How the word matrescence is helping me through postpartum

Pregnancy shooting by Imogen Love

A few times after giving birth, I wondered if I had postnatal depression. It's something we hear about often, with so many changes in hormones, lifestyle, and a life turned upside down. Honestly, I was scared I had it—some days, I felt no hope or joy. During those times, I was grateful for a strong support system that helped me get more sleep, nourishing meals, and gentle encouragement to go for walks, even when I didn’t want to.

Now, almost 12 months postpartum, I can say I’ve often felt completely lost. I could only focus on what I needed to do each day to keep my baby happy, yet I couldn’t see beyond that, which worried me.

It’s totally normal to feel lost and wonder if life will ever change from what we're experiencing now. After giving birth, I felt raw and vulnerable, like my skin had been ripped off and I had to regrow it while caring for another human. It was as if I were exposed to freezing winds, walking on burning charcoal. Though it sounds intense, that was my reality.

We’re thrust into a completely new role without a transitional period. The theory and advice we hear help us imagine what’s to come, but it’s only when we’re deep in it that we realize how hard it is. Yet, society expects us to be fine a few months later, as though we should be ready to “move on” when the baby is no longer a newborn.

These expectations don’t consider what’s happening within us. Our bodies have endured the greatest physical challenge they’ll ever face, our minds are in survival mode, and our hormones are out of balance. It takes time to readjust, so we don’t need external pressure to be “okay” now. Feeling lost, teary, angry, vulnerable, and then joyous and euphoric—like a daily emotional rollercoaster—is normal. This transitional phase helps us find our footing in this new life. Sometimes, tears are needed to cleanse our past selves and ways of thinking.

There’s a term that helped me understand this period:

Matrescence.

(And funny enough, my autocorrect still doesn’t recognize it)

This term was introduced by Dana Raphael in the 1970s to describe the complex physical, emotional, and social transition a woman goes through as she becomes a mother. She wanted a word that acknowledged that motherhood isn’t just a new role but a profound, multi-layered transformation, much like adolescence. More recently, psychiatrist Dr. Alexandra Sacks has popularized the term, comparing it to adolescence and explaining how it’s marked by hormonal shifts, identity changes, and emotional turbulence as mothers adapt to a new phase of life.

Twelve months in, I still don’t feel like I’ve fully reclaimed my old identity or formed a new one. I feel like a mom who occasionally gets to do things she used to. I don’t know how long it will take to feel like a whole person with her own identity again, but I’m giving it time.

Much like adolescence, we couldn’t wait to be adults, but we didn’t know what it would feel like. It came gradually, through trials, errors, and time. Eventually, the hormones settled, we got to know ourselves better, we had new experiences, and suddenly, we weren’t as impulsive or emotional as before.