Marriage is a trip. It makes me so curious about what lives inside other marriages. Seemingly happy and simple, our reality has been complex over the last five years. Taking the leap to move to Texas rocked our world- our careers, our children, our finances, our home, and our extended family relationships. Basically everything.

When we first moved, I was pregnant with our fourth child. I knew one friend who lived 45 minutes away (who was my lifeline), and my husband was traveling back and forth from California to Texas every week for work because he hadn’t sold his chiropractic practice. We had three young children, 3, 5, and 8, and they were beginning a new life where all they really had was me.

There were heavy, hard things we navigated, like leaving our hometown, families, and best friends from childhood. And then there were the irritating adulting details that come with moving which felt more overwhelming than I could have anticipated- change of address forms, selling and buying cars, unpacking boxes and deciding where everything you own lives. I remember vividly how our new couch took three months to be delivered. I would look down at the beach chairs in the living room, then down at my seven month pregnant belly, and think “Nope,” and would just go lie on my bed. Inevitably, as soon as I did, I would hear, “Mom!” coming from upstairs. There was no one else to answer the call, so I’d waddle up the stairs and attempt to solve the problem at hand.

At first it was okay. The novelty and excitement kept us afloat. But soon the long nights with James away became hard. I was trying to fit in clients in my own practice, but the only day I could work was Fridays. We did not have trusted childcare or even a clear direction for how to find it. James traveled Sunday through Thursday. I worked all day Friday. We spent weekends building IKEA shelves and trying to set up a life. I got more pregnant each day and tried not to stress about the possibility of James missing the birth when he left each Sunday night.

Around this time, we became aware of some sensory processing challenges for one of our kiddos, and I began driving her to occupational therapy twice a week, 45 minutes each way. It became too much, too fast, and it started to pull at the seams of our relationship. I felt abandoned in my hard while he carried the pressure of our financial life and future.

We welcomed our fourth baby in November after not being able to sell the business and ultimately closing it, losing so much of what we had built. But we were together, and we believed that would help. Still, after months of strain, we had a lot to sift through and a lot of big decisions to make. Jim Gaffigan has a joke about having a big family. “Imagine you’re drowning, and then someone hands you a baby.” It felt a little like that.

Once we found some footing, James started a new job, the kids got connected at school, and I moved through the early postpartum months, we thought we had found our way. But we came to realize our financial health was still suffering, and we needed to make a radical change. So we moved again.

This time it was easier and harder. We moved down the road, not across the country, but we had to give up our dream of land, the garden we built together, and the home where I birthed our last baby. Again, the intensity of our relationship brought us to our knees.

We had been through couples therapy several times. I have been in and out of therapy throughout my life and have found it deeply helpful, so we went back. We learned new tools that began to shift some of the deeper hurts.

Then we joined a group that met online. This was outside the box for me, and I was surprised by how intimidated I felt. I often kept my camera off so I could manage the activation in my body. The group was a bi-monthly somatic experiencing based relationship group. Somatic Experiencing is the modality I spent three years training in, and yet this group taught me more than I thought possible. It solidified concepts I had understood but had not fully lived. The group gave my husband a deeper understanding of himself and offered us a shared language that began to change our relationship at a fundamental level. Slowly, we started finding our way home to each other.

Then, the trauma of my recent car accident pulled us back into old ways of coping, triggering past wounds across our 14 year marriage. Layering that into my physical and mental healing journey has felt overwhelming at times. And still, when I look at us now, I’m amazed by what we have walked through together.

Recently, we took our oldest daughter and a couple of her friends to a local carnival while our younger kids stayed with their grandma. The girls are old enough now to navigate on their own with a few check ins. James and I found ourselves alone for the first time in a long time. It felt like a date. Looking over at him looking at me gave me all the feels and I remembered why we began. Who we are and what drew us together still lives here but it’s deeper… better. What stood out most was our laughter. Sitting across from him on the Ferris wheel, I thought: We are laughing again.

But the truth is, we never stopped. There were seasons with much less laughter. But if I scroll back through my camera roll, it’s there, woven through every chapter.

Laughter… It’s the best medicine we’ve had all along.

In the months that followed, I was hyper aware of subtle changes I couldn’t ignore. I wasn’t consciously afraid while driving, yet my shoulders would quietly creep toward my ears as I approached an intersection. My breath would become shallow before I even realized I was holding it. A loud sound or a car moving unexpectedly beside me would send a wave through my body before my mind had time to make sense of what was happening. I wasn’t choosing those responses. My body had simply become very good at anticipating danger.

It made me understand more deeply how our lives are shaped by experiences we no longer consciously think about, how our fascia is related to our trauma… ultimately, how our body keeps the score.  How often are we responding to the present through the lens of the past? How much of what we call tension, restriction, or even pain is simply the body doing exactly what it was designed to do?

For years, I’ve studied trauma and the nervous system. I’ve spent thousands of hours teaching movement and helping people reconnect with their bodies. And still, there is something profoundly different about becoming the student of your own body. Just like pregnancy and postpartum healing revealed something to me about my body with each birth, this experience has taught me more than any textbook ever could.

