Why Motherhood Is a Metamorphosis with Lucy Jones

Introduction and Welcome

Britta Bushnell: [Alright?], hello folks and welcome to Transformed by Birth, a podcast about the rite of passage of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. I'm your host, Britta Bushnell, author, mythologist, childbirth educator and an all around deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here today. We're talking about metamorphosis, motherhood and the changing mother brain, body, life. So grab your comfy beverage of choice or take us along for a walk as we connect with award winning journalist and the author of Matrescence, Lucy Jones. Before we begin, we start the way we always do by lighting a candle. If you want to join me, please do, or just take a breath as I light mine. Today's candle is in honor of the metamorphosis of motherhood. Metamorphosis. It's the word we use for when a caterpillar transforms and becomes a butterfly or moth. Contained within that single word is a world of transformational restructuring and profound change, and yet few use that language for what happens when someone becomes a mother. When talking about pregnancy and birth, it's often framed as "adjusting to motherhood." There is talk about the transition to parenthood, but metamorphosis — that word can feel, I don't know, maybe too dramatic, too complete, too honest, maybe about what is actually happening, and yet, this is exactly how my guest today and I both feel and refer to what happens during the period of becoming a mother, the period of great change, increasingly known as matrescence. My guest today is Lucy Jones, an award winning journalist and the author of four books, including the best selling Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild, and most recently, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood, which was longlisted for the inaugural Women's Prize for Nonfiction and named a New Yorker and New Statesman Book of the Year. Lucy's book Matrescence takes seriously the biological, social and general life upheaval that happens in motherhood. As someone who has spent decades in birth work, I've watched mothers navigate this metamorphosis while being told by societal messages, healthcare providers, and even well meaning friends and family that what they're "going through" is just baby blues, or that they should bounce back soon enough, or that this is simply a new chapter they're going through. Lucy's work names this transition for what it is — a transformation at the most fundamental levels. Welcome, Lucy. I am so honored to be here with you, and I'm feeling emotional about it. I'm just — your work lights me up and feels so important. And as I said to you before we hit record, I think it's been a really vital element of helping shift the conversation and illuminating this topic of matrescence that is so essential for what's going on and what's happening when we become mothers.

Lucy Jones: Thank you so much, Britta, thank you for having me. It's so nice to be here with you.

Naming the Metamorphosis: Why Matrescence Matters

Britta Bushnell: It's just truly wonderful. So Lucy, we use the word metamorphosis to describe what happens when someone becomes a mother. Both of us do. Can you talk a little bit about what that metamorphosis actually entails — biologically, socially, psychologically, spiritually? I don't know, pick one, pick four. What — what's going on?

Lucy Jones: Well, I think, you know, you're kind of summing it up with, you know, all those different kind of words — all the different facets of the experience. You know, it's physical, as you say, psychological, emotional, social, existential, relational. And when I had my first child and was going through this first metamorphosis, the reason that I was really kind of drawn to that word was because of a story by Kafka — you know, The Metamorphosis, where the main character is like a salesman, and he turns into an enormous beetle overnight in his room, and he has no idea what's happened to him, but he's just become this huge insect, and he's kind of locked in his room away from everyone, and he's isolated and kind of freaked out. I became obsessed with rereading this story, because I felt, you know, I could identify with him, and I felt that I turned into something I was not expecting. And you know, that culture and society were denying. So what does it entail? Well, I suppose there are things you can say about, you know, what it does entail for most people, but then it's obviously also an extremely individual experience as well. I was pregnant with my children, but of course, not all mothers are. But if a mother is pregnant and gives birth to their child, then we now know that there is a huge dramatic impact on the brain — the hormones that you and your listeners will know this — but this kind of seismic endocrinology events which happens through pregnancy, and which we're only just starting to slightly understand, sculpts and fine tunes and, yeah, kind of rewires the brain so that we can do what we need to do, which is look after a baby. And that, for me, was so helpful to learn about when my baby was, I think, nine months old, and the first major kind of landmark, groundbreaking study came out around the year before, which found that pregnancy renders significant, long lasting changes to the brain. And, you know, before I read that science, I knew something had happened. Like I could tell that my brain was different. I'm not talking about, you know, the stereotype of baby brain, because that — that's effectively been, you know, put in the bin. I mean, of course there'll be some, some memory loss and sleep deprivation kind of can affect cognition. But the, you know, the misogynistic idea of baby brain is just not true. Like, in fact, our brains in motherhood and pregnancy are becoming, you know, better at what they need to do.

The Maternal Brain: Neuroplasticity, Synaptic Pruning, and Diffuse Awareness

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. I mean, I don't know about you, but I felt that in my — in my brain. I remember feeling that energy coming at me from messages about baby brain, and feeling a certain element of pregnancy brain, or mother brain, that was about not being able to follow the linearity of information type thinking, but my ability to track sort of widespread awareness — what I often think of as diffused awareness — like being able to track and understand what's happening in a huge span of area. And like even to this day, my children live thousands of miles away from me, and I feel like I can track them to a certain degree from thousands of miles away. Like, I have what I refer to as my mommy alarm that will sometimes go off, and I'll reach out to my child who lives on the other side of the country and be like, "Y'all right? What's happening?" Because there's this, like, diffused or broad awareness that feels like a change. It's not that my ability to track and keep, you know, my bullet point lists well tidied — isn't — you know — that came back for me, but it was lost to a certain degree early on, but it was replaced with something that really deeply mattered.

