Dear friends,
I first heard about the world matrescence when I was in what is often be called āthe fourth trimester.ā I canāt remember where I heard it, but likely in a (Covid-distanced) conversation with a new mum-friendāstaring blankly into each othersā pallid facesāasking what the hell was happening to me. They described it as a lesser-known adolescence: a huge hormonal shift that turns your life, perspective, and body inside out and upside down, reconfiguring you as a new person. Oh, thatās it. Yes, thatās it. It was the first time anything anyone had said to me had made any sense. All the books, NHS leaflets, Insta-gurus, etc, were a soup of ācontentā around motherhood which felt remote, alien, miles away from my experience. But matrescence, I could instantly understand. I grabbed onto it and held it close. If someone had coined it, other people were feeling the same tectonic shift I was too exhausted and overwhelmed and āin itā to describe.
When Lucy Jones published her non-fiction of the same name in June, I reserved it immediately at my local library. I knew it was going to be goodāthere was a queue of other people waiting to read it after me. I had a week. I didnāt need a week: I couldnāt put it down. I was taking a photo of every other page on my phone, using the fingertip highlighter to scrawl and annotate. I quickly ordered two more copies when it came out in paperback: sending them to two June-birthday friends as the greatest gift I could imagine. Iāll continue to buy it for my friends as gifts throughout the year.
Yes, I think itās that good. Iām dedicating this rapid-fire post to it. Iāve read a heap of books this year. We donāt have a TV, I donāt scroll (except on Substack of course). I read books for about an hour every day. Yet, instead of a roundup of my top summer reads (for that, we published a roundup of top reads released in time for summer over on Substack Reads), I wanted to share just one really good, gleaming read I can wholeheartedly recommend for any gender, any age, any stage of life. This isnāt just for mothers, although I know a sort of word-of-mouth virality is happening among millennial mums right now. My husband just started the audiobook and says itās brilliant. I recommend it to anyone curious about the intersection of nature, technology, history, biology, and social systemsāand how they interplay and play out today. if you are a curious-minded person, it should be top of your stack.
Letās dive in!
SPOTLIGHT: Matrescence by Lucy Jones
I was going to reach out to Lucy, who I met when I interned at a national newspaper years ago (hi Lucy!), but then I saw the inimitable
had spoken to her for an episode of new podcast, Creative Coffee, and asked her all the questions I would have, and many more, so Iām linking to that below instead, and pulling a few quotes from the transcript:I've had quite a few different lives in a way. My hair has been every colour of the rainbow. I've had very religious lives. I've had very, how should we put this? I've lived in active addiction and I've always been really interested in how a person can really change. This experience was another metamorphosis for me, but it kind of was put upon me and surprised me. I just found metamorphosis as a thing, like a really like intellectually and creatively fertile area to think about.
Some 10 years ago I decided to train as a Pilates instructor, while working in journalism and freelancing. As the daughter of a surgeon and former ballet dancer Iāve always been fascinated by the human body and wanted any excuse to learn more about anatomy, physiology, and how aches, pains, and the mind and body are connected. I was also attending to a long-held secret desire to work as a Physio in the NHS. Another side, another self.
In my studies, I learned about how the body regenerates itself every seven years. The whole thing. Every seven years. We know about hair and fingernailsābut the thought that all our organs, cells, and even bones were completely refreshed, was tantalising.
I studied the philosophy of self during my time at university, and like many others I often feel Iām a completely different person after different chapters of my life. A lot of old colleagues and friends who meet me today comment on it. Youāve changed so much. Youāre unrecognisable. Of course I look different; my brain, my sensibilities, my personality, all feels new too.
Iām currently seven months pregnant with our second child, and latch onto anything which seems to quantify and solidify the rapid shift in my body and mind which is occurring. An episode of the podcast Child revealed that the pregnant woman metabolises 2.2x more calories that the average personāwhich is, given the nine-month timespan, on par with ultra-marathon runners, cross-country hikers, and other sports which test the limits of human endurance.
One of the biggest feats of human endurance is pregnancy.
Lucyās words are the closest Iāve come to seeing the strange metamorphosis fully articulated. Not directly, or succinctly, but through the course of the book and her observations in nature and the world around us. The particularly bizarre version of it we live in in the U.K.
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I tired too to capture something of it through writing.
I gave birth to our daughter at the height of the pandemic, in June 2020. I had been in strict isolation for the entire third trimesterāsince Boris Johnson announced pregnant women were āhigh risk',ā and the country was asked to stay at home, except for a single walk a day. Itās hard, sometimes, to remember what that first lockdown felt like: there were no vaccines, scenes from over-run Italian hospitals flooded the news, we were all wiping down our groceries with disinfectant. All the books told me to ban excess stress or anxiety in the third trimester. But blocking it all out felt untenable. And I harboured a particular knot of fear for my dad, sister, and sister-in-law, who all still went into NHS hospitals to help care for people and make them better.
