Jessie Harrold is a coach and doula who has been supporting mothers through matrescence for over fifteen years. She is the author of "Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage".
540: Matrescence: Transformational Power of Motherhood
Jessie Harrold
Hunter Clarke-Fields and Jessie Harold explore the profound transformation that occurs during motherhood. They discuss the societal pressures surrounding motherhood, the loss of identity, and the importance of compassion and support during this transition. The conversation also touches on the comparison between matrescence and adolescence, the challenges of early parenthood, and the need for equity in partnerships
Ep 540- Harrold
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Jessie Harrold: We live in this kind of fast-paced capitalist culture where our worthiness and our value is measured in how much we can produce and get done, and then you have a baby.
[00:00:17] Hunter: You are listening to the Mindful Mama Podcast, episode #540. Today we're talking about “matrescence” the transformational power of Motherhood with Jessie Harrold.
Welcome to the Mindful Mama Podcast. Here, it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting Course and Teacher Training, and I'm the author of the International Bestseller, “Raising Good Humans” “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the ”Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
If you're a mother, you know the profound transformation that occurs during motherhood. In this episode, I talked to Jessie Harold, a coach and a doula who's been supporting mothers through their “matrescence” for over 15 years, and she's the author of an incredible book that I really loved called “Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage”. And we're gonna talk about motherhood as a rite of passage and the transformation that happens and we compare the idea of “matrescence”- becoming a mother- as adolescence. And you know we're, we'll talk about the changes of early parenthood. We'll talk about the need for equity and our partnerships and all about motherhood. I felt so seen in this episode. I know you are going to, too. So if you enjoy it, please do share it with a friend- tell them to subscribe so we can grow the podcast. That makes such a big difference. And let's dive into this conversation with Jessie Harold.
[00:03:12] Hunter: Jessie, thank you so much for coming on The Mindful Mama Podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:03:17] Jessie Harrold: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:03:19] Hunter: I love this from your introduction. I'm just gonna read it 'cause I think it's so good. Becoming a mother is one of those changes that changes everything.
It's a seismic transformation that is biological, psychological, socio-cultural, economic, and spiritual in its scope. Perhaps more than anything at its heart, the transition to motherhood represents a shift in the very tectonic plates of your identity. Despite the dominant bounce back cult cultural narrative of our times, motherhood is one of those transformations that makes your old self not applicable, at least not for now and maybe forever.
I love that. I, yeah, I don't really have a question around that. I just wanna say I completely. Resonate with that. That way it is like a, you're, you feel like a whole other being and then you say this, like that. Losing yourself in motherhood isn't the problem. It's the point. And I love that too. So tell me about that, please, Jessie.
[00:04:25] Jessie Harrold: Yeah, totally. It's so interesting because. On this side of motherhood, both of us being mothers, we can be like, yeah, definitely. That is how it is. But there is this kind of pervasive narrative in our culture that motherhood shouldn't change you. And that in fact, the worst thing that could happen, okay?
It's a bit of hyperly, it's a little bit extreme, but the worst thing that could happen is that you might lose yourself in motherhood. It's just a very it's a very interesting idea, isn't it, that we could have this kind of world rocking thing happen and yet expect to be unchanged. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and yet that's the dominant cultural paradigm is that you should bounce back.
And I think the thing that we forget about in that narrative is that, you might not return back to that kind of former self, and that is a loss. And you can feel feelings about that. You can have grief and all kinds of complex feelings about that. But what we forget to remind ourselves and the mothers who are being born today, that you might become someone new.
Like you might become. Laser clear on your priorities. You might get in touch with a sense of inner knowing that you didn't have before. You might find a community of people that you know never existed to you before. There's so much potential here. And I think that actually that bounce back narrative kind of robs us of that potential.
Yeah. So it's, I think, but it's so pervasive, isn't it? And we feel that if we're, if we haven't returned back to quote unquote normal, that we've somehow done it wrong. And I think that couldn't be further from the truth.
[00:06:20] Hunter: It's funny, like as you're speaking, like I completely relate in so many ways.
