There was no candlelight, no yoga mats, no crystal singing bowls or gongs.

There was the tech on the other side of the glass wall inviting me to close my eyes and asking me to stay still. And then there was me, lying inside the claustrophobic machine, listening to a strange sequence of mechanical sounds.

thump thump thump BUZZZZZZZZ knock knock knock knock

silence.

Then again and again and again.

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The sounds were loud enough to make it impossible to ignore them. They seemed to come from all around as if I was in a surround sound theater. I couldn’t see what was making the sounds. I couldn’t leave the machine. All I could do was lie there and listen.

At the time, I didn’t think of this as anything remotely connected to healing. Now I know that this experience was one of the first steps that led me to becoming a sound healer.

I’ve always felt super connected to sound and music. Like when “she works hard for the money” by Donna Summer came on the radio this week…I can still do my high school kick routine in my head. There are other songs that instantly bring me to tears. Like “Home” by Phillip Phillips, which transports me back to a funeral for a friend in college. Or songs that make me smile. Like when “all the small things” by Blink 182 comes on at a friend’s wedding.

Sounds impact us in a way that doesn’t even seem possible. A few notes can transfer you back 20 years, and a familiar melody can give you full body chills. And I realize this even more now that I’m a mom.

Anytime I enter a room and Baby Girl hears my voice, she turns her head toward me. My voice can make her smile. My bad singing can soothe her to sleep. My vibrational hummmmm can (sometimes lol) calm her.

There is a lullaby I sing to her every night over and over again, to the tune of “you are my sunshine” and she’s begun to associate that song with going to sleep. Other times she’ll be crying and fighting sleep and nothing seems to be working. So I’ll hum and rhythmically tap her and she’ll slowly begin to close her eyes.

She doesn’t know what “mama” means yet but she can understand sound. Sound is safe, sound is grounding, and sound is a way for me to say “I’ve got you.”

I didn’t plan to become a sound healer, but instead it found me. For a long time, I thought of sound healing as something that only people in L.A. did 😂 I thought it was woo-woo and something only the privileged were able to partake in. In my mind, the average person wouldn’t have the time or money to spend an hour of their time laying with their eyes closed.

But then I was burntout, having panic attacks, and decided to experience a sound bath myself. Worth a shot, right?

I remember opening my eyes after the hour-long session and thinking oh.

I didn’t have any crazy visions or clarity but for the first time in a long long time, my mind was completely still. My brain was used to creating worst case scenarios or “worry stories” as my therapist liked to call them and yet instead the 47 tabs usually open in my brain were quiet.

As someone who has spent a lot of my life being in my head, solving problems, thinking ahead, worrying, planning, and trying to figure out what comes next, there was something incredibly powerful about an experience that asked me to do none of those things.

Instead I just had to simply be. And let the sound do the work. And as a chronic learner, I knew I had to learn how to play crystal singing bowls immediately.

And eventually, I became a certified sound healer so that I could share that magic with others.

People are always telling me, “Ugh, I need to come to one of your sound baths” and honestly, I get it.

We live in a world that asks us to constantly consume sound without ever really listening. Notifications. Emails. Car horns. Podcasts. Talking. Someone asking us a question while we’re simultaneously answering another text. Silence can feel uncomfortable because we’re so used to the constant background noise of life.

So when someone tells me they need to come to a sound bath, I don’t necessarily hear, I need you to heal me. I hear, I need a place where I can stop. A place where nobody needs anything from me. A place where I don’t have to make a decision, answer a question, accomplish something, or take care of someone else. A place where I can close my eyes and listen.

And that is why I became a sound healer. To create a space where, for even an hour, someone can stop holding everything themselves. To sit beside people in the messy, uncertain, difficult parts of life.

And, in the only way I know how, to say: I’ve got you.

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Paid subscribers receive a free sound bath audio track at the end of this article. Start your free trial to read this full essay and access sound healing from the comfort of your own home 😊

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This week marks one year since I found out I was pregnant with Baby Girl. I haven’t talked a lot about feeling ready to have kids.

“Ready.”

I personally don’t think you can ever feel ready. I never did. I think I could’ve found a million reasons why “now isn’t the right time.”

