What followed was an initiation I hadn't prepared for: a pregnancy that was physically fine and emotionally hard. A marriage I entered in good faith and left in survival. Postpartum in a pandemic apartment, away from family, in a fog so thick I didn't know it was depression until I heard myself asking my best friend: Am I a good person?

I knew I needed to leave. I moved home. I started over as a sole parent, built my practice around mothers because I had become one, and began learning — finally, urgently — everything I hadn't known about the body I had been living inside my whole life.

Ayurveda taught me longevity and rhythm. Feminine embodiment coaching taught me to befriend my shadow rather than transcend it. The menstrual cycle — once just a monthly interruption — became a portal. Every month, an invitation to know myself more deeply.

Four years in, even with all those tools, I hit a wall. I had to slow down, take fewer clients, and learn — again, more humbly this time — that the practices I was offering others applied to me too. That being held requires allowing yourself to be held. That receiving is not weakness. It is the most sophisticated practice I know.