Imagine being the first person to say to a client: “What you’re going through has a name. It’s called matrescence.”
That moment of recognition? It can change everything.
Practitioners don’t need to have all the answers, yet having the language and knowing how to use it can fundamentally shift the experience of motherhood for mothers.
That’s exactly what the Matrescence Practitioner Training Program is designed to give you:
A high level grounding in matrescence
Key research
How to name it for your client/patients
What matrescence-informed care looks like in your context
Sometimes, a single word is the most powerful tool in the room.
Matrescence: In Practice
June 11 & 18 | 12–1:30pm PST | Zoom
Link in bio to learn more
Cayley Benjamin Coaching
Share
Virtual workshops and coaching supporting mothers to normalize the transition to motherhood and to lead fulfilling lives.
05/29/2026
Did you know the term adolescence is only 100 years old?
In 1904, G. Stanley Hall named adolescence — and it ultimately changed how we understood and supported young people forever.
Matrescence is having that same moment.
First named in 1973 by Dr. Dana Raphael, matrescence is the profound transformation a woman undergoes when she becomes a mother. Resurrected in the early 2000s by Dr. Aurelie Athan, it’s only now beginning to receive the rattention it has always deserved.
If you work with women, mothers, parents or families — this is the most important developmental stage you were never taught about.
Matrescence: In Practice is a specialist training program designed to give you enough grounding in matrescence to recognize it and name it for your patients and clients. Because I know that can make all the difference.
June 11 & 18 | 12–1:30pm PST | Zoom
Link in bio. Early bird rate ends today!
05/26/2026
During the average low-risk pregnancy in Canada, there are:
12+ doctors/health care provider appointments
2+ ultrasounds
3-5 blood tests
And for many,
Pelvic floor physio appointments
Prenatal massages
Prenatal fitness classes
And birth prep courses
And for most, not one mention of matrescence. Not one conversation about the identity shift she’s moving through.
This where you come in.
The Matrescence Practitioner Program will equip you with the language and knowledge to prepare her for what’s happening to her sense of self — who she was, who she’s becoming, and the tender, disorienting space in between.
June 11 & 18 | 12–1:30pm PST | Zoom
Early bird registration ends for the program this Friday May 29
Link in bio to learn more about the program.
05/22/2026
One week left to register for the Matrescence Practitioner Training Program at the early bird rate.
I designed this program for practitioners who want real, applicable knowledge. Just two 90-minute Zoom sessions built around your full life.
My goal is simple: that you walk away with enough grounding in matrescence to recognize it and name it for your patients and clients. Because I know that can make all the difference.
June 11 & 18 | 12–1:30pm PST | Zoom
Link in bio to register before the early bird rate ends.
05/08/2026
Over the next two weeks, I’m bringing conversations on matrescence to parents and practitioners at three events (online and in person):
May 13 | Matrescence & the Identity Shift of Motherhood | For parents
Mqy 14 | Matrescence: A Missing Piece in Maternal Care | For practitioners
May 20 | Creating Capacity: Parenting, Partnership & the Goldie Effect
Mothers, and all parents, deserve to have their experience named, witnessed, and truly understood. These events have been created to give mothers, parents and the practitioners who support them the language, the tools, and the community to make that happen.
Please join us.
Link in bio to register.
05/05/2026
It’s Maternal Mental Health Week. And there is a concept that belongs as part of this conversation……
It’s called matrescence.
We talk a lot about pathology in maternal mental health — postpartum depression, perinatal anxiety, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
These matter deeply and deserve every bit of attention they receive.
But pathology is not the whole picture. For the mothers who don’t meet a clinical threshold — the current conversation has very little to offer. And that gap has consequences.
This Maternal Mental Health Week, we are making the case for matrescence as a foundational piece of the conversation — for mothers, for practitioners, and for the health care institutions and training programs shaping maternal care.
The word matrescence is not a linguistic gesture. It is a clinically meaningful intervention.
Join my free virtual talk next Thursday May 14 - Matrescence: A Missing Piece in Maternal Care at 12pm PST on zoom.
Link in bio.
This week’s in person workshop is SOLD OUT!
