Rebecca Mercurio (43) and Gideon (6). Rebecca has also experienced two miscarriages and one abortion.
Buffalo, NY
Rebecca shares -
“I’ve struggled a lifetime with body image. Having been a super scrawny kid who lived in boys jeans and a Yankees cap, who needed suspenders to hold up her skirts, the nearly overnight transformation of puberty left me feeling out of touch in an alien new form of curves and billows I neither understand nor felt at home in.
At 13, when I was called “voluptuous”, I cried for days. People took one look at me and decided I must be sexually active and I was often labeled a whore based solely on my body type. My sister’s sweet sundress looked scandalous on me, I filled it out in ways that felt inappropriate and shameful. All I wanted was to be cute. My cheeks flushed at being labeled sexual and I was never able to fully embrace it.
And then, pregnancy. I felt fierce and powerful in my pregnant body. It so suited me and served as an opportunity to dig into my sensuality, which I did wholeheartedly and unabashedly. My hips, my breasts- this is what my body had been waiting for. What it was made for. And I owned every last pulsating inch. I loved it all, had an incredibly powerful and empowering birth and breastfeeding for me was a daily miracle to experience.
6 years later I have moments of self loathing, the softness remains but is suddenly overwhelmingly soft. Gone are my days of yoga and running. The sensuality gave way to a general feeling of frumpiness, sloppiness. Looking at my belly and the extra pouch that has accumulated there, I work hard to remind myself why - that I grew and nurtured a human then got him from the inside of my body to the outside. That the extra softness is with me because he is with me. And while clothes may not fit the same (or fit at all anymore), my ferocious strength is undeniable and my softer version works to stand in her sensuality. Sometimes she nails it but each day is different. I’m trying to recapture that level of awe and inspiration in myself- parenting takes the depth to a whole new level, new discomforts that leave body image in the dust.
Pregnancy and birth were so powerful for me that the crash postpartum was unexpected. During pregnancy I worked hard to extract myself from an unhealthy relationship and thrived once I had. Three months postpartum when maternity leave was up and I couldn’t imagine leaving my baby, in an act of desperation to buy time, I moved in with my son’s father. I knew it wouldn’t last long and it was a means to an end but it was still not one of my better choices. We were out three months later and I hustled from sublet to sublet, staying with friends, living off of my savings and coming unraveled, feeling overwhelmingly alone and hopeless. I had suicidal thoughts daily but my child silenced those immediately the moment I looked at him. All of the work I had done during my pregnancy to let go of the toxic stuff seemed for nothing and was back with a vengeance.
My little one kept me laser focused, holding him was my therapy and I wore him all day long, we slept together for 4 years. My postpartum depression didn’t feel like a disconnect from my baby at all but it seeped into and took over ever other aspect of my life. I had severe insomnia and anxiety. I became obsessed with pumping and building a stash of milk, irrationally terrified I wouldn’t be able to feed my child. Nurse, pump, clean, repeat. The panic attacks I had experienced early on in my pregnancy (which correlated directly with proximity to my son’s father) were debilitating and made working a challenge. I would hyperventilate and the walls would close in and I saw stars and would have to physically leave the room. I disconnected from family and friends, went quiet- everyone figured I was in the new baby bubble, all blissed out and respected my quiet.
I lasted a year in the NYC single momma hustle before moving back to my hometown of Buffalo. I hadn’t lived in buffalo for 15 years and it felt like failure to me. I found a tiny apartment, a job at a restaurant so I could bring home food, grossed peanuts after paying the babysitter, cried every night. Everyone I wanted to call lived in a different place, it was suffocating how alone I felt. I needed a Village, and over the next few years I quietly worked to build one. I took all of the things I wished for and opened a space that served those needs. At first it was a collective effort with a few other women going through similar struggles- divorce, a recent birth, pregnancy, etc. Buffalo is Magic like this- it is a close knit community that truly earns the moniker “city of good neighbors”.
Four years later, I’m solo in the space. We host a Postpartum support group, Childbirth Education and Hypnobirthing classes, have an in house therapist who specializes in postpartum and PTSD, a breastmilk donation program, Doula services & local choices in childbirth consultations and specialized, therapeutic treatments for the shape shifting anatomy of pregnancy and the immediate postpartum.
I took the feeling of isolation and used it to cultivate a place where all women and babies and partners and caregivers are welcome and catered to. The best possible healing for my own postpartum journey was to create a space for anyone else on that ride to pop into and join me. It’s been unbelievable how organically it has grown and what a true village it has become. Healing through community, through non judgmental, respectful support - basically I healed by giving all of the things I needed. My family here in Buffalo were an integral part of all of this- with their help I was able to carve out the time to build this and to continue to grow. My hometown has shown up for me in a way I never could have imagined and I owe much of the positives of this experience to the people here who believed in me enough to hang with my kid and let me love them up the way I wanted to be loved/held up during my pregnancy and postpartum.
My child saved me. He chose me for reasons I work daily to live up to. His conception sparked a profound and introspective shift. All of the things I had previously accepted were becoming increasingly unacceptable. I did deep, deep healing work during my pregnancy and encourage every woman embarking upon this transition to find a therapist. Seriously! It’s the greatest gift you can give yourself in terms of breaking unhealthy habits and unlearning toxic patterns. Our babes will get their own shit when they get here, they don’t need ours as foundation. They need our clarity, our awareness and our presence so get clear, become aware of what you are aware of. It’s so liberating and sets us all up for deeper connections and better coping skills! Own your shit and then let it go..... the truth is we all have such a light to shine but so many of us are discouraged from cultivating it.
Birthing and parenting are so hard. So SO hard. But it is only in the doing of hard things that we grow as individuals. Motherhood shows us what we’re made of, the dark stuff is so meaningful and necessary. There is such value in doing hard things, take the opportunity and do the work. Find the people who can guide and support you in that work, but do it (and you’ll realize it’s Never ending - so many opportunities to continue to grow)!
{I’m here} because motherhood is powerful and taken for granted. Because women feel isolated and overwhelmed, judged and ill equipped as we step into this role. There is such solidarity in motherhood, in womanhood period. We are so connected to nature, to each other and our culture makes no time or space for this and certainly holds little reverence for the remarkable capabilities of the female body. Because we are too often shamed and the whore/virgin dichotomy is garbage yet we often find ourselves feeding into it, divided by it. This movement; this coming together of women in their underwear, nursing their babes and occupying a space of compassion and nurturing, is so important to bring into our daily lives. To be vulnerable together, accept ourselves as we are, meet one another without expectation or comparison and find strength there. Together. It’s the cultivation of the divine feminine and its contagious.”