Learning to Listen to Your Body in Motherhood with Vaness Henry

Learning to Listen to Your Body in Motherhood with Vaness Henry

July 20, 2026 · 53 min · Season 1 · Episode 14

About this episode

Mandy Cai and Vaness Henry discuss the importance of listening to one's body in motherhood and how it affects parenting decisions.

So much of motherhood asks us to make decisions for another person. But how do we know when we’re responding to our child—and when we’re reacting from our own fear, conditioning, or past? In this episode, I’m joined by Vaness Henry, a Human Design guide and mother, to explore what it means to listen more closely to ourselves and our children. We talk about Human Design as a tool for understanding difference: why the way you use energy, respond to your environment, or care for your body may not be the way your child does. Vaness also shares how childhood cancer shaped her relationship with health and taught her to pay attention when something in her body changes. For me, this conversation brought up something very practical about motherhood: how easily we can mistake our own experience for our child’s. My daughter has always run much hotter than I do. When she was younger, I would insist she wear another layer because I felt cold—and because I was afraid she would get sick. I believed I was protecting her. But I was also asking her to ignore what her own body was telling her so that I could feel less anxious. That distinction matters. Key insights Self-trust begins with noticing…

People in this episode

Host: Mandy Cai

Guest: Vaness Henry

Topics covered

Keywords

More episodes of The New School Of Motherhood Podcast

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The New School Of Motherhood Podcast podcast page.