About Us

First and foremost, let me tell you a little about our loves.

Fletcher and Max:

Fletcher is a wickedly smart six-year-old. He was an early walker and an early talker and has been asking question upon question ever since. He is endlessly inquisitive and often uses his body to explore his curiosity. He is all gross motor – loves crashing, jumping, climbing, swinging, flipping, bouncing and dancing – all which provide his body with the sensory input it needs. He has always been insanely coordinated, light on his feet and incredibly sensitive when he is emotionally regulated. He can read people with an amazing adult-like intuition and often “feels” for them. He is about as social as they come and isn’t one to enjoy independent play. Fletch wasn’t a great sleeper as a baby. We’d frequently walk him in the stroller, in the front pack or drive him around in the car to get him to sleep. He needed that constant motion to help him settle in. The calm that motion provides has been a common theme for him as he’s gotten older. He was done being snuggled at about nine months and from that point he literally hit the ground running. So much to see, so much to do. He loves weighted blankets, tight squeezes and often sleeps under a compression sheet.    Fletcher experiences life through his senses and notices EVERYTHING.  Someone missing an earring, furniture rearranged or pictures repositioned on a wall, a tiny little freckle on your arm.  He has always had a keen sense of smell and hearing and keys into things that don’t even register with my husband and me.  He keeps us on our toes in that way.  Fletcher is very concerned with time and likes knowing what comes next – and then what he can expect after that.  He has this charm that makes other kids around his age gravitate towards him which is perfect because he loves nothing more than to be in the midst of his buddies.

Max, three, was the easiest baby. With his calm and sweet demeanor, he was carted all over the place and he mostly just smiled and coo’d, always happy to be held and snuggled. Born via emergency c-section because he was breech (more on this later), Max had a bit of a challenging start with a brief stay in the NICU. He crawled and walked later than average and currently uses an assistive communication device in lieu of speech, which he is working really hard to develop. He is super bright and what he may lack in audible words, he makes up for in his own creative ways of communicating his needs. There is rarely a time we don’t know exactly what he needs or wants. He has a sly sense of humor, loves to play independently and is very protective of all of his senses. He’s not as quick to engage with people he doesn’t know as his brother who will shout “hello” across the street and down the block if he sees another human. Max knows his limits and will seek out a quiet refuge when things feel too over stimulating. While he loves bubbles, climbing and being around any kind of water, he finds the most joy when he’s swinging – even in the rain.

Both of our boys struggle with sensory integration. Both are sensory-seekers, but they seek sensory input in very different ways. This means that we don’t have a one-size-fits-all approach to sensory regulation in our family. Instead, we are challenged to be agile in our approach – to pivot on a moment’s notice and to embrace the fact that what works with one of our boys on a given day may not be the most effective the next. This provides its challenges.  Like Fletcher, I, too, like to know what to expect.  I’m routine oriented and like structure so have struggled at times with the unpredictability of sensory processing disorder.  I have found, though, that the ticket to success is having loads of tools in our toolbox, learning how to be flexible, letting go of needing to have control over every situation (our kiddos like to share in some of that!) and embracing the support of therapists who show up with their own creativity and innovation when we can’t seem to find ours.

Now a little bit about me:

A midwesterner to my core, I love the idea of finding my people and loving them hard – and I live by that.  I’m the oldest of 4 girls with a fierce love of family and friends.  I enjoy being in nature, finding fun ways to be active, being surrounded by my gigantic extended family, yoga, good coffee and have recently discovered a love for dogs. (My husband credits himself with my relatively new affinity for coffee, dogs and bacon – one might wonder how I even lived before him, ha!). 

I am married to a barbecue-enthusiast educator with a passion for anything football.  When he’s not teaching or helping student athletes figure out their path forward, he can be found fearlessly experimenting with new seasonings, sauces or brines in preparation for his next “big cook.”  This guy is happiest when he’s feeding the masses.

In the midst of learning about and navigating sensory processing disorder along with my family, I have spent the last few years trying to rediscover and redefine who I am.  At the end of 2018, I left a my full-time job of 15 years to be able to spend more time with our boys – having little idea of what was on the horizon.  I absolutely loved my co-workers – many of whom became some of my closest friends, and I enjoyed my work.  I had been in my position long enough that work made sense to me.  It gave me an opportunity to be creative and innovative, harness my leadership skills and collaborate with colleagues on some really fun projects.  I had a quiet office that I traveled to each day after dropping the boys off at school or daycare and no matter how challenging the mornings had been, I found great comfort in the structure and stability that work provided.  I didn’t realize how much I relied on my dear colleagues for support during the beginning of our most difficult season as a family so struggled with my transition to being home despite still working a few part-time roles.

Pre-pandemic, my husband and I loved finding fun new local places to eat, spending time with family and friends and attending sporting events.  Now, we’re finding out that we do really love being home and have worked to make the best of the challenges the pandemic has presented.  We live within a few miles of both sets of our parents and most of our siblings and are grateful for the support that provides for us and our children – we know we’re very lucky in that regard.

