Sometimes we forget the power of language and the way it evolves. I'm particularly grateful for new words that offer a container for a previously unarticulated truth. Like the new term bed rotting. New TikTok trend deemed as bed rotting. Bed rotting. Bed rotting. Bed rotting. I'm gonna bed rot for the rest of the day. Bed rotting is the word for laying in bed for hours and doing nothing, which could be classified as depression, yes, but most of us moms would call it the perfect
Mother's Day. Or the phrase girl dinner. Have you heard of this one? This is my meal. I call this girl dinner. I call this girl dinner. Girl dinner. Girl dinner. Girl dinner. Girl dinner. Girl dinner describes the small random meals we throw together on those rare occasions where we only have to feed ourselves, like some apples and peanut butter. a gobstopper, some kimchi, and a handful of flaming hot Cheetos. It's random,
it's convenient, it's minimalist. It may or may not be nutritious, but girlies everywhere finally found a phrase for those meals that men would never classify as a meal, but that we've been throwing together for decades. Or the retort I just learned the other day, touch grass. If you have teenagers, you probably know this one. Go touch some grass. What does touch grass mean? I was nominated by Amina to do the touch grass challenge. Go outside and touch some grass like
I'm doing right now. Touch grass is what you say to people who need to take a chill pill from the digital world and go outside to reconnect with nature. It's the toddler equivalent of you need a nap. It's what could be said to those keyboard warriors that pop up in Facebook comments and Twitter feeds. And if anyone tells me to call Twitter X, I would say to you, go touch
grass. All of that to say, when new terms enter our vernacular, they not only enrich our language and connection to one another, but they also validate our personal experiences. These things help us feel seen, which is a powerful thing to be. It's all any of us really want to be. Seen. And there's a new word that helps us feel just that. Motherhood is history's greatest untold story. It's built empires, fueled revolutions
and pushed the boundaries of science. And yet, because it happens in quiet rooms, behind closed doors, it's been left out of the grand narrative. But make no mistake, motherhood is not just tenderness. It's raw, unrelenting, a force that tears you apart and remakes you over and over again. It's blood, bone, love, and sheer will. This isn't a story about sacrifice. It's a story about power, about what it means to become a mother and what it means to never stop becoming. This is Bloodline
and Backbone. what we've learned throughout this series is that moms are the ultimate system changers Moms change faith systems, economic systems, community systems, medical systems, cultural systems, family systems, and countless others. But you know what system motherhood changes first? Our own. Our very own biology and brain chemistry.
If you've ever felt like you were losing your mind after becoming a mother, well, you kind of were, but not in the way culture makes it sound, not in that silly sitcom -y way of, when did I put the milk in the pantry? It's more than that. See, your brain was literally rewired. And there's a term for this. You may have heard it. It's called matrescence. It's like adolescence, but instead of growing into adulthood, you're
growing into motherhood. Here's Lucy Jones, author of the book Matrescence, on this metamorphosis. My experience of becoming a mother was one of great astonishment and shock. how much harder the work of caregiving was. I was amazed by my beautiful baby but I was especially bowled over by the sense of metamorphosis and that I was a different person. I'd been led to believe that pregnancy, childbirth and early motherhood would be a kind of external and environmental change.
But actually it was the most, well, physical, but psychological, emotional, mental, social, existential experience of my life. As the months went on, as my daughter was growing, I felt kind of strangely altered and rewired. And as a journalist who writes about science and health, I was interested, fascinated in what was happening to me. I started to read about the science of the maternal brain, the science of hormones, what actually happens in that period. And at the same time, I was really
struggling. I thought that maybe there was something wrong with me to be feeling so kind of discombobulated and bewildered. Matrescence is the metamorphosis every mom is intimately, terrifyingly familiar with. It's as seismic and sacred as it sounds. Just like adolescence, matrescence is hormonal. It's emotional, messy, transformational. But here's the problem. We don't treat it like that. Most of what we hear about the maternal experience is drenched in condescension. Mom brain, momnesia,
baby blues. That sounds cute, which is the opposite of what that experience was for most of us. We often see this tired stereotype of the scattered mom who used to be sharp but now wears mismatched socks and calls everyone buddy. But the truth is, your brain isn't malfunctioning. It's rebuilding. Pregnancy and parenting don't just change our lives. They literally rewire our neural pathways. According to neuroscientist Dr. Sarah McKay, the maternal brain doesn't dissolve. It evolves.
