Wholistic Harmony

08/19/2026

You are not imagining it. And you are not alone.

Perimenopause and menopause can affect so much more than our periods and our body temperature.

For many women, this transition can bring significant changes in mood and emotional well-being—including:

• Irritability
• Anxiety
• Low mood
• Anger or rage
• Loss of confidence or self-esteem
• Low motivation
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Changes in sleep and ability to cope with stress
• And perhaps most unsettling of all…feeling like you don't recognize yourself anymore.

And there are A LOT of women experiencing these changes.

The menopause transition is a time of significant physiological and psychological change, yet menopause-specific education and care remain limited among many healthcare professionals.

Too often, women are told that what they're experiencing is simply "part of getting older" or that they just need to push through it.

You don't have to.

There are evidence-based treatments and supports that can help with many of the emotional, physical, and cognitive symptoms that can accompany the menopause transition. And sometimes, simply having someone who understands what is happening can make an enormous difference.

This transition can feel lonely, destabilizing, scary, and confusing. You may find yourself wondering:

"Why am I suddenly so anxious?"
"Why am I so irritable?"
"Why don't I have the motivation I used to?"
"Why don't I feel like myself anymore?"

If you've been asking yourself these questions, please know that you deserve support!

I am passionate about providing mental health care for women during perimenopause and menopause because I know how profoundly this transition can affect the way we feel, function, relate to others, and experience ourselves.

You don't have to navigate it alone. ❤️

If you're struggling during this transition, please reach out for help.

08/14/2026

Well said. 💜

“So here we are in 2026, not 1928. Is postpartum depression in the DSM?”

Read that again.

Because for those of us working in perinatal mental health and women’s healthcare, this was bigger than a question asked in a courtroom.

It named the problem.

For decades, women have been told their symptoms are hormones. Stress. Motherhood. Lack of sleep. Something they should push through.

We have watched mothers sit across from us terrified by thoughts they don’t understand and afraid to tell anyone.

We have watched women minimize symptoms because they fear being labeled a “bad mom.”

And we have watched postpartum depression, anxiety, OCD, trauma, psychosis, intrusive thoughts, and grief get flattened into one vague category of “postpartum.”

Those of us doing this work have been saying it for years:

We have to do better.

We need better education. Better screening. Better collaboration. And providers who understand the differences between perinatal mental health conditions.

🚨 Postpartum depression is not postpartum anxiety.

🚨 Postpartum OCD is not postpartum psychosis.

🚨 Intrusive thoughts are not automatically intent.

🚨 Postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric emergency requiring professionals who know how to recognize it and respond appropriately.

Words matter. Specialized training matters. Women’s lives depend on us getting this right.

That is why this courtroom moment felt so powerful.

It took something perinatal specialists have been saying in therapy offices, hospitals, trainings, and consultation rooms: and put it into a much larger conversation:

It is 2026. Women deserve healthcare that reflects what we now know.

We should not have to wait for a courtroom, headline, or tragedy before maternal mental health receives the attention it deserves.

We need collaborative systems around mothers before they reach crisis.

Because postpartum mental health is not niche healthcare.

It is healthcare.

Maybe this becomes more than a courtroom quote.

Maybe it becomes a movement.

Better education. Better training. Better collaboration. Better understanding. Better protection for women and families.

It is 2026. It is time our systems caught up. 🌸

08/10/2026

This week I had the gift of spending time with a dear friend I've known since childhood, and every time we are together, I am reminded of how deeply special friendships are with people who have known you for decades.

There is something different about being with someone who has witnessed so many versions of you.

Someone who remembers where you came from. Who knows your history without needing the whole story. Who can see where you are now and still recognize the person you've always been.

My heart felt full.

We laughed. We talked. We listened. We held space for each other. There was room for both the difficult things and the joyful things. I didn't have to explain myself or perform or have everything figured out. I could simply be.

And it reminded me once again just how healing friendship with other women can be.

As a therapist, I spend a lot of time talking with women about the importance of connection, co-regulation, being witnessed, and having people in our lives who can sit with us in both the beauty and the hard stuff.

And I believe this becomes especially important during perimenopause and menopause.

This season of life can be incredibly isolating. So much can be changing at once—our bodies, hormones, sleep, mood, relationships, careers, families, identities, and our sense of who we are. At the same time, many women are caring for aging parents, navigating empty nests, supporting adult children, or simply asking, "Who am I now?"

We don't need to navigate all of this alone.

