becoming
A Matrescence group for New Mothers
A soft landing place for the first year of becoming a mother.
An 8-week, in-person group designed for tender new mums who want clarity, connection, and a place to breathe.
Motherhood changes everything, including you.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, emotional, unsure, or not like yourself, you’re not failing.
You may be moving through matrescence, the profound identity and emotional shift of early motherhood.
This circle is here to hold you through it.
About the group
The first year of motherhood can feel like an emotional rollercoaster, beautiful and overwhelming, tender and shocking, joyful and disorienting, all at the same time.
Most mothers are never told about the inside of motherhood: the identity shifts, the emotional intensity, the moments of grief and loss, the feeling of becoming someone new in your own life.
If you’re in your first year of motherhood and feeling tired, stretched, unsure, or “not like yourself,” you’re not failing. You may be moving through matrescence, the profound emotional and identity transformation of becoming a mother.
BECOMING is a gentle, 8-week, in-person space designed to help you make sense of this transformation, feel less alone, and find steadiness in the truth of early motherhood.
Come as you are, emotional, exhausted, uncertain, curious, excited and be held in the becoming.
who this space is for…
This space is for every mother in her first year, whether you’re struggling, feeling on top of the world, or somewhere quietly in-between.
It’s for you if:
this new chapter feels tender, emotional, or unfamiliar
you feel overwhelmed, stretched, or “not quite yourself”
motherhood is different, softer, harder, deeper, than you expected
you’re doing okay, but beneath the surface something feels shifted
you swing between joy, doubt, love, and tears
you crave honest connection without pressure or performance
you want to understand what’s happening inside you
you want a gentle, grounding place to land each week
You don’t need to be at breaking point to be here. You don’t need to have it all together either.
Whether this is your first baby or your fourth, you are welcome here, exactly as you are.
What to expect
Language for what you're feeling
This is very important so you can finally understand your emotional and identity shifts.
Validation instead of self-blame
Because nothing is “wrong” with you, something inside you is changing.
Clarity about why motherhood feels the way it does
A gentle understanding of matrescence and the forces shaping your inner world.
Connection with other mothers
Real, honest, grounding connection without pressure to share if you’re not ready.
Relief from comparison and guilt
Understanding the “good mother myth” and the cultural expectations that exhaust us.
Gentle grounding practices each week
Mother-friendly, simple, soothing. Perfect for tired minds and tender hearts.
A break from pretending
A space where you can be real, messy, emotional, unsure, and fully human.
A softer, kinder relationship with yourself
More compassion. Less pressure. More truth. Less “I should be coping better.”
This is not a space to fix you, it's a space to hold you,to help you feel less alone, and to honour the becoming.
BECOMING is a 8-week, in-person matrescence circle, a deeply supportive space where mothers gather not just to talk, but to experience something profoundly healing: being witnessed, held, and understood in the company of other mothers who truly get it.
This is not a coffee morning.It’s a carefully created, emotionally grounded space where you can bring all the ideas you absorbed about motherhood, the expectations, the pressure, the guilt, the myths, and gently hold them up to the light.
Together, we explore what you were taught to believe about being a mother, what you’ve discovered to be true, and what you’re still trying to figure out.
Each session is 90 minutes, held in a small, intimate group, giving you space to exhale and get to know yourself at the stage of you’re at now. Babies are warmly welcome.
This circle is facilitated by myself, a mother, psychotherapist, matrescence coach and writer with over seven years’ experience supporting women from around the world across every stage of their motherhood. This means you receive not only emotional support, but also gentle, grounding teaching that transforms the way you see yourself, your identity, and your motherhood.
We meet at Applewood Community Centre in Swords, beginning on 14th of January, with an investment of €350. Payment plans are available so this work remains accessible and there is one ‘Pay What You Can’ place available for each round of BECOMING (if you’d like to enquire about this space, send me an email and I’ll take it from there).