We had traveled all over from Colombia to Laos to Iceland and Chile. We had careers we were happy with and the goodest boy at our side each step of the way. We said our vows on a mountaintop and celebrated with friends and family in a yurt village. We bought a house and made roots in the best city in the world. We had plans for the weekend that didn't involve coordinating around naps or wondering whether a diaper bag had enough diapers in it.

We had a life that was ours.

And then, on a beach in Costa Rica last spring we decided it was time to make it a little less ours. Nothing had changed, but when we looked at our life, we realized we were in a place where we wanted to make room for someone else.

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One year ago we were about to go to our annual lakehouse trip to the Michigan Upper Peninsula. We didn’t even mean to make it a tradition, but somehow the end of August became our time to bring Oskee along as we hiked, swam, drank IPAs on the paddle boat, and ate pasties. I was an organized trying to conceive (TTC) girly with my ovulation strips and temperature tracking, so I knew going into that trip I would either A. get my period or B. be pregnant. So I packed my tampons and pregnancy tests and off we went.

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Mothering Myself

The Day I Was Told to Move My Ovaries

This summer marks twelve years since I started 32 rounds of radiation for my recurring spinal tumors. I’ve never written about that experience, and I rarely talk about it. It was a whirlwind of doctors, scans, opinions, second opinions, procedures, an all-expenses paid week to Oklahoma City (seriously), and a whole lot of…

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16 days ago · 5 likes · Emily Kiefer

When you have a cancer center in mind, you probably have a very stereotypical and specific idea of the people who are there. People with no hair, people in wheelchairs, parents accompanying their young children and parents accompanying their parents, older people who look exhausted, and families speaking a different language because they traveled halfway across the world to be there.

And then there was me.

I was 22 years old, had just graduated college, was about to start my first teaching job, and (thankfully!) did not have a malignant cancer.

I felt like a fraud.

Yes, I had tumors. Yes, I needed radiation. But walking into the proton therapy center every day and seeing what everyone else was going through made me feel like I didn’t belong. This is another part of my lifelong diagnosis I haven’t ever really talked about before.

After my extremely eventful day with Dr. Ego, I went to my second opinion at a proton therapy center in the suburbs (where Angel recommended). This type of radiation was relatively new at the time, but it was designed for people just like me and where my tumors were located.

My tumors were in my spinal cord at the lumbar spine. Traditional photon radiation would go through my body, meaning it would hit my spine and then continue through all of those organs on the other side. Proton radiation is different because it can be much more targeted, stopping more precisely around the tumor instead of continuing through the body. That meant there was a much better chance of protecting everything in front of my spine, like my bladder, intestines, uterus, and ovaries.

This is also exactly why people traveled from all over the world to this particular center. I remember seeing kids there who had flown to the United States for the first time every with their families. They were children who were incredibly sick, and it was gut-wrenching to look at them without feeling a pit in your stomach.

And then there was me, walking in with my hair, summer-tanned skin, my 22-year old drinking habits, and my relatively normal life. It was hard to not feel like I didn’t belong.

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The weirdest part of radiation was that since I had just graduated college, I was also starting my first adult job as an elementary teacher. There’s nothing quite like figuring out how to be an adult and a teacher and a radiation patient at the same time. When I started radiation, the school year hadn’t started yet so I was technically unemployed. So a lot of the expenses for radiation were actually covered through a grant program, which is pretty unbelievable.

Radiation for most people, including me, is Monday-Friday. You have to be there, rain or shine, sick or healthy, no matter what you have going on, everyday. So each day I would go to school and teach hundreds of kids engineering and computer science. Then I would get in my car, drive an hour to radiation, get treated which depending on the day took an hour or so, and then drove an hour back home.

I was required to stop drinking water after lunchtime, because they wanted my bladder to be as empty as possible during radiation so it was out of the way of the proton beams. So I was teaching children all day while dehydrated, then lying on a radiation table face-down while a giant machine shot proton beams into my spine.

Just your average summer at age 22.

And since I was 22, of course I was partying in Chicago on the weekends. I would visit my then-boyfriend, now-husband, and try to amp up the “I am normal!!” facade. I would leave school on Friday, go to radiation, then drive to Chicago for a couple days because apparently my coping mechanism was pretending none of this was happening for 48 hours.

I wanted to see my boyfriend, my friends, I wanted to drink vodka sodas at The Kerryman and be like every other 22 year old who had just graduated college and was figuring out her life.