Like I definitely became a whole other person in some ways, but then I also feel. There's somewhere something of a messy middle in that's also something I want for moms and dads is that you should have something that's just you that's outside of the role, right? Like it, like that transformation shouldn't just transform you into the role of this thing but there should be.
There should be places and spaces that you carve out that are for just you. Not maybe bouncing back, but just being you, whatever that is too. I think that as Zu, we spoke about the idea that's becoming this all encompassing, all pervasive think. Then, but then I also, part of me pushes back against that and says but no like it's good for us as parents to be whole rounded human beings that have parts of ourselves that have nothing to do with parenthood,
[00:07:29] Jessie Harrold: yeah. Totally. I couldn't agree more. And I think, so I think one of the things you're pointing to here is some nuance around the idea, that idea of losing yourself. And I think another thing that we have happening in our culture is a set of social norms social policies and external systemic forces at play.
That actually do rob us of our sense of self in many ways when we're bending over backwards to be the perfect mother, for example. Or, when we're, we have social policy that doesn't support parents to, parent as they would prefer. And balance that between, having a healthy income and work and all that.
There's a lot of things that kind of, make retaining that sense of self, or finding a new sense of self, really difficult. So there is some nuance there. And I think another thing that is also true is that especially in those really early years, there are parts of ourselves that we put on pause in a lot of ways, and there's this concept. It really elucidated by a researcher named Pauline Boss called “Ambiguous Loss”. And “Ambiguous Loss” was originally a term that referred to the specific experience of, loved ones of, usually like a military member who was MIA, lost in action.
And so those family members don't know if they're grieving a death or if they're hoping against hope that their loved one will return. And I've borrowed that concept to support mothers to think about what it might feel like to be in this really messy middle of, maybe you've got young children, you're in this trence time, which we can totally talk about a little bit more.
I define it as a two to three year period, and there's a lot on pause. And we don't really know actually for a lot of those things if it's pause for now or pause forever. Yeah. And I don't know about you, but I certainly had some things that I was actually relieved to let go of. Or that because my values reoriented so much that I didn't want to return to those things.
So there's a lot of nuance there. As well that, we get this opportunity to reshape ourselves in a lot of ways. And I think what ultimately happens for most of the mothers that I work with, particularly when they are well supported in their matrescence time, is that actually this process helps 'em to become more of themselves.
And it's oftentimes. That, we go into our motherhood having followed a lot of rules and ideas and norms about how we should be. And oftentimes, again, in a well supported process we leave a lot of those behind. And actually become more fully ourselves in this whole kind of transformation.
So yeah, there's a lot going on there in terms of. What we let go of and what we hold onto. And I do believe that there is this sort of essential self, I actually use this metaphor in the book that a caterpillar has these things called imaginal cells in them, in the imaginal cells. They stay the same from caterpillar to chrysalis and all that goo and mush that they turn into in the chrysalis.
To butterfly. So even though there's this fundamental metamorphosis that happens, these imaginal cells stay the same. So they have the blueprint for the butterfly when it's still a caterpillar, and they have the memory of the caterpillar when it's turned into a butterfly. And that's what I like to think about when I think about this sort of loss of self, but this retention of maybe this essence and maybe even a return to that essence as we move through matrescence.
[00:11:44] Hunter: Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
I get many people sending me many books and Mary just talking about whatever, all kinds of issues and I think that. What you put your finger on is that it's, it is, it's so much, it's beyond, the pelvic floor and the mental health and stuff like that. There's like a deep, profound change and.
That's something we can celebrate and grieve and I love how you talk about that. But like you've used this word so far, ence a couple times, and one of the things you, in the book that you do is you relate this idea of our process of moving into motherhood that you say it takes two to three years, which is also something to pull apart, but like how it relates to adolescence.
Can you tell us about that?
[00:14:53] Jessie Harrold: Yeah. So the word “matrescence” refers to the transition to motherhood and refers to this kind of biological, psychological, sociological, economic, spiritual, like the, everything that we talked about that changes, and it was originally coined by a social anthropologist, Dr. Dana Raphael, back in 1975 actually.
She also coined the term doula, which we love her for.
[00:15:20] Hunter: Where does doula come from? It's just outta curiosity. Obviously I can understand matrescence where that comes from, but where the heck does doula come from? Do you know?
