Nobody warned me about matrescence. I’d read the books, attended the antenatal classes, downloaded the apps. I knew about diastasis recti and meconium and the importance of skin-to-skin contact. What I didn’t know — what almost nobody told me — was that becoming a mother would feel like a complete dismantling and reconstruction of myself. That I would grieve the person I used to be even as I fell completely in love with my baby. That the two things could be true at the same time, and that this was not a sign of failure but of something much more fundamental happening in me.
That experience has a name. It’s called matrescence — and understanding it changed everything for me.
What Is Matrescence?
Matrescence is the process of becoming a mother — the physical, psychological, hormonal, and identity transformation that occurs when a woman transitions into motherhood. The term was first coined by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s, but it remained largely outside mainstream awareness for decades. It has only recently been brought into broader cultural conversation, largely through the work of reproductive psychiatrist Dr. Alexandra Sacks, whose 2018 TED Talk on the subject has been watched by millions.
Dr. Sacks defines matrescence as analogous to adolescence — a life transition so significant and all-encompassing that it rewires your identity, your relationships, your sense of self, and your place in the world. Just as adolescence involves the turbulence of moving from child to adult, matrescence involves the turbulence of moving from woman to mother. And just as we have cultural frameworks for understanding adolescent confusion and conflict, we badly need cultural frameworks for the internal upheaval of new motherhood.
Why Nobody Talks About It
Here’s what strikes me most about matrescence: the experience is universal, and yet it is almost never discussed. We prepare women exhaustively for labour. We discuss postnatal depression, albeit with still insufficient nuance. But the broader, longer, more pervasive experience of identity transformation in new motherhood — the grief, the ambivalence, the strangeness of no longer quite recognising yourself — this is met with near-silence.
The silence has consequences. Women who experience profound ambivalence about motherhood — who love their child fiercely and simultaneously mourn their former life — often conclude that something is wrong with them. That they are inadequate mothers, or selfish women, or secretly broken in some way. They rarely share these feelings because the cultural script of radiant maternal joy leaves no room for them.
The result is an epidemic of hidden suffering. Mothers who are struggling not with postnatal depression specifically, but with the profound disorientation of becoming someone new — and having no language, no permission, and no community to process it with.
The Identity Shift of Becoming a Mother
Research in neuroscience has begun to illuminate what happens in a woman’s brain during and after pregnancy. A landmark 2017 study published in Nature Neuroscience, led by Dr. Elseline Hoekzema of Leiden University, found that pregnancy causes significant and lasting changes in grey matter volume in specific brain regions — changes that persisted for at least two years postpartum and were associated with stronger maternal attachment.
This is not a metaphor. Your brain literally changes when you become a mother. The neural architecture that prioritises threat detection, social cognition, and attunement to your baby becomes more pronounced. The self that existed before — with its particular configuration of priorities, pleasures, and preoccupations — is genuinely altered. You are not the same person you were before you had a child, and pretending otherwise does not honour the magnitude of what has happened to you.
This is both the beauty and the difficulty of matrescence. The changes that make you a more attuned mother can feel, from the inside, like a loss of yourself. The hypervigilance that keeps your child safe can feel like anxiety. The reorientation of priorities that helps you show up for your family can feel like a diminishment of your individual identity. Understanding that these are two sides of the same coin — transformation, not destruction — is the beginning of making peace with it.
Ambivalence Is Not a Betrayal
One of the most radical and compassionate things Dr. Sacks says about matrescence is this: ambivalence is normal. It is not a sign of bad mothering. It is not a sign that you made a mistake. It is a sign that you are human, and that human beings contain multitudes — that you can love someone with your whole heart and simultaneously grieve the freedom you had before them.
The push and pull of matrescence — between self and baby, between old identity and new, between the mother you thought you’d be and the mother you actually are — is not a problem to be solved. It is the experience itself. And allowing yourself to feel the full complexity of it, rather than flattening it into a simple narrative of joy, is actually what helps you integrate the experience and emerge from it more whole.
