No one told me it would be this way: Why matrescence helps make sense of motherhood with Katrina Court

When I first held my newborn, I never realized that, just like them, I was embarking on a profound transformation. Our latest conversation with Katrina delves into this very metamorphosis, known as matrescence—the redefining of a woman's identity through motherhood. It's a journey that echoes the unpredictability of adolescence, complete with the resurgence of past traumas, hormonal roller coasters, and significant brain changes. Katrina's candid stories illuminate the often unspoken challenges that new mothers face, prompting a much-needed shift towards supporting a mother's well-being in equal measure to that of her child. We challenge the societal narrative that paints motherhood in extremes and advocate for a more nuanced appreciation of every mother's unique journey.

Transitioning gracefully through motherhood's stages requires a mindful approach, and this episode is rich with strategies for fostering self-compassion and finding joy in the smallest of parenting victories. From the grounding practice of maintaining a gratitude journal to the importance of redefining success in alignment with personal values, we offer actionable advice for navigating motherhood's complex landscape. Our discussion also emphasizes the crucial role of breaking the silence surrounding maternal struggles and the power that comes from sharing and seeking support. As Katrina opens up about her life's passions beyond motherhood, our listeners are invited to join the conversation and discover the resilience that lies within the heart of every mother's experience.

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Matressence
• 12:33 Navigating Motherhood
• 22:04 Breaking the Silence

Transcript

Kayla Huszar: 0:00

Welcome back to the Chillika Mother podcast. We are here with Katrina this week and we are going to look at motherhood through the lens of mattressence and help us make sense of our motherhood experience and why so many mothers are wanting to do things differently.

Katrina Court: 0:18

Hello, it's lovely to be here. Thank you for having me.

Kayla Huszar: 0:21

You're welcome. You're welcome. So tell me. For those who don't know, mattressence might be a word that they've not heard before or have not heard in a conversation. I know it took years for that word to enter into my motherhood kind of consciousness. What does mattressence mean and why is it important?

Katrina Court: 0:39

Yeah, absolutely such a great question.

Katrina Court: 0:41

And yes, I was two years into my own motherhood journey before I heard that word, but when I did, it was like light bulbs going off.

Katrina Court: 0:50

So mattressence is the complete transformation and identity shifts that a woman experiences as she enters and moves through motherhood, and whilst it was a term that was coined back in the 70s by an anthropologist called Dana Raphael, it seemed to get locked in the textbooks until it was revived about 10 to 15 years ago by some other polythorical looking women. When women become mothers and I just think that it has that power to really change the way that we talk about, the way that we value and the way that we experience motherhood, because the emphasis is that it's a transition, it's not a one off event. We don't just have our babies and then all of a sudden, we become a mother. Just like adolescence captures that transition that we go through when we leave childhood and enter adulthood, this is exactly what happens when we become moms. It's transition, it takes time, it comes with a lot of bumps in the road that are completely normal, and we change on every level. We change.

Kayla Huszar: 2:18

Yes, on every level, every level. Yes, I remember distinctly some of the moments in my own motherhood where you have this inner narrative. Nobody told me it would be this hard. Nobody told me I would be up against this. No one told me that my previous, whatever trauma from whatever age was going to resurface and our brain changes and our hormones fluctuate and our changes in our body, the way that we view our body, the identity shift For me. I had a hospital birth and I was induced, so it was planned, so to speak, and I went into the hospital at noon and left the hospital the next day. Mom, there was a time in my early postpartum where I didn't even know who Kayla was or who she could be in. And amongst all of those, changes.

Katrina Court: 3:32

That is so, so true, and thank you so much for sharing your personal experience. This is it, I think. We spend so much time preparing for the birth. You know all of our pregnancies. We are focused on this one moment and nobody tells us that. You know, when we have our baby, they are not the only new person that we are going to meet that day, Because we are a newborn too.

Katrina Court: 3:59

We is the first time that we are entering this world where we feel that we have been split in two because we have, you know, it's the person that we were before and everything that we knew about ourselves and our world, and then the mom that we are becoming. And you know, I think it's really important to emphasize that. You know the becoming, because it is a journey and I think the support that we need, unfortunately, to help us through that journey often isn't there, because so much of the focus is on the child at that point in time. And of course that is needed and of course that is necessary, but it's a little bit like what about the mom? What about the mom?

Kayla Huszar: 4:55

Yes, and what about the mom? You know, like for anyone who's kind of like hearing this term for the first time, or maybe like this is the first conversation you've kind of heard about this change, or maybe you're pregnant and you're like you know, I work with a lot of pregnant people and there is this. I wanna maybe call it a resistance to really understanding what happens after, right, because our society and the way that modern Instagram and all of the things are geared towards is just get to the birth, right, and then after that you'll figure it out, and I even saw a couple of posts about a year ago that I was really having to reflect on about like stop telling mothers, it gets worse. Like there was kind of this, like series of posts, and I can totally appreciate that doing therapy with pregnant people is that it does suck when people tell you it's going to get worse, but I think, through the lens of mattressence, it changes that into it's not worse. Maybe it's just different.

