Aloha! I'm Mahana Alira.
Quantum Mind-Body Therapist® · Functional Nutrition Therapist™ · Mother to Amazing Twin Girls
In 2021, I began one of the most transformative journeys of my life: becoming a mother. From a young age, I always knew that motherhood was sacred — even though I was never explicitly taught that. So when I discovered I was pregnant, I knew it was time to make profound changes in my life in order to fully honour and embrace the path I had been blessed with by God.
The Woman Before The Mother
Before I became a mother, I was a chef. And not just a chef — I was a chef on the rise.
Along the way, the industry began to take notice. I earned a bronze medal at the Compass Group Chef of the Year — one of the most respected culinary competitions in UK food service, judged by Michelin-starred chefs and industry leaders. I competed at the International Salon Culinaire at ExCeL London — the UK's largest and most prestigious programme of chef competitions, running for over a century — and took home a silver medal. I managed the pastry section at the Rosewater Pavilion during the Wimbledon Championships, one of the most iconic and high-profile hospitality restaurants in British sporting culture, serving four-course British-inspired dining to guests at the world's most celebrated Grand Slam. I was named a finalist for Rising Star of the Year at the UK Social Mobility Awards — recognising young professionals under thirty making a significant contribution to advancing opportunity and equity in their field. And I was Highly Commended in the Retail, Hospitality and Tourism category of the BAME Apprentice of the Year Awards, placed among the most outstanding emerging talent in my sector nationally. My culinary journey was also featured as a Career Spotlight by Only Chefs, one of the UK's leading specialist culinary recruitment platforms.
I had worked my way up through professional kitchens with intention and grit — from commis chef, through food development management at Chartwells, to Pastry Sous Chef at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with Levy UK. I had stepped into one of the most prestigious kitchens in professional football hospitality, and I had earned every rung of that climb.
My goal was clear. I was ascending the culinary ladder deliberately — building the experience, the technical mastery and the credibility that would one day underpin my own business. Patisserie. Sweet treats. Cakes, cupcakes, celebration bakes — the kind of artisan, soul-infused confectionery that I had always dreamed of offering the world under my own brand.
My identity was woven entirely into that dream. I was a chef. I knew who I was in the kitchen. I knew my craft, my skills, my place in that world. And I had the accolades to prove it.
And then I fell pregnant, and everything I thought I knew about myself was quietly, irrevocably placed on the table.
I knew, in the depths of my soul, that the career I had built did not align with the mother I desired to be. The early mornings, long hours and late nights. The physical demands, the relentless pace of professional kitchen life — none of it sat alongside the vision I held for my twins and I. And so I made the most significant decision of my professional life.
I walked away. Completely. Willingly. And wholly unprepared for what that would ask of me.
The Identity I Didn't Know I'd Have to Grieve
What no one told me, what I had never heard discussed nor warned about was that leaving a career that had defined you is its own form of loss.
I had poured years into becoming a chef. The title, the whites, the craft — these weren't just what I did. They were who I was. And when I stepped away to embrace motherhood fully, I didn't just leave a job. I left an identity.
And motherhood, as profound and sacred as it is, does not tell you who you are as a woman. On the surface, it tells you what to do. It hands you a role distorted by self sacrifice and matyrdom and the world applauds you for disappearing into it.
But beneath the surface, if you are willing to go there, motherhood is something else entirely.
It is a death. And a rebirth. A spiritual initiation of the highest order — one that strips away every identity you have clung to, every label you have hidden behind, every version of yourself you performed for the world's approval. It asks you, at the cellular level, to die to who you were so that you can be reborn into who you were always created to be.
Most women are never told this. So instead of moving through the initiation consciously, they fight it. They grip the old identity. They grieve without knowing what they are grieving. They feel the disorientation and call it depression, failure, weakness, laziness — when really, it is transformation asking for their surrender.
When I, a woman beneath the roles — beneath the chef, beneath the mother — who was never been introduced to herself outside of those labels, the silence of that stripping away was so deafening.
But the silence wasn't emptiness. It was space. Space for the truest version of me to finally emerge.
I found myself in the thick of matrescence without a map, without a name for what I was experiencing, and without a single space that held both the enormity of what I was navigating and the complexity of who I still was beneath it all.
The identity work I had to do — not just from the NICU experience, not just from the toxic relationship, but from the quiet grief of releasing the chef I had worked so hard to become — was some of the deepest work of my life.
I had to learn who I was without the labels. Without the title. Without the accolades or the kitchen whites or the career trajectory.
Just a soul. Created by God. Sovereign, whole, and free to choose who she becomes next.
When Pregnancy Became My Doorway
My pregnancy took an unexpected and challenging turn early on when I was classified as high risk. I was carrying Monochorionic Diamniotic (MCDA) twins, meaning they shared a placenta. This later developed into twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). I attended weekly appointments to closely monitor their growth, until one routine check-up quickly became a medical emergency. Overnight, my condition worsened and I required urgent laser ablation surgery.
What followed was one of the most frightening, painful, and emotionally taxing experiences of my life. The anaesthetic administered did not work, and I was in pain throughout the procedure. Complications arose, and the medical professional in training who was performing the surgery lacked compassion and empathy, refusing to acknowledge the distress I was in. In that moment, I realised how vital it was to advocate firmly for my care. I refused her treatment, and Professor Kypros Nicolaides took over the procedure.
Unfortunately, the challenges did not end there. One week later, at just 23 weeks pregnant, my waters broke without any signs of labour, and I was admitted to hospital. After a week, I was discharged but remained under close observation with weekly appointments at the fertility and pregnancy unit. Then, at 27 weeks, I woke at 1am experiencing contractions. By 5am I was at the hospital, and by 6pm I was being prepared for an emergency caesarean section, as each contraction was placing one of my twins in distress.