Each week follows a soft, predictable rhythm:a gentle arrival, a grounding practice, relatable teachings that turn big ideas into “Oh… that makes so much sense,” optional sharing, slow reflection, and a calm closing ritual.
This is a place where clarity replaces confusion, where self-blame softens into understanding, and where the impossible expectations of motherhood begin to lose their grip.
It’s a space for truth. A space for compassion.A space for the kind of relief that comes when you finally realise:
“It’s not just me who feels this way.”
This programme is for tired, tender new mothers who are carrying far more than anyone can see, and who want a place to breathe, to understand, and to feel like themselves again.
BECOMING
The 8-Week adventure
BECOMING unfolds gently over eight weeks, guiding you through the emotional, psychological, and identity shifts of early motherhood. Each session is spacious, supportive, and designed for tired new mums who want understanding without overwhelm. Together, we move through the inner and outer changes of matrescence, slowly, compassionately, and with room for whatever you’re carrying.
🌿 Week 1 — Naming the Transition
A gentle introduction to matrescence, why early motherhood feels so intense, and what’s really happening beneath the surface. We arrive, breathe, and begin to settle together.
🌿 Week 2 — Loss, Longing & Letting Go
We explore the parts of yourself you miss, the unexpected grief, and the longing that can accompany new motherhood, without shame or judgment.
🌿 Week 3 — Myths, Expectations & “Good Mother” Stories
We unravel the cultural messages you inherited about motherhood, release impossible standards, and soften the grip of comparison.
🌿 Week 4 — Identity in Flux: “Who Am I Now?”
Why you don’t feel like yourself. Why identity feels shaken. How to meet this shift with compassion, curiosity, and grounding.
🌿 Week 5 — The Emotional Weight of Motherhood
Why your feelings are so strong, so tender, or so unpredictable right now — and why it all makes sense. We explore how exhaustion, responsibility, identity change, and unmet expectations shape the emotional landscape of early motherhood, and how to soften the shame around how you’re feeling.
🌿 Week 6 — Mothering in the Real World
Relationships, invisible labour, mental load, and the expectations you’re carrying. We explore how to express needs without guilt.
🌿 Week 7 — Support, Community & Finding Your Voice
Why mothers were never meant to do this alone. We look at real support, real connection, and reclaiming your voice in motherhood.
🌿 Week 8 — Integration & Return
A soft gathering of everything you’ve learned. Naming what has shifted, what you want to carry forward, and honouring your becoming through a closing ritual.
Why Group spaces are So Healing for Mothers
There is something powerfully healing about sitting in a room with other mothers,
not performing, not pretending, not comparing, just being.
In early motherhood, so much of what you feel happens inside you.The doubts, the grief, the overwhelm, the tenderness, the fear of being “the only one”…all of it can feel so isolating, even when you’re surrounded by people.
But something shifts when you hear another mother say,“I feel that too.”
Group work offers a kind of healing that is very different to individual support:
1. It breaks the silence.
The thoughts you’ve kept to yourself, the ones you worried might be “too much” or “not normal”, become shared, human, and understood.
2. It dissolves the illusion of “the good mother.”
When you witness the truth of other women’s inner worlds, the pressure to be perfect loses its power.
3. It restores belonging.
You realise you are not separate, not failing, not behind, just human, just becoming.
4. It grounds your nervous system.
Being in a room where mothers breathe, cry, and settle together creates a calm, regulating, deeply embodied sense of community.
5. It helps you find language for what you’ve been feeling.
When one woman shares her story, another finds her words. When someone names their grief or confusion, someone else finally understands their own.
6. It creates collective relief.
There is a moment in every group, sometimes quiet, sometimes spoken, where the whole room exhales.The relief is shared.The weight lifts because it’s no longer carried alone.
7. It transforms identity through reflection.
Who you are becoming as a mother becomes clearer when reflected back by others who are walking the same path.
Group work doesn’t ask you to be more. It invites you to be exactly as you are, and then lets you see, perhaps for the first time, that who you are is enough.
