MOTHERING AND CAREGIVING.
A Mothers Mental Health. “ A mother is a verb not a noun.”- Unknown.
A mothers health is a sacred foundation on which the health of our socities is formed, with them begins a cycle of intergenerational health. A mothers health is incomplete without honouring and observing the sanctitiy of her mind, a mind which is continually evolving.
A mothers brain, sculpted through experience and biology, is a shifting sand dune, constantly adapting to the cycles of change. In groundbreaking research published in 2017 researchers gave a name to this constant sea of change for mothers, finding that a specific and inherent type of neuroplasticity was inherent to reproduction. Never before had this finding been recognised. Neuroplasticity is a term scientist use to depict how the brain moulds and adapts to experience through forming and reforming connections.
Formly neuroplasticity was thought to be confined mostly to windows throughout childhood growth, then in further scientific developments was demonstrated to extend throughout life, just to a lesser extent but the princple could be utlised to facilitate healing in neurological or bodily injury and then into personal development.
Never had this prinicple extended into understanding internally what maternal bodies and brains were encountering through their reproductive evolution.
For mothers and carers this internal evolution and sculpting is important to understand, as the consequences of neuro flexibility offer a paradox for women/ mothers/ in thier own becoming. Through increased neuroplasticity, which cannot ever be understood in isolation from the hormones that facilitate it, the emotions it evokes, or the bodily inputs into this process, yet through these adaptions persons are offered greater opportunities for their own growth and development, yet conversely these changes represent times of increased vulnerability for women in their mental health, with up to 20% of women encountering challenges in their mental wellbeing throughout the cycles of reproduction. Whilst we cannot understand an individuals experience through statistics alone, they highlight the need to develop a greater understanding and compassion for the realities of creating and raising children. The potential for its many great joys but also the seas of change that may not be visible on the surface.
13. May. 2025.
References and Further Reading.
McKay, Dr Sarah 2018, Demystifying the female brain. Orion Spring, London
Image Kim Verdebo.