I interviewed Jacqueline Kelly, who coaches mums and champions the concept of matrescence through her organisation: Our Brave Hearts. If you’re not familiar with her work, check out her very thought provoking videos on Instagram! Below we talk about matrescence, and in the next post: mum guilt.
What led you to the work you are doing now, coaching and supporting mums?
My own experience of motherhood, really. The challenges that I faced, the realities of motherhood, and then the conversations that I had with so many other mothers about what their lived realities were actually like as opposed to what we see and what we read about online.
One of the biggest things that has fascinated me about motherhood, and that I myself went through, was this feeling that I had lost myself completely. Untethered to all that I thought I had been, all who I thought I was. I was surprised at that and I think my desire, my desperation, to know more about that is what led me to study and read and do the work that I do.
With hindsight, when I look back at the early days of my motherhood, I realise that I felt trapped by the lack of vocabulary that I had at that time. And I see this coming up time and time again with mothers. There is a language of motherhood that really is pumped into society, that we grow up completely immersed in. Without us perhaps even consciously realising it we are using other people's words and other people's phrases to try and describe what it feels like for us.
I felt like I was either happy or sad.
I was either coping or not coping
I was either postnatally depressed or I was OK
And at the time it just felt so limiting and terrifying.
After my son was born It took me quite a while to be able to figure out that I was constantly comparing what I had to a fancy version of motherhood that I thought I should have had. I didn’t realise at first that the reality would just never match up. I was never going to be satisfied. It was never going to be good enough.
I was never going to feel like I was coping enough because the expectations and the standards that I was comparing myself to were unobtainable, unrealistic and never mine to begin with.
When I started to realise that I was in this massive gap between the fantasy and the reality, that's what really opened up my confidence in searching for other mums and being able to speak about what was happening in my life. My confidence to be able to talk about the lived reality of motherhood that I was having as opposed to the one that I thought I should have.
If you could change something about the preparation we get before giving birth, what would it be?
Matresence.
This is a conversation that is growing and gathering momentum but still doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. So if I were to be in any way responsible for some type of change in what we learn about what it means to become a mother, then the concept of matresence has to be involved.
Matresence offers us a lens to look at what happens to us, the women, when we become mothers.
Rather than being so child centred and based only on the physical changes that we go through, matresence offers us a social lens, a physical lens, a psychological lens, a cultural lens, a spiritual lens.
The changes we experience when becoming mothers are so much bigger than we have been led to believe and for many of us, the impact that it has on our sense of self is huge. It's so vast and yet it's so under-supported and under-acknowledged. And I believe that this topic truly has the potential to change so many women's experiences of what it means to become a mother.
Do you think people with no experience of motherhood could manage to engage with these ideas in antenatal preparation?
I do. I remember what you’re talking about though and when I reflect back, would I have paid attention as someone thriving with a textbook beautiful first pregnancy? I remember when I was learning about birth I was so focused on the idea that I was going to use gentle birthing methods, I was going to be in my head, I had my homoeopathy remedies and my vision boards. I had all these beautiful plans but at the same time I remember being told: you have a toolbox.
In that toolbox you have things like your TENS machine, you have your homoeopathy, you have your birthing ball, you have your epidural. And within this tool box there is a C-section too and I remember dismissing that completely.
“I hope to God I don't have an emergency C-section”, “I definitely don't want an epidural”. This is the previous version of me talking full of romantic ideas and ideals. “I definitely won't be having that. Won't be having that. Put it aside”.
And then of course when I went into labour and the birth wasn't going as planned, and I remember at that moment thinking I have a toolbox. I have things in here that I have chosen not to engage with at any point because I perceived that they were not going to be relevant for me. But I remembered the conversations about it. So I knew immediately that I had resources to go to.
I believe that that will be the same if matresence becomes so common a word that we are talking about it as frequently and as often and as naturally and as easily as we are about birthing positions and delivery.
Women are giving birth later and later. What impact does age and culture have on our transition to motherhood?
There’s an interesting discussion on this in ‘The Mask of Motherhood’ by Susan Maushart. She talks about how for women who become mothers when they are a bit older, sometimes the shift in identity is particularly harsh. It's so dramatic because we have lived a life where we have possibly studied, we've maybe got a job that we loved. We've created an identity. We are used to a certain level of disposable income, a certain level of freedom. We have built an identity around who we believe ourselves to be in the world and we have all these things around us that we use to reinforce it. The bus journey that you take into work, the Thursday night with friends, the weekends away. Then when you have a child the massive shift in your priorities and values has such a tremendous impact on your identity.
There's also a really crucial conversation to have around the experience of young mums. I've spoken to mums who are 17/18 and say that they hadn't even had a chance to develop their own adult self. What does becoming a mum mean for their identity?
This again speaks to how vast the experiences of motherhood are. And yet here we are: so many of us trying to do this as if one-size-fits-all.
Culture without a doubt plays a role too. The book I mentioned before is very much an American perspective. I’m from Scotland but have lived in Ireland since 2006. What’s right in the US and what good mothers believe themselves to be there doesn’t perfectly transfer over to Ireland or to the UK.
Historically Ireland is a very religious country. There are very strong family values where the mother is seen as the one who really looks after the needs of her whole family. Very selfless, very self sacrificing. I can't accept that in this day and age and I won't accept that. So it's interesting, the conversations that I have here with younger Irish mums, mums my own age and then the older generation of mothers as well. Irish mothers who perhaps can be quite shocked at the conversations that I would be having about motherhood.
There is a lot of resistance but there is a lot of support as well. Every time I've walked away or sat in a comment section, thinking I've lost hope a comment will come in where it's completely inspiring and reminding me that actually there is a huge movement of mums and people out there who want the change and who want to see mothers supported.
And for people who want to be part of the movement or want to learn and think more about matresence, what would you recommend people check out?
I would recommend two books:
Mama Rising: Discovering the New You Through Motherhood by Amy Taylor-Kabbaz,
Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood by Lucy Jones
And two podcasts:
Motherkind by Zoe Blaskey
Seasons of Matrescence by Nikki McCahon
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