One of the most fascinating discoveries over the last couple of decades is that fascia is far more than the connective tissue we once believed it to be. It forms a continuous web throughout the entire body that is richly supplied with sensory receptors that are constantly gathering information. Every change in pressure, position, tension, and movement becomes part of an ongoing conversation between our body and our brain. We experience the world through this conversation whether we realize it or not. This is where movement has the opportunity to become the medicine we don’t realize we need sometimes.

The nervous system is always making predictions based on previous experience. Since my car accident, my brain is preparing the body for impact long before any actual danger exists. It’s trying to predict and protect. If you’ve lived through chronic stress, your body may organize itself around protection even when life has become objectively safe. If we want to release the tension patterns, we must consciously re-teach the tissues what safety feels like. We often try to think our way into feeling safe, but safety is something the body comes to recognize through repeated lived experience.

Movement isn’t simply about becoming stronger or more flexible. It is one of the primary ways we communicate with our nervous system. Every time we slow down enough to notice what is happening inside of us, we are practicing interoception, our ability to sense the internal landscape of the body. Every time we explore balance, shifting our weight, changing direction, or a new way of moving through space, we are refining proprioception, our awareness of where we are in relationship to the world around us. These systems then provide the brain with new information.

When we approach movement with curiosity instead of performance, something remarkable begins to happen. A slow spiral through the spine, a new way of reaching overhead, weight shifting into a foot that quietly carries more tension than we realize, a fuller breath into the ribs that have spent months protecting the heart beneath them- these aren’t just ordinary moments but new experiences that do the teaching needed to find safety again. They offer the nervous system evidence that this moment is not the same as the one it has been preparing for.

We literally cannot force the body to let go. In my lived experience and as a witness to my clients in the work, the body lets go when it no longer believes it has to hold on. In the words of one my favorite artists, Trevor Hall, “You can’t rush your healing.” That has become one of the greatest lessons of my own recovery. Every time I move with awareness instead of urgency, I am giving my nervous system another opportunity to update its understanding of the present moment. This requires slowing down and becoming present, especially with the things that are unpleasant, because those are the things that signal the patterns to arise and go to work protecting me.

Healing is not about fixing our seemingly broken selves but about expanding our body’s vocabulary. We can offer it new sensations, new movements, new ways of breathing, new ways of relating to gravity, to the ground beneath us, and to the space around us, and that establishes the agency that’s been lost in trauma. Over time, those experiences accumulate until what once felt unfamiliar begins to feel natural. Safety becomes something we no longer have to convince ourselves of because our bodies have experienced it enough times to believe it. Don’t forget we’ve done this before, as children. Once upon a time you learned to walk, talk, jump, run. And then one day, we did those things without tumbling or stumbling.

Whether or not you are healing from trauma, your body benefits from novel movement and your attention. To offer your attention to your physical body is a gift you give to yourself.

My interest in fascia and moving in a way that feels like freedom and my experiences in movement have given me so much back. This week, I’m sharing an excerpt from a recent Fascia and Flow class I taught online for paid subscribers. I hope you’ll consider joining for $8/month as I am hopeful to share this and more with you in support of regulation and healing. This is a movement practice I learned in a Somatic Experiencing training, and one I’ve used many times in client sessions to help foster connection to the body. I’ve added some lymph flow movements I find supportive of the tissues to create a warming and nourishing daily practice. May you take some time for yourself and move well, my friends. You. Are. Worth. It.

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Grief is just part of the path. We all experience it. You cannot hide from it, yet we spend so much of our time trying to dodge or avoid the pain it stirs up for us. Understandably so. There can be physical pain associated with loss, and our bodies were designed to guard and protect us from pain. But it is through learning to feel it that it actually moves all the way through us. It’s by growing the capacity to allow grief and pain to arise that we teach our bodies we are safe to feel fully and completely.

There’s a sweet book I read to my kids each year around Christmas. It’s by J.K. Rowling, and it’s called The Christmas Pig. Without spoiling too much of the story, there’s a line that clenches my heart every time I come to it. The boy has found his lost pig in the Land of the Lost, and as he’s deciding his fate, the pig reminds him of an unpopular truth: “Losing is a part of living.” There’s something profound to me within the pages of this beloved children’s book. We all must lose things we love. It’s simply part of this life. Sometimes it’s a person. Sometimes it’s an experience. Sometimes it’s an experience we never got to have. But it’s all grief, and it’s tied to so much of our human pain.

I think so much of healing is less about trying to escape our pain and more about changing our relationship to it. The more I live, the more I see that grief isn’t something to conquer or move beyond. It’s something to meet. Something to listen to. Something to allow. Because beneath grief is always love. We only grieve what has mattered to us, what has shaped us, what has changed us. These two poems were born from that place, and I suspect they’ll continue to reveal new meanings to me as I continue walking this very human path.

