Tend
12 Weeks of Radically Re-Organizing Your Body, Life + Relationships
Around You + Your Needs
Let's start here...
You are worthy of the same exquisite care and tending you give others.
I know, I know. The fact that humans have needs and require ongoing care and love completely tracks when you think about other people. But you? Somehow you feel like the exception.
Because there's always something else to do, right? Someone else to take care of. Another achievement to reach for. One more errand to run.
It is frighteningly possible to spend an entire life waiting for it to be your turn, with your days designated by external factors. But there are no special prizes for sacrificing your life in service of everyone else. The to-do list will never actually end.
Of course, divesting from that is no small feat. (Especially for those of us socialized to be caretakers, living in the soft animals of our bodies in incredibly challenging times.)
But on the other side? Radiant aliveness. Deep resourcing. Benevolent self-responsibility. Nourishing stewardship.
Welcome to Tend
Notice and name your needs, (re)build unshakeable self-trust, and stay by your own side, even when everything in you wants to self-abandon.
Tend is a 12-week process of reorienting your life so that YOU are solidly in the center of it.
As we work through the framework for forming the self-awareness, self-regard, and self-trust required for true self-partnership, we’ll go spelunking into what you really require in order to feel well nourished and well loved, experiment with new ways of relating to yourself and others, and create your own unique way of moving through the world informed by you and your needs – not who you think the world wants you to be.
We'll approach the often-nebulous world of self-care in concrete, straightforward ways that leave you with a rock solid relationship with yourself that will see you through literally anything.
Never again will your needs, value, or relationship with yourself be up for grabs. Those core pieces of yourself will be absolutely, solidly, yours.
Self-trust is built through practice, not insight.
You've read the books. You've gone to therapy. You are an incredibly capable human being who is consistently showing up for the people around you.
...but, when it comes to your own care, you simply cannot seem to figure out how to show up for yourself consistently.
Instead, you worry about what other people are going to think about you if you put yourself first. You fear their judgment and rejection.
You're exhausted. There is no time or energy for that beautifully articulated 10-point plan you crafted while lying awake at night, wishing for someone to come and save you.
You're doing great! But then, you catch yourself falling back into familiar patterns the minute someone else needs something.
You tell yourself that you know better, but you honestly cannot seem to do better for yourself and are feeling disenchanted and mistrusting of your ability to make a change.
Here's the truth: Your life can be different, if you want it to be. You can FEEL differently within it. You can learn to stay by your own side, no matter what.
But you can't stay on your own side if you don't know what your needs are in the first place.
You can't advocate for something you can't identify. You can't hold your ground if you don't know what ground you're standing on. You can't say, "This doesn't work for me," if you don't know what DOES work for you.
And you can't do any of this without getting into the messy middle of actually PRACTICING these changes in real-time, while held in a community of support as you confront your long-held stories about what you learned that it means to be a person who has needs over the course of your life.
In Tend, you will..
Learn to notice and name your needs.
Not vague "something feels off" but specific "I need 20 minutes alone when I get home from work."
Not "I just need everything to be different" but "I need to eat every 3-4 hours or I get cranky."
Too many of us were raised without examples about what we are even allowed to need. Tend teaches you to build your needs vocabulary from the ground up.
Then: You will build trust that those needs are legitimate.
"I need rest" stops being followed by "But am I REALLY tired or just being lazy?"
Your needs are data, not something up for debate. In Tend, you'll become more comfortable and confident accurately reporting what you need, and no longer need to check in with everyone else before you believe your own experience. (HALLELUJAH)
Finally: You'll practice staying on your own side when advocating for your needs, even when you feel reeeeeally uncomfortable.
Not saying "never mind" when your partner pushes back or squelching your needs to avoid the awkward conversation.
In Tend, I will lovingly will hold your feet to the fire as you learn to ask for what you need without immediately apologizing. Learning how to tend to your own discomfort will support you in holding boundaries even when someone seems hurt or disappointed. (And this really will change everything. I pinky promise.)
Tend is 12 straight weeks of learning how to take up space smack in the center of your life by tending to yourself, your relationships, your commitments, and your community… without losing even one tiny bit of yourself in the process.
The Tend Framework
Over 12 weeks, we'll move through three essential phases: learning to notice and name your needs, building unshakeable trust in them, and practicing how to stay on your own side when advocating for them.
WEEKS 1-4: Attunement (Notice and Name)
Week 1 – Opening: Your needs are the best, most alive part of you. Learning how to honor them is the homecoming you've been aching for. We start with the foundation: You have needs. Having needs is not only okay, it's an essential part of being human.