Looking back, I can see that my brain was compartmentalizing. Monday-Friday: Radiation girl. Saturday and Sunday: Normal girl.

Rinse and repeat.

When I first started radiation, I drove myself back and forth everyday. I had a car, a job, and even though I lived with my parents I was determined to keep as much of my life as normal as possible.

But then the radiation side effects started to kick in.

I was exhausted. I was definitely more tired than the newborn tired I am now, that’s for sure. But I was also twelve years younger 😂 So family started to drive me so I could sleep in the passenger seat. And my lower back started to burn where the radiation was being directed. A burn that is still visible as a tan to this day, twelve years later.

During radiation treatments, there’s a lot of waiting. Usually with the same people at the same time everyday. I remember one conversation about fertility with a deskworker, who was in remission at the time. She told me about her journey to motherhood, because having biological children was not an option for her because of the treatment she had gone through.

I remember sitting there thinking, do I even want kids? I was 22, just graduated college, was not married, and was not thinking about having kids anytime soon. And yet, suddenly, I was having very adult conversations about my ovaries, fertility, radiation exposure, and how I might have children someday. It was like my future was rushing closer and closer, especially since the entire reason I was at this particular radiation center was because the doctors were trying to protect that future.

Ever since my diagnosis in 2011, I’ve felt like a fraud. But especially during my 32 radiation treatments. Everyday I would walk in after teaching. I didn’t look sick, I drove myself there, I wasn’t spending every waking hour in a hospital, I was dating, I was going out on weekends, and I was for the most part functioning. Unless you were in my immediate circle, you would’ve had no idea that I was going through radiation at the time.

As I would look at all the people fighting for their life around me in the radiation center, it felt like I was taking the spot from someone who needed it more. My logical brain knows that’s absolutely ridiculous, but our brains love to be that way.

I think back to that 22 year old version of me a lot who was trying to protect her organs for a hypothetical future, especially now that I have my daughter here with me. At the time, I was having conversations with women about fertility and motherhood without actually understanding how much those conversations would eventually matter to me.

At the time, I didn’t feel sick enough to be going through 32 rounds of radiation treatment. Now as I reflect back, I can see the duality of what I was experiencing. I was a sick person and also a normal 22 year old. I was scared and also danced at the bar on Saturday night. I was receiving radiation and also teaching 5th graders about the radiation levels after the Fukushima nuclear disaster (the irony was seriously uncanny). I sat in a cancer center next to a family who had flown across the world and was also having my own very real experience driving back and forth from my parents’ home each day.

I wasn’t a fraud. I was just 22, sick, and trying to live her life. I know that now.

Can you relate? We’re all going through things that are invisible to everyone else. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments <3

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Before birthing Baby Girl this spring, Husband and I talked about all the things you need to before birth. What were we going to name her? Do we need/want to move? Where will she sleep? Would we do daycare? If so, when?

And then came the conversation that kind of stumped us: Will we post photos of her online?

I’ve followed content creators who use emojis or blur their children’s faces, as well as others who openly share their families and seemingly every detail of their kids’ lives. One of my favorites is Alex and Jon, who have found a hilarious middle ground: Jon plays their baby in all of their videos.

I’ve also followed creators like dadchats and momchats, who have built a business revolved around their kids, yet we don’t even know their kids’ names or what they look like. And they have explained that their rule is that if their kid is the brunt of a joke, it’s not being shared.

I knew I didn’t want to fully share her life with the world, but did I want to have photos of her face on the Internet? I wasn’t really sure, even once she was born. So I decided to play it safe and share a photo without showing the defining features of her to announce her birth.

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A week or so later, I posted photos where you could see the tiniest bit of her face. Like truly someone would’ve had to zoom in to see just a quarter of her facial features. I received several comments and messages after posting basically saying “yay we can finally see what she looks like!”

I understand everyone’s curiosity, I’ve been there before too! But it was in that moment I decided I definitely did not want to share her face.

Baby Girl is adorable. I’m biased, and I realize all newborns look like little baked potatoes tbh. I take approximately 47 photos of her everyday, most of which are nearly identical. I’d LOVE to brag about her and share her with the world!

