Life has been a lot these past two years. That’s really when I started leaning more into my somatic practices and intuition—not just as concepts I was interested in, but as things I needed to function.

A Cross-Country Leap into the Unknown

My husband, Ethan, and I packed up our family and moved across the country—from Florida to Colorado—without ever having visited. We picked our apartment and the general area we’d live in based on the internet, which sounds a little unhinged in retrospect, but here we are.

The move wasn’t just about a new adventure; it was about safety and values. Florida’s legislation wasn’t supportive of my transgender husband or our interracial family, and I wasn’t willing to raise my kids in an environment that wasn’t fully inclusive. Love is one of my highest values, and I want my children to grow up knowing that—not just in words, but in the way we live.

So, we packed up our lives and landed in a brand-new state, knowing zero people. It was a huge adjustment—new jobs, new schools, new routines. I was able to transfer with my job, but Ethan had to start completely from scratch. Not long after, our oldest daughter moved out here too, and we helped her get settled into her own place. It was a lot of transition all at once, and safe to say, everyone’s nervous systems took a hit.

At one point, I realized I literally did not have the physical or emotional capacity to handle everything that was happening. And I couldn’t figure out why.

I mean, I was big on personal development.
I did breathwork sometimes.
I even meditated.
I was doing mindset work.

So… why was I completely overwhelmed?

The Realization That Changed Everything

Then one day, it hit me:

My nervous system was in a constant state of fight or flight.

It didn’t matter where I was—work, home, the grocery store—I was stuck in fight mode 24/7. My body was treating life itself as an ongoing threat, and I felt it.

And here’s the thing—I knew this wasn’t how I had always felt.
I also knew my body remembered this state from the past.
So if my body had been here before and had also not been here before, then it didn’t have to be like this.

That was my lightbulb moment.

Why Therapy Alone Wasn’t Enough for Me

I was already in therapy at the time, but I started noticing something frustrating:

I wasn’t leaving sessions feeling lighter. I wasn’t leaving thinking, Okay, I can do this. I was ending them feeling pissed off. Or exhausted. Or more dysregulated than when I walked in.

It wasn’t my therapist’s fault, and it wasn’t that therapy wasn’t valuable—it just wasn’t enough on its own. Talking through things wasn’t regulating my nervous system. In fact, sometimes it made things worse because my body didn’t feel safe enough to process it all.

And then I started noticing something else.

I felt better after meditation.
I felt better after moments of stillness.
I felt better after breathwork.

That’s when I started digging deeper. Why did breathwork work so well for me? What exactly was happening in my body? And what the heck was somatic healing?

That’s when I learned about the bottom-up approach—working with the body first to regulate the nervous system, instead of just trying to think my way into healing.

And that changed everything.

Life Isn’t Stopping, So I Needed More Capacity

Once I really dove into somatic practices, I made some life changes.

I realized I couldn’t keep going like this.
I realized that avoiding emotions wasn’t the answer.
I also realized that reliving every trauma in therapy wasn’t the answer either.

What I needed was to increase my capacity to handle life.

Because life? It’s not slowing down.

• I’m married. I plan on staying married.
• I have kids. Parenting is not getting any less intense.
• I have a job. Bills are still going to bill.
• There will still be laws I don’t agree with.
• There will still be Denver traffic that makes me question my entire existence.

Life is always going to life.

So the real work isn’t about stopping every trigger or avoiding discomfort—it’s about building the capacity to handle it. It’s about listening to my intuition and knowing when something (a friendship, a home, a job) is truly right for me.

And that’s different for everyone because we’re all created differently.

What Somatics Has Given Me

I won’t lie and say I have no struggles anymore.

I do. Daily.

Parenting? Still hard. Probably my biggest struggle right now.
Marriage? We feel disconnected A LOT. We joke that by the time the kids are asleep, the house is clean, and we’re actually fed—we finally sit down, look at each other, and remember, oh right, we actually like each other.

But here’s the difference.

I can handle it now.

Somatic work—breathwork, nervous system regulation, intuitive practices—has given me space to hold it all without constantly feeling like I’m drowning.

And what’s even better?

I don’t have to relive every trauma to get there.

That doesn’t mean I avoid it. There are things I’ve chosen to revisit and move through because I wanted to learn from them. But I now believe that healing doesn’t have to mean constant rehashing of the past.

Therapy and Somatics—Not One or the Other

I want to be really clear—I’m not saying therapy isn’t valuable. It is.

But I believe talk therapy alone isn’t always enough.

Because if we can start by helping the body feel safe, then how much more impactful does talk therapy become?

If I feel regulated and capable of processing, how much more healing can happen when I start unpacking:

• The rejection I’ve experienced from family.
• The triggers from my past.
• The wounds from domestic violence in my previous marriage.

If my body feels safe, I can actually work through those things without shutting down or spiraling afterward.

That’s what I want for everyone.

I’ve always been drawn to personal development, but it’s taken me a while to really hone in on this work. And now that I’m here, I’m excited to bring everything I’ve learned to you.

Because life is always going to life.
But we don’t have to feel like we’re barely surviving it.