Week 2 – Feelings, Needs, and Your Body: You are allowed to have needs, and your needs begin with feelings. Feelings take place in your body. This is your invitation to climb back into your skin and start tracking what your body is telling you.
Week 3 – Building Your Needs Vocabulary: You may not have language for what you were never taught or modeled, but you can co-create that language with your body. We'll build out your personal needs library and your preferred strategies for getting those needs met.
Week 4 – Practice and Integration: You want to be seen and known. You want to be cared for in a way that is so bespoke and nuanced, it's custom created just for you. You can have that, in your relationship with yourself. We practice essential self-care as a call and response with your needs.
WEEKS 5-8: Depth Relationship (Build Trust)
Week 5 – You Are Allowed: You are allowed to need what you need and want what you want. This week focuses on healing old stories about not being allowed to need, and beginning to trust that your needs are legitimate.
Week 6 – Becoming a Detective: You are worth knowing and trusting. The best information about how to craft a more delicious and alive life comes from within you. We practice self-partnership as attuning to yourself for data collection and putting that data to good use.
Week 7 – Practice and Integration: How do you know when to push and when to pause? We practice following powerful data about your needs and capacity, separating knowing what you need from having to rush out and meet that need immediately.
Week 8 – Shedding What Doesn't Belong: What do you carry that doesn't originate from or belong to you? What were you told was required to earn the belonging and love you ache for? We practice unhooking from your socialization around prioritizing everyone else but you.
WEEKS 9-12: Holding Your Ground (Staying on Your Own Side)
Week 9 – Practice and Integration: You are radiantly alive. Let your care for yourself nourish and stoke your aliveness. We practice staying with ourselves even here, even now.
Week 10 – Self-Talk for Self-Trust: Every word you utter to or about yourself has the power to either rebuild or further destroy your self-trust. We practice speaking with great intention, care, and generosity... and redefining consistency as remaining by your own side when you want to self-abandon.
Week 11 – Advocating for Your Needs: You are the sacred vessel for your contributions, which means you being in good working order is vitally necessary. We practice sustainable productivity, advocating for your needs with yourself and others, and making tandem commitments that honor your capacity.
Week 12 – Closing: You are fertile land. You are tender earth. Your body and very life itself responds to your touch. This is a practice, and we close by building your self-care systems for continuing this work long after Tend ends.
Each week includes: Self-study lesson, journal prompts, practices to build into your daily life, and community support on our weekly calls. Integration weeks give you space to catch up, practice what you've learned, and let it settle into your body before moving forward.
Tend bonuses!
Your Tend tuition includes my full workshop library to support your specific needs as they arise:
The ASK: How to Ask for What You Need – My complete framework for advocating for yourself in relationships without self-abandoning
Cycles & Seasons – Working with your body's natural rhythms instead of against them
Holiday Boundaries – Navigating family gatherings and seasonal expectations without losing yourself
Community Activism Without Burnout – Staying engaged with what matters without depleting yourself
Plus additional workshops on rest, productivity, boundaries, and tending to yourself through life's various seasons
Think of these as targeted support for the specific moments when you need extra help staying on your own side.
Tend Details + Dates
12 WEEKS OF GUIDED PRACTICES
12 self-study modules of video, audio, and written content. We'll cover a broad range of topics that help you shift your mindset and build your skillset for stewardship.
LIVE CALLS + GATHERINGS
Weekly coaching + community connection calls with me. This is deep work, and I'm here to support you every step of the way.
PRIVATE PODCAST
Private podcast of Tend content + call recordings. Listen anytime you want to go deeper on a specific topic, or put Tend on in the background as you go about your day.
TEND CARE PACKAGE
Carefully curated care package delivered to your doorstep. Care packages are my love language, so you know this is going to be good!
12 MONTHS OF GUIDED PRACTICES
Each month, we’ll explore a new topic, focusing on the inner work to do to internalize the practice, the outer work that affects how we show up in the world + finishing with nourishing energy work to support your growth.
SEASONAL VIRTUAL RETREATS
We’ll circle together four times a year for virtual retreats that are filled to the brim with communal celebration, sharing intentions with one another + borrowing from our collective brilliance to brainstorm what's next for you.
NEW! WORDS THAT SOOTHE + STRENGHTEN
Brand new this season of Tend, I am whipping up The Daily Touch: 3-5 bite sized audios each week that tend to the youngest and most fearful parts of your being. These love notes will encourage you forward with micro dares + messages that reinforce your wholeness.
FALL 2026 COHORT LIVE CALL DATES + TIMES:
The dates for the fall 2026 cohort of Tend are coming soon.
We’ll have a welcome call at 7 pm Eastern to kickstart our time together.
Weekly Q&As will take place on Thursdays at 12 pm Eastern.