Lucy Jones: So well put. And I think that's — that's part of the conversation and the transformation that we just don't really know or think about. Often you have a focus on, you know, in the kind of reports of these studies, like loss of gray matter, and people hear that and they think, "Oh, mothers just become stupid," because that's the kind of, you know, dominant right stereotype. But actually that means something completely different. It's synaptic pruning, and it's kind of a fine tuning — you know, like you say, changing, changing how the brain works. Yeah, I love that word "diffuse." That's —

Britta Bushnell: — that's how it felt. It felt like it went from being able to be really pointed to being broad, diffused — like that, the ability to track what was happening on the other side of the house while cooking dinner.

Lucy Jones: Yeah, totally, and —

Britta Bushnell: — that heightened.

Lucy Jones: Yeah, yeah. I really get that too.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah.

Lucy Jones: I mean, I feel like I could talk for kind of an hour on each of the, you know, different facets of it, but the brain stuff, you know, it's so interesting. But, you know, it's just one part, isn't it, and it intersects with all of the other different ones. So you mentioned social, and I think, you know, the social aspect of becoming a mother is huge, and it feeds into the brain changes. So in this transformation, the brain becomes kind of, you know, more plastic in a way that it does in adolescence. So you have kind of the neuroplasticity. But that also means, as we understand it too in adolescence, vulnerability — and particularly vulnerability to severe stress. I mean, you might know Pilyoung Kim ["pill young Kim" in transcript — please verify] — she's done lots of work on this. I think she's actually on the West Coast. And we know that brains — you know, people who experience severe stress, so whether that's poverty or domestic violence, racism, parenting struggles like a child who's not well — that moment of the brain changing puts the kind of added vulnerability on. So you can see how these kind of social circumstances and the structures of our society, you know, are so — it's so interrelated. But then, you know, you have it. I guess the psychological aspect — huge, like massive, but quite individual. I guess, like, you know, how you were parented, and how — you know, I feel like everything is up for grabs in this.

Britta Bushnell: Yes, everything is up for grabs.

Social Isolation and the Village We Were Promised

Britta Bushnell: I mean, it makes me think — you were just talking about the social, and one of the things that comes up for me, and that I think about, is the kind of statement that we need a village. You know, you hear this sort of yelled at new moms all the time — find your village, build your village, village, village, village. And yet there's actually so much isolation in motherhood. And I mean that's — that's not necessarily about brain changes socially, but there is this — in terms of metamorphosis — what do you think the relationship with metamorphosis and this dance between what it is that we're craving, this feeling of a village, you know, with the capital V, everybody talks about it like it is a thing, and what what is often really felt as profound isolation?

Lucy Jones: Yes, it's such a good point. I read a statistic recently that was so shocking. It was that many new mothers spend eight hours alone every day with their babies. And that was absolutely my experience for the first few years, really. And we are social animals. So expecting a person to be on their own for eight hours a day doesn't really make any sense, if you think about, you know, how we evolved in collective caregiving networks, where studies of kind of contemporary hunter gatherers suggest that between 10 and 15 allomothers ["Aloe mothers" in transcript — corrected] may be helping the mother with the baby, and that the mother might be responding to the baby perhaps half the time. Doesn't —

Britta Bushnell: — that make you just, like, green with envy?

Lucy Jones: And it makes sense, doesn't it?

Britta Bushnell: It makes so much sense. So much sense. You mentioned in your book like that you saw communities of church people or other cultures within your society that did it differently, and how that was kind of interesting and exciting to you to see, but it wasn't what you experienced.

Collective Caregiving, Cultural Support, and the Loneliness of Patriarchal Capitalism

Lucy Jones: No. I think it was quite protective of them as well. So, yeah, I moved to a kind of small town outside London when my baby was about three weeks old, which I would not recommend. Yeah. I know. I had, you know, a friend whose family were in Nigeria, and another whose family were in India, and one in Pakistan, and they had a family member often coming over for months to live with them, and even kind of six months or so on to kind of support them. And I found that just so fascinating. It was so different to what was in my kind of white western Christian ecosystem. And I also saw in friends of mine who were active members of churches that they would have support too. And I think there's something — that it wasn't really until I had this experience of the profound isolation and loneliness of new mothers in patriarchal capitalism that I really — it really radicalized me. And I really thought, okay, this, you know, this system and structure is cruel. Actually, it doesn't work. I remember thinking in those early months, like, my nervous system just is not — I'm not evolved for this level of — I mean, I had, I suppose, what you might say is a kind of highly sensitive or high needs baby, and so there was a lot, you know, other things going on for sure. But my sense, since, you know, publishing Matrescence, is that this is very common.

