I grew up the youngest of nine on a farm in rural Minnesota in a fundamentalist religion. TV, music, dancing, birth control, and questioning were considered sin. I left at 21 and eventually found my way to New York City, where I've spent the last two decades building a life that was unimaginable to the girl I used to be.
Along the way, I became a personal trainer, a doula, an Emmy-nominated television personality, a graduate student, and a podcast producer. Eventually I ran out of ways to avoid becoming a writer. So here I am, telling the truth about where I came from, and helping women live well in the bodies that carry them through it.
For 21 years I’ve trained women through pregnancy, postpartum, cancer recovery, and menopause. I’ve navigated my own perimenopause, badly at first and then better, and NPR and Elektra Health have both featured that story. These days, I split my time between training a select group of women, speaking and consulting on women’s health, producing podcasts about the craft of life writing, and working on my own books.
I have an MA in Biography & Memoir from CUNY Graduate Center and a BA in English/Creative Writing and Black Studies from City College, where I graduated summa cum laude.
I live in New York City with my husband James and our dog.