TONTS. - Matrescence Festival: Day One with Amy Taylor-Kabbaz & Vicki Chan

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

Welcome to first episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025.In this episode you'll hear all about what it was like at the festival, how it was laid out and from two wonderful speakers from the morning of day one.Amy Taylor-Kabbaz is a Best-Selling Author of 'Mama Rising', Speaker, Journalist, Matrescence Activist and Mama of three. Along with hosting 'The Happy Mama Movement' podcast, in 2019, she launched her world first Matrescence Facilitator Training - Mama Rising - sharing her unique formula of coaching and support into mother’s transition through matrescence. In 2022, Mama Rising was recognised by the ICF and currently has more than 200 accredited Mama Rising coaches globally. For more from Amy, you can visit https://amytaylorkabbaz.com/Vicki Chan is the mother of four children, and one very happy grandmother. She has been a midwife since 1983, working in hospitals, birth centre, and 25 years in homebirth practice. Presently she is working in a private hospital facilitating normal birth and has private practice rights at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital. She leads (radical) preparation for birth for parents-to-be and, with midwife Lynne Staff, is co-presenter for the Better Birth Workshops for birth-workers. She loves to write poetry, make pottery, and has published her first children’s book.For more from Claire you can head to: https://www.clairetonti.com/ or her instagram @clairetontiFor more from Lizzy you can head to: https://www.lizzyhumber.com/ or her instagram @lizzyhumberAnd to keep up to date with past and upcoming Matrescence festivals you can follow @matrescencefestival on instagram or go to https://www.lizzyhumber.com/matrescencefestivalOriginal theme music: Free by Claire TontiEditing: Maisie JGSocial Media: Surabhi Pradhan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I create, speak and write today. There are Wondry people of the Kulin Nation and pay my respect to their elders past, present and merging, acknowledging that the sovereignty of this land has never been seeded. I want to acknowledge the people who have given birth on this land, raised children on this land for generations, connected to country and spirit. Hello, welcome to Tons. This is a podcast of in-depth interviews about emotions and the way they shape our lives. I'm your host Claire Tonti and I'm so glad you are here. Usually each week I speak to writers, activists, experts, thinkers and deeply feeling humans. But this is a very special season

of Tons. I'm going to bring you into the live podcast episodes of our recent Metrescence festival that took place in Australia, in Melbourne in March 2025. Now, for you, for you, For those of you who don't know me and are coming to this podcast through Matresson's Festival, I am a musician and a podcaster. I live in Eltham, Australia. I have two little kids, five and nine. And I'm really passionate about creating art and culture and gigs that are parent and mother accessible. I'm also making a film about Matrescans.

And I have someone very special to introduce you to. So as part of Matrescent's Festival, I co-founded it with a wonderful producer. from Exeter in the UK, Lizzie Humber. She is here joining us all the way. It's in the morning over there and the evening over here from Exeter. Lizzie, do you want to say hello? Hello, it's so good to be here. My name is Lizzie Humber. I'm a producer for art events in the UK and a mother to two children. The thing that I'm really passionate about at the moment is creating parent accessible events. So all of my events take place in the day, amplify the voices and stories of mothers or parents and support people to have access and raise barriers. So getting out of an evening

can be very challenging when you're a parent. So I create high quality art and culture events where kids are welcome to where nobody has to compromise or miss out. It's so wonderful to be here. And, you know, I'm back from Australia now, but had such a wonderful time. And I'm very excited to share the podcast episodes with everyone. I've been telling everyone in my community all about the amazing things. So I'm just delighted that we get to share them. with a wider audience. Yay, me too. We could talk about it so much.

So we're trying to be nice and short and punchy. I think what I will do is quickly define the word metrescence. For those of you who are familiar to my podcast, you've probably heard me talk about it quite a lot and in my songs in my album metrescence. But for those of you who are new to the word, Dr. Raleigh Aethyn revived the word in 2012 from the work of Dana Raphael, who is an anthropologist.

And it's defined as the myriad psychological, social, cultural, and existential changes which occur as women transition into motherhood and those who give birth were never the same. And it's just become my passion because I had no idea when I became my mum what it was going to be like. So that's what we're doing what we are doing. Lizzie, do you want to tell us what Matressens Festival actually is? Yeah, metrescence festival is a space to explore the metamorphosis of motherhood. We've done two now and each has been a composition of expert speakers, vibrant discussion, poetry songs, art making, nature walks, workshops, dancing, laughter, tears. We give everybody lots of breaks, we have good food. It's always in the day

