Why Matrescence Matters

If you are pregnant or have had a baby, you already know from experience that your body goes through a dramatic transformation. Even an outsider can see the physical changes taking place over the course of pregnancy.

But what can’t be physically seen is no less dramatic: a hormonal, emotional, and identity shift that is comparable to another time in all of our lives that I doubt any of us would want to repeat: adolescence.

We all know that adolescence is a dramatic process of transition. It has ups, downs, twists, turns, and a whole lot of big, confusing feelings. It warrants support for the radical transformation that is taking place. We don’t expect children to become adults overnight because we know that entering adulthood is a process of becoming, rather than an immediate change.

But despite the fact that having a baby entails a similarly dramatic transformation as adolescence, we often expect that women will look, act and feel 100% like mothers (or at least the socially constructed picture of mothers) upon the birth of their babies. We don’t leave room for the tumultuous process of integrating your role as a mother into your identity as a woman.

Yes, it is magical when you meet your baby for the first time and experience a love and bond unlike any other. It’s also flippin’ HARD to have your independence stripped away in one fell swoop. BOTH/AND.

It’s both immensely fulfilling to tend to the needs of a tiny adorable human, and it can feel de-humanizing to let your own needs go by the wayside. The list of coexisting paradoxical feelings could go on and on. The process of becoming a mother is a beautiful, complicated, and intense process.

So if you find yourself feeling ambivalent about your new role as a mom, if you feel lost or confused about who you are now, if you feel thrown about at times in the torrent of surging feelings of both love and loss, You are not alone.