How One Word Changed the Way I See Myself as a Mother

I didn’t have the word for it when I really needed it.

I knew I felt different. Not broken exactly, but changed in ways I couldn’t explain. The love and joy were real. But so was the grief and confusion. Who was I now that I was a mother? I missed the old me. The confident, free version of myself. And felt guilty for feeling that way.

I wondered, more than once, whether I was a failure. Why wasn’t I enjoying being a mum as much as I thought I would? Why was this harder than anything I expected?

It wasn’t until I discovered the word matrescence that everything started to make sense.

A word that changes things

The word itself is worth unpacking - 'Matrescence' comes from the Latin 'matr,' meaning mother, and 'essence,' meaning becoming. Mother. Becoming.

It was first coined in the 1970s by Dana Raphael to describe what happens to a woman as she becomes a mother. Not just the physical changes. Not just the weeks after birth. The whole process. Before, during, and long after a baby arrives. It was later brought into wider public conversation by Dr Alexandra Sacks, helping name something experienced by every mother.

Adolescence is a developmental shift that we know and understand well. We all lived through it. Society has studied it, named it, built school programmes around it, and created coming-of-age rituals to mark it. Teenagers are given space to be a little lost, a little unlike themselves, because we understand they are in the middle of a transformation to become an adult. Our society expects challenges during this transition, allows time and space and provides resources to navigate it.

Matrescence is also a profound developmental shift. The changes are just as physical, emotional and as significant to identity. Dr Oscar Serrallach, author of The Postnatal Depletion Cure, goes further, arguing that matrescence may actually be more biologically significant than adolescence, given the sheer volume of neurological change that occurs during pregnancy alone. But unlike adolescence, matrescence has been largely absent from public discourse. There is no rite of passage. No rough timeline. No mainstream acknowledgement of what is happening to mothers. With little support and few resources available. 

We have baby showers where we celebrate the baby that is about to be born, but nothing that celebrates the mother we are about to become.

Matrescence NZ describes it as the process of adapting to the many changes associated with becoming and being a mother. The changes, which are often experienced as challenges, are not over once we hit the six-week postpartum mark.

What you are experiencing is not a phase. It is not a failure. It is one of the most significant developmental passages of your life, and it has a name. Matrescence.

Why it matters that we name it

Having language and a word for this transition is powerful. It takes an experience that felt private and shameful and says: this is real, this is recognised, and you are not alone in it.

Zoe Blaskey, author of Motherkind, writes that when women and mothers don’t have language for something, they internalise that experience and tell themselves that “I am the problem”, that “I am not doing it right”, rather than looking outward at the systems and structures that are failing them.

I have sat with mothers who described feeling like they were the problem. Like they weren’t a good mum. They loved their baby fiercely and also didn’t enjoy it all. These mothers quietly wondered why they found this so hard, and carried the heavy guilt and shame of feeling that way.

They were not the only ones. Not even close.

What matrescence actually involves

Matrescence is not just about the newborn stage. It begins before birth, possibly even before pregnancy, it recurs with each child and arguably lasts a lifetime. It touches every domain of life.

Your brain physically changes during pregnancy. Research cited by Dr Oscar Serrallach, Australian GP and author of The Postnatal Depletion Cure, suggests there is more neurogenesis occurring during pregnancy than across the entire period of adolescence. Your brain is not foggy. It is being rebuilt, rewired, optimised for the work of mothering.

Your body changes. Your sleep changes. Your sense of identity shifts. Your relationships feel different. Your values, your priorities, the way you move through the world, all of it is in motion.

Matrescence NZ identifies twelve domains where this transition commonly unfolds, including the biological, psychological, relational, societal, and spiritual domains. What this tells us is that the challenges mothers experience are not a mental health crisis or a character flaw. It is a whole-person transformation that has largely been unrecognised and unsupported.

Why modern motherhood makes it harder

We live in a culture that celebrates bouncing back. That values productivity over rest and offers little room for the reality of what becoming a mother actually involves. Many mothers today are navigating this transition without the community that once surrounded them. We are more isolated from our supports than ever. And if we have a partner or spouse at home to help raise our babies, they usually return to work soon after baby is born, leaving mothers, primarily, to carry the invisible load, often alone. That is not a personal failing. It is a structural one.

Alongside that, the Perfect Mother Myth sets an impossible standard. The idea that a good mother is one who is always calm, patient, present, loves every moment, and puts everyone’s needs before her own. It is a social construction, one that has been built and reinforced over generations, and one that was never based in reality. As author Lucy Jones writes in Matrescence, we live in a culture that has simultaneously idealised and undervalued motherhood, leaving mothers to feel as though they are failing a standard that was never achievable to begin with.

Intensive mothering ideology compounds this further. The expectation that a mother must be endlessly available, the primary environment for her child, meeting every need, anticipating every emotion, creates a pressure that is not only unsustainable but is also relatively new in human history. We did not evolve to do this alone. Two people is not a village.

On top of that, instead of a village we now have constant comparison and information overload. Social media offers more information than any generation before us has had access to, and most of it is designed to make you doubt yourself.

So much of why motherhood feels so hard is outside of our control, but we have been conditioned to believe that it is because we are doing something wrong. The reality is that we live in a world that does not truly value and support mothers.

What I wish I had known sooner

When I finally discovered the word matrescence, it didn’t suddenly fix anything. But it changed how I held what I was experiencing.

It gave me permission to stop treating my struggle as evidence of failure, and to start understanding it as evidence of transformation. It helped me see my experience with kindness and compassion rather than blame, self-doubt, and criticism.

I was able to ask better questions.

Not “what is wrong with me," but instead, “what do I need right now?”

Language shapes the way we see ourselves. And when a mother can see herself clearly, without shame, when she can see that she is not alone, she can begin to actually get what she needs.

If something in this article feels familiar, I would gently encourage you to keep reading about matrescence. Talk to someone who understands it. You do not have to navigate this transition in silence, and you do not have to figure it out alone.

“Becoming a mother leaves no woman as it found her. It unravels her and rebuilds her. It cracks her open, takes her to her edges. It’s both beautiful and brutal, often at the same time.” — Nikki McCahon