In her book, Baby Brain, she unpacks exactly how motherhood sculpts our brains and reshapes our minds. We've been led to believe it's for the worse, but it's actually for the better. Things like empathy, memory, multitasking, and motivation become sharper, becoming rewired to suit a new role. You're neurochemically recalibrating to keep a human alive, and that's just the beginning.
Here's Dr. Sarah McKay to talk about this process, what exactly happens to the brain during matrescence and beyond, and what might change if we stop treating mom brain like a punchline. and started honoring it like the superpower it really is. So this is a word that people use, as you said, different words around the world to describe
feeling forgetful. lack of attention the inability to kind of function in the way that you felt that you were cognitively able to before pregnancy or parenthood and if we look at women around four out of five women will put their hands up and say hey yes that's me i i feel that way but what's really interesting is when we bring these women into the research lab either during pregnancy or in early motherhood and apply a range of cognitive tests we just simply don't pick up any evidence
of broad scale cognitive decline these women aren't aren't losing their minds, they aren't becoming more forgetful. So we've got quite a paradox here. We've got the experience of women saying, hey, the subjective experience of feeling forgetful, and then the objective lab testing saying, hey, look, we're not really picking anything up. So what's going on in the middle there? And certainly as a neuroscientist, when I was told that this was a thing, I just sort of dismissed
it. I thought, what would Mother Nature's intention
be? to make women kind of more stupid during pregnancy and and motherhood and certainly our understanding from the mammalian kingdom is mothers show cognitive enhancement they get better at doing what they do when when they go through pregnancy and motherhood various researchers have gone in and looked at that and there's there's a number of explanations in there one is it's very much associated with a sense of well -being so women who are more anxious depressed, sleep
deprived, typically report lower wellbeing during pregnancy or early motherhood, are much more likely to rate their memory as poor, even if they sit down and do memory tests and we say, hey, look, your memory's fine. So there's a real kind of a self -perception part of that. Another part is why do we remember and how do we remember? And memory depends on attention, what information
we take in. and what information we filter out and our pregnant brains have been reorganized to focus in on keeping this new little human alive and to read their social cues and to understand who they are so we've really got an enormous shift of attention either when you're pregnant you've got a baby in your belly um or keeping this this new little person in your life healthy and safe and alive so we've got an enormous shift in attention and if we forget you know you forget
we've the classic way you've put your keys or to check your emails. It's not because you're experiencing some kind of cognitive deficit. It's simply that your attention was focused somewhere far more important. And then thirdly is this concept whereby women are sort of expected to do it all. We have this dreadful phrase, super mum. If she's a super mum, no one needs to help because she can do it all. And when you're trying to do it all, you simply can't. And when you
drop the ball. We've kind of been primed as girls and women through our lives that when we've got our brains and then you sort of add in reproductive hormones or reproductive function, that that is synonymous with cognitive decline and emotional instability. So if you aren't really coping, you forget one thing, well, you just internalize that and blame your brain. I'll blame baby brain, blame my hormones when the issue might be social
support. It may be that you simply can't do it all because it's a really big, it's an entire new career that you're suddenly being, you know, taken on board. And so that's kind of what I think baby brain is almost like kind of a phrase we use to describe that sensation or that kind of experience of not being able to do what we did before. It's not a cognitive issue. It's a social issue. When your brain changes, everything
else starts to change too. You don't just look at your baby differently, you look at the world differently. You look at yourself differently. You notice things you've never noticed before. The cracks in the healthcare system, the price of childcare, school lunch options, the broken sidewalk outside your neighbor's house where the stroller always gets stuck. Suddenly the things that felt abstract now feel personal. The policies, the pain points, the cultural assumptions.