But when it comes to social media, my decision not to share her face has less to do with being paranoid about the Internet, and more to do with something much simpler:

So, naturally, I’ve decided to write about it now. 😅

There’s way too much to fit into one essay, so this will probably become a few different parts. But I think we need to start with my ovaries.

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June 2014

It was the month after I graduated college, so the vibes were high at a young 22 years old. I was starting my first elementary teaching job in August, so I was going to curriculum trainings over the summer months and needed to get my first classroom ready. All this to say, I had a job lined up, but I had not started it yet. So in all meanings of the word, I was unemployed (this is important later on in the story).

I was headed to my bi-annual MRI and consult for my lumbar spine, in the area a hemorrhaged spinal cord tumor had been removed three years prior. I wasn’t nervous at all, tbh. I was naive in the sense that since they said they thought they’d removed all of that tumor during surgery, that it would be something I never had to worry about again. I was loosely promised by doctors about how in the future I’d get an MRI every five years or so, just to make sure nothing was there (what an adorable little thought to look back on).

It’s easy to tell when a doctor has to deliver not the best news, and this was definitely one of those times. She said there was a spot (tumor) that had grown, and several “new spots”, and that my case would be presented to the tumor board roundtable the next week. They were small, because they was caught early, but still recurrences nonetheless.

Tumors. Plural.

The tumor board was split 50/50 between having me begin radiation, or wait and see (a term that will haunt me later in life) if the tumors grow/shrink/do nothing. I was given a referral to talk to the radiation department at the same hospital. I would meet with the radiation department in a couple weeks, and start radiation the week after.

Everything was happening so fast, and I was trying to stay optimistic. But I was also 22 years old and had no idea what was going on.

Then I met Dr. Ego.

Dr. Ego was the medical director of the radiation department, which I mention because he had the confidence of a man who was very aware that he was the medical director of the radiation department. He was also joined by a resident, who we'll call Angel 😇

Angel stood at the side of the room as Dr. Ego talked all about photon radiation, that basically it’s like a beam of power that destroys anything in the direction it points. So like a laser beam it would go through my back, spine, and out the other side. Unfortunately, the “other side” contained several important organs: my bladder, my intestines, my uterus, and my ovaries.

And then Dr. Ego casually explained that I would need surgery immediately to move my ovaries in front of my uterus so they could potentially be protected from the radiation, in case I wanted to have children someday.

There are certain sentences you don’t expect to hear at 7:00am when you’re 22 years old, and that was one of them. I pictured my uterus as some kind of WWE wrestler, standing between my ovaries and a giant photon beam, bravely protecting my hypothetical future children.

Dr. Ego delivered all of this information with approximately the same emotional energy a waiter might use to tell you the dinner special at Chili's.

I started crying. I hadn’t really thought about having kids at that point. I was fresh out of college, about to become a teacher, figuring out who I was, when suddenly someone was telling me that the ability to have biological children might be taken away from me. So now, on top of trying to figure out how to treat the tumors, I had to figure out how to protect a future I hadn't even decided if I wanted yet.

Dr. Ego said all this as if I was a problem to be solved, not a young woman whose life was just turned upside down by his words. And my ovaries were apparently part of the problem.

Dr. Ego you could tell felt uncomfortable and started to backpedal. He sent me to OBGYN surgery to do an ultrasound, in case I moved forward with the treatment he laid out. This is where things get more interesting.

To say the OBGYN surgeon was shooketh is an understatement. She absolutely did NOT recommend doing this surgery, and said there had to be another way. They did the ultrasound since I was there, but ultimately the discussions left me even more confused.

I had one doctor telling me, we need to move your ovaries immediately. And another doctor looking at me like, Um…no? You’re 22 years old and have your whole life ahead of you!

We took a break for lunch, when I received a phone call. It was Angel 😇 the resident who sat quietly in the room during my appointment with Dr. Ego.

“Between you and I, you should get a second opinion at a proton therapy center [in the suburbs]. I worked there, and I think it would be a great fit for your case.”

Pause. The resident’s recommending I go elsewhere? And she’s calling me privately to discuss this?

I don’t know ANYTHING about radiation or tumors or ovaries. But I do know one thing.

If the resident who worked under this man was calling me privately to suggest I go somewhere else, I probably shouldn't ignore that. My intuition had already been screaming at me during my appointment with Dr. Ego. Now someone on the inside was confirming it.

So I listened.