I’m over here loving joggers and cozy sweatshirts while trying to make sense of the many seasons of sensory processing disorder and how to ensure all of us get to live our best lives.  

Our Journey

It started with football games… or so we thought.  From little on Fletcher was a football enthusiast and loved going to watch his daddy coach high school football under the Friday Night Lights.  Games were his favorite…until they weren’t.  What he looked forward to as a two-year-old became an anxiety-inducing experience when he was three.  His poor little body was so torn – he wanted so badly to watch his dad on the sidelines and high-five his favorite players, but when we’d get to the stadium, he’d melt into a puddle – sometimes it was just a little rain storm and others it was total tsunami.  I wanted to honor his desire to go, but also prevent a traumatizing experience.  We made it into one game that season.  It was the playoff game and he wanted to be there so badly.  We prepped him all week, talked about wearing his noise cancelling headphones and figured out a few other strategies that would work.  And they did for that game.

My beloved aunt saw a photo of us from the game and thought to gently ask about how we were doing.  I explained Fletcher’s struggles that season.  Having a career’s worth of knowledge working with individuals experiencing sensory integration challenges, she mentioned that there may be value in having him evaluated by an occupational therapist.  For a long time, we thought that conversation is what started everything for us, but the reality is that our journey with SPD began long before we realized. You know how hindsight works… now we can see it so clearly.   

For at least a year prior, we were dealing with tremendous meltdowns – often without warning and frequently resulting from things that we couldn’t quite put our finger on.  Transitions were hard, environments with loud noises caused Fletcher agony, and gatherings of almost any kind were enough to make his sensory bucket completely overflow.  Looking back, it felt like there was always a looming feeling of anxiety. For him it was uncertainty and lack of control in his environment and for us it was the unknown of how and when … On more than one occasion we had to make a quick exit from a family gathering to avoid a complete disaster of a meltdown.  Sometimes that meant leaving without so much as a goodbye.  I come from a large family of innate gatherers where we joke that a typical “goodbye” is no less than 45 minutes.  So such an abrupt exit was really hard for me – but it was necessary.  Transitions had always been hard for Fletcher.  We started visual schedules with him before he turned 2 without realizing what they were called.  It was the only solution we could come up with that might make our mornings just a tad easier.

Soon after that fateful chat with my aunt, I met with a dear friend whose son was on a similar journey, just further along than us (yet I didn’t know the extent of their struggles at the time).  I’ll never forget how validated I felt in talking to her.  I was overcome with emotion and couldn’t help but feverishly nod my head with every word she uttered.  For the first time I was hearing someone describe exactly what we had been trying to manage for months.  But we didn’t know what we were “managing” nor did we talk much about it.  It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.  We seemed to at least have a path forward even though the months following would constitute one of the most challenging times of our lives.

When our journey with therapy officially began, we didn’t know about sensory diets, vestibular or proprioceptive input or “heavy work”.  We knew that Fletcher was struggling and as a result so were we.  

We started occupational therapy and eventually therapeutic listening.  For months we endured heart wrenching melt downs, long days filled with negotiations and dysregulation and made some really tough decisions about the best fit for Fletcher as it related to school.  No matter how difficult our days were, I’d peek in at our sleeping boy each night and pray that we’d soon find the magic answer.  The hurt and frustration melted away with that sweet sleeping face – he looked so peaceful.  Every single night I was overwhelmed with this conflicting combination of grief and gratitude.  I longed for Fletcher to experience life in an easier way and yet I was so grateful for all that each day taught us.  

Six months after Fletcher started occupational therapy, Max started speech.  He was just shy of 20 months and didn’t have any true audible words while also struggling with some feeding issues.  His pediatrician had been concerned as early as his fifteen month check-up, but he didn’t yet qualify for services through Birth to Three so we had him privately evaluated.  Two months into speech his meltdowns had gotten so bad that we made a joint decision to transition him to occupational therapy to address feeding and sensory issues.  

And there we were.  Two precious boys, two exhausted and overwhelmed parents and two very different sensory journeys.

Fast forward a few years.   We’ve spent hours in therapy and know that occupational therapy and therapeutic listening have played integral roles in the development and progress of both of our boys.  We have navigated genetic testing and know that Max and I are both missing a small part of the AUTS2 gene (more on this later), have endured a whole lot of trial and error at home to find our groove and most recently, have discovered the magic that is cranial sacral therapy (more on this to come, too).

While it feels like we’ve already traveled a long road, we know that there are a few more hurdles on the horizon.  Beyond the gift of Fletcher and Max, we feel the most gratitude for the incredible access we’ve had to an amazing support team, brilliant therapists and strategies that have been game-changing for us and we’re happy to share our own journey with the hopes that it helps families on a similar path.