Matrescence

Motherhood changes you. Every fibre, every cell, every area. And with a little understanding, support and deep compassion, it will be the making of you.

It didn’t surprise me to read that researchers at the University of Massachusetts found, in a synthesis of literature on working mothers, that matrescence was associated with enhanced knowledge, skills and capacity. They found evidence that it “strengthened women’s mindset, willpower, and overall emotional intelligence.”[7] Nothing that I had previ

Unlike other cultures, which treat becoming a mother as a major, traumatic life crisis, with special social rites and rituals, Western societies had been failing to recognize matrescence as a major transition: a transition that involves a whole spectrum of emotional and existential ruptures, a transition that can make women ill, a transition in whi