[00:15:29] Jessie Harrold: I think it's a Greek word. I think it's complex. It's come under some controversy lately.
Oh, really? I probably am not even well informed enough to go in into that, but but yeah it, I believe it was a Greek word for servant. Oh. Yeah. All very, yeah. You can see there's a little bit of complexity there. Yeah. So it was Dr. Dana Raphael that kind of drew this line between the word mares essence.
And adolescence as being similar processes in the sense that they affect everything. And what I think is. Really interesting about the comparison between the two is that we never expect adolescents or we hope that they don't go back to being children, we hope they don't bounce back.
In fact, we don't love it when our. Adult children or young adults start acting like children again, except for the cuddles. Except, yeah, let's keep those. Totally. We never expect them to bounce back. We see it as a process. I think we agree as a culture that it's very crunchy and very challenging and filled with awkwardness.
And filled with potential. And that this idea that we grow up and grow, mature, and we evolve and grow our capacity, that's all part, that's all baked into how we think about adolescence. I. And so that's should be how we think about matrescence. It's hard, it's awkward. It takes time. By the way, that's the other thing.
Adolescents, we think that takes many years. And that we grow. And one of the things that I do in my work as I take. The field of adult development psychology. So we have milestones for how children develop and progress through their lives.
We actually have those for adults too. And that we become more mature and grow our capacities and all kinds of things over our adult years. So I, that's the kind of field of adult development psychology. I pull that in to highlight how ence again, when it's hopefully well supported, can grow us up and can evolve us and is full of potential.
And increases our capacity in so many ways. So I think it's a really potent parallel, and it's one we all are so familiar with because most of us who are adults have been through an adolescence of some kind. We get it. Yeah. We don't
[00:17:55] Hunter: judge our kids for their mood swings and their difficulties and their tears and their grief over childhood or any of those things.
Yet we judge ourselves. For those things in us. And so to take this and say, yeah, this is this period of time, two to three years, like adolescence, like that, that it's a metamorphosis is happening. And so then I think that what I love about this is that it takes it removes some of the judgment and the should and the, I guess you're, what you're working against is that sort of like.
Like bounce, bounce back kind of thing, but just like giving people time to evolve. But this can be tricky and of course in itself, because when there's other people who say it's like we're told that the first three years are so important for development, for human spend, they are. But also especially if this, the first time you're a.
Parent or a mother like this is you've never done this before. You're just learning. You're learning on the job. You suck at this. You have practice, right? Yet we're judging ourselves because it's such an important time for developing humans. So how do you, when you're working with moms and looking at this time, how do we work through this process of allowing ourselves that, that grace for this and maybe forgiving ourselves for the mistakes that we be maybe making, or maybe not even advertently, maybe we're.
Going through some stuff and it's, of course it affects our child. So how do you work through some of this with moms Or with yourself?
[00:19:42] Jessie Harrold: Yeah, totally. It's such a good question. 'cause you're right, these first three years are so important for our children's development and. Let me be 185% honest. I did things differently the second time around with my second child.
Me too. I often, people ask me, do you go through matrescence more than once? And or with each child. And I, yes, of course you do. Of course you do. Every child is different and your life experiences are different. And often the first time you're grappling with this big, like identity.
Crisis, really. And yeah. And I think one of the themes of this time is a sort of loss of autonomy in a lot of ways. Like that sort of physical and emotional autonomy that you had pre-kids, at least a lot of us would've had that the second time around you, you're thinking about different things.
You're thinking about can feelings more stretched thin, oftentimes. Is what it is. How do I, hold onto those imaginal cells when I'm stretched in two different directions now, or three different directions now? Oh, I'm sorry. Did you
[00:20:45] Hunter: I can relate that to that loss of autonomy.
I think part of what attracted me to, probably I was shaped by the bounce back culture. I wanted to bounce back so I could have my freedom again. You know what I mean? And I, the frustration of. Of being, so I, I remember some, definitely some grief and frustration of being so tethered and at times resentment of my child because I, you can't go back.
