The Menstruality Podcast - Matrescence - The Initiation Into Motherhood (Amy Taylor Kabbaz)

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Becoming a mother is a profound initiatory journey. Journalist and coach, Amy Taylor Kabbaz remembers exactly the moment when she split in two. Fifteen minutes after her child was born, she went from independent, ambitious, ABC journalist, career woman, to completely surrendered mother who would do anything for her child.That moment changed everything for her, and took her on her own personal pilgrimage to understand how motherhood initiates us. She’s interviewed hundreds of authors, maternal health experts, and teachers. She’s been the anthropologist, in the trenches of early motherhood, trying to decipher why so many of us feel burnt out, overwhelmed, and addicted to being busy. And she’s emerged from that time knowing that matrescence is the missing link for truly understanding why women feel the way they do, and how we can revolutionise the way we think about and value motherhood.We explore:The fact that we’re not mothers at birth. Mothering is a verb - it’s a learnt act. And it gives us daily - hourly! - invitations to move from control, to surrender, if we are supported to cultivate the ability to trust our intuition. How to hold onto the thread of ourselves as we to navigate the deep reorganising of priorities that happens in matrescence.How to meet a world that doesn’t recognise the deep shifts that are happening within us, even as we’re inside this deep initiation of matrescence.---Registration is open for our LIVE Mothering Your Daughter Through Menarche. We start on May 2nd. You can check it out here: https://redschoolonline.net/p/mothering-your-daughter-through-menarche---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @red.school - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolAmy Taylor Kabbaz: @amytaylorkabbaz - https://www.instagram.com/amytaylorkabbaz

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hi there, welcome back to the menstruality podcast. Becoming a mum, a mother is a profound initiatory journey. Today I'm talking with journalist and coach Amy Taylor-Kabaz, the founder of Mama Rising, who remembers exactly the moment when she split in two.

15 minutes after her first child was born, she went from an independent, ambitious ABC journalist, career woman, to a completely surrendered mother who would do anything for her child. That moment changed everything for her. We chat about that in our conversation today and how it took her on her own personal pilgrimage to understanding how motherhood initiates us and understanding this incredible term of matrescence she's interviewed hundreds of authors and maternal health experts and teachers and mamas since then she's been the anthropologist in the trenches of early motherhood trying to decipher why so many of us feel burnt out and overwhelmed and addicted to being busy she's emerged from that time knowing

that matrescence is the missing link for truly understanding why women feel the way they do and how we can revolutionize the way we think about and value motherhood. So Amy, it's such a delight to be here talking with you this morning for me in your evening about matrescence. It's such an incredibly important topic. I would like to start though where we always begin, which is with a cycle check-in. So could you share where you're at with your with your cycle at the moment and how it's impacting you? I am about to bleed again and feeling all the emotions the last two days uh my cycle has over the last decade or so definitely synced with the moon and so coming up to the full moon in a few days is a beautiful acknowledgement of what happens in my body I feel very full

leading up to the full moon but it's really interesting because for me Sophie I am 45 I'm 46 this year and I really had an assumption that by my mid-40s my body would start changing that I would move into perimenopause I've I've explored a lot of what those symptoms are and what those classic signs are and have kept almost preempting something that actually is not happening in my body. And it's been a really interesting experience to once again look at the cultural stories we're told around what happens to a woman's body and me myself I have ended the relationship of 20 years over the last two years and found myself in the mid-40s with a body that I am telling myself is perimenopause and to really crack open and break down all of those stories about what my body is doing, who I am, what mid 40s looks like. So yeah, it's a really beautiful process at the moment to explore all of that. Wow, we could have a whole conversation about that I know interesting I hear many people speak of this

and actually in the book that Alexander and Shani will be publishing later in September this year about menopause we have a whole section about exactly what you're speaking about and Alexander and Shani refer to this phase as the quickening when there are some changes happening or there's some there's a gearing up going on for this next big initiation of menopause so it's fascinating to hear your experience perhaps that's another conversation we can have it would be amazing i would love that in fact as you know my my passion in life is these rites of passage of women and I believe that my calling will always be about motherhood and matrescence but as I begin to move into the next one I am so keen to learn and talk about

this next stage as well so whenever you want me back I'm there for that conversation. Well speaking of rites of passage you have created an incredible body of work around the initiation the rite of passage into motherhood which has a name and many people don't know that it has a name it has the name of matrescence and I love the way you speak about how they're like your inner nerd your journalist your cultural studies student part of you really likes to geek out on this and you've compared it to adolescence how everything changes in this phase our brains brains change our bodies change our hormones our relationships the way we see ourselves in the world so can you take us by the hand and walk us into this word matrescence and how you define it. Absolutely. I think the best way to take the hands and walk it through is to share my own

