There’s a good chance you’ve never heard the word matrescence. Most people haven’t. And the reason for that, I’d argue, isn’t accidental.
We live in a culture that has decided, collectively, that the story of becoming a mother is supposed to go one way. The clouds part. The angels sing. Your whole world, your being, your reason for living, comes into focus. And if your experience is anything other than that, if it’s messy, or disorienting, or makes you quietly question everything you thought you knew about yourself, there’s an almost imperceptible pressure to keep that part to yourself.
Matrescence is the word for what actually happens. And the fact that most people have never heard it says a lot about which parts of this experience we’ve decided are worth naming.
What matrescence actually means
The term was first coined in the 1970s by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael, who used it to describe the transformation a woman undergoes when she becomes a mother, physically, psychologically, and emotionally. Decades later, Dr. Aurelie Athan, a psychologist at Columbia University, brought it into wider conversation, arguing it deserves the same attention we give adolescence and other major life passages.
That parallel is worth sitting with. We accept that teenagers are going through something seismic. We give them grace for it. We understand that the person coming out the other side will be genuinely different from the one who went in. Still, almost none of that grace gets extended to new mothers.
Matrescence isn’t postpartum depression, though the two can coexist. It isn’t a disorder or a diagnosis. It’s a developmental passage, one that can feel like jumping into a pool – for some, the water is warm and inviting, and all the stress and sounds of the world blur into a distant hum. For others, it’s a shock to the system, cold and disorienting, and coming up for air takes everything you have. Often it’s somewhere in between, and it can change from one day to the next. It isn’t linear. It certainly isn’t always pleasant. And it almost never looks the way anyone told you it would.
The grief behind the gratitude
“I’m grateful, but…”
Here’s the thing about the grief of matrescence: it almost always arrives wearing an apology.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard a version of this: “I know I should be happy, but…” or “I’m grateful, but…” That “but” is everything. It’s the thing someone’s trying to say before the cultural script kicks in and reminds them that they had a healthy baby, that other people have it worse, or that they’re so lucky. The pressure of gratitude and happiness placed on new mothers from the very beginning makes it genuinely risky to name anything other than joy.
When the stakes are even higher
For BIPOC birthing mothers, that risk runs even deeper. Black women are 3 to 4 times more likely to experience maternal mortality than white women. Hispanic women are twice as likely to experience severe maternal outcomes. Over half of postpartum depression cases among BIPOC individuals go unreported. In that context, admitting you’re not okay after birth carries a very real fear, that someone might deem you unfit to be a parent. That fear doesn’t make the grief disappear. It makes you tuck it in deeper, try to convince yourself it doesn’t exist, and smile through it instead.
What the “but” is really saying
So when I hear someone say “I’m happy, but…” or “I’m so grateful, but…” I listen very carefully to what comes after. Because what usually follows is grief. Grief for the familiar rhythms of a life they knew so well. For a body that now feels foreign. For a relationship strained beyond recognition. For the version of yourself who used to move through the world without keeping a running mental list of nap schedules, dishwasher cycles, and whether anyone walked the dogs. For a version of themselves that existed before, and isn’t quite sure where she went.
This grief is real. It doesn’t mean you regret becoming a mother. It doesn’t mean you love your child any less. Grief and happiness aren’t opposites. In fact, holding both at the same time isn’t a contradiction, it’s one of the most human things there is.
Permission to hold both
If you’re reading this in the middle of it, newly postpartum, or months in and still waiting to feel like yourself, this is what I want you to hear:
You’re allowed to be grieving and overjoyed at the same time. You’re allowed to count down the hours until bedtime and then stand over the crib unable to leave. You’re allowed to feel touched out all day and still reach for your baby in the night. You’re allowed to miss your old life with an ache that surprises you, and still not want to go back. You’re allowed to feel completely lost and more purposeful than you’ve ever been, sometimes within the same hour.
But there’s power in recognizing it for what it is, a transformation, not a failure. A becoming and not a breakdown.
If we could extend even an ounce of the grace we give teenagers to new mothers, the state of postpartum mental health would be that much better off. You deserve that grace. Not because you earned it, not because your experience was hard enough to qualify, but simply because you’re in the middle of something real.
And real things deserve to be named.
References
Raphael, D. (1975). Matrescence, becoming a mother, a “new/old” rite de passage. In D. Raphael (Ed.), Being Female. Mouton Publishers.
Athan, A. M., & Reel, H. L. (2015). Maternal psychology: Reflections on the 20th anniversary of Deconstructing Developmental Psychology. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering.
Athan, A. M. (2020). Reproductive identity: An emerging concept. American Psychologist, 75(4), 445–456.
Community Solutions. (2024). Disparities in maternal mental health: A rising public health issue. Retrieved from https://www.communitysolutions.com/resources/disparities-in-maternal-mental-health-a-rising-public-health-issue
National Partnership for Women & Families. (2024). The maternal mental health crisis undermines moms’ and babies’ health. Retrieved from https://nationalpartnership.org/report/the-maternal-mental-health-crisis-undermines-moms-and-babies-health/
