Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage with Jessie Harrold

In this conversation with Jessie Harrold, we talk about her creative process of writing her second book and what that looked like practically, with two children. Jessie's own matrescence experiences and the work that she does with mothers around this transformation and identity shift. 

You’ll hear us discuss:

• Jessie's personal story with Matrescence 
• Jessie's process of writing her new book Mother Shift Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage
• How Jessie started Women's circles and why they are a big part of Jessie's life
• Why Jessie created MotherShift as an online program
• Jessie's personal experience with creativity and Motherhood 
• We hear Jessie's experience of being a Doula before having kids

MEET JESSIE HARROLD

Jessie Harrold is a coach, women's mentor and doula who has been supporting women through radical life transformations and other rites of passage for over a decade. Jessie works one-on-one with women and mothers, facilitates mentorship programs, women’s circles and rituals, and hosts retreats and wilderness quests.  She is the founder of MotherSHIFT, the internationally acclaimed matrescence support program, and its sister program for postpartum professionals, The Village.  Jessie is also the author of Project Body Love: my quest to love my body and the surprising truth I found instead, as well as the forthcoming title with Shambhala Publications, Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage.  Jessie’s work has been featured in Spirituality & Health, Green Parent, Expectful and Explore Magazine.  She is also the host of The Becoming Podcast.  Jessie lives on the east coast of Canada where she mothers her two children, writes, and tends to the land.


JESSIE SAYS

"I wanted to write my book during National Novel Writing Month but I was solo parenting and I didn't want to let go of this dream. I would set my alarm for 4am and write for 2 hours, because that's my best time to write.

The part that took four years was writing a book proposal, shopping it around to agents. Getting a lot of rejections, building my social media platform, doing a tonne of articles, podcasts and all kinds of things to Increase the strength of my platform."

Connect with Jessie
Instagram - @jessie.es.harrold
Website - http://www.jessieharrold.com/

Connect with Rachael Rose
Instagram: @the_rachael_rose
Website www.rachaelrose.com.au


JESSIE SAYS

"When we fail to grieve in motherhood, what we find ourselves doing is either scrambling back to the way things were. I usually see that leading to suffering among mothers because things are not the way they were, they just can't be right now."

Jessie has kindly provided her Momifesto Workbook for our listeners to dive into and explore more of this topic. 

Full Transcript attached

Music by Edwina Masson 'The Feminine Spitfire'

Transcript

Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage with Jessie Harrold

Rachael Rose: Today I speak with Jessie Harold, who is a coach, women's mentor, and doula who has been supporting women through radical life transformations and other rights of passage for over a decade. Jessie works one-on-one with women and mothers facilitates mentorship programs, women's circles and rituals, and hosts retreats, and wilderness quests.

She's the founder of Mother Shift, the internationally acclaimed matresence support program and its sister program for postpartum professionals. The Village. Jessie is also the author of Project Body Love My Quest to Love My Body, and the Surprising Truth I found instead, as well as the forthcoming title.

Mother Shift Reclaiming Motherhood as a right of passage. Jessie [00:02:00] also has a beautiful podcast called The Becoming Podcast, and I binge listen to some amazing episodes with guests. So go and check that one out. Jessie lives on the east coast of Canada where she mothers her two children, Rios, and tends to the land.

I could have spoken to Jessie for seven hours. She speaks in poetry. You can tell she's a writer. I loved asking her about the creative process of writing her second book and what that looked like practically, when you have two children. The conversation also led to what Jesse's own matresence experiences were like and the work that she does with mothers around this transformation and identity shift.

[00:03:00] I do want to admit that this week has been challenging for me. I think I'm on about night five of little to no sleep. And so if ever you hear my brain catching up, my words catching up to my brain. There you go. There's an example of it. That's because I'm just really in the thick of it this week and.

That sometimes happens when you're a mom who runs a business and children get sick. And I still wanted to make my commitment to this interview. We're in different time zones and I got up early to do this, and I'm so glad that I did because I just couldn't wipe the smile off my face hearing Jesse speak about.