We were living in Southern California, living “our best life.” But were we? I was already having literal dreams of living under oak trees, engaging in a slower life, and offering my children a different kind of culture where they wouldn’t know whose mom drove what kind of fancy car. We never imagined our life away from where we grew up. James and I moved closer to home when we got married so our kids would be raised near our childhood friends and family. And that was so wonderful while it lasted. It’s the only thing we miss besides the proximity to the ocean.

When the pandemic hit, James was working long hours trying to continue to build his business with so many new roadblocks imposed by the state as we navigated the unknown. While he had found some success, he knew raising three kids in Orange County would require more of him.

I was at home with those wonderful and wonderfully energetic three children, five and under, struggling to find myself amidst the constant outpouring of self that raising tiny humans requires of you. Continuing my education, practicing my new professional skills, waking in the early hours, and taking meetings when I was able to rely on family support in an attempt to build my own private practice was like spinning plates that came crashing down when our community went into lockdown.

My career dreams took a backseat, the kids were home from school, and there was so much fear circulating that we didn’t dare expose our older parents to our kiddos, so any support was no longer available. The park in our neighborhood was closed, with caution tape wrapped around the jungle gym. Our only outings were walks around the block, and I had to go grocery shopping when my husband returned from work, which he could only do because, as a healthcare provider, he was considered an essential worker. We were required to wear masks and stand six feet away from the next person as I waited in line to be let into the store to shop since only a few people could enter at a time.

Talk about a pivot. Everything about our lifestyle changed in a matter of days. I was in so much shock I wasn’t able to fully grasp how much grief I was experiencing. I think that is something we continue to navigate collectively: the grief we had to suppress to survive the global unknown. We couldn’t stop long enough to feel the weight of what was happening because we were too busy figuring out how to keep going. Looking back now, I can see just how much we were carrying.

But we made it. We came out the other side, while so many others did not. So much was lost and yet, we are able to gather together in celebration once again. It seems like a strange reality to remember wondering if we would ever go to concerts or fly on airplanes again, but here we are… back to the days of Coachella and ACL. Music festivals survived right alongside us.

Navigating this extreme time in history activated the thing deep in my heart that knew we needed a change. The pandemic wasn’t the reason we moved away from our hometown, but it was the call to action. It’s been the biggest pivot of our lives to pick up and move across the country with our kids. It gave me more grit and strength to face my fears of the unknown with a resilient spirit that knows she can do the hard things life throws at her.

I believe this grit is what helped me face the pain of my car accident and get up each day to do my physical therapy exercises. It’s what has offered me the strength and confidence to trust that I could answer the call to homeschool my daughter, who was struggling in the different school environments we tried. It’s what helped us bravely step away from the comfort we’d created to take the leap into a new business venture at the same time we decided to travel the world. Is it going to work? Who knows, but we do have faith that we will land on our feet because we’ve had to pivot away from our expected path again and again. Even when it’s been hard, it hasn’t broken us. We’re still here.

So, with as much excitement as we had around our original travel plans to go to Italy and Spain next year, we find ourselves pivoting once again. Unfortunately, our visa status was unclear, so we’ve changed our trajectory and we’re headed to Spain first and then… Japan!

I’ve had to let go of my great Italian chapter, where I sip on cappuccino until noon and eat pasta at every meal. I won’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed. But there’s purpose and meaning in this shift. I spent eighteen months in Japan when I was nineteen and twenty, working for Disney, and James spent six months in Spain in his early twenties, immersing himself in the culture and becoming fluent in the language. These are the countries that helped shape who we are today, and now we get to share them with each other and our kids. What an absolute blessing this pivot turned out to be.

We can focus on what we are losing or we can focus on what we are gaining. It’s up to us. Each time life asks us to pivot, there is loss and gain, pain and beauty, but always growth and transformation. Can we hold both while focusing on what supports our eventual emergence from the cocoon to spread our wings? I believe we can.

If we look around, we live in a different world than we did before March of 2020. We have lost so much. But can you consider what that pivot gave you? What you learned about yourself? Who you became in the face of massive change? Every pivot offers us an opportunity to get to know ourselves and our patterns with more clarity. It holds up a mirror, but we have to be willing to look and be present with what we see. Then we can appreciate what is working for us and rearrange what is not.

Every pivot has reminded me that life can ask everything of us without taking who we are. It may change our plans. It may change our direction. But if we’re willing to look in the mirror, every pivot leaves us knowing ourselves a little more deeply than before.

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Today’s poem, The Truth About Healing, is part of the first section of my poetry collection, Sacred Human, called “Descent”. This opening section explores the parts of being human we often spend the most energy trying to avoid: grief, fear, pain, uncertainty. It’s the place where we begin to recognize that if we truly want to come home to ourselves, to our truth, and to our capacity for joy, we have to be willing to step into those places with honesty and compassion.

For paid subscribers, I’ve also recorded the poem in my own voice, along with a short reflection about where it came from and why it became one of the foundational pieces of Sacred Human. I hope both offer a quiet place to return to whenever you need them.

