Still Becoming…
From trauma bays to temples, from grief work to ritual space. This is the journey that brought me here. A story not just about healing others, but of learning how to heal myself.
Where It All Began
I was born and raised in Canada, but my life has unfolded across many diverse landscapes. It’s been full of detours, deserts, jungle trails, hospital corridors, and cross-cultural friendships that reshaped the way I see the world.
At 24, I moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I was young, eager, and wildly unprepared for what I was about to learn. Not just about medicine, but about culture, religion, and humanity. I worked in a busy urban hospital and witnessed, firsthand, what it meant to live as a Muslim woman in a culture vastly different from the one I was raised in. There were moments of discomfort, anger, and plenty of misunderstandings, but I kept coming back to this: I was there as a guest.
It was there I met one of my dearest friends, someone who still walks beside me decades later. One of those friends that represents what true friendship is-she has supported me during my lowest moments, highest moments, and all the murkiness that comes in between. It was also in Saudi that I met my (now ex-) American husband. I didn’t know it at the time, but that chapter in the desert would change the course of my life.
From Desert to Mountains
After my time in Saudi, I returned to Canada for a short while, waiting for my (now ex-) husband to complete his contract. During that time, I began working in the remote northern region of British Columbia, a place where isolation wasn’t just geographic, it was woven into daily life. Medicine there required something different: ingenuity, presence, and grit. That work gave me a front-row seat to resilience. I remember one night vividly-it was just me, a Nurse Practitioner, and an ER physician guiding us via telemedicine. In the middle of the chaos, that doctor calmly talked us through an emergent venous cutdown. The moment was intense, but what stayed with me was the resourcefulness, the trust, and the steady coordination under pressure. Rural medicine has its own rules and its own rhythm. I once took a call at the clinic from a local veterinarian requesting an absurd amount of Benadryl; for a horse. That’s when I truly understood: out there, protocols bend to necessity. Supplies are limited, help is distant, and creativity is part of survival.
I could easily fill an entire blog with stories from that six-month stretch, and maybe I will, as this space continues to unfold. But what stands out most is what that experience taught me: to think on my feet, to lead with calm, and to meet challenge with creativity. Those lessons have followed me into every role I’ve taken since. Never underestimate the quiet power of small moments. They have a way of preparing you for everything that comes next.
From there, I made my way to the U.S., eventually landing in Olympia, Washington-a place I’ve returned to time and time again. It’s where my roots finally took hold. And truly, there’s no better place to live in the US than the Pacific Northwest. I’ll admit, the landscape felt familiar (I had just come from northern Canada, after all), but the healthcare system? That was a whole new world. I went from a remote community where care was shared (even with the horses) to a place where access depended on insurance, and wellness came with a price tag. Apple Health hadn’t quite arrived yet, and for the first time, I saw how choosing health could also mean taking on debt.
Fast Medicine, Quiet Burnout
Fast forward a few years, a divorce, and the adrenaline-soaked life of a flight nurse, I somehow landed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t exactly part of the plan, but life has a way of rerouting us. I took a job at a Level 1 Trauma Center, stepping into one of the most intense and formative chapters of my career. At this hospital, I found myself in one of my most unforgettable moments: standing in a trauma bay, manually pumping a patient’s heart. My hands keeping rhythm, my energy trying to sustain a life hanging by a thread. We often performed emergency thoracotomies, cracking open chests in the aftermath of gunshot wounds, electrically, chemically, and manually doing everything possible to save their life. These were always acts of last hope. But in a Level 1 teaching hospital, the lines were sometimes blurred between intervention and education.
Today, my work has shifted. I’m in Public Health now, specializing in systems-level maternal and child wellness. I helped create Washington State’s first Fetal Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) program, designed to bring compassion, equity, and accountability into the heartbreaking realities of stillbirth and infant loss. I’ve sat with grieving families. I’ve reviewed case after case of infant and child fatalities. And I’ve devoted myself to transforming heartache into prevention.
It’s still trauma work, but now it’s quiet, deliberate, and deeply human. And somehow, it holds my heart and spirit more tightly than anything I’ve done before. The weight of it stays with me. That’s why self-care, therapy, and staying connected to the people who get it, who know how this work has shaped me, are essential. They’re the ones who help me return to myself, to the version of me we both recognize and love.