The important work that she's doing on the other side of the world to [00:04:00] me. Enjoy this conversation. Go gently if I stumble. You know why. Thank you. Welcome, Jessie. Thank you for being on the show today. I'm so glad Dr. Sophie Brock introduced us because I was looking through your website and your Instagram and. I feel like we're the same person in some ways and we're deeply passionate about the same things, and you have the wisdom of being on this journey for 10 years longer than I have, and working as a doula and mentor for mothers for a whole decade longer than me.

And I just want to ask you everything and really soak up your wisdom today. So thank you for being here.

Jessie Harrold: Oh, thank you for having me.

Rachael Rose: I wanted to [00:05:00] begin by talking about your book. You recently shared that you've been signed, and so your book is going to be published. So what is the book? Who is it? Four, and why did you ride it?

Jessie Harrold: Thank you so much for those questions. That's great. So the book is titled Mother Shift Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage. At least it's tentatively titled that it might change. And the book is about mattresence. Which is What I define as the two to three year long shift into motherhood, and it's a shift to basically every area of your life.

And I've been doing work in this field of Matress for about eight years now. And teaching a program that's also called Mother Shift. And so a lot of the book came from my experiences of teaching this [00:06:00] program. This was a program that existed before the word matress had been revived. It was, we weren't really even talking about it.

This book, matresence is something that in the last couple of years handful of years we are. Growing in awareness about it's become more of a household term, at least among mothers and parents. We don't know very much about matresence. So I always like to say we know that it's a thing , but what we don't know is like how matresence unfolds.

We don't have a lot of information about that. And pause there to say what on earth, like how is it that, at least in our kind of like modern western understanding, we don't have an idea of how the rite of passage to motherhood, like the oldest rite of passage, literally. Since the [00:07:00] dawn of humanity, we don't really know how it works.

And so the book really elucidates that and it draws on things like rights of passage theory, adult development theory, complexity theory and a whole lot of evidence to really start to hash out like what actually happens in your life. And in a way, I think of it as like a map.

That you can follow, or a compass, you can take some compass headings along the way and say, oh, okay, this, and like really one of my biggest goals is for you to be able to say, this is normal. And by normal, myself and a lot of other people are experiencing a really similar thing, and I think we can say oh, what's normal anyways, but normal connotes belonging, right? It means that we belong to this like wild and crazy, enormous array of other humans who are going through a really similar experience. So [00:08:00] if anything, I hope the book conveys that message and gives mamas like some tools and resources and a map for the road.

Rachael Rose: I love that.

I know for myself it was through sitting in women's circles and in mother's circles that I really had the space to understand my unraveling and understand that a, I wasn't broken. B, I wasn't losing my mind. C there were so many other mothers that were thinking and feeling and experiencing the same things that I was complete identity shift.

And I like to call myself in that matresence period, an angry snake cuz it's, itchy and uncomfortable and there's so much shedding. But we don't demonize snakes shedding their skin. It is part of the process. And so just bringing more of that awareness [00:09:00] into the women that I work with and for myself, like really embodying it.

It's been wonderful because I think a lot of women can get pathologized in that unknowing whatever is happening to them. So you hold circles too, don't you?

Are you doing many in person or is it predominantly online?

Jessie Harrold: Right now most of my circles are online. Yeah. But I started out way back in the day, like 15 years ago, holding circles in my basement and yeah. But now mostly online.

Rachael Rose: I love that. I think some women can have some hesitation and resistance to online circles, but I've found, I've held them myself, and I've joined them myself. Especially when you are circling around a particular topic. It can be so amazing to be doing that with women who are all over the world. [00:10:00] Can you tell me a little bit about that experience for the women that you work with?

Do you see that too?

Jessie Harrold: Yeah, I really do. Yeah. So interestingly, mother Shift has always been an online program. Like before online programs were really even a thing because. The way I experienced trying to get to a place for a time when I had a young human was just impossible. Like everybody had to get dressed maybe and get fed and get out the door.

