The WEIGHT WE CARRY
I know the immense weight of grief, depression and PTSD. I tried my best to sit with my emotions on a bathroom floor, in a cabin in the woods with my forehead leaning on the base of the top bunk bed to hold me up.
I’m sharing my story because I believe in the path back to your body, to your strength, to yourself and for that path to feel a little less impossible to move through when you know somebody else has walked a similar path.
The Descent
I had been working full-time with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) for about eighteen months when in August 2022, I was contracted to supervise students during a 10-day Wilderness First Responder (WFR) course followed by a backpacking expedition with the same cohort. At the same time, I was also recertifying my WFR credentials. By a twisted fate, none of us were anticipating that the emergency scenarios we practiced at the Wyss Campus would soon be put into practice in the field.
Jack Murphy was the first student I had met from this cohort. I was in the lobby of the main building at the Wyss and Jack came in ready and determined post-workout. As the WFR progressed, I was intrigued to meet his parents to let them know what an amazing job they did parenting as he represented the kind of son I would be proud to call my own. I vividly remember witnessing the last conversation the Murphy’s had with Jack as he facetimed them seated on the cabin stairs with a big smile on his face. I wanted to introduce myself and tell them how beautifully they had raised their son, but I chose not to interrupt and kept walking toward my cabin. Inevitably, the worst-case scenario forced my introduction anyway. It was day four of a 30-day backpacking expedition when a fatal lightning strike took Jack’s life.
A few weeks later I returned to NOLS Alaska to plant a tree in Jack's memory. I wanted to honor him as Alaska is a place I knew he loved so deeply, yet I struggled to process such profound sadness within the very community and landscape that had once opened my heart so fully. Amidst that isolation, I found solace in two friends: Mack and Eli.
I was the first person Eli had met at NOLS, and back in April of 2022, we had joined the same mountaineering seminar. Eli became the one person in the NOLS community with whom I could transparently grieve. When I broke down, bawling my eyes out in front of everyone and struggling to find words for Jack, Eli was there. He was the first to help me place dirt around the roots of the tree.
Months later after returning to Seattle, I found myself sitting on my bathroom floor, desperately trying to sit with my grief the way I had read and heard about. Craving a shift and open to exploring psychedelics therapeutically, I consumed four grams of psilocybin in the San Juan Islands. That journey did not fix everything, but it gave me something crucial back: the ability to look at trees without feeling a dull void and the crushing weight of depression. Very slowly, my nervous system began to remember feelings other than grief, though the healing process took much longer than I ever expected.
A Pattern of Loss
Three months later, on November 11th, my high school track coach, David VonBrethorst, passed away from gallbladder cancer. He was a man with whom I shared countless fond memories. David spent his final months chasing his dream of becoming a professional golfer. Tragically, just two days after his passing, his widow received a letter from the PGA: he passed his written and practical exam to officially become a pro golfer. I sobbed for months, heartbroken that he never got to read those words. However, I know one thing for certain… going pro was a mindset for Von. It took four EMDR sessions to ease the tears. But the losses kept coming.
That winter, I traveled to Patagonia to instruct two NOLS courses. There, I spent valuable time with Eli between the courses we worked.
While working in Patagonia, I lost both of my grandparents just three weeks apart, each passing during a different expedition. During a sea kayaking course, my co-leader Fabio looked at me with deep empathy and said, “You’re going through a lot of grief right now in your life.” He was right. In May 2023, just one month after my grandmother Joy’s funeral, I was back home in Seattle when I received two back-to-back calls from Mack. With zero hesitation I got up to answer the phone as I was working at a new job but knew this was a call to answer. Mack informed me that Eli and another NOLS friend, Nafiun, had died from a 5000 foot fall due to an avalanche while climbing Moose’s Tooth in Denali National Park. For nearly two years, from August 2022 to May 2024, I cried an unimaginable amount. By the one-year anniversary of Eli and Nafiun's deaths, I hit a wall. Utterly exhausted by the continuous, heavy grief, I simply couldn't cry anymore. I shoved the remaining pain deep down inside.
Today, I understand through visceral feedback that the body truly keeps the score. From a lightning strike to a fatal fall, a bittersweet letter unread by a pro athlete, and the early loss of my identity as an outdoor leader… my heart was shattered. My mind spiraled into a cycle of deep ruminations, trapping me in relentless tears, isolation, anger, hypervigilance, and a total loss of joy.
The Turn
I returned to my yoga mat to reconnect with myself through movement, and soon after, I discovered Pilates Inspired by Von, I also showed up to test the limits of my strength. I kept asking myself: If Von can literally go pro at the end of his life, what can I do with this body? If I were to live until 47-years-old just like him, what can I do with my remaining time in this one wild and precious life?
