The portable table
I left the way a lot of practitioners leave a bad situation: without a plan. The man I worked for as an associate tried to enforce a non-compete by calling every clinic in town. He was toxic in ways that eventually caught up with him; he ended up in jail not long after I walked out. I didn't have anywhere to go. I had a son, born five weeks early, because the toxic stress of staying in that situation had become the kind of stress that can trigger labor.
A naturopath took me in. A room to rent at a low rate, a portable table borrowed for the occasion, a six-week-old strapped to my chest. I didn't know what I was doing. So I did what everyone told me to do, catering to the needs of everyone but myself.
Seven figures and no boundaries
I took insurance because everyone took insurance. I worked twelve-hour days because that's what you were supposed to do. I followed the blueprint, because it was the only map anyone had handed me. Within five years, to the outside world, it looked like I had arrived: seven figures a year in billables, a 6,000-square-foot building, a team of twelve.
The version of me that could adjust a patient was confident. The version of me that was supposed to lead a team, run payroll, and carry a building's worth of overhead had never solidified an identity of her own.
The audit
One of the two payers that made up half my practice's income audited me. I'd done everything by the book. They recouped hundreds of thousands of dollars, with no recourse on my end. Somewhere in the middle of that, the wrist that had bothered me my entire career finally got looked at. It was torn in six places. I filed for bankruptcy, left the profession, and retreated to my house for three years. I told people I'd retired. I was 36. Truthfully, I was too broken, physically and emotionally, to keep going, and I didn't know how to fix myself. It took six years to get there.
Every move was a reactive one
I collected certifications. I built real success as a virtual women's functional medicine health coach. Every one of those moves was a reactive decision, born out of the pain of what I'd been through. I burned out again, and finally stepped back long enough to ask different questions. That's where the practice beneath the practice took shape: not as a theory, but as the only way I found my way back to myself.
Practicing again, with a new identity
I got my license back in 2024. I still practice, this time built with resistance, the good kind, the kind that shows up when you're actually present for your own decisions. And I help other chiropractic practice owners build the freedom, confidence, and certainty I had to walk through the fire to learn.