I've been thinking about offering a small, therapist-led psychoeducational menopause support group in my practice, and I'm curious whether there is interest.

This would be more than a traditional support group and not quite group therapy in the traditional sense. It would be a space for women to learn, connect, process, and feel less alone.

We may explore topics such as:

🌿 Understanding the impact of hormonal changes on mood, anxiety, sleep, and stress resilience
🌿 Learning about the nervous system and why stress can feel different during midlife
🌿 Building nervous system regulation and resilience
🌿 Grief and the many losses and transitions that can accompany this stage of life
🌿 Identity—who am I now that children are grown and some of the roles I've spent decades inhabiting are changing?
🌿 Boundaries, relationships, and the emotional labor women often carry
🌿 Body image and developing a more compassionate relationship with a changing body
🌿 Sexuality and intimacy
🌿 Self-compassion and learning to listen to what our bodies need instead of continually pushing through
🌿 Creating meaningful connection and community with other women who understand

There would be education, conversation, reflection, gentle nervous-system practices, and opportunities to explore what this transition means for each of us.

My hope would be that women leave not with another list of things they need to "fix," but with more understanding of themselves, more compassion for their bodies, practical tools for navigating this season, and a sense that they are not alone.

Because I don't believe menopause is simply something we need to endure.

I believe it can be an opportunity to slow down, listen differently, reconnect with ourselves, and discover who we are becoming.
And I believe we need each other while we do it. ❤️

Would this be something you would be interested in?

If you're local and this sounds like something you—or another woman in your life—might benefit from, I'd love to hear from you in the comments or by private message. I'm exploring what this could look like and would love to know if there is interest.

08/06/2026

Yes!!

A boundary gets mistaken for coldness a lot. It’s not.

It’s just an honest report from your body about what it actually has capacity for right now. Saying no to one more thing isn’t rejection of the person asking. It’s protection of the person who has to live in your body tomorrow.

The people who love you well will hear a boundary and adjust. The ones who can’t are showing you something important too.

I talked about this at length with my friend Melissa Urban, Whole30 co-founder and author of The Book of Boundaries, on my podcast. She calls the thing that happens when you don’t set one “energy leakage,” and once you hear that phrase you cannot unsee it in your own life.

Comment BOUNDARIES and I’ll send you that full conversation.

Where in your life do you need to let your no be a full sentence?

08/05/2026

Over the past year, I've been feeling called in a new direction with my practice. While I will always be passionate about helping people heal from trauma, anxiety, and chronic stress, I've realized that my heart is especially drawn to supporting women through perimenopause, menopause, and the emotional transitions of midlife.

The truth is...this isn't just professional for me. It's deeply personal.

A few years ago, I found myself becoming someone I didn't recognize.

I've lived with anxiety for most of my life, so I knew what anxiety felt like. But this was different.

I felt emotionally out of control. I was angrier than I had ever been. I had a hard time recovering from stress. I cried more easily. For the first time in my life, I experienced depression and moments of hopelessness.

At the same time, life was changing all around me. I had moved away from the community I'd called home for 30 years. I lost my support system and professional network. My adult children had moved away and were navigating struggles of their own. I found myself reaching for alcohol more often, only to discover it made everything worse.

I kept thinking, **"What is happening to me?"**

I didn't recognize my body. I didn't recognize my reactions. I didn't even recognize how I felt about some of the people in my life.

As a therapist, I did what I know how to do—I became curious.

I immersed myself in learning about hormones, the brain, menopause, and the nervous system. I learned that estrogen doesn't just affect our reproductive system; it supports the very brain circuits involved in mood, stress resilience, sleep, memory, and emotional regulation.

I also learned that for far too long, women's health—and menopause in particular—has not received the attention it deserves. Too many women are left believing they simply need to "push through."

I'd spent much of my life pushing through.

I was done.

Ironically, one of the greatest gifts menopause gave me was permission to stop fighting my body.

Because my usual exercise routine suddenly felt impossible, I found slow, gentle yoga. For the first time, instead of demanding more from my body, I began listening to it.

I resisted hormone replacement therapy at first because I was afraid. Thankfully, I had a physician who took the time to walk me through the evidence, answer my questions, and help me make an informed decision that felt right for me. Combined with understanding my nervous system, it became a turning point in my healing.

But the biggest transformation wasn't simply feeling better.

It was learning to have a different relationship with my body.