Britta Bushnell: I think it's very common. As somebody who's been in this field for 25 years, I see it a lot. And I also see a longing for it to be different, and a lot of suggestions and opportunities coming in to say, try it this way instead, that are sometimes based in other cultures. You know, books that are being written and programs being created that are saying, "Here, try your early postpartum period in this way, using, you know, this kind of idea, or this kind of idea, and make these kinds of foods and have this kind of support." And I've also found that those can kind of create, at times, for some people, really high expectations that they can kind of copy paste onto a Western, patriarchal, capitalistic culture — something that hasn't been woven in societally and culturally — and then it ends up being an ideal that, again, fails them.

Copy-Pasting Rituals: When Postpartum Practices Become Another Ideal

Lucy Jones: So interesting. I think about this idea a lot — like how a ritual around becoming a mother, or a rite, or some way of — some ceremony, or some way of holding the newborn mother could come out of kind of Western society. Like, I know, and I, you know, I've heard you talk on your podcast about, you know, we have the mother blessing and the baby shower and all that. But I wonder if it's even possible.

Britta Bushnell: And those aren't doing enough. So, I mean, those are, those are sort of stand ins that kind of leave us wanting rather than fulfilled.

Lucy Jones: Exactly. I mean, and I think it speaks to this, you know, this kind of post colonial, neo colonial — you know, we're in this kind of at the end of this kind of 500 years of like, violent extractive capitalism, which has run roughshod on environments and, you know, global majority peoples and women. And it's quite hard from that, you know, in that wake or in the ashes of that, to imagine — I feel it myself, like I — I have got some a kind of a village, for sure, like, I have made friends where I am. But I also know that I'm, like, pathologically incapable of asking for help. Or, like, you know, I'd like to help people, but I also am quite introverted and probably very selfish. And, you know, I find it hard to do anything for the basic essentials of raising a family and working — at the moment my kids are still quite young. So it's interesting to me, like, how that spark could happen without, like you say, it being a kind of copy and paste job. Or, I don't know — what do you — I mean —

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, I'm — I'm still exploring it as well. I mean, I know that many of my clients find great support and help in doing like a lying in period, or a — there's, you know, the five days in the bed, five days on the bed, five days around the bed kind of process. And then I also have had clients who try that and find that actually they need to get out, and they need to walk to the coffee shop, and they need sunshine, and that the idealization that has been fed to them, that they need to do in a particular way, backfires. And by one of the things that I loved in your book is you unpack a lot of idealism — you look at a lot of the ways that. That we have ingested these messages of ideal pregnancy, ideal birth, ideal motherhood, and and how, how so much of that can actually really start to wear on us and make things harder.

The Cruelty of Idealization: Breastfeeding, Shame, and the Landmines of Motherhood

Lucy Jones: So much. I find it — it's so cruel, in a way, the kind of the idealization, because it's, you know, it creates, like, actual, you know, tangible, real issues. Because, you know, it sets people up. And I think, you know, one of the things that makes me so angry is how many women I know who've given birth, however they've given birth, and they go into this time of wild vulnerability and rawness, having, you know, done this momentous thing, feeling like failures. Like, I just find that just like — makes my stomach turn.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, well, and I've already told you I'm tender today, so it makes my ears prick with tears.

Lucy Jones: Yeah.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. It's really tender.

Lucy Jones: It's so cruel.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. To go in — we're already so profoundly vulnerable, and then to feel like, from the get go, like we're already failing —

Lucy Jones: Yeah.

Britta Bushnell: — is such a setup by these systems that keep us small.

Lucy Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Britta Bushnell: Not individual failure. It's systemic failure of us, not the other way around.

Lucy Jones: And it almost kind of — I mean, I might sound a bit paranoid, but it kind of feels like a bit like a punishment. It's like you give birth, or, you know, you grow a person — pretty big deal — and then, you know, all these precious expectations, you know, come in. It kind of feels a bit like there's something weird going on, but it's so denigrated and minimized and, you know, under invested in, under researched.

Britta Bushnell: Hugely. And it makes me want to read a passage from your book back to you. So just let me do that, if I can, if you're okay with that. So I'm going to read from a passage that I underlined and starred and made notes. It's got a tab because it really just knocked the wind out of me, which is: "Caring for a child is a uniquely weighty and serious pursuit. Even with the desire to parent equally, the fact remains that mothers are still the primary caregivers, especially at the beginning of life. I was responsible for the literal survival of an actual human person. The dissonance between what I felt in myself — that this was a big deal — and what I felt society and culture were telling me — that this was not valuable work, although you have to get it totally right — was bewildering." I mean, it is part of that dissonance that we're talking about.