And so that was really purposeful for me, eight years ago when I started the program. But yeah, when When the pandemic started, that year, mother shift just took off in a way that it had never done before. Because I think what sort of the increase in us accessing online spaces did was it broke down some of those barriers.

That kind of said you can't have intimacy in an [00:11:00] online space, or and people were accessing resources well beyond sort of their geographic limitations because we had to because we had the opportunity to. And I think that a circle that is like really well tended, that's trauma informed has really beautiful guidelines in where a lot of people who attend my circles really speak to the experience of culture creation that we do in the space.

And so there's a lot of kind of work that gets done around like, how are we going to be together in this space? And we have a really beautiful culture now in the circles that I offer. And when people are enveloped into our circles, new people, they quickly catch onto this culture and it's, it creates an incredible container.

And I think when we learn how to do that skillfully online circles can be beautifully intimate [00:12:00] and yeah, can offer people opportunities to participate who might not otherwise have had an opportunity.

Rachael Rose: I agree. I've had women that lived regionally and there was not a circle for two and a half hours away from them. And being able to connect with other mothers and share stories like it was a game changer. So I love that you are providing that space. So back to the book, I'm endlessly fascinated with the creative process and especially.

Mothers and creativity and mothers who run their own business. I have a six and a half year old and a two-year-old, so I'm still really in the thick of night. Wakings and my son's been sick this week. And when things like that happen, I just have to put things on pause. Like it's not really the time when my brain is on the most alive creative fire, and I just know, wait, [00:13:00] just wait.

And it'll simmer and it'll come back. And I noticed that you said you've written this book over four years, which to me, I just. I love that dedication because I'm sure it sometimes it would've felt impossible and you kept going. So how do you hold onto a vision for four years?

Jessie Harrold: Yeah. Oh, I have so much to say about creativity and motherhood and all of it. Let me clarify something that is it's probably falls under one of those kind of categories of I did but did not recommend. Which was that? So this book how far back to Go? Okay. So in 2019, I attended this writer's retreat.

It was a weeklong retreat. My kids were like five and eight or something. It was the longest time I'd ever been away from them. It was like mama's big break. And also do [00:14:00] not recommend. Please get away from your kids sooner than that. Oh my goodness. Looking back now. Anyways, so I went on this writer's retreat and.

I had just published my first book and it was just really well received by the people. There and I was like creatively inspired and I started thinking about this next book and, doing the post-it notes. And so I was like hanging onto this book and through that summer, deeply frustrated because of course I wanted to start writing and I wanted to start making things happen.

But children and November of that year, so there's this thing called NaNoWriMo and it's national novel writing months. Every November, it's a whole thing. And the idea is that you write 50,000 words, which is basically what a novel would be, plus or minus in a month. And I had always wanted to do it like a bucket list kind of thing.

And I thought, you know what? I've got a book idea. I've got a lot [00:15:00] of like old articles and bits I've written here and there that I could pull together to make up the first slew of words like, I'm gonna do it. Then my husband found out that he was going to be deployed. He's in the Navy. He was gonna be deployed for the month of November.

So I was solo parenting, I just. I didn't wanna let go of this dream, so this is the part that I don't totally recommend. So my children, we sleep in a heap, as it were, so they would go sleeping with me when he was gone, and I would like my alarm would go off at four o'clock in the morning, which is actually not unprecedented for me because that's my best time.

And it's, I've have a long, many years long history of getting up very early to write. So that wasn't unusual. I'd pull out my laptop and just start pounding away two hours before the kids had to be gotten up and go to school. And I wrote the book in a month actually. So I actually did complete the [00:16:00] book at the end of that November.

So when I say it took four years, what the part that took four years was writing a book proposal shopping it around to agents. Getting a lot of rejections trying to build my social media platform, doing a ton of, articles and podcasts and all kinds of things to raise Increase the strength of my platform.

And so actually like most of those years were just this it feels like a bit of a hustle. It's how the publishing industry works. And I had decided very early on in the game, I had self-published my first book. I really wanted to try and get a book deal for this one through a traditional publisher for lots of reasons.

