Book - Matriarch Makeover: A 30-Day Invitation

The Book: “Matriarch Makeover”

Helping women map their truth and redefine their own paths.

Matriarch Makeover: A 30-Day Invitation is a daily journaling practice for women, to transform your leadership identity and craft a personalized map grounded in your unique cultural lineages. Twenty minutes a day for thirty days is all it takes to start your Matriarch Makeover.

“This book is perfect for any woman ready to know herself and harness her personal power, from 18-50 years old and beyond… This book teaches women to spend some personal time daily, identifies for each woman that her personal power lies in her choices, brings spirit into conversation and freely allows each woman to define it for herself.”
— Eli PaintedCrow

This transformational book is a call-to-action for you to step into your full power as leaders, nurturers, and stewards of your communities and the natural world. You will be offered tools for a path toward greater self-awareness, resilience, and personal dignity, making it a valuable resource for any woman seeking to embrace and integrate her full potential into her daily life.

“Matriarch Makeover is a transformative guide to healing, self-discovery, and empowerment. Through this work, I experienced a profound shift in nearly every area of my life. I healed many relationships with men and loved ones, opening the door to love and partnership in ways I never imagined… This journey helped me renew damaged relationships, realign my priorities, and rediscover my inner artist.”
— Madeline Reeves

You will learn tools for how to move beyond outdated patriarchal paths and to a new definition of success. Becoming a modern matriarch includes redefining power as a consensual experience. As you practice the daily activities, you are guided to map your truth, heal your wounds, own your lineages, and forge new paths to radically generative futures. Women leaders are invited to choose a new form of self-leadership that heals the past and creates a meaningful, whole, and modernized path to living as a modern matriarch.

“This guide is a compilation of years of Maija’s embodied practices that she’s gathered from her professional work, commitment to social and racial justice through healing and reconciliation, reconnecting with her lineage, Indigenous wisdom, and her own inner ways of knowing.”
— Louellyn White

These tools are a gift to your future self, and they are a map that can be passed down to help the next generations understand their own lineage… it is more than just a family tree, it’s a deeply rooted map of beliefs, experiences, and purpose.

Order now (Amazon)

Order now (Blurb)

What You’ll Discover Inside

The first thirteen (13) days are all about helping you find the structure and support you’ll need. At the end of Day 13 you’ll understand that “We will choose to heal so we can avoid harming others and ourselves, and we will practice on those we love: our biological or chosen families.”

Here is what you can expect from the first 13-days of exercises:

1. Tools that will help you succeed in your journey
2. Set your intentions for this journey and reflect on the term “Matriarch”
3. Understand and recover your feminine power
4. Guide you to create a physical space, with an invitation to include the Spirit
5. Uncover your deepest memories of self, fear, ancestors and lineage
6. Understand your advocates and what makes them an advocate
7. Help you imagine your future self
8. Understand your stress responses and move to a place of calm by building new neural pathways
9. Find your accountability partner
10. Set boundaries and name your non-advocates
11. Understand what you do and don’t want
12. Name your ancestors and honor the gifts they gave you
13. Build an ancestor altar Help you heal, to avoid harming others and ourselves

The following six (6) days help you build a framework for a healing practice. We must find balance in order to be whole human beings, and learn what practices & values to keep for the next generation, especially when the laws and unhealed wounds of our dominant culture continue to devalue our humanity. During the six (6) days you will learn that forgiveness is not a one-time deal, or a shield — it is an ongoing practice — and that a strong apology can best be shown through a change in your behavior.

Here is what you can expect from days 14-19 of exercises:

14. Understanding “informed consent” and reminding yourself of your resources before diving deeper into the wounds of humanity (colonization, slavery, sexual violence, and genocide)
15. Understand how you balance your individual, family, and community identities
16. How you balance the four ways of knowing – spiritual, emotional, mental, physical
17. How healing is a choice between the Forgiveness Cycle and the Revenge Cycle
18. Practicing the steps of the Forgiveness Cycle
19. Understanding apologies and how they are not tied to forgiveness

The following four (4) days are a deep dive into who you are culturally by acknowledging your lineage and the practices of your ancestors. After these four days you will have a renewed Matriarch identity. You will be invited to remember things that have been forgotten, and that you are an embodiment of how your ancestors were nurtured, or not nurtured. For me, I came away knowing that I am a grown-ass woman on a mission to recover my cultural identity and heal my family line. Your community of belonging and your Matriarch identity are your own choice.

