She built a 6-figure practice. Then she realized she wanted out.

On knowing something has to change — and not being able to make yourself do it.

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I see you. You’re a woman in healthcare whose life and career looks wildly successful on paper — respected, fully booked, partnered, financially stable —

And you still find yourself sitting alone in your car, or in the shower, or staring at the ceiling at night thinking:

“I’m not sure I can do this much longer … but I don’t know what comes next. And I don’t want to rush to the next thing simply to have a place to land … only to regret it later.”

Ooof, my friend. If that’s you – I feel you.

And chances are, allowing yourself to even dare to admit that out loud might feel suuuuuper treacherous inside your body.

So let’s do that together. Cozy up. Grab a blankie, a cuppa, and anything else that might help this land softly.

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What are you actually feeling underneath all the doing?

First, before we go anywhere in this blog – I have another invitation for you.

I want to invite you to notice what happens in your body as you read.

Notice what tightens, what softens, what feels familiar or uncomfortable.

Notice the urge to pick up your phone at any point.

Notice where you might feel seen, or confronted, or exposed.

The real exercise is just to notice. If you want to do something with that noticing, maybe keep a journal close by to jot down any notes.

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What if you’re not burned out—you’ve outgrown?

Now – I invite you to peek behind the curtain to hear a story of a client of mine, a client whose story – even if different on the surface – might feel similar to yours in some way.

Quick note: to honor and keep sacred clients’ personal stories, all stories that I share are composite stories, made up of elements of multiple clients over multiple years.

A beautiful client – let’s call her Marjorie – is a 40-something year old PT business owner.

Over the past few years, she built a super successful multi-clinician, multi-six-figure, highly specialized team in an outpatient sports and orthopaedic practice.

But over the last year or so, she has started to grapple with this little voice that has told her she is …done with it.

It says – “How could I even THINK this? I worked so hard to build this. I built a reputation. Clients love me. It’s paying me well. We are respected in the community. My team is doing great. I have control over my schedule and my income – it’s so much better than my hospital-based job that sucked the life out of me. I should be grateful!”

She thought maybe she was just burning out. So she doubled down on setting boundaries, handing over administrative and owner responsibilities to her business partner.

All the things that the self-help world will tell you to do. Not wrong things. A solid attempt at firming up the low-hanging fruit.

She is in perimenopause and thought maybe it is just her changing body, sleep, hormones, and energy affecting her capacity.

So she dove deep into that work, including the 26 supplements sorted into a pill sorter (like her 76 year old mom) that she carries with her every time she travels.

She’s explored different hobbies to create work-life balance. She’s exercising to let off steam. She’s meditating with an ironclad morning ritual. She goes to yoga, walks her dog every afternoon, and is spending quality time with her partner and kids.

All of that has helped to bring a sense of peace, but it hasn’t quieted the voice in her heart that keeps saying “it is NOT this anymore.”

That voice shows up at work more often than she would like to admit.

She finds herself watching the clock, counting down the minutes until her client sessions are over.

These were all things that never happened when she started her business.

But now they’re here. Business coaches tell her this is just what happens when you grow a team. This is what it means to be the one in charge and keeping the lights on. It’s part of the risk of doing business.

She has fixed and optimized and solved for every variable that could be “off.”

But the voice that remains – she can’t seem to solve for that. And she is terrified to really look deeper at what that voice could mean (because once she looks behind that curtain, she’s afraid she can’t unsee it).

Sound familiar? If so, keep on reading.

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What question keeps her awake at 3 AM?

A little over 6 months ago, Marjorie booked a session with me, a Soul Story Mapping session. We had worked together before, and she felt compelled to circle back to revisit.

She was back because she had seen how transformative the work was before, and she not only was grappling with that voice saying “it’s not this” – but she was also grappling with another deeper, scarier question, one that no supplement or perimenopause treatment could help when she lay awake at 3 AM with insomnia.

That question?

“If it’s not this, this thing I’ve built that is doing SO well … then WTF am I supposed to be doing with my life? And even if I figure that out, how do I prevent myself from building it and then realizing even THAT is wrong?”

She rightfully saw it and felt it as a big rabbit hole of questions.

No wonder no amount of melatonin and breathwork and nightly progesterone were helping her sleep.

