1 | My Matrescence: From Disorienting to Reorienting 🗺️

My first matrescence was disorienting. My second, thanks to matrescence, has been reorienting… helping me find the path that is truly mine to walk.

Feb 6, 2023

The beginning of my story

When I became a mother I was an adolescent psychotherapist supporting young people in the often disorienting process of becoming an adult. I understood adolescence as a time when young people face physical, psychological, behavioral, social, and ecological challenges as they mature into adulthood. I also understood this developmental period as a vulnerable time requiring specialized support, that if lacking, could lead to significant problems later in life. What I did not understand, however, was that my transition into motherhood was a comparable transitional process.

After I gave birth the first time I needed mental health support. I experienced a range of symptoms similar to perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) such as sadness, anger or guilt, lack of interest and motivation, worry and hypervigilance, and self-doubt (particularly around environmental concerns, but more on that later)... so it made some sense my therapist focused on helping me behaviorally adapt to my new role. Unfortunately, conventional perinatal mental health models left me feeling disempowered, overwhelmed, and a bit lost. When I went searching for a developmental way to understand my postpartum experience in alignment with the work I did with young people, I realized just how much matrescence shares with adolescence, including the disorientation and reorientation experience of a major life transition.

Matrescence shifts my experience

My second matrescence, the birth of our youngest daughter in 2022, has so far been an entirely different experience. Although I’ve been a mother for a couple of years, I believe the biggest difference was my research with Dr. Aurelie Athan to apply matrescence clinically and to understand mothers psychoecological growth. Dr. Aurelie Athan is the scholar who revived the term matrescence and applied it for the first time to developmental psychology to represent a mothers’ holistic transformation in motherhood.

After working with matrescence for years, its strength-based framework has become a part of my daily experience, central to my self awareness, and foundational to how I understand psychological change. Instead of feeling disoriented as a new mother, I feel I’m reorienting to the path that is truly mine to walk in this lifetime.

Matrescence theory transformed my experience of becoming a mother. This mother-centered psychological interpretation offered me a vital shift from the perspective of “something is wrong with me” to “what I’m feeling is a valid response to the transition into motherhood.” It helped me recognize that challenging emotional experiences were already adaptive to the disorienting attempt to transform myself into a completely new way of being without the same recognition and support we offer other developmental life events like adolescence. And with this reframe, matrescence continues to help me better identify and advocate for the holistic support I need on my developmental path towards becoming the mother I want to become.

Why Seeding the Mother

The difference in my personal experience of matrescence with and without applied maternal psychology (aka matrescence)—a shift in wellness I see echoed in both my clinical practice and research—is at the heart of what I want to explore through Seeding. This newsletter will meander in and out of my personal reflections and questions on what exactly shifted my experiences so dramatically towards mental health and wellbeing through my unique ecocentric lens.

Tending Practice is a place to apply maternal ecopsychology to our lives with expressive reflections. They are available for paid subscribers. Here is a sample:

Reorientation Art Journal Invitation

When mothers first come to me for therapy I introduce the concept of matrescence as a development from one life stage to another; a period of disorientation and reorientation requiring specialized support. Curiosity about our own development is a great place to start in becoming more aware of how we are growing, the growing pains we’re experiencing, and our deeper feelings about all of these changes.

Here are a few art journal prompts to spark this curiosity:

Draw, paint, or collage a picture of who you were before you became a mother. Then draw, paint, or collage a picture of who you are now.
Looking at the before picture: What are you doing? Who are you with? What is around you? Where are you in the picture? What is the main emotion? Who or what has the most power in the picture?
Looking at the second picture: What are you doing? Who are you with? What is around you? Where are you in the picture? What is the main emotion? Who or what has the most power in the picture? Does it feel complete? If it does not already feel complete, what does it need to be complete? Can you give this to yourself by adding it to the picture? Why or why not? What needed to change?
Looking at both: Which drawing was easier to create? What parts were the most difficult to look at? What are the similarities in the pictures? What are the differences? Where there any surprises as you were creating?

When doing expressive art for greater self awareness and insight, the way it looks does not matter. In fact, as a therapist I ask that all therapeutic art remain with me because it helps create a container for honest expression in a world that wants all pictures (and people) to be perfect according to external expectations. So a quick sketch or a reflective collage-making session are both equally helpful. If you try it out share your insights below!

Thank you!

I’m so excited to be back writing this newsletter with long-time readers and hope to meet many more. It’s an honor to get to share with you and I’m grateful you are here.

How to cite this issue:

Davis, A. (2023, February 6) My matrescence: From disorienting to reorienting. Seeding the Mother.

Athan, A., & Reel, H. L. (2015). Maternal psychology: Reflections on the 20th anniversary of deconstructing developmental psychology. Feminism & Psychology, 25(3), 311-325. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0959353514562804

Athan, A., & Reel, H. L. (2015).