I sat down with our mayor and the constable sergeant hoping to find a path toward getting a traffic camera installed at the dangerous intersection where my accident happened, only to leave with very little clarity about what comes next. I learned that someone with two prior DWIs can still carry insurance with a maximum payout of only $60,000, even after causing an accident with well over $100,000 in damages while blowing a .19 on a breathalyzer. I learned that it may take more than a year for my case to make it to court and that the woman who hit me is still legally allowed to drive.

To be honest, it’s all maddening.

But underneath all of that rage-inducing information was the lesson I wasn’t ready for. Joy has a way of finding us in places we don’t expect. And if we are really paying attention, it softens blows that never should have landed in the first place. It doesn’t erase what’s painful or unjust but it did remind me that there is more to the story unfolding in front of me.

While I was recovering in bed with a fractured leg and bruising so severe I couldn’t remember the natural color of my skin, I began researching to figure out what kind of car we’d replace after ours was totaled. I assumed I’d buy another Suburban since it was the car that saved my life. But as I sat looking at photos of the interior on my computer, something got triggered. My body tightened and my heart rate soared. I realized I couldn’t climb back into a vehicle that looked exactly like the one I had been trapped inside. In that moment I realized I didn’t just need another car, I needed an entirely different experience of driving.

That realization led me back to the Volkswagen ID. Buzz. I’d actually looked at one the year before, but it was well outside our budget. This time, I noticed prices had dropped because several had been sitting on dealership lots. Then I worried that could be a red flag, so I did what I always do when I’m looking through the lens of fear: I researched and pored over article after article before deciding it would at least be worth test driving one, even if only for fun.

I was still on crutches, so James drove while I climbed into the passenger seat. The moment he pressed the accelerator, I felt my heart flutter but this time it wasn’t the same kind of beating that put me back into the driver’s seat of the accident. This time it was unexpected joy and I laughed a genuine, childlike giggle. The ride was so smooth and quiet that I could feel my body soften. My four-year-old has a name for the happy and fun acceleration experience in our car now. Whenever we’re on a long stretch of open road she’ll ask, “Mommy, will you ‘go electric’?” Every time she says it, I smile.

As we sat there in the dealership talking through budgets and batteries and whether this was actually the right decision, my eyes wandered across the showroom. There, hanging above the display, was a large sign with a picture of the ID. Buzz. It simply read, “Joy just pulled in.” I felt tears well in my eyes. Joy isn’t just a feeling in our family. Joy is the name of the baby we lost in 2020. Since losing her, that word has carried a sacredness I can’t fully explain. It has become a quiet reminder that love continues, that grief and joy belong together, and that even after profound loss, life keeps inviting us back into the present.

Seeing those three words in that moment didn’t feel like a coincidence to me. It felt like an invitation to begin again. As I sat there, I remember thinking that I was being invited to drive again through Joy. There would be plenty of work ahead to get back into the car and face the reality that I will never be able to control the outcome of any car ride ever again, but I was not about to let trauma have the final word in my story. That day marked the beginning of a new chapter for me. Not because I bought a really fun car, but because I chose a different way forward. Instead of allowing fear to make every decision, I gathered enough courage to allow joy to lead one. And from that one comes another, and that’s how the feeling of agency returns.

The irony is, what has happened since then has been anything but easy. The car itself has become another chapter in this story, bringing its own frustrations, setbacks, and battles with insurance, dealerships, and corporate systems. AND… it hasn’t changed what happened in that showroom that day.

The gift I can see in all of it is the reminder that sacredness meets us even after trauma, especially after trauma. Joy still knows how to find us. Sometimes it arrives so quietly that we almost miss it, but if we’re paying attention, it shows up with a simple sign reminding us that life is still inviting us forward.

I’ve been writing poetry for the past several years as an outlet to process all of my big feelings. I think I might have come to the planet with more feelings than most. Since I was a little girl, waves of emotion would overcome me and at times they made me afraid. They definitely made me feel different. As much as I love to feel different now and giggle at the weird things I think or do, all I wished for growing up was to fit in. And that’s not uncommon. It’s completely developmentally appropriate to want to fit in with our peers as we move from our family into the world. But the world was a scary place for me because my body would react in big ways I didn’t always understand.

It’s one of the reasons I dove into psychology and somatic training. Understanding my body and it’s responses has helped me make sense of my world, and poetry has helped me express myself through my growth and healing process.

I’ll never forget the first poem I wrote for this collection and how it felt like the beginning of something. It was years ago on a beach in Laguna. I had gone down to the beach to get away from the house and take some much needed alone time in a season of mothering 3 of my children all under the age of 5. It was an intense time for me and I could feel claustrophobic at times. The ocean always reminded me of how expansive life is. Once I had walked through the shoreline for a while, I sat down, pulled out my phone, and wrote the poem in a matter of minutes. It came whole and complete as many of the poems in the book did. Like a download from the universe or a message from Spirit. Many of the poems in this collection arrived that way.