That was 6 months ago. After we chatted on that session, she not only felt the courage to name what she suspected was next, but she walked away with a map to help her get there.

This map wasn’t so specific that it offered an exacting step by step plan. Nobody can predict the future, and part of why Mapping is so important is that it allows for fluidity and for the Universe to surprise you.

But to understand what that map actually does — and why it’s different from every other map she’d been handed — we need to back up for a second.

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What happens when you follow the map everyone else drew for you?

Part of what gets physical therapists in trouble in their careers is following a rigid map that is drawn by someone else, based on a pre-determined and socially & professionally acceptable set of steps.

First you get the DPT. Then the specialty certification (with or without a residency). Maybe you do a fellowship or simply do a whole lot of courses and mentorship to sub-specialize as soon as possible.

Become a highly reputable mentor to others—either teach courses or be a clinical instructor or both.

Maybe do research, teach in PT school, speak on big stages, do service trips. Once you have enough experience, leave the employee world and become an entrepreneur so you can be in charge of your schedule and your revenue. Build a team and scale. Do community or group events and programs and give back.

It’s more or less the same formula, depending on the specialty area.

Marjorie had followed that map to the letter. And it had worked for her. Until it didn’t.

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What changes when you finally say it out loud?

Soon after Marjorie had her new map, she was ready to start taking small steps. Not to burn down all that she’d built, but to start moving toward where her heart was calling her.

She was the type who often raced to the finish line and hated unfinished business. So she knew she needed support to walk this new path and forge her own trail so that she didn’t rush to the finish line, make haphazard decisions she’d regret later.

She signed on to a private client container with me – and we’ve been working together again since.

Now, she’s gone from secretly saying to herself “I don’t think it’s this anymore” to knowing and saying out loud “It’s not this…and I need to get out.”

She can’t unhear it, she can’t unsee it, and at some point, she couldn’t tolerate being in her business anymore.

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What’s the cost of rushing to certainty?

But here’s the thing that I want to pause and name out loud, especially if you’re like me (and Marjorie) and you’re built on a foundation of wiring that has you get an idea and then RUN, not walk – to implement that idea quickly and efficiently.

In Marjorie’s case, she didn’t rush to find certainty in whether she was truly done. She let it hang in uncertainty for a bit.

It was excruciating.

Even though she had a hunch that this voice was FOR REAL over 6 months ago – she took her time to finally let it land in her body so she could say it out loud with her full chest.

That’s because listening to the voice would inevitably result in a big set of consequential decisions not to be made lightly, impacting not just her life, but the lives and careers of lots of other people as well.

In the last 6 months, she’s not only slowly come into that truth, but she’s also slowly come to the realization that she doesn’t want to rush into what’s next — because she realizes for almost two decades she’s built her identity around her career and therefore having that “label” and clearly defined career container feels safe.

The old version of Marjorie would have rushed into “What’s next” – trying desperately to calm the anxiety associated with that uncertain question – throwing herself into any thing that could possibly be an answer to the question. A new certification. A new professional network. A new business mastermind. Adding a new service to her business. Adding a new team member. Hiring a marketing coordinator.

She did all of it.

This time, she paused before making any decisions, allowed herself to play on the playground with them for a bit, gathered legal and financial resources, and waited to hit “GO” until she was resourced and supported emotionally, logistically enough to say “I’m officially done here” out loud to someone who wasn’t me and her immediate friends and family.

Meanwhile, she now has a billion ideas percolating.

But she’s not yet fully intuitively in the “yes, that’s it” column with any of them.

In truth, neither of us knows where she is going nor how long it will take to get to “what’s actually next” for her.

It’s an adventure for both of us. But we’ve got the map with the themes, visions, desires of what she would like to do.

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Why does changing your mind feel like changing who you are?

Maybe you recognized yourself somewhere in Marjorie’s story.

That thing you feel when the voice gets loud — the disorientation, the low-grade dread as you walk into work, the sense that the ground has shifted underneath you but nothing in your life has technically changed for the worse —

That’s not a mindset problem, weakness, failure, burnout, or something you can think or muscle your way out of.

And the fact that you’ve been doing everything in your power to feel better — the supplements, routines, boundaries, hobbies, hormone optimization — that tells me something really important about you.