experience and weave in the thousands of mamas that I've spoken to. So for me, and so many of us, we grew up in such a masculine-focused world, didn't even realise it. Rites of passage, our bodies, our emotions, how we change, all of it was never acknowledged. And I was born into that belief system in such an intense way. I was a very intense child. I mean, now that I'm a mama of three, I can only imagine what it would have been like

to have mothered myself. My dad tells a story of when I was born, they put me on my belly on the side of the, you know, on the bed next to the little baby's bed next to the hospital bed for my mom. And I'm not sure if it's a folklore or whether it's the truth, but according to him, instead of crying, I pushed myself up with my arms and looked around the room and said to everybody with my eyes, come on, let's get on with it. Literally, I've had an intensity about me my whole life I've always felt like there's work to be done like I just had that drive in me and then the cultural story around success and being an

independent woman was you know just fueled that so I, I knew I wanted to be a journalist at a very young age, and set out on that path and was by all definitions, very successful. And then when motherhood came along, I, I just crash landed into it thinking it would be something else I added to my resume, I really believed to my core that it wouldn't change me to the point where I wasn't going to let it change me. Because the belief systems of the empowerment of women had been so ingrained in me that being a mum wasn't allowed to change my path being a mum wasn't allowed to change me it was going to be this beautiful benefit this beautiful role but I could still be all of me the career woman the independent woman that I had my sight set on being a foreign correspondent for the ABC. All of that was still going to be possible. And everyone who's listening who's a mother will know that, you know, yeah, that's not how it works.

And within 15 minutes of my first child being born, that became incredibly obvious to me. In that moment, I split in two. I was the woman I used to be, the incredibly ambitious ABC journalist who knew where she was going to go and had a commitment to tell stories of women around the world and go on the front line of war and whatever I needed to do to do that. And at exactly the same time, I became this completely surrendered mother who will do anything for this child. And that split, as I call it, the inner split was incredibly painful.

I couldn't get my head around it. I didn't understand how I could be so certain of who I was a month earlier and suddenly not know who I am. It was, and I think exacerbating that, my daughter was not well when she was born and so the support around me in the early days of being a mama was so lacking that uh I really shut down um there was no beautiful doula there was no beautiful woman sitting next to me saying it it's okay. It's all right. It takes time. It's okay. You don't know how to do this yet. It's all right. You're crying for days on end. It's okay. It's okay. This is part of the process. I didn't have that. And that was, it brought me to my knees. So a few months after that, when I began to sort of emerge from that

darkness, being the journalist that I am, I began to ask, well, surely someone else has been through this. Surely I'm not the only one who, yeah, okay, I need to learn how to be a mom. But what about me? What about me? What just happened to me? And this was 14 years ago. I wasn't even on Facebook. Like Facebook was this weird thing that some people did. There was no social media, there was no forums, there was no group chats, there was nothing back then. And so I looked around and I found no one talking about it, no one being honest about what this feels like and so I thought it was my me I thought I was the only one that wasn't coping so I swallowed my words as us women do and I put on the mask of motherhood and I got back to it and I went back to my job and I went on for years years and years managing this amazing career and this growing family and a marriage

and uh had two more babies second one planned third one absolutely not that's such a blessing and then when I was pregnant with my third I uh found myself in early labour at 28 weeks in hospital and very dangerous situation. All my babies are very small. So he was really not going to be okay if he was born at 28 weeks. And the specialist was saying to me, you know, we know why this is happening. It's your lifestyle.

You have to be able to slow down, Amy. And that was such a turning point for me because I was couch ridden, bedridden for 10 weeks to keep him safe. And in those 10 weeks, I started to ask myself, why can't I acknowledge that I've changed I was keeping up with this career that didn't make me happy anymore but I had decided as a 22 year old that that's what I was going to do and I was hanging on to this identity I was hanging on to who I used to be it was like I was trying to prove to the world look I haven't changed motherhood hasn't changed me and it was really a very very confronting time but I didn't understand what those questions were until many years later, six years later, I was driving around Sydney, listening to a podcast, dropping one kid off and picking another one up as we do as mums.

