Herbalism, or knowing how plants could benefit our health, was not part of my upbringing. Like most American families, ours relied entirely on western medicine — if we got sick, we went to the doctor. But eating fresh produce from our garden or local farms was always important in my family, and our huge garden quietly planted seeds of wellness that grew throughout my lifetime. Growing and harvesting fresh vegetables, picking fruit from local farms and freezing it for the winter — that rhythm of nourishing yourself from the earth was foundational to my life, even if I couldn't have told you why it mattered at the time.

After college, my husband and I both served in the Air Force. I served as a nurse on active duty for almost five years, then three more in the reserves; my husband served for 26 years. Military life meant moving every two to four years, and while everything else shifted constantly, three things followed me everywhere — I always tried to grow a garden, my digestive health was always in flux, and I constantly struggled with acne.

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The garden was the good constant. Even when that meant container gardening, I was determined. This kept me connected to the earth even when everything else was changing around me.  Some of my favorite years were when we were stationed back in Oregon, with raised beds and a yard full of berries and fruit trees. My kids would wander outside on summer mornings and announce they were going to "forage the yard" for breakfast. Those mornings were pure magic.

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The digestive and acne struggles were the hard constant. With every move came new digestive symptoms, new flares, new things my body seemed to be reacting to — and no real answers. The  acne affected me more than I let on. I'd pull back from social plans, not wanting people to see my skin, which was isolating in a way that's hard to describe alongside the loneliness of starting over with each military move.

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Looking back, I can see now what I couldn't then — my skin and my gut were telling the same story. My body was trying to communicate something, and no one was listening closely enough to hear it.

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It was also during those Oregon years that my perspective on health began to shift. Having young kids made me look at everything differently — food, household products, personal care. Then in 2011, my son, who was about 18 months old, started having serious sleep problems,  sleeping only five of his twelve hours in bed. The pediatrician told me, "some kids are just bad sleepers." It wasn't until a speech therapist recommended occupational therapy that we found real help. Qi-gong massage at night helped him regain healthy sleep — and it opened my eyes to an entire world of healing modalities I hadn't paid much attention to. This was also when the first whispers of my herbal journey began: my husband and I were learning about the use of elderberries as a treatment for the flu. In those early days, I still applied my allopathic, nursing mindset to herbs as purely "this herb treats that condition." I simply didn't know better yet.

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Around the same time, I started developing a gluten intolerance. When a GI doctor couldn't find a clear cause, he suggested it "might be in my head." I left his office feeling completely unheard, and to add to the misery, he performed an upper endoscopy that left me with terrible reflux. I remember walking through the grocery store not knowing what to eat, because everything made me feel miserable. Years later, I realized I may have had mold exposure in Oregon that led to my gluten intolerance and reflux symptoms.

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These experiences — feeling dismissed, finding unexpected solutions, discovering that the body tells a fuller story than any single symptom — planted the seeds for everything that came next.

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A few years later, a friend suggested I look into herbalism. My first reaction was honestly, "I don't want to learn about all those plants." But she knew me too well. I tried one online class and fell completely in love with the plants. Herbalism offered something I hadn't encountered in conventional medicine — a way of seeing the whole person, matching plants to someone's constitution and energetics, and understanding the way their health shows up across every body system. Thanks to wonderful teachers like Kat Maier, Sajah Popham, Matthew Wood, and Paul Bergner, I found a new language for the body that nursing school hadn't taught me. They opened my eyes to energetic herbalism and showed me the body's innate ability to heal itself. Through a whole-body assessment, I learned to pair the unique energetics of each individual with the energetics of their plant allies, supporting the body on its own path to wellness. I no longer saw elderberry as a treatment — instead, she was doing so much more, supporting the body's natural immune processes.

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It was my herbal education that finally brought me relief from years of acne and digestive struggles. Liver and digestive herbal supports changed my skin and digestion completely. I had spent years trying birth control pills, antibiotics, and countless topical products without resolution, never realizing these treatments were actually causing further damage to my digestive tract and microbiome, preventing my body from healing. It wasn't until I was going through herbalism school that I understood the connection between the digestive system and every other body system. Repairing my digestion and supporting my liver with herbal medicine changed my skin forever. I finally have clear skin that I don't have to stress over.

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More recently, I've found a need to dive deeper into the digestive health of my clients, and to better understand my own digestive struggles after a covid infection. The Institute of Restorative Health trained me in functional lab testing that allows me to identify food triggers for inflammation that a standard elimination diet of trial and error would not be able to find. Removing those irritants while repairing digestion with herbs and supplements decreases the inflammatory response throughout the whole body, helping my clients improve both their digestion and their overall health.

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That's the thread running through all of it: I kept hitting walls in conventional medicine, kept finding my way through with curiosity and natural approaches, and kept learning more so I could help others do the same. My nursing training taught me a lot about disease and symptom management. The plants taught me to support the body’s innate healing. My own health journey taught me what it feels like to be dismissed — and how transformative it is when someone actually listens. I am excited to embark on this pathway with you along the water's edge, and to support your journey to live life fully with the ones you love.