After spending time sending the manuscript to literary agents and receiving no response, I decided to begin sharing it piece by piece here on Substack. It feels more aligned, in a way. Each poem gets its own moment to be digested and integrated. It took me years to write this collection, so it feels right that it should take time to find its way into the world.

I’ve named this account Sacred Human Journal after the name of my book of poetry, Sacred Human. So I welcome you to the beginning of a journey. I hope you enjoy the poems as they become interwoven with my other posts here. For those reading who might be interested in becoming a paid subscriber to this page, I am offering audio recordings of the poems. This first one is on me. The book begins with a poem I call, I’m not broken, I’m human.

Here is the audio recording in my voice reading I’m not broken, I’m human:

And here are some personal reflections on the poem:

We rented a house on a hill and when we walked up the stairs (and there were PLENTY of stairs, I was so grateful for the use of my legs and all the rehab I’ve done to this point), the view took my breath away. It stunned in 180 degrees with treetops and ocean as far asks the eye could see. There was a swing on the deck and in that moment I promised myself I would spend time reading a new book I was looking forward to every chance I got.

After a long travel day, we unloaded our things and set the kids up before making our way down the hill for dinner. We drove around a bit to orient ourselves to where we would go to the beach and what there was to eat close by. Navigating food on vacation has been a significant struggle for us with kids who have allergies and sensitivities and I’ve often had to take over a lot of the meals because we have a hard time finding fresh, whole foods at restaurants where we’ve been. I love to cook, but cooking for 6 people everyday is a lot and taking a much needed break was a hope. When we found Lola’s, it was like the universe was shining a beacon of light on our trip. Down a dirt road near the beach was a little sign for a restaurant attached to a boutique surf hotel. We are starving so the timing was right for me to hop out and take a look at the menu. I could see this little outdoor cafe with a slack line, trampoline, corn hole game, and little outdoor kitchen for kids next door. The food looked good so I signaled for James to find a spot to park. “Hola!” We were greeted with a warm smile and offered a seat. There was only one other couple in the place and at 6:30 p.m. I was worried this might be a bad sign. I was so wrong. We ordered and when our food came, it was fresh and perfectly presented. Every bite was a treat. We ate shrimp, kale salad with avocado, poke bowls, fresh smoothie bowls with fruit, nuts and seeds, jugo en agua (which is like a Costa Rican version of agua fresca), ribs with rice and sautéed veggies. I was so excited we found something that didn’t just work for us, but something we all actually loved. So we went back for breakfast the next day…

After eating at Lola’s in the morning, we walked down to the beach and as the trail opened up to the ocean, I was overwhelmed with feeling and beauty and gratitude for life, I started to cry. There was a sweet Costa Rican woman who had attempted to sell us some of her fresh juice that sweetly said to me when I named that the beauty of the moment brought tears to my eyes, “So cry- I cry!”

We found a little handmade hut of driftwood and palm branches and parked our clothes and towels before running straight into the warm pacific waves. The delight on every one of my children’s faces in that moment is burned into my memory. The novelty, the joy, the excitement swirled around us as we laughed, splashing each other and diving under waves together. The kids dig holes and built drip castles until we started to get hungry again in the afternoon.

Walking back up the hill to our house was hot. Hot is an understatement, actually. We were sweating profusely, but it didn’t really matter because we were met with the Tuesday street fair. We were all so interested in the booths of art and delicious foods that we were distracted enough, there was no complaining from any of the four kids. Miracles happen in Costa Rica.

We all stopped at a booth together admiring some unique jewelry of twisted metal and crystals. This is where we met Jesus. In Spanish, it’s pronounced heh-soos. My 8 year old was admiring a teal bracelet made of beads. Being her impulsive and excitable self she says, “I want this bracelet.” As I opened my mouth to meet her with some parenting, Jesus beats me to it and says, “It’s yours. Go ahead and take it.” She looked at me and I shook my head, but Jesus insisted and even took the bracelet and adjusted it to her wrist to fit perfectly. I let him know I didn’t have any cash but that I could send money through Venmo or come back with cash. He looked at me and said no, he was happy to gift it to her. That if we were still in town to come visit him next week. I was taken aback with this kind of generosity. This man was an artist living a modest and simple life, giving of his gifting freely, trusting so deeply in the reciprocity of life and I saw Jesus in Jesus. I was touched and inspired. Jesus gave us the experience of Pura Vida (what they say all over Costa Rica, “Pure Life!”). I’m grateful for Jesus- he’s changed something in me along with Costa Rica and while there are a hundred wonderful stories I could share with you, this one feels the most valuable.

Costa Rica reminded me of something I had forgotten after the accident: life is still generous. Not because it is easy, and not because suffering doesn’t exist. But because alongside the hard things, there are mangos falling from trees, warm ocean waves, strangers who tell you to cry when beauty moves you, and artists named Jesus who give bracelets away for no reason other than kindness.

