I spent five years training women, and I kept noticing the same thing. What was happening in a woman’s body was never only about her body.

Between sets, she’d tell me about the grief, the marriage, the exhaustion, the pressure. I could help with her strength. I couldn’t help with the rest. So I went back to school for the other half and earned my master’s in clinical mental health counseling.

Then I became a mother myself. I planned a peaceful home birth. After more than 50 hours of labor, my daughter was born in the hospital instead. I wrote the whole story down within a week and thought I had processed it. Months later, it still surfaces, and I realized that my experiences impact my day-to-day and worldview in a greater way than I had even realized.. Motherhood is another life experience that changed who I am, and it’s a new invitation to let the old version of me go.

That’s why I believe the big transitions in a woman’s life can’t be simplified to mental health disorders. I view them more as thresholds.

Becoming a mother, raising kids through every stage, starting a new career, caring for aging parents, moving into perimenopause: these can shake you to your core without meaning anything is wrong with you. You deserve someone who understands your body and your mind, and who won’t rush you through either.