Emerging Practices faculty member Rachael Benjamin has overseen the launch of Tribeca Maternity, a new branch of Tribeca Therapy offering online therapy to women, their partners, and their families to address the emotional experiences of family planning, trying to conceive, infertility, pregnancy, childbirth, and early parenthood. An expert in maternity and women’s health, who trains and supervises other therapists in the field, Rachael Benjamin will act as Tribeca Maternity’s Director.

Conceptualized in 2019, Tribeca Maternity was created in response to the limitations inherent in much of the help women and their families receive during maternity. Women, their partners, and their families’ emotional distress is largely understood as solely biological or hormone-related, and the help is isolated to the perinatal or postpartum period. Benjamin, as well as other Emerging Practices faculty who will also work as a part of Tribeca Maternity, didn’t believe this was good enough.

Tribeca Maternity was founded with the understanding that women and their families’ emotional pain is a therapeutic issue–not one of pathology, diagnosis, or illness–and deserving of specialized attention. Rather than relying on a solution-focused medical model, Tribeca Maternity approaches treatment through a systemic lens and explorative relational therapy. By getting close to women and their families’ current experiences, as well as understanding the continued impact of their lives, relationships, and histories, Tribeca Maternity believes individuals, children, couples, and families can be healthier in the long-term.

The name Tribeca Maternity and the designation of “women, their partners, and their families” was developed after extensive discussion about the continued lack of inclusive language around this time in people’s lives. That language hasn’t yet caught up to people’s diverse realities is yet another example of how stuck the help is during this time. Tribeca Maternity understands that trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people, as well as and cisgender men, are affected by these issues too, and strives to be fluent in the ways these experiences can be unique and challenging for marginalized populations.

Practicing online therapy due to COVID-19, the Emerging Practices faculty witnessed the incredible impact the crisis has had on women, their partners, and their families: overcrowded hospitals, overtaxed doctors, stalled adoption and surrogacy processes, closed fertility clinics, new parents struggling to work from home while parenting a newborn, and the general overwhelming stress of living during a pandemic. In response to this complex and unprecedented time, Tribeca Maternity expedited its launch in order to meet women and their families’ growing and shifting needs.