And I heard this podcast around this term matrescence. And it was described in the podcast that matrescence is this period of transition from woman to mother, just like adolescence is a period of transition from child to adult. And during this time, everything changes, everything, the brain, the hormones, the physical body, but also her beliefs, her identity. She pushes up against everything. She asks, what's the point? She wants to know what's going to be my legacy. What am I going to do in this world? Just like a teenager does. I have a teenager and that's exactly what she's doing. And this was such a moment. My eldest was 10 at the time, nearly 10. And to hear that word 10 years after I had first experienced matrescence,

it's still, I don't know if you can hear, it's still, every time I tell this story, it makes me cry. Because to be searching for an answer for a decade and then to hear it is this word transforms us and it was such a moment I had to pull over on the side of the road and burst into tears not just for myself but by this stage I'd had hundreds of mamas through my online programs and so I knew that this was the answer this is what I've been looking for this is described that split in me when she was born which was I'm not who I used to be but I don't know who I am anymore and that's what matrescence is in my definition. I love the lens of initiation that you're bringing in here that a profound shift on all levels of our

being is happening you know at Red School the foundation of our teaching is that the menstrual cycle is initiatory in nature in this in a similar way that if we pay attention to it it's evolving us into a different and fuller expression of ourselves all the time and throughout so throughout our cycling lives we're being initiated persistently if we're paying attention and then as we make this arc from our first bleed to menopause if motherhood is our path then matrescence is this mother of all initiations along the way I relate to everything you just said I literally word for word I'm like is she reading my mind because I've had you know you have to be able to slow down that came up for me a lot actually in my infertility process

to get my boy here I had to change my entire career everything in my life to slow down enough to be able to welcome him into my body and then again that's that what's the point idea and what's the legacy I'm leaving I've been having all those thoughts and wanting to talk about them with my my mom and baby group girlfriends. And either they're not able to access it or they're in a different place or I'm not sure what's going on. But I'm not able to have those conversations with them. So I'm hoping that this podcast is going to be a great resource for anyone who hasn't got someone to have these conversations with. But let's look at, you know, why aren't we seeing this? Why isn't it so obvious when you describe it?

Why aren't we talking about it? Why isn't this known in the mainstream? Oh, how angry do you want me to get um you know um not long after hearing that podcast I once again went into a google tunnel a dark tunnel of google and found Dr. Aurelie Athen who I really believe and and know is almost the godmother of matrescence in our time. So matrescence, just to honour the lineage, because I know in what you teach as well, it's important to always honour where this wisdom has come from. So matrescence was first

coined, I guess, by Dana Raphael, who in the 1970s really looked at what our experience of motherhood was as an anthropologist and a phenomenal woman and said, we're not supporting her enough. We're doing this wrong. We're not honoring this process of becoming a mom. And so she really studied this transition of motherhood around the birth and saw how wrong we were doing it and came up with two ideas. One was a doula. It was her that coined that term and developed that idea. And the doula was the person who was there to be the advocate

for the mother because what had happened by the 70s is that we had so westernised birth, we'd so hospitalised it, we'd so built so much fear around it that everybody in the room when that baby was born was only there to keep the baby alive and to keep the mother alive medically but nothing else. And so she said, no, someone needs to be there to be the midwife of the mother, you know, to really honour what is happening in this process

and to be the voice for her when she can't voice it herself. And that's where the term doula was birthed, really. And at the same time, she then acknowledged that there's something else we don't understand. There's something else happening here. She is not a mom when that baby comes out. Becoming a mother is a process. It's a transition. It's something we need to understand more. It's a period of matrescence. And then when I dived into that

Google search, I found the woman who is now bringing this teachings to the world who is my mentor and teacher Dr. Aurelie Athen and within a few months of hearing that podcast my phenomenal publishers Hay House supported me and paid for me to fly to New York and and meet her and and immerse myself in this study. And Dr. Athens says, if this had been happening to men, we would have universities dedicated to it. Yes. We would have whole government departments of patrescence or whatever it's called. And so that's what I meant of how angry do you want me to be? I think the first answer is we don't know about this because we live in a patriarchy that

denies the process of women. So that's what it is, first of all. Secondly, we have grown up in an era of feminism, which is such a gift. You know, it is such a gift to be able to be in a time where women are considered mostly, maybe not so much, but beginning to be considered equal. We can work, we can have our own bank account, we can buy a house on our own, all things that were not possible in the 60s. But in the process of

that first and second wave of feminism, what happened is, is that we rejected motherhood. We rejected the feminine body. We really were taught that our way to be successful and to be taken seriously is that we needed to be like a man and you know there's this beautiful theory that I learned through my studies called the maternal mandate and the maternal mandate is this assumption that because you were born a female you will a want to be a mother b fall pregnant easily and naturally and quickly c birth now actually and breastfeed naturally and d love every minute of it and be willing to self-sacrifice for your for your child and this was the assumption that we were given as a culture in the 60s. Like when you think about the red thread, these are either our mothers or our grandmothers, but we were in our grandmother's body.