Katrina Court: 6:13

Yeah, you're so right. I think it just gives us a language to talk about motherhood that isn't in extremes, because I think at the moment.

Katrina Court: 6:21

quite often it's either motherhood is portrayed as blissful and it's this world of pastel shades and natural and gorgeous children just looking beautiful and pristine, or the other extreme is motherhood is so challenging, it's the worst, it sucks. I hate my life. They tend to be the two different portrayals, or the kind of the mummy needs a wine culture. Motherhood is so awful, but we'll just drink through it, which I think there's probably a lot of the generation before us. That is kind of how they clothe.

Katrina Court: 7:02

But there's so much nuance in the middle, like there's so much space for more, and that is why having the language and kind of like a framework to understand that it's going to take time. You can piece it together. You need to take time to almost kind of unravel before you can then start to pick up the pieces and put them back together. And the answer is that you're never really going to be exactly you and your lives. We're never going to be exactly the same way that they were, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be worse. It's just going to be different and taking the time to process that and feel like you actually have some agency in it as well. So I think that's the other thing I'm the woman that I work with and speak to that this sense of helplessness is that motherhood is happening to them.

Katrina Court: 7:55

To me yeah, yeah, exactly, and yeah, and I think that's perpetuated as well by society and by the expectations and the standards that we see. And therefore, if we don't match up to what we're seeing or what's being deemed as a good mom, then that's where we then start to feel like we're failing. When we're not, we're just finding our way.

Kayla Huszar: 8:25

What would you define as some of those kind of like normal and I use air quotes for those of you who are not watching the video part of it so like the normal parts of that transition that can feel sticky and hard and but that it is kind of normal and that it does need to be processed or responded to in a way that feels like you have agency or feels like you have waste in it.

Katrina Court: 8:55

Yeah, that's a really good question, I think. I think first of all it's worth saying that, you know, retreat is the universal experience but we will all experience it very differently and what is right for one mother isn't right for another, and some changes we will feel strongly, others we won't. So it is really unique and I think knowing that is kind of the first step of actually feeling that you can take some control. Because if you constantly comparing to what everyone else is feeling or doing, then it's quite easy to feel that you're powerless if you're not matching up to that. But yes, some typical things, kind of feeling that you're lost, you've lost your own self, but you don't really know who this new person is or where you're going. Quite often kind of that happens well, when you kind of first come out of that early motherhood fog and then you think, oh, hang on a minute, what about? What about me? Who am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? So that's really common Feeling invisible and less valued.

Katrina Court: 9:59

You know, a lot of women struggle with this kind of label of, oh, I'm just a mom now, whether having to take pause in their careers or just kind of you know, making changes to. You know their, you know their lifestyle, that can be a really big one. He'll kind of feeling guilty for wanting time away from your children, maybe go back to work, and there's a lot of shame sometimes. That comes, you know, with that. Oh my God, you know I love my child. You know I just need a bit of time for me.

Katrina Court: 10:36

Relationship changes, whether that's your relationship with your partner or even with family. You know, I experienced my relationship with my own mom. That was a real friction point and kind of how we navigate that Feeling unexpected emotions, emotions that are not allowed in air, quotes like grief and anger and resentment, frustration. How dare I feel these things? As a mom, I'm meant to be happy and blissful and content and grateful. So I think understanding that there is room for both, that you know that ambivalence is a normal part of matressants and it's something that I yeah, I feel very strongly. That kind of maternal ambivalence isn't spoken about enough, because it's so normal, because it is a lot, and you're just figuring it all out, you know, and two things can be true at the same time.

Kayla Huszar: 11:45

That really struck a chord with me, and so if someone is listening right now and they've taken a big deep breath of like, okay, this is like these things are typical of the matressants or the motherhood experience, you know, what do they need to know to navigate through it, who are the people they need to talk to, or what are the things they need to be doing to process all of that?

Katrina Court: 12:11

So I think, first of all, just being aware that it's an on first step, take a deep breath. You're not alone. It's not talked about enough, because what happens when we don't understand what's happening is that we don't talk about it. We put on a mask and we carry on as if we've got. You know, everything together and everything is fine. So I would say, you know, as uncomfortable as it feels finding a space where you feel safe to be able to talk about some of the way that you're feeling, whether that is through professional channels or through friendships, families, you know, I think back to my kind of early first part of days and kind of going to, like mom and baby groups and we talked about everything apart from how we were feeling as as moms, you know, we would rather talk about who, then talk about the way that we were feeling, and I've always said, you know, if I could go back and do one thing differently in that space is I would pluck up the courage to try and talk about it. So that that's kind of one thing, I think.

