Hello again, my friends...

On the morning of my recent birthday, I traced a knot through my harness and settled into my breath. The desert sun warmed my face as I moved through holds that felt both familiar and surprising. Each move asked for an ongoing remembrance of how to manage my energy, maintain my attitude, and believe in my ability all at once. Later that weekend, I attended a yoga workshop led by a dear friend and teacher I hadn't seen in over ten years. She still held the image of me from my prime yoga competition days—all fierce strength, limitless flexibility and practiced poise. The theme of her workshop asked us to investigate the threads that exist within us: the origin, the continuation, the color, the texture, the pattern of what joins us to our values and more so what binds us to each other. After surrounding myself with old memories and friends, I realized something significant that ties us all: those threads have been calling me back to this space, back to connection, back to sharing what I've learned in my deep silence.

Five years. That's how long I've been away from this space, from the conversations, from showing up online, from the phone calls or the visits. Five years of living so deeply in the experience of being human that I could not document it, had no desire to share it, lost touch, forgot that maybe—just maybe—someone else needed to hear that it's okay to disappear for a while when life demands your full presence. Sitting in that workshop, seeing myself reflected in my friend's eyes—not as I am now, but as I was then—I understood that the thread tethering my past self to my present self is exactly the yarn to be spun.

What Five Years Can Weave

When I snuck away quietly, I didn't know I was bracing for the most transformative chapter of my life. I thought I was just taking a break from the noise, from the constant sharing, from the pressure to have something profound to say every day. What I didn't know was that life was about to stitch together a pattern I never would have imagined—and exactly the one my soul has spent a lifetime aligning towards.

In these five years, I've said goodbye to my 17.5-year-old puppy, Codie, the sweet beast who taught me more about unconditional love than any spiritual text. I've entered the shadow of doom that only cancer wraps around you when supporting a friend through it. I’ve been devastated by my brother's tumor that crept in and ravaged through our lives stealing him from our grasp no matter what mantra was chanted. I’ve received my own diagnosis—Hashimoto's—and learned to befriend an autoimmune condition that initially felt like betrayal but has become a gentle teacher in disguise.

I left the corporate world that never quite fit, packed up my Oregon life, and followed something I couldn't quite name toward the desert Southwest. I'm still teaching yoga, but differently now—with the weight of real loss, real illness, real transformation in my body and voice.

And through it all, I kept getting on the trail and climbing. Tyler and I prioritized spending two more summers in Glacier pushing toward remote, challenging summits that demanded full focus and grit. Since arriving in the southwest, each week the mountains and canyons call me up to their faces. I answer because their demand for my commitment to effort is rewarding. The relentless struggles I willingly endure reveal everything that isn't essential and hand it back to me as evidence of my progress.The desert has taught me more about resilience than any yoga pose ever could. The mountains here enliven me differently than Oregon or Montana did, with a penetrating tenderness that matches where I delicately sit in my life right now.

The Ancient Path Forward

I tried to ignore the reality of myself in perimenopause—the hot flashes that arrive without warning, the brain fog that makes me forget words I've used a thousand times, the way my body shape has shifted despite eating the same foods and moving the same ways, the dry skin and brittle hair that no amount of products seem to fix, the energy that used to carry me through 90-minute hot yoga classes now requiring careful rationing—and found myself unable to blaze a better trail ahead. Somewhere in the middle of learning how to grieve, how to heal, how to accept the reality of my changing body, I returned to my ongoing curiosity of Ayurveda. Or maybe it found its way back to me.

This more than 5,000-year-old system of healing didn't offer quick fixes or Instagram-worthy transformations. Instead, it offered something simpler: the radical notion that every challenge in our lives contains the seeds of our greatest healing and a process to understand why my body has been speaking to me so loudly.

My Hashimoto's diagnosis suddenly made perfect sense through an Ayurvedic lens. Years of over-working, over-perfecting, over-thinking, over-exerting—all that effort to present calm under pressure, all that yoga and training in heated rooms, pushing through exhaustion, chronic stress, poor sleep quality—had systematically drained my ojas, my vital essence. My system had burned through its reserves like a candle lit at both ends. What I thought was dedication was actually depletion.

I'm currently deep in Ayurveda school, and every day I'm amazed by how this ancient wisdom speaks directly to the modern struggles we all face. Through studying the concepts of marut - the vital wind that governs movement and the nervous system, agni - our digestive fire that transforms not just food but all of life's experiences, and soma - the nectar that nourishes and cools our tissues, I finally understand that balance isn't something we achieve—it's something we practice, moment by moment, choice by choice.

Having spent years demonstrating form and flow of asana and sequencing, I thought I understood the mind-body connection. Ayurveda has shown me that healing isn't about perfecting poses or pushing through discomfort—it's about honoring our unique needs, and finding the delicate dance between effort and ease that allows our marut to flow smoothly, our agni to burn steadily, and our soma to replenish what has been spent.

The Invitation

I'm sharing this not because I have it all figured out, but because I've learned that our struggles become our medicine when we're willing to turn toward them with intrigue instead of resistance. Every autoimmune flare up or menopause symptom has taught me something about stress and boundaries. Every mountain climb has shown me that the summit isn't the point—it's who you become on the adventure. Every loss has cracked me open to deeper love and appreciation for what remains.

If you're in your own season of challenge, of transition, of wondering if you have the strength to keep trying—you do. And if you're curious about how ancient wisdom might support your modern life, especially if you're navigating the wild ride of perimenopause with its unpredictable symptoms, dealing with autoimmune conditions that seem to have appeared out of nowhere, or recognizing that your old patterns of pushing and perfecting may have depleted your vital reserves, I'd love to connect with you.

I'm offering Ayurvedic consultations now, combining everything I've learned about the body through yoga with the profound healing wisdom of Ayurveda. Together we'll explore how to strengthen your ojas, balance your marut when overwhelm takes over, kindle your agni without burning yourself out, and cultivate the cooling, nourishing soma your tissues are craving. It's not about adding another thing to your wellness routine—it's about coming home to yourself in a way that acknowledges exactly where you are right now and what you uniquely need to thrive.

This is me spiraling up into the light, not as someone who has conquered her challenges, but as someone who has learned to dance with them. The mountains are calling, the desert is teaching, and it’s time to share what I'm learning along the way. Thank you for being here as I find my voice again.