I walked into my first classroom as an educational assistant the year I graduated high school. That was over 40 years ago. I'm still showing up.

Over those decades, I wasn't just teaching. I was learning. Every single day. There were big emotions and hard days. There was also so much laughter and so many kids who taught me more than I ever taught them.

Some of them had high needs. As the years went on and the world kept shifting underneath families, I watched more and more of them struggle. With regulation. With attention. With just finding their footing in a space that wasn't built for the way their brains worked. I became a certified teacher and spent years in Kindergarten, then Grades 4, 5, and 8, working closely with the kids and families who needed someone to really see them.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I realized something quiet but important: the tools I was teaching those kids were the exact same tools the adults around them were desperate for too.

So I kept learning. For over 20 years now, I've been a certified yoga instructor. I've trained in Iyengar, Anusara, and Hatha yoga. I've studied energy medicine, breathwork, self-regulation, mindfulness, and Celtic Shamanism. I became a certified Healing Arts Practitioner. I completed my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training. I did 300 hours of training through the Mehrit Institute in self-regulation alone.

But none of that is the part that matters most.
The part that matters most is that I have lived it. The burnout. The giving until there's nothing left. The imposter syndrome. The loss. The grief. Mental and physical exhaustion. Financial worries. Caring for children. Caring for aging parents. Family far away. I have been in all of those rooms.

And I built my way back. One brick at a time. It was slow and it was real and it was full of lessons I didn't always want to learn. But brick by brick, I started to reintroduce myself to myself.

Foundations for YOUR Wellness was born from that. I didn't plan it. I didn't sit down one day and decide to start a business. I just kept walking and recording voice memos and writing things on sticky notes, and one day I looked up and realized that everything I had learned was the thing you might be searching for.

This is the space I wish someone had given me. And I'm so glad I get to offer it to you.

Cheri's Story