For months, my body has been scanning for what might go wrong. In Costa Rica, I remembered how to notice what was going right. I remembered that abundance is not something we earn or chase, but something we learn to receive. Maybe that is the real meaning of pura vida- a life that remains open to wonder, trusting there is still beauty to be found, generosity to be received, and love waiting in unexpected places. I met Jesus in Costa Rica and forgotten part of myself, too.

My jumpy nervous system saved my life again yesterday.

I was driving my daughter to her homeschool group on a two lane country road. It was a beautiful spring day and we were enjoying music together when I noticed a large truck coming toward us in the opposite direction begin to swerve. At first I assumed it would correct itself, but as it got closer, I realized it wasn’t moving back into its lane.

In the final seconds before impact, my body reacted before my mind could fully catch up. I honked and instinctively swerved into the ditch on the side of the road. Somehow, I was able to pull the car back onto the road before going so deep into the ditch that we could have flipped. The moment the car steadied again, I just started bawling.

My daughter looked over at me, worried, and asked, “Mom, are you okay?” “Yes,” I told her through tears. I asked if she was okay. “That was really scary,” she said, “but I’m okay.”

Since my accident in February, my nervous system lights up with signals of danger while I’m driving, often.

Some triggers make sense, like once when I was driving through the intersection where I got hit. It was raining and dark, and as I passed through, the light turned yellow and my heart started pounding like I wasn’t going to make it. Even though I was clearly and legally driving through at an appropriate time, my body threw up warnings anyway. A pounding heart. Tightening shoulders. Hypervigilance that stayed with me long after I got home and kept me awake through the night.

Some triggers make less sense, like when a car is far ahead of me stopped at a light to my left and suddenly my belly grips, my eyes widen, and my whole body reacts as if the car is coming toward me, even when it is obviously nowhere close. Either way, what I know and understand is that I’m dysregulated.

Nervous system dysregulation is not simply a system on high alert. Dysregulation happens when the nervous system continues to lead with responses that are a mismatch to the actual experience you are having, rather than the historical experience your body expects you to have. And right now, two and a half months after almost losing my life, it makes sense that my brain and body are working overtime to keep me from experiencing that particular flavor of trauma again.

Being able to witness myself carry this trauma has been the opportunity of my life. I am learning through experience what I need in order to let go.

Here are some things that have helped so far:

Regular chiropractic care (I just so happen to share a bed with the best one on the planet, so I’m a very lucky lady…)

Yoga, as uncomfortable as it is now compared to before the accident, I can feel it helping my tissues move and rebalance after the significant damage in my legs.

Time outside.

PEMF mat time.

Walking.

Eating whole, balancing foods.

Pausing intermittent fasting.

Stepping back from certain responsibilities that feel like too much.

Giving energy to projects I genuinely care about.

Reading.

Writing.

Taking action in my community by speaking with the mayor and police chief about what I can do about my case.

You see, healing is a process and a practice of slowly coming back to life. It is working with the nervous system response and learning to understand it rather than judge yourself for it- recognizing that it’s not personal, it’s biological. It is being committed to getting to know this version of you and offering grace and space to do the hard work of slowing down and giving your nervous system a new experience of safety when possible. It means saying no to things you once said yes to and yes to things you don’t necessarily feel like doing but you know it will support you. It’s hard to see that the protection of your nervous system has a place when it creates new challenges. This can create discord or it can be the opportunity of a lifetime. Ultimately it is a choice. It’s where we relearn agency.

So here I am, living into a rebalancing act one day at a time and honoring my nervous system by saying, “Thank you. I see you trying to protect me,” while remembering that the activation she leads with is also the very thing that kept me alive, again. I am here today because of it, and I’m so grateful.

Something in me came alive when I imagined that life. I had it all worked out in my head. I would go to New York for college, perform on Broadway, and eventually get my big break in movies. Then I would move through the world. Tokyo, Paris, Sydney. The idea of traveling has always brought my heart to life. Even now, as I write this, I can feel that quiet flutter in my chest.

My path took a different direction. I stayed closer to home, and while I continued performing through college, I never had that big break. I did have a moment that felt like stepping into the life I had imagined. I traveled to Japan with the Walt Disney Company to work at Tokyo Disneyland. I had been going to school about 20 minutes from Disneyland in California, performing in shows and parades part-time. When an audition opened for Tokyo, I went for it. Ten hours of cuts and callbacks later, I was chosen. I signed a contract and flew across the world to perform on a bigger stage than I had ever known. In some ways, my dream came true.

When I returned from Tokyo, I started to feel pulled in a different direction. As I got older, I felt I needed to make responsible decisions and performing felt risky when I considered my future, paying my own bills, and being able to rely on a steady income. I became interested in the psychology of people. In understanding how we think and feel. So I followed that path. I set performing aside and leaned into something that felt more steady. I started studying the mind and the body, and I really haven’t stopped since. I still find it all fascinating, and in a way, all of it has led me here.

