12/03/2026
“I feel so lost but I don’t know how to describe this feeling.”
I have heard this from mothers more times than I can count. And every single time, my answer is the same.
Matrescence.
For nine years I have sat with mothers who say some version of the same thing: “I know something has radically changed in me since becoming a mother. I just don’t have the words to describe it all”
When a mother speaks about her struggles, the systems we go to for help often hands her a label. Postnatal depression. Anxiety disorder. Adjustment disorder. A chemical imbalance to be medicated until it’s gone.
And maybe she accepts it because it’s the only language on offer. But so many mothers I’ve spoken to have quietly rejected it, not because they aren’t struggling, but because the label simply doesn’t cover the deep ache and identity loss. It isn’t big enough for what they’re actually going through.
What they’re going through is matrescence.
A developmental transition, psychological, emotional, social, spiritual, financial, as profound as adolescence (see the work of Dr. Aurélie Athan) The concept has been studied and written about since the 1970s (thank you, Dana Raphael).
And yet I wonder if your GP has ever mentioned it to you? Has your midwife ever said the word? Maybe your public health nurse has brought it to your door?
I’m guessing, for most of us, the answer is no.
None of these people have mentioned it and that silence has a cost. It leaves mothers feeling like they have woken up in a different country and cannot speak the language, as Susan Maushart describes in her book ‘The Mask of Motherhood’. It leaves them believing they are failing, that they are not enough, that something is wrong with them.
What does it feel like to consider, even for a moment, that nothing is wrong with you?
You were never given the word. Never introduced to a concept that had the potential to transform your experience of becoming a mother.
Had you heard of matrescence before today? Tell me below.