Lucy Jones: Yeah, there are so many paradoxes in this area, isn't there? And it's so maddening and bewildering. And, you know, I feel like I've been able to loosen some of the idealism from myself. I feel that I've managed to shake some of that off, you know, and just kind of lower expectations and realize that we live in a time of kind of a socially constructed idea of intensive motherhood, and, you know, perfect motherhood, total motherhood — how it like — sociologists obviously call it —

Britta Bushnell: — your picking —

Lucy Jones: — things exactly, you know. And that this, you know, it's romantic — you know, with the capital R — it's a kind of romanticized, idealized depiction of the maternal experience, which, you know, sets women up to fail. And I think, you know, there's so much shame in that as well. I certainly felt it, particularly with like breastfeeding. So I really struggled to exclusively breastfeed, and I had to mix feed. And you know that absolutely — it really soured and kind of really messed up those early months, because I felt that, you know, I was failing her, and there hadn't been enough — there hadn't been the adequate information about feeding. And anyway, I mean, it just felt like the idea was that, you know, if you fed all the time, you would have enough milk and be able to feed your baby and everything would be great. And my experience was that I hadn't slept for many days, and I was feeding all the time, but there was a physical problem for me, and then —

Britta Bushnell: — is that, did that create the that spiral of kind of the equations that we make that say, if I can feed my baby with my body, I am a good mom — that means that if that equation breaks, the opposite happens, which is, if I can't feed my baby, I am a bad mom — we get swung into that shame cycle that isn't about what we're doing or not doing, but what we're telling ourselves about our worth?

Lucy Jones: Exactly. And I think there are so many things like that. They're kind of like —

Lucy Jones: Oh my —

Britta Bushnell: — land mines everywhere in motherhood, about this.

Lucy Jones: Exactly. And, you know, and there's so much ideology around them, and kind of ideas like — more like social ideas — or they become kind of sites of these kind of idealized, invented ideas of womanhood and motherhood, which aren't real, but they're so — it's kind of interesting to me, how, how powerful those ideas are. You know, since publishing Matrescence, I have heard — I've been so lucky. I mean, you will have had similar having worked with women for so long — but I've heard from probably thousands now of women in the last couple of years. And I get one of the patterns that comes through in this correspondence is a sense of relating to things that I wrote in the book, which are quite honest and open, and saying, "I felt so much shame about experiencing these things" — whether it's just whatever, any any struggles with kind of the metamorphosis — and a sense that they haven't been able to speak it in public or with other people. So I think this repression and denial of the full experience of matrescence and pregnancy, birth and early motherhood is so — it's so like strong and tough. But also quite easily broken, I think, because — you can, if you have a conversation with someone and they are just real and honest, or if you listen to a podcast and someone's talking and sharing, you know, their experience, or reading a book — those things really give me hope. You know, that's how we can break down this shame. I don't know — what do you think?

Breaking the Shame: Honest Stories and the Power of Connection

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, I mean, it's — it's interesting because I hear — my work, as I think you know, is a lot about unpacking some of that idealism around birth and preparing for birth, not from a place of creating a script for birth to follow, but more really, preparing to go through the challenges, the ordeals, the beauty, the full multi faceted possibilities of what can unfold. And pretty much inherent within that is the unpredictable — that which you cannot prepare for in terms of the specifics, but preparing for: what do I do when I don't know what to do? And to me, that's a big part of what it is we need in birth and new parenthood — is not how do I follow the scripts or make my bullet point lists more detailed, but more how do I show up for myself when it feels like it's not doing what I want it to do. And so I hear from parents and and folks that I work with that they — I mean, that's that's an important part of what they're doing with me. And then in the postpartum period, I hear the stories of going to baby groups. You share about some in your book — going to baby groups — and that they kind of fall on one of two tracks, which is a track of what I would call motherhood bashing, where it's like, all they want to talk about is how hard it is — the baby, baby sleep — or it's, it's highly baby focused on what's hard, which is different than what's hard for us as the parent. Or it is the rose colored glasses version, where they're just singing the praises of the beauty of the process. And what I feel like is missing is the opportunity for nuance and individualism in either of those groups. So I've heard parents who go to the group that is bashing how hard everything is, and they feel like they can't talk because some things are going well, and so they feel isolated, because some things feel really easy for them, and they don't want to speak it because they don't want to limit what's being said. Or those who go to the rose colored glasses group and are like, "Wow, nobody's talking about how hard this is." So it's, it's like, I want to pop the bubbles on both sides and create spaces where we aren't in competition or comparison, but are really replacing comparison with curiosity, yeah, and compassion.

Mother-Centered Groups and Creating Postpartum Community

Lucy Jones: Yeah? Do you think a way of doing that is — I know that this — there's quite a few of these in England, and they're growing — having mother centered groups. So kind of groups focused on the subjective experience of mothers, whether it's through kind of writing or craft or, you know, something that's — it's not a baby group. It's — or a mother or father group, you know, something which —

Britta Bushnell: Yes.

Lucy Jones: — and that says this is about, we're going to talk about you — how you're doing, or if you want to —

Britta Bushnell: Yeah.

Lucy Jones: — because that —

Britta Bushnell: — yes. I think that's a huge piece. I used to run a six week postpartum group where it was a closed group. So that meant that you couldn't just drop in to group number five and start fresh. It was — you signed up for the whole six weeks and committed to it, because I wanted that feeling of "we're building something, and we're deepening together," and the drop in possibility creates more of that performative piece that I feel actually can be toxic to new mothers. And so yeah, it was a closed group. We had specific topics that built over six weeks, and every week had a story, an archetypal story, that we used as an entry point into conversation, and then we had interactive things that we would do. I loved it, and people felt really — there was — it was a very different kind of conversation. It was not about baby sleep. Now, sometimes that would happen when we would have a snack break — great, I loved that. But when we were in group conversation, it was about them.

