Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

by Lucy Jones

I am no longer dangerously sleep-deprived, nor is my sympathetic nervous system activated to an intolerable level every day. I am adapting to the responsibility, to the alteration of temporality, to the presence of mortality and risk, to the theme park of emotions, intense but fickle, to the constant buzz of potential horror, albeit lower now, to the truth of human vulnerability. I have had to throw out all my old shoes because my feet are a size bigger. My period is completely different: I bleed more, and my body ovulates aggressively, as if a starting gun has gone off. I am softer, and harder. The birth of my first child, after the maelstrom passed, was a deliverance. It brought me closer to my real self. I have learned how to surrender when I need to. I am learning to live in the rhythm of other lives; I have learned to share my life. I am trying to learn how to rest, so I can show my children it is important to rest, be, exist, not just to do. I am trying to accept help when it is offered. I can’t work myself to the bone anymore, or play fast and loose with my health, because I must look after them. A consequence: I must look after me. I seek wonder and awe in the woods, in the transcendent ordinary of moss and lichen on brick walls, through planting seeds in our garden, with friends I can talk honestly to, in a community project with neighbors to restore a small patch of amenity grass to a biodiverse wildflower meadow, in local community groups, in micro-awe. I have b...