Here is what you can expect from days 20-23 of exercises:

20. Learning to introduce yourself based on your ancestral blood memory
21. Dive deeper into your cultural identity, traditions, and practices
22. Dive deeper into your cultural clothing, jewelry, foods, holidays, language, art and more
23. Understand cultural assimilation and reclaim your cultural identities or choose new ones

The final seven (7) days help you understand what comes after this invitation – your continued journey as a modern matriarch. After these seven days you will have your truth map and goals for moving forward. Whether it’s showing respect for another’s culture or house rules, or naming the issues in order to reach your goals, the power of habit changing is a challenging and completely possible practice.

Here is what you can expect from days 24-30 of exercises:

24. Understand what it means to be a good guest and active listening
25. Dive deeper into your future self
26. Dive deeper into the traits of the dominant culture and imagine alternatives
27. Create specific and measurable goals for your continued journey
28. Naming the issues that may prevent you reaching your goals and solve one issue
29. Integrate your truth map into your community of belonging by sharing it with an advocate\
30. Celebrate your journey so far and practice gratitude

Order now (Amazon)

Order now (Blurb)

Join the Online Book Club

Planning to read the book or already started? Join this group of supportive women as we meet once per month via Zoom to discuss our leadership journeys and becoming a Modern Matriarch. Click here to learn more.

Before we lead with the courage to speak our truth, we need to establish a foundation of support, and the ability to resource. We also need to be able to navigate the challenges of a structural system that was designed to keep a diversity of perspectives out of positions of power, and to maintain and reinforce a dominant culture meant to keep producing in a way that is unsustainable for humans, other living things, and the Earth’s natural resources. We have an inkling of what needs to be done. But without listening to our own truth and having the resources needed to speak it, the systems continue to cause harm while we stand by, feeling helpless.

The good news is that you can be part of the change. It starts with remembering who you really are and by designing a leadership map that is sustainable to your well-being and circumstance.

Testimonials

“Maija Danilova West’s Matriarch Makeover felt like opening a gentle invitation and then unfolding a precious map to deepen my understanding of my place in the world. Reading it connected me to my longing to be of service and demanded I embrace my subtle strength and personal lineage. Even halfway through the slim, 30-day manual, I found it challenging not to rush ahead. The material drew such curious insights out of me, that I finished every prescribed 20-minute session ravenous for more. And yet, taking it as the author suggests, one day at a time, is part of the magic of this program. I highly recommend this book. Buy one for yourself and a second one for a friend.”

— Kristy Lin Billuni
“Maija has undergone her own transformation as a professional, a woman who is living with her spirit connection from a place of reverence. Her humility and commitment to community is held in high regard. This book is perfect for any woman ready to know herself and harness her personal power, from 18-50 years old and beyond. For any woman ready to know and love herself, or wanting it and willing to keep her word to herself. This book teaches women to spend some personal time daily, identifies for each woman that her personal power lies in her choices, brings spirit into conversation that freely allows each woman to define it for herself; and brings culture, ancestors and the mother earth into the lives of women to help the remembering process of what being on purpose is, for each one of us.”

— Eli PaintedCrow, Indigenous ceremonialist, Iraq War Veteran, author of Why You Matter, and co-founder of Turtle Women Rising (https://www.turtlewomenrising.live/).
“Matriarch Makeover is a transformative guide to healing, self-discovery, and empowerment. Through this work, I experienced a profound shift in nearly every area of my life. I healed many relationships with men and loved ones, opening the door to love and partnership in ways I never imagined. I reconnected with my ancestry, reckoning with generational pain and finding peace within my family’s history. This journey helped me renew damaged relationships, realign my priorities, and rediscover my inner artist. This isn’t just a book—it’s a call to reclaim your sovereign self. The work is deeply personal, beautifully guided, and profoundly impactful. I’m so grateful to Maija for this invitation to step into my power and healing. Matriarch Makeover is essential for anyone ready to embrace their story and lead with love.”

