Why I Built Encompass
I opened Encompass because I was tired of watching women go unheard.
I've spent much of my adult life angry about the way women are treated in healthcare. Not the throw-things-across-the-room kind of angry. Well, usually not. More the kind that has you rage-reading medical journals at midnight, questioning things you've been told are settled science, and eventually deciding that the most reasonable response is to open an entire psychiatric practice.
You know. Normal, well-adjusted behavior.
But Encompass Mental Health & Wellness didn't begin with a business plan. It began decades earlier, long before I knew psychiatric nurse practitioner was even a job. It began in hospital delivery rooms, in conversations with my mom, in my own attempts to get answers about my health, and in the stories of women who were told that what they were experiencing was normal, that they were exaggerating, that it was probably just stress. Eventually, I got tired of hearing it. Because here is what I believe, all the way down:
Women deserve better healthcare. And we shouldn't have to fight so effing hard to get it.
It Started Long Before Encompass Had a Name
I began my nursing career in labor and delivery, where I spent nearly a decade caring for women during some of the most significant moments of their lives. Some rooms were full of laughter, brand-new babies, and the kind of joy that reminds you why you became a nurse.
Other rooms were quiet. Dark. Rooms where the life someone had imagined changed in an instant, where grief was too large for words, and all I could do was sit beside her and stay.
Those rooms changed me. They taught me that caring for a woman means more than understanding her body. Her physical health, mental health, relationships, identity, hopes, and fears are all connected, and you can't divide her into convenient pieces and expect to understand her. You can't treat a pregnancy without considering the person who is pregnant. You can't treat postpartum depression without knowing what's happening at home. You can't talk about menopause without also talking about sleep, sex, mood, relationships, and the unsettling experience of no longer recognizing yourself in the mirror. And sometimes the most important thing you can do isn't to fix anything. It's to sit with her, listen, and make sure she doesn't go through it alone. I didn't know it then, but those years were laying the foundation for everything that came after.
Then Grief Broke My Life Wide Open
I came to psychiatric care through grief. Not the kind you study in textbooks or score on a screening questionnaire, but the kind that settles into your bones and changes the shape of your world.
When my husband died, the life I knew didn't just change. It shattered.
Slowly, I began gathering the pieces. Some I recognized right away; others had changed so completely I hardly knew where they belonged. I put them back together as best I could, only to learn that rebuilding is not the same as restoring. The pieces were still mine, but they fit together differently now. The cracks remained, not as proof that I was broken, but as part of the shape of who I had become. And in the places where everything had come apart, I found parts of myself I hadn't known were there.
I won't romanticize that loss or pretend the pain was necessary to make me who I am. But the woman who came out of it carried a depth, a tenderness, and a determination she hadn't fully known before. It changed what I valued, what I was willing to accept, and what I wanted to do with the life still ahead of me. I had spent years sitting beside women in their most vulnerable moments. Now I understood that vulnerability from the inside. And I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my career caring not only for women's bodies, but for their minds and hearts as well.
Meanwhile, Women Were Still Being Told It Was Probably Just Stress
As I moved into women's mental health, I kept hearing the same stories. Women who were exhausted, anxious, depressed, sleepless, foggy, or simply unlike themselves. Many had spent years trying to get someone to take them seriously, and the explanations they'd been given were remarkably consistent:
"That's just part of getting older." "Your labs are normal." "You're probably just stressed." "Have you tried losing weight?"
Ah, yes. The four horsemen of women's healthcare.
There are wonderful clinicians doing extraordinary work for women every day, and I've been lucky to work alongside many of them. But the gaps in how women's health has been studied and treated are real and well documented. For decades, medical research centered on male bodies. Women were underrepresented in clinical trials, and differences in how we experience symptoms, respond to medications, and develop disease too often went uninvestigated. The consequences show up as missed diagnoses, delayed treatment, and women who start to wonder whether the problem is them.
A woman is not a smaller version of a man.
Her hormones, reproductive history, physiology, and life experiences shape her mental and physical health in ways that deserve serious attention. That doesn't mean every symptom is hormonal. It means we should understand the biology we're treating rather than assume one approach fits everyone. That seems like a reasonable expectation of modern medicine. So why does it still feel revolutionary?
I Was One of Those Women, Too
This isn't only something I've observed professionally. I've lived in a female body for more than five decades, and I know what it is to feel that something isn't right and struggle to find anyone who can explain it. I've asked questions that didn't seem to have answers. I've been frustrated by how little is known about things that affect enormous numbers of women. And I've been handed explanations that simply didn't match what I was living.
So I started reading. Researching. Digging through studies, sometimes for my patients and sometimes for myself. There is something uniquely maddening about being a healthcare professional and realizing that, even with your training and access to the literature, you still have to work remarkably hard to understand your own body.
Now imagine navigating that without a medical background.
That realization made me angry, but it also made me curious. I went deeper into reproductive psychiatry, hormonal transitions, and the tangled relationship between physical and mental health. The more I learned, the more I saw how many women had been handed pieces of a puzzle with no one to help them see how the pieces fit.
I thought about my mom, my aunts, my grandmother, and generations of women who navigated their health with even less information and fewer options than we have now. How many of them suffered needlessly? How many were told their symptoms were normal, just part of aging, just part of being a woman? And how many believed it, because no one ever told them otherwise?