And while the world may tell you you're just a mom, the truth is your very biology is coursing with an extra dose of courage, tenderness, and strength. First your mind shifts, then your priorities, and then your convictions. These are the qualities of a powerful leader, and they help you get clear on what you really care about. You take a job that pays less but gives you your evenings back. You raise your kids with more presence, less pressure. You advocate for a friend's kid who
doesn't have a voice in the school system. I love how Ellen Pompeo, yes, that's Meredith Gray, of course, talks about this shift on Call Her Daddy. You know, the truth is, at work, I'm not 100 % at work when I have kids at home. I'm absolutely not. You cannot be a mother and have children and give 100 % to your job. You can't. Because there's a part of you that somewhere else you split into different pieces. You're no longer just you. You split into different pieces. And
you know what that does? It makes you more soulful. It makes you richer. It makes you funnier. It makes you feel more. It makes you more empathetic. It makes you angrier. It gives you this. range of emotions that you can't even imagine having without this person. You will be yourself times a thousand. Everything becomes different and that's how it's supposed to be. Whatever systems we find ourselves in as moms, our very presence is capable of shifting that system, rewiring
it in the same way our brains are. It doesn't have to be loud or flashy, but it's radical. And here's a secret every mom eventually learns. The system isn't going to save us. We are the system. And when mothers shift, so does the world. So the question is no longer what we have to survive, but what we get to create. And when we decide to create, our job is simply to get to work, to make art, to raise kids, to write, to do equations, if that's your thing, to explore
and experiment. Because we never know how what we create will impact generations. Our job is to show up and get to work. One example of how what we create can impact generations is found in the 1990s TV show, The Cosby Show. Up until that point, moms had rarely, if ever, been portrayed on TV as having careers outside the home. However, the female writers of The Cosby Show decided that Cosby's wife, Claire, was going to be an
accomplished lawyer. Her character was winsome, smart, good at her job, and also a great mom and wife. For the first time, moms were seen as whole women who could do multiple things at the same time and not become a cliche. This was so revolutionary that it sparked a cultural phenomenon known as the Claire Huxtable effect, where young women and moms flooded law schools becoming lawyers. There are countless studies about how profoundly Claire Huxtable's character shaped a generation
of women. simply because a handful of writers decided to write scripts that went against cultural norms. Society tends to paint motherhood in pastels, soft pinks, baby blues, tidy quotes about cherishing every moment. But any mom knows motherhood is technicolor. It's screaming red, bone -tired gray, neon joy, midnight blue grief. It's all of it, loud, sacred, disorienting, alive. And matrescence? It's not a gentle fate. It's a full -blown color shift, the kind you don't come back
from because you were never meant to. What if, instead of laughing off the hard parts or shrinking to fit the script, you honor them in your own life? What if you stop measuring your experience against what it should be? and instead named it for what it is. Not a punchline, not too much, not a cliche, but something that deserves to be seen. A story that's shaping future generations because motherhood deserves to be reclaimed. We'll be right back. Let's talk about the word
reclaim. It's one of those words we toss around a lot. Reclaim your time. Reclaim your space. Reclaim your power. But it's older and wilder than you might think. Back in the 14th century, reclaim meant to call back a hawk. Picture that. A wild, untamed bird circling overhead and a falconer holding out a gloved hand calling it home. That was reclaiming, calling back what had flown away, not taming it, not trapping it, just recognizing that what's wild and distant
might still belong to us. Later, the word took on more volume. It came to mean to protest, to cry out against, to bring back from an erring path. It became fierce, loud, intentional, a fight and a return. And maybe that's exactly what we're being invited to do now. We don't reclaim by going backward. We reclaim by restoring what was meant to be whole. Our time, our wonder, our voices, our joy. We've given a lot away and
it's time to call it back. So let's bring this idea to the spiritual level too because the language of reclaiming, of restoration, of calling back the scattered and the lost is woven all throughout scripture. The gospel story isn't about behavior management. It's about wholeness. It's about things being made right, not just in theory, but in you. I think it's actually really helpful to see this image in the Bible of God as a laboring
mom. It might surprise us that actually several times throughout scripture, God is a mother in labor. And those spaces are actually not just about God as a mother in labor, but they're often paired with God as a warrior. Which seems really strange to us because we don't put moms and warriors together, generally speaking, in our minds. But in the ancient world, they did. And the connection is this. When mothers in the ancient world were giving birth, it was the closest space to death
that they might face. And they either would die in childbirth or they give birth to new life and new hope. And so, warriors, for men, the space where they were most likely to die was in the heat of battle. And they'd either die or be victorious. And so, because of this, in our ancient documents, all surrounding the Bible and the Bible itself, we get this imagery of a crisis of a woman crying out in birth pain.