and it's designed around the rhythms of caring responsibilities. So in the recording, you will hear children of all ages were welcome alongside their caregivers and invited to be their free, curious, free thinking selves. Matrescent's Festival ultimately is a space for village thinking and support, open to anyone interested in learning more about metrescence. So the podcast today is episode one, which is the opening talk. And so if you listen in order, you will have the experience of sitting in the room listening to these speakers. So we're going to take you through the flow of the day. Claire, could you set the scene a little bit about what that might have felt like to be in the room? I absolutely can. Okay, so I want you to imagine a room

filled with colour and movement. The word metrescence hung in big silver letters across the back of the stage to highlight just how monumental the transition is. There were handmade paper butterflies hanging from the ceiling. The space is bright and light with gum trees glimpsed through the floor to ceiling windows at the back. Loads of curious people, babies, toddlers running around everywhere, comfy beanbags and mats, toys, hot coffee on tap and snacks, kind volunteers supporting mothers and whoever needed a tissue or a shoulder to cry on and wireless headsets which supported audience to tune in or walk around without missing anything so that we could all listen at any point and children could be free to be themselves. I just feel like I'm back there already.

It was so delicious. So each morning we had this beautiful composition of speakers and artists sharing and then each afternoon after a really good lunch and time to chat we would go off to workshops and everyone would have space to listen to each other process and unfortunately we can't give you those workshops as part of a podcast experience but we would really encourage you to listen to these podcast episodes perhaps while walking take yourself out into nature invite yourself to have some time to listen you might like to draw or write in response to what you hear we might like to get together with a friend and have a coffee and discuss it afterwards so we'd love you to be part of curating your own metrescence festival whilst listening to this podcast.

We're going to start the first podcast. We're going to bring you in with the amazing Amy Taylor Cabaz. And then we're going to end the episode with the equally amazing poet and midwife, Vicky Chan. And just to let you know, the day opened with Rwandri elder Mandy Nicholson, leading us in a welcome to country where she spoke in language and connected us to the land. The Rwandari people of the Kulin Nation. And then I sang my song Hats, which you'll hear reference by Amy during her talk. It was so beautiful, by the way, because it just brought everyone like a siren calling us into the space in the morning.

Right, let me introduce you to Amy to kick us off. Amy Taylor Cabazz is a mama of three and best-selling author, journalist and fierce matressant's activist. Amy is changing the way the world sees motherhood. From breaking news at the ABC to breaking barriers for mothers everywhere. Her work has inspired thousands through her book, Mama Rising, her globally recognised podcasts and her transformative programs. We were so honoured to have Amy open the Matresson's Festival. So without further ado, here is Amy Taylor Cabaz.

Claire always sings before I need to speak. And it's so unfair because it's so emotional to you, you sing. And then I'm like, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. And then I have to come up and start speaking coherently. So I'd like to just start by taking a breath. And acknowledge the Warrondri people of this beautiful land that we're here on and the elders past and present and emerging. And also start by acknowledging the elders of this wisdom

that we are hearing over the next two days, in particular the phenomenal women who have gifted me. with the teachings and insights of matressants, the women that have supported me in so many ways to build this work. And also so many of you, and again, might try not to cry, who really were kind of like our first community of mothers coming together to figure out how we can do this differently. So I really want to acknowledge that this,

what I'm about to share and what you're going to hear over the next two days It's just this beautiful lineage of knowledge that has always been there, but we didn't know. And what we really want to be able to do over the weekend, but also ongoing, is to reclaim and remember what we should have been told and make a commitment to share it in your own way. I genuinely mean that. I think the most powerful thing we can do is go back home and tell our neighbour, tell our sister, tell our children. This is how we're going to change the way that mothers are supported. around the world. So I wanted to start by reading to you a passage from a book that really changed my life maybe 15 years ago when I had two little ones at home. This book is called Circle of

Stones by Judith Jurek. I don't know if any of you have heard of that or read of it. And I want to start with this. How much your life have been different if there had been a place for you? a place for you to go a place of women to help you learn the ways of women a place where you were nurtured from an ancient flow sustaining you and steadying you as you sought to become yourself a place of women to help you find and trust the ancient flow already there within yourself waiting to be released a place of women to learn the ways of women how much your life be different I remember reading that so long ago and just bawling my eyes out because I realized that that's actually what I had been missing when I became a mum.

