The Poverty of Community: The Village That Wasn't There — and Why I Built One
When my mother died, the people disappeared. When my brother died, I was almost completely alone. When I had Toby, I understood for the first time what a village is supposed to feel like — and what it costs to not have one.
My mother died when I was sixteen. And what I remember, besides the grief, is how quickly the people disappeared. The meals stopped coming. The check-ins tapered off. The casseroles ran out and people went back to their lives, as people do. And I was left in a house that felt enormous and silent, trying to figure out what came next.
Two years later, my brother died by suicide. I was eighteen. And this time, there was almost no village at all. Suicide carries a particular kind of social silence. People don't know what to say, so they say nothing. They don't know how to be present for a grief that complicated, so they disappear. I learned to be very comfortable being alone.
"I don't need people"
I told myself it was self-sufficiency. Independence. Strength. I had been so thoroughly let down by the absence of community that I had rebuilt myself around not needing it. Which is its own kind of poverty — the belief that you have to do everything alone because there is no one coming.
Loneliness has health effects equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes per day
Chronic social isolation is associated with significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, and early death. For mothers — who are more likely to be isolated, particularly in the postpartum period — this is a public health issue that is rarely treated as one. (U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection, 2023)
Becoming a mother without a village
When Toby was born on July 16, 2025 — three weeks early, emergency C-section — I got a crash course in what a village is supposed to feel like, and what it costs to not have one. I was recovering from major surgery. I had a complicated medical history that made the postpartum physical experience harder than average. I was navigating new motherhood with the weight of every person I'd ever lost sitting quietly in the room with me.
Tony was there — completely, genuinely there. And I am grateful for that in a way I can't fully express. But two people is not a village. Two people, no matter how much they love each other, cannot be everything. That's not a failure of love. It's just physics.
“The women who need community most are often the least able to build it — because poverty, grief, and instability make it hardest to put down roots.”
We say "it takes a village" and then we build systems that assume the village already exists. Parental leave that's individual, not communal. Healthcare that doesn't count loneliness as a medical concern. Housing that separates families across cities. A culture that calls asking for help weakness.
Momera exists because I know exactly what it feels like to have no village. I built this community because I did not want one more mother to face what I faced — the grief, the health crisis, the postpartum nights when everything feels impossible — completely alone. If you're here, you're already part of the village we're building. You don't need to have it together. You just need to show up.
Becky Tsadilas
Founder, Momera — Movement of Mothers Ending Poverty. Based in Cochrane, Alberta. hello@momera.ca