Dear Future Mother: What Nobody Tells You About Who You're About to Become
Part of the Matrescence Series
You're preparing for everything.
The nursery. The hospital bag. The birth plan. The car seat installation that took three YouTube videos and a mild breakdown. The freezer meals. The childcare research. The registry items you agonized over and the ones you probably didn't need.
You are ready. Or as ready as anyone can be.
And yet... there's something nobody is preparing you for.
Not your OB. Not your birth class. Not the well-meaning friends who tell you to sleep now while you can. Not the parenting books stacked on your nightstand.
Nobody is preparing you for what's about to happen to you.
Not the baby. Not the labor. Not the logistics of new parenthood.
You. The woman. The identity. The self you've spent decades building.
That's what I want to talk to you about today.
There's a Word You Need to Know
It's called matrescence.
Coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael and more recently brought into the mainstream by developmental psychologist Dr. Aurelie Athan, matrescence describes the profound biological, psychological, neurological, and identity-level transformation a woman undergoes when she becomes a mother.
Think of it like adolescence... but for your adult self.
When you were a teenager, the world knew you were in the middle of a transformation. It was messy and disorienting and nobody expected you to have it together. You were given room to become.
Matrescence is that same seismic shift. Except this time, the world hands you a baby and expects you to be fine.
Here's the truth: you will be fine. And also... you will be changed in ways that are impossible to fully anticipate. And knowing that in advance? It changes everything.
What's Actually About to Happen
Your brain is going to rewire.
This isn't metaphor. Neuroscience shows that gray matter actually reshapes during the transition to motherhood... reorganizing to increase empathy, attunement, and the kind of hypervigilant awareness that comes with protecting someone you love this much.
Your nervous system will recalibrate. Your hormones will shift in ways that affect your mood, your memory, your sense of time and self. Your relationship with your body will change. Your relationship with your work will change. Your friendships may change. Your relationship with your own mother may change.
And your sense of who you are... who you are when no one is watching, what you want, what matters, what you'll tolerate... all of that is going into the chrysalis too.
This is not bad news. I promise you it isn't.
But it is real news. And you deserve to have it.
The Feelings Nobody Gives You Permission to Have
Here's what I want you to know before you're in the thick of it, because it's much harder to hold when you're exhausted and overwhelmed and two weeks postpartum...
You may love your baby fiercely and also grieve your old life. Both are allowed.
You may feel profound joy and profound loss in the same hour. Both are real.
You may feel, at some point, like you don't recognize yourself... like the person you were before is somehow out of reach. That is not a warning sign. That is matrescence.
You may feel guilt for any of the above. That guilt is so common, so normal, and so unnecessary.
None of these feelings make you a bad mother. None of them mean you made the wrong choice. None of them mean something has gone wrong.
They mean you are human. They mean the transformation is happening. They mean you are exactly where you're supposed to be.
What You Can Do Now, Before Baby Arrives
Most birth preparation focuses on the body. What's coming through the body. How to survive what the body is about to do.
Very little of it prepares the self for what's coming.
So here's what I'd offer you, as someone who has walked alongside hundreds of women through this transition and who has lived it herself...
Learn the word and use it. Just knowing that matrescence is a real, named, researched experience will help you feel less alone when it's happening. When you feel disoriented or unrecognizable to yourself, you'll have a word for it. And a word is a lifeline.
Start noticing your identity now. Who are you outside of your roles? What do you value? What lights you up? What parts of yourself feel most essentially you? The more clearly you can see yourself now, the easier it is to find yourself again on the other side.
Audit your beliefs about asking for help. This is a big one, especially for high-achieving women. If asking for help feels like weakness to you... if you'd rather figure it out alone than let someone see you struggling... matrescence will test that belief hard. Start softening it now. Practice saying "I don't know" and "I need support" before you desperately need to.
Build your village intentionally. Not just the practical support... childcare, meal trains, the people who will hold the baby so you can sleep. The emotional support too. Who can you call at 11pm when you're not okay? Who will tell you the truth with kindness? Who will hold space for the whole complexity of what you're feeling without needing you to be fine?
Consider support before you think you need it. Therapy, coaching, or subconscious work before or during the transition isn't a sign that something's wrong. It's one of the most proactive, loving things you can do for yourself and your future family. You don't have to be in crisis to deserve support.
A Note to the Women Who Took a Longer Road Here
If you are here after loss... after infertility, after IVF, after miscarriage, after years of hoping and waiting...
The complexity of your matrescence may run even deeper.
Because you may have told yourself, somewhere along the way, that if you could just get here... if you could just be pregnant, just have this baby, just make it to the other side... you would feel nothing but gratitude.
And you will feel gratitude. Enormous, overwhelming, breathtaking gratitude.
And you will also feel the full weight of matrescence. The disorientation. The identity shift. The grief for parts of yourself that are changing. Maybe even unexpected emotions that feel confusing given how hard you fought to get here.
You are allowed to feel all of it. Every complicated, contradictory, overwhelming piece of it.
The road you took to get here doesn't determine how you're allowed to feel now that you've arrived.
You Are Not Just Becoming a Mother
I want to leave you with this, because I think it's the most important thing I can say...
You are not just becoming a mother.
You are becoming a new version of yourself. A version that contains everything you've been before... and integrates it into something larger, more layered, more whole.
That process is sacred. It is disorienting. It will ask more of you than almost anything else ever has.
And it will also give you more than you can currently imagine.
Not because motherhood completes you... you were never incomplete. But because this transformation, when it's witnessed and supported and given room to breathe, has a way of clarifying what was always true about you. What you're made of. What you actually want. Who you actually are underneath the roles and the to-do lists and the performance.
You are about to become more yourself, not less.
Even when it doesn't feel that way. Especially when it doesn't feel that way.
If you want support as you move through this transition, I'm here before, during, and after. Explore working with me at Evolving Whole, or step into the Inner Workroom to begin gently on your own.
Want to understand the full picture? Read the rest of the Matrescence Series: Part 1: What Matrescence Really Is Part 2: Grieving Your Pre-Mother Self Part 3: Matrescence and the High Achiever
Abbey Sangmeister, MS.Ed, LPC, ACS is a Licensed Professional Counselor, transformational coach, and subconscious change expert in Collingswood, NJ. She specializes in supporting women through the profound identity transformation of matrescence... before, during, and long after baby arrives.