And so this was very much ingrained in who we needed to be. And then along came the phenomenal feminist movement in the 70s that said, no, we get to choose. Just because we're a woman doesn't mean that we have to have a baby. We have contraception. We can go out and we can fight for ourselves and we can get a career and we can be independent and all of that. And really in that moment, they said to everybody, motherhood is a choice but when you check in with most women on the planet who identify as women they will say they still feel the pressure of the maternal mandate if they're not having kids they still feel the pressure of those questions of did you want to have kids are you okay with not having kids if you've had one child are you going to have another one it's really important to have a sibling you know if you're not breastfeeding

if you didn't have your if you had a child by cesarean anything our culture still has this under not underground but underlying maternal mandate that we feel as women and we need to bring it to the surface and say, you know, yes, apparently we are free from all of this, but actually we're not and we need to start talking about it. So this rejection of motherhood in the beautiful process of empowering women I think has meant that we don't honor motherhood the way it should we don't talk about how motherhood has changed us because

we were brought up to tell ourselves motherhood can't change us you can't just be a mum you know we can't just you can't give up your career do you know how many women I've coached over the years Sophie that have said to me I don't want to go back to work but do you know how long I worked to get to that point in my career do you know my university debts do you know how hard I've pushed to get there? I can't give it up. But their body is saying that's not who you are anymore. And in my experience, there's this other interesting layer of this,

which is so I had my son, who you might be able to hear crying downstairs right now. I have beautiful beautiful perfect timing hi arty but he's with his amazing child mind he'll be okay uh but this is this is this is meta right now because i'm i'm trying to ask you this question and my mama heart is downstairs with him wondering if he's okay so he was born and I wanted to process this wildness this wild changes that were happening inside me and I didn't have the time and space to process any of it or to understand any of it I was very used to up until that point having space and time for myself to be able to reconcile the

initiations and challenges that I was facing particularly with the infertility and then suddenly we become mothers and there's because of the way our world is designed and because of the all-consuming process of looking after a newborn there's there isn't much space and time to understand this these massive shifts is there no and i really picked that up about what you were saying before with this uh understanding of the initiation into menopause if we're given the understanding and the space and the tools if we understand the process of our first period and menopause and, yes, matrescence, if we're given the women to talk to, if we're given these understandings,

it is the most phenomenal initiation. But in our current system, we literally place the baby on her chest, perhaps support her for a few days. I mean, in COVID, we did a terrible job with this. But, you know, in an ideal modern world, she's there for maybe a few days to learn the basics of breastfeeding and wrapping her baby. And then we send her home. She has no elders, no mothers around her. She's isolated. And unfortunately, her partner very quickly goes back to work. And there she is at home.

No space to ask herself, what just happened to me? And that's what I think is the gift of this word. I think this, you know, when we don't have a word or an understanding of what happens to us, that's when we hurt. That's when we really turn it on ourselves. We judge. We think we should be doing better better we look around at others and think they seem to be okay and I'm not if we can have the language and the space and the questions

to explore this for ourselves then we move through this transition in a very different way but it's that lack of understanding it's the lack of the words. Once again, honouring my teacher, Dr. Oralee Athens, says words create worlds. And when we don't have a word to describe how we're feeling, we feel like we don't know the world we live in. And that's why this word is so powerful and why my DMs and my inbox is filled every day with women saying, oh my God, why didn't I know this? And it's one word. Why does one word

have such an impact? It's because it's finally naming what we're all feeling and it normalizes it. I mean, imagine if we didn't have the word adolescence. Well, we didn't at one time. No, there was a period of time where we thought, not we, but society thought that there was this period of time where adults went crazy. You know, they didn't understand why kids at a certain age seemed to go crazy before they grew up and were, you know, more responsible. It wasn't until we started studying what happens

to an adolescent's brain, what happens to its hormones, to its sense of self. How do we support them better? How do we not? I mean, this is what parenting is now. Parenting a teenager, oh, my gosh, we know so much about what's happening to them. I think every parent, every aware parent of a teenager