Lucy Jones: Oh — oh, I wish I — I wish I could have been in your groups when I was having my babies. Or, I said it to you before, but so — I so wish I'd had your book or your podcast. Because yeah, and like, what you were saying just now about unpredictability — like, that, I think that's such a strong reality of birth — unpredictability — and —

Britta Bushnell: — and parenthood.

Lucy Jones: And parenthood. I —

Britta Bushnell: — you experienced it with nursing.

Lucy Jones: Exactly. And I think I mean —

Britta Bushnell: — that wasn't something you planned.

Lucy Jones: Not at all. I mean, and I guess there is probably something inherently counter cultural about like, the inherent unpredictability of particularly, probably birth in a way — that it's kind of frightening to the dominant culture, because we want to be able to control, you know — we control, and we can optimize, and we can buy whatever we need to, like, fix things and, you know, find hacks. And, you know, that's how the neoliberal psyche works. But the chaos of birth — you know, matrescence — kids, like, I'm used to it now. I kind of, you know, you just get used to the, you know, the fact that every day you never know what's happened, and every day has to be a gift. And they just, you know, that's it.

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Gift, Slog, and the Existential Weight of Parenthood

Britta Bushnell: You a gift or a slog? Sometimes it doesn't feel like a gift. It feels like you're slogging through the mud. Sometimes — let's say it like it is, right? Sometimes you're not going, "Gosh, it's a gift of a day" — no, sometimes it's like, "I want to get to bedtime."

Lucy Jones: I mean, yeah, you're right. Like, for me, it was a slog for many, many years. But I think when I say that — and I'm absolutely not trying to sugar —

Britta Bushnell: — I know you're not a Pollyanna —

Lucy Jones: I'm not, I'm not. Almost like I say that because — more about the unpredictability of life and death and chaos, and how there's something about having a child, which, for me anyway, brings you closer to the idea of mortality. And you know, for me, that was one of the most unsettling, disturbing aspects — was, you know, if something happened to my child — I've got three children — I would be in hell forever. That — that would be, you know, you're — I felt so vulnerable. But there's something that could happen where life would be like a living hell. And you know, that's really — for me, anyway — is very frightening to live with that. So when I say every day is a gift, I guess I'm thinking more — and, like, because I'm quite a morbid person who's quite worried about, you know, death and chaos.

Britta Bushnell: But I think — I think that that element of being brought close to sort of what I sometimes refer to as existential truths — it is kind of part of what happens when when we are facing ourselves in motherhood and when we are welcoming a baby. I mean, I tell a story in my book and in my classes that my teacher, my mentor, taught me, which is the Sumerian myth of Inanna's descent. And as part of that story, when she's descending to the underworld, her breastplate is taken from her. And this one always hits me really deeply emotionally, because there is a way in which our breastplate is taken from us when we step into motherhood because our heart is un-armored.

Lucy Jones: Yeah. That's so profound. I've never heard that story — that's so, yeah, wow.

The Myth of Inanna: Death, the Chrysalis, and What Matrescence Takes From Us

Britta Bushnell: We live without a breastplate. I mean, it's our — we feel like we can be mortally injured at any moment.

Lucy Jones: I did not expect that the — you know, the being, the existence that was blithe and carefree and wandering around in a kind of that when the baby was born, and that, to some extent, sent pregnant in pregnancy, that's gone, that person's gone, that's never gonna — so it's a, it's a case in a way of coming to terms with that. And, yeah, that's and, you know, that's why, I think the existential kind of dimension of this metamorphosis — I found that so useful. Like, there's a big textbook by someone called Claire Arnold-Baker ["Claire Arnold Baker" in transcript — hyphen added] about the existential experience of motherhood. And I love that because it was so — it's a lot of the things you talk about and the kind of existential dimensions, you know. That's, you know, almost like — when I was just before, talking about kind of death, now I'm thinking I shouldn't be talking about this as like a taboo subject, but of course that death's in the room. And of course mortality is — it's like, how would we — how could we think? Sometimes I think, like, before I had kids, I thought motherhood was kind of lame, or, like, mundane, or — it's such a gross thing to say, but it's true, like, this kind of had this, like, you know, the way it's depicted in culture, you know, that it's kind of bland or safe when, actually, you know, for me, it's like punk as —

Britta Bushnell: — fuck, as fuck. Yeah.

Lucy Jones: I don't know if we're doing that —

Britta Bushnell: We are, we can go there.

Lucy Jones: You know, wild and raw, and it's taken me to, like, the edges of — I've felt things I've never felt before. And in a way that makes me think, you know, where have all the stories and where were all the — I did English lit at uni, like, we never read anything from the maternal perspective. Or, I mean, we did read Beloved, actually — that was major. But what — so that ancient Sumerian story you just mentioned, is that, like, basically a story about matrescence and metamorphosis?

