I Chose My Sports Based on the Uniform. Here Is Why I Became a Pelvic Floor Specialist.
I was born with one kidney.
As a child I had multiple surgeries. Doctors were not sure I would ever have full bladder control. That uncertainty shaped my earliest years in ways I did not have words for then and am only now fully able to articulate.
I did eventually gain bladder control. But not during sport. And sport was everything to me.
So I made a choice that no child should ever have to make.
I chose which sports to play based on the uniform — and the locker room situation.
Not because of the team. Not because of the coach. Not because of what I loved or what I was good at. Because I needed to know — could I hide it in the uniform? Could I manage the locker room? Could I get through a game or a practice or a changing room full of other girls without anyone knowing?
That was my childhood. That was my relationship with my body. That was the framework through which I experienced being a young female athlete.
And despite years of medical care, I was never referred to physical therapy.
What I Was Told
The medical answer to my leaking was medication. Pills that helped sometimes. But mostly, I learned how to manage.
And then the words that stayed with me for years:
This is just how you were made.
I was a child. Of course I believed them.
So I kept managing. I kept hiding. I kept choosing uniforms over passions and logistics over dreams. I built an entire relationship with movement and sport and my own body around the fundamental belief that I was different. That my body had limitations that other bodies did not. That this was simply my life.
Nobody told me it did not have to be. Nobody told me there might be more we could do.
Then, at 18, Everything Changed
At 18 I had a bladder sling surgery.
And for the first time in my entire life — I did not leak.
I do not know how to fully explain what that felt like. To have lived your whole childhood and adolescence managing something nobody could fix — and then suddenly not managing it anymore. To move through the world in a body that just worked the way bodies are supposed to work.
It felt like being given something I had never had. Not given back. Given for the first time.
I was 18 years old and I was experiencing something for the first time that most people have the privilege of never thinking about at all.
And Then I Had Children
The leaking came back.
So did the planning. The calculating. The managing. All of it — back. Like it had never left. Like the surgery had been a pause rather than a resolution.
But this time, something was different. I was an established orthopedic physical therapist. I understood movement. I understood musculoskeletal function. I understood how systems work and how to rehabilitate them.
But Pelvic health had not been the focus of my career.
Standing there postpartum with symptoms I had spent my entire childhood hiding I made a decision.
I was going to understand my own body. Completely. I wanted to understand what my body was doing, why I was having symptoms, and what—beyond simply managing them—I could actually change.
I immersed myself in pelvic floor rehabilitation — the research, the advanced training, the clinical application. Not because someone assigned it to me. Because I needed it. Because I was done being told that this was just how I was made.
And I started connecting pelvic health with everything I already understood about the rest of the body.
Knowledge Changed Everything for Me
Knowledge is power. I believe that with everything I am — because understanding my body changed my relationship with it.
My leaking wasn't simply a pelvic floor problem existing in isolation. There were things I could address. Things I could strengthen. Things I could coordinate differently. Ways I could change my diet and response to stress. Things I could change about the way my body managed movement and load.
And eventually, I stopped leaking.
I am still working on the chronic UTIs that have been part of my story since childhood. That work continues. Because healing is not always linear and not always complete. But it is always possible to understand more, address more, and live better than you did before.
Our bodies are complicated.
Sometimes there’s a clear solution. Sometimes there are multiple contributing factors. Sometimes we’re still figuring it out.
But understanding more gives us options.
And what I know now — about the pelvic floor, about the whole body system, about the connection between what we are told as children and what we accept as adults — is the foundation of everything FitPelvis PT stands for.
Why I Built FitPelvis PT
I think about the girl who chose her sports by the uniform.
I think about every girl who is making that same choice right now. In high school locker rooms and cheer gyms and CrossFit boxes and track meets. Hiding something nobody told her she could get help for. The teenage athlete who doesn't even have the vocabulary to explain what she's experiencing.
And I think about the women who were those girls and are now in their 30s and 40s still carrying it. Still managing. Still adapting around symptoms because nobody ever told them there might be another option.
That’s why I built FitPelvis PT.
My experience with leaking shaped the way I see pelvic health—but it also changed the way I practice.
I don't believe women should have to choose between pelvic health and orthopedic care.
Pelvic health doesn't exist separately from the rest of the body—from the hips and core to strength, movement, and the demands of sport. FitPelvis exists to bring those pieces back together.
I don’t want another girl deciding what her body gets to do based on what she can hide.
I don’t want women spending decades believing that leaking, pain, pressure, or other pelvic floor symptoms are simply things they have to accept.
And I especially don’t want women afraid of movement because they’ve been taught that their bodies are fragile.
Nobody should ever be told — by a doctor, by a culture, by a system that was not built to look deeply enough — that this is just how you were made.
I was made with one kidney. I was made for movement. I was made to be an athlete and a mother and a specialist and an advocate.
And after spending much of my life believing leaking was simply part of my body, I learned that it didn’t have to be.
That’s the knowledge I want other women and girls to have much earlier than I did.
You Deserve to Understand Your Body
When a woman understands her body, she has more power to make decisions about it.
I know because I spent much of my childhood without that understanding—and a big part of my adulthood finding it.
FitPelvis PT exists so you do not have to wait as long as I did.
If pelvic floor symptoms, pain, or movement limitations are keeping you from doing the things you love, you don’t have to keep guessing. FitPelvis PT combines pelvic health, orthopedic care, and performance to look at the whole picture—not just one symptom.