— Madeline Reeves
“I didn’t know that the conversation about lineage was for me (as a white woman) before this experience.”

—Carol Tisson, Management consultant and executive coach with nearly 30 years of experience in organizational effectiveness, leadership development, and culture change
“You need to be ready. Not a book to just pick up. This book makes you do the work, and therefore you must be prepared to delve into yourself.”

— Plasha Fielding Will, CEO, PFW Consulting & Political FrameWorks
“Any woman who desires to dig deeper into her soul, to rise up and let her light shine, could benefit from Maija's wisdom and daily practices of self-reflection. This guide is a compilation from years of Maija's embodied practices that she's gathered from her professional work, commitment to social and racial justice through healing and reconciliation, reconnecting with her lineage, Indigenous wisdom, and her own inner ways of knowing. It's been such a joy to witness her evolution over the years that has culminated in this generous offering to women around the world.”

— Louellyn White, Assistant Professor in the First Peoples Studies Program at Concordia University in Montreal, and author of Free to Be Mohawk: Indigenous Education at the Akwesasne Freedom School
“This book lays out a clear path for self-reflection and growth that is doable but also very bold in its invitation to rise into our most rooted feminine strength and virtues. To help bring balance to the patriarchy, we must be grounded in our most authentic expression of feminine power and wholeness as individuals and in the collective.”

— Jessica Dune, Artist, author and licensed landscape architect in present day Carmel, CA - Rumsen homeland
“Why read this book? Because it's FUN, educational, expanding. I have already recommended this book to several friends.”

— Jacquie Cordova, Retired public school art teacher, community organizer, elder and supporter of many
“What I appreciated most in this process: We are pulling together all of these resources to pass down to the next generation.”

— Safira Vinci, Owner of Vinci Digital Marketing

Item 1 of 9

Not ready for these 30-days of exercises?

If you’re not ready for these 30-days of exercises, that is okay and I invite you to begin with the free guide “Naming and Honoring Your Ancestors” which is inspired by chapters 5, 12 & 13 in the book — click here to learn more

Whatever you decide, I am honored you have made it this far and are thinking about what it means to be a modern matriarch in today’s world.

With gratitude,

Maija Danilova West

Hello! Labdien! My name is Maija Danilova West (formerly Maija Danilova Blaufuss), and I am a dual citizen of Latvia and the US. My practices are related directly to my heritage on my mother's side. My mother's name is Laima Danilovs and she fled the occupation of Latvia by the Russians and Germans during WWII and settled in California with her family as a displaced person. My mother's people come from near the Gauja River and from the Aloja region north of Cēsis. The Latvians are land-based people who have survived 800 years of occupation, and make up five different Peoples. I am currently living as a settler on the unceded lands of the Salinan, Chalon and Ohlone Peoples. I am recovering what was lost during my mother's departure from her homelands and am sharing that I have learned about my own cultural recovery for those who may benefit, especially during these times where there are so few women leaders that are walking the core values that I believe in. Raised with the cultural traditions of my mother’s Latvian heritage I learned early the importance of relationships, rituals, and honoring life’s many transitions.

Yet, navigating the world of law and business, I often found myself asking—how do we lead with wisdom in times of great change? For over 25 years, I have worked as a trusted advisor to nonprofits, foundations, businesses, Tribes, and government agencies. As a former attorney and strategist, I now dedicate my work to leadership training and conflict resolution, weaving together reconciliation and peacemaking practices to foster stronger, more connected communities. As the founder and managing partner of Maija West Consulting, I champion women’s voices, believing that women’s leadership is vital in shaping the future. My journey has also led me to co-found the Healing and Reconciliation Institute, a testament to my lifelong commitment to bridging divides, strengthening communication, and creating spaces where transformation can take root. LinkedIn

My latest book, Matriarch Makeover: A 30-Day Invitation, is a reflection of my journey, bringing my experiences and insights to life.

I take full responsibility for all content on this page.