08/05/2022
Matrescence. A term so profound, so important, so not spoken of enough.
I had a truly soul-filling conversation with a friend this week about all the pulls in different directions as we find our way through each stage of motherhood.
These feelings, these stories - regardless of origin - that once your baby reaches a certain age, you resume certain aspects of your life as they once were.
Arbitrary timelines of when you should feel a certain way, look a certain way, be able to work again, be able to sleep again, feel like yourself again, have the same relationships with your spouse, your friends, your career, yourself.
The suffering that comes from feeling like you’re finally piecing it together and can “get back” to some semblance of your life as it was before kids,
only to then be hit with a sleep regression, exhaustion you didn’t know possible, a sickness, a leap, a stiff and sore body, a cloak of anxiety rendering you immovable, doubt in your ability to handle it all, and a feeling of guilt on top of it for feeling anything but joy in “these precious times”.
Matrescence speaks to this never ending continuum of evolution in this new form as a mother. A way to frame the conversation of: you have forever changed in birthing life. Every aspect of your past identity has changed. Every relationship with everyone and everything, every hat you wore, all that you were.
There is no going back to your life as it once was. You have been reborn and though there are moments of familiarity to your past identity, clinging to this will only bring suffering.
In honouring matrescence, we give ourselves permission and grace to change, to release the expectations and pressures, to flow with the unknowns in every stage of this new foreign form.
Through this lens, and through this level of surrender, there is peace. Something I choose to remind myself of as often as I remember, and something I feel important to share 🙏🏼
