Welcome! I’m Karla.
I believe that begins with us.
When mothers have space to heal, rest, and reconnect with the aliveness in themselves, something different becomes possible — for our kids, our families, and our communities. That ripple is what calls me to this work.
I want to live in a world where our children thrive.
I accompany women through the thresholds that undo and reshape us — as mothers, as women.
I've been doing this work for more than fifteen years, weaving together Ayurveda, somatic practice, nervous system support, and deep accompaniment. Again and again, I find myself walking alongside women at the places that ask the most of us: becoming a mother, growing a family through adoption, navigating grief and loss, career changes, menopause, a diagnosis, divorce, caring for aging parents, and beginning again.
Supporting women who are mothering through adoption while meeting their own thresholds isn't simply my specialty. It's the landscape of my own life.
The women who find me are wise, resourceful, and devoted. They've read the books on trauma and attachment, found good therapists, gathered wisdom wherever they could. Some even work professionally with adoptive families.
What they haven't had — often ever — is a space designed entirely for them. Not for their child's healing, their family's stability, or anyone else's wellbeing. A space for their own nourishment, rhythm, and restoration. Without judgment. Without needing to explain themselves. Without pressure to have it all together or figured out.
That's the space I offer.
How I found my way back to center
I became a mother through birth in 2004, and through adoption in 2010. As we arrived back home from Ethiopia, I was mothering three daughters — six, three-and-a-half, and eighteen months. I thought I'd prepared consciously and well.
What I couldn't have prepared for was how deeply adoption would shape me. Every part of me and my soul.
It asked more of me than I knew how to give. And before I understood it in my mind, my body was already telling the story. I was exhausted, reactive, and working so hard to meet everyone's needs that I slowly lost the thread back to myself.
It doesn't happen all at once. It's more like a gradual dimming — something you feel underneath, even when everything looks fine from the outside. A deep hum. The wired and tired feeling. And if you don't know another way is possible, it's easy to keep overriding it.
I was teaching yoga. From the outside, I probably looked healthy-ish.
But I wasn't sleeping well. My digestion and hormones were off. My doctor had ordered an MRI. One sleepless night that same week, I remember thinking: something has to change.
That's when I found Ayurveda. I wasn't looking for a new career. I was looking for a way to feel better and show up more fully for my family.
I didn't overhaul everything at once. I made one small change, then another. I started paying attention to rhythm — how I slept, ate, rested, moved, and lived with the seasons instead of constantly pushing against them.
Over time, my own health began to shift. I began sleeping better. Long-standing allergies disappeared. My heavy, painful periods eased. No more creaks in my joints and aches in my body when I woke. I found myself responding more often than reacting. I genuinely felt more joy and reverence for life.
What surprised me most was what happened in our home.
As I became more grounded and paid attention to what I needed, our family rhythms changed too. More ease around bedtime and meals. More laughter. More play. More moments where we simply enjoyed being together. Life kept moving and parenting still had challenges. But we weren't just surviving every day in the same way.
Looking back — I don't think my children only needed more support. I needed support too. That is sometimes hard to see, and even harder when our culture isn’t really set up to support and value the wellness of mothers.
That realization changed the direction of my life.
What I've come to understand
So many women are depleted not because they're doing something wrong, but because they're carrying too much alone for too long with too little support. This is all done within a culture that encourages and celebrates the carrying while offering almost nothing to support it.
For women mothering through adoption, there are added layers. The love is immense and the complexity is real, and the support for the mother specifically — not the child, not the process, but her — has been almost entirely missing. And we often think we should be last—centering the child and birth mother. Yet when a mother is depleted, the family’s anchor can no longer hold.
Most adoptive parenting books end with a self-care chapter. A list. I know, because I've read them all. What I've found is that lists aren't what we need. We need someone to accompany us back to our own bodies, our own rhythms, our own knowing — and that's what this work offers.
Ayurvedic and somatic wisdom can help restore connection, rhythm and vitality. The wellness of all mothers matters. We begin with ourselves. Let’s do this together and then slowly build a village of mothers.
Training & Credentials
Ayurvedic Wellness Coach — Shakti School
Living Ayurveda & Yoga Health Coaching — Cate Stillman
Women's Health & Hormones — study with Dr. Claudia Welch
Somatic Education — more than six years studying women's embodiment and nervous system work with Kimberly Ann Johnson
MotherCircle Facilitator — Kimberly Ann Johnson & Jessica Connolly
Yoga Teacher (RYT) — Poonam Gupta
Aerial Yoga Teacher — Kelly Kuder, Transcend Aerial Yoga
Core Functional Fitness Level 1 & 2 — Hope Zvara
Reiki I & II
Master of Divinity — McCormick Theological Seminary
B.A. in Communications — Marquette University
Twenty-two years of motherhood through birth and adoption. More than fifteen years teaching yoga, Ayurveda, and embodied practices. The ongoing privilege of walking with women as they find steadier ground beneath their own feet. And more recently, the deep wisdom, joy and grief elder women have shared with me as I’ve accompanied them through the changing terrain of aging, dementia, and Alzheimer’s.
I don't believe mothers were meant to carry so much alone.
I believe we need spaces where we can exhale, be witnessed, and remember that our wellbeing matters — not only for ourselves, but for the people we love and the children who are watching us live.
If you're longing to feel more at home in your own body and your own life, I'd be honored to walk alongside you.
Free Live Class
Coming Back to Rhythm
When life has been outpacing your body
