Before My Loss

Long before I entered this field of work, my life was rooted in the outdoors, in movement, nature, and the belief that people learn most deeply through experience.

I earned an interdisciplinary degree from Fairhaven College focused on experiential environmental education and social justice, and spent my early career in the field: as an interpretive ranger with the United States Forest Service, a climbing director for youth programs, an outdoor educator and naturalist, and a traveling educator for the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics.

Over time, that field-based work expanded into organizational leadership. I went on to serve as Executive Director of the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA) for nearly a decade — shaping the future of professional guiding in the United States while continuing to be shaped myself by what it means to lead people through challenge and uncertainty.

During this chapter of my life, I also found Nia, a holistic movement practice integrating dance, martial arts, mindfulness, and somatic awareness. What began as a personal practice deepened over years into multiple certifications, a Black Belt, and a Moving to Heal Practitioner credential. It became, and remains, a central thread in both my life and my work.

All of it — the trails, the teams, the teaching, the leadership, the movement — was preparing me for something I didn't yet know was coming.

Eliza

Everything changed when I lost my second child, my daughter Eliza.

At 31 weeks, we learned she had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a rare and severe congenital heart condition where the left side of the heart is critically underdeveloped and unable to sustain life without multiple complex surgeries and intensive intervention. Over the following weeks, we met with specialists and explored every option, and each path carried deep uncertainty.

At 33 weeks, we received a second diagnosis: Trisomy 18, a genetic condition associated with profound developmental differences and a very limited life expectancy. Together, these diagnoses made it clear there was no viable path toward long-term survival. We continued the pregnancy, knowing her life would be brief, and began the strange, split reality of carrying a child while also carrying the knowledge of her death.

Those weeks became a liminal space. Walking between worlds. Outwardly, I was visibly pregnant, moving through appointments and daily life. Inwardly, I was already in anticipatory grief, holding her and loving her while also preparing for her death.

In that in-between space, grief would arrive in waves that felt almost otherworldly — my body overtaken by cries that felt ancient, uncontained, and beyond language. And in the very same breath, there were moments of profound love and joy so vast it felt like I might burst into a million pieces of light. As if something immense and sacred was moving through, holding both her life and her impending loss at once.

She died in utero at 41 weeks.

Her death brought the continued unfolding of grief — the moment I had been living toward and simultaneously dreading, where love and loss became permanently intertwined.

After our final goodbye, life as I knew it no longer served me. Everything had to be rebuilt, reconsidered, realigned, remade from the inside out. It felt less like a choice and more like a force larger than me moving through my life, as though something beyond me was reshaping everything.

It moved me across the country, through a subsequent pregnancy, and into a complete re-creation of my career, identity, and sense of purpose. I felt as though she awakened something in me — a deeper layer of my soul that had been quiet for a long time.

A remembering of what I am here to do: to show up with others in deeply human, raw, and sacred ways — in love and respect in depth and honesty.

Finding My Way Into the Work

The path into this work unfolded the way grief itself does — not in a straight line, but one step at a time, each one revealing the next.

It began with Resolve Through Sharing, where I received my first formal training in perinatal death and bereavement care. That training opened a door — and I walked through it. I helped structure a bereavement doula training program at Swedish Medical Center. I brought Nia, my somatic movement practice, to a retreat for bereaved mothers through Return to Zero: HOPE — and something remarkable happened. The founder, Kiley Hanish, witnessed what movement brought to the retreat experience and the door opened wider.

I began leading retreats. I brought my nonprofit leadership background to RTZ HOPE's transition into a formal nonprofit organization, served on the board, and slowly built what became an established role supporting bereaved families directly. I opened my own private practice alongside that work.

Then COVID arrived and everything moved online. What could have been a contraction became an expansion. I began creating and facilitating closed multi-week support groups for RTZ HOPE — eventually facilitating 30+ groups a year — and continued leading retreats. New niches emerged. The work deepened and widened simultaneously.

The path into this work unfolded in the way grief often asks us to move — not with a map, but with presence. What began as a journey through loss became an unexpected becoming, leading me somewhere I never could have imagined.

And alongside all of it, I was going deeper within myself — exploring not only the experience of loving and losing my daughter, but the many experiences across my lifetime that shaped me. I began to understand how my earliest stories, relationships, and wounds influenced who I became, while also illuminating the places that were ready to be tended to as I continued growing into who I wanted to become.

What I Carry

I come to this work not only as a bereaved mother, but as someone who has done my own deep healing — from loss, from childhood trauma, estrangement, and from the lasting impacts of a family system that caused real harm.

These lived experiences inform everything I bring — the attunement, the patience, the refusal to pathologize, and the deep knowing that healing is not linear, not tidy, and not something anyone should have to do alone.

The Education Behind the Work

I believe the people I work with deserve someone who has gone deep — not only personally, but professionally. My training spans more than a decade at the intersection of the body, the nervous system, grief, and relational healing.

Through The Embody Lab, I hold advanced certifications in Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy, Somatic Developmental Trauma Therapy, Somatic EMDR, Somatic Parts Work, Somatic Attachment Therapy, and Inner Relationship Focusing — a coherent body of training built around how trauma lives in the body and how healing happens there too.

My perinatal loss and bereavement training is grounded in the gold standard frameworks of Resolve Through Sharing and Postpartum Support International — the same foundations that inform the best clinical care in this field. Because loss and perinatal mental health are rarely separate.

Who I Am Beyond the Work

I come alive near water and seek sunshine whenever I can — a familiar longing in the Pacific Northwest. I feel most grounded in nature, in music, in movement, and in the presence of people I love. I'm endlessly curious, drawn to depth, beauty, learning, and the remarkable complexity of being human.

I hold a love for both adventure and play, and I'm equally nourished by stillness or a good Netflix series. Whether I'm with friends, moving through the rhythm of family life and everyday adventures, dancing with my Nia community, or immersed in a nonfiction book, I try to meet life with presence and reverence.