Pollination Mama's Podcast

Aurelie Athan PhD is a clinical psychologist and faculty member at The Teachers College, Columbia University in New York. Aurelie has dedicated much of the last 15 years of her career in Reproductive Identity, understanding and revival of the term Matrescence, originally coined by Anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970’s. In fact the popular TED Talk by Alexandra Sacks on Matrescence, was inspired by one of Aurelie’s conference talks. Aurelie’s working definition of the term Matrescence is: “The process of becoming a mother, coined by Dana Raphael, Ph.D. (1973), is a developmental passage where a woman transitions through pre-conception, pregnancy and birth, surrogacy or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond. The exact length of matrescence is individual, recurs with each child, and may arguably last a lifetime! The scope of the changes encompass multiple domains --bio-psycho-social-political-spiritual-- and can be likened to the developmental push of adolescence. Increased attention to mothers has sp