A Mother’s Heart. A Trauma-Informed Guide. A Fellow Traveler.

Welcome, friend.  I’m Stephanie—a trauma recovery coach, nervous system educator, former social worker, mom to five grown kids and a first time seed grower!

I’m also a girl who came from a tough place and spent years finding my way back home to myself, all while in the midst of raising a family and pressuring myself to do everything right. I learned early in my life to live outside of myself – making sure everyone was taken care of and okay. I carried this in to every part of my life as an adult. Maybe you can relate? (There are unconscious stories there for all of us, and this is what we get to dismantle and heal)!

For 22 years, I homeschooled my children—two of whom are adopted and have special needs—while navigating the enormous weight of trying to “do it all” and “be it all.” I poured everything I had into mothering, schooling, and living up to every expectation placed on me by family, religion, culture, and my own inner perfectionist, without any familial support, and all while completely having abandoned myself in the process. I was born a healer, a dreamer, and a highly sensitive, compassionate kid. I had no idea how much the young girl inside of me was begging me to care for her the same way I spent my days caring for everyone else. I also had no idea how many precious survival strategies were driving my life and how these young parts of me were mirroring the very things I needed to heal in order to be free.

In 2012, I had pushed past my limits for too long. As a highly sensitive, neurodivergent woman with a lifetime of unresolved trauma and without the support I needed, I hit a wall—intense physical pain, deep burnout, and total disconnection from myself. At that time, I left the toxic religious culture that had perpetuated my childhood trauma and began the long, hard work of disentangling my worth from the roles and stories I had adopted as a kid, healing my trauma and coming home for the first time to myself.

Coming Home to Myself

With time and support, I began to heal and make space for my own precious heart and needs. My physical health had suffered so much, and as I healed I had to learn a completely new way of being in this world.  A way of being that had been calling to me since I was a kid, even though I couldn’t hear that call until physical pain put me in bed for years. It was a way of being that finally honored my sensitivity and unique needs as a hypermobile, highly sensitive, neurodivergent woman.

Through powerful tools like parts work, somatic attunement, and spiritual and emotional exploration, I began the healing journey of coming back to me. I let go of the myth of being superhuman and learned to be beautifully, compassionately human. I learned to honor my capacity and work with my body and heart instead of being at war within myself. I also dismantled a lifetime of patriarchal and cultural and capitalistic confines and delved deep into training and understanding the whole system that landed me here, all while continuing to mother some of the most amazing human beings (healing while parenting is not easy, but it is possible). Finally, I addressed long held, subconscious, adaptive patterns and roles I had not even been aware were driving my inability to finally find closure and move on, whole and whole-hearted.  

I now spend my days doing the things I love at a pace that I was designed for. I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out what I actually like, who I am, and how to honor my needs and re-connect to my wholeness. I am able to meet my life and the ongoing crazy that is our world right now with capacity, resilience and a presence I never thought possible. I’m still a mom (!) with an almost empty nest and I adore visiting with my grown kids and adorable grandsons, and helping my daughters and daughters-in-law - and my clients! - live more softly AND grow their capacities to hold all that is being asked to be held in their stories and in our collective society.  (I healed while raising all these kids, so if that’s the season you’re in, I can help!)

This slower, softer life has taught me how to honor my needs, meet myself with humor and grace, and deeply care for the parts of me that were ignored for far too long, as well as to step into my wholeness and meet this moment in history with my full heart. If that’s something your heart is longing for, I’d love to walk alongside you.