When Dr. Ego asked to see me again before we left the hospital, I was already sure I wasn’t going to do what he had initially recommended.

And then, in a move that I can only describe as very Dr. Ego, he took credit for Angel’s suggestion and told me he would be referring me to the proton radiation therapy center.

Of course he would.

Men.

I walked out of his office into the open air, feeling like I’d just escaped a snake pit and was released into the wild again. I spent 7.5 hours at the hospital that day, where I had gotten bad news about my spinal tumors, I had cried, I had been told I’d need to surgically move my ovaries, then told I shouldn’t, then gotten a secret phone call from a resident telling me to go to another hospital.

And somehow, after all of that, the best news I received that day was that my uterus and ovaries looked great. So that’s a win, I guess.

At 22, I didn’t know yet how important this day would become in my story. I certainly didn’t know that twelve years later, I’d be writing this essay with my daughter in a carrier against my chest.

But I did know that my body was mine.

Even when the doctor was talking about my body like a collection of organs and treatment targets, I was the one who was going to have to live with whatever decisions were made. That was the beginning of a lesson I would learn over and over again:

Sometimes advocating for yourself in medicine doesn’t mean knowing the right answer. It means recognizing when something doesn’t feel right, and having the courage to ask, are you sure?

1. taking a break like a normal person (unlikely) or…

2. in the midst of quiet quitting (the more likely answer)

According to Gallup, at least 50% of the U.S. workforce is made up of “quiet quitters”. Isn’t that wild? Half of us collectively decided that doing the bare minimum was enough. Go us!

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As a chronic over achiever, I learned a few years ago that going above and beyond doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to be rewarded in the corporate world (or in life tbh). A few years ago, I found myself in a job where I was constantly trying to be someone I was not. I began suffering from chronic shortness of breath, got told to go the ER, I was answering Slack messages on my honeymoon, and responding to emails in the middle of the night.

I was always available, and I was miserable for a significant portion of my waking hours. Work became my identity, and I struggled to hang out with friends on the weekends because I needed to decompress (and work some more). I knew something had to change. And thus began my journey as a “quiet quitter”.

So here it is. My prescription for how to quiet quit, whether you want to actually quit your job or not.

Baby Girl slept through the night for the first time.

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And when I say “slept through the night”, I did wake up probably ten times from the typical sounds babies make throughout the night, and had to give her her pacifier probably three times. And it was in the Snoo, aka a robotic parent that rocks baby to sleep basically, which is a whole other issue that I had literally planned to combat starting tonight. But I digress.

She went to sleep at 8:00pm, and woke up at 6:30am.

I woke up around 6:00am, hearing Jon and Oskee going for their morning walk (that I miss so much and hope to one day join regularly again when I’m not insanely sleep deprived 🙏🏼) and looked over and she was still asleep as the sun was rising. I was absolutely shooketh.

Today, I am a woman who slept.

Yesterday I was with friends, many of whom are now parents as well. And I realized something:

Having a baby is mostly just talking about sleep.

How is she sleeping? What time are you doing bedtime? How long are her naps? Are you doing drowsy but awake? How long are her wake windows? The grunting and moving while sleeping is crazy, huh? Will she ever sleep through the night? How should we transition her out of our room? Into the crib? Are you still doing contact naps? How will she ever nap once she’s in daycare?

It is absolutely bonkers.

An alarming percentage of my thoughts and conversations with Jon nowadays sound like:

“She’ll probably wake up from her nap in 27 minutes, then we should wait a little bit to start the bedtime routine so that she gets a little more tired. Maybe we can go for a walk? But I read that if she goes to bed too late then babies get a second wind and…”

At some point you wonder…when did I become a (bad) sleep consultant?

The superstitious part of me is already trying to recreate yesterday so that she hopefully sleeps through the night again. A feat that is both impossible and hilarious considering we were out and about all day, which is the exact opposite of what a sleep consultant would recommend.

Since becoming a parent myself, one of the more interesting conversations are hearing what our own parents’ generation says about sleep when we were born.

By far the most common thing they say is:

“[baby] cried all night. Never slept. We used to have to drive them around all night to get them to stop crying.”

Which just can’t be true that literally every one of us NEVER slept.

