“Becoming a mother is an identity shift, and one of the most significant physical and psychological changes a women will ever experience
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What is Matrescence?
Matrescence is the transition into and through Motherhood. It is the developmental process a women experiences where she transitions into and through motherhood towards the integration of her other-self with her mother-self.
Materscence is “a transition that involves a whole spectrum of emotional and existential ruptures….the wildest, hardest, most enlivening and extreme psychological, existential, social, physical and socio-political experience of my life”. – Lucy Jones
We are here to support you through the beautiful and brutal transition into and through motherhood
The shift into motherhood can bring up a lot of old and new feelings and thoughts. It can raise those ghosts in the nursery, it can bring up chages in identity, values, you might feel lost, alone, that you’ve lost your sparkle and miss the old you. Your support network may have changed, and you might be navigating new friendships as well as different pressures on your more intimate partnerships. You might be anxious, low in mood, you might have intense intrusive thoughts. Motherhood in all of it’s glory is a huge adjustment and we’re here to help support you through it.
Womens Matrescence Circles, groups and workshops
This is an opportunity to have space to connect with your community of mothers, to share experiences and emotions. There are three different offerings we have and please see further information below:
1) ‘Seasons of Matrescence’ women’s sharing circles
2) ‘Mother’in Mind’ six week course
3) Workshops online, in the community and for organisations.
Therapy
Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Compassion Focused informed therapy we can work on sense-making, identity shifts, changes in values, and identify what you need in order to lead a rich and fulfilling life.
We can work with any ‘mothers’ and have experience working with biological mothers, foster carers, kinship carers, adopted parents, mothers with children with health conditions and mothers of children who are neurodivergent.
Rachael is also a Seasons of Matrescence Educator and Guide in training (see below for details).
Both Lottie and Rachael are EMDR trained to help treat birth trauma.
Retreats
Retreats offer a fully emmersive protected time for you to take a journey for self development as a woman. To rediscover, reinvent and find who you are and who you want to become.
Retreats will include women’s circles, reflective groups. yoga, mindfulness and meditation.
We are aiming to run the next retreat summer 2026.
Womens Matrescence Circles
Seasons of Matrescence
Seasons of Matrescence is a framework developed by Nikki McCahon to support Mothers into and through the transformation that motherhood brings.
Seasons of Matrescence recognises that the transition of motherhood is not linear but cyclical. Just like the seasons, our experience changes as we move through our journey. Using this framework we can:
Explore your identity by talking through your values, roles, activities you enjoy, and your relationships.
We will honour matrescence as a rite of passage in a variety of different ways, providing a sense of stability in a world that you might be lacking control and that feels chaotic.
Understand where you are in your matrescence journey and how this might leave you feeling.
Develop a vision for your future that is rich and fulfilling.
Work through career decisions that you were not anticipating making.
At Nurture in Psychology we facilitate weekly Women’s Matrescence Circles where we hold space to reflect on the topics above and join together as a community of mothers.
Sessions are help during school hours and in evenings in both person and online.
Motherin’ Mind Group
A protected place to nurture your emotional wellbeing, no matter where you are on your motherhood journey. Sessions involve guided meditations, sound healing, learning about mindfulness and evidence-based psychological strategies, and sharing experiences around different themes relating to motherhood.
Weekly sessions covering a 6 week program
Group run in school hours and evenings in support of Mums.
Join as many session as you can and feel free to drop in to the ones you wish to. There is a discount for bulk booking the whole course.
Next group due to run winter 2025.
‘Flamingo mothers lose their bright pink as they are caring for their chicks. If you feel like you are losing your colours, just like with the flamingos, your pink will return again’ Lindsay Gurk.
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This first week of the course is inspired by Paul Gilberts Compassion Focussed therapy (CFT) psychological model to explore and practice how to harness self-compassion. This includes guided metta meditation, restorative yoga, self-massage, and tips on how to manage negative self-talk.
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This week is full of discussion and tips around managing our nervous systems in moments of high stress. As well as being informed by Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) strategies, we are treated with a Gong sound bath meditation.
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This week is all about how we can find home in our bodies. We explore the role of hormones and the many biological changes we go through as a woman and how this impacts us psychologically; the powerful mind-body link through inspiration from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). We learn about some statistics around the beauty industry to ignite a fire within us and motivate us to find our own ways to embrace our individuality. We connect with our bodies through restorative yoga poses and meditation to help shift our mindset towards our bodies.
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Where do we get energy from? Is it just sleep or are there other ways to manage the sleep deprivation and relentless demands of parenthood? In this week we discuss what tips actual help with managing fatigue, low energy and motivation. This session integrates concepts from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and we are treated to an energising Gong sound bath experience.
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This week we faciliate exploration and insights into how parenthood has influenced your relationships; with friends, with partners and spouses, family and work. We give tips around boundary setting, how to ask for help and how to manage common difficulties within relationships. We integrate some concepts from Family Therapy and bring light to the many expectations we hold of ourselves, where these have come from and how to relieve ourselves of these.
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In this final week we spend time taking a big pause to reflect on what aspects of our identity we may have given birth to and what things may have changed. We focus on the theme Matrescence using principles from the Seasons of Matrescence framework, thinking about what this means within our own forever evolving journeys as mothers. We support you to identify ways you can reconnect and ignite aspects of your identity you might be missing. Our aim is to unleash a sense of freedom to alleviate the mental load, which can often be a big barrier to reconnecting with the other things in life which are also important to our identities.
Workshops
We deliver workshops on matrescence to organisations and the community, online and face to face.
A bespoke package can be developed based on the needs of the organisation. Get in touch for a free consultation.
We can cover a variety of topics including:
Understanding matrescence
Making sense of and supporting mental health within motherhood
Supporting mothers in the workplace