Britta Bushnell: It's — well, I mean, it's a story about a queen who descends to the underworld, meets her sister in the underworld, dies in the underworld, and journeys back out. And it is a phenomenal metaphor for matrescence. I mean, absolutely phenomenal. The peeling away of the upper world identity pieces is part of what happens. She goes on a journey to the underworld, and there's a bunch of gates, and at each of those gates, something is taken from her that matters to her. Yeah, right. And by the time she gets to the underworld, her sister is there — which is a common motif in myths and fairy tales, where there are siblings or twins who are living two different realities — and the one in the underworld is like, "You've been gone a long time, and you left me down here, and now I'm pissed," right? And there's — because we do put parts of ourselves in the underworld. And her sister looks on Inanna with the eye of death, and in that moment, she dies. And the queen of the underworld hangs her on a hook and leaves her there to rot, which is a lot like the experience of early parenthood — like a part of us dies. We, you know, we're talking about metamorphosis here, you and I, and we are kind of dancing around it, but part of what happens in the chrysalis is the caterpillar dies —

Lucy Jones: So true.

Britta Bushnell: — to its caterpillar self.

Lucy Jones: Yeah, it becomes the goo.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, it becomes the goo. Now, there are imaginal discs, imaginal cells. There are elements that stay —

Lucy Jones: Yeah.

Britta Bushnell: — but it does become goo.

Lucy Jones: So true. And —

Britta Bushnell: — that's like Inanna hanging on the hook.

Lucy Jones: Yeah.

Britta Bushnell: She's transfiguring.

Lucy Jones: I think they should give that story out at the antenatal appointments. Like, I don't know what you call them in the States, but —

Britta Bushnell: Prenatal.

Lucy Jones: Yeah, prenatal — you have like, prenatal care, and you go and you get like, leaflets about, like, you know, "breast is best, just feed the baby all the time, you'll be fine, blah blah blah." Like, nothing about, you know, healing from birth, nothing of any, you know, that useful. They should give that story out.

Britta Bushnell: I agree. Well, it's in my book — people can get it in my book. But yeah, I think it's an incredibly important way of helping us understand, you know, what you and I are talking about around this death, because there is a relationship. And, you know, I talk about sort of cultural myths in my book, and we've touched on a couple of them today — one being the very first one I address, which is that control and certainty one, and then another one that we're touching on now is the denial of death, and how much motherhood — parenthood, because I've seen it for non birthing people as well who become parents — have that feeling of dying to a part of themselves and a closeness with our mortality. So we're kind of talking about it in a couple of different ways, and I think all of those are real. And as well — we also need to acknowledge that for some people, there is a real, actual threat of real death.

Maternal Mortality, Racial Disparities, and Why Society Fails Mothers

Lucy Jones: Yeah, absolutely. And of course —

Britta Bushnell: — not just a metaphor.

Lucy Jones: And you know, those rates are not declining as they should be, and they're certainly not, you know, racially fair. I think it's women of color four times more likely to die in the UK. I think it's similar in the States.

Britta Bushnell: It's very similar in the States.

Lucy Jones: You know, and the fact that that's not a national emergency. But I wonder if there's something about this — this closeness to death — which is, I'm always trying to work out in my head, like, why are we so neglectful and kind of cruel to mothers? Like, why — for example, in England, like, over half our maternity wards are deemed unsafe. Why is the public space so hostile? Like, there's no benches, you can't sit down and feed, there's no changing spaces, you can't go on a train with a buggy — like, but it's just like — you become a mother and it's like you're just treated, I think, so badly in society. The fact that birth can be so, you know, the veil is there — the possibility of death is there, you know — it's quite frightening, I think, on one level, to society and culture. Like, in the dependent infant and all the blood and all the, you know, the whole thing is bodily fluids — it's a kind of reminder of our creatureliness and our dependence —

Britta Bushnell: — our animal nature. Yeah.

Lucy Jones: Exactly.

Britta Bushnell: — behind the human.

Lucy Jones: Exactly, exactly. And also our non individual reality — like, the fact we're not actually individuals. But also, you know, you look at the big kind of stories of masculine heroism and power, and it's all about, you know, big voyages and journeys and, you know, vanquishing death and almost dying. And, like, birth is something pretty majorly existential with where death's in the room. So I wonder if there's a kind of — I don't know — an envy, or a kind of —

Rites of Passage, New Names, and the Identity Shift of Matrescence

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. In my graduate studies in mythology — my program was mythological studies with an emphasis in psychology — so it was about looking at the myths and stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. So it's not like I know every, you know, obscure nymph in Greek mythology — that would be a classics degree. Mine was more about, sort of, more of the archetypal nature of things, and looking at rites of passage. I remember coming across — and I wonder exactly where it was — but coming across a passage that was looking at the similarity between rites of passage given to young men coming into adulthood and the journey of a young woman having a baby, and kind of a chicken or the egg question — like, was the rite of passage designed for the young men based on the one that these young women were getting kind of inherently through the passage of giving birth? Or are we utilizing the understanding of rites of passage, and now looking back on birth and saying, "Look, it's like a rite of passage" — well, wait a minute, which one? How do we know? Sometimes I think, like what you're pondering here — is there actually one that is built in for those of us who have children?

