About ten years ago, I started my first business making headbands with women while I was in college and studying abroad in South Africa.

This little hobby became my obsession.  

I became quickly obsessed with HOW to teach women a skill in a way that got them asking “what else could I do?”  

I wasn’t just teaching women how to make a headband, I was empowering them with the confidence that they can achieve whatever they set their mind to!  

As that business ended, I focused my attention on growing as a therapist.  

I knew to truly support the women I dreamed of helping, I needed to learn how to support their children. So I started as a child and family based therapist.  

I was trained in the approach called “Conscious Discipline”, which focuses on supporting adults with knowledge of how to support their children to get out of survival mode and into the higher parts of their brain where they can learn and communicate.  

However, the biggest challenge I saw was that in order to offer this support to children, parents needed to be there (the higher part of their brain) first.  

But, there WASN’T an approach out there that taught parents how to do this.

In the Summer of 2020, my whole life flipped upside down.
 
My son was 9 months old, which meant I was finally adjusting to the routines being a stay at home mom with a toddler. I felt like I was finally getting my body back -- which for me was a huge thing after being extremely sick with lots of extra pains during pregnancy and suffering 3 rounds of mastitis postpartum!!  

However, one day something seemed off. I experienced more cramps than normal and had some strange bleeding happen. I called my OBGYN and was asked if I was pregnant. I literally laughed so hard on the phone! How on Earth could that be the case I thought - I had literally still been breastfeeding, been on birth control, and let's be frank my sex drive was still out of whack postpartum. But it turns out I was pregnant!!! All it took was 1 day of not taking my birth control pill to make it all happen.  

So I panicked!! I was not ready for another child and I was only starting to adjust... and frankly was beyond exhausted. I hated pregnancy and just couldn't imagine going through it again, at least not this soon.  

It wasn't until my body kept giving me strange signals that I realized something wasn't right with this pregnancy. Although I questioned having a child at first, the will and desire "to fight" just took over me. And no matter how big it was, it could not have prepared me for what came next. My husband and I lost our baby.  

The devastation, whirlwind of events, my body shutting down requiring me to go to the ER, needing a D&C, and still being a mom to a toddler... I was barely hanging on. The darkness I felt was awful. I felt so alone, scared, hopeless, and beaten down. I completely checked out and disconnected from my husband and son.  Let alone, I disconnected from myself!

Can you relate?!

I thought about a getting a tattoo or planting a tree, but nothing felt right.

So I kept thinking.  

We named our baby "Liv". We didn't know the gender of our baby so Liv is short for Oliver or Olivia. But we also believe our baby "Lived", even for a short amount of time.  

I knew the months and gosh even years post miscarriage were going to be really tough. Feeling my feelings felt impossible, especially since I hate the grieving process (ohh yes, even therapists don't always like feelings).

But I kept thinking about a desire to move on. Which did not mean forgetting my baby, but being able to heal my emotional wound (which I learned was not just healing the emotional wound associated with having a miscarriage, but many throughout my lifetime).
 
So I began the process of creating an approach to heal. I created it for myself. And saw it worked, so tested it out with some clients, who also saw amazing results.  

My therapy practice is named after my angel Baby - Liv Family Services.