There's no way to go back and you're, this is just it, and it feels forever. And it is, it's the longest, shortest time makes so much sense, right? But now that child is like waiting for college acceptances, it's oh, things really do change. And it does, it isn't forever, but. But yeah, I really felt that chafing against that freedom and grieving both freedom.
Totally.
[00:21:39] Jessie Harrold: And I think, I think this is so true and I think it is important to have compassion for ourselves during this time because yeah, to be birthing yourself in many ways as a mother, perhaps for the first time. While also tending for this child who is, yeah. Grating against some of those kind of ways of being is really challenging.
Compassion. Yes. And I also wanna say that as always we need to point to the social and systemic, factors that are really deeply influencing our experience of this time. And so it's not just on us as parents to have the compassion or a buckle up and, hold on for the ride I.
But also we live in a culture that makes these first two to three years and quite frankly, all of Parenting so challenging.
And so I think we also need to problematize the culture within which we're trying to do this really difficult work in these first years. And yes, I feel like I could go on and on about this question because yeah.
And I also, I guess I'll finish by saying I've been working with mothers for. 17 years, and I've never ever met a mother who didn't want the very best for her children. And I think we can put lots of trust in our capacity to hold this transformation in our own selves and be exactly the parent our child needs.
In so many ways, even during the times when we're stretched thin.
[00:23:19] Hunter: Yeah. That, I guess having someone else to reflect that trust back on you might be helpful with those sense. You've mentioned that though, like that this can be, properly supported and properly, like maybe properly isn't the, is a bad word here, but maybe well supported or this can be a positive transformation.
It can be. What does that look like? What if, for somebody, maybe there's an someone who's just transitioned into motherhood, who's listening to this, like what does that even look like? What is the vision of that? I think that it's it's hard to imagine what that is. Even I think it is something that isn't a vision that isn't held in our culture.
[00:24:00] Jessie Harrold: Yeah, totally. Big visions are obviously, being able to do this within a culture that values interdependence and, values Parenting in general. Like obviously we can we can cast our vision, broadly and, ambitiously.
[00:24:18] Hunter: Let's say it's in the culture we have now.
[00:24:20] Jessie Harrold: Precisely. Yeah, exactly. With that in our, in our Far zen I think a lot of this, honest to goodness is as simple as knowing that matrescence is a thing. That this is a process. And so you're not, you're not like going crazy. That, that this is normal and that the enormous spectrum of feelings you might be feeling are also probably normal and you're probably not alone.
That grieving is okay. That liminality, which is another thing that I talk about in the book, this idea of like being in between of, maybe you're a mother. Because you have a kid in your house now, but you might not feel fully embodied or identified or integrated in that role yet. And that would be normal too.
And that, it takes two to three years. So all of these things, I think are the first step to feeling well supported, because I think it just gives us a ton of permission. And compassion. I think that's the beginning of it. I think my hope is that “Mothershift”, my book, will help people to dive a little deeper.
I. Into this process because, we not everyone knows, but a lot of people know the word resin or they know that it's a thing. We're hearing it more and more. But what we don't really know is how resin unfolds. And that's what I'm trying to unearth in mother shift because I think what that allows us is to, really meet ourselves and be met well in each step along the way. So that we have specific tools and resources to use. For example, that grief piece, like we're a pretty grief illiterate culture. We ask, are you done crying yet? Rather than have you cried enough yet, we don't give ourselves permission to feel grief about anything that's not a death. And all kinds of things. And it would make a lot of sense that somebody who's actually feeling grief about having lost lots of things that made them feel like themselves in those early weeks and months of parenthood to be really confused about what that is.
And how to work with it and move through it in some way. So I think like those are our low hanging fruit right now when it comes to a well supported matrescence. And I'm very I delineate that experience because I think a lot of people don't have a well supported matrescence.
[00:27:03] Hunter: Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
[00:27:40] Hunter: Yeah, let's at least not pathologize ourselves, right? Let's recognize that this is a process and that you are in process. I think that, yeah, you're right. That is like our next step is to say, yes, this is a process.
We are in a process and we have permission to experience all the ins and outs and nitty. And you also talk about in that process like. The, there's all these changes in all these different parts of our lives, in our bodies, in our work with our partners, right? It's a process with all of those things.
