Rooted and Rising: What It Means to Build on Tradition Without Being Bound by It

In a world that often celebrates reinvention over remembrance, many women are finding power in both. At In The Vā, we’re constantly inspired by those who stand at the intersection of cultural heritage and creative innovation, women who are deeply rooted in their ancestral stories yet boldly carving out something new.

Honoring the Lineage, Shaping the Legacy

For some, tradition is the soil. It holds memory, resilience, and rhythm passed down through generations. But tradition can also be heavy, especially when it’s policed, gatekept, or unwelcoming to evolution.

That’s where the rising comes in.

Meet Ana Tofaeono, a textile artist and entrepreneur based in Aotearoa. Ana learned to weave from her grandmother in Samoa, spending summers absorbed in the patience and poetry of it. Today, she teaches digital workshops on Pacific pattern-making and sells prints that reinterpret these ancestral motifs in neon hues, layered with digital glitch textures.

“I’m not abandoning our patterns. I’m remixing them,” Ana says. “This is still our story, just told in today’s language.”

The In-Between as a Creative Compass

Many women building businesses today are not interested in either/or. They’re designing lives and work that honor both their grandmother’s teachings and their own vision of what’s possible. This isn’t dilution, it’s evolution.

Take Leila Mansour, who launched a spice and tea brand inspired by her Lebanese-Sudanese heritage. Her packaging is minimal, modern, Instagrammable, but open the jar, and you’re hit with za’atar blends grounded in village recipes.

“It’s not about keeping it ‘authentic’ for others,” she says. “It’s about staying in relationship with my culture while growing it into something that reflects me today.”

Why It Matters

These stories remind us that cultural continuity doesn’t mean cultural stasis. To be rooted and rising is to live in deep conversation with the past, without being confined by it.

At In The Vā, we believe that honoring your ancestors means giving yourself permission to be all of who you are, in the fullness of your contradictions, creativity, and change.

So whether you're weaving, coding, cooking, healing, or designing, do it in a way that makes sense for you. That, too, is tradition.