could write a PhD on what happens to a teenager in the process of adolescence. This is what we need for mothers. We need that level of study we do need universities dedicated to this oh my god this is happening across the world to so many women and yet motherhood studies is taught in like a handful of universities around the world. If, like me, you're feeling a fire in your belly as you listen to Amy, and I still feel it right now as I'm recording this,

and you want to contribute to the de-shaming and the honouring of the initiations that we go through as women, as mothers, as people with periods, then we've got a special invitation for you, especially if you're a parent and your child is on their way to starting their first period. So we're soon to begin our first ever live round of our Mothering Your Daughter Through Menarche course, which is taught by Sharni and one of our mothering your daughter through menarche course which is taught by Sharni and one of our menstruality leadership program mentors Emily Stewart who's the founder of the real period project. Menarche is often defined as the first period but we believe it's a sacred time of transition that spans a few years around this special event. Mothering your child as they move through this can be an

initiation for you too and it can be lonely and bewildering so we want you to feel resourced for this journey so that you can both support yourself and really be there for your child. We are beginning on May the 2nd, we're so excited, we'd love to have you with us so you can click the link on the show notes to find out more and take your seat. Okay, let's get back to Metrescence, the initiation into motherhood with the amazing Amy Taylor-Kabaz. It's classic, isn't it? It's like how the menstrual cycle is shrouded with shame even though half of the planet are experiencing it or have experienced it you know vaginas and

vulvas are you know there's this taboo when that's where we all come from it's just so bizarre when we actually lay it out clearly how patriarchy has dismantled and fragmented these beautiful aspects of life it's I get breathless to to really to really receive it and see it me too and it it lights a fire in me and you know I can stand on a soapbox for hours but I think the beautiful thing is is that as you've said if we can talk about this and honor this in each other then this is a portal to breaking down the patriarchy you know this these questions we're asking ourselves in the process of matrescence is what the world needs right now. You know, it is who do I want to be and what's important and why can't I slow down? And is that actually really what I thought it was?

Like these are the questions that we should be asking ourselves. And this is such a beautiful portal into that. If and only if we have the people around us to support those questions and the right language I'd like to look at some of the initiatory threads that are happening through the process of matrescence and you spoke about surrender at the beginning of our conversation for me I would say that motherhood the core initiatory pulse of motherhood for me has been moving from control into surrender and this was especially heightened in the fourth trimester so I had a long labor I had an emergency c-section breastfeeding was so much harder than I thought it was going to be I literally thought you just put your baby to your breast and they started drinking and that was that and like whoa it's

such a conversation and there's so much to navigate oh it was huge. And, you know, I had to surrender to bring him here. I had to surrender to feed him. I, the need for control had to die in me, the way that I had controlled. Literally, I look back at everything in my world. suddenly couldn't I couldn't even get myself a meal or wash because I was so immersed in this process could you speak to this I mean I'd love to hear your personal experience and also what you're seeing in the mamas in your community of this how we have to find a way to relinquish this control and what's being born in its place. I 100% agree with you. I think the greatest gift of matrescence is especially for this generation of women that we are, is to realize we have no control. It is the first time in my life personally that I haven't been able to control, research or work harder to fix.

You know, I think when we're not initiated into this, like neither of us were, our survival mechanism is to control. That's what we've been taught. We were born into a world that said the more control you have, the more control you have. You know, you can control your happiness. You can control the outcome. You can control all of this. And so to get to a point in life where no matter what you do,

it doesn't work I mean the process of infertility the mothers that I have supported over the last decade through this like talk about an initiation by fire it's like initiation by a volcano it's bigger than that it's let go let go let go let go let go we are not taught to do that at all and it is it it is it is an intense hard process and that's why we need spaces where women talk about this because my God, we're not meant to do this alone. So yes, control, surrender. But what I think for everyone listening, who's in that struggle between control and surrender, control and surrender, and I'm 14 years into this and I'm still doing that on a daily basis. I think there's a third step that I hope brings hope. I think

there's a third step in this process. And the third step is trust. Because for me, control, surrender, control, surrender, control, surrender still makes me believe that I'm the one who's impacting this. That's so true. See, we can even control the process of surrender. Yes. So if I surrender this, then I'll secretly control it. And you know what? 80% of the time I'm doing those first two steps, back, forth, back,

