Meet the Founder

I’m Rebecca, founder Morpho Market. I’m thrilled that you’re here! Thrilled that your path has crossed with mine, and that you’re perusing my shop for some very lucky women.

Morpho Market exists because at 34 I recognized that I have full agency of my own life, and that such agency feels equally breathtaking in its beauty and horrifying in its responsibility. This was a year of change. On the heels of heartbreak from the end a long-term relationship, I pressed pause on a 15-year human rights and public health career. For the first time since childhood, my life was not bound by responsibilities to others or measured by what I produced each day. Suddenly I had nothing but time to spend healing from my burnout and trauma.

The first thing I did was run to my closest friends. I showed up at their doorsteps raw and vulnerable. I slept on their couches, moved into their guest rooms, and inserted myself into their lives. I felt such gratitude for the way they welcomed me, but soon learned that my visits were more reciprocal than I thought. While I was there because I needed them, they showed me their raw vulnerability by letting me into their messy and loving households. I witnessed the everyday moments between my friends and their spouses, between them and their kids, their work, and their countless other roles as homeowner, daughter, sister, sister-in-law, auntie, mentor, and friend. They were touched I wanted to be in their world. I was touched to get to be in it. I needed houses filled with love, and they gave me theirs.

The rarity of having time to just be and to invest in being with friends was not lost on us. As I packed up my bags (okay, my one bag!) for several months of solo travel, I was left thinking about how to maintain the closeness I felt with my friends across the distance.

While perching myself in a tiny beach town in Costa Rica (where I discovered morpho butterflies), backpacking through Europe, and reconnecting with my roots in Israel, I slowly watered the seed of an idea about how I could make it easier for women to stay close with their friends even when their jobs are stressful, when their kids are dependent, when their time is booked.

On the island of Hvar in Croatia, I spent a solitary month resting in my travel hammock above rocks that meet the Adriatic Sea. During the days I would peruse the local shops and punctuate the time with iced espressos (I had long learned that iced coffee is not a thing in Europe!). While at this café one morning, I started writing about an idea I had to make it easier for people to find unique, handmade gifts, and for the independent designers of these gifts to gain exposure to people who are inspired by their work. Despite the joy I felt looking at the local jewelry artists, leather smiths, and more, I was very disciplined about my budget and the limits of my backpack. But this didn’t stop me from thinking how I wished I could get this purse to my sister, or this bracelet to my friend.

Gift giving is a love language at which I’ve always been well-versed. I love shopping for people I love, selecting something special—that compliments and elevates their style while appreciating their individual taste. Good gift giving is about making someone feel seen—it’s a true expression of love in physical form. And it is one that can travel through distance, and that can be expressed with limited time.

One month later, in the car with my cousin and her 3 teenage daughters driving in Jerusalem, I told them about this idea I had for a business—a beautifully curated gift shop, that prioritized the joy that the gift giver experienced while shopping, and not just the joy that the gift receiver would feel. They loved it instantly, and the excitement in my voice when talking about it. They believed in me. They were young but aware, at that tender age when they are absorbing messages about what they can do and the types of goals they can achieve as women.

Something switched on for me in that moment. I had no good reason not to try this. My only hesitations came from fears—fear of failure, fear of looking like an amateur, fear of judgment from not returning to the work I had trained for, fear of losing my value as someone who saved lives to become someone who makes lives worth living. Having impressionable adolescent minds watching me, I decided I was not going to succumb to these fears. I would persist, with the fears. I wanted to show them that being a woman means you can do scary new things, you can radically reinvent yourself, and you can create a life you want.

I returned home to New York City and got to work, creating something—a very awesome something—from nothing.