It tells me how much you want to feel good in your work and your life and that you’re a woman who cares deeply about herself and the people around her.

The problem isn’t what you’ve been doing.

It’s that none of those things can touch what’s actually happening underneath.

Because your identity lives beneath conscious thought and action.

The stories you’ve built about who you are, what you do, what you’re allowed to want — they’re not housed in the part of your brain that reads self-help books and makes vision boards. Which means editing your thoughts or adding new routines won’t touch it.

But the multibillion dollar wellness and marketing industry will definitely try and teach you that is what you need.

What you actually need is something your nervous system hasn’t had enough of: permission to be in the uncertainty without rushing to the exit with a quick answer.

Whether you consciously realize it or not — you are wired to be held, guided, and mentored into your next layer of becoming.

It’s why you might have had someone like a doula or midwife guide you through not just the process of having a baby, but who you became in the process.

It’s why you grew as a clinician with someone guiding you — not just on skills, but on the person you were behind the skills.

When you start to notice that you’re in the valley between identities — when you’re letting go of one version and stepping into another — you’ll feel disoriented.

Your nervous system is going: “Alert! Alert! Code orange! Change is on the horizon! Batten up the hatches!”

And when the body is stressed and people don’t seem to get it when you tell them you want something different, it can be really difficult to discern who to ask for tending and befriending.

Depending on how great the disorientation feels — it may feel very alluring to work with someone who offers a “guaranteed” or “quick” road out of that uncertainty.

For example, you might think, “Oh! I’ll do coaching work instead of clinical work,” then research coaching programs. This is a well-established exit point for many clinicians. It’s professionally and socially acceptable.

You might speak with someone over the phone about their program. They tell you that you will have no trouble building a coaching practice with your clinical background and expertise. They’ll tell you they will even mentor you not only to become a coach, but also to grow a business.

Two years later, you followed all their frameworks. You have a certification. You have an instagram and website. But you have no coaching clients. You’re still in the clinic. You’ve followed someone else’s map.

And if you’ve ever worked with someone who offered those kinds of guarantees — chances are you got down the road only to later learn “Shoot, this wasn’t for me” or “Shoot, this totally didn’t work out the way they said it would.”

And you feel duped, resentful, incredulous (even though you won’t admit it).

And you’ll question your own judgment and ability to discern what’s next, because when you leapt before, it didn’t work as planned. Which will freeze you. You might even question trusting mentors, since someone said they could help you, and it didn’t get you where you wanted to go.

Has that ever happened to you?

I know it has for me, countless times. And it certainly did for Marjorie.

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What if the people closest to you don’t see or support who you’re becoming?

And this brings us back to Marjorie.

A few months ago we were chatting and she “let it slip” — she is surrounded by people, but she feels so lonely. This is one reason she has hesitated to leave her practice. Because at least there, she is respected and cared for. It’s reliable, even if it’s not intimate.

I was so proud of her for saying it out loud. I could tell she was a bit surprised she did.

When I said “Oh, you’re not alone. I totally get it. I’ve been there. I am there. There’s nothing wrong with you.” Her demeanor instantly changed.

Marjorie has an amazing husband and a doting set of grandmothers who live nearby and care for her two kids. But beyond that — her work colleagues and team members aren’t necessarily what she would put in the “friend” category. They once were, but they still identify themselves by their work.

She doesn’t. This is creating a rift between them.

Especially as she grapples with the weighty decision of leaving her business — and especially as she looks at deeper identity questions that not only have to do with her work, but who she is in general.

The women she has built friendships around outside of work are still PT and healthcare colleagues. Many of them are still fully entrenched in defining themselves by their work. They seem supportive, but also don’t seem to fully get it when she tests the waters and tells them what she’s dreaming up or shows up as “non-work, non-PT Marjorie.”

They push back. Not always overtly.

Sometimes it looks like raised eyebrows.

Sometimes it’s a simple, innocent-sounding phrase like “Wow, that’s really gutsy. After all you’ve put into that business, you’re just going to shut it down?”

Sometimes it’s more overt: “How are you going to finance all of this? Don’t you have a mortgage to pay?”

