How to Support Yourself Through Matrescence (Part 2)
Updated: Sep 3
Part 2 of a 3-part series. Read Part 1: What Is Matrescence? first if you missed it.
In my last post, I shared a little about my own experience becoming a mother, and the challenges and emotions that come with a life change this all-encompassing. I talked about how pregnancy and postpartum bring an "awkward" stage — what Alexandra Sacks calls the adolescence of parenthood, involving a mother's body physically changing, hormones surging, new roles to navigate, and shifting relationships alongside it all.
Today I want to share more about how you can actually support yourself through this period — some insights, and a few resources I've found genuinely helpful.
Crafting Your "Village"
You've heard "it takes a village to raise a child" but in this day and age, you're often the one responsible for building that village yourself. During pregnancy and beyond, start thinking about the people who can hold and support you through this time. Your "support system" includes everyone who lends support in any capacity — from a mother-in-law, to a midwife, to a neighbour or friend.
Consider every role player, not just the obvious ones, and think through what you might need from each and how to ask for it. Your needs will shift from pregnancy through to life with a newborn.
A lot of postpartum support tends to focus entirely on the baby, so it's worth deliberately considering how you need to be supported too.
It can help to break your village into groups:
Support professionals — your medical team, therapist, doula, midwife, coach, psychiatrist
Cheerleaders — friends, family, anyone who wants to share in your experience
In-home support — a partner, nanny, night nurse, or a friend or family member staying with you
Physical support — physiotherapist, massage therapist, reflexologist, yoga teacher
Emotional support — therapist, support group, support resources
Some people or forms of support will fall into more than one category — that's fine. The point of breaking it down is simply becoming aware of what you actually need, and who's positioned to help with each part.
Become Emotionally Aware
It's normal to feel easily triggered during this season — each trigger is making you aware of something. Sometimes it's a past childhood wound surfacing; sometimes it's simply flagging an unmet need — sleep, nutrition, downtime, movement.
To feel less triggered and more at ease, pay attention to your feelings and ask what's needed in that moment, and what's needed afterward. How can you support yourself better? What might you need to sit with and process when you get a quiet moment?
Notice what triggers you, notice what arises, and ask what it's trying to communicate, without judging yourself for feeling it.
Find a Good Therapist
Motherhood doesn't just bring new things to navigate, it often surfaces old ones too, things that may have been stored away for a long time. There's something about new life that turns us inward, toward our own childhood and upbringing. Revisiting that can be both beautiful and painful.
Having a trained, objective professional who can support you in finding your own path to healing — without judgment — is a genuinely powerful form of support here. Matrescence challenges us to be self-reflective and to heal our own emotional wounds, so we can show up for our children in the way they need. It can help enormously to work with someone skilled in facilitating inner child work, so you feel held while working through what surfaces from your own childhood.
Learn to Ask for Help — and Receive It
This one is hard if you're used to relying on yourself rather than reaching out. But this period genuinely requires outside support. No one can do it entirely alone, and that becomes very apparent in the first few weeks after birth. Asking for help isn't weakness. It reflects the wisdom of knowing your own needs, and it takes real courage during a season this vulnerable.
Resources Worth Having
A few resources I've personally found valuable, shared with me by dear friends and colleagues during this period — I hope they help you too:
Holding Mama — a beautifully crafted book and journal by Caitlin Scott and Caryn Edwards, covering pregnancy right through postpartum
The Birth of the Mother — a guided journal by Sharmon Reddington, with well thought-out prompts to support your journaling practice
Morning Pages Journal — an open-ended journal by Sara Moosa, with prompts, musings, and linked guided meditations
Motherhood Sessions — a podcast by Alexandra Sacks featuring real conversations with mothers about the shifts of matrescence and their own experiences
What's Next
The final post in this series covers the postpartum period itself, and making peace with the transition into motherhood. Read it here and as always, I'd love to hear your own experience with any of this.
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