Meet Mmabatho Montse

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mmabatho Montse. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Mmabatho, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

Resilience: A Sacred Alchemy

Resilience is more than strength in the face of adversity—it is a sacred alchemy, transforming hardship into purpose and pain into progress. For me, resilience springs from a deep well of identity, connection, and a profound sense of belonging that transcends time and space.

I was born in South Africa to a migrant mother from Lesotho and trace my ancestral roots to the Basarwa people of Botswana. These connections carry the echoes of countless stories of endurance and triumph. My name, Mmabatho—“Mother of the Peoples”—is both a guiding light and an inheritance, linking me to what Alice Walker describes as an unbroken line stretching “all the way back, perhaps, to God; or to gods” (In These Dissenting Times). My lineage, shaped by histories of survival and renewal, continues to remind me that resilience is not merely a reactive instinct. It is an intentional practice of love, interconnectedness, and alignment with a higher purpose.

Growing up in a single-headed family, I encountered pain and loss early in life. Between the ages of 13 and 16, I endured sexual grooming and abuse, leaving scars that would take years to acknowledge and understand. By the time I was 17, I had lost my mother, and at 19, I became a mother myself. These experiences, marked by profound grief and despair—including multiple suicide attempts in my teens—shaped me in ways I did not yet fully comprehend. Yet, they ignited within me a fire to forge a path of survival and self-determination.

Necessity drove me to entrepreneurship as a young mother, but it soon evolved into a mission. Over the past decade, I have worked as a fast-food franchisee and collaborated with local artists, incorporating African-inspired arts and crafts into retail through my interior décor business, Tea Tree & Co. Though the pandemic brought this chapter to a close, its legacy lives on in the spaces of connection and creativity it nurtured. My podcast, Conscious Conversations, continues this work, exploring spirituality, healing, and resilience, fostering authenticity and awareness within communities.

Despite these achievements, the feeling of otherness persisted—a deep, gnawing sense of being at the periphery of belonging. This feeling led me, some years ago, to heed an internal call for stillness. I embraced rest as an act of resistance, an invitation to listen deeply to the wisdom of my body and spirit. Yoruba philosopher Bayo Akomolafe’s words guided me during this time:

“To slow down in times of crisis… can seem counterintuitive. But slowing down invites us to research and to perform research into the ancestral tentacularities that precede us.”
This intentional slowing down allowed me to untangle the threads of my past and center the memories, emotions, and spiritual energies that had long gone unattended. In this sacred space, I found the strength to reconcile my pain and honour the beings—visible and invisible—that make me whole.

Today, my resilience is deeply rooted in my work as a spiritual-decolonial practitioner and autoethnographic scholar. I draw upon Africana Womanist paradigms and Indigenous philosophies like Botho (Ubuntu) to explore healing, intergenerational bonds, and ethical relationships between humanity and the greater-than-human world. In this practice, I engage with ancestral wisdom and metaphysical interweaving to address the enduring legacies of colonialism, capitalism, racism, and sexism.

Resilience, for me, is not only about overcoming adversity but about envisioning and creating alternatives to oppressive systems. It is about dismantling hegemonic structures and advocating for justice, equity, and collective healing. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin reminds us, “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” This understanding inspires me to view life’s challenges not as barriers but as milestones on a transformative journey of growth and liberation.

In every setback, I find the fire that tempers iron, the grace that allows me to rise, and the strength to move forward with purpose. My resilience is tethered to the sacred calling within me—a calling born of my heritage, sustained by my ancestors and carried forward by my unyielding belief in the goodness of the All. It is through this unbroken connection that I continue to endure, evolve, and thrive.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

As a Spherical Guide, I help individuals, groups, and organisations tap into this deeper understanding of resilience—by seeing life as a network of interconnected spheres, where each experience, no matter how difficult, can lead to transformation when viewed through the lens of interconnectedness and purpose.
What I offer in the service of resilience:
• Inspiring Public Speaking that shifts perspectives, challenges limiting beliefs, and sparks personal and collective resilience
• Engaging Group Workshops that foster collective growth, where participants build resilient, adaptive mindsets and learn to navigate challenges as a community
• Personalised One-on-One Guidance—helping individuals reconcile with their Shadow, heal ancestral wounds, and realign their values to foster true inner resilience and sustainable transformation
In each of these offerings, my aim is to guide individuals and organisations to understand their inner strength and to see how resilience is not simply a response to hardship but a proactive and intentional practice of reconnecting to the self, others, and the world. Through this, resilience becomes more than just enduring the storm—it becomes the creative force that drives us to build, grow, and thrive together.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

A belief in something greater than ourselves, something that is for our highest good, can be a powerful anchor as we navigate life’s complexities and our own unravelling.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

I am open to collaborating with visionary individuals who are called to help weave resilience into the fabric of marginalised communities, particularly across Africa. Our partners are those who believe in—and live by—the sacred art of interconnectedness, where every relationship is a thread in a larger tapestry of healing and transformation. These collaborators are rooted in academic research, especially work that honours Indigenous knowledge systems and the cultural re-membering that restores and strengthens ancestral ties. We are also eager to partner with those in the digital media space—individuals and organisations who can amplify these efforts, using technology and creative media to bridge gaps and spread the message of resilience and interconnectedness. If you feel the call to join in this collective effort to help nurture resilience and weave a future grounded in reciprocity and wholeness, I would love to connect with you. Together, we can transform challenges into pathways of healing, growth, and liberation.

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