Hi, I’m Julie (she/her).

Welcome!

However you landed here, whether searching for language for your own story, tools for your work, a little beauty in the mess, or sheer curiosity — you belong.

I’m a mom, queer late bloomer, psychiatric nurse practitioner, trauma educator, and writer.

A couple of years ago, I came out to myself and found Belonging outside that stuffy closet of mine. I caught a glimmer of wholeness and began the journey out of survival mode and into true living.

But with beliefs etched into my body — “meek, unquestioning, straight” — joy quickly slipped away, crowded out by internalized homophobia, impossible expectations, and lifelong shame behind a kind smile and chill vibe.

For fifteen years I sat in therapy chairs, trying to think my way out of depression, detached from body and feelings, fooling everyone that all was well.

Coming out changed everything. Suddenly, I wanted to feel. To connect. To embody. And in doing so, I uncovered truths of complex trauma and a life shaped by survival.

Like any seasoned nurse, I knew healing meant going deep — removing what was damaged to reveal raw but living tissue beneath. Slow, complex, painful work.

At my most vulnerable, my therapist gifted me with a truth I wish I had learned long ago: trauma lives in the nervous system. When it is always on high alert, those lines of safety blur. Suddenly everything feels unsafe.

Because “safe” for me had long meant wearing an ill-fitting mask of quiet contentedness while reeling inside, my body became the ultimate danger zone. Reestablishing safety within — reclaiming myself daily as worthy of space — became everything.

My body’s tough love eventually brought me to a full stop: sudden paralysis, then “trauma camp.” Both reminded me: the rawest part of the wound is the deepest place of healing.

This is why I created The Reclamation Institute: to provide individuals navigating trauma, shame, or otherness — as well as their communities and the professionals who serve them — with language, tools, and spaces that honor agency and nurture safety.

Because safety, belonging, identity, and worth are not privileges to be earned or virtues that can be lost. They are birthrights, waiting to be reclaimed.

My work, my writing, and my life are rooted in that reclamation: of identity, of voice, and of truth.

I live in the Decatur/Atlanta area, raising two spirited kids, weaving resilience with rest (or at least trying to), and continuing to seek the Sacred in the Suck — finding it in some of the most unlikely places.

I am also the author of Coming Out Saved My Life, a memoir-in-progress about coming out as queer later in life, and how that revealed a lifetime of comings-out that have shaped who I am, how I show up in the world, and what “saving my life” every day truly means.

Thank you for stopping by.

With so much light and love,

Julie