For a long time, travel felt out of reach. I grew up associating it with extreme wealth, something reserved for other people. I always hoped we would get there one day, but it stayed in the category of someday. James and I have been together for 17 years now, and we’ve lived through a lot of different seasons financially. There were moments that felt expansive, especially with his family’s financial support as we were getting started, but most of our life together has been built slowly. Working, saving, building something stable for our kids. As our family grew, travel started to feel less and less possible.

Part of the reason we moved from California to Texas was to create more space. Financially, yes, but also in the way we were living. We wanted something that felt a little more open. This past holiday season, as we celebrated our fifth Christmas in Texas, something hit me. We have never taken an international trip with our kids. Not once. It stopped me. We’ve talked about it for years, said we would do it, imagined where we would go, and suddenly I could see how easy it would be to keep waiting.

So we decided to stop waiting. Costa Rica had always been on both of our hearts. James has wanted to share it with us, and I’ve always wanted to experience it. The pace of life, the ocean, being outside, immersing ourselves in a new culture. So we took what we had set aside and we booked it. This month, we’re leaving for ten days with our four kids to experience a new country together for the first time, and once we said yes to that, something else started to open.

Around the same time we decided on our Costa Rica trip, life shifted in a different way. When signs led me to start homeschooling our daughter, Lucy, I felt overwhelmed. I worried about stepping away from a practice I loved, about our finances, about whether I could actually do this well. I sat in that for a while, but it didn’t move anything forward, so I stepped in anyway. I leaned into becoming a homeschool mom and we got started on the work. My eyes were opened to a new way of doing things that came with an unexpected sense of aliveness. The pace of our life slowed, I watched Lucy’s curiosity expand, and I saw how quickly she could grow when she had space. I started to enjoy learning alongside her instead of feeling like I had to manage it, and I found myself asking a bigger question. What would it look like to give all of my kids something like this?

That question stayed with me, and eventually it led me to Boundless Life, a world schooling program where families live and learn together in different parts of the world in three month stretches, moving between countries in a rhythm that blends learning with real life. James and I have talked about taking a gap year with our kids for years. It was always something we said we would do but never actually planned. His work kept us grounded and life kept moving. When I brought it to him, it inspired him and lit a fire for him to start making good on the dreams he has shared with me around creating changes in his business. After all, we only have one more year with our oldest before she starts high school.

Everything got clearer after that conversation. We knew she wouldn’t want to leave once high school began, so if we were going to do something like this, it had to be now. A full year felt too big to step into right away, so we started looking at what six months could look like, and the more we explored it, the more it made sense.

And then the accident happened (read more here). There’s something about being reminded how fragile time is. It changes the way you make decisions. It makes the things that matter feel more obvious. It brought us into a different kind of clarity, and from that place, the answer felt simple.

So we said yes. We booked it.

Italy first. Then Spain.

Even writing that feels a little surreal. We’ve reserved our spot, which already feels like a leap, and now we have the next several months to prepare. Visas, work, schooling, logistics for a family of six. It is a lot, and somehow it doesn’t feel heavy. It feels like we’re moving toward something that has been waiting for us.

I’ll share the process here as we figure it out. What works, what doesn’t, and everything in between. From Costa Rica to Italy and beyond.

I’m still in the early stages of navigating this new world I find myself in, but I’ve decided to write it down. Part journal, part processing space, part how-to manual, this writing is a way for me to share what I’m learning in real time as I begin to shake up my life and see where the dust settles. And somewhere in that, maybe I’ll find a way to settle back into myself again.

February 27th was a day of excitement in our household. My oldest daughter was going to a dance, and we were hosting some friends beforehand for snacks and pictures. The last several years have asked a lot of me, learning how to juggle a family of six, another move, a career, the natural growing pains within a relationship, and just life in general. Life is a lot… for all of us.

In the midst of it being a lot, I’ve been practicing what I teach, working to stay within my window of tolerance, trying not to take on more than my system could hold. Social gatherings, especially hosting, had started to feel like more than I was willing to carry, so I had quietly pulled back over the past few years. But as my oldest begins to move toward her teenage years, I’ve been feeling something shift. I realized that if I wanted our home to be a place where kids could gather, where they felt safe to land and just be, I would need to begin opening back up in a way I had been hesitant to.

And in doing that, I noticed something I didn’t expect. The energy I had spent trying to stay within my capacity had actually created its own kind of anxiety around hosting, one that didn’t fully match reality anymore. The evening was easy. It was light. It was genuinely enjoyable. I had meaningful conversations with other mothers, the kind that feel grounding and real, and I walked away feeling connected instead of depleted. This is the importance of tuning in and orienting to the moment. We condition ourselves into spaces that we outgrow. This moment reminded me of the value and necessity of regular check-ins with myself and that facing my anxiety head on only helps me realize where I’ve grown my capacity and where I can put down the protections I once needed. I truly believe that in order to heal and become who we’re here to be, we have to be willing to see ourselves honestly, especially the parts that arise out of protection, the patterns that are harder to love. It feels good to see how far I’ve come and freeing to imagine what else could come from this growth.

