From maiden to mother: birthing a new self

My mom shared this article in the New Yorker with me about author Lucy Jones' new book Maternescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood. In her book, Jones explains how giving birth and becoming a mother alters your brain comparable to what goes on in puberty during adolescence. When you give birth to your baby you are physically giving birth to a new brain. How a woman's brain composition and chemistry is affected by childbirth and child rearing is a topic and area of research that has received little attention! This article left me completely in awe of mothers everywhere and the magic of the female body: how innately selfless and adaptable it is. 

Some of my best friends have recently become mothers, and I’ve had the privilege to bear witness not only to their new babes but to the new versions of themselves they have birthed. 

With all new life there is a death, though rarely talked about it is an essential part of the process: the death of who you used to be. The death of the maiden as you transition to the mother archetype. I have watched my friends mourn their past selves while they begin to get to know the new versions they’re meeting in the mirror. Like the infant, the mother is navigating a whole new world, learning how their new body and mind works. There are tears and the fears that they're not doing enough (oh but they are!) and then there comes the surrender to fumbling in the dark, trusting that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that they will finally feel like they’ve got a handle on this new way of being.

I’m watching now as the soft light of summer illuminates the path and my friends find their footing, blossoming into motherhood like the hydrangeas in June. It is a reminder again that although we have evolved, we are not separate from nature and its primal cycles of Life/Death/Life. In her book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes this cycle as a means of letting go and waiting for the rebirth. We have to surrender and believe that after a death, there will soon be a rebirth.

The Birth of Venus painting by Sandro Botticelli

We have so much to gain when we surrender ourselves so freely in the name of love and trust in life’s cycles. As I watch my beautiful friends birthing and raising this next generation, I can already feel all the love they are putting out into the world and it brings me hope and excitement and reminds me what a miracle this life really is!

To the mamas reading this, thank you for your selflessness. I see you ❤️

Big Hugs,

Syd