What I didn’t expect was how deeply committing to movement would change me.
Slowly, over many months, my resilience grew. Through intentional pilates movements and a mindful yoga practice, I became the most physically strong I have ever been. This strength didn't grow because the grief was gone, but because movement became my emotional outlet. And my nervous system, which had been running at full volume, finally began to regulate.
However, I could still tell I needed deeper support to process my compounded grief and ruminations.
That was when I began ketamine-assisted therapy. I share this openly because many are helped by healing modalities that carry stigma. This therapeutic approach lifted a weight I could not move on my own, providing an outlet for releasing deep-seated grief that willpower and exercise alone couldn't touch.
My body transformed, and I felt a profound internal reconnection. The capable body I thought I had lost—the one that had carried heavy packs through the backcountry and performed CPR for two hours—was returning. It felt different this time: more connected, more present, and entirely mine.
Yoga gave me one piece of healing, and Pilates gave me another. I needed them both. But as my body changed, I often felt misunderstood in fitness settings. What people saw was a curated physical aesthetic. In reality, the only thing I was showing up for was hidden within the privacy of my own heart.
I needed to regulate, reconnect and rebuild.
What the Wilderness Taught Me
Mother nature doesn't give a f%*& about your liability paperwork.
After experiencing an immense amount of grief with zero negligence, I am far less inclined to lead people outside under my own name or business. The wilderness taught me its rawest lesson: We are not in control. Sometimes the bravest thing is knowing where to redirect your gifts and therefore I decided to let go of a long-time dream of leading my own outdoor wellness retreats.
My purpose and vision has been redirected back to the mat. In a practice I could not have built before I was broken. It’s taken me a few years to fully realize and embrace the unexpected gift of trauma.
Who I Am Now
I live in Seattle, Washington teaching yoga and pilates and I am also a Psychedelic Integration Guide with Mindbloom.
I carry Jack, Eli, Nafiun, and Von in my heart — not as weight anymore, but as reason.
The practice I teach now is the practice that brought me back. Unlike the yoga I taught before, which was focusing on movement and breath as a meditation, this practice comes from wanting to get up off the bathroom floor.
After having been in the descent and finding slowly, the way up… I am here to lead others back into.
I have created movement courses called Regulate, Reconnect, Rebuild because that's the exact sequence my own body took. First, my body needed to recalibrate safety back into my nervous system that had forgotten what safety felt like. Then slowly reconnect to sensation: the simple aliveness of mindfully moving in a body again and the burn of pushing myself. Then rebuild — with precision and intention — the strength that proves you're resilient, strong and capable.
To the Ones I Carry
To Jack, Eli, Nafiun and Von,
You are not forgotten. You have given me reason. You are the reason I am transparent about suffering and honest about healing. You are the reason I believe in the power of movement and the medicines that help us process the unprocessable.
To my Grandparents, Uncle Glenn and Chetta… here’s to carrying on the light.
And to Danny… a friend and Crossfit buddy I had while living in Japan (who I beat during a WOD sprint ;) once said,
“You have no idea how strong you are.”
I was rather shocked to hear him say this and eagerly asked, “What do you see?!”
He confidently replied,“You’ll have to find out for yourself.”
To anyone reading this who is carrying their own heavy grief,
I feel you. I know what it’s like to be on the bathroom floor, crying for years. I know the paralyzing depression of spending two solid weeks in bed, only getting up to use the bathroom or eat to quiet the hunger. I know the exhaustion of waking up with tears already streaming down your face, and the constant challenge of trying to hide tears throughout the day. A single song with a certain frequency on the way to the grocery store or a yoga class could completely undo me.
I learned firsthand that the stages of grief and depression are not linear. I lived the hypervigilance, the anger, and the crushing weight of PTSD. About a year and a half after Jack passed, I was invited back into the field to guide the Murphy family to the exact spot where he had been struck by lightning. Upon receiving this invitation, all the grief I had tried to shove down surged up viscerally from the depths of my core, releasing in an uncontrollable, sobbing cry. It plunged me right back into a paralyzing depression. Yet I knew I wanted to go and being out there with his family taught me something invaluable: the profound, transformative power of healing in community.
As I say to my Mindbloom clients, “Honor your Process”. Through the tears, embracing the small moments of doing and when something in your body settles or shifts.
If you find yourself called to move your body to help process your emotions…. start here. → [The Free 10-Minute Somatic Reset]
You can also go here to learn more about the practice. → [ Regulate . Reconnect . Rebuild ]