After we took some photos, we loaded the girls into my husband’s Suburban to head to the dance. I watched them spill out of the car when we arrived, full of life and sparkle. I drove away in the quiet, feeling grateful to witness this season of my daughter’s life, to know the people she’s spending time with and to feel a sense of ease in loving them, too.

When it was time to pick them up, I briefly considered taking my own car since we wouldn’t all be coming home together. But I already had my husband’s keys in my hand, so I got back into the Suburban and went, not knowing this giant boat of a car would save my life.

We laughed most of the way home, talking about who danced with who, what songs came on, the awkward and hilarious details that seem to define nights like that. I dropped the first friend off, and we headed toward the last girl’s house.

It was around 9:20 when we entered the intersection. I don’t have a clear memory of approaching it, in fact I don’t have a clear memory of the entire accident. I was awake and talking to the helpers and even spoke to my husband on a FaceTime call, but I don’t remember it. What I have are fragments: flashes of light, the feeling of chaos inside my body as the firefighters worked to pry the car open, and a deep, instinctual fear that the girls had been hurt. And every time I picture the scene, I see a giant angel wing covering our car as we spun into the railing that caught us before rolling into a storm drain.

I regained consciousness in a hospital bed where a kind, gentle presence was taking x-rays of my legs. Another nurse attempted to administer pain medication through my IV, but I refused. I’ve watched people I love struggle with addiction that began in moments like this, and even in that state, I was afraid to go down that path. We compromised on a mild oral medication.

I knew I had been in an accident, and more than anything, I wanted my husband in the way a child wants their blankey. He was there quickly, and we just cried… relieved to be together, relieved that he could advocate for me while my mind tried to catch up with what had happened. It turns out, I had been t-boned by a very drunk driver who had blown through a red light at a busy intersection in the middle of town. It is a miracle that I am alive.

I finally had the answer to the only question I had asked over and over to the firefighters: “Are the girls okay?” Yes. Both girls walked away from the accident shaken and terrified, but with only minor bruising and whiplash. And with that, I could begin to orient to my own journey ahead.

There is so much waiting in hospitals. So we waited. We didn’t talk much. We just held hands in the quiet. Eventually, they took me for a CT scan of my head and chest. Being in the machine stirred up a wave of anxiety, so I started singing to myself. The only thing that came was a children’s song I’ve sung with my kids countless times:

“Every little cell in my body is happy, every little cell in my body is well.”

And somehow, it was exactly what I needed to get through to the other side. On the other side was good news and a lot of pain. Among the massive bruising, cuts, and swelling in my legs, the only structural injury was a fracture of my fibula that wouldn’t require surgery. My CT and bloodwork showed significant signs of a concussion, but there was no internal bleeding in my brain. And with that, I was released in the early hours of the morning.

We arrived home before anyone was awake. I felt so grateful my parents were able to come stay with us to receive my daughter and help her settle in while our three younger children slept. My whole life had changed, and my world was asleep. The juxtaposition of that, the relief and the internal chaos, was a lot to land at home with. But I was too exhausted to process it. We slept for an hour before the kids woke up, and then we shared the news.

It’s wild to be with 4 small people and witness them experience life, especially in the difficult moments. We are all so different, and I’m reminded of our radical uniqueness every time I watch them respond to the same moment in their own way. Since that morning, we’ve seemingly returned to center as a family, but the truth is we all know nothing will ever be the same.

And so I’m writing now to uncover what is and what is next.

There is no going back. It feels like I was living on land and then suddenly dropped into the water. I can let life carry me downstream, or I can get in the boat and take the oars, guiding my life in the direction I want to go, knowing with a new clarity that while I can learn to steer, I can’t control the weather.

Over the last several weeks my husband, James, and I have begun to solidify some radical changes in our family life, choices that move us toward living the life we’ve been quietly dreaming about.

When we moved to Texas, one of our guiding intentions was to create enough financial space to travel with our kids. It’s been five years, and we haven’t made that dream a reality yet. We had just booked our first trip to Costa Rica this May, and I held onto that as a marker for my healing. But something shifted. A one-time trip stopped feeling like a big enough dream.

If I only get so many days on this planet, I don’t want to spend them making plans that never come to life. I’m ready to live it now, fully, because I have a new, embodied understanding that everything can change in an instant.

And so, we’ve stepped into a new way forward. James is building the business he’s been holding back from, choosing to move beyond the comfort of a steady salary. I’ve stepped away from client work to homeschool one of my children who needs extra support right now. And we’ve committed to a worldschooling program that will take us to Europe for six months next year.

We have no idea what we are doing and yet, our souls absolutely know the road forward so we are putting our faith in a good and beautiful God who sent angels to save my life for a reason and we are going to live out what that reason is. I hope you’ll join us as I write about our journey over the next year. It will be a tale of healing, learning, growth, adventure, family, travel, and love. Because it’s all for love, anyways.

Welcome to a new beginning of what I am calling Sacred Human Journal, a place where I write from inside my experience and hope to stimulate curiosity about where you’d like to take yours.