'Matrescence' is a word that has been around since 1973. It only made it into the dictionary in 2022. That gap tells you almost everything you need to know about how well we've been holding the experience of becoming a mother.

Lucy Wylde is a matrescence activist and coach who works with women navigating the identity shift of motherhood - before, during and long after. She's also a poet. And in this conversation, she and Jacky go deep into the places most parenting content never reaches: birth trauma, the inner split of wanting to be two people at once, feeling unseen in the experience that changed everything.

This is an episode for anyone who has ever felt like they were supposed to be grateful - and found something more complicated underneath.

In this episode:

• What matrescence actually is
• How poetry became Lucy’s way of telling her truth about the traumatic birth of her daughter Matilda, the loss of the woman she was and the parts of motherhood that no one validates
• The ‘inner split’ - wanting to be fully present as a mother and fully yourself as a person, at the same time
• How ‘premenstrual tension’ is actually ‘premenstrual truth’ - what surfaces when hormones that act as a buffer shift and change
• Why “you matter” isn’t a platitude - and what it actually takes to feel it

| "My scar is amazing. My stretch marks are too. They remind me of growing and welcoming you... well done, strong mama. Please know you'll recover. Birth trauma is real and we must help each other." — Lucy Wylde

Website: https://www.lucywyldecoaching.com