forth, back, forth, back, forth, back, forth, back, forth. And then in my experience, true surrender comes when you step into trust, which is I let this go. I'm actually not trying to figure out what's going to happen here anymore. I know I'll be okay and that is that is profound and so easy and yet easy in the moment only because you have been pushed so far through the eye of the needle of control surrender control surrender that when you land a trust you're like of course yeah but wowsers and you just get so many opportunities to take that journey you know I'm thinking of as like eventually when breastfeeding started to work Artie was always really slim you know and I'm slim my husband was slimmer I mean we're both

putting on we're getting into middle age we're putting on our bodies are changing so we both naturally are like are slim and Artie was very slim and he just didn't look like the other babies with these big chubby cheeks and like rolls and rolls of fat and and I was concerned and even though now I look back and go he was fine he's just slim like me and but I had health visitors coming to visit I didn't have a community around me because we were in lockdown so I was isolated I think that really contributed to this but but you know, so many of us are isolated at any way, by the way that our communities are organized. And they kept saying to me, he's underweight, he's underweight, he's underweight. And it was such, it was another

initiation through fire because then I, I had a choice. like he's moving around brilliantly he's curious about everything he's a he's full of joy he's not crying he's really happy he's full of energy he's obviously fine am I going to trust my instincts or these professionals who are in a position of power over me and are asserting that power and eventually I it took me months but eventually I was able to trust that he was taking in what he needed because life's intelligence was working through him and I was doing everything I could because life's intelligence was working through me and together we were working it out and lo and behold he's fine but that's just one example of the opportunities that we get to practice this or to build this muscle of trust that's it and what a divine example you just shared you know the authority was saying we know better than you

and isn't that what we've been told our whole lives about our bodies, our systems, like everything? We know better than you. And yet, as you said, it took you a few months. You know, I think this is also really important to say, especially if you're listening as a new mama. I remember people saying to me when I was, you know, in those first few weeks with such an unwell, unhappy baby, it's okay, just, you know, you'll know what to do,

your instincts will kick in, you trust your intuition. And I was like, I have no intuition. I don't know what to do. And that's, again, honoring Dana Raphael, who said, you are not a mother at birth. Mothering is a verb. It is a learnt act. The only reason they used to say women have intuition is because we were surrounded by it. We grew up in villages.

We were carrying our baby, our siblings, and then our cousins, kids, and we were, you know, we would, that was just how we lived. We live in a very different time in a very different culture, we haven't been able to access our intuition. And yet we tell women who have just gone through a cesarean a traumatic major surgery shoved a baby on her boob and said don't worry it's natural oh it makes me cry it is so dangerous in my mind what we do in that moment because she doesn't know we have to acknowledge that she may never have seen someone breastfeed she may never have seen it with her own eyes yes we all had intuition 200 years ago when we all raised each other's kids

we now have intuition about what works on instagram like this isn't going to work for us we need to do this differently i'm feeling so much relief talking to you right now and i'm i can feel in my body that the layers of shame that are falling away from me and my experience and from the collective and hopefully hopefully from the people listening you know this this matrix that you've described of the um maternal maternal mandate mandate the maternal mandate and all the layers of shame that then we unconsciously wrap around ourselves and yeah this this conversation it brings so much dignity and honoring to the clunkiness and bumpiness of this massive transition sort of shaking inside in a good way like i feel so yeah i can feel something falling away in me.

The thing is, is that we've made this, we say that there's no maternal mandate anymore. And yet we tell women as they birth, your body was made for this. And as you breastfeed, your body was made for this. And yet we've never been initiated into this body. We've been told we needed to act like men we've been told we need to push and go and do more and we have never been taught how to do this and then we have an epidemic a pandemic of postnatal depression and women who are angry

and blame themselves and it just breaks my heart this is one of the reasons why i feel so excited about menstrual cycle awareness because by listening to the cycles that are naturally happening inside our bodies, by paying attention to how our emotions ebb and flow throughout the cycle month, by noticing the letting go that naturally is happening as we head towards the bleed. And obviously for many people, there's pain, there are symptoms. It doesn't feel like a letting go it feels like pain and like challenge and there is a there is an initiatory process happening each month that if we can pay attention with it and if we if we can pay attention to it and if

we're supported to be with it which our world does not support us to do but if we are then we can practice trust and we can practice surrender or I mean for me now I see surrender differently I see surrender as something that happens once like you said once I put in place what needs to be there so once I find my way to trust then surrender happens which is what happened in the process of labor surrender just took me and I and I realized our surrender is never something I do surrender is something that happens and and so on and it goes round and round and in a similar way to how we're not honored as we become mothers we're not honored as menstruators and our world isn't set up to support us to be with that process but if we swim upstream and follow our cycles then we get we get a chance to there's a deep initiatory process happening that we can tap into there that we can learn from there is and i agree i think

you know in an ideal world this would start with our girls and each and every one of these cycles would be honored differently I now have two daughters who you know have been through that process of that first menstruation unfortunately both of them were we were in COVID lockdown for both of them. And in my mind, Sophie, I had this process in mind of when this happened for them. I had this gathering of women. I had all of this processed and planned in my mind, and yet we couldn't do anything. I couldn't take them for a special meal.