It made me sad. Then it made me furious. I didn't need research to tell me women deserved better; I already knew that. What the research showed me was how deeply the problem was woven into the system. Some days I wanted to burn the whole damn thing down and start over. Mostly, though, it made me determined: to ask better questions, to find better answers, and to make sure the women who came to me never had to wonder whether their concerns were worth taking seriously.
We can do better than this.
Science Matters. So Does Curiosity.
I believe deeply in evidence-based medicine. I also believe that "we don't have enough research" is not the same as "your experience isn't real." Those are two very different statements, and we have confused them for far too long. Science isn't a fixed set of facts we memorized in graduate school and are now obligated to defend forever. It is an ongoing process of asking questions, testing ideas, challenging assumptions, and changing our minds when the evidence changes.
I don't want to practice medicine based on trends, testimonials, or whatever supplement is being promoted this week by a woman with suspiciously perfect skin on Instagram. But I also don't want to dismiss something just because it doesn't fit the way I've always done things. I want to know what the research actually says, where it falls short, and where we genuinely don't know yet. And when we don't know, I would rather say so out loud than pretend otherwise.
There is room in good medicine for both rigor and an open mind. Curiosity isn't abandoning the evidence. It's being willing to keep looking.
You Know Your Body. I Know Some Things About Medicine. Let's Talk.
Healthcare should be a partnership. I bring education, clinical experience, and specialized training. I understand psychiatric diagnoses, medications, physiology, and the research behind treatment decisions.
But you have something I don't. You've spent your entire life in your body. You know what normal feels like for you. You know when something has changed, what you've tried, what has helped, and what matters most in your life. That knowledge isn't an inconvenience to work around. It's essential to good care.
I don't want patients who nod politely while I explain what we're going to do. I want questions. I want conversation. I want you to tell me when something doesn't make sense, when a medication isn't working, or when a plan doesn't fit your life. Sometimes I'll suggest something you hadn't considered. Sometimes I'll explain why a treatment you've read about isn't supported by the evidence, or might not be safe. And sometimes you'll tell me something that makes me rethink my approach entirely.
That's how this is supposed to work.
I don't need to be the smartest person in the room. I need to be the kind of provider who keeps learning, listens carefully, and uses what she knows to help the person sitting across from her.
So I Built the Place I Wished Existed
Eventually, it all came together: the years in labor and delivery, the grief, the patients whose stories stayed with me, the women who had been dismissed, the research, my own frustrations, and a growing conviction that women's mental healthcare could be more thoughtful, more informed, and more personal. At some point, Encompass stopped being a vague dream and became something I couldn't stop thinking about.
I wanted a clinic where women felt safe walking through the door. Where no one had to rehearse her symptoms in the parking lot, trying to sound credible enough to be believed. Where she could talk about depression, anxiety, ADHD, intrusive thoughts, sexual health, pregnancy, postpartum struggles, or menopause without embarrassment.
I wanted care that wasn't one-size-fits-all. Care that considered the whole person, including her medical history, hormones, relationships, responsibilities, preferences, and goals. A place where the answer wasn't automatically another prescription, but where medication was there when it was appropriate and helpful.
I wanted to take insurance, because thoughtful, specialized mental healthcare shouldn't be reserved for women who can afford hundreds of dollars out of pocket.
Most of all, I wanted women to feel respected. Not managed. Not tolerated. Not patted on the head.
Cared for.
I wanted a place where "I believe you" wasn't an extraordinary act of compassion. It was simply where we started.
And Now, Somehow, It's Real
Some days I walk into Encompass and still can't quite believe we built it.
I love this clinic. I love the offices, the people I work with, and the conversations happening behind those doors. I love watching something that once existed only in my imagination become a real place where women come for help. I even love the complicated, occasionally terrifying work of running a business.
Except QuickBooks. QuickBooks, my ADHD, and I are in a deeply unhealthy throuple, and I'd appreciate everyone respecting our privacy during this difficult time.
But what I love most isn't the office, or the divinely gorgeous couches, or even finally getting to practice the way I always wanted to.
It's the women.
It's the woman in midlife who finally feels heard after years of trying to explain what's happening to her, and who learns she doesn't have to accept feeling miserable as the price of getting older. It's the young woman who discovers her symptoms have a name, that treatment exists, and that she isn't simply failing at life. It's the new mother who can say the scary thing out loud without being judged. It's the teenager who gets support now, before she spends decades believing something is wrong with her.
And it's the woman who has spent her whole life taking care of everyone else, and has finally found a place where someone takes care of her.
That's the part that gets me. Every single time.
What I Want Encompass to Be
I don't imagine Encompass will single-handedly fix everything wrong with women's healthcare. Although, given enough caffeine and a sufficiently irritating insurance denial, I might be willing to try.
We won't have every answer. We'll meet complicated cases, make mistakes, and have hard days. But I know what kind of practice I want us to be: curious, thoughtful, compassionate, scientifically grounded, and always willing to learn. A place where we listen before we assume, and remember that the woman across from us isn't a diagnosis, a medication list, or a collection of symptoms. She is a whole person, with a life that matters.
Encompass grew out of grief, frustration, curiosity, and more than a little righteous anger. But it was built out of love: love for women, for this work, and for the extraordinary, complicated, resilient people I've had the privilege of caring for. And love for the belief that healthcare can be better than what so many women have known.
I didn't start Encompass because women needed another clinic. I started it because women deserve a different kind of care: one where their experiences matter, their questions are welcome, and their concerns are taken seriously. Where science and compassion aren't competing priorities. And where the people who spend their lives caring for everyone else finally get cared for, too.
That's my dream. And every day, we make a little more of it real.
