thrive even when external world was shaky. And I realized that sometimes that breakdown is what clears space for a deeper, truer rebuilding.
Spring is a season of growth, but growth often requires shedding. What have you had to release lately to make space for what’s next?
Growth has really asked me to release a lot recently. So we sold three of our businesses and even letting go of things like social commitments. Now, each one has carried weight and meaning.
So letting go hasn't been a piece of cake, but I know what all my core values are right now. Family is number one with two tiny children. And I know that I wasn't being true to my core value whilst still running these other businesses and saying yes to social things when I really wanted to be at home with my children.
And I knew that I couldn't keep expanding while clinging to what no longer is a number one priority. So stepping back from these things has created so much beautiful space. I've felt an exhale, my shoulders drop, and saying no thank you to social things has freed up energy to pull back into my family.
And that just feels really deeply nourishing. And the shedding feels like pruning a tree. It looks bare at first, but I trust it's what allows stronger, healthier growth to come through.
How do you know when it's time to let go of something, be it a belief, a habit, or even an identity?
I feel like your body will always tell you long before your mind catches up. Your body, it will whisper the truth. It shows up as tension in your shoulders, a tight chest, a knot in your stomach. Every time that you say yes when you mean no.
Sometimes it's fatigue and no amount of sleep can fix that. Or the way that you suddenly dread something that you once loved. Now for me, those signals are red flags that something is out of alignment.
They are invitations to pause and to really listen. And when I've ignored them in the past, the whispers have grown louder and turned into anxiety or burnout or illness. But when I pay attention, I see that my body is trying to give me a nudge.
It's trying to guide me back to my truth. So letting go is really not a logical thing at first. Whether on paper, the job or the habit or the identity makes sense.
But if your body feels heavy, tight, constricted every time that you think about that thing or step into it, that's your compass pointing you elsewhere. Releasing becomes less about losing and more about trusting your inner wisdom enough to create space for what wants to arrive. And I just fully trust that everything that is unfolding in my life is for me, for my growth, for my highest evolution.
You speak a lot about tuning into your inner guidance. How did you hear your intuition in the noise of everyday life?
You're right. It is really noisy. Life can feel like a constant stream of pings, voices, to-dos and demands. That is why meditation has been such a lifeline for me and why I'm such an advocate for it. It gives me the pause I need to drop beneath the chatter and hear what is real.
Even 20 minutes with my breath can feel like pressing reset on my nervous system. But it's not just meditation. I've noticed my intuition gets clearer when I create micro moments of stillness throughout the day.
A walk by the ocean without my phone, sitting on the grass with my kids and letting the sun hit my face, even a few deep breaths before I answer an email. Those little beautiful rituals soften the volume of the outside world so that my highest self, my inner voice can rise to the surface. And here's the thing, your intuition, it doesn't usually shout.
It comes as a nudge, a knowing, a pull in your body. Sometimes it feels like lightness, sometimes like an ache when we are veering off course. The more I practice tuning in, the quicker I can tell the difference between fear disguised as logic and the quiet clarity of truth.
What are the most nurturing daily rituals or practices you keep to support your own evolution?
For me, nurturing rituals are the anchor that hold everything else together. Meditation is where I begin. I have been meditating for over a decade and absolutely love it.
It clears the mental clutter so that I can start from presence instead of reactivity. Then prayer, it connects me to something greater than myself, reminding me that I don't have to do this all alone. So meditation and prayer every single day.
After I have done my morning meditation for 20 minutes and after I've prayed, I usually do some journaling. This is my way of listening on paper. It's where I process what's moving through me, release the noise and uncover the truth sitting just beneath the surface.
And then I always do a little bit of study each day and this keeps me growing. Now, this could be from a spiritual text like Kabbalah or listening to a lecture or a podcast or learning from a mentor or something like that. But I make sure I study every day, whether it's something from Kabbalah or the Bible, I absolutely love.
