Price: $39.95
Page Count: 264
Publication Date: February 2026
ISBN: 978-1-77258-566-7
The term matrescence has entered popular conversation, but this remarkable book demonstrates just how deep, broad, and transformative the concept truly is. With an impressive roster of scholars, clinicians, poets, and activists, the book bridges psychological, philosophical, and feminist paradigms into a coherent collection. Each chapter contributes to a rich tapestry of maternal thought, theoretical and practical, reflective and action-oriented. Both content and format of this book shows us the complexity, creativity, and power of matrescence and why it still has so much more to teach us.
- Helena Vissing, PsyD, Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies, author of Somatic Maternal Healing
"This beautifully written collection is a much-needed map for mothers and practitioners alike. It honours the hardships of matrescence while highlighting its potential for growth, empowerment, and transformation. By amplifying the multiplicity of mothers’ experiences, it helps women feel seen and validated - reducing shame, destigmatising distress, and creating safety to share conflicting feelings. Embracing the “both/and” of mothering - the light, the dark, and the messy middle - it also offers practitioners clear frameworks and resources to support women through this transition. Matrescence is positioned as both personal and political: a site of meaning-making, resistance and possibility. This powerful contribution reimagines mothering not as a loss of self but as a generative force for mothers and society."
- Dr Caroline Boyd, perinatal clinical psychologist and author
Mother Becoming is a beautifully crafted exploration of the transition into motherhood, blending expert insight with first-hand experience to capture the depth and complexity of this profound life stage. It gives language to what so many mothers feel but struggle to express, validating their lived realities and inviting the thoughtful inquiry and conversation they deserve in a culture that too often dismisses or pathologizes them.
- Erin Spahr, therapist and founder, Feminist Mom Therapist
Mother Becoming is a landmark collection: powerful, wide-ranging, fascinating, beautifully assembled, and deeply quenching.
- Lucy Jones , author of Matresence
Introduction 5
Jessie Harrold
PART ONE: Diverse Perspectives on Matrescence 13
Poem Mammal Mother 14
Genevieve Beech
Chapter 1 Allowance of the Breech: Interruption in Matrescence 15
Layla O’Mara
Poem Mothering in Real Time 28
Louise Adongo
Chapter 2 The Expectations of Expecting: An Autoethnographic Account of 30
Matrescence
Claudia Méndez Wright
Chapter 3 From the Bardos of Becoming Mother 43
Hanako Hoshimi-Caines
Poem You Okay Mama? 51
Devon Parish
Chapter 4 The Birth (and Death) of a Mother: A Story of Matrescence and 53
Motherloss
Lindsey Phillips Abernathy
Chapter 5 A Whisper of a Loss 65
Abigail Barth
Chapter 6 Mothering in the Crucible: The Intersection of Chronic Pain and 79
Matrescence
Shelly Jackson Buffington
Poem Milky Ways 87
Genevieve Beech
Chapter 7 An Existential Journey: “World” Travelling to M/Otherland 88
Claire Arnold Baker
Chapter 8 The Sacred Mundane: Mothering as an Embodied Spiritual Technology 104
Larissa Rossen and Hillary McBride
PART TWO: Practice, Research and Policy Supporting Matrescence 120
Chapter 9 Rooted in Matrescence: A Garden Story of Self-Mothering 121
Shakara Russell
Chapter 10 Finding Coherence in Ambivalence: Helping Mothers to Reconcile 133
Conflicting Feelings About Their Changed Identity in Matrescence
Ali Pember
Chapter 11 Differentiating Between PMADs and Matrescence: A Critical 151
Examination of Maternal Development and Its Pathological Interpretations
Chelsea Robinson
Chapter 12 Mapping Matrescence: Toward a Developmental Model of the 179
Transition to Motherhood
Jessie Harrold
Chapter 13 Culturally Responsive Matrescence Care for Black Mothers 200
Stepha Lafond
Chapter 14 Full Circle: Circles of Care as a Way to Honour Matrescence 207
Vania Sukola
Chapter 15: Maternal Wellness at Work: A Call For Workplace Policies and 220
Practices That Support Matrescence
Taylor Cavallo, Nicole Dillard and Danielle Tope-Davis
Chapter 16 Reimagining Maternity Care: A Matrescence-Centred Framework 236
Sarah Pedersen
Jessie Harrold, B.Sc., MA, is a coach, doula and author of the award-winning book Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage. A pioneer in the field of matrescence, Jessie is the founder of the internationally acclaimed matrescence support program MotherSHIFT, as well as The Village, its sister program for perinatal professionals. She is a mother of two children and lives on the wild ocean coast of Mi’kmaq’i.