There was no place for me to go to learn about what was happening within me. There were lots of places where I could go and learn about what's happening to my baby. And I was the good student, like I had been my whole life, and I went to all those classes, and nobody talked to me about how I was feeling. Instead, what I had was a whole culture, a whole lifetime, of learning the ways of women were very masculine. It was all about ambition and success and hard work and hyper independence, never asking for help, never showing emotions, never showing weakness. I grew up, my parents were in the military, and then my dad left the military and became a homicide detective.

can imagine what my childhood was like. Without these words in particular, I grew up with the knowing that if I was feeling emotional, I needed to suck it up, Princess. And I had huge ambition. I decided by the time I was about nine that I wanted to be an ABC journalist and I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I remember listening to the beginnings of the First Iraq War on ABC Radio and thinking that's what I want to do. So I was this hyper-determined, ambitious, independent, don't help me. I don't need your help. I don't even need a man kind of teenager. Then stumbled into my 20s and then of course, met a man, fell in love and found myself pregnant. There was no way I had any preparation about what was about to happen to

me. And I don't know, I've reflected a lot on whether it would have made much difference because I deeply believe that matrescent's one of the beautiful insights and purposes of it is to crack us open to let go of who we used to be. For me, it needed to happen in this way. But I crash-landed into motherhood. I honestly thought it would be something I would add to my resume in a way. Like no parts of my life were going to change. I actually remember talking to my husband at the time saying,

this isn't going to change us, you know. And I still actually thought that I might become a foreign correspondent and I just have the baby strapped on my back. That's how naive or ignorant or blind, I guess, I was. And when I gave birth to my beautiful daughter, who's now 17, yeah, she's now 17, it was a very traumatic birth. I know many of us in this room have had those experiences. 17 years on, still makes me emotional.

It was incredibly scary. I have never felt more alone and scared in my life. I don't even remember anyone else being in the room. That's how alone I felt, even though others were there. And she eventually arrived and something had shifted in me. Something permanent had changed. I had this feeling that for the first time I was, that for the first time of my life, I don't understand what's happening because my whole life

I'd always just gone and read a book or done a course. I was a journalist. I can find somebody to interview about that. And for the first time I was just there and I had no idea what was going on. So being the journalist that I am, I thought, well, surely somebody's talking about this. For the first four months of her life, she was born with a lot of physical challenges and we were in physio every day in the children's hospital for six weeks. She couldn't feed properly. When she was four days old, they wrote in her medical notes, severe breast rejection.

And as a first time, mother, that was the breaking point. I honestly thought that my baby had rejected me. It was even written in her medical notes. But nobody was talking about that. So eventually when I became a bit stronger, I started asking this question, what happens to us, what happens to a woman when she becomes a mother? This was 17 years ago.

I wasn't even on Facebook. There was no community. There was no place of women to talk about the ways of women. So I went on this seeking journey. I was obsessed with trying to find out why I felt the way I did. And nobody could tell me. I had some insights around postnatal depression or I had other insights around burnout

out or whatever was happening in my body, but nobody could explain that I didn't understand who I was anymore because everything I had ever used in my life to be okay doesn't work with motherhood. You know, I'll just try harder. I'll just wake up earlier. I'll just do more than what everybody else is doing. I'll just ask somebody. I'll read that book. I'll do this. I'll do that. That doesn't work in motherhood. And I couldn't figure out how to do that. And then what everybody would tell me is that's okay, just trust your intuition. And I remember in my head wanting to scream, I don't have any. I don't have any mothering instinct here. I don't know what to do. This is terrifying. Long, long, long story short, two years later, I had another baby,

as we do. And then three and a half, four years after that, I had my third child. I often joke that the universe knew that I still hadn't got the lesson after the second one, so then they sent the surprise baby number three, and that's what totally brought me to my knees. By that stage, I was the senior producer on ABC Radio in Sydney. I was waking up at 3.30 a.m. five days a week to start work at 4.15. To then run, you know, interview the Prime Minister and do all the things that we do, in my heels, in my outfits, rush home, write a blog, about self-care for mothers, ironically, no, no, truly, then go pick up my kids from

childcare, come home, put them to bed, and I had to be asleep by seven so I could wake up at 3.30. And when I was 28 weeks pregnant, I went into early labour. And on that bed in hospital trying to keep him inside, I have very small babies. He was very, very small. If he had been born then, it would not have been good. I remember asking myself the second most important question I've ever asked. The first one was what happens to a woman when she becomes a mother. And the second was why is being a mother not enough for me? Because I didn't want to be doing that anymore. I didn't want to be getting up at 3.30 in the morning. I didn't want to be so burnt out that I was just yelling at my kids every night if they weren't asleep by seven. I never saw my husband. I was so sick.

I have a thyroid disease after birth of my first child. I was so run down, but I couldn't stop. Because the ways of women that I had been taught was ambition, success, hard work, keep going, keep going, keep going. I still hadn't achieved the foreign correspondent, so I wasn't going to stop. I couldn't get off the treadmill. And so this third baby came along and kicked me off the treadmill and made me sit on the couch for 10 weeks.

If I got up and walked up the road to pick up my children from school, the other two from school, contractions would start. I was literally couch-bound for 10 weeks. And that's when I started to go in. Instead of trying to interview everybody around the world, around why I was feeling the way I was, I started actually just asking myself. And that led to the most incredible transformation.

