I almost didn't
MY STORY
And because I did - because I chose the harder, more beautiful road
- I am here to walk it with you.
moment.
this
make it to
I wanted to be a mother
more than
I want you to feel that with me for a moment. The wanting. The kind of wanting that lives in your body, in your chest, in the way you hold your breath every single month hoping — just this once — that the answer will be different.
For five years, the answer was no.
Five years of infertility. Five years of appointments and procedures and hope and loss and getting back up and trying again. Five years of watching the world around me fill with babies while I quietly carried a grief that nobody could fully see. A grief that doesn't have a name, that doesn't come with casseroles on your doorstep, that you are expected to carry in private because at least you don't have it as bad as someone else.
anything
I had ever wanted in my
life.
chapter one The longing
I carried it anyway. Alone. In silence.
Smiling when I needed to. Saying "I'm fine" when I wasn't. Because that is what I had learned to do — swallow the truth and keep moving.
And then — through IVF — our daughter Avery arrived. And she was everything. But we weren't done. We knew our family wasn't complete. So we chose to go back — to hope again. And almost five years after Avery was born, our twin boys Ryder and Dylan came into the world through IVF.
Two rounds. Nearly a decade in total. Three children who each felt like a miracle. Three children I would do every hard, painful, hopeful moment all over again for without hesitation.
chapter two The weight
These children
that I prayed for
were changing me
in ways I wasn't prepared for.
All three of my children were diagnosed with ADHD and ODD. And I want to be very clear — I love my children with a ferocity that defies words. They are my whole heart.
But I also need to be honest with you, because that is what this work demands: parenting them has been one of the hardest things I have ever done. The kind of hard that is relentless and invisible. The kind of hard that wears you down to nothing and then asks you to keep going.
And underneath all of it, something was happening in my marriage that neither of us could fully see yet. The infertility years, the parenting challenges, the exhaustion of holding everything together — those kinds of pressures have a way of quietly eroding a relationship when they go unspoken. And we weren't speaking them. Not really. We were surviving side by side, but we weren't sharing the weight of it with each other the way we needed to. I don't think either of us knew how.
I was carrying all the pain from before — the grief, the years of silent hoping, the losses — that I had never fully allowed myself to feel. I was keeping it all inside. All of it. The exhaustion. The fear. The loneliness.
And I was disappearing in the process.
chapter three the breaking
I remember the day I found myself
hiding in my closet.
were changing me
in ways I wasn't prepared for.
Behind the clothes. On the floor. Away from my
children - the children I had spent ten years fighting to
bring into the world.
I was on the verge of a complete breakdown. And in that dark, quiet space, I had the most honest conversation I have ever had - with God, with myself, with whatever force holds us when we have nothing left.
I couldn't help but ask the hard question.
Why did it take ten years to give me these children if I can't enjoy being their mother?
I sat in every "why me." Every "this isn't fair." Every "I can't do this." I let myself feel it all - maybe for the first time.
And then in that stillness, I was shown a fork in the road.
I stood at the edge of two very different futures.
Disappear from the pain. From the weight. From the relentnessness of a life that felt impossible. Give up on the version of myself that was fighting so hard to survive.
Check out.
Literally.
road one
Say out loud what you have never been able to say.
Ask for help you were terrified to need. Choose yourself - even when everything in you wanted to disappear.
Get help.
Use Your Voice.
road two
I'm so grateful I chose this road.
I chose to get help. I chose to use my voice. And that choice -
made in a closet on the floor with nothing left - is the reason I am here today.
On this earth. Writing these words to you.
I will never stop being GRATEFUL for that moment. Because it didn't just save my life.
It showed me my purpose.
"I was meant to learn from this - every heartbreak, every loss, every silent year
- so that I could help other women who are living it too."
- TIFFANY CARSON
chapter four the voice
In 2020, I did the hardest and most healing thing I
I used my voice.
I started the Hard Beautiful Journey podcast. I began speaking the truths I had been carrying in silence for years — the infertility, the grief, the motherhood that didn't look how I imagined, the marriage that was ending, the closet floor. All of it.
And something extraordinary happened. Women started reaching out to tell me they had never heard their own story spoken out loud before. That they had been carrying the same silence. That for the first time, they didn't feel alone.
That is when I understood. My pain was never just mine. It was always meant to become a bridge.
Recording the first episode of Hard Beautiful Journey.
had ever done.
Then in 2021, I lost my brother Cory to a fentanyl overdose. And in the depths of that grief — a grief more shattering than anything I had known — I found an unexpected gift. I wrote Dancing in the Rain. The story of Cory and I. Our shared childhood, our shared trauma, the healing we found together in his final years, and the love that never ends even when the person does.
Writing that book was the deepest act of voice I have ever offered. And it changed everything — for me, and for the women who read it and finally feel permission to grieve their own stories out loud.
The day after my brother Cory passed away -
I never thought I would get back up from this loss.
And then came another kind of loss — the one that had been building quietly for years. My marriage ended. And even though a part of me had known, on some level, that we had been drifting — that the unspoken weight of everything we had been through had slowly created distance between us — it was still grief. A different kind. The kind that doesn't come with a clear before and after. The kind that makes you question the story you thought you were living.
But using my voice had taught me something by then. I knew that silence was no longer an option for me. I had learned — through the closet floor, through the podcast, through Cory's passing — that the things we refuse to speak out loud are the things that keep us stuck. So I spoke this too. Imperfectly. Honestly. Out loud.
One of the lowest points of my life - when I went away to think and be by the ocean.
chapter five The work
I built this work from
everything that saved me.
I trained in trauma-informed breathwork — because I know what it is to hold your breath through years of pain, and I know the release that happens when you finally exhale.
I trained in trauma-informed somatic coaching — because I know that the body holds what the mind cannot process, and that healing lives in the body first.
I took part in the Vocal Transformation Method with Maryn Azoff - because I know that using your voice isn't just about speaking. It's about finally being heard. By yourself. This method taught me what it truly means to find your voice, own it, and stop swallowing parts of yourself that the world hasn't made room for yet.
And I created OVARA — a free community where women come to find each other, to share honestly, and to remember they were never meant to carry any of this alone.
I am not a coach who studied this work from the outside. I am a woman who needed this work to survive. And now I wake up every single day grateful that I chose the road that led me here — to this work, to these women, to you.
A few other things you may want to know about me.
Because the certifications and the podcast are only part of who I am. Here's some more.
beyond the work
I cannot - and will not - begin my day without coffee. This is
non-negotiable and not up for debate :).
Dog Mom to Ella and cat mom to Puss. One greets me with full on body snuggles every single morning. The other judges me silently (or not so silently) from across the room. I love them both equally.
Give me a good book and I am completely unreachable. I will finish that book before feeding you. Sorry, but I gotta know how it ends.
Car rides with me are a full blown concert. I am the opening act, the headliner and the encore. Prepare thyself.
I'm a highschool softball coach - showing up for young women on and off the field is one of my favorite things to do.
Momma bear to 3 cubs - always their Mom 100% of the time, even when they're not under my roof. They are my whole heart and also the reason I need breathwork.
you've read my story
If any part of my story felt like yours - if you recognized yourself in the silence,
in the weight, in the keeping it all together while quietly disappearing -
I want you to know there is a place for you here.
Now let's talk about
yours.