Sources:
Trinko, Victoria et al. “Improving maternal well-being: a matrescence education pilot study for new mothers.” Maternal health, neonatology and perinatology vol. 11,1 18. 2 Jul. 2025, doi:10.1186/s40748-025-00203-0
Athan, Aurelie M. “A critical need for the concept of matrescence in perinatal psychiatry.” Frontiers in psychiatry vol. 15 1364845. 10 Jun. 2024, doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1364845
# matrescencemovement
Last night I was in a room with Gabor Maté. And everything he said made the case for matrescence.
He asked how many people in the room had been pregnant.
Most hands went up.
Then he asked how many were asked about their emotional wellbeing at their first prenatal appointment.
Almost every hand went down.
That gap is exactly what the Matrescence Movement exists to close.
- the inspirational creator of last night’s event - called the healthcare system what it is: “a sick care system, not a health care system.”
A system built on pathology — with no framework for a healthy developmental transformation.
Matrescence is not a pathology.
It is a becoming.
And it is time practitioners had the framework to meet it.
Please share it with a practitioner you know - this is a grassroots movement.
04/21/2026
There’s a concept that’s been missing from practitioner training for fifty years. Swipe to meet it. →
Matrescence was first coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973 and resurrected by Dr. Aurelie Athan, a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Not a disorder.
Not a synonym for postpartum depression.
It’s a developmental passage that every single mother is navigating
— and that almost no practitioner has ever been formally trained to see.
Matrescence acknowledges both the challenges and opportunities of motherhood and frames motherhood as a time of self-development.
Once you have the framework, you will see it everywhere:
in the clients you’re already seeing
in the language they’re already using
in the moments you already sensed were significant but didn’t quite have words for.
Save this. Come back to it. Share it with a colleague and ask them what they recognize.
And join me at one of two upcoming free events for maternal practitioners where we’ll discuss matrescence and how to apply it in your practice.
Link in bio.
Source: Athan, A.M. (2024). A critical need for the concept of matrescence in perinatal psychiatry. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15, 1364845. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1364845
04/16/2026
We’re hosting a free evening for practitioners in the maternal health field — and we’d love for you to be there.
Seen: What Mothers Want Practitioners to Know
📅 Thursday May 7
🕡 7.30-9pm, Doors open at 7
📍 The Cheerful Pelvis, East Vancouver
Through an honest conversation between myself as a matrescence educator, Anniken Chadwick a pelvic floor physiotherapist and clinic owner, and Elie Rushton midwife, we’ll explore how the framework of matrescence can shape the way we support mothers during one of the most significant transformations of their lives.
Matrescence gives language to what you have already been witnessing in your practice. This evening is about beginning to bring it into clinical care — together, across disciplines.
With Mother’s Day approaching, there is no better moment to ask: how do we better centre the mother? How do we recognise what she is actually going through — not just clinically, but developmentally?
Come and be part of this community and conversation.
Free to attend.
Register at the link in bio.
And if you’re not in Vancouver or can’t make this event, I’m hosting a free virtual event May 14. Link in bio.
Here’s the one question I’ve heard across hundreds of mothers and it’s changed the direction of everything I’m building…
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Why didn’t anyone tell me it could feel like this.
Why didn’t anyone tell me this was normal.
Why didn’t anyone tell me I wasn’t alone.
I heard this question so many times — from so many different mothers, in so many different circumstances — that it stopped feeling like an individual question and started feeling like a systemic one.
Something is missing in how we understand and support mothers through the transformation of becoming. Not in how much practitioners care — every maternal health practitioner I have ever met cares deeply. But in the framework they were given.
That framework is called matrescence.
It names the developmental process of becoming a mother — and it has been almost entirely absent from practitioner training across every discipline for decades.
This is the origin story of why I founded my matrescence coaching practice five years ago.
And why my work is now expanding to include the education of the practitioners already in the room with mothers.
Because answering “why didn’t anyone tell me?” requires more than individual support.
It requires systemic change.
Watch the full story above.
And if this resonates — please share it with a practitioner you know.
Click here to claim your Sponsored Listing.
Location
Category
Contact the school
Website
Address
Vancouver, BC