and of the hope of new life. And this combination actually tells us something more broadly about the idea of what does it mean to be restored? What does it mean to be reclaimed? And you get this language several places. So, Isaiah 42 has a woman, I love she's just like screaming out in childbirth, and her cry is paired with a warrior crying in battle. And we have God who is like a mother doing this. He's like a warrior and like a mother. And we have this language also
in other places in the New Testament. So, for example, Jesus compares his death and resurrection to a mother giving birth and the cry and the labor pains that she would be in, like the grief of his death. and her giving birth, like the joy, the rejoicing in this new life and resurrection. And so, when we talk about a biblical picture of reclaiming and how God initiates that, even the biblical text itself gives pictures of God initiating that like a birthing mom and like
a mom raising her new child. I think this is really interesting because what it does is it tells us that the Bible is aware of both the grief and the difficulty that can come with birth and that can come with this new experience of being a mother, but also the hope that comes with that and this picture of what it means to be restored. And so it's interesting because not only is God pictured that way, but so is
Israel or Zion. And so we get in Isaiah 66, this picture where Zion gives birth and she's nursing. And then God describes himself like a nursing mother in the same passage. And then it's used with all this language of how everything is restored. So there's going to be peace like a river and there's going to be hope and the wealth of nations and there's going to be comfort. And so it plays
these two types. two forms of birthing, God, who is the birthing mom, who brings restoration and will not forget her children, but also Israel responds by also being a mom who is nursing and nurturing. And so we can see that model of like God and his people that then mirrors what it is for us to be like people who respond. And so this idea is not just about restoration within
a family, but restoration within the world. So when God makes these When God nurtures, it isn't only his children, but it has implications for the nations. It has implications for everybody. What do you want to call back? Your power, your patience, your desire, your joy, your hope, your fire. Sometimes it's just deciding to have more fun again. Sometimes it's trusting your instincts. Sometimes it's letting your rage be righteous.
Other times it's getting in the car with no plan and turning up the music you loved before anyone called you mom. Sometimes it's rest. Sometimes it's prayer. Whatever it is, it's time to call it back. I talk with women all over the world every year, and they all share the same two feelings. First, they're exhausted from doing so much. And second, They feel like there's so much more
they should be doing. Boiled down, this means we are running around at the pace of chihuahuas on cocaine while simultaneously feeling fatigued, numb, and under -accomplished. Almost every woman I know has driven herself to the veritable ledge of what she is capable of handling, physically,
emotionally, even spiritually. It's impossible to overstate how exhausted everyone is, exhausted by their marriage, their divorce, or dating life, exhausted by their dream job, their hobby, their day job, or their side hustle, exhausted by their kids, the adoption process, or their fertility journey. We are trapped in a cycle bigger than our circumstances. But just because exhaustion is so remarkably common doesn't mean we should
settle for it. There are parts of Louisiana where major hurricanes roll through every few years, often impacting the same low -lying parts of the city. Homes are destroyed from mold and water damage, and people lose all their belongings and have to start over. It's horrific what these families must endure. Frequently, These families stay and choose to rebuild. But then a few years later, another hurricane hits and destroys their
lives again. And watching this process and the emotional, financial, and physical toll, many of us would ask, why don't you just move? But most of them say they won't leave because it's the only home they know. Sometimes, exhaustion is the only home we know, the only way of being that we know. We're so used to being battered by life's hurricanes that we don't realize there might be other options. Often, if we want to experience something different, we simply need
a new strategy. A friend sent me a post by author Regina Thomasauer where she outlines two road trip scenarios. So imagine you're on a long road trip in a car by yourself. You're determined to get to your destination efficiently. You're hungry and have to pee, but you don't want to stop at a gas station because it will slow you down. You keep punishing yourself, pushing, ignoring your discomfort so you can cover more distance. You're convinced that you'll be able to enjoy
yourself once you get there. That's option A. Here's option B. You're on a long road trip in a car with a couple of girlfriends. Each of you has packed a basket of delicious goodies to snack on, and you're currently passing around some chips and guacamole. You have interesting podcasts and audible books to listen to, Whitney's blasting on the radio, and some of you are singing along. The destination is clear, and you're excited to arrive, but you're also open to taking in
some interesting sights along the way. You meet the most interesting woman in the restroom at one of the rest areas who told you about a special waterfall that only locals know about. So you take a 15 -minute detour and put your feet in the water, which feels amazing. Which trip would you rather be on? A or B? One more detail that might impact your choice. B gets to the destination
first. Know why? Since A was determined to make good time, she ignored the check engine light, alerting her that the car was overheating and needed to stop for a break to cool down. She persisted and is now on the roadside waiting for AAA to tow her to the nearest mechanic. This illustrates two options, a life without pleasure and one that includes pleasure. Don't settle for a numbed out life or miss life entirely because you're so productive in your preparation for
living. You are never meant to fade away. You are worthy of feeling good along the way. You are meant to fly and find your way home. Lieutenant Colonel Marvin Willett -Gonin was one of the first U .S. soldiers to liberate a Nazi concentration camp. Documenting his experience in his journal, he wrote an astonishing entry dated May 23, 1945. This is what he writes. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women, and children
