My Story

For as long as I can remember, something inside me ached for adventure, a quiet longing to see beyond the edges of what I knew. As a child, I devoured magazines, tracing my fingers over distant landscapes, memorizing colors from films that painted the world in light and shadow. From quiet beaches to bustling cities, I wanted to drink it all in. I wanted to belong to it all.

But life, as it does, pressed in. Responsibilities stacked like stones, and for a time, I believed travel was beyond my reach. I told myself I was too busy, that I didn’t have the resources. School. Student loans. A small child. Looking back, I see the truth: I had a choice—I just didn’t yet understand what travel would mean to me. I didn’t know it would reshape me from the inside out. And so, I said no.

Until I didn’t.

After school, I merged my work with my longing. As a nurse anesthetist, I traveled on medical missions, stepping into places far from home but strangely familiar. Seventeen missions across the Caribbean, Central America, South America, Africa, and Asia. In these places, I got to see the world—and also I feel it. I learned connection in a way that cannot be known as a tourist passing through. I witnessed lives so different from my own, yet deeply the same. And in those lessons, I found the kind of gratitude that humbles you to your knees.

There are moments in life that shift the ground beneath you, altering everything to come. Mine came on a flight over Africa, staring down at Mt. Kilimanjaro. I looked at that mountain and said, I am going to climb that. It was almost laughable—I was the woman in high heels and lipstick, someone more at home in a city than the wilderness. And yet, I was also the woman who craved the unknown, who was unafraid to leap. A year later, I made that dream come true, and as I stood on that mountain, I did not yet know that my world would never be the same. My love for the mountains, for wild places, for the unshakable knowing that I am stronger than I knew—that love has carried me ever since.

At the same time, yoga was weaving its way into my life. First, to heal my body from the abuse I subjected it to in an effort to make it small. Then, as it always does, to heal everything else. It became another kind of home, one that allowed me to soften, to listen, to expand. Teaching yoga was a natural extension of my path, and it didn’t take long to see how travel and yoga—two of my deepest loves—belonged together.

For me, travel has never been about checking boxes. It has been my greatest teacher. It has shown me who I am in the waiting, in the uncertainty, in the missed flights and wrong turns. It has revealed my strength when standing before an impossible climb, and my doubt when I’m unsure I can take the next step. It has taught me that courage and fear often exist in the same breath. And, it has shown me the power of women coming together—how we reflect each other’s light, and how we rise when we allow ourselves to be seen.

This is why I lead retreats. To not simply travel but to experience the world. To feel it move through you, to let it change you. To return home knowing yourself in a way you never have before.

Because when you say yes to yourself, everything shifts. You walk differently. You live differently. You know who you are. The world can see it…and so can you.

Say yes. You deserve it.