Owning my own wellness center has always been a lifelong dream. I grew up as a dancer in Michigan and college in Arizona. After moving to NYC for graduate school, I settled in Brooklyn, ran a dance program at a performing arts high school in NYC, and taught pilates on the side.
We have our “aha” moments when life is about to change. Pregnancy definitely qualifies, and — having just read “30 Things To Do When You Turn 30” shortly after finding out I was pregnant with my oldest son (now age 13), that “aha” moment was that life was moving too fast. There was no time to waste in creating the life I wanted.
A few months later, my son was born via an emergency c-section, and I experienced all the feelings that go with a traumatic birth. At eight weeks postpartum, I returned to work, still thinking about my dream of my wellness center and the book I had read.
Within a few days, I put in my notice that I wouldn’t be returning, went home, moved all my furniture out of my living room, and decided to transform it into a Pilates studio. The first year of my son’s life was the start of my business, Brooklyn Embodied, which I ran while he napped and slept at night.
The business grew steadily, and I began to specialize in working mainly with moms, receiving additional certifications in prenatal and postnatal pilates. At the same time, I was trying to reconcile my own experience and the fact that my vision of squatting, pulling out my baby, and holding him up to music from Lion King might not be the most realistic vision.
The more I worked with moms, the more I wanted to empower and educate them. This led my path to becoming a birth doula, enabling me to work with women through their journey to motherhood.
After becoming a doula, I was able to have an absolute dream VBAC birth for my daughter. One year into living in Brooklyn with a colicky baby and trying to apply to 14 kindergartens for my son, I was sent over the edge, and we decided to move to Croton-on-Hudson in 2016.
We love living in Westchester County in a small town where every time we walk out of the house, we run into people we know in such a beautiful setting. I promise myself to take advantage of the hiking, yet I seldom do. That doesn’t stop me from buying new hiking boots every year.
Over the past decade, my business has grown into a company specializing in diastasis recti repair. There is nothing I love more than working and helping other women heal their bodies and decrease their pain.