And one of the things you write about in the book that I really enjoy is that you talk about, I. Equity in our partnerships rather than equality in the early years. And I was wondering if you could tell us about this. 'cause I think this is, I feel like what I end up seeing is people who are com not aware of the changes that are happening in their partnerships or trying not to maybe even see them, or there's so much going on that you're not aware of them or it's happening.
And no one's talking about the different changes that are happening in things in a partnership that may have been very equitable before you had kids, and now is changing in this different way. And we're gonna have feelings about that and things that we have to discuss, but I think it's hard for you to have those conversations, right?
Yeah.
[00:29:04] Jessie Harrold: Yeah. Okay. This is such a. Like nuanced subject. And I think, I think, I hope that I've done it justice in the book and I'll try to do my best to tease it apart a little bit here. 'cause I think it's really important. Primarily in the book and with a lot of my clients, I'm working with this idea from the lens of a cishet male-female couple. Because there's all these pretty heavily ingrained social norms in that sort of growing up female and growing up male experience that then can come to a head in a lot of ways in our early parenthood. And I also will kind of preface this by saying that this experience is particularly magnified with people who've been pregnant and birthed their own baby and also particularly magnified among breastfeeding folks. And so there's sort of certain experiences where people are gonna feel this a lot more, but basically, and I'm sure everybody who relates to some of those experiences will find themselves nodding when I say that oftentimes having a baby just rockets our relationship back into 1953. And all of the kind of hard won equality that our foremothers have worked so hard for, that we've maybe really valued and upheld in our relationship, suddenly goes out the window and we've got this real imbalance. So the idea of equality being equal means that, I wash the dishes, you wash the dishes, I fix the car, you fix the car- we have the same tasks and we are both equally capable and responsible for each of those things. And a lot of us-pre-kids, definitely- pride ourselves on that kind of relationship. And then a baby comes into the mix and suddenly we have a really different dynamic and it's both kind of nature and nurture. It's biological and it's social. So a lot of ways that biological piece- if we've carried our babies and we're breastfeeding our babies, we have this pretty undeniable biological and physiological bond with these little babies. And our partners may not: when a person gets pregnant, they're often integrating and metabolizing this experience of this transformation from the minute they pee on a stick or even before then, right? And so they've had 10 months worth of getting used to all of the changes that have happened. And their partner oftentimes, it hits home in the birth room. And so there's this kind of biological difference and then there's this social difference where we as women have often been socialized to care from the minute we were born also.
And, we know now that caregiving there's some good research to show that caregiving is actually a learned behavior. It's not necessarily innate. But we've had maybe 20 or 30 or 40 years of learning how to be a good caregiver and how to look after little people. Whereas our partner, if they're male, may not have experienced that and in fact may have gotten the exact opposite message.
You are not a caregiver. That is not what you do. So we're tumbling into this. New baby in our house situation with a lot of kind of biological and social. Influence. And what often happens is naturally, is that the birthing person or mother ends up doing a lot of the baby care and there's this kind of imbalance and maybe, hopefully the partner is doing a lot of the other things that surround that.
And so this looks like failure to someone who values equality. We do the same things. But we can strive for equity, which is maybe I'm doing a lot of the baby care right now. And the resting and whatever else that needs to happen so that I can do that. And maybe you are doing like everything else.
And we're not doing the same jobs, but are, we're both putting effort into the kind of wellbeing of this household and. I there's a kind of model of support, the concentric circles of model concentric circles of support model where, you know, the person who needs the most support, which in this case is the baby, is like the center of the bullseye.
And then we've got these concentric circles and the person providing the most care. Is the next kind of layer of that support, and that's oftentimes the birthing person or mother. And then the next layer is perhaps the partner and then the next layer, hopefully, goodness, there's a next layer.
I think that's quite a problem in our culture, right? Someone there. Yeah, someone please. Someone bring a casserole. And that there's this, it's not equal, but there is this kind of way that it can work and that needs to shift. And I talk about this two to three year timeframe and that timeframe is also can be biological and physiological as well.
