Postpartum University® Podcast

The Science of Matrescence | Jessie Harrold EP 219

• Maranda Bower, Postpartum Nutrition Specialist

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As a postpartum provider or professional, it can feel like the standard "bounce back" narrative after birth just doesn't quite capture the profound shifts your clients are experiencing and  you sense a deeper transformation happening beyond postpartum depression and anxiety. Get ready to have your understanding of motherhood completely reframed with Jessie Harrold as she shared the concept of matrescence – the essential and often overlooked developmental transition into motherhood. Forget the outdated idea of simply "recovering"; this conversation unveils how becoming a mother is a radical rewiring on biological, psychological, social, and even spiritual levels, a journey that can take years and demands a whole new level of support and understanding. This is critical postpartum education for all who work with new mothers.

Check out this episode on the blog HERE. 

Key Time Stamps: 

  • 02:19: Diving into the definition and significance of matrescence. 
  • 05:02: Comparing matrescence to adolescence 
  • 07:20: "losing yourself" as a necessary part of mother becoming. 
  • 10:52: The growth and reprioritization during matrescence. 
  • 13:20: The normative matrescence experiences & postpartum depression. 
  • 15:39: Matrescence as a developmental model 
  • 16:48: Grieving pre-baby identities. 
  •  21:52: Connecting matrescence to adult development 
  • 23:37: Mindfulness when navigating postpartum changes. 
  • 24:42: The importance of community and tradition in the healing process
  • 25:40: Exploring "mother powers" as during this transition 
  • 27:38: The challenges of building community in modern motherhood

Connect with Jessie: 

Jessie Harrold is a coach and doula who has been supporting women through radical life transformations and other rites of passage for over fifteen years. Jessie specializes in matrescence, or the transition to motherhood.  She's the founder of the internationally acclaimed matrescence support program MotherSHIFT and The Village.  She is the author of Mothershift:  Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage.   Website | IG 

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Speaker 1:

The postpartum care system is failing, leaving countless mothers struggling with depression, anxiety and autoimmune conditions. I'm Miranda Bauer and I've helped thousands of providers use holistic care practices to heal their clients at the root. Subscribe now and join us in addressing what modern medicine overlooks, so that you can give your clients real, lasting solutions for lifelong wellbeing. Okay, friends, before we dive in today's incredible episode, I have to tell you something. I made a total mistake in this conversation and, instead of editing it out and pretending it didn't happen, I'm leaving it in because as providers, as leaders and humans, we make mistakes, and owning these moments, laughing through them and learning from them, that is where the real power lies. So let this be a reminder Perfection is not the goal. Authenticity is, and let's get into it. Hello, hello, welcome everyone to the podcast Miranda Bauer.

Speaker 1:

Here and today I have Jesse Harreld, who is a coach and a doula, who has been supporting women through radical life transformations and other rites of passage for over 15 years. She specializes in matri-science, or the transition to motherhood, and we are going to get into that topic hard and fast today. I have so many things I want to ask her that I want to share with all of you. She is the founder of the internationally acclaimed major science support program, mother Shift and it's sister program for postpartum professionals of the village. She's the author of Mother Shift reclaiming motherhood as a rite of passage, I almost said my book Reclaiming Postpartum Wellness, because similar titles here and she's the editor of the upcoming anthology Mother Becoming Explorations of Major Science. I am so glad that you are here. Thank you so much for being a part of this.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

I want you to dive into everything related to major science. What is major science? Because I'm hearing this word happen more and more in the online space and maybe not everybody is familiar with it, because I know so many of us, especially as providers, are not trained in this.

Speaker 2:

No, totally. So the word is matrescence, and matrescence sounds like adolescence. It is, and I'll kind of get into that in a moment, but it was coined by a social anthropologist back in 1975. His name was Dr Dana Raphael. She actually also coined the term doula, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

And then you know, she wrote this beautiful, you know, kind of body of work and she said matrescence is the time of mother becoming. It's this transition to motherhood. It doesn't happen automatically and it needs more study. And then, you know, as with so many things, so many areas of research and exploration around mothers and women's experiences, that kind of went underground for a long time and nobody actually gave matrescence that further study that Dana Raphael said we so deeply needed until probably about 10 years ago when the term started getting used a little bit more, started getting studied a little bit more, and in the last five or six years it's really hit the mainstream quite a lot. And you see it, you know there's a hashtag.