I couldn't do anything. We couldn't go. I couldn't take them for a special meal. I couldn't take them anywhere. And yet there was a gift in that because it came back to just each one of them separately going for a walk with our masks on. And, you know, the full COVID experience and just sitting under a tree and just talking about it and just trying to honour this moment for them each individually. And again, for me, that was a process of surrender. You know, I wanted to control that. I had, I'm going to gather my girlfriends, we're going to do this thing, I'm going to buy her a gift, I'm going to da-da-da-da-da-da.

And in the end, trust. It was beautiful. It was just as how it needed to be. It was a walk. It was a conversation with each of them individually as that happened. And I think if we can plant those seeds then and then continue to talk to them differently about that process each month. I have my eldest daughter. It's totally okay for me to share this.

I always want to say that first because I do know as mothers, we get protective when we think she's sharing something about her child publicly. But my daughter is very, what's the word? She's very certain that she wants me to use the platform I have to talk about mental health for teenagers because of what she's been through. So I want to just place that, you know, as a, as a first thing, but my daughter really struggles with her mental health and to talk to her and point out to her

I noticed this happened at the same time last month I noticed that whenever you're just about to bleed just in those first few days these are the thoughts you have just starting to point out to her that there is a cycle and a season to this she has bigger mental health issues than that but to begin instead of just dismissing them instead of just wiping them away as another anxiety attack, another moment of what she's going through, trying to bring awareness to her of her body and the role that plays in her mental health. I mean, again, this has only come from me because of my own experience through motherhood.

I had no idea about any of this. And again, through the process I've been through, this initiation, I'm now able to show up for her and for her younger sister to be able to say, yes, okay, there's bigger things that we need to acknowledge here. But also what's happening in your body right now might be affecting how you're feeling. And that's, you know, I will say I'm incredibly proud

that I can talk to my daughters about that. Wow, that's such beautiful evidence of the patriarchy being dismantled right there in that arc you've described of your initiation into motherhood and now you supporting their initiatory journey with their cycle so beautiful I've got shivers from head to toe thank you yeah you know what I'm going to take that because I don't think we acknowledge each other for how we're breaking this down with our daughters and our sons enough so thank you for saying that I will receive that we could clearly talk for about three days about this non-stop thing like not sleep but we would just have such a great time but that there's one other thread that I'd like to pull on which is a

good way of closing this conversation for now although you know I heartily recommend everyone listening to go and explore Amy's work and we'll talk more about that in a minute if if this conversation is really you know turning you on like it is for me so the thread I want to pull on is as we find our way back into the world so for some that looks like people going back to work at the end of maternity leave or for some it looks like coming out of that newborn bubble a little bit and having a bit more space to you know like have a shower or go to a yoga class or something how do we navigate this entering back into the world which I'm sure goes on in many ways for years when we're inside this deep initiation and we're vulnerable and we're disorientated and we're confused and we

don't know really who we are how do we meet the world when the world doesn't recognize the deep shifts that are happening within us what can we do how can we hold ourselves how can we support ourselves what a beautiful question the first thing I want to say is that I wish the world knew that you had changed. You know, my goal with Mama Rising, with the work that I do, is that matrescence is understood in workplaces, in policies, in all of it, because I really, really want us to create a world where we don't welcome a woman back from maternity leave and

assume she's been on some extended holiday and she might have forgotten her password but other than that she can just sit back at her desk her desk and go to the first meeting at 10 a.m you know like welcome back you know so and so's left and this person's new, but the first meeting's at 10. So I first want to really acknowledge that. I wish it was different. I really do. I really hope that we are creating through conversations like this a world where we will acknowledge that becoming a mother and one day I hope we also acknowledge becoming a father,

