Matrescence is not a one time event
IWD Siren Songs: on the never quite finished 'becoming' of motherhood
This piece is my contribution to the beautiful Siren Songs project for International Women’s Day on 8th March 2025, led by Laura Durban and contributors Claire Venus ✨, Georgia, Lauren Barber, Lyndsay Kaldor, Laurita Gorman | Therapist SEP & Emma Simpson
You are invited to add your voice and share your siren song to keep the ripples of inspiration going. Feel welcome to tag me in your post and make your subline ‘IWD Siren Songs’.
Matrescence is not a one time event
IWD Siren Songs: on the never quite finished 'becoming' of motherhood
I type the word matrescence into the title here and feel a little sting. Despite the term having become widely used in recent years, a dotted red line appears underneath it.
It’s not a word, apparently.
And yet it is a word. An important one for mothers the world over.
One that, despite still not having arrived in our spellcheck dictionaries, we have begun speaking in soft tones to ourselves and each other. Giving voice to an experience we previously have not had adequate enough language to name.
A word we’re sharing between ourselves, with a kind of reverence. One that’s helping mothers make sense of their journey into motherhood and who they’ve become.
Matrescence
Matrescence is a term, first used in the 1970s by anthropologist Dana Raphael, to describe the profound and many-layered transformation a woman goes through in becoming a mother.
It contains echoes of the term adolescence and speaks to the healthy but demanding changes a person goes through, physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually, through the transition from one life phase to another.
As a term it illuminates something mothers have long known; that becoming a mother is not only about birthing their child, they have begun a process of rebirthing their Self.
To have a word to describe the rebirthing of a woman and the becoming of a mother is beautiful progress.
I devoured Lucy Jones' recent book Matrescence: on the metamorphosis of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood.
Here was the book younger me had sorely needed to read when all the books available at the time spoke only about the baby and what I needed to do to take care of it; with never a mention of the often tumultuous journey of becoming an entirely new version of myself and what I needed to do to take care of me through it.
I wished I could have sent a copy back down the line to younger me.
The difference it would have made to read Lucy’s words. The validation that I was not the only one experiencing this seismic shift, seemingly one without an obvious end point, whilst also getting very little sleep.
Naming this experience matters
Like countless other mothers, I doubted myself a lot. Surely if what I was experiencing was a thing others would be talking about it.
Yet most of the conversations I had with other mums didn’t go there.
Occasionally, I would lose my filter. Grab inadequately for words I didn’t really have, to tell the truth when someone asked me how I was doing.
I’d explain I was ‘fine’ and also… that under the surface I was being taken apart and put back together again and though I was quietly sure this was ultimately going to reveal itself to be a good thing, just now I felt like all of my insides were being rearranged and yet I had to keep on changing nappies, making snacks, wrestling small people into car seats.
Once or twice I received alarmed looks back.
Some-golden-times, the other mum’s eyes would snap to mine, she’d exhale and semi-crumple as she whispered, ‘oh my god, me too’.
I love that we now have a word
I do. I love that there is a word passing from lips to lips, from hands to hands, being taken in by tired I-don’t-know-who-the-fuck-I-am-anymore eyes of mums who need to hear: how you’re feeling makes so much sense and nothing has gone wrong.
You are not wrong.
But I do have something to add to this word…
The thing that’s missing
The conversation around Matrescence is naturally centered around early motherhood.
While this makes total sense and is so important, I find sometimes that this word that describes the process of becoming a mother is spoken about as though there’s an end point.
That at some point you are the finished article. That as a mother you will reach a place where you have become.
But as a mother with fifteen years under my belt so far - and as somebody who’s spent years supporting mothers in her work - I know this to not be true.
Matrescence, in my case and that of many women I’ve worked with, is an ongoing process.
‘Motherhood is not a state of being but a state of becoming, a continuous unfolding’
It really is a continuous unfolding.
Seasons of motherhood
In my experience, motherhood unfolds in seasons.
I recall the raw, milk-soaked days of early motherhood when all parts of me felt stretched thin and porous, as if I’d been cracked open. The touched-out toddler days when my body was still considered their vehicle and I couldn’t always discern where I ended and my children began.
The preschool years and middle childhood when, slowly, I began to come into some kind of focus and get to know my Self again.
Now, the loosening and opening of children growing into tweens and teens, needing me differently rather than less, but allowing me space for a deeper reckoning with who I am now.