The NICU Experience — Four and a Half Months That Changed Everything
After a deeply traumatic and exhausting pregnancy, I welcomed two beautiful baby girls into the world. Due to their prematurity, they were admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where they remained for just under four and a half months. One of my daughters was discharged on home oxygen, and I devoted myself to supporting her journey toward breathing independently, while also nurturing both of my twins' overall health until they no longer required paediatric check-ups and medication.
Alongside medical support, I used quantum practices such as spherical reality, prayer, visualisation and affirmations to support my daughter's oxygen weaning. Within four months, she no longer required oxygen support.
Having premature twins taught me profound lessons — about empowerment, protection, advocacy, sovereignty, and deep gratitude. Lessons I carry with me every single day.
Throughout my pregnancy and postpartum period, I had to consistently advocate for my bodily autonomy and for the protection of my twins. I experienced bullying, threats, fear-based pressure, exclusion, and blacklisting by various medical professionals — including midwives, neonatal nurses, and doctors — for exercising my right to make informed choices for myself and my children. I stood firm in my decisions and refused to operate under false authority. During one of the most vulnerable periods of my life, I chose sovereignty over fear and self-trust over external pressure.
The Reckoning That Came After
When we finally came home, I thought the hard part was over.
It wasn't.
Because what came next was the identity reckoning I had no framework for. The exhaustion that sleep couldn't touch. The relationship that was slowly fracturing me from the inside. The daily act of showing up entirely for two tiny humans who needed everything — while quietly, invisibly disappearing as a woman.
I didn't recognise the woman in the mirror. I didn't know who I was outside of survival mode. And I had no language for what was happening to me.
When the relationship ended, I knew something had to change — not just in my circumstances, but in me.
My Healing Journey Home
So I began the slow, sacred work of coming home to myself.
After separating from an abusive relationship, I made the conscious decision to elevate the quality of my life by embarking on a deep spiritual healing journey. This began through energy healing programmes guided by my mentor Liana Shanti, and later expanded into formal training at HMI Wellness.
I started dismantling the inherited patterns, the self-abandonment, the identities I had carried for years without ever questioning them. I restored my faith. I reclaimed my sovereignty. I found her — the woman beneath the trauma, the roles, and the exhaustion.
Along my journey, I have been able to heal long-standing challenges, including over a decade of depression and anxiety, severe period pain, PMS, body dysmorphia, hyperhidrosis, ovarian cysts, and so much more.
My healing journey has empowered me to live as a testament to what is possible when you release generations of trauma, dissolve self-sabotaging patterns, and reclaim self-love and self-worth. When you choose to love and support your body rather than fight it, you allow it to heal and thrive exactly as it was designed to do.
Your body is always working in your favour. Its primary purpose is to keep you alive — by any means necessary. When you experience stress or overwhelm, your nervous system activates survival mode. Your body holds onto these survival responses — not as a failure, but as a way of keeping you safe. Nothing your body does is random. It is divine intelligence working in real time.
Why I'm Passionate About This Work
I do this work to bring mothers back to the truth of what matrescence actually is — not a crisis, not a breakdown, not a failing — but the most life-altering, soul-awakening transition a woman will ever move through. One she was never adequately prepared, supported or equipped to navigate.
And that is not her fault.
I know this not from research alone, but from lived experience. I have walked every layer of it myself.
The career identity left at the door. The body that changed beyond recognition. The relationship that fractured under the weight of it all. The NICU experience. The advocacy. The grief.
Matrescence is still a word most women have never heard. It is still a transition that most healthcare systems do not acknowledge. It has not yet found its place in the dictionary. And it is still — in 2026 — a conversation that is not happening loudly or widely enough.
That is exactly why I am here.
Because every mother deserves to know that what she is experiencing has a name. That the disorientation, the grief, the rage, the loss of self — all of it is part of a sacred initiation that she was never meant to navigate alone.
I walked through it. And I made it my life's work to walk alongside you.
Through my own transformation, I am deeply passionate about supporting women through their own identity shift into motherhood — with nervous system support, trauma healing and ancestral pattern work. To empower mothers to reclaim their sovereignty so they can fully embrace the sacredness and joy of motherhood, just as it was designed by God.
Ready to Begin?
If you feel the nudge in your gut and you're ready to step into your calm, empowered and sovereign self — I invite you to book a free clarity call with me.
A real conversation between two women — one of whom has walked the path you're on, and is committed to guiding you through it.
No pressure. No obligation. Just a conversation about where you are and where you know, in your gut, you're being called.
With love and absolute belief in who you are becoming,
Mahana x
Credentials
🎓 Master Practitioner™, HMI Wellness®
🎓 Herbal Medicine and Skincare, By Brianna Cherniak
👩🏾🍳 Pastry Sous Chef, Levy UK
👩🏾🍳 Chef Manager, Food Development Manager, Chartwells
👩🏾🍳 Commis Chef, Westminster Kingsway College
Awards & Achievements
⭐ Best Transformational Coaching Practice 2026 - Kent
⭐ Holistic Maternal Empowerment Award 2026
⭐ Managed the pastry section at the Rose Pavilion restaurant at Wimbledon Championships 2019
⭐ Finalist for Rising Star of The Year Category 2020, UK Social Mobility Awards
⭐ Won bronze medal at the Compass Chef of the Year 2019
⭐ Highly Commended in the Retail, Hospitality and Tourism category of The BAME Apprentice of the Year Award 2020
⭐ Silver medal at the Salon Culinaire 2020
⭐ Only Chefs | Career Spotlight
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