I took myself meditation, got myself a coach, then eventually decided to train as a coach, started coaching some of the incredible women here in this room, and over the following years left the ABC and built this business and coached thousands of mums around the world and realized that that thing that I had felt all those years ago, it wasn't just me, and I knew how to talk about it and I knew what to do about it. But it wasn't until six years ago now. By this stage, more than 3,000 women had been through my online programs.

I'd run events like this. I'd published two books. I had a podcast, everything about all of this work. It wasn't until six years ago that I was driving in my car around Sydney, pick up, drop off, you know, sports, whatever it was. And I was listening to a podcast. And I heard the woman on the podcast say, matrescence. This word metrescence. And metrescence is like adolescence. It is this developmental

change, this massive shift in identity, and it is the explanation of everything that I had been going through over the last, at that stage 12 years. And it was such a profound lightning bolt moment that I had to pull over on the side of the road because I was snot crying and hysterical because by that stage it hadn't just been me that had been lost without this understanding of what was happening to me but like I said I had thousands of women around the world and it was like oh my God I found it I'd been 12 years 12 years of asking why did I feel the way I did when I loved being a mum but I didn't love who I was anymore I didn't know who I was. I couldn't figure out what this change was. Within a couple of months, I had the great

privilege of flying to New York and sitting in the office of the world's leading matressants as a developmental transformation expert, Dr. Orley Athen, sitting in her office at Columbia University. Again, snot crying, like so embarrassingly, like actual snot running down my face, she had to go into the kitchen in Columbia University and get paper towel. It was so bad. And in that moment, I knew that this is the word that we all need to hear. What this is is a beautiful invitation for us to redefine our sense of self and to, in my humble opinion, break up with this patriarchal view of what it means to be successful and happy, to allow ourselves, to soften, to maybe step off that treadmill, and to learn how to listen to our bodies in a

completely different way. That beautiful opening from our Indigenous woman, the way she talked about nature, I thought, yeah, until very recently, I didn't even know what it felt like to breathe in the earth underneath me. Like, that's not something that we teach our children, or certainly wasn't in the 80s for me. What this is and what this whole weekend is about is really coming back to this village and this community through this word of metrescence and acknowledge it as this rite of passage which we should always have known. And we are now reclaiming and bringing back so we can learn how to do this differently because our world desperately needs these awakened, healed mothers. this generation of children, they are fierce

and they are here for a really big purpose and I really believe that through this lens of matressants we are able to do our own healing and our own redefining of who we are so that we can then be the shepherds of this next generation. So I want to finish by just reading you again from this beautiful book how much your life have been different

if deep within you carried an image of the great mother and when things seemed very very bad you could imagine that you were sitting in the lap of the goddess held tightly embraced at last and that you could hear her saying to you I love you. I love you and I need you to bring forth yourself. And if in that image you could see the great mother looking to her daughters,

looking to each woman to reveal in her own life the beauty, strength and wisdom of the mother. How might your life be different? Thank you everyone. We're thrilled. now to introduce to the stage, Vicky Chan. Vicky is joining us today with over 40 years experience as a passionate midwife and educator. Vicky has dedicated her life to better birth experiences for women and supporting their metressants transition. Okay, let's give her a clap. Birth fire. And once a long, long time ago,

Women were strong. Before the first man thought to question, these empty shells were one brilliant net to hold the sun. Each girl, in turn, was taught the right way to drink light. Each woman had to learn how to catch fire and yet not burn. Mother, then daughter, began to eat their diet of heat. And so for years, six million years or higher, they held that fire.

But the time came when women's ways of knowing and growing was stifled by the suffocating fear of men and the crunch of metal. Church and state decided women's fate. And that which was the strength and power of flame became the smoldering ash of shame. That which was strong became weak and that which was light became dark, suffering, disempowerment, humiliation, separation, sadness and rage.

But here, out of the splinters that remain, the fire is loose again, embers glowing, women growing, courage rising, sparks flying, I see a hundred, may, a thousand hands reaching here and there, filling the air, growing boulder, twisting free. We fasten onto the remnants of what again must be. We face fears, one by one consuming them, moving higher, we leap. We are done, and we go back to the sun. because we are fire and we can be free we can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be because we are fire and we can finally breathe

and we can unlearn all the things that they told us we should be we can be free We can be free We can be free And that brings us to the end of our very first episode of Tont's Metrescent Festival edition Thank you so much for listening. For more from me, you can head to claretonti.com or at ClareTonty on Instagram.

For more from Lizzie Humber, you can go to Instagram at Lizzie Humber. That's L-I-Z-Y-H-U-M-B-E-R. We'll put more links in the show notes below for more about our beautiful guest speakers. As always, thank you to Masey for editing this episode and we'll see you in episode two.