When a Mother is HELD, a community is healed.
Matrescence is the transition from Woman to Mother.
Matrescence was first coined by American Medical Anthropologist, Dana Raphael in 1973.
Dr Aurelie Athan, a clinical psychologist revived the term as she shares as the working definition of Matrescence:
“The process of becoming a Mother is a developmental passage where a Woman transitions through pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond...
Matrescence is individual, recurs with each child, and may arguably last a lifetime!”
The work of Dr Athan helps put this transformational period into perspective: matrescence, like adolescence. Motherhood is a rite of passage, similar to what adolescence is for a child who is transitioning to adulthood.” - Elise Clement, Holistic Psychotherapist.
Dana Raphael nursing one of her sons in the mid-1950s. Dana was a leading advocate for breast-feeding and began an anthropological quest that would end up spanning decades: “Why was breast-feeding more successful in some cultures than in others?”
Dr Aurelie Athan is a Reproductive Psychologist and research Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York specializing in maternal mental health while part of her research focuses on Matrescence.
WHAT IS MATRESCENCE?
The becoming of a Mother does not happen overnight, this transition has a name, it is called, “MATRESCENCE.” - Jen V
MATRESCENCE effects a Mother on many levels:
• Emotional
• Physical
• Economical
• Social
• Spiritual
WHY I CREATED HELD - THE MATRESCENCE COLLECTIVE
I decided a long time ago that I loved being a Mum but I didn’t love all of Motherhood. I felt so ashamed to feel this way; what was wrong with me?
Being a new Mum I felt the overwhelm, the euphoria, the mess and chaos as well as experiencing this miracle of life where you will do absolutely anything and everything in your power, and then some, for this tiny human who relies on you for their existence and all at once!
I was bored and craved mental stimulation. I decided we needed more adventure in our lives. Without much a-do we drove to the tip of Australia with our then, 3 month old baby, a true adventure. Upon our return to the Queensland town of Bowen, I decided we should move our family overseas where my Husband could transfer while I immersed myself in the culture and language I had been studying during the early days of life as a stay-at-home-Mum.
Within months we packed up our lives and moved. A friend and I were passengers in a car when we crashed. I was 7 ½ months pregnant with our second son, living in Borneo, my husband was hours of driving and a flight away and something with my unborn baby didn’t feel right... the result, eventually, was an emergency c-section.
And so the journey began; my biggest identity crisis AND the greatest spiritual awakening of my life.
What I know for sure if that every Woman faces challenging circumstances in their Motherhood journey. What nobody tells us is that we will never be the same Woman we were before we became a Mum, and, that that’s okay!
I created HELD as a space for Women to embody their Matrescence as a becoming in a judgement free space with full permission to release guilt and shame.
EVERY Mother deserves to be HELD
WHAT I WANT FOR WOMEN IN THEIR MATRESCENCE:
What I see are too many women who go through their own rebirth into motherhood, who fall through the cracks, left, not knowing who they are anymore, feeling isolated and lost, thinking they need to re-invent themselves to be seen, heard and loved.
HOW I AM GOING ABOUT OBTAINING THIS:
How Women / Mothers ended up here is multilayered, and so is the solution.
HOW DID MOTHERHOOD END UP LIKE THIS?
The answer is multi-layered, hence, so is the solution. Women were once revered as Goddesses,
What we don’t realise is that our loss of identity is nothing to do with anything external to us. Who we truly are starts from within.”
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EXPERIENCE THE WORDS OF JEN V