I wanted the challenge of it, like I wanted A publishing team to take my work to the next level, and I thought that was really exciting. I, yeah, there was lots of things that made me want to do this, but it was a real [00:17:00] decision to like, quote unquote play the game of traditional publishing because it is a game, it's a popularity contest in a lot of ways.

And so I made that decision early on, but it was not an easy road. But I wanted this so badly. There was definitely a lot of Ups and downs, just despair. There was so much despair along the way.

Rachael Rose: Yeah, like writing a book in a month sounds easy, and then it's three years of rejection and having to back yourself and all of the, stuff that would've surfaced in your mind about, is this a good book and yeah.

Jessie Harrold: Oh yeah. Yeah. And frustration too, because I was seeing like the conversation around matresence growing and I was like, I have things to say about this. I really wanna write this book. And there's a, it's a bit of a zeitgeist right now, which is super exciting. And also, when I got the book deal, I look back on the last four years and.

I have [00:18:00] changed so much. My mothering has changed so much. We went through a pretty significant crisis with one of my kids over the period of the pandemic, and it was a huge wake up call too. A lot of things, both personal and professional and related to the book. And it's just a different book now than it would've been four years ago.

So rose colored glasses, right? Looking back and thinking, oh my God, it's such a richer, more mature more useful book now than it would've been four years ago. But yeah, it was a long time.

Rachael Rose: How do you know when to stop? How do you know when a book is done?

Jessie Harrold: Oh my goodness. I don't know. I think you know when, 

Rachael Rose: Sage advice.

Jessie Harrold: Yeah. That's what I always tell mom is when they say, how do I know I'm, I am. Like, I've gone through matresence. And so I say you know when yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It'll be interesting [00:19:00] to, to see how that feels for this book. Cuz my first book, it just, yeah, it felt complete.

And I can't remember exactly why that was, but this book, it's gonna go to a much wider audience. It'll be, you'll be to be honed and edited by so many more people also. So it'll be really cool to understand what it looks like to be finished and also, having written a book already.

So my first book this thing happened that I like to call the Glennon Doyle, if you recall, when she wrote Love Warrior, the End of Love Warrior was like my marriage is all better now. And then she like promptly turned around and got divorced. I don't know how much longer after that book deal was, or whatever.

But it was pretty shortly after that book came out and like life, just life. Right. your book is this kind of like snapshot in time. But then life keeps going. And my first book was called Project Body Love, my Quest to Love My Body, and the Surprising Truth I found instead. [00:20:00] And I had gone on this quest to love my body and written about it along the way.

And then two weeks after the book was published, I had a major health crisis that I ended up dealing with for the next three years. So this book was out in the world that was like, oh yeah, can, and respect. In my body. And then two weeks later, literally it was like, oh, but I, now I'm gonna have to learn how to do that all over again because my body's not working the way I wanted it to.

And so, to say is like a book might get finished life will just life and we'll see how much will hold water for me or for others as time goes by. Yeah.

Rachael Rose: How are you feeling about the upcoming visibility and, being known and being seen by so many other people?

Jessie Harrold: Yeah, it's , wasn't expecting to feel any sort of way about it, but then no. [00:21:00] Yeah, pretty shortly after I got the book deal I was like, oh shit. And for me, I. It's really, really sick in this process right now, so I'm speaking from a pretty, experience of it. It's really about analyzing and really getting here about maybe some of the things that I have come to know to be true about matresence that actually maybe aren't true for others.

I think there's like, this real thin wavery gray line I think between like overly concerned about what other people will think people pleasing, I think. But then there's this like, no, but really I do have bias and I need to , that speaking to as many people as I can because that's my intention.

I'm aware of the lens that I have , my best to expand that lens as much as I can. So there is this fear of like, of like hurting other people or inadvertently harming people by not [00:22:00] representing them well in the book. And I think that's my big thing about the visibility piece.

And it's just like, And part of that is just like, probably will happen. And so, so it's just kind of with that a little bit.