But I think the difference is that nowadays we have access to so much information and resources. Every sleep issue is a problem we are supposed to solve, which is both a blessing and a curse. I have a pretty much daily morning text with a friend where we recount how our nights went. That’s the equivalent to the “had to drive around all night” of generations past.

Motherhood is like a full-time workout in wondering what you can do better than the day before. Sleep just gives us approximately 400 opportunities per day to try to do just that, which is why last night feels miraculous. I’ve thought a few times this morning if I’ve made it up in my head. Maybe I did feed her in the middle of the night and don’t remember it? I am sleep deprived, after all.

I’ve spent months waiting for Baby Girl to sleep through the night. I’ve now dranken the kool-aid and seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

Of course, tonight she’ll probably wake up every two hours just to keep me humble 😂

And that’s okay. I’ll continue reading a new parenting book about sleep, texting my group chats, reading Reddit threads about other parents to 15-week old babies that were born premature, and wondering if the Snoo is the reason for all of this (probably. Maybe I’ll just plan on wheeling it into her college dorm room in eighteen years.)

But for today: she slept through the night. And I (kind of) slept through the night. Gonna celebrate today and gear up for tonight’s chaos.

The downside? The towels weren’t really soft, no bathtub or balcony, and I needed to get permission to leave my room.

Oh yeah, and the biggest downside of all: I was staying at the hospital.

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Halfway through my pregnancy, I was diagnosed with vasa previa. A rare pregnancy complication that can be fatal to baby. In order to prevent the worst possible scenario, it’s recommended to be admitted to the hospital prior to delivery for monitoring—for weeks or even a month or more.

So at 34 weeks pregnant, I packed my bags and headed to the hospital. Here’s my full review and c…

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I write this while my baby is crying on the monitor after a too short nap 🤪 so bear with me while the postpartum crazies get the best of me.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately at three months postpartum is why am I struggling so much right now? This question has felt even louder as I’ve been watching the heartbreaking Lindsay Clancy trial unfold this week. It’s been another reminder of just how profoundly postpartum can affect a mother’s mind, and how much we still don’t understand about what happens to birthing people after a baby is born.

Everyone talks about how hard the newborn trenches are, but taking care of my no-longer newborn these days feels much, much harder. I can feel my energy dwindling, my mood swinging, and my tolerance for the unexpected to be very very small.

At three weeks postpartum, I was surviving on adrenaline. At three months postpartum, I’m barely surviving.

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Sound healing doesn’t heal you.

Not my crystal singing bowls, not my chimes, not my meditation script, not the breathwork I include in my sessions.

Here’s what I do believe.

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I smiled and said hi to someone I hadn’t seen since January or so, and she replied, “Hey, haven’t seen you in a while! What have you been up to?”

I paused. Then laughed.

The real answer would've been that I've been watching someone sleep every night. That I've memorized the weight of a baby on my chest. That I've learned the difference between hungry cries and tired cries. That I've spent countless hours on the floor during tummy time. That I've recovered from major surgery while learning how to care for someone else. That I've become the safest place another human has ever known.

“What hav…

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This essay isn’t telling you to quit your 9-5 job. I don’t think that’s the right choice for everyone. Instead, this is the story of everything I started before I finally quit in order to successfully transition to a freelance career.

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First, I had to admit that my dream career had changed.

I had spent almost a decade working in education in some shape or form. And had finally become a manager, something (I thought) I wanted and should strive for. Yet I found myself the unhappiest I had been in a long time, even worki…

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When I was in high school, another young family member got a tattoo. It was a huge deal in my family at the time, and everyone was worried about my grandpa finding out because we knew he would be upset (he was lol).

Looking back, it wasn’t even about the tattoo. It was about being the first.

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Every family has rules, some are spoken, and some are not. You absorb them as a young child listening in to adult conversations, and growing up inside structures that have been passed down for generations. They become the blueprint for what a successful and happy life looks like.

In my family, education was important. Getting married and having babies was important. Teaching wasn't just a profession, it was a part of our family's identity. So was living in the same suburb as each other.

None of those things are bad, they’re…

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I loved Baby Girl from the moment I saw those two pink lines. But even through that love, pregnancy often felt out of body. I knew she was there. I watched her on ultrasounds and felt her kicks, yet it was still hard to believe there was an actual little person growing inside me.

What surprised me the most, however, was that feeling stayed after she was born.

