The Origin Story

The origin of Root-to-Rise Occupational Therapy LLC is founded in my time working in a pediatric outpatient DIR/Floortime clinic for a little over five years. This was my first job out of graduate school and it is formative to the occupational therapist (OT) and person that I am today. In my time working at this clinic, I noticed a pattern: something would happen, I’d get an email or phone call from a parent, and I’d see their child later in the week.

example:

“I was late to work again this morning because my child would not get dressed for school in the clothes we laid out last night that they said they would put on without me having to yell at them. But that’s not what happened, I knew it wouldn’t, we’ve been at this for 2 weeks now and nothing is helping. After they finally got dressed, there wasn’t time to eat breakfast so we had to eat in the car and they forgot their snow pants at home. I was running late already and couldn’t go back and get them so that resulted in a full-blown tantrum in the drop-off line, I cannot keep doing this. Something needs to change.”

-signed frustrated parent on Monday morning

I don’t see their child until Thursday afternoons and I have zero emotional baggage with their kid, I get to hang out with them in a sensory-friendly gym and practice following multi-step directions and organizational skills by making slime in the kitchen. I’m not there in the heat of the fire with transitions to school from home. My efforts at the clinic were helpful, my relationship with parents was crucial to working towards effective goals, and there were missed opportunities to offer support where it was needed real-time. I saw this play out over-and-over. I was stuck in a system that wasn’t as effective as I wanted to be in working with families.

So, I made some changes. The first change was a personal one, I was born and raised in the midwest and knew I needed to get to the mountains. In August of 2023, I moved here to Bend, Oregon with my black lab. The next change I wanted to make was to bring to fruition this vision I had of doing the kind of work I wanted to do without the constraints of working with insurance where I was limited on location of sessions, length of sessions, number of sessions, etc. Root-to-Rise is informed by my extensive trainings in both yoga and Reiki as well and serves the mission of holistic wellness I’ve held near and dear to me for many years.

My passion lies in getting messy in the real stuff—going to the roots of whatever is going on so there is a solid foundation from which the collective is empowered to rise.

So, here we are, and right where we need to be.