Sometimes it’s passive aggressive: “Wow, must be nice to have all this money in your business and be able to dream up what’s next. I still have student loans and kids’ schools to pay for. I could never afford to just let it all go.”

So in her friendships — she feels she can no longer be herself. She holds her cards close to her heart.

That’s why our work together is so instrumental. I’m a PT. I get it. Her sharing the highs and lows of what she is sensing and feeling doesn’t freak me out or surprise me.

And it’s this relational safety which is the part that most women in healthcare are missing when they’re trying to make their next bold move.

It could be that they ARE working with mentors — but those mentors are encouraging them to take steps that really don’t align with what they truly want. Maybe their mentors say their big idea won’t sell, or is too nuanced for anyone to understand. Maybe they’re in a mastermind full of women who say they support each other, but secretly compete with each other behind the scenes.

They join the PT business coaching groups — they follow someone else’s framework to build their brick and mortar practice. It works. But they also tell me “I know I don’t really want to do this. I have a bigger dream — coaching, online business, or staying home with my kids. I’m just doing this because it pays the bills, it works, and I don’t yet feel like I can let go of this PT identity.”

This is why I love working with women who are in this messy middle.

I’m in it too. I have been since I took the leap out of mainstream healthcare practice 10 years ago.

I have seen relationships I thought would be Ride or Dies fizzle away as soon as I dared to step even an inch out of the familiar professional roles and boxes.

I have seen people come and go — colleagues, clients, mentors, besties — who just don’t seem to get or support the “Me” I became and am becoming, and how I make intentional choices to reflect that in my work that don’t fit into the narratives they have written in their own systems, minds, and hearts.

This is a normal part of all relationships of course. They come and go. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sometimes come with an enormous amount of grief, anger, and a deep reckoning and reorientation to what a true friendship and true supportive companion actually looks like for me and my clients who experience it too.

It has also come with a beautiful, soul-filling, deeply held emergence of people who CAN hold all of you. Cherished mentorships, friendships, and colleagues who have walked the path. Who get it. Who have sunk into the valley, felt the disorientation, risen, and swum again.

(Give you one guess where the name of my podcast, Sink and Swim, came from.)

We love to rush to the final, finished version of ourselves or grasp on to identities and relationships we’ve outgrown to feel a semblance of belonging and avoid the anxiety of being in the in-between. It’s human nature.

Your nervous system — and its inherent need for identity and belonging — is built to exist with labels, boxes, and soft containers in which to land.

But it’s the stories of the becoming that show the real magic. And in that messy, unlabeled process — you need somewhere (and someone) to hold you when you don’t fit into any neat boxes.

Someone who doesn’t need you to rush or get it done in their 3-month “go from 0 to 100K or get your money back” program.

That’s me.

Marjorie’s story isn’t finished. And neither is yours. Or mine.

She’s got a long way to go, and it’s such an honor to hold her while she’s in this messy, undefined, terrifying-yet-invigorating middle.

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Why knowing what's next isn't enough — and what actually gets you moving

If any part of Marjorie's story landed in your body — this next part is for you.

I need you to hear something first.

Here’s another invitation to sense what comes up in your body when you read it.

You are not doing anything wrong.

The supplements, morning routine, boundary-setting, delegation, therapy, business mentors, perimenopause deep dive, yoga, dog walks — all of it made sense.

All of it was you doing exactly what a smart, resourced, solution-oriented woman does when something feels off.

You were solving the problem the way you’ve always solved problems. Which is exactly what you’re supposed to do.

The problem isn’t that you chose wrong. It’s that nobody handed you the right map for solving this kind of problem.

And without the right map, it’s like being an athlete who shows up every single day, trains hard, does everything she’s supposed to — and keeps hitting a wall because she’s training on low iron stores without enough carbs. She’s not doing anything wrong. She’s just missing the right nutrients.

And in this case, you can’t get those nutrients from supplementing alone. You have to receive them from other people.

The nutrient comes in the co-regulation, not the self-regulation.

You’ve been self-regulating beautifully. But you’re missing the “co-” part.

That’s why this feels so hard. You keep trying to source the nutrients from people who don’t have the capacity to hold you in this transition — and coming up empty. Not because you’re asking too much.

Because they genuinely don’t have what you need right now. That’s not a character flaw in them or in you. It’s just a mismatch.

