The 4th Trimester
Milk & Moon Circle
A 12-week postpartum therapy group for mothers and their babies, beginning Fall 2026. Small, intimate, and deeply supportive.
A Place to Land
The months after birth can feel like nothing you were ever prepared for. Your body is healing. Your identity is unraveling and remaking itself. Your nervous system is running on little sleep and enormous, terrifying love — and somehow, the world expects you to have found your footing by now.
The fourth trimester holds everything at once: fierce joy and unexpected grief, tenderness and exhaustion, the baby you have and the birth you might still be processing, the self you were and the one you're slowly becoming. All of it is real. All of it belongs here.
This circle was made for what so many mothers are missing — a small, intimate gathering of women who truly understand, held by a clinician whose whole practice is devoted to this threshold.
Real Motherhood, Welcome Here
Babies belong here
Feeding, crying, fussing, movement — all of it is part of this circle. This space was built around the reality of new motherhood, not a sanitized version of it.
Come exactly as you are
Unwashed hair, yesterday's clothes, words that don't come easily — you don't need to perform wellness here. You just need to show up.
Slow, spacious, and unhurried
Sessions breathe with the rhythm of your babies. Structure is here to hold you, never to constrain you.
Clinically grounded care
Every element of this group is rooted in nervous system awareness, attachment science, trauma-informed practice, and years of deep clinical presence with new mothers.
More than words
We weave in somatic practices, breathwork, and embodied tools — because some of what you're carrying lives beneath language, and that deserves space too.
Grounded, Whole-Person Support
Topics We'll Cover
- Postpartum emotional health, including PMADs
- Matrescence — the identity-dissolving, identity-making passage into motherhood
- Grief: for the self you were, the birth you hoped for, the ease you imagined
- Nervous system regulation and the exhausted, overstimulated body
- Bonding, attachment, and the full complexity of early love
- Feeding journeys — breast, bottle, or combo — held with zero judgment
- Relationships, support systems, and the loneliness no one talks about
- Finding your way back to yourself while caring for a brand new life
Session Flow (60–75 min)
Each session breathes with the needs of the babies present. Flexibility is always honored.
The Particulars
Duration
12 weeks
Starting
Fall 2026
Group Size
Maximum 13 mothers
Location
In-person, Richmond VA
Investment
$160/month · 3 months
Per Session
~$40 per session
Babies
Welcome & encouraged
Ages
Newborn to early infancy
Who This Is For
There is something about sitting in a circle of mothers that changes everything. I've watched women arrive feeling alone, undone, invisible — and slowly soften as they realize the room is full of people who actually understand. In group, we remember that so much of what we carry is shared. That being witnessed by others who are living it too is its own kind of medicine. You don't have to hold this alone.
Jessica Smith, LPC, PMH-C
Founder, Radiance Counseling
You Were Never Meant to
Do This Alone
Space is limited to 13 mothers so that every voice has room to be heard. Join the waitlist to be the first to know when enrollment opens for Fall 2026.