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As Baby Girl was placed on my chest, I knew she was mine. Half of me, and half of Jon. A combination of us both, not particularly looking like one of us over the other.

The first 24 hours felt like science class, with the nurses asking us to track every poop, pee, and mL of milk she drank. They told me to pump every 2-3 hours to build my supply and m…

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It’s been two years since I left the 9-5 world and became a freelancer. One of the most uncomfortable things in doing so by far has been marketing myself through social media. Everyone tells you to “niche down” in order to get clients, and in some ways that’s helpful. But doing so led me feeling like I was leaving behind parts of me that are important. I felt inauthentic to who I really am, which is someone who is constantly trying new things.

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Whether it’s baking sourdough bread or playing sound bowls, creating computer science curriculum for schools or writing these essays, I find joy when I have diversity in my life and in my work.

I am a teacher, mentor, curriculum designer, entrepreneur, chronic disease patient, sound healer, a new mom, and a woman who is learning how to care for herself through unexpected seasons.

My essays over the p…

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MRI techs often say I’m a dream to scan, too, so does that also make me an A+ patient? Valedictorian?

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I’m the person people call when they’re pregnant and have complications, when they get diagnosed with a rare illness, or when they need a packing list for a long-term stay in the hospital. I’ve received so many of these calls, and hundreds (truly) of DMs from strangers all over the world asking for advice in these situations.

Why do they ask a random girl on the Internet, you ask? Not a family member or friend?

When you become The Patient, everyone wants to help. Bring meals, drive you to appointments, text and check in. The diagnosis is the hardest part for everyone else because it’s big and d…

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At 19 years old I was learning to be an adult, doing my own grocery shopping and laundry for the first time, giving life advice to college friends as if I had all the answers already, and of course making mistakes along the way (with a little help from vodka). When BOOM reality hit in the form of a hemorrhaged tumor in my spinal cord.

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It was one of those moments where you say “I wish my mom was here.” She was only 3 hours away, but a blizzard and closed-down highways stopped her from being able to come get me. For those few days amidst feet of snow, my sister stepped up to the challenge as pseudo-mom, keeping track of my pain meds and feeding me Jimmy John’s all while trying to enjoy her final semester of college.

And it was in those oxycodone-fueled days and the years that followed where I became a mother for the very first time to the most important person of all, my…

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But for the other 360 days of the year, we prefer to be home, just us. Friday nights on our roof deck, watching House of the Dragon on Sunday evenings (omg can you believe this week’s episode?!), heading to a local brewery, cooking dinner together, walking around the neighborhood with Oskee. You get it.

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We did our research (aka talked to friends who have recently had babies), and decided that we would definitely not have visitors in the hospital. And would definitely limit visits for the first month or two, even with immediate family. We knew that one of the hardest parts of having a baby for us wouldn’t be the late n…

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Have you heard the news?! I am so honored to share that I am returning as a Mentor for The Sound Healer’s Academy! This training is truly one of the most in-depth trainings out there (we lovingly refer to it as the Harvard of sound healing trainings). And now I am SO grateful to be supporting the next generation of healers as they go through this incredible program!

Our Fall 2026 cohort of The Sound Healer’s Academy starts on Monday, September 14th. To learn more about the program and take the first step towards receiving your certification as a professional sound healer, CLICK HERE to download your FREE program guide! As an added gift, I am excited to offer you a very special VIP Angel Discount off your tuition when you mention that you were referred by me.

I would love to support you as you begin your journey of becoming a professional sound and energy healer!

When I entered a corporate office to lead a sound bath for the first time, I set the space where employees get to safely relax …

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How are you feeling? (like I just birthed a human)

Are you sleeping ok? (I mean…no?)

Are you breastfeeding? (lol, why does it matter?!)

But by far the most common question I get is: When are you going back to work?

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An easy question to answer for someone with a set maternity leave established by their employer. Not so easy of a question for someone like me who is an entrepreneur and freelancer.

In some sense of the question, I never stopped working. I’ve been responding to corporate sound bath requests as early as two days after birth from my hospital room. I’ve been setting up structures and future programs in Corporate Alchemy School. I’ve still been writing these Substack essays.

But that’s not the answer everyone’s looking for. They want a specific date for when I’m going back to “normal” again.

But what is my new normal as a …

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