And there is this sort of natural, separation that happens as a little one grows older or as a mother goes to work, for example. And we rely on more different caregivers to come in and support our baby, and they naturally just need us less. And then the dynamic needs to change.
And I think one of the problems that we have is that often the dynamic doesn't change and we eight years later, we're still, as the mother juggling all the balls and running the household and feeling really resentful about it. But I think, and I think that's where our question of equality versus equity starts to get crunchy, is that we don't shift and realize that actually our partnerships aren't dynamic and sometimes.
The other partner will need all of the support and will need us to step up and do more. Or we might, not be able to do as much. And like it's meant to do that. And we're meant to have conversations about that over the course of our partnership. And equality, actually, when the rubber hits the road, doesn't necessarily work much at all.
We need to come to an agreement and have conversations about. What our responsibilities are, what our strengths are and expect that's gonna change over time.
[00:35:35] Hunter: Yeah.
[00:35:36] Jessie Harrold: That was a super long-winded answer, but it's a lot.
[00:35:39] Hunter: No, I love that. I love it. It's interesting, there's, in the Plum Village tradition the Zen Buddhist tradition of Thích Nhất Hạnh, one of the things that is talked about in the precepts is may we be free from a superiority complex, inferiority complex and equality complex. And I always think that's so interesting because they identify that this, that, inter being requires us being so different. And that equality, equity, and I just, I love that.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Long answer. Put you teasing out. The difference between equity and equality. But I think this is such an important conversation to just continue to have as these seasons change and shift, right? What is equity now? Maybe while you're breastfeeding versus what is equity now that they're back at school and all of those things.
How can we each be supporting I and I love that concentric circles. There's so much in here. I have all these. Questions that I would've love, loved to ask you. Can I quickly ask you, what is the, tell me just about the big slowdown, because that's one of my, one of the things I I get frustrated about is the pace of everything in childhood and early childhood and mindfulness, right?
Like being present. A parent having some modicum of ease and peace, right? Which is the best thing we can give our kid is like us feeling steady and at ease. That's the best thing. That requires some slowing down. So tell us what is the big slowdown?
[00:37:29] Jessie Harrold: Yeah, the big slowdown. Oh my goodness. I think it might be one of the hardest.
Thanks for mothers, at least the mothers that I've worked with to grapple with motherhood slows us down, and so what I see how this kind of looks in real life is that we live in this kind of fast paced capitalist culture where our worthiness and our value is measured in how much we can produce and get done.
And then you have a baby and you are, quote unquote big air quotes here, only, breastfeeding all day and night, or changing diapers or figuring out all of the things that you need to figure, it's a tremendously intense job and. And we just can't get as much done, and it, I think, we have all of these kind of things like sleep, when the baby sleeps and just rest. And I think that's actually really hard to do. Not, yeah, not for these sort of practical reasons, but actually because. It causes us to question who we are and how we are worthy in this world if we're not the sum of our kind of production.
And I think that's really hard for mamas. And so what I see is like trying to keep up with this fast paced. World with a tiny human and, cue the suffering, right? Trying to, I don't know, make it to your next appointment before the baby needs to feed or finding yourself out at coffee dates or play dates or whatever it is that you're doing and exhausted afterwards.
And, that's the biggest challenge and it's a huge potential. In motherhood that it allows us to slow down. It allows us, I think mothering and the process of metasense is fundamentally counterculture. Like it asks us to swim against the tide and to together.
I think where there's enough of us to do that, it feels possible. And to thumb our noses at the pace of our culture and say, no, this is my invitation to slow down
[00:39:49] Hunter: the big F you to getting it all done. It's
[00:39:52] Jessie Harrold: so true. Yeah. Yeah. But the big slow down, it's really tough. And I do wanna say that, I think some of us don't get to slow down. People who have to return to work immediately or who have other children or other caregiver caregiving responsibilities or what have you. And so I don't necessarily think the big slow down is always just that you're, sitting on the couch breastfeeding all day.
And I think in those situations where we can't slow down. I think what happens is that we become unwell or that we lose our tolerance for the culture that we live in. That we have this kind of rupture in a way of oh wait, this is not how humans operate. I can't do this anymore. And I, I think a lot about the people that can't keep up.
