By Author, Benita Bensch
It’s easy to look at it objectively now.
There I was, relatively isolated on a property in rural Queensland, a mum to four in four years, a history of mental illness, feeling less-than and disconnected to my body and mind. I’d set aside my aspirations and interests beyond motherhood and our farm business, and I was trying to live up to being a perfect mother.
The distance between who I’d been and who I was felt like an abyss.
I grieved for the freedom I used to have. I dreamed of running outside for as far and long as I wanted to, with no regard for the time or anyone else’s needs. I longed to go somewhere with ease and no preparation.
I was in awe of my new battle-scarred body and what it had achieved, and I also grieved for my pre-baby body. I wanted to feel fit and confident in my own skin again. I grieved the loss of my confidence and the way my mind once worked. I longed for my old relationship with my husband, for control, for space, for a full night’s sleep.
There was a definite sense of loss. At my worst it felt like wandering alone in the dark, the feeling of being lit up a distant memory.
My heart was full of love but my inner fire was smouldering.
I didn’t know who I was anymore, what I wanted, or how to get it.
In my years of working with mothers, I’ve heard similar words time and again, including ‘I feel lost’, ‘I feel like I’ve lost myself’ and ‘I’ve lost my spark.’
Before motherhood, many women hold a self-image tied to paid work, a profession, a role, or a social identity that feels visible and valued. That was the case for me too. My sense of self had always been closely tied to my doing. It felt safe to achieve. It was my way of being seen. Then came being a mother to four precious little human beings. The phrase ‘you’ve kept your children alive today’ appeased me a little, but I wanted to feel the old sense of achievement I’d found in my career.
The seismic transition of matrescence shakes that picture. When the old markers of being seen vanish, we can feel invisible and undervalued. Our bodies change. Our priorities tilt, values shift. Our days revolve around the relentless needs of another and our sense of worth is tested. Our brain changes in pregnancy, and those changes last a lifetime.
Self-image in matrescence is not cosmetic, it’s existential. Matrescence – the bio-psycho-social-political-spiritual transition a woman undergoes to become a mother – is a transformative experience we can’t fully understand until we live through it. It remakes us from the inside out.
It’s natural that at first this evolution can feel like loss. We grieve freedom, space, the bodies we once knew, mental clarity, relationships untouched by the weight of responsibility. We can long to go back to the woman we were. I felt the instinctive pull to find my way back to what felt good and familiar before motherhood.
I assumed the only place to look was behind me.
When instead, the identity shift of matrescence is not a one-time event but an ongoing rhythm of shedding, stretching, becoming, again and again.
Even if we feel lost, uncertain, or invisible, this too is part of our metamorphosis.
Our self-image will stretch and re-shape many times, just as our children grow and change before our eyes. Each shedding, each shift, is another layer of our becoming visible. As we evolve, we can love and honour the woman we were before children, while also allowing space for our new self-image to take shape. We can embrace gratitude for wherever we are right now and our previous versions of self.
I now know that motherhood is an and game, and claiming that can be a game changer.
My early years of motherhood were predominantly filled with light: love, awe, beauty, precious moments, and lessons that shaped me. There was also dark: guilt, shame, rage, grief. That is okay, natural, normal. I can be grateful and have moments of rage.
I can be a good mother and not love mothering at all times. I can mourn my old self and learn to love the next version of self I’m becoming.
Motherhood brings forth extraordinary gains and capabilities we don’t anticipate or might never have discovered otherwise. Every day, we improvise, negotiate, learn, and grow. We learn things about ourselves we couldn’t have known beforehand, and we become someone new in the process. It’s hard and an opportunity to keep meeting ourselves anew.
Benita Bensch is a rural author, motherhood studies practitioner, coach and director of her family’s farming business near Moama, NSW. She is the author of Seen Again: Light on Matrescence (The Kind Press), which explores matrescence through memoir, research and the stories of Australian mothers.
