Everyone warns you about the sleep deprivation. The feeding challenges. The way your social life restructures itself around nap schedules and babysitter availability.
Nobody warns you about the grief.
Grief for the older version of yourself. The one who moved through the world with a particular kind of freedom. Who knew what she was building. Who had a clear answer to the question: who are you?
Becoming a mother is one of the most significant identity transformations a woman will ever go through. And the fact that we don't talk about it more directly - that we hand women a baby and a six-week check-in and consider the job done - is one of the many failures of how we support women in this season of life.
Coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s and largely forgotten until recently, matrescence describes the developmental process of becoming a mother, which despite popular belief, is a transformation as profound and disorienting as adolescence.
Matrescence involves a complete reorganisation of identity, relationships, body, priorities, and sense of self. Like adolescence, it's turbulent, non-linear, and not fully understood until you're on the other side of it.
Unlike adolescence, it happens while you're also responsible for keeping someone else alive.
"Matrescence is as significant as adolescence. We just don't give it the same name, the same patience, or the same support."
Matresence doesn't always look like what you'd expect. It's not always dramatic or over the top (though, sometimes it is). It can be quiet. Subtle, even.
Most women who experience this change aren't necessarily the women who hadn't thought carefully about becoming a mother. They're often the opposite: women who had considered it carefully.
But no amount of preparation fully prepares you for the experience of your identity reorganising itself around another person.
Sleep deprivation affects every cognitive and emotional process. Your hormones are doing things your body has never done before. Your relationship is under pressure. Your career is in limbo. And in the middle of all of that, you're supposed to figure out who you are now.
Time. The acute phase of matrescence does pass, even when it doesn't feel like it will.
Community. Women who are in it alongside you, or who have come through it and can reflect back that it gets easier and more legible.
And support. Real, long term support. The friend that you can call at 3am, the overnight doula, an understanding partner.
This is where coaching comes in. Having a space that is entirely yours, with someone who can help you make sense of what's happening and what you want from the other side of it, is one of the most useful things you can give yourself in this season.
A motherhood coach isn't going to tell you who to be. They're going to help you figure out who you already are, and how you want to see that person evolve.
A lot of women put off getting support until they feel more stable. More like themselves. But support is most helpful during the in-between.
At Revie, we have coaches who specialize in the motherhood transition: identity, return to work, the invisible load, and everything in between. You can browse coaches and book a Signature Session directly. No discovery call, no big packages - so you can get right to work.
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