And I love being a student for life. I'm always curious, always refining, always wanting to connect more with the light of the creator, to be more like love, to be more like the creator. And I am a student for life like we all are.
And the other ritual is embodiment. It's one thing that I know to be deeply powerful. And we can know things, wisdom intellectually, but another is to really live it through the body.
For me, this means embodying what I am studying and teaching, embodying the wisdom that I get through the meditation, the prayer and the journaling. There's no point in studying and doing these practices if I'm not taking those out into the way that I mother, the way that I work, the way that I am in the world. So these rituals, they're not about perfection or ticking off a box.
They are about creating daily touch points that bring me back to who I am, my highest self and who I am becoming.
How can women balance doing and being in a world that rewards constant productivity?
I think being is essential and we need to be present and be in our body all the time. And we can still be when we are doing.
And I don't believe in perfect balance. There's no such thing as perfectly balanced in all areas of our life. Like we flow where we need to flow.
But I think we can absolutely bring beingness, presence into everything we do and especially our doing, because we do need to do things in our everyday life. But we can do it with beingness, with presence. We can do motherhood with presence.
We can do our work with presence and bring that beingness into everything that we do. It's been a game changer for me to stay true to that. And I often say like, don't chase balance.
There's no such thing or perfection. There's no such thing. Like I choose being in alignment with myself and honesty and I check in with myself.
Am I acting from alignment or am I acting from fear? And I pause and I hear my inner voice. Tell me the answer. So when I live from that place, the mix of doing and being, it takes care of itself.
Which season of womanhood has surprised you the most?
Matrescence with my second child has surprised me the most.
I thought I knew what to expect, having already walked the path of becoming a mother once, but the second time cracked me open in ways that I did not see coming. It wasn't just about learning to care for another baby. It was again, that shift in my identity, which I'd already gone through.
So it really surprised me, but the deeper surrender, the way my body, heart, and priorities reshaped themselves all over again, I underestimated how different it would feel, how much I would be asked to soften, to release control and trust myself more fully. That season taught me that matrescence isn't a one-time initiation. Each child brings a new layer of becoming.
And while it was raw and messy at times, it also revealed reserves of strength, patience, and love that I didn't even know there. Like when I reflect back, I'm just in awe of myself. And I think matrescence is such a beautiful thing, and we should be talking about it more. There should be more support, more love for all women navigating that season of womanhood.
Do you think women are taught to expect and embrace change, or are we conditioned to fear it?
We absolutely are conditioned to fear change. From a young age, we are taught to cling to certainty, to keep things looking stable and ‘together’. Yet change is the very rhythm of life.
Without it, there's no growth. There's no evolution. What I've learned is that change is rarely the enemy.
It is not. It is the invitation. Even when it feels uncomfortable, and most times it does, it's always moving us toward who we are becoming.
And when I look back, the seasons that felt most disruptive were also the ones that expanded me the most. So instead of resisting, I choose to see change as a gift, an opportunity for growth, and to see it as perfect because it is. Everything is always unfolding exactly the way that it is supposed to for our growth, for our evolution.
And I know that to be true because it's happening. And if it wasn't for you, it wouldn't happen. So a reminder for me is that everything is just happening for us, not against us.
And when we embrace it, we get to step into our own becoming with far more grace and trust.
What is one belief you are currently outgrowing?
Right now for me, one belief that I am outgrowing is that I need to achieve to be worthy.
For so long, my value felt tied to output, how much I produced, how many boxes I ticked, how successful I looked from the outside and it kept me chasing, even when I was exhausted, even when my body begged me to slow down. So now I'm learning that worth isn't something you earn, it is inherent in all of us.
It's the quiet knowing that we are enough simply because we exist. Achievement can be a beautiful expression of our gifts, but they are not the measure of our value. Now releasing that old belief feels like laying down a heavy burden and finally breathing again.
It's big and it is powerful.
MUSE PAPER
ISSUE 08