During our season together, we will have two additional workshops on Thursdays at 7 pm Eastern.
All calls will be recorded and posted to our online classroom + private podcast within 24 hours.
join Tend
3-month journey
12 weeks of prompts, practices + rituals to support you in honoring your needs + creating systems of sustainable productivity
Weekly 90-Min Q&A calls with Mara
On-demand support when you hit reply + dance into Mara’s inbox
Private podcast to listen to lessons + recordings on the go
Welcome care package with Tend workbook 💌
Access to a fabulous on-demand workshop library – we’ll talk cycles and seasons, holiday boundaries, and how to ask for what you need, among other things!
Lifetime access to the course materials + future updates
Join the Waitlist!
A few notes for when you say YES:
Tend is a three-month course, not a monthly membership you can cancel at any time. When you sign up, please do so with the intention of being a participant for the duration of the program.
3% of profits from Tend will go to Summer of Sass - a vital program in my community that transforms lives by offering a much needed break to LGBTQI 18-20 year olds from oppressive areas in the US by offering them a summer in the welcoming community of Provincetown, Mass to live + work where they are celebrated.
Limited seats available. Doors close on Date TBD or when program fills.
Hey there. I’m Mara.
she/her
If you're new to my orbit, I'm a coach, writer, podcast host, and self-proclaimed World's Neediest Human. I quite literally wrote the book on needs: Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs & Reclaim Your Sovereignty.
You want to be seen, acknowledged, and appreciated. You can have all of those things in your relationship with yourself. In fact, that's the only reliable source of the attention you're looking for.
I'll be frank with you: I used to look at others who embodied their lives as a frontier for play, who didn't define their worth by their productivity, who owned their role as their ultimate permission granter, and I'd think, "Must be nice."
Well, friend. That's how I live now, and let me tell you: It absolutely is.
Tend is the school and community I wish I'd had when I was a burnt out oldest daughter, mental health care professional, people pleaser, anxiously attached human with a history of relegating my needs to the bottom of a very long to-do list.
Tend is my answer for how to live in a way that is infinitely more delicious, satisfying, rich, intentional, and grounded. One where you are present, regulated, and able to contribute sustainably.
I am on this journey with you. I haven't arrived. No one does.
I hope you'll join me.
Tend is for you if...
You want to feel radiantly alive in your life, but the moment you try to tend to yourself, it becomes another item on your to-do list, another thing to do "right."
You want to trust that your needs are legitimate, but you spend so much mental energy litigating whether they're real or if you're just being dramatic.
You want to let yourself be resourced enough to thrive, not just survive, but the guilt about the time, energy, and money it takes stops you before you even start.
You want to stay by your own side, but the minute someone else needs you, you abandon yourself so fast you barely notice it's happening.
You want to ask for what you need and want, but the crushing fear that you're being needy, self-indulgent, or taking up too much space keeps you silent.
You want to stop putting everyone else first just because you can handle it, but you're terrified of being seen as selfish. And, what if they reject you? (YIKES.)
You want to take aligned action in your life, but perfectionism hijacks it every time, turning self-care into another stick you beat yourself up with.
You want to settle into bone-deep belonging, but right now it only seems possible through self-sacrifice and giving your best bits away.
Tend is not for you if...
You're looking for quick fixes or someone to tell you exactly what to do.
You're not willing to practice and show up imperfectly.
You expect your needs to stay neatly contained and never inconvenience anyone else.
(Actually Tend really is for you if you feel like this, but you've got to want it for yourself and be willing to dive in. Wink.)
join Tend
3-month journey
12 weeks of prompts, practices + rituals to support you in honoring your needs + creating systems of sustainable productivity
Weekly 90-Min Q&A calls with Mara
On-demand support when you hit reply + dance into Mara’s inbox
Private podcast to listen to lessons + recordings on the go
Welcome care package with Tend workbook 💌
Access to a fabulous on-demand workshop library – we’ll talk cycles and seasons, holiday boundaries, and how to ask for what you need, among other things!
Lifetime access to the course materials + future updates
Join the Waitlist!
A few notes for when you say YES:
Tend is a three-month course, not a monthly membership you can cancel at any time. When you sign up, please do so with the intention of being a participant for the duration of the program.
3% of profits from Tend will go to Summer of Sass - a vital program in my community that transforms lives by offering a much needed break to LGBTQI 18-20 year olds from oppressive areas in the US by offering them a summer in the welcoming community of Provincetown, Mass to live + work where they are celebrated.
Limited seats available. Doors close on DATE TBD or when program fills.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Your life is for living.
It's YOURS. Tend is an opportunity to practice the skills and build the capacity to hold the radiant aliveness that is your birthright, simply because you exist.