Lucy Jones: And that's why it feels so kind of traumatic when there is nothing — when there is no holding —

Britta Bushnell: No holding.

Lucy Jones: — training. I mean, the — you know, Dana Raphael, who coined the word matrescence in her essay, where she introduces this word, she writes about — and I'm sure you know — how most cultures and societies and human existence have had ways of holding, you know, the newborn mother and rituals. And I think she mentions the Tikopia people and how they announce "a mother is born." And that emphasis seems to be so missing in Western culture.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. I wrote in my dissertation about how part of a rite of passage is often the process of getting a new name. And you mentioned that in your book as well. And the new name that most of us get is mother, or mom, or mama, or mommy, or some version of that. And yet it goes from being a more individual name to this kind of collective name that sort of removes some of that individuality, but is a new name. So it's like — it's a — yes, there's a rite of passage element to it. You get a new name, but you also lose — lose this part of self. And I always think of that as — I don't know — it rocks me in that rite of passage reflection place.

Lucy Jones: But that's such a good point. There's, there's, like, a kind of, you know, common trope in England of, you know, the health visitor or the doctor at six weeks in will say, like, "How's mom?" you know. And everyone's like, what? Like, can you use my name now? And that's so common — I think, you know, doctors — but you know, "What does mom think?" Or — it's kind of funny, and in a way, you know, I know it's well intentioned. And there's —

Britta Bushnell: — something bugs me, though, I will admit.

Lucy Jones: But it — and it does. And I suppose we're living at a time where, you know, thanks to many decades of feminism, you know, women have — well, some women have a lot more rights. And, I mean, we could debate what that means, or — did we have the rights that we actually need? But we have — well, okay, let me let me say it from my own experience. Like, I was kind of raised to be a bit like a man, you know — I was raised to have a career and not like my mother. Like, I was raised to be like my dad and have opportunities to learn and to work and to earn and to consume and to pursue independence. And I really benefited from that, you know, in so many ways. But in the portal to motherhood, that stuff didn't matter — like, it didn't hit the sides. It wasn't going to hold my hand or hold the baby if I needed to, like, go to the loo. Or, you know, there was something so missing in the kind of liberal feminism that I had, you know, absorbed or grown up in.

Liberal Feminism and the Portal to Motherhood

Britta Bushnell: Now you're mom. Yeah. And like — well, wait a minute. What about Britta, who went to college and had a career and a relationship in the world with some element of power —

Lucy Jones: Exactly.

Britta Bushnell: — and then we can be like, "Whoa." It can be shocking.

Lucy Jones: Yeah, it really can. And I guess — I think it's Tracy Crittenden ["Tracy Crittenden" in transcript — please verify spelling] who said, you know, "When you have a child, the egalitarian office party is, like, over." That's the point where, like, how you worked before, or how you imagined yourself in public life generally — it's going to be different. And that can be really difficult to, yeah, to let go of those things. But also, I don't know, I think I'm in a place now — I'm really happy and okay with it all. But I think there is this a murder, or, you know, hoodwinking or deception around the whole thing.

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. So, so let's — I want to — I want to say, like, we've — we've been kind of diving into some of the hard parts, the unspoken parts about matrescence and this transition. And kind of like with adolescence — I mean, I think it's important to address the hard parts of adolescence and the unpredictability of going through a metamorphosis, and as a society and as cultures around the world, we've come to understand that young people in that era are going to be a little messy. And what do you think we need for understanding and supporting parents who are going through matrescence? Like, what is the — some of the antidote — and "antidotes" is the wrong word — but what's something that could be helpful at this time? I mean, you've spoken about getting through some of it now. What's helped?

What Helps: Embracing Metamorphosis as a Natural Process

Lucy Jones: Well, yeah, I think dialogue and connection around transformation and metamorphosis, and realizing that there is a process — and a process which, you know, like we said at the beginning, is social, psychological, emotional, spiritual, existential, and economic — and it's going to affect everything. And once I kind of realized that, and kind of understood it, and also saw it reflected in the wider world, for kind of ecology and the rest of nature, and saw that, you know, process and change is actually natural. And, you know, culture might say "bounce back" or, you know, "look 18 for the rest of your life" or whatever — "don't change." But that's just silly, and, you know, patriarchal capitalist bullshit. So once I realized that — that was, you know, part of, like, the moon changes, and, you know, the tadpoles turn into frogs, and the goo turns into a butterfly. And yeah, the matrescence — peppered with these stories —

Britta Bushnell: Yes, which I love. I love the ecological openers to each of the chapter. It's each chapter, right, that has, yeah —

Lucy Jones: Yeah, exactly. Because I found these stories just so relaxing — to think there are so many examples of, like, really wild metamorphosis.