That's Yeah. 

Rachael Rose: And accepting that no one would ever write anything if they stayed in that fear of Yeah. Saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. And yeah. So your experience of Matress you were a doula before you had children,

Jessie Harrold: Yes.

Rachael Rose: and I find that. Fascinating. Because I can imagine that would've totally influenced your preparation stage in a way.

Most of the women that I work with, many of them, they're holding a baby for the first time when it's their own. And, they haven't been at births, they don't really know what to expect apart from Hollywood culture. What was it like being a doula to a mother?

Jessie Harrold: Yeah. So [00:23:00] that is I think probably why I ended up doing the work that I'm doing now. so 15 years ago when I started practice as a doula, I, yeah, was not a mother yet. In fact, I was about the idea of motherhood. Along the way I had some, uh, had two really quite kind of remarkable experiences, of mine had big challenges postpartum monumentally big and.

It me to start to wonder like, doula I was taught, and I think most doulas are still taught to mamas with the transactional stuff like the baby wearing or breastfeeding or healing process or bathing the baby or whatever. And I. Yeah, I realized that there was something a lot deeper than that.

I was starting to ask the question, I guess, gonna happen to me watched these clients go through this really rough uh, time, and so I [00:24:00] had the great fortune of meeting a mentor who is still my mentor. She would end up becoming my doula. She uh, a talk at a local doula kind of meeting, and she said she was the first person I'd ever heard say that the transition to the motherhood, we didn't have a word for it back then.

 Two to three years. And I was like, oh my God, I gotta talk to this lady. What is this all about? And that was the first time I'd ever heard it. then, yeah, so then becoming a mother, like I was kind of primed to think about matress. That's what my doula was like preparing me for her lens.

But also as a doula, I didn't have the same questions that most mothers have as they're preparing to birth. Right? I, I was teaching prenatal classes. I that stuff. Course birth is radically unpredictable. So that part of it, obviously I couldn't prepare for, but nobody can.

so it really turned my attention to not even [00:25:00] just the like, breastfeeding and baby care, because I kind of do that too. But the, who am I going to be? Who will I become as a result of this? And so I think that primed me almost to ask the questions that I would probably otherwise not have asked for, two down the line.

Yeah, so it was a kind of an interesting career trajectory, but.

Rachael Rose: Yeah, I became a doula after I had my first, because of the way that unfolded and the newfound passion that I felt, and that matresence period was massive because it was. A total reorientation of who I was and my work life and all of that jazz. But I equally, if not more, found my second experience of becoming a mother earth shattering as well.

And I shaved my head, I questioned my existence. I was like, I'm gonna burn it all down. [00:26:00] And, I thought I had it handled cuz I'd done it once before, but I. Stuff surfaces when we go through these radical life transformations, which I love that's language that you use around rights of passage and transitions.

Did you find your second mares essence easier or more difficult to navigate?

Jessie Harrold: Oh, that's such a great question. So my first matress daughter who's now 11 and a half, she, has always been a socially anxious child. I would not have known to put those words to it when she was little, but from the day I dropped her off at daycare, I knew that. I wanted to be closer to her and I was working in this miserable cubicle job, and so I set the wheels in motion to start business that we're talking about now.

 Been a doula already, but it was sort of, a lot of volunteer dueling and I had done like kind of a side hustle,[00:27:00] 

really wanted to. Changed my career. So like that was the beginning of that trajectory. And before this call, you and I were talking about , the parallel path, the often parallel path of motherhood and career shift and, the time that takes.

So like I had set kind of ball in motion with my daughter and it was three and a half years later that I had my son. And the ball was just still rolling in that direction. But I had not yet left my job. Moved to like a nonprofit. I was teaching prenatal classes and coordinating the largest volunteer doula program in North America.

