I grew up in a home with...

holy things mixed up with hard edges. My family was sacred in the ways that mattered: we went caroling in the neighborhood during the holidays, ate donuts after mass on Sundays, and tended to each other with fierce loyalty. We were also, quietly, dysfunctional. Love and hurt braided together so tightly I didn't always know which was which. Those early contradictions taught me how to hold complexity: to sit with tenderness and with the parts that needed repair. 

I was born the eldest of four daughters - a role that carries both weight and wisdom. From a young age, I felt an innate pull to care for others, to step in, to soothe, to lead - a responsibility stitched into my being. Looking back, I see how that role shaped me: watchful, attuned, both protector and guide.

But it wasn't just duty - it was empathy. I was always the one who felt the unspoken currents in the room, who sensed where the hurt lived, who wanted to soften the edges of someone else's pain. Some might call it sensitivity; I've come to understand it as being a healing empath. That ability - to feel deeply and to translate those feelings into care - has always been both my gift and my work.

That call led me to nursing, and eventually into the cardiac pediatric intensive care unit in both my home state and then across the country. There, my instinct to hold, to translate, to comfort became my daily practice. The calm in the storm, carrying both clinical precision and emotional presence for families whose lives had been upended. But the constancy of that role - the adrenaline, the sorrow, and the endless nights - slowly carved away at my own reserves. Like so many caregivers, I faced burnout: a deep exhaustion that no amount of rest could fix.

In my early twenties..

I stumbled into a yoga class, desperate for some sense of release from the heaviness of my work and personal struggles. What began as a way to move my body became something much deeper: a practice of presence, grounding, and repair. Yoga taught me how to listen to myself as much as I listened to others. It became a form of medicine that helped me soften, breathe, and return to myself. Eventually, I pursued yoga teacher training - not to leave nursing, but to weave a more holistic language of healing into my job.

When I stepped into my training as a family nurse practitioner, I began to see how these threads connected. Adults and families - especially parents - were carrying chronic stress and illness that could not be treated with prescriptions alone. Their lives reflected exhaustion, poor sleep, overwork, and disconnection. I realized that the same practices that had sustained me - nutrition, movement, rest, and mindfulness - were the very tools my patients needed, yet rarely received guidance in. 

At the same time, my research into maternal mental health confirmed what I had always sensed, even through my own maternal lines: mothers in particular are holding too much with too little support. One in five experience maternal mental health challenges, yet access to care remains inconsistent and fragmented. Families deserve more than crisis management - they deserve prevention, community, and a place where their wellbeing is held as sacred. 

My response to that need...?

 Sundáy Mums.  It is weaving together my lived experience as the eldest daughter, my years at the bedside, my way of listening deeply, my yoga practice, and my nurse practitioner training in family wellness. It's a village where evidence meets emapthy, where the sacredness of family life is honored alongside its struggles, and where women and families are supported in creating lifestyls that sustain - not deplete - them.