This is why having space to process the emotional landscape of new motherhood matters so much. Whether that’s through therapy, honest conversation with trusted friends, journalling, or communities of mothers who speak truthfully about their experience, the processing is the point. Repression does not make the complexity disappear — it just makes it harder to live with.
Matrescence and Your Relationship With Your Partner
Matrescence doesn’t happen in isolation — it happens inside a relationship, and that relationship is also undergoing its own seismic shift. Partners who don’t understand matrescence often interpret the emotional turbulence of a new mother as personal — as evidence that she’s unhappy with them, or has changed in ways that feel alarming. In reality, she has changed, but the change is developmental rather than relational in origin.
Couples who navigate the transition to parenthood most successfully tend to be those who can hold space for both people’s experience without competition. “This is hard for me” and “this is hard for you” can both be true. The challenge is resisting the urge to rank suffering, and instead moving towards curiosity and shared navigation of an extraordinary transition.
If you’re finding the relational shifts of new parenthood difficult, it can help to return to the basics of what makes relationships strong — reading about the signs of a healthy relationship might offer a useful reset. And giving yourself genuine permission to prioritise your own needs — particularly understanding that self-care isn’t selfish — is often the first step in finding your footing again.
If you’re in the thick of matrescence and feel like you’ve lost yourself entirely, know that this experience is shared by countless women, even if it is rarely spoken aloud. You can also find comfort in this honest piece on rebuilding yourself — because sometimes becoming a mother genuinely does feel like starting from scratch.
Reclaiming Yourself Within Motherhood
Matrescence is not a loss — but it does require mourning, and mourning requires acknowledgement. If you are in the thick of it, give yourself permission to grieve the self you were before. Give yourself permission to feel the ambivalence. Give yourself permission to be a work in progress, rather than a finished mother who has it all figured out.
And then, slowly, give yourself permission to begin discovering who you are becoming. Because the woman on the other side of matrescence — the one who has been taken apart and reassembled by love and exhaustion and the daily radical act of keeping another human alive — is extraordinary. She just needs time, and honesty, and community, to find her feet.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between matrescence and postnatal depression?
Matrescence is a normal developmental process — the identity transformation that all women go through when they become mothers. Postnatal depression (PND) is a clinical condition characterised by persistent low mood, inability to bond, loss of interest in activities, and other symptoms that significantly impair daily functioning. The two can overlap — the struggles of matrescence can tip into PND, particularly in the absence of support — but they are not the same thing. Many women experiencing the disorientation of matrescence do not have PND; they are going through a challenging but normal transition. If you’re unsure, speaking to your GP or midwife is always the right step.
Does matrescence only happen with the first child?
Matrescence can occur with each child, though the experience often differs. A first child typically brings the most dramatic identity shift because it is the first experience of becoming a mother. Subsequent children can also trigger significant internal recalibration — particularly if there are significant age gaps, if the family circumstances have changed substantially, or if the new child has needs that are very different from previous children. Some women report that each child prompted a distinct and significant period of adjustment.
How long does matrescence last?
This varies enormously. For some women, the most acute phase of identity disorientation lasts a few months; for others, it extends across years. The neuroscientific research suggests that brain changes associated with pregnancy persist for at least two years, which might explain why so many mothers report feeling like themselves again only well into their child’s toddler years. There is no fixed timeline, and the process is not linear — many women experience it in waves, with periods of clarity followed by renewed questioning. The most important thing is to have support and honest community throughout.
Further Reading & Sources
Arlyn Parker is a wellness and mindfulness writer with a background in holistic health coaching. She completed her practitioner training in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and holds a certification in positive psychology from an accredited UK provider. Over six years of working with clients navigating anxiety, burnout, and major life transitions gave Arlyn a front-row seat to what actually helps people create sustainable calm — and what doesn’t. Her own experience with burnout in her late 20s, and the slow, deliberate process of rebuilding her health and habits, is the foundation of everything she writes. Arlyn’s work is not about aspirational wellness — it’s about practical, evidence-informed strategies for people living real, complicated lives.
