Engineer, Personal Trainer, Mother, Spouse, Lifelong Student

My story

My story started on the east coast, where I was raised. It started in my Dad’s basement wood shop, learning basic mechanics, and sick in bed with my RN Mom taking loving care of me. It started with too many extracurriculars and reliance on my little, learning body to perform.

I went through a few trials (and errors) to get from there to here. I always loved to use my body for athletic pursuits, but never made tryouts for sports, so I wound up pursuing hiking and outdoor sports while I was still living in New Jersey - the land of the overemployed and overcommitted. I went to the US Coast Guard academy for the beginning of my college career, and the most valuable thing I learned was what I didn’t want to be when I grew up. Finishing my bachelors degree at Lehigh University in mechanical engineering was more a means of achieving a grown up life and grown up salary than a true calling. I worked in medical devices for a decade, and while I truly loved biomechanics, I found that engineering sucked me dry. To maintain my soul and sanity while my work was trying so hard to destroy them, I turned to my body. Rock climbing, running, cycling, salsa dancing, backpacking - I was relentless, and it was fun! At some point though, I turned back to my mind, and realized that I still didn’t want to be an engineer. But what, then?

I didn’t know, so I quit my job designing orthopedic implants for the pelvis, and moved to South America, and thought maybe I could find someone there to tell me. Spoiler alert: I didn’t. But what I did do is learn a language, obliterate my comfort zone, and see a lot of really amazing and beautiful places and people. So when I had to return to the states, I came back with…even less purpose than before. I became a personal trainer, afraid of a doctorate degree, and the expense, and the time, So I used my lack of professional motivation to explore my own country. Sitting by Barren Lake in the Sierras, I decided once and for all to go to PT school. My background in biomechanics married well with physical therapy, and my years of experience designing pelvic plating led me smack into a specialty in - you guessed it - the pelvis.

The story’s only written so far, and it finds me living with my husband and children in Oregon City, OR, doing what I love. I love being a wife and mother, and living on this beautiful coast. I love learning. I love helping people make their lives better, especially in these uniquely personal and valuable ways.

The Birth of Bottoms Up! Pelvic Floor PT

I worked for a big outpatient hospital-affiliated clinic at first, and like several of my colleagues, found the priorities of a large healthcare company to be disagreeable and disingenuous. While I loved working with my patients and my fellow caregivers, as well as the availability of experienced mentors and trainings, the demands placed on a public hospital system by insurances, by hospital management, and by the bottom line made it impossible to treat according to my ethics and best practices in the field. I started investigating what it would mean to separate myself from that system, and branch out on my own.

Around that time I also had a pretty small toddler. When changing her diaper I have always lifted her little bottom and said, “Bottoms up!”. If I ever was going to start my own pelvic floor practice, I thought, that’s what it would have to be called.

Now, months or years later, it still just feels so right. Not at all a reference to late nights at the bar (though if that’s your goal, we’ll help you get there with a happy bladder!) or feeding ducks, it’s simply how my life and family continue to inform my practice every single day.