Everyone had a different experience of the pandemic, and that first lockdown, but those at the birth and death end of the spectrumāI have since foundāall share in common sharp stories of sadness and loss.
I wrote reams of Apple Notes, journals, poems, quotes and saved texts in my daughterās first months, trying to process what I was going through. Here is one:
Learning To Breastfeed: 2020
80% YouTube videos,
9% the book my sister gave me,
8% encouragement on WhatsApp,
2% realising that you are not the problem,
0.80% realising I am not the problem,
0.15% realising there is no problem,
0.05% motherly instinct.Ā
I later put together some of those notes, poems, texts, and excerpts into a pamphlet of prose and poetry. Two others were published, one as a runner up to the Wild Words prize, and Bay 4 published in Toasted Cheese. A pamphlet of the texts is currently in the works as an art project for a charity (excited to share more soon!). I also revisited it through a piece for the miscarriage association, which I still refer back to, here.
Finding, and reading, Lucyās book is like time travel. I go backwards and forwards through my own childhood, preconception of mothers, the education system of Tony Blairās government. Lucy pinpoints a certain point in time while circling all the things leading up to that pointāwhat our motherās read for advice on baby rearing, what the Victorians did, and what scientific research determined the systems we live in today. Itās unlocking a greater understanding for me of what it means to be a modern day mumāborn in the 80s, raised in the 90s and 00s, and raising children now.
Thereās a part of me that is keen to put a full stop, or maybe just a comma, against my own experience of matrescence. Though something tells me having a second is going to add a whole new perspective to it. Pregnancy outside of lockdown is already utterly opposite from what we had before. I want to make room for it, in my notes, journals, poems. So far, Iāve refrained from bringing it here to my corner of Substack, and I canāt determine what the next phase will bring. But I know that it craves space, is taking over. It is so radical, so psychedelic, that it canāt be ignored.
While weāre talking about motherhood here on Substack, I wanted to take a moment to shoutout the amazing parenting community on this platformāfrom those who write exclusively about it and bring me so much warmth, ideas, and support in these yearsāfor example
by Charlotte, ās , ās , , by , and so, so many more (plus the crossover parenting Substacks which merge into other genres such as (technology, (humor), + (food), (personal finance), and (music).To those whose writing I already loved, but when they turn their hand to hard subjects to do with the maternal conflicts, I am hooked on every word and they sum up feelings I just couldnāt explain. Here are a few of my favourite recent posts from
: has published many posts about motherhood and her fertility journey I love. Written with a rawness Iāve only really seen in Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder. Here are two recent examples:And this recent post by
Iāve had in my head for weeks:You rarely see posts about parenting today which get into the nitty gritty detail of what they entails day-to-dayāfrom the financial admin to the division of labour among couples who want to do things equally while living in societies that keep trying to heave the load on women.
is doing just that by unpicking the personal finances of couples, and this recent one really hit home:What can one say, except thank youāto all the mother writers on here who put themselves, their honest, raw, messy, whole selves out here, so that many others can feel less alone.
what Iām reading šĀ //
Log Off by
. Kristen also works at Substack and her debut novel was just released by , with a beautiful cover illustrated is by Jinhwa Jang and designed is by Tim Vienckowski (Kristen has written about the joys of working with an independent publisher and getting to help design her own cover here.) Iām about halfway through the novel and safe to say I absolutely love it. I canāt wait to read it every night before bed, and Iām totally absorbed by the characters, writing, and world. I ordered mine from my local bookshopāand it only took a week to arrive. Fully recommend you getting a copy now! All listed retailers are here.I also just finished Sinead Gleesonās Hagstone, and it ticked all my boxes.
what Iām listening to š§ //
This podcast episode on Moomin philosophy by Jennifer Saunders is probably one of the best things I listened to this year. A delight for the ears, and something Iāll remember for weeks and weeks.
I really enjoyed discovering this podcast episode from last year with novelist and Substack writer
and . Given the response to last weekās post on book grief, I think many of you will too.what Iām watching š //
Nothing at the momentā¦ what are you watching? Share your recommendations and hot finds in the comments:
What are you reading, watching, and listening to? Leave a comment below, or join me and the TTS readers in Chat on the Substack app:
Such a great read, Hannah! and thank you for the shout out of the podcast, I'm glad I asked the questions you would have asked! xoxo
Thank you so much for featuring Baby Brain in such a wonderful post. I'm definitely buying that book! x