Initially I felt they jarred with the body of the work, which follows Jones’s journey into motherhood and is divided according to a series of themes, including birth, the brain, sleep and society. The cultural myths of motherhood hold strong, and at times I found myself craving more delight, particularly because Jones’s writing on this aspect of motherhood is some of the most beautiful and creative in the book. Sure, there are a million books out there about how to take care of a child (and most of them are contradicting each other, or shift gears every couple of years), but very few about what it means to become a mother, to go through matrescence. throughout the entire thing, which just seems like such an obvious question of how on earth the author could possibly have thought differently?

I think had I read this whilst pregnant it would have made me feel rather fearful of early motherhood, whereas I think if you do have a fantastic support network around you, you are able to focus on the more joyous elements of mothering. Lucy’s ability to put words to experiences that I’ve been unable to describe myself is both incredible and the greatest gift.Losing Eden rigorously and convincingly tells of the value of the natural universe to our human hearts. It is] wide-ranging in its scope, packed with statistics about mental health, new studies on the rewiring of women's brains after childbirth and the presence of foetal cells in our bodies . Thank you to the author - a book unlike anything I’ve read before on motherhood, and one that many women will not only relate to, but will also benefit from reading.

And those who fall in love with the world might protect it, a virtuous cycle that would make a real difference in the fight for a workable planet - Bill McKibben, author of Falter; Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? The book’s title comes from a 1973 essay by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael, lamenting the lack of acknowledgment of “mother-becoming” in western societies. A phrase far too often used, but this is ‘essential reading’ for everyone - not just mothers or fathers or care-givers, but everyone. Matrescence holds the power to carry us back to ourselves, to the rituals and community from which we came; the caregivers we all hold the seed within us to become- and Lucy Jones is the person who should have written it. This shift of focus captivates Jones, a new mother at the start of the book, who has a daughter and two sons by its conclusion.Around halfway through the book, I kept thinking, ‘please give me the good side that makes this all worth it.