Speaker 2:

There's lots of people talking about matrescence online. I guess, depending on the circles you travel in, but I bet you, the circles we travel in we're hearing about it more and more. And so matrescence is the word that we use to describe the transition to motherhood, and that transition is, of course, biological, it's psychological, it's social, it's economic, it's sometimes spiritual. It really is, as I like to say, one of those changes that changes everything. And in my work and kind of the research that I've done around this, I posit that matrescence takes about two to three years. So we're used to talking about maybe that first six weeks postpartum, maybe we're used to talking about the fourth trimester now, thank goodness we're talking about that but when we're talking about matricence we're talking about something a lot deeper and a lot more. I guess it just impacts every area of our lives and you know, matricence like adolescence.

Speaker 2:

So the sort of the kind of most important thing to kind of note about matricence is that it's considered to be a developmental shift, just like adolescence is. And you know we think of adolescence as a time that lasts quite a number of years. We think of it as being kind of an awkward and sometimes challenging and sometimes even painful time in our lives as we sort of awkwardly figure out who we're becoming, and we overall look at adolescence as a good thing. You know, you're becoming more mature, you're becoming an adult, you are, you know, contributing to the wider world in a different way.

Speaker 2:

And though kind of don't love it when adolescents bounce back, I'm going to use that term, borrow it from sort of the way we think about and talk about motherhood in our culture.

Speaker 2:

We, you know, if adolescents start talking or start behaving like children again, we think of that as a pretty bad thing, right, we want them to grow up and grow older and grow mature and go through this developmental transformation and come out the other side even more themselves, even more mature than they were. And, interestingly, like matricence is also a developmental shift. But in our culture we're pretty caught up with the idea that actually changing in motherhood at all is something to be avoided. You know we're encouraged to bounce back. Many of us have to, you know, return to work immediately afterwards or, you know, don't have adequate childcare or other supports. So we kind of end up being forced back into this pre-baby life and we say that losing yourself in motherhood is the worst thing. So we're really denying mothers the possibility and potential that also exists in this developmental transition into motherhood. So that's long story short, short story long about matrescence.

Speaker 1:

I love this so much, and I first have to address the fact that I called it matri-science rather than matri I'm still gonna mess it up. Matrescence, matrescence, yeah, and I think that just speaks to one. The fact that how, how little I've heard this word and many others maybe are like how could you have gotten that wrong? But I'm gonna leave that here for everyone to see that I am a imperfect, perfect human being and will always get things wrong, and it's totally fine, and so I just wanna leave everyone with that. But you said something super profound and I wanna address this. You said that and I captured this from some other things that you are, you've been writing and working on and I'm so excited to get your book. But you said that losing yourself in motherhood isn't the problem but the point, and that is such a bold, beautiful statement. Can you kind of unpack what that means, especially for providers who are kind of trained to you know, quote unquote bring moms back into themselves.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally, totally. There's a bit of nuance here so I will dive into that. But but I'll start with, yeah, that when we become mothers we become new. There's no turning back, you know. And the thing is is that every life transition we go through, whether it's that transition into motherhood or something else, asks us to let go of who we are no longer so that we can fully step into who we're becoming.

Speaker 2:

And I think this is a pretty unusual kind of statement in our wider culture, because hand in hand with that means that we might have feelings about that. Specifically, we might be kind of sad about that, or grieve that loss of self. And you know, in a culture that has quite sort of a dearth of grief literacy, it can feel really scary to imagine that you might feel sad feelings and not know what to do with them, or that that might look poorly on you, upon as a mother, for example. So we kind of try and avoid all of these more complex and messy and nuanced feelings that we all feel in motherhood, but maybe don't talk about as much. So, yeah, the thing is, you know, when we talk about losing yourself in motherhood, you know, as a practitioner I've been supporting mothers for like 17 years now, and here's what I see. I see mothers either trying to kind of scramble back to the way things were, to the pre-baby genes, to the way their partnership felt like before having a baby, to you know, whatever you name it and and there's often a lot of suffering with that, because they are just different, we are different and or I see mothers kind of like pushing through to the next thing, like trying really hard to find the new normal, you know and and and you know, trying to kind of bypass all of this really messy like who am I now? Stuff right, because it's uncomfortable and that actually kind of limits the potential and possibility that also exists when we are able to kind of let go of that pre-motherhood identity and consider for ourselves you know what? Who am I really? Who am I now? Who am I now that I'm a mother? You know what actually would. Am I really? Who am I now? Who am I now that I'm a mother? You know what actually would I love to let go of? You know, I'm sure you see this in your practice.

Speaker 2:

I see a lot of mothers who get laser clear on their priorities and let go of things that aren't serving them anymore. That can be a part of losing yourself in motherhood and you know I like to say that you can't do the growth without the grief. So we need to actually feel these tough feelings, to consider what we're letting go of and, you know, get support with that, of course, but that there's a lot of power and potential that's also available to us. What we forget to say is that you find someone completely new and there's a good chance that she's more of who you are and that she is more aligned with what matters most to you, what your values are.