With our culture the people that culture leaves behind in a way. And I think mothers are among them. And I think that though that's really hard, that is a swim against the tide. I also think that there are more and more of us who are able to speak up and speak out against. Really the dehumanizing conditions that our culture creates for us and say, Hey, we were, we don't wanna move this fast.
We, we are more than our to-do lists. And I think motherhood really opens up this possibility for that kind of talking back to the culture.
[00:41:27] Hunter: Amen. Tell him, give the big f you to the pressure. Yeah. Yes. Jessie, this has been such a pleasure to talk to you. Jessie's book is “Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage”. It's everywhere books are sold. I really enjoy this book and I really enjoy your message and I obviously we can only touch on so much. Is there anything else that we miss that you'd like to share with the listener?
[00:41:57] Jessie Harold: I think I would just love to offer the folks listening permission for this transformation to take time to be messy, to feel lots of feelings about it, and for all of that to be okay.
And seeing it's normal doesn't mean don't get help if you need it, obviously. But. That it's all part of it. And that, there is a lot of potential and possibility that's also here for you.
[00:42:29] Hunter: That's so beautiful. This has been lovely. Where can people find you if they wanna continue the conversation?
[00:42:36] Jessie Harold: Yeah, so my website is JessieHarrold.com. And I write a monthly newsletter as well- you can sign up on my website. It's called “Imaginalia”. So play on those imaginal cells. And I'm on Instagram too, so people can find me there pretty much every day.
[00:42:53] Hunter: Thank you again. Thank you for your thoughtfulness in what you've written and the work you've done. Just seeing seeing the wholeness of mothers going through this transformation and the change, and I think this book really, I wish I had it, of course, when I, as a young mother, but yeah. Could really make people feel seen. Yeah. And I think you're really, you have a very compassionate view and that is really needed. So thank you.
[00:43:25] Jessie Harold: It's been a real pleasure to chat with you.
[00:43:33] Hunter: Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I really loved talking to Jessie. I think she is so much profound, such earthy wisdom. And I really love that. If you're looking for more episodes about motherhood in general, I recommend you check out episode #415, which is the Unsustainability of American Motherhood with Jessica Grose. And then go way back to #199, “Is Motherhood Broken?” with Brandy Ferner.
And then let me know what you think. I am @MindfulMamaMentor on Instagram. You're welcome to just DM me. I'd be happy to chat with you about the episode. And if you'd like to have more episodes to dive into, we also have a place where you can get your own personal Mindful Mama Podcast playlist, and that's at MindfulMamaMentor.com/Quiz. You answer a few easy questions and you get a five episode playlist of the podcast to help you become a little less stressed and a little more joyful. So just one quick quiz- MindfulMamaMentor.com/Quiz. And if you enjoy this episode, please do me a favor share on your Instagram stories and tag me in it @MindfulMamaMentor.
And I'm wishing you a wonderful week. We have amazing episodes coming up soon. Next week I have an episode where I talk to my daughter, Maggie. She turned 18, not long ago, and she agreed to talk to me for the podcast all about her childhood. It's really interesting and it was really beautiful. So that is coming up for Mother's Day. We're gonna have my daughter, Maggie, talking to me, so make sure you're back and subscribed so you can listen to that and please share, of course, share the podcast of course.
And please have a lovely week. It is really gorgeous here in Delaware, in May. Lots of things are blooming and it just is filling me up the flowers and I've been doing my Scottish dancing and having a lovely time just trying to feel a time that feels unstable in the larger, global picture with some pockets of joy and focusing my attention on that to keep me stable through it. So anyway, hope for that for you. Lots of flowers, maybe some dancing would be great. Look up your local RSCDS chapter. Maybe you can join me in Scottish dancing.
It's so fun. And I hope you have lots of hugs and lots of rest, and you give yourself some grace this week. Thank you so much for listening. Namaste.
Support the Podcast
- Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: your kind feedback tells Apple Podcasts that this is a show worth sharing.
- Share an episode on social media: be sure to tag me so I can share it (@mindfulmamamentor).
- Join the Membership: Support the show while learning mindful parenting and enjoying live monthly group coaching and ongoing community discussion and support.