My First Love: Travel
Through all the seasons of my life, I’ve continued to travel. It’s my first love and the way I come back to myself when the world feels too heavy or too loud. Over the decades, I’ve wandered through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, soaked in the quiet magic of Bali, stood in awe before the pyramids of Egypt, and journeyed through Kenya and Tanzania. I’ve explored the vibrant cultures of Ghana and Togo, the sun-drenched coasts of Greece and Turkey, the healing landscapes of Mexico and Costa Rica, and fulfilled a lifelong dream of seeing Machu Picchu.
These journeys weren’t a single chapter, they’ve been a thread woven through my entire adult life.
At 22 years old, I went on my first solo trip, it was a six-month backpacking adventure across Southeast Asia. It was during that time I truly met myself-my strength, my wit, and the wide-open possibility of who I was becoming. That trip gave me the space to grow into the woman I had dreamed of becoming as a child: independent, courageous, and deeply alive.
Why I’m Sharing This
I share all of this not just to celebrate my wins, but to include them. Much of what I write about publicly leans into the murkiness of change: the grief, the mess, the fear, the unsteady path of healing. It’s honest, and it is part of my story. But so is this. The bold choices, the growth, the resilience it’s taken to keep walking forward.
As a woman, sharing my successes isn’t always encouraged, or well received. There’s a quiet conditioning that asks us to downplay, to stay small, to soften our shine. Lifting others comes naturally to me. I’ve spent much of my life being the one who cheers people on, who holds space, who notices the quiet strengths others don’t always see in themselves. It’s instinctual, woven into who I am. And while it’s a gift, I’ve come to realize it’s also been a shield. Pouring outward was often easier than turning inward.
I’m learning, slowly and with intention, to redirect some of that energy back to myself. To become the one who stands beside me with encouragement, compassion, and truth. Because the truth is, relying on others to lift me, especially when they don’t fully understand the weight I carry, has sometimes left me feeling unseen, and deeply depleted.
These days, I’m practicing what it means to lift myself. Not through perfection or constant productivity, but through presence. Through allowing. Through rest. I’m learning to offer myself the same grace I so easily give to others. Wholeness doesn’t come from erasing the struggle or the joy. It comes from making space for all of it. The strength and the softness. The grief and the light. The shadow and the shine.
The Road to Ayurveda
Eventually, all these experiences began to shape a question I couldn’t shake:
What does true healing look like when we stop separating the body from spirit, or the person from environment?
That question led me to Ayurveda.
Today, I own Sacred Juniper Ayurvedic Clinic-the first Panchakarma clinic in Olympia. It’s a space where ancient wisdom, modern science, and deep human presence come together. I work with clients to regulate their nervous systems, support hormonal transitions, and return to rhythms that nourish rather than deplete. And I still travel. I still learn. I still listen.
I keep going. I keep creating. I keep letting myself be both soft and strong.
I continue to offer what I’ve lived, because I’ve learned the most powerful thing we can do is tell the truth of our lives, out loud, in the hopes that someone else might feel less alone.
Sacred Juniper isn’t just a clinic. It’s an extension of my story.
It’s a place where I nourish women, a space to share, unpack, and release.
A place to feel held.
It’s not about being fixed. It’s about being witnessed.
Seen in your becoming. Heard in your unraveling. Held, not for who you should be, but for who you already are.
Sacred Juniper was born from that truth. From the pulse of my lived experience, from every trauma bay, every ritual, every woman I’ve walked beside and from knowing that healing isn’t a destination. It’s a homecoming.
Here, we don’t rush.
We remember.
We reweave.
We rise.
And maybe, if you’ve found your way here-it’s because this is a place where you, too, can come home to yourself.
This blog is slowly becoming something more than a place to share thoughts-it’s becoming my way of chipping away at the armor I’ve worn for over 40 years. That armor protected me. It helped me survive. But with my 47th birthday on the horizon, I’m craving something different. I want to walk into this next year lighter. With more ease. More breath. More of me.
The truth is, only a handful of people really know my full story. Maybe it’s time to share more of it, and in doing so, release some of what I’ve been holding. It feels like it’s time to let myself shine a little more. To take up space not just through service, but through honesty.
Maybe this is the cathartic outlet I’ve been needing. We’ll see.
Thank you for being here. Stay tuned.
Let’s keep riding this life together: bumps, curves, fires, and all.