Speaker 2:

Now I do want to kind of invite the nuance here, in the sense that you know we live in a culture that you know has a lot of messaging and norms and kind of uh, you know, really toxic, actually toxic messages for mothers that can pull us away from who we truly are and can pull us out of what would otherwise potentially be a really empowering experience. So you know, yes, some of us might lose ourselves in motherhood because we have inadequate childcare or because, you know, inadequate maternity leaves or you name it, the number of injustices that mothers experience, and that's not the. You know the full truth of it, that's part of it. But also, you know, motherhood has always changed us since the beginning of time, and it's always meant to, it's always meant to have been a rite of passage, and I think that's really what we're kind of missing in our culture.

Speaker 1:

As I'm hearing, you share all of this. I'm wondering and I know that I've experienced this in my own birthing and growing human beings and also witnessing it in a multitude of my clients sometimes this confusion between the grief and the letting go and then what we've almost normalized as postpartum depression, which is a real problem in our world, do you see that sometimes those two kind of either go together or get confused? Or, you know, do you have anything that you can share on that in particular?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally, and I'm going to invite us all to just hold a lot of nuance here because there is a lot of nuance to this. But there are many reproductive psychologists and psychiatrists now who are positing that because we don't have a lot of ways to talk about the postpartum time, aside from when it is really challenging and involves like a diagnosis of postpartum time aside from when it is really challenging and involves like a diagnosis of postpartum mental health challenges, because we don't have much of a rubric for that. When we see a mother who's going through big challenges, who's experiencing grief and sadness, for example or anger can be part of that sort of spectrum of emotion we so these kind of these folks, these who are sort of witnessing that in their mental health professions, are positing that we're perhaps labeling what is actually a normative experience of the transition to motherhood as a postpartum mood disorder, when in fact motherhood as a postpartum mood disorder, when in fact it may actually be part of this normal experience. So it's super nuanced, obviously, but because we kind of lack those skills to, you know, support us through grief and loss, because we kind of lack this language, we we think that we're supposed to bounce back. And if we don't bounce back, there's something wrong with us. We think we're supposed to love motherhood 100% of the time and if we don't, there's something wrong with us, right? So we kind of pathologize some of the challenges in this process and what matrescence is.

Speaker 2:

I've kind of referred to it as a developmental model. So a developmental model kind of says, like, when we go through a period of growth of any kind, you know, there's actually kind of a Venn diagram where this work overlaps with post-traumatic growth research. Anytime we go through a big change, we have lots of challenge and we grapple with that and we get help and whatever else is needed and we have lots of possibility. And so you know, like I used the example of adolescence, it's the same thing happening here, and so I think it's important to still have these, you know, conversations about postpartum mood disorders and the like, the really complex array of things that impact those, not least of which is the culture within which we're raising our children and becoming mothers. But we can also have a conversation about what's normal or what's normative in this experience, but challenging but also kind of filled with possibility when well supported.

Speaker 1:

I love this so much and I can share a little bit about my experience. To kind of give everyone an example, I remember having my second and I had created. I was a single mom for my first and in order to survive that single motherhood, I had created this entire image of what it would be like with just me and my son, because there was no way that I would ever have another kid. That was just something that I had created in my mind, and so I had this beautiful version of my life in my head that I lived by that it was just me and my son, and this is what's going to be our beautiful life, and I was going to create that beautiful life. And then, of course, they met my husband and we have a beautiful relationship. And then I had a baby. And then, after having my daughter second baby now I was like whoa, of course I've been in it, I've, I've, you know, met my husband and we've going through this and clearly there's no more of my son and me. But it wasn't until that postpartum period came where that story that was playing in my head became challenged and I was like this is no longer my life, and that was such a beautiful thing that I had created, that I lived by, that, I thrived in, that.

Speaker 1:

I made sure that my son and myself were like it was just like this, you know, beautiful space that I was created, and now it's no longer, because now I have my partner and now I have another baby who I equally care for, and so there was this whole grieving that took place of that story and and then I had to ask myself wait a second, this, this felt really similar. It felt really similar to what had happened when I had my first and that grieving process and although it wasn't the same grieving process, I in my first, it was like that life and that, the freedom that I had felt before and and now I'm having this kid who relies on me, 24, seven, and not being able to to do the things that I had, you know, done and my body's different and you know mourning those aspects of myself, but the feeling was very much the same and it was a whole new perspective for me that that developed from that. And, of course, I felt it in different iterations, with kid number three and kid number four, and I've also seen it so many, so many other times as well in the women that I've supported. And it's just.