And I already know what your brain is doing right now.

Ok. I hear you. So how do I get the co-regulation? What’s the protocol? What are the steps?

There isn’t a protocol, love. I know that’s not what your science and medical mind wants to hear. But I love that you’re asking — because it means you’re ready.

For the sake of giving that part of you somewhere to start, here’s what I’ve watched actually move women across this threshold — the unglamorous, unsexy nutrients that most business coaches and Instagram memes will never tell you about.

1. You need a map that moves you forward, not a plan that keeps you circling

Your nervous system cannot settle into uncertainty without at least a compass. Not a destination — a compass. Something that orients you to where you are, what you’re releasing, and what’s pulling you forward, so the alert-alert-code-orange can move back into green light mode.

This is the step most ambitious women skip — not because they’re careless, but because they think they already have it figured out. But the map you’ve been following is the one that led you here. You need a new one — one that fits who you are becoming now, not the one your industry, profession, family, or all three handed you.

And it’s impossible to do this alone when your system is wired to default to the old map. This is why doing this in co-regulation with someone who can point out your blind spots, illuminate doorways you don’t see yourself, and encourage the realest parts of you to be heard and seen — is so essential.

It isn’t a waste of time. It’s the single most important thing you’ll do.

2. You need a financial safety system, not just a sense of your numbers that stresses you out

Part of the alert-alert-code-orange firing in your body is tied not just to orientation safety, but to financial safety. And most women I work with don’t just have an unclear sense of what they need financially — they have an outsized read on it.

They think they need to be making so much more than they actually do in order to support themselves and their family. And because they can’t see another way to generate that income other than what they’re doing now, or what they want to do next, they stay frozen between the two.

What they can’t see is that there’s almost always something in between. Something that might even be their current work — just restructured, reduced, or redirected. A stepping stone that gives them cash flow and feels palatable while they build toward what’s next.

Having a conversation about this with someone who isn’t financially dependent on you — and therefore not triggered by your curiosity and courage to step outside your current financial plan — is a really key piece.

Because money is one of those topics your system is primed and conditioned to avoid. Having someone to walk that terrain with you matters enormously.

3. You need an honest read on your people and who is coming along with you

This is the nutrient most women are missing — and the one they’re most ashamed to admit they’re missing.

Who in your life can actually see you right now? Not the version of you that makes sense to them. The you that is becoming.

Because here’s what happens: you feel the dissonance. You sense something shifting. And you reach out — to your colleagues, your friends, your partner — and you try to test the waters, share what you’re dreaming up, show up as the version of you that doesn’t quite fit the old box anymore.

And they don’t get it. Sometimes it’s a raised eyebrow. Sometimes it’s “must be nice.” Sometimes it’s genuine love wrapped in genuine fear that sounds a lot like “but you’ve worked so hard for this.”

So you stop sharing. You hold your cards close. You stay in the thing that makes sense to people because it feels unbearable to keep being misunderstood.

And you feel alone in a life that is very, very full.

“Shame loves lying, hiding, and secrecy,” says Brene Brown. She's right.

And the loneliness of carrying this without witnesses — without people who can hold you in your fullest self without flinching — is one of the most significant reasons women like you stay stuck.

Not because you lack courage or conviction to move and take action. But because courage and action and conviction requires co-regulation. It requires being seen.

And so — I want to be that person for you. The one who gets it, who has walked it, who won’t flinch.

That’s where we start.

This is exactly what we do together in a Soul Story Mapping session.

We map your compass and direction – who you are becoming, what you’re desiring and craving, what’s important to you and why, and what slowly needs to come to a close.

We map your financial picture — what you need, what the bridge job or what your transition in your work looks like, what’s actually possible between here and there.

And we map your relational picture – who’s going to be there with you, who isn’t, and what relational support you might need to navigate the shifts ahead.

For the women who want to take the map and make it come alive with support every step of the way — that work then continues in Soul Story Alchemy, my private ongoing container.

But it starts here. And I'd love to walk across this threshold with you. If something in you felt a tug - Book your Soul Story Mapping session now.

Got questions? Don't hesitate to reach out any time.

May you feel oriented, supported, and clear as you move into your next chapter,