This is why BECOMING is held in community. Because mothers heal in connection. Because the truth of motherhood deserves to be witnessed. Because you deserve to feel accompanied as you navigate the first year of becoming.
About Me
The holder of this space
I’m Jacqueline Kelly, a psychotherapist, mother of two, a matrescence coach and someone who has been supporting mothers since 2018. For over seven years, I’ve worked with women 1:1 and in groups, listening to their stories, holding their sorrow and their joy, witnessing the moments when language finally catches up with their lived experience and they can put into words what they’re going through.
My work sits at the intersection of identity, emotion, culture, and the truth of what really happens to a woman when she becomes a mother. I live and breathe matrescence, not just as a concept, but as a deeply human experience.
Again and again, I’ve seen the same thing: When a mother has a framework that explains what she’s feeling, when she realises she isn’t failing but transforming, something in her softens. Shame loosens its grip. Space opens.
This is the way I hold space, grounded, gentle, steady, and deeply human.
WHY I CREATED THIS space
For years, my work has been about supporting mothers who are already struggling, mothers who reached out because they felt lost, overwhelmed, guilty, alone, or “not like themselves.” I have spent seven years meeting mothers downstream, helping them make sense of experiences they were never prepared for.
It is no longer enough to keep fishing mothers out of the river. It is time to go upstream.
BECOMING is my first in-person group for new mothers because I have always known that holding women in the earliest, most tender stage of matrescence requires a very specific skill set. The depth of emotion, identity change, vulnerability, and unspoken grief that can surface in this period is profound, and I wanted to be able to meet it with the training, steadiness, and professional capacity it deserves.
For years, I held off offering an in-person space for new mothers because I knew I wasn’t ready yet. I knew the places I would need to go with women. I knew the depth of presence required. And I wanted to be absolutely certain I had the clinical training, the grounding, and the skill to hold that safely and well.
Studying to become a psychotherapist gave me that. Now, I have the skills. I have the capacity.
That’s why this programme is happening now.
The first
BECOMING circle begins on 14th of January
This group is intentionally small so every mother can feel held, heard, and supported, not lost in a crowd. If you’re feeling a pull toward this space, trust it. That pull often arrives before the words do.
You don’t have to navigate this part of your motherhood alone. You are welcome here.
Programme Details
• 8-week in-person circle
• 90-minute sessions
• Babies welcome
• Location: Applewood Community Centre
• Start date: 14th of January, 10:15 - 11:45
• Investment: €350 (payment plans available)
There is a ‘Pay What You Can’ space available in every group I facilitate, please email me if you’d like to enquire about this space.
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Yes, babies are absolutely welcome. Some mums prefer to come on their own if they can, but if that’s not possible or preferred, babies are always welcome.
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It’s okay. Early motherhood is unpredictable. You will still benefit from the sessions you can attend, and the group will hold a steady rhythm for you to return to whenever you’re able.
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No. Sharing is always optional. Some weeks you may have words; other weeks you may just want to listen. Both are welcome. You get to choose what feels right for you.
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Small and intimate. This allows every mother to feel safe, seen, and genuinely supported.
If you have any questions or would like to talk about taking part in BECOMING, feel free to get in touch and we can have a wee chat
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BECOMING is a coaching, supportive space grounded in my training as a coach and a therapist but it is not group therapy. It’s a guided circle that blends gentle psychoeducation, grounding practices, reflection, and connection.
If you’re unsure whether therapy or group support is the better fit for you, you can reach out and I’ll help you explore what feels right.
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You don’t need to. Many mothers come to this space simply feeling not themselves — overwhelmed, emotional, unsure, or unable to put their experience into words. That’s exactly what this circle is for.
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Yes. You don’t need to be struggling to join. This space is also for mothers who want grounding, understanding, companionship, or simply a place to make sense of the transformation they’re moving through.
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Most mothers do. It’s completely normal to feel unsure or worried about joining a group, especially in the early months with a new baby. The space is warm, gentle, and held with care.