How I Found My Mom People When Everything Felt Uncertain

By Jamie Bendell

It was six months into the pandemic when I found out I was expecting—and absolutely nothing in life felt certain. The world was flipped upside down, and my partner, Brandon, and I were still reeling from the shock of our careers being thrown into disarray overnight. I’ve always had a tendency to worry, and now my brain is having a field day: pandemic what-ifs, health fears, financial stress, birth logistics… welcoming a baby into chaos felt both surreal and terrifying.

Still, at some point, all the mental noise gave way to a quiet flicker of excitement. I started to let myself believe this was actually happening. I told Brandon. I told my friend Ash, an incredible doula and my go-to for all things birth. But I didn’t tell many others. I didn’t trust myself with sharing the information more broadly. The pandemic had set me off on a control streak, and I wanted to own the new information I was carrying.

And then, Brandon got hit with a life-altering health diagnosis, and we didn’t know if he would be okay. It happened when I was exactly twelve weeks pregnant. How do you tell people that one partner has stage IV cancer, and the other is pregnant, in the same breath? I wasn’t prepared. No one is.

But somehow, we just… kept going. Just the two of us, in our little New York City apartment. Brandon was home all the time—except when he was getting treatment. I worked from home, too. We were in it together, quietly, privately. No one could see my growing belly over Zoom. No one saw Brandon’s changing appearance either.

Every day, I willed the pregnancy to stay. For him. For me. For all of us. But I didn’t let myself connect—to my body, to the pregnancy, or to others. I tried once. I asked the social worker at my OB’s office if she knew of any support groups—somewhere to hold the messiness of what I was carrying. She didn’t. I reached out to the hospital where Brandon was being treated. Nothing. So time kept moving, and I kept holding my breath across a computer screen.

Then I saw Marika’s post on Facebook. I knew her from HER, another community she had built and led so beautifully. I had always admired her ability to bring people together. And here she was again, extending a hand to moms-to-be looking for connection. I reached out.

“What a moment to become a mom,” she wrote in her first reply.

Oh, you have no idea, I thought.

Then this line: “Community and support are even more of a prerequisite for basic survival.”

She saw me. Somehow, without knowing the details, she captured the truth I had been carrying alone.

Near the end of my pregnancy, I started to soften. To take deep breaths (as deep as you can with a giant belly). To feel a little more hope. A little more excitement. I reached for connection to other pregnant moms instead of only grasping for support as a caregiver. I let myself begin to imagine our baby in my arms.

And on the other side of birth, Mysha and my birth pod were there, waiting. The community I’d longed for—the one I didn’t know how to find or ask for—was suddenly right there at my fingertips. After so much isolation, from the pandemic and from the fear we were holding, I opened my arms. And the other Mysha moms welcomed me in.

Every pregnancy story has its own shape—and thankfully, most don’t involve a partner’s stage IV cancer diagnosis. But what I hope resonates here is that we all come to pregnancy and motherhood from different angles. With different histories, hopes, and fears. And still, there’s this pull—quiet but undeniable—that draws us toward one another. Toward real connection. Because despite how divided and isolating our world can feel, pregnancy isn’t meant to be a solo act. We all deserve a community that gets it, that sees us in our full complexity. For me, that was Mysha. It still is. And if you’re looking for a place to land, I hope it might be that for you, too.

Mysha is the mom group, reimagined. Use code HATCH for $100 off your first year of membership at myshapods.com.