collapse as you walked by them. One had to get used to the idea early that individuals just didn't count. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, although it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted. We were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things, and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wished so much that I could discover who did it. It was the action of a genius. Sheer, unadulterated
brilliance. I believe that nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets, no nightie, but with scarlet red lips. You saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post -mortem table, and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At least someone had done something to make them individuals again. They were someone, no longer merely a number tattooed
on the arm. At least they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity. It doesn't take much to help us reclaim our sense of aliveness, but it does take something. And so to close, let's talk about desire. Jesus asks a question that makes a lot of us uncomfortable. Seven times in the Bible, he asks a very specific question. He asks, what do you want me to do for you? Wanting is a tricky thing, isn't it? Sometimes we're
afraid we'll want the wrong thing. Or we've become convinced that wanting is bad or selfish or greedy. Maybe we're tired of desiring things only to be disappointed repeatedly when they don't happen. Or our longings feel incongruent with the options around us. So we learn to reduce our longings to a more manageable size. Make dinner. Pay the bills, look at Instagram, and then do it again the next day. I have spent a lot of time ignoring my needs. This wasn't necessarily a conscious
decision. Somewhere over the years, I picked up the message that it's better to be low maintenance. easy to have around, and have minimal expectations. I wanted to be the person who met other people's needs but was so in control of my life that I didn't need any help. But then I found myself resenting the people around me for not intuitively knowing what I needed or wanted. And I learned that we can bury our wants, needs, and desires and pretend they aren't there. But they still
are. Simone Weil once said, the danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread. But less by a lie, it should persuade itself that it's not hungry. One thing that strikes me about Christianity is that it begins with an invitation to desire. It's a message for those of us who hunger and thirst. And nearly every interaction that Jesus had with people addresses their needs and longings. To the weary, he offered rest. To the lost, he speaks of finding your
way. To the hungry, he provides nourishment to people who were outcast. He offers a family. Jesus takes longing seriously, but sometimes we don't. C .S. Lewis in his book, The Screwtape Letter, says the enemy's ploy is first to make humans flabby with small passions and desires, then offer a sop to those diminished passions so that their experience is one of contentment. They know nothing of great joy or sorrow. They
are merely nice. In another writing, Lewis poignantly observes, we castrate the gelding and bid him be fruitful. Author John Eldridge builds on this idea, adding, as a society, we are producing a generation of men and women whose greatest virtue is that they don't offend anyone. Then we wonder why there's not more passion for Christ. How can we hunger and thirst for Christ if we've
ceased hungering and thirsting altogether? Perhaps it's time we raise our expectations and get passionate about taking hold of what God is offering us. In Proverbs 4 .23, we're told, Sometimes we interpret this verse as a clarion call to protect ourselves from contamination and letting our hearts be influenced by evil, which is essential. However, when I think about not losing heart, I'm also very aware of the fact that everything that makes
life worth living flows from the heart. As Eldridge puts it, to lose heart is to lose everything. Intimacy, romance, love, adventure, meaning, purpose, courage, sacrifice, and joy. Nothing of human greatness is accomplished without heart. It's where desire stirs and fuels our creative energy to write symphonies and climb mountains or make babies. We need this wellspring of life within us to fully live and not merely get by. And so what all of this has been about is simply
a reminder that it's time to come alive. You were never meant to do motherhood flawlessly. You were meant to do it fully. I know you want certainty. I know you want to get it right, but that's not how this works. Motherhood is not a math problem to solve. It's a wilderness to move through. It's a long becoming. And so here's my benediction for you. May you grow comfortable with the mystery. May you sit beside your fears
and doubts with courage. May you trust that becoming undone is sometimes the first step toward becoming more whole. You're not failing. You are forming. And just when you think you've reached your limit, when the questions feel too heavy, when the ache for who you were meets the love for who you're becoming, I want you to remember this. You walked through the first door. And you're still walking. You carry the bloodline. You are the backbone. And with every step you are not just surviving,
you are unfolding history. I know you want to know, where do we go from here? But the answer isn't a place. It's a posture. The beauty is not in knowing, it's in living it. This experience of being a mom is something only the worldwide society of women will ever experience. And so we must stay close to one another and remind each other that yes, motherhood is hard, but it is also full of ecstatic joy, endless possibilities,
and most of all, it is wildly. holy. This has been Bloodline and Backbone, a production of MomCo Media, created by Mandy Arrioto. It was written by Emma Turnbull and Mandy Arrioto, produced by Jeremiah Shoemaker. Special thanks to Dr. Beth Stoffel. Music composition and sound design by Sleepy Dog Creative. Our executive producer is Kelly Jo Smith. And our theme song is Glory by Zuri Alvarado. If this show has moved you,
share it with someone who needs to hear it. And for feedback, you can reach out at media at themom .co. And from all of us here at The Mom Co., thank you so much for listening to Bloodline and Backbone.