My Journey
I’m Cara Matsukane, owner of Matsu Love.
My journey to creating this business is defined by three main experiences:
First: I became Conscious. I woke up
I was sleep walking through life. I was often a victim of my circumstances, and didn’t do much self-reflecting outside of worrying about what others thought of me. I didn’t understand or experience the ways in which what I ate and drank impacted me physically and emotionally. My life and my own forward motion was on auto-pilot in the direction that society and other people’s opinions were pointing me in, and I didn’t question that. I was numbing myself so that I didn’t have to feel “negative” emotions. I was trying to fit in but didn’t know what true belonging was like. I projected a version of self that I thought other people wanted, and it left me feeling really insecure and ungrounded because that changed depending on who I was with. In July 2014, I confronted my alcoholism and got sober.
After getting sober, I started to notice how things made me feel - both physically and emotionally. I got reconnected to whole food and started to feel good in my body and have boundaries - choosing things that felt good and avoiding things that felt bad. I started to understand my own psychology and how human beings work. Perhaps most significantly, I started to understand, unpack and heal the experiences of my child-self, and I discovered that navigating the confusing and painful landscape of what it is to be a human being in today’s society was difficult for everyone, not just me.
I had several profound spiritual experiences. I got connected to a Higher Power in big ways and small, daily ways, and started to trust God and relinquish control of my own life to the flow of the universe. I learned to live with the discomfort of less certainty, and surrendered more to what is. My prayers changed from laundry lists of things I wanted to a simple, “Please guide me. Show me how to be of service to others.”
I quit my job in the corporate world and pursued my passions. This included food and cooking, (I became a professional cook for a few years in a health food kitchen in Boulder, CO.) personal development, and empowering others to live a conscious, loving, and purposeful life. I moved from a state of being unconscious, resigned and cynical about people and the world to being a bright light of unconditional love and hope.
Second: I became an Aunt
I LOVE being an aunt. Prior to my first nephew being born, I was pretty disinterested in children - mostly because I was intimidated by them. I was afraid of their rejection, so I just didn’t engage with them. When I became an aunt, I got SO intrigued by children. I learned I was good with them, and what made me good with them was all the inner work I was doing to heal and expand my self-expression beyond past patterns.
I found I had a passion for teaching children the things that I had to learn in my late 20s and early 30s: emotional regulation, self-soothing, boundaries and self-trust. I realized that how we raise children and create space for them to discover themselves has a significant impact on their adult life: their well-being, relationships and self-esteem.
I also connected this important inner work with a brighter society - one where mature, healed, self-trusting adults could live and work together to create something beautiful. As I was doing my own inner child work, I could see the inner children in the people on the news - the people who were committing crimes, causing dissension in politics and leading companies and cultures from a place of fear and survival instead of love and abundance. I saw that impacting how children experience themselves and the adults around them meant impacting the society we create in the future.
Third: I wanted to nourish the nourishers
As my three sisters and many friends became mothers, I saw them all struggle with the same things: becoming mothers and losing their own personal identity, feeling guilty any time they did anything for themselves, complete overwhelm and an inability to get it all done, burnout, stress and physical illness. I realized that the way our current society, households, and social patters are designed are not conducive to the wellness of mothers. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: social patterns and norms are actively harming them. Mothers need community, they need support, they need space and time to heal and take care of themselves. That's why I created Matsu Love.
This business and my mission is a love note to my sisters, my mother, my beloved friends and dear clients who have children. To all of those women and any others I haven’t had the gift of meeting yet: Thank you for who you are for our world.