 Doing like passion work, but it wasn't my own. Business. I still certainly had to like up to an office every day, which was not what I really wanted to be doing. And so it was finally with my son almost a year old. I actually also, I dyed my hair orange, so like on that one.

with my daughter. It was pink hair. I love thinking about [00:28:00] these, like changes we make to our appearances to like signify the transformations we make. It's a whole other conversation. So it was finally with my son that I the leap as it were. Probably worked for another, let's say maybe a year after he was born and then finally like able to.

Kind of step into my business full-time, and I'll be super transparent. And I value this so much about the work that you do. It, I did not get to step into my my entrepreneurship and like replace my corporate income. That did not happen. We radically downsized made some like life decisions so that, That would be possible.

It wasn't pretty and it wasn't like a, unquote success story,

just wanted to be super clear about that. But

Rachael Rose: You weren't bathing in a tub of money. You weren't just.

Jessie Harrold: totally not. I was bathing in a top of, Yeah. But, so yeah, that was the second [00:29:00] Matress was like, into this career in a different way. The pragmatic stuff with him was easier. And the say like your first matress, it's a lot about like, I now? The big identity shift and the loss of autonomy, like personal, physical, emotional autonomy.

Your subsequent matresence, I've only had one myself, but I've heard lots of mumas who've had than two matresence times. But the second one tends to be about like, how will I divide my energy? Between these two humans. The cliche term is like, I share the love between the two of them?

We all know that it just, multiplies and all of those Hallmark card things like, how will I divide my energy between these two and still care for myself and maintain my relationship if you've got an intimate partnership, like those kind of pieces tend to be the territory of a second matresence for a lot of people.

 Was certainly existing for me, but it's not as much of like, already sense that. [00:30:00] Your autonomy will return, but not on your timeline. And you that like, than an intellectual knowing that this t shell passed, you haven't embodied, knowing that this t shell passed the second time around.

And you might know how to do a view of the things like you might be a little bit more solid on your values and you might have some of those pragmatics in the bag, but yeah lot around, yeah, some of those deeper shifts that happen the second time around. At least that's what I see.

Rachael Rose: Yeah, that's, I work with a lot of mothers who are transitioning into owning their own business and a lot of them are second, third time moms, and it's because they've tried to do the thing and returned to the work that they were doing before, and I. For financial practical reasons, that's what they had to do.

But that yearning for something else for their family is really starting to shift when they're suddenly trying to manage and juggle and hold space for two children. And there is this kind of cliche that having your own business [00:31:00] provides freedom and flexibility. And it does in some ways and in other ways.

It's. It can be just as difficult as going to be employed by someone else. And there's so much inner work that you have to do when you're on your own business around setting your own boundaries and, taking time off. And it's a whole thing in and of itself there. 

Jessie Harrold: It is such a whole thing. Yeah.

Rachael Rose: Yeah, so I don't wanna idealize it and also just acknowledge that I do love the creativity that comes from running your own business, as well as sometimes I'm just rocking back and forth wondering if I've done the wrong thing.

Jessie Harrold: Yeah. I often have to tell myself like I, big rule breaker at our school and my daughter just, kind of what her nervous system needs. And she often goes to school like an hour or two later, just, needs a little bit more time in the morning to settled uh, take her an hour or two later and there's this part of me that's like, is what I wanted.

Like I [00:32:00] wanted the flexibility to be able to meet my kiddos, needs her, like very unique and often very challenging needs. this is what I wanted. And then the other half of me is like, damnit, I've just lost two hours of my workday. Like how am I gonna do this? And so, it's, it is both wonderful and challenging.

Rachael Rose: Yeah, so as a circle facilitator, as a retreat leader, you do wilderness retreats. You do all kinds of beautiful things. As someone that has dedicated eight years to matresence the study of matresence, the process of matresence, can you offer. My listeners, any practices or rituals or tools that can support them in this transformation?

Jessie Harrold: Woo. I mean So many Rachael. But wanna what I'll do is share [00:33:00] perspective that I think is helpful. it's when. We take a rights of passage lens or framework and apply it to the process of matresence. What we get to do that's really different from the way we typically look at change in our culture that we get to grieve.