Katrina Court: 13:30

The second is really approaching this with kindness and self compassion. We are our own worst critic most of the time and it's so easy for us to focus on the things where we feel that we are falling short and not so easy to think of all the things that we're doing well. And something that I often encourage my clients to do is, along with a gratitude journal who a lot of people now do is in that same journal, at the end of the day, just to write down three things that you feel proud of that day as a mom. And it could be the tiniest thing, you know, and mine right now, is something. I've got a four year old who really knows how to push my buttons, and so quite often mine is you know, I've just handled something where I didn't snap out, you know. So they don't have to be good, but just reminding yourself that you're learning. This is a learning curve and, by the way, you know, metresense doesn't just end with that kind of that six week post-partum chat. It's ongoing, because in every new stage of motherhood you are a new mom again. You know, you're a mom to a newborn, then you're a mom to a preschooler, then you're a new mom to someone that goes to school, then you're a new mom to a teenager, so the cycle continues. So, yeah, treating yourself with kindness, self compassion and questioning or interrogating kind of that in a mean mom of ways that comes out so open. She loves to come out and shame us Taking the time to just reflect as well on these changes.

Katrina Court: 15:22

Sometimes they happen slowly and we don't notice and then all of a sudden we look up ourselves in the mirror and think who are you? And that can kind of be a bit of a shock. So kind of trying to find small pockets of time to just how are we feeling today? How am I feeling about X compared to how I did two weeks ago, and kind of taking regular check-ins with yourself as well and kind of help you see how you're growing, because it is, it's a, it can be a time for huge, you know, personal growth, but it, you know it comes with its uncomfortable moments as well.

Kayla Huszar: 16:01

Yes, and I have so much grace and gentleness for yourself in those tough moments, because I think a lot of well, a lot of my clients, you know, share with me that they want to avoid the tough moment. They just they want to try to do everything to prevent it, which creates this real. I must prepare for everything. I must sacrifice a lot of myself in order to, you know, have the right dinner on the table so that we avoid the meltdown at supper time, so that we avoid the horrible bedtime, so that we avoid.

Kayla Huszar: 16:32

You know, there's this cycle of you know I must give all of myself over to this so that I can prevent any uncomfortable or tough moments which can create so much pressure on you know, some of us who really struggle with things like perfectionism or emotional regulations, where, in that you're trying so hard to prevent something from happening.

Kayla Huszar: 17:01

When it does happen, you're so depleted and then that's where the showing up, like you don't want to show up moments happen, right Like yelling or slamming or you know this like this feeling just comes out of you because it's not, it's been kind of lingering in the background and not totally paid attention to which I have been in these moments. That's why I say it like that right, there's been many moments in my own motherhood where I've gone through periods of not reflecting, not checking in, not feeling like I had agency, feeling like everything was happening to me and that I was just along for the ride. And then time has this funny way of passing by and then you're faced with a moment, you're faced with this new moment where you don't show up the way that you want to, and then that mean, that mean voice then comes in and you know is you should have been doing this. You should have done that. Why did you do?

Katrina Court: 18:03

that, yeah, I feel that that resonates a lot with me and I think also, you know, we come into motherhood with a lot of expectations for a for what the experience is going to be, but also what we're going to be like as mothers, and I think that's another big mindset shift actually is actually taking the time to redefine what success looks like in motherhood.

Katrina Court: 18:25

What are the expectations that are actually yours and what expectations have you just kind of brought in kind of with you from whether that's from family, the way that you've seen it done with the way that you were parented, or, yeah, what you see in the media, social media? You know we come in carrying a lot of baggage already. When we don't reflect on that and when we don't filter out what is truly ours, based on our own values, and what actually belongs to someone else, that can cause a lot of friction, as you say, because then we have more of those moments where we don't show up the way that we we think we should. We think there's a lot. It's it's not always easy to do this work as well. It's working through things that actually were completely unrelated to motherhood from earlier, in my own childhood or my teens and then all of a sudden they just start to show up in other ways with your children, and I think that's why, going back to that, just being gentle, so, so gentle and compassionate towards ourselves.

Kayla Huszar: 19:38

So we're doing a lot with big job it is and you know the stakes are high.

Kayla Huszar: 19:46

The learning curve is steep and the stakes are high because how I mother now with an eight-year-old and a four-year-old is very different than how I mothered with just a two-year-old or just a six-month-old, or a four-year-old, five-year-old and a six-month-old.

