Tribeca Maternity Was Founded on the Belief That Experiences of Women and Their Families Deserve Dedicated Attention

Since our founding in 2009, Tribeca Therapy has worked with women, their partners, and their families, including LGBTQ+, interracial, multicultural, interreligious, and non-traditional couples and families, through experiences related to family planning, infertility, trying to conceive, pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. In particular, Senior Therapist Rachael Benjamin, who joined the practice in 2012, has emerged as both a specialist and a leader in the field of maternity and women’s health, including supervising and training other therapists in the field. Through her own trainings in maternal mental health, Rachael discovered firsthand the limitations of the help women and their families are generally offered. In particular, emotional distress during maternity is frequently understood as separate from a trying, expecting, or new parent’s life and relationships, which we believe does not see the whole person by ignoring essential aspects of who they are.

In late 2019, we made a decision as a practice to use our resources in order to launch Tribeca Maternity with Rachael Benjamin serving as Director. This launch was expedited in response to the crucial need we observed in our practice of emotional help for women, their partners, and their families around family planning, pregnancy, and parenting amidst the complications and uncertainty of COVID-19.

COVID-19 Made the Emotional Health of Women and Their Families During Maternity Critical: We Made It Our Priority To Launch Remotely To Address These Needs

When our practice shifted to teletherapy and online therapy in response to the health concerns related to COVID-19, we feared that the constraints of remote therapy would delay the launch of these much-needed services. However, what we witnessed in our remote therapy sessions was that COVID-19 and the related safety restrictions strongly affected women, their partners, and their families who were family planning, trying to conceive, pregnant, or in early parenthood. Pregnant women were understandably frightened about delivering in overcrowded hospitals or going to necessary doctor’s appointments during a pandemic. Already overburdened families with newborns were struggling to keep up with the demands of caring for the family under the additional strain of working from home and a lack of childcare resources. Most fertility services, as well as the adoption and surrogacy processes, had been delayed, leaving women and their partners feeling lost about family planning and trying to conceive. And above all, all of us were stressed.

We realized the special attention paid to women and their families’ concerns that we were working toward providing couldn’t wait. Tribeca Maternity pushed up our launch in order to give women, their partners, and their families the help they needed immediately. Though we’ve now returned to seeing patients in person at our Tribeca Maternity offices in Lower Manhattan, it’s meaningful to reflect on the launch of Tribeca Maternity, which influenced us to continue to offer teletherapy and online therapy in order to give women, their partners, and their families the attention they deserve.

Meet our founder and clinical director, Matt Lundquist, LCSW, MSEd

A Columbia University-trained psychotherapist with more than two decades of clinical experience, I've built a practice where my team and I help individuals, couples, and families get help to work through difficult experiences and create their lives.