Motherhood changes everything- especially you.
I wasn’t living in my home country when I had my first baby. In many ways, the experiences of living overseas and becoming a mother felt remarkably similar: adjusting to a brand-new sleep pattern, trying to understand someone who didn’t speak my language, and the sheer amount of time and effort it took to complete basic everyday tasks.
If you’ve ever spent time in a culture other than your own, you can probably relate to the disorientation, frustration and eventual shift in perspective that sticks with you long after the initial struggle to adapt.
While the external changes of motherhood can be obvious and even exciting, no amount of baby showers, birth plans, or meal trains can fully prepare you for the internal journey you find yourself on. You may find yourself wondering:
“What is wrong with me?”
“Why can’t I just enjoy this time?”
“Will I ever feel like myself again?”
“Who even am I anymore?”
This feeling of being dropped into a new country without a map has a name: matrescence.
Like adolescence, matrescence is a word that names the transition from one life stage to another from one life stage to another, a process that is messy, layered, and far from linear. But while we fully expect the teenage years to be confusing, emotional, and complicated, many new mothers are caught off guard when their transition feels the same way. Instead of feeling normalized, these emotions often lead us to feel broken or inadequate.
When we think of motherhood as a one-time event (“having a baby”) rather than an ongoing process, matresence goes unrecognized. And when we lack the language for something, the experience often becomes isolating and even frightening.
This confusion is made worse by a culture that focuses almost exclusively on the baby rather than the mother, offers very little real support for new families, and bombards women with unrealistic ideals about what being a “good mother” should look like.
But naming matrescence changes everything.
Recognizing its signs can ease the shame many new mothers feel. It opens the door to self-compassion, deeper understanding, and meaningful connection with others who are walking the same unfamiliar path.
Common signs of matrescence can include:
- Contradictory emotions (joy and grief, gratitude and resentment, love and anger)
- Missing parts of your pre-baby identity or lifestyle
- Feeling guilty or wondering if you are a bad mom when things don’t go as planned
- Craving the space to just be you again while also feeling lost without your baby (or not)
- Asking, “When will this stop feeling so hard?”
These feelings don’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. They are a natural part of the transformation we all go through. Becoming a mother isn’t smooth or easy, even when it’s something you deeply wanted.
You don’t need to fix this, but you can find a space where it feels safe to be honest about it. That’s what I’m creating in Untangling Motherhood, a small group program that offers bite-sized lessons, personal reflection, and supportive conversation to help you feel more at home in this new land of matrescence.
Want to be notified when the next Untangling Motherhood group opens? Join the waitlist here.
Or for a little extra support while you wait, download one of the free matrescence tools I’ve created as my gift to you.