I am a certified teacher, ERYT200 (soon to be RYT500) trauma-informed yoga instructor, bereavement group facilitator & writer. Previously, I owned Present Yoga Community in Wall, NJ, (2018-2020) and I am also the founder of The Grief Ritual (previously called Manifesting Busual), a yoga philosophy centric approach to post-traumatic growth and healing. I provide support and education to grievers, caregivers and humans in general, so that together, we can bolster and refine our toolbox of resources and rituals to assist us forward on this complex journey that is life.

I am currently completing a Masters of Clinical Mental Health, with a concentration on Military and Veterans Counseling at The College of William & Mary.

All of this began as two separate things…a yoga studio business and the grief that I carried since the progressing illness and eventual death of my husband Juan.

Silly me…for a while, I considered these two parts of me to be separate.

Eventually, I had the opportunity and the awareness to lean into combining the work I have done on my own grief and the ways in which yoga teachings, trauma teachings and what I have learned through my trauma-trainings, could be experienced alongside grief.

This shift has allowed me to use the instagram I started to inspire me to approach my grief in a new way, to become a platform that serves as witness to my grief, and the grieving hearts of others. Now, “Manifesting Busual” holds a place of origin in my heart, while The Grief Ritual gives others a better picture of what this work has become.

If you are unfamiliar with the word ‘busual’, you are not alone. It is a word, concocted by a better than usual man, to mean, ironically, just that….better than usual. This unparalleled human, unrivaled in his take on a life that was not always kind to him, was my husband. Despite the hardships and loss that he faced over the short 28 years that he lived, he seemed to see everything as beautiful….nothing, not even bleak doctors reports, could stop him from finding awe in the world, from remembering to stop to look up at the stars, from being truly present with those he met, from loving the world, his life, and me, with everything he had. He was truly busual. Now, on my own path to finding myself almost ten years after losing him, I am making the manifestation of all things busual, a daily practice. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

The beauty of busual is that it is only better than you have come to readily, or not so readily accept as your usual state. It is not a competition with anyone else’s life, or what they present as such; instead it’s a personal journey to elevate your capacity to find remarkable moments, otherwise hidden, neglected or missed, in each day of your life.