Britta Bushnell: Your book is absolutely adding to that conversation — talking about metamorphosis, even the popularity and growing attention to the word matrescence, and understanding that as a developmental phase is helpful and time —

Lucy Jones: Yes. And I think research — things like, you know, going back, looking at kind of the social history of motherhood, and how, like, this idea of the mother and child dyad is actually quite new and recent. Obviously, you know, mothers and children have a primary bond and a, you know, unique relationship. But the idea of a nuclear family, or this two dyad thing, is very new — very like ahistorical compared with how we evolved. So, you know, learning about that, and learning, you know, what is behind the stories about, you know, what mother should be like and how a woman should be — kind of tracing those to, you know, capitalism and to, you know, patriarchy, and, you know, just kind of seeing it a bit more for what it is. Realizing, "Oh, all those books I obsessively read in the first few weeks and months about how to make your baby sleep — blah blah blah — you know, I'm doing myself insane with the trying to fit into, 'if you do this, your baby will never be happy again'" — or, and, you know, realizing, oh, they're just grifting. Like, they're just, like, selling something. Or it's — not every baby's individual, and every mother is. And, you know, like you were saying earlier, like, this idea of, like, a script or a kind of — a way that you could solve a problem just doesn't really exist. It's not like that. That's been a relief.

Following Scripts vs. Listening Within: Reclaiming Inner Wisdom

Britta Bushnell: Although — although there are plenty of scripts out there to follow if you want one, and that's sometimes what gets us into trouble — is trying to find the script and losing connection to the part in us that is asking the question, "Is this right for me?" And I think that is such a — I had a private session with clients yesterday, and this expectant mom was talking about how each time somebody tells her something that she should do, or, you know, "try this" and, or "try that" or "what about this," that she puts it in and goes, "Oh, now I have to do that. I have to make sure I do that. I have to make sure I do that," and how it's escalating some of her anxiety rather than calming her anxiety. And that she was tuning into that, which I so loved and validated, because I thought — that is what she really needs, is somebody to say, "Wow, you noticed that that actually hearing all of that was escalating your nervous system in a unhelpful way. And so maybe saying, 'No, I'm not sure that's what I need,' is actually what you need." Yeah. And that just felt so important, and I want more people doing that. Yeah, yeah.

Lucy Jones: I think it's really difficult though, because, like, I think capitalist culture detaches us from our instincts and our needs, and it's quite hard to locate your values, or — what you have — this idea of a maternal instinct — or we're quite detached. And then, as women, you know, we're taught from a young age that our bodies are inadequate, or, you know, need to be fixed in some way. So I think this metamorphosis — it brings up all that stuff as well about it can take a really long time to sift through it all, and —

Britta Bushnell: — absolutely. Especially because the voices from outside sound like shouts, and the inner place of "is this right for me?" sounds like a whisper. And so being able to sift through the shouts to hear a whisper is really challenging.

Being Witnessed and the Need for Reflection in Matrescence

Lucy Jones: And without the social connections — I think it was something one of your previous guests was talking about, and you were about, you know, how we need to be reflected back, or —

Britta Bushnell: Yeah, we need to be witnessed.

Lucy Jones: Exactly. And to have that becoming in connection with other people, in relationship. So —

Where to Find Lucy and Closing Reflection

Britta Bushnell: Yeah. Okay, you and I clearly could keep talking for so long, and I'm just feeling so enlivened by our conversation. And I know we're coming toward the end, so I want to ask you this — this work that you're doing and have done has added such an important voice to this conversation about matrescence. And so where can people find you and continue this conversation with you and your work?

Lucy Jones: Thank you. Yes, so the paperback of Matrescence just came out in the States — it has a lovely cover by an artist called Lakshmi Hussain ["lashmi Hussain" in transcript — please verify spelling]. I don't know if you know her, but she's incredible.

Britta Bushnell: I've seen the cover. Yeah, beautiful. It's beautiful, yes.

Lucy Jones: And I'm sporadically on Instagram at @LucyFJones — not very much. And I have a website. I'm mostly occasionally update on Instagram.

Britta Bushnell: Okay, wonderful. And then as we come to a close, I like to end with one question, and I ask all my guests this question, and it's: what's one thing that you feel passionately about? And I know there's probably lots, but just pick one that you feel passionately about that you want new or expectant parents to see, hear, feel, or know during this profound period of their lives.

Lucy Jones: I think it would be — and I know we've talked about, you know, the caterpillar and the goo a bit in our conversation. But I think knowing that if you're in the goo, or you're entering the goo — knowing that the goo is inevitable, and the things which make the goo much harder, and those are societal things — but the goo doesn't last forever. And, you know, there is another stage. And that's the reality of life on Earth — is most is change in process. Yeah. And to kind of hang in there in the chrysalis.

Britta Bushnell: Hang in there in the chrysalis. After the goo, there's the rebuilding. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Lucy.

Lucy Jones: Thank you.

Outro

Britta Bushnell: Thank you. And thank you listeners for sharing this time with us. If something shared today impacted, supported, or moved you, please share this episode with a friend. I produced this podcast myself, and your support makes it possible. To show a little love for this podcast and these conversations, please follow, rate, and review. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please join us on Instagram at @TransformedByBirth. I look forward to being with you on the next episode of Transformed by Birth. And now as we close, let's gather what we want to take away from this episode with an inhale, and with an exhale, I'll blow out the candle. Until next time, bye friends.