And we get to be in liminal space. And those are two things that I think we're still kind of our heads around when it comes to the transition to motherhood. it is okay and actually normal and not often, or usually pathological in any way. To feel really sad about the life that you're leaving behind and that every rite of passage, even if it's something that's dearly wanted us to let go of something that is no longer.

 A researcher, Pauline Boss, who talks about ambiguous [00:34:00] loss it's typically used to talk about someone. Dear to you, has gone missing. And so you don't know if you're grieving or if you're hoping against hope that they'll come back. And that's how I feel like Grief around motherhood and matresence often feels like, I get back into the old genes?

I don't know, but am I grieving or am I hoping I use that as a kind of a trite example, but like, marriage ever feel the same again? I grieving the loss of the way this relationship felt, or am I hoping that it will get back to the way it was? really feel like you can't do the growth without the grief.

Like we, fail to grieve in motherhood, what we find ourselves doing is either scrambling back to the way things were. I usually see that leading to suffering among mothers things are not the way they were, they just can't be right now. we try and like ahead to this kind of quote unquote new [00:35:00] normal really time feeling what it is to.

Let go of this former self or this, job or this former relationship. Lot of mamas have a really big shift to the relationship with their own mothers. That's a whole area of exploration. Much there. And working with mamas the thing that we do I just wanna kind of name that it's really important to do this in a way that feels safe and okay, and kind of titrate experience to the capacity that you have.

So like, head, dive in head first, thinking like, yeah, I'm gonna do the work. To name. Grief that you have to really put a name to it. Like are you being asked to let go of? Are you sad about? What is no longer? And sometimes there's like relief too.

Like I'm so, glad to get rid of the underwear, bras that I no longer have to wear. Like, that list grief wants four things. It wants to be felt, it [00:36:00] wants to be honored, it wants to be metabolized. And then sometimes it wants to be released. Some griefs don't get released.

 Just become right sized for our life over time. But so like really allowing yourself to feel it. Honoring it, like saying, Hey, it is okay to feel sad about this. Even though everyone says motherhood is supposed to be the best thing in the world. It is okay to just really not enjoy this sometimes or regret it sometimes, or all of those feelings are welcome.

Metabolizing it is like moving the grief through in some kind of a way and maybe creating some meaning of it in time. It takes time. releasing, release that grief. And then second piece is this liminal space. This sort of like, a mother. But I'm not, I haven't yet fully stepped into this identity or this role as mother.

I'm in between and it's a really [00:37:00] uncomfortable time, when of our culture, gives us a lot of gold stars for having goals and intentions and a purpose and knowing what's next. I mean, of us just wanna know what's next we are. Where we're headed. And liminal space is just not that.

It is not that, and it just, again, takes time. I think like the biggest thing I'd love for people to hear is that this takes two to three years. That's not meant to be like scary. That's meant to be like just, Feel all of this and be in this don't feel as though anything's gone wrong at all.

You're exactly, you know where you need to be. And it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean don't get help, it doesn't mean any of those things. That it's probably normal. That liminal space is a time of not knowing, and it's a, and also can be a really fruitful time because when nothing is sure everything is possible, right?

And so this is [00:38:00] where I see so many mamas like tapping into their intuition for the first time, finding that creative urge like it's. So astounding and baffling to me that mothers are the most time constrained, the most exhausted of any human most of the time. And yet I see mothers creative practices flourishing like in nap times or yeah, that 4:00 AM I don't recommend the 4:00 AM but like where it flourished for me.

 It's just like remarkable. And the, these are the gifts of the liminal space that we can realize when we're not striving toward something new just yet. And I find that when we're able to sit in that unknown for long enough, there's this gravitational pull toward what's next that will happen.

There's a tremendous amount of trust will happen.

Rachael Rose: Yeah. I love [00:39:00] that. I, the first interview on this podcast was with a mama who gave birth at almost 45 weeks.

Jessie Harrold: Oh yeah.

Rachael Rose: And describing that surrender and the weight. And it wasn't always pretty, it was like minute by minute sometimes. But it made me think a lot about the Trence period as well. And just, we don't know and we have to just sit in the unknown and we have to wait.