Speaker 1:

It is, you know, finding that balance between what is this normal? You know, finding that balance between what is this normal, you know, normative process that we all go through that is challenging, yet beautiful in the same breath. Right Again, all of those nuances that are a part of this, which kind of makes postpartum a little challenging to study. But I do have a question for you. There's this emerging research that shows that knowing, just like simply knowing about matricence can be protective against postpartum depression can be protective against postpartum depression.

Speaker 1:

Can you speak to that connection and how providers can really integrate that understanding into their client work?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally so. There's a kind of a very preliminary early study that shows that when mothers see this experience as well, this study actually looked at as a potentially spiritually enriching experience, but also one that offers a lot of personal growth and development when mothers see this process in that way and so are just invited to see that way, just like we're talking about it right now. You know, for so many mothers just hearing this word matrescence and knowing that it's a thing and that they're not normal, it's like all it takes right. But this research shows that it actually, within this study group, lowered the rates of postpartum depression or the risk of postpartum depression for the entire first postpartum year. So that is really interesting and promising. And then we can pull also, as I mentioned, from some of the post-traumatic growth research and some other like very preliminary studies, that kind of use that alongside positive psychology to sort of say, hey, there are a lot of things that in and amongst the challenges that we face also occur. So a lot of mothers are able to hold nuance just as we're talking about nuance and paradox more easily. You know, as you and I probably both know, and most of the people listening, when you become a mother like everything it's not black and white anymore, right, like everything is sort of you're able to kind of hold the both and a little bit more.

Speaker 2:

A lot of mothers experience an increase in their intuition, a sense of presence and mindfulness. That's different than what, when you know pre-baby they were able to experience, baby, they were able to experience. There's like this experience where so in my research I've kind of overlapped the adult development psychology research. One of my favorite researchers is Dr Robert Keegan at Harvard University, and he studies the kind of development of the adult mind and way of thinking, sort of similar to the way that we talk about our children's milestones. We actually have adult milestones, and one of the things he talks about is this ability to be self-authoring.

Speaker 2:

So rather than kind of looking to everyone else and kind of you know, copying what they're doing or like using a lot of social referencing to decide who we are and how we should be in the world, we start to author our own lives and we start to kind of be a little bit more sovereign and be a little bit more kind of able to access a sense of authenticity. So all of these things are actually markers of mature adult development. So there's just this really incredible stuff that's also happening for mothers while we're going through these challenges and like, maybe because we're going through these challenges right and that's not to say that I don't want you know the conditions under which we mother to improve drastically, please you know but that there's a lot more than just the challenges and just the oppression and just the pathology that we tend to focus on because it deserves our attention. But there's more.

Speaker 1:

It's so interesting. There was a recent study and I just shared this in a newsletter and it was about trait mindfulness, and so they took over 600 postpartum women and they had found that mindfulness had a greater impact on depression outcomes than resiliency and self-efficacy, and actually that when someone was more mindful and they had it's a it's a beautiful study and they they break down exactly what they mean by that. That would go way above and beyond this episode but that it actually increased resiliency and self-efficacy and so women were able to navigate all of these changes a little bit more fluidly without having to. And I and I'm I'm seeing that and and what I just shared, and like hearing you and like putting all of those pieces together. And you're right, we need so many more changes in this world that supports women but also supports women so that they can go through this shift.

Speaker 1:

I love that you have a program called Mother Shift and your book Mother Shift Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage, and these are so deeply rooted in community and tradition, which I think is oftentimes kind of an afterthought or something that we don't necessarily get to pay too much attention to, especially because you know in our world of when we go seek help as moms, we tend to go to a provider who's got only a couple of minutes of their time and we can't necessarily find community and tradition in those spaces. But what can we do to find that community and that tradition and bring that into ourselves for healing, for that experience, and to bring about more health and well-being within us and therefore within our community as a whole? Yeah, this is a great question.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that I talk about in the book are these things that I call the mother powers, and the mother powers are these kind of skills and capacities that we have access to during this time of matricence, and it's not only people who go through matricence that have access to these things, but we kind of get like a rocket boost and also they can support us through matrescence, and they're also extremely counter-cultural in our times and so in my mind, as we're learning these things as new mothers, we're also bringing them to the wider world. Community is one of the mother powers. Also ritual self-tending, which is a different way to think of self-care, embodiment, earth connection, inner knowing and creativity, and so these are kind of the tools and resources that I support mothers to pull on and grow capacity around, and they already are, because they seem to be a really like an almost inherent part of our transition to motherhood for so many of us. So community I mean this is a question that I'm grappling with ongoingly in my own life because we live in a really hyper individualistic society, and the reason why community is a mother power is that, you know, among these kind of traits of adult development that we kind of grow in motherhood is this ability to be more interdependent. And because we have to be right, because all of a sudden, like you talked about you know, especially with your first child, you go from being this autonomous human being to all of a sudden having another little person that you are fully you know being this autonomous human being, to all of a sudden having another little person that you are fully, you know, interdependent with, and so we get this kind of crash course in what it is to show up for another person. And so I think there's a lot of potential there when it comes to our ability to build community.

