Re-Villaging and Maternal Mental Health
Re-Villaging - a new framework for maternal mental health.
First and foremost - this blog is NOT clinical advice nor is it intended to minimize PMADS or maternal mental health. In fact, it is to strengthen this conversation, expand it and bring more attention to it, from all disciplines and providers who work with Mothers.
You've heard of re-mothering yourself.
But have you heard of re-villaging yourself?
As professionals who support mothers, we are tasked with more than addressing symptoms of distress. We must also examine the cultural, relational, and structural conditions in which that distress arises. One of the most significant—but often unnamed—conditions is disconnection.
Somewhere in the process of matrescence, many women begin to feel an unraveling. (Part of this is necessary—and another part is manufactured. We explore this distinction inside the training!) The very traits they were socialized to value—independence, self-reliance, productivity—begin to turn against them. The internalized ideal of the “good mother” as self-sacrificing, tireless, and endlessly competent begins to fracture under the reality of unsupported care.
This is not individual failure. It’s structural design.
The Legacy of Isolation Is Not Accidental
What we now call “maternal burnout” or even "adjustment difficulty" is often a logical response to systemic conditions - rooted in patriarchal motherhood (Rich), intensive mothering ideology (Hays), and the cultural aftershocks of neoliberal individualism and post-industrial capitalism.
Mothers are navigating their identities in a culture that has devalued care work, dissolved extended kin networks, and normalized hyper-independence. As scholars like Adrienne Rich and Andrea O’Reilly have argued, Motherhood is not just a private experience - it is a politically constructed institution.
And that institution has left mothers profoundly alone.
Re-villaging as Theoretical and Therapeutic Framework
If re-mothering is the intrapersonal process of tending to one's own unmet needs, then re-villaging is the interpersonal and systemic work of re-learning how to exist in relation.
It is, in essence, the practice of relational repair.
To “re-village” oneself is not simply to seek support—it is to undo the internalized narratives of self-sufficiency, emotional privacy, and perfectionism that keep one from receiving it. It is to practice vulnerability, reciprocity, and accountability—capacities rarely nurtured under dominant cultural norms.
This process is both therapeutic and political. It is personal healing that demands collective reorientation. It is, as Carol Gilligan might argue, the reclamation of an ethic of care as a legitimate mode of being in the world.
A Shift in Consciousness, Not Just Circumstance
When we frame maternal wellbeing solely through the lens of psychological resilience or individual adjustment, we risk pathologizing mothers while leaving oppressive systems unchallenged.
Re-villaging introduces a socio-relational model that centers context, interdependence, and community as clinical and cultural imperatives.
This is the heart of The Matricentric Way - a mother-centered framework informed by maternal theory, feminist psychology, and community-based practice. It is a model that holds both the intrapersonal transformation of matrescence and the interpersonal labor of relational repair - without losing sight of the structural forces that shape both.
Re-villaging matters.
Because the antidote to maternal burnout is not more coping strategies.
It’s being more resourced—internally, systemically, and relationally.
And that resourcing cannot be outsourced or commodified. It must be re-cultivated, collectively.
Re-villaging is nervous system work. It’s political education. It’s community practice. It’s maternal mental health—reimagined.
Learn More and Get Involved
Professionally: The Matricentric Way is leading this paradigm shift - it truly is expanding the conversation on maternal mental health. If you are a professional that supports Mothers, I invite you to enroll in The Matricentric Way, either LIVE or self-paced. Join this movement today so that we can transform not only the lives of the individual Mothers we support, but the greater collective of Mothers.
Personally: The Becoming Mama course is available self-paced for any Mother within her first 7 or so years postpartum, interested in learning more about her matrescence AND the impact of Patriarchal Motherhood on her experience of being a Mother. (NOTE: this is NOT a substitute for clinical therapy NOR is it recommended to treat maternal mental health challenges. Consult your therapist for any mental health concerns.)
