I came here to remember who I am.

Dogwood Beach grew from the practices I needed when life changed my body, my sense of time, and the way I understood healing.

Before Dogwood Beach, I was a lawyer, yoga teacher, and musician. In 2023, at age 36, I found a lump and was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was one year younger than my mother had been when she received her first stage IV breast cancer diagnosis. 

Navigating breast cancer, caregiving, and burnout changed my relationship with my body, my work, and the way I wanted to spend my time. The question became less about what I could accomplish and more about how I want to live each moment of each day.

Cancer does not arrive with a tidy lesson. There is fear, uncertainty, and the work of finding one's way in a changed body. Burnout brings its own reckoning: recognizing that being able to keep going is not always the same as being well.

To be clear, practicing yoga and meditation did not make the hard parts disappear. Instead, they gave me a way to stay true to myself while I moved through them, moment by moment, breath by breath. On some days, my practice was one of movement. Other days, it meant sitting quietly outside, listening to the water, or letting rest be enough. The most important thing I learned to do was to listen to myself.

Changing my life meant making more room for these practices—for nature, creativity, and work rooted in presence and compassion. It meant listening differently, rather than treating my body as something to push through or challenge without discernment. It meant integrating the concept of slowing down into my daily life, instead of just intellectualizing it. It has never been easy, yet finding ways to transmute the pain and grief of cancer through cultivating awareness of self has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my professional and personal life. 

Dogwood Beach grew from that change.

Today, as a 500+hour registered yoga teacher, I offer the kind of space I needed: somewhere you can be tired, uncertain, grieving, or beginning again without having to explain yourself into belonging.

I share these practices not because I have finished healing or figured everything out, but because I know how much it matters to have somewhere soft to land.