Speaker 2:

And then this horrible irony that I think like community, and then this horrible irony that I think like so many of us are stretched thin in motherhood these days and like the last thing we have the kind of you know, spoons to do those are spot to do is to reach out and say, hey, do you want to go for coffee? Or like, meet up with someone, or make someone a batch of your homemade granola and take it over, right, but I don't know if there's a hack for this. Like I feel like we need to, kind of, you know, start showing up in our own way, in the way that we would want to receive support and have those conversations with the people around us about reciprocity. I think asking for help is a huge community building move, and it's one that so many of us are uncomfortable with. But I always like to think about, and share this with the mothers that I work with, that everyone that I know loves to help other people. Like that is a source of great meaning in our lives, and so you know we can think of our ask for help as a gift to the other person, as a as an opportunity for them to help and to know that they're being of assistance.

Speaker 2:

This is my new trick Whenever I offer help to someone, rather than saying like, hey, let me know if you need anything, I'll say if you would let me bring over dinner tomorrow night, you would make me so happy. I would love to do that for you, would you? Let me do that for you, and it's so different than you know. Let me know if you need anything.

Speaker 1:

I love that so much. That is such a beautiful thing because you're right, we do want to help and I feel like so often we have. You know, everybody comes over after baby is born and everybody's so excited. But if you ask them to actually do something, like they're going to be quick to do it right, like they're like, yeah, sure, you need your laundry done. Yeah, yeah, I'll take care of that. You know, like the excitement is there.

Speaker 1:

I think we've just forgotten how to take care of mothers. And here we are the generation having babies and supporting women and families in having babies, and expanding our communities with this. And we have to make that shift and that change so that our children can experience that so much more better, so much more beautifully than we had the opportunity to. So you know, know that when you are asking for that help and this is something that has helped me tremendously is knowing that I am training this next generation to be able to feel comfortable doing the exact same or be in a position where maybe they don't have to ask for help because it's already provided, because we remembered, because we remembered.

Speaker 2:

Oh yes, let's send that one up as a big hope for the future. Definitely, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I feel like I can sit here and have a conversation with you forever. I'm just like sitting in here and going over our conversation in our head and I feel like there's such a calm presence to you and I just want to acknowledge that for one and two, to really invite people to your space. Do you have anything coming up? Do you have? Where can people find you and your books and everything that you, you, have got to share?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you so much. That's really sweet to hear. I have a website, jessieheraldcom, and lots of kind of information blogs, a podcast on there called the Becoming Podcast, and a monthly newsletter that I send out called Imaginalia, for anyone going through any kind of life transition. And you mentioned earlier I have a couple of programs. So Mothershift is a support program, three months long program for new mamas, and I also have the Village, which is a six months long matricence apprenticeship program for perinatal professionals. So that's that, and then I hang out on Instagram for the most part. So if you're on the gram, head over and visit me over there. Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my book, right? Yes, most important thing, yes, my book is mother shift, reclaiming motherhood as a rite of passage, and it is available anywhere books are sold. Do do us a favor and like, ask for it at your local bookstore and maybe avoid the big a retailer. Yeah, I feel that one. Yeah, so I would love it if people are interested in what I have to say. There's lots and lots more in the book, so matriarch sense.

Speaker 1:

I'm gonna say I. I am going to practice this word after we hang up, but I wanted to say it correctly on the show for the first time. I love this. Thank you so much for witnessing me and my humanness and for everybody else who is listening in and also just sharing such this, this beautiful, beautiful story, and almost I feel like rewriting the postpartum experience as we know it. So thank you for that. We need that.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me and thank you for the amazing work that you were doing as well so important Thanks thanks so much for being a part of this crucial conversation.

Speaker 1:

I know you're dedicated to advancing postpartum care and if you're ready to dig deeper, come join us on our newsletter, where I share exclusive insights, resources and the latest tools to help you make a lasting impact on postpartum health. Sign up at postpartumu the letter ucom which is in the show notes, and if you found today's episode valuable, please leave a review to help us reach more providers like you. Together, we're building a future where mothers are fully supported and thriving.

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