Erin Schlozman is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, maternal mental health specialist, and author of The Myth of the Perfect Mom. Through her platform @4th.trimester.wellness she helps mothers untangle perfectionism, navigate matrescence, and feel less alone in modern motherhood.
← All profilesMatrescence is not a quick identity upgrade. It's a slow integration.
Erin Schlozman, maternal mental health therapist
Read it the way it ran in print.
Motherhood is often framed as instinctive and intuitive. But for many women, the transition into motherhood is far more complex than that. Her full feature ran in the March 2026 issue, pages 6–12. Below is the actual spread, page for page, exactly as it appears in print.
Matrescence is the psychological transition into motherhood, but most women have never heard the word. What happens when women finally encounter it?
They feel an enormous sense of relief. Because what they've been experiencing has a name, has been documented, has been felt by every mother before them in some form. The disorientation, the grief alongside the joy, the sense of being unrecognizable to yourself, these aren't signs that something is wrong with you. They're signs that something very large is happening. Naming it doesn't fix the sleep deprivation, but it tells a woman that what she's feeling has a shape.
You've written about perfectionism and what you call the myth of the perfect mom. What does perfectionism actually cost mothers?
It costs them the ability to be present. Perfectionism is fundamentally about control, and motherhood is fundamentally about releasing it. When those two things collide, and they always do, it tends to produce mothers who are simultaneously doing everything and feeling like they're doing nothing well. The antidote isn't lowering standards. It's changing the question from "am I doing this perfectly" to "am I doing this honestly." That shift changes everything.
Read the full feature in the June 2026 issue.
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