And yeah, I woke up at 3:00 AM during my pregnancy. I gave birth at 42 weeks, so not 45, but still that stretch phase and the creativity that I found in the 3:00 AM moments. And they say that the veils are the thinnest at 3:00 AM so there was lots of beauty around like being woken and then just writing writing but also being a astounded that, hey, I am very pregnant.

And yet I also have this creativity. And so yeah it is [00:40:00] fascinating, like you say, the most tired and exhausted and time restricted. We just, there's something about this stage that just, I. Lights, a lot of mothers. And then for anyone listening that's I'm not feeling that right now. That's normal too.

And I think it's cyclical. It depends on where you're at with your sleep, with your baby, your toddler or children, and what's happening in your life. It's not always gonna be writing books and that kind of thing.

Jessie Harrold: Totally. I was just gonna say the same thing, so I'm so glad that you did the creative and curious, and like learning oriented parts of our brain don't actually operate at the same time as our like, Fight, flight and freeze parts of our brain. And so if you're deep in that creative part isn't turned on and the most adaptive thing for you to do right now is to like nervous, your nervous system, right?

 Yeah, I totally wanna offer huge caveat and also that creativity looks a [00:41:00] million different ways and might. Look like creativity with to find time for your self-care practice. Or it might look like creativity with building community or with your career or even just the way that you're parenting.

Like there's thousand different ways. So even if you're not, yeah, writing at 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM.

Rachael Rose: Yeah, like I, I liken, mothering is an artistic practice, so you know, the ways that I would make up these little step dance moves when I was holding my baby and rocking him to sleep and the little songs that would come out, like all of that is creative. The way we stroke our baby's hair or the little pardon between their eyes to get them to k nod off, it's.

It's all creativity.

Jessie Harrold: Yeah.

Rachael Rose: So we're both very passionate about community. You have a beautiful podcast called Becoming . I think just to round out this conversation, I wanted to name that a lot of this is supposed to be done with other people. [00:42:00] Is that your experience too? That , we can Find it easier to do this massive work when we've got other mothers alongside us.

Jessie Harrold: Yeah I think it's really interesting. one of the things that I talk about in my book are these mother powers and go into like a of detail about what they're, there's seven of them and there's these sort of, some of them are things that we learn and become skilled at.

They're kind of and capacities when we become mothers, just like, gonna happen. It's just gonna happen. Some of them we actually need to kind of our attention and focus too and a little bit of more active learning. Community is one of those mother powers and I feel like, a new mother, we talked about how time strapped and exhausted you all are and the doing the emotional labor.

Of building community and finding your people maybe like the last thing you wanna do. It's a lot. Be really [00:43:00] scary too if you don't already have sort of of belonging somewhere. Also motherhood will cull you into that work. Whether you've got the time and energy for it or not, because what you don't have the time and energy for is mothering alone.

And so I think, we, yeah, we gained this mother power learning to build community because we have to, because we weren't meant to do any of this alone. And so I think this is something that I see mama's doing so many creative and beautiful ways. Yeah. Totally important.

Rachael Rose: If my listeners wanna learn more about Mother Shift, when is the next intake? When is it happening?

Jessie Harrold: Yeah, thanks for asking. Mother shift , goes from September to December of every year. So end of August will be the early bird registration opens and then through the month of September be [00:44:00] doing ongoing registration and end of September start.

And I also have a program called The Village, which is and apprenticeship program for people who or want to work with mamas going through this rite of passage. Runs at the same time. That's why I mention it cuz it's actually a six month program. From September to March.

 So if you're listening and that's actually, is this feeling like the kind of work you wanna be doing? offering that also. So both of those programs run in tandem year.

Rachael Rose: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Jessie. I've really enjoyed soaking up your wisdom today. And yeah, thank you for joining.

Jessie Harrold: Thanks so much. I just, I love the work that you're doing in the world and it's just an honor to be here and to be able to speak to your folks.

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