Understanding Matrescence: An insight into our practitioner programme
Guest post by Chantelle Van Niekerk
Chantelle is a founding member of the Matrescence Practitioner Certification. If Chantelle’s post speaks to you as an aspiring professional working with mothers, find out more about our matrescence education courses.
Chantelle Van Niekerk
Childbirth has been around since the dawn of humankind. It was with this assumption and with the knowledge of all the pregnancy books I'd read that I felt confident in my abilities to just “know what to do” when our first baby arrived. Boy was I in for a surprise! The changes in my body and brain, the huge hormonal swings, the changes in my relationship with my partner and wider society, the shifts in my emotional and mental states, the effect of lack of sleep and lastly (and the most impactful for me) the feeling of loss around my sense of identity and who I was, blindsided me completely. I wasn't prepared for any of this. Nothing around how becoming a mother might feel, and why, was shared with me. The physicality of giving birth and how to change a nappy or wrap a swaddle I'd been over time and time again but I was completely unprepared for the other changes. Even with my 5th child, I was still struggling with the new changes because though I had been through similar situations, I had never been through this particular situation with this particular baby. Each new shift and change felt disorientating as if suddenly I was suddenly in a new space I'd never been in before. What I didn't know was that in each of these moments I was simply venturing further along my journey through “matrescence”, a journey all my lineage had gone through before me.
My experience isn't unique or new. In our modern society we tend to live in nuclear families, without the village support or well-known wisdom to guide us through our mothering journeys. We often aren't offered that all-encompassing, first-hand knowledge about what it is really like to experience motherhood. Our insights now into this monumental change in our life tend to come from the very filtered and biased views portrayed on television or social media. Matrescence is now a long forgotten rite of passage.
So what is “matrescence”? Matrescence is a uniquely experienced, developmental process of adapting and transitioning to significant and varied changes that come with becoming a mother.
You can experience matrescence without giving birth:
This developmental process starts often at a very young age when our first concepts of what a “mother” and what her role is are formed inside us. Furthermore, the changes experienced through matrescence are holistic and affect all areas of our lives. Matrescence is similar in nature to adolescence in that in both of these developmental processes there are known big changes in hormones as well as substantial changes to our sense of identity.
It's a lifelong process about “being” and “becoming” a mother, not “achieving” or “arriving”:
Unlike adolescence though, matrescence is not well talked about, researched or resourced. Also unlike adolescence, matrescence is an ever evolving lifelong process which centers on learning to adapt and transition through the changes experienced with both becoming and being a mother. It's not a destination or point that we can “achieve” or “arrive” at, but rather an ever changing journey that we navigate. We're mothers for a lifetime and so we will continue to experience matrescence, and the changes that come about through new changes, as our children grow and develop, throughout our and their life journeys.
A brief history of the word “matrescence”:
“Matrescence” is a word that was first coined by Dana Raphael in 1973 but it was only rediscovered around 2008 by clinical psychologist Dr Aurélie Athan. Then in 2018 Dr Alexandra Sacks revived the term with her TedTalk “A new way to think about the transition to motherhood”. Matrescence can be hard and challenging at times but it is a normal process. With the right support, together with the tools of understanding and skills, it is possible to transition through the changes more easily by adapting, responding and navigating through them so that they don't become insurmountable challenges.
It centers on journeying through maternal transitions and adapting to the ongoing changes that are holistic in nature and affect the whole of our lives:
Every change and new experience in motherhood requires us to undergo a new transition. Bridges (1988) defines transition as the process of psychologically adapting (i.e. adapting one's thoughts, emotions and behaviours to deal with changes or challenges) to a new situation. Some changes can feel seamless while others may require some bigger shifts and adjustments. They can be internal, such as shifts in hormone levels or changes in thoughts, or external, such as not being able to spend the same time with your friends or your baby starting to crawl. These changes, and matrescence itself, are not inherently good or bad. It's how we experience and adapt to these changes that impacts how we feel about them and makes them feel “good” or “bad”.
Furthermore, how we experience these changes is based on our own internal and external influences. Our internal influences come from internal sources such as past experiences, feelings of self-worth, personal expectations and knowledge around emotional self-regulation tools etc. On the other hand, our external influences come from outside and around us such as the amount of family support we receive, the societal norms around us and how freely we have access to resources or policies like parental leave etc. Consequently, two mothers might go through the same change, such as their baby starting to crawl, but they can have two completely different experiences of the change due to their own internal and external influences.
Experiencing changes as challenges is not a reflection of our own abilities (or lack thereof). They are a consequence of a flawed system within our society of how we view and value mothers as a whole. The varied and challenging experiences of matrescence are unfortunately common and are a normal response to how we are being asked to mother in our current societies, but they do not have to be the norm. We were never meant to do this alone and without any guidance. As a society it is important that we correct the circumstances and conditions that are leading to these challenging experiences, through systematic change.
What systematic change might look like:
When mothers are empowered with the wisdom and skills to anticipate and understand the potential shifts and changes that motherhood can bring, it enhances our ability to build coping strategies. We fear what we do not know and so, if we empower ourselves through the right supportive understanding, it relieves the fear and allows us to be able to use our intuition more.
By being supported to build a proactive support network early on and creating that village around us such as through local resources, peer support groups, professional support etc, we can feel supported and less fearful when we need it the most. This also allows us to feel prepared and reduces the risk of feeling isolated or overwhelmed when challenges arise.
By sharing our journeys of motherhood we help set up realistic expectations of what motherhood is (and what it isn’t) and can help ourselves and others avoid the feelings of perfectionism and the unnecessary stress of meeting unrealistic ideals. One big lesson I learnt with caring for 5 children is that there is no one way to raise a healthy, emotionally nurtured child. We all have our own different ideals and values and by parenting according to our own values, not only are we able to parent more authentically but we have a much higher sense of emotional wellbeing through the process.
With the right support, transitioning through matrescence can be about embracing growth. Through this lens, and with the right resources both internal and external, we can have an opportunity to use the changes and challenges that we face as a way to explore and grow our sense of self as mothers (and parents). Matrescence can be used to get to know ourselves better and then take purposeful steps to create a life that feels fulfilling and in line with our values.
Sometimes it can even be a way of working through all our filters to find who we really are and what we really value, allowing us to create a life that is true not only to ourselves but also in line with the gifts that each of us brings uniquely into this world
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“Change is inevitable but it doesn't always have to be challenging” - Matrescence New Zealand
*I want to acknowledge this understanding, deep inspiration and source of wisdom of matrescence was developed through my study with Matrescence New Zealand to become a Certified Matrescence Practitioner.
Note: “It is important to know how to recognise the difference between matrescence, which is a normal transition to a very new challenging state in our life, and between a clinical diagnosis of postnatal depression and anxiety. Matrescence requires self-care and a patience with time of adjusting, whereas PND requires professional support. To know what are the red flags for PND please look in our other information sources using the search function on https://pada.nz/matrescence/, or navigate to our pages for antenatal depression or postnatal depression.” - Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Aotearoa