a parent also changes you, that therefore it's an opportunity to ask them how are you and what do you want. That's what I think this is all about. We can't assume she hasn't changed. And so perhaps your workplace, perhaps even your partner, your friends, your parents don't understand how deep this shift has been in you. I know you're holding a lot already, but is there any way that you can hold this for yourself? Grab a journal, a notebook, a space, and just start asking, how have I changed? What do I know for sure now? What am I done with now? I think the greatest gift of matrescence is

we become fierce in what we're not interested in anymore. You know, that friend that you've been putting up with who always saps your energy, you're done. Don't have time for that. You work, you have to go home to your kids, you're done. So find a way to start exploring who you are. And secondly, do whatever you have to do to find a space of women who are willing to have this conversation as well. Even if it's a Facebook group, even if it's an online program, even if it's the local yoga studio, and you've never done yoga, but somehow you just feel like, oh, maybe these women will get it we need both of them we need the questions and the space and we have to have women around us having these conversations so speaking of having women around us could you share about your work and how our listeners can

connect with you and what you're offering at the moment yes thank you for asking I am on Instagram and Facebook as Amy Taylor Kvaz my website is amytaylorkvaz.com I do two things now after exploring this in many different ways over the last decade one is I have an ongoing membership called The Village, which is a village of women, a village of mamas. And, yes, we definitely explore matrescence, but we also then look at the other ways that we've been defined as women. We look at redefining our anger our emotions our bodies our roles as women as mothers it's um it's a spectacular space of women from around the world so that opens three four times

a year and the second thing i do now is mama Rising which is a facilitator coaching training program which teaches you how to support women through this it teaches you the basics well the fundamentals is a better way to describe it the fundamentals of matrescence feminist theory everything I've shared and more maternal mandate the inner split it gives both the because as a journalist I needed the theory so it gives the theory of why we feel the way we do and then it gives what do we do about it and that's the support that we can give mothers and that opens just once a year in August it's a certification program to be able to teach and support mamas this way and all of it's on amytaylacabaz.com I should add one more thing sorry Sophie I'll add that we also have just recently launched mamarising.net and this is the directory of women who are supporting women through matrescence

these are the mama rising facilitators you can go on there and find a coach a women's circle a doula a midwife who has the matrescence understanding it It's in its infant stage. It's only just being birthed. But I'm incredibly proud of what we're doing as a collective, these women and I, to be able to create change around the world. So mumarising.net to be able to work with one of these women for yourself personally. Amy, it's so beautiful to encounter a person who not only, you know, you know yourself so well, you've tracked this journey, you've been through this profound moment of there is a word for this it's the presence and because of the fire

and the tenacity in you you've and because it's your calling that's what I'm hearing you've taken your experience and you've crafted not only a space that can hold and nurture and dignify and honor people through this experience but you're now skilling people up to to change the world very literally moment by moment person by person this is so exciting and you know congratulations for fulfilling your calling in such a meaningful way and it's only going to grow from here it's really beautiful to encounter wow thank you i think this is what activated mamas do that you know most of the women in that training came to this because they struggled so deeply and found the word and said and found me and said, I need to do this too. And I just think that is the power of an activated woman who is not going to silence herself anymore,

not going to deny what's happening in her body and in the process that she's going through. Like we will create change. That's what we do. Yeah, I see it in the people on our menstruality leadership program in a similar way. Once they reclaim the knowledge, then a fire is lit in them. And it's, it's like, right. I now I want to lead now. I will take this in my own way into the world. And this is how, this is how we change things. It's fantastic to fantastic to feel the synergy here yeah I've enjoyed this conversation so much is there a final message that you'd like to share

particularly for anyone who feels like they are in the middle of this initiatory moment is there anything you'd like to share with them in closing? I think it's just about that final step of trust that this is the making of you. It's the becoming of you in this period of a deep challenge of motherhood. You will find yourself. You remember yourself. You will find parts you didn't even know were there but trust the process you know surround yourself with people and if you can't find the people surround yourself with podcasts like this there are ways to hold you through this and it will be the making of you I know that hey thanks for being with us until the end of this conversation it was as you could probably tell a really moving one for me as I'm right in the middle of this transition myself and if you are in a similar place to me at any point in the mothering journey or perhaps preparing to be a

mum I really hope this helps you to feel seen and honoured and dignified and part of a community of belonging which is so needed in our world so thank you for listening and thank you for tuning into the menstruality podcast it's my one of the most profound joys and honor in my life to be in this ongoing conversation with you as always please reach out to me sophie at redschool.net to let me know what you're loving what you're wanting who you'd like to hear from i really want this to be a conversation okay so we will be back next week with our next episode and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm