Sometimes, the work we do comes from the places we once needed it most. At young adult age,  I was someone who spent a lot of time in hospitals as a patient. I was told that, because of my own medical circumstances, I might never have a child of my own.
 

During those uncertain years, music gave me comfort when I couldn't change what was happening around me. That experience eventually led me to Berklee College of Music to become a music therapist. I wanted to work with children, and knowing how fragile my own health had been, I found myself especially drawn to babies who needed a little more help getting started.
 

With additional training, I worked with premature babies in the NICU in UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital, learning about suck–swallow–breathe, early feeding and how something as simple as a mother's voice and music could support a baby's regulation and feeding experience. I worked alongside feeding Occupational therapist, speech language pathologists and the medical team, and I began to understand something that has stayed with me ever since:
 

A child is never just a mouth, a behaviour, or a feeding problem. There is always a whole little person behind it.

Years later, I went on to obtain my Masters in Professional Counselling,  and became a licensed counsellor, continuing to work with children and families.
 

Then life brought me full circle, and though it was a traumatic experience, I became a mother myself. My own child had premature lungs and feeding difficulties. But this time, I wasn't the therapist sitting beside the baby.
 

I was the mother.
 

And I understood the worry in a completely different way. Because that experience brought everything together for me. Music therapy, feeding, counselling, regulation, sensory experiences, relationships and the parent-child connection.
 

Which is why I created Feeding Connections.

Because when a child isn't eating, I don't just want to ask, “How do we get them to eat?”
 

I want to understand:

“Why is eating difficult for this child?”
 

Sometimes it is oral-motor. Sometimes it is sensory, regulation, emotions or behaviour. Sometimes the whole family needs support too. And sometimes, before we ask a child to eat, we first need to help them feel safe enough to connect.
 

That,  is the heart of Feeding Connection.