These seasons of motherhood are often indistinct in terms of beginnings and endings - particularly when we have multiple children in different phases and with different needs - but the shifts between them are distinctly felt even when not easily nameable.
The shifts and changes
What’s required of us in our mothering is always shifting and changing as our children develop and grow. It makes sense that we continue to change and evolve alongside them.
It feels as though this is more accepted in the early years of motherhood, but I get the sense from the women I support that our appetite for our own process of becoming at some point wanes.
We assume we should be done.
As we’ve seen, matrescence is not a process only experienced by new mums - it’s ongoing - but the conversation around it has yet to be expanded far enough.
‘At times I think my matrescence is over, but perhaps it never will be.’
~ Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence
Middle motherhood (and later)
I speak with mums of school-age kids, tweens and teens who are meeting new layers and phases, who are feeling shifts within themselves as their kids grow - and not only are they having a hard time finding the space for figuring this latest version of themselves out, they’re often giving themselves a really hard time for not being the finished article by now.
They’re meeting the inner wobbliness and disorientation that’s so understandable in a process of change with disdain and self-judgement.
Middle motherhood, it seems, hasn’t yet received the self-compassion memo for this ongoing process of becoming.
What if it all makes complete sense?
Here’s what I want you to know…
It makes complete sense that as your children develop, grow and change, you will too.
That this will bring up all kinds of feelings, doubts and discombobulation - and this doesn’t mean something has gone wrong or you’re wrong.
It’s all part of the natural unfolding, that you’ll pause periodically and say: ‘Wait, this all feels different, how do I meet this moment as the mother I’m becoming? Who am I here?’
Matrescence, the ongoing process of becoming a mother, is in my eyes the biggest personal development journey known to humanity.
Each time you find yourself in the messy middle of an inner shift feeling all kinds of wobbly, you’re just doing an absolutely beautiful job of becoming and becoming and becoming some more.
What if you could meet yourself with compassion and see that you’re unfolding into this wild journey of motherhood just as you’re intended to.
Don’t wait to meet yourself here
When we see matrescence as an ongoing process, something shifts.
Motherhood is no longer a pass or fail test, it’s a portal to our own unfolding. Every new stage our children move through invites us into deeper layers of ourselves. Invites us to meet what’s waiting here in this season.
We can find ourselves endlessly putting off tending to our own journey. Imagining at some point we’ll somehow arrive and then it’ll all be possible.
Fifteen years in I’m coming to know that if I waited for this imagined arrival I’d be waiting forever.
After the early years of craving an evening in which to re-group and re-connect with myself, the following handful of years where I pretty consistently had those, my teen now goes to bed when I do and solo evening time is a thing of the past.
It’s always changing, all of the time - and so, the mythical oasis of all-the-time-and-space isn’t something I wait for anymore.
Maybe the invitation is not to wait, but to soften into the process.
To meet yourself in the messy middle, tending to yourself in the pockets of time you have available and to ask on repeat:
What do I need here?
What will bring me to life in this season?
The answers will keep changing, just as you will.
Hi, lovely. If we don’t already know each other, I’m Lisa Mabberley from Mother, Nurture & Wild. I’m a coach for mums and those who hold others, a circle holder and retreat host. I hold soft, supportive spaces for you to come and deepen your sense of Self, grow your self belief and figure out what will help you to thrive inside your motherhood and life.
I hold a variety of spaces for women and mothers from 1:1 coaching support to group spaces, circles and more. You’re warmly invited to DM if you’d like to talk about whether one of my services is right for you or book in a free chat here.
New for Spring:
Becoming is a supportive small group journey (3-5 people). Through beautiful explorations and practices I’ll help you lean into who you are now - this beautiful latest version of you - to figure yourself out and know even more clearly what’s important to you. We’ll seek to find exhale-inducing clarity and craft your heart-led vision for where you’re going and what you’re calling in in this life season. Early info here - more coming soon. You’re so welcome to be in touch for more info if this speaks to you.
Edited on 11/03 to correct the quote from Lucy Jones and add links to early info on my new offering, Becoming.
Ahhh Lisa you speak to my heart here. Every phase is an initiation and it seems to be a constant unravelling. This piece speaks so beautifully to the transformative shift that js felt, thank you so much for writing, and speaking it, so wonderfully. Xxx
Thank you for this wise and compassionate piece of writing, Lisa. My eldest is at uni and turns 20 this summer and with 2 teens still at home I am finding these years of motherhood to be so wildly interesting in so many respects.