This body has carried me through every season of my life. It has allowed me to bear children, feed them, nurture them, build a career, grieve, laugh, move, and keep showing up. For so many years I treated it like an enemy—wishing it looked different, criticizing it, pushing it beyond its limits, and rarely asking what it needed.

Today, I'm still learning to trust my body, and maybe more importantly, to let my body trust me.

To nourish it.
To listen to it.
To honor it instead of fighting it.

I don't believe menopause is simply something to survive.

I believe it can be an invitation.

An invitation to understand ourselves more deeply.
To grieve what is changing.
To honor what our bodies are asking for.
To decide what choices are right for us.
To stop measuring our worth by how much we can push through.
And to discover that we are not alone.

This is why I'm choosing to focus my practice on women's mental health during perimenopause, menopause, and midlife.

I want women to have a place where they don't have to explain themselves, where they feel believed, where they can understand what's happening in both their brains and their bodies, and where they can begin building a compassionate relationship with themselves.

Most of all, I want women to know this:

You are not broken.

You are changing.

And sometimes, those changes become the doorway to becoming more fully yourself than you've ever been before. 💛

07/13/2026

06/16/2026

I tried something new professionally recently, and it is not going the way I had hoped. Maybe you've had this experience too with something in your life?

And yet, I'm still proud of myself. I hope you can be proud of yourself too.

Stepping outside of our comfort zone means accepting that not everything will work out as planned. That's the price of growth.

One of my values is continuing to take risks, try new things, and stay open to learning—even when the outcome isn't what I expected.

It's not failure.
It's information.
It's growth.
It's learning.

And that's a value I intend to keep honoring.

05/12/2026

As a therapist in the Grand Strand area, I have become increasingly aware of something that feels deeply important and often overlooked: the lack of trauma-informed care within many medical systems.

Trauma is incredibly common. Research estimates that the majority of adults have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, and many people — especially women — carry histories of experiences that involved powerlessness, fear, shame, dismissal, or loss of control.

Unfortunately, medical environments can unknowingly recreate these same dynamics.

Being rushed through appointments. Procedures happening without clear explanation. Feeling like there is no choice, no voice, or no space to slow down. These experiences matter to the nervous system.

This topic is personal for me both professionally and personally. I have witnessed how deeply medical experiences can impact people with trauma histories and how often patients leave feeling unseen, overwhelmed, or reluctant to return for care.

Trauma-informed care is about recognizing that patients are not just bodies, symptoms, or diagnoses — they are human beings with nervous systems, histories, emotions, and lived experiences that shape how safe or unsafe medical care can feel.

I wrote a new blog post sharing more thoughts on this issue, my experiences, and why I believe this conversation is so needed in our community. I am pondering how I can offer trainings and consultation around this.

People deserve healthcare that treats not only the body, but the human nervous system attached to it.

Please feel free to share your thoughts below!

As a therapist, I have watched the mental health field become increasingly intentional about understanding trauma and its impact on the nervous system, relationships, emotions, and physical health. While we still have a ...

05/09/2026

As we move into Mother’s Day weekend during Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to acknowledge that this time of year can hold many different emotions.

For some, Mother’s Day is joyful and celebratory. For others, it may bring grief, longing, complicated family dynamics, estrangement, infertility, loss, loneliness, guilt, or reminders of relationships that have been painful or difficult.

And for many mothers themselves, this weekend can carry invisible exhaustion, pressure, or feelings of not doing enough.

Whatever this weekend brings up for you, your experience is valid.

May this be a gentle reminder that you do not have to force yourself to feel differently than you do. Take breaks when needed. Protect your energy where you can. Reach for support. Allow space for both gratitude and grief if they coexist. Allow moments of joy.

Most importantly, try to offer yourself the same compassion you so freely extend to others.

04/09/2026

The most resourceful thing I did for my nervous system this week wasn’t anything complicated or part of my usual routine.

It was this👇

In the middle of a walk with my dog, I paused… found a sunny patch of grass… and just laid down.

No agenda.
Just soaking up the warmth of the sun, watching the trees sway, and letting my eyes rest on the open sky.

At one point, a hawk even perched above me—clearly wondering what in the world I was doing 🤣

And honestly? That moment did more for my nervous system than most of the “productive” things I check off in a day.

A gentle reminder: regulation doesn’t have to be elaborate.
Sometimes it looks like slowing down enough to receive what’s already around you.

✨ What’s the most resourceful thing you’ve done for your nervous system this week?