I am a person who thinks a lot about how our bodies work and how we, as humans, fit with the rest of nature.  I think a lot about how we live together, how life goes when it’s smooth, and when it’s really hard.  I think a lot about how to make the living better.

I’ve been working as a doctor of physical therapy for 10+ years, but I’ve been enchanted with healing since wanting to be a doctor for tigers in kindergarten. As I started to learn human anatomy in high school, I began to have profound experiences while playing ice hockey. As I’d push my skate edge into the ice I’d see the muscles contracting, pulling, powering my skeleton. As I exerted more effort and the cold air filled my nostrils and lungs, I’d follow those oxygen molecules through my airways, heart, and back to the muscles. It doesn’t sound extraordinary in writing; I can’t  convey the magnitude of awe I experienced. It was a lightning bolt, mind expanding experience for me. Since then I’ve done my best to go through life following one lightning bolt experience to the next.

I’ve lived all over the country. I have done a lot of long distance hiking (1000+ miles). I’ve worked in a variety of settings (strength training gyms, inpatient rehab hospitals) with a wide variety of people. I become a mother. I’ve traveled the world. I’ve stretched outside my comfort zone to work in places that were new. I joined the Port Townsend city planning commission. All of these experiences have taught and prodded and given me the opportunity to stretch and grow.

I’ve created this website because another impulse stretch and follow another lightning bolt moment of realization. I believe that health is not a solitary endeavor. It never ends with just one body part, one body. It’s a cascade of interconnectedness, and I don’t believe it’s possible to optimize individual health alone. This is not a particularly unique or revelatory idea, however for me and my practice, it’s creating quite a push for me to imagine and experiment with different ways of doing things.

I don’t know exactly how, but I am certain that there is a better way to do health for people, healthcare providers, for communities, for individuals, for trees, for healthcare systems. I know lots of people are working on this problem. So this website, this experiment, it’s just trying to put words to my small part, to my experience.

I want to figure out how to make health care more meaningful, tangible, and connected. I would love to get in a dirt with you. I would love to help you with your gardening, with your farming. I would love to help you accomplish whatever your dream is. I want to come to your art studio. I want to come to your playground. I want to come to your neighborhood, and I want to help figure out how we get your health to align with your mission and bring them together. I hope that we do it for you. We do it for your family, your neighbors, your community, your friends and we don’t end it.

Health is not an arrival. It is an ongoing practice. Whatever we cultivate for our own health needs to be sustainable forever for our life and for the next thing that’s going to keep being on this planet in a physical form a little bit longer than we were.