Kayla Huszar: 20:06

It's different at every stage and every one of your children if you have more than one is also different and needs a different parenting lens or needs a different parenting approach. Because you know, I say a lot to my new moms like you're strangers, like you haven't known each other for 10 months in the womb, but you know, in those early days, early months, that first year, like you're still getting to know each other and you don't know what is going to comfort them or in subsequent children, what comforts one might not comfort another. And it is incredibly important to not take some of that personally. And I think some of that is really connected to everything that you've said around expectations and the lens that we're viewing motherhood through and how that changes through time and just that you're getting to know not only each other but you're getting to know this new version of you different version.

Katrina Court: 21:14

Yeah, exactly Learning things about yourself as well that you did know, and yeah, you're so right. I think that not take well, we don't take the time to actually get to know each other and I mean kind of both our child, but also kind of ourselves is you can almost kind of like I'm kind of goes by and you just feel completely discombobulated because you think, oh, how should I get here? And then obviously then this kind of that work to then kind of process like how you just get there, but it's wonderful and it's crazy and it's messy and it's just all of the things. I went into motherhood kind of thinking one thing and it's turned out to be a hundred different other things. It can, as I said, it can be, I think, the making of us. It breaks us, but it does put us back together as well.

Kayla Huszar: 22:13

Oh, yes, yes, and I think that's really, I think that's a really powerful takeaway. You know that it will likely break you before it puts you back together again. When we resist the falling apart or the knowing how to put ourselves back together, or not knowing who or how or where we need to reach out for support in that process, can create some of that Helplessness, that hopelessness. But when we have the language for it, we have the language of struggle, of not doing it alone, of voicing those moments of shame or moments of guilt. Those are the pieces that are being put back together when we kind of break that silence and sometimes even the silence with ourselves. You know, I think in social media there's a lot of, you know, talk about talking outside of yourself.

Kayla Huszar: 23:11

You know getting professional support and how to do all of that, but I think also part of that process is breaking the silence inside.

Katrina Court: 23:20

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

Katrina Court: 23:23

I think that that's that's probably the most difficult step, because we don't want to admit to ourselves that we're struggling and we're finding it hard.

Katrina Court: 23:31

You know, I think also you know with with the generation that's kind of been brought up being told that we can be and do and have everything, and so when we get everything that we want and then we struggle, then we think we're doing something wrong.

Katrina Court: 23:47

So that's where the self-blame comes in and then that's what makes it so hard to speak out. So I think that's why I'm so passionate about normalizing conversations like this is what will normalize the bumps in the road that come with mattresses, and that this totally normal and that you're not alone and likely every mother that you meet will be facing some kind of struggle or challenge, even if she looks like she has it all together, and that there are places that you can go and reach out for support and kind of finding what works best for you. Some moms they really want to be kind of held in circle. For other moms it might be going to therapy. Other moms might thrive more with coaching because they feel that they're taking some actions themselves. So I think finding what support looks like for you as well is that's another big, important step, because it won't look the same for everyone.

Kayla Huszar: 24:58

Thank you so much, katrina, for being here with us. Thank you, I like to kind of do a I don't know what I call it kind of a rapid fire questions at the end, just for some fun. What's on your bedside table?

Katrina Court: 25:13

My bedside table I have a book called Motherhood Feminism on Feminist Business, which I only started reading yesterday. But yeah, I'm actually quite looking forward to bed time tonight, but I can get back into it Awesome.

Kayla Huszar: 25:30

What do you do for fun? Oh for fun.

Katrina Court: 25:35

Well, if it's fun by myself, then I love just wandering around galleries in London, going to Borough Market, which is like this amazing kind of food market, and walking along the riverside. So that would be kind of like my ideal kind of me date. And if it's kind of fun with my family, then, to be honest, the moment my daughter's four so she just wants to be outdoors. So yeah, so we've got some really lovely kind of parks to go by. So winter or autumn kind of changing the seasons, running around, kicking the ball around, something like that.

Kayla Huszar: 26:16

What do you do for creativity or self-expression?

Katrina Court: 26:21

So, creativity I dabble a little bit in interior design but obviously that doesn't kind of give me that much scope to kind of keep going over things. But I do love interior and self-expression, normally through writing, so that's kind of my outlet. Yeah, I love my journal and my blogs and all that kind of stuff.

Kayla Huszar: 26:48

And where can people find you?

Katrina Court: 26:52

So people can come and find me either on Instagram I'm at Katrina Court under school coach or my website is katrinacourtcoachingcom. So, yeah, they're probably the best ways to come and say hi.

Kayla Huszar: 27:11

Awesome, and I will include all those links in the notes below. Thank you so much, katrina, for being here with us, and thank you all for listening and hanging out with us today.

Katrina Court: 27:21

Thank you so much. It's been lovely to chat. Thanks, Katrina.

Kayla Huszar: 27:24

Bye.