Reflections on birth, matrescence and the profound transformation of becoming a mother. Written from the threshold, as a doula, a practitioner and a woman navigating this journey herself.
There is a season that most women move through entirely alone, without support, without language and without anyone acknowledging that something significant is already underway. It is the season before pregnancy begins, the pre-conception period and it is one of the least held passages in the entire motherhood journey. Most maternal care begins at the positive pregnancy test. The appointments, the books, the advice, the community, all of it arrives after that moment. But the
In 1973, an anthropologist named Dana Raphael coined two words that would go on to shape how we think about birth and motherhood. One of them, Doula, became widely known. The other, Matrescence, remained largely absent from mainstream conversation for the next fifty years. Matrescence describes the transformation a woman undergoes as she becomes a mother. Not just the physical transformation of pregnancy and birth, but the complete neurological, psychological, emotional and
