Molly, Jessica, Bankica, Caroline, Kym, Shira, and Marie
In June 2019, 12 of us join a new parents support group at Love is Juniper in Brooklyn NY. Our babies were then between 18 days and 15 weeks old. For most of us, it was the first baby. For one of us, it was the second. We were all doing our best to navigate parenthood, sleepless nights, joys, worries, love and anxiety, but figured it couldn't hurt to expand our community and get to know other parents dealing with the same things. Indeed, despite everything it has to offer, New York City can be a pretty isolating place to have a baby, especially as many of us live far away from family members and friends.
During the 6 weekly sessions we had together, we talked about everything - emotional trauma, relationships, physical recovery. It was liberating to find a safe space in which we had the freedom to discuss the realities of parenthood and the postpartum period without any filter. Along the way, we got to know each other and realized how truly supportive it was to have a community to reach out to with questions, to share resources with and, perhaps above all, to get strength from when things got rough. We are still meeting regularly; as we get to know each other better, we now understand each other's stories and are able to help each other more than ever.