Introducing the Empowered Futures Podcast
This post is the companion to Episode 1 of the Empowered Futures Podcast, but it also stands alone as my origin story — the honest, winding, imperfect, deeply human one. Click on the links below to listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
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https://katyo6.substack.com/p/becoming-an-occupational-therapist
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about life, it’s this: you don’t have to have everything figured out by 18. Or 25. Or 40.
Most of my path has unfolded through a long process of elimination — learning all the things I didn’t want before discovering what I did. And as the one and only Taylor Swift puts it, “Today is never too late to be brand new.” That one lyric has become a kind of guiding mantra for me, because nothing about my career or my calling arrived “on schedule.” It arrived exactly when it needed to.
Trying Everything Before Finding My Bliss
In my early adulthood, I worked in food service and retail management. I was a Starbucks store manager trainee. I was working long hours, navigating people and pressure, learning how easily burnout can take root. (Oh, and we can’t forget about my undergraduate degree in Theatre and a brief stint in the film & television industry on top of a job working at my former performing arts high school as a costume designer. Totally standard life story so far, amirite?)
At the same time as I was learning how to run a multi-million dollar Starbucks store, I was training in martial arts — 10 to 20 hours a week on top of everything else. I didn’t know it then, but those hours on the mat were quietly shaping the future therapist in me. I was fascinated by the human body, movement patterns, stress responses, and the power of habit and repetition. People around me noticed this curiosity long before I did.
In all my spare time between managing baristas and getting throw into (padded) walls by my martial arts friends, I also volunteered at a therapeutic horseback riding program. That’s where I first heard the term occupational therapy, through hippotherapy. I thought it was fascinating(using a horse eating carrots to help a child manage their misophonia? Wild!), but it didn’t feel like “my path” at the time. So I tucked it away. Another seed planted.
But seeds have a funny way of sprouting when the timing is right.
Joining the Coast Guard at 30 — and the Injury That Changed Everything
At age 30 — an age when many people feel they’re supposed to be “settled” — I joined the Coast Guard as a machinery technician (what, like it’s hard?). It was demanding, meaningful, and intense in all the ways you’d expect.
And then I got injured.
That injury changed the trajectory of my life. Suddenly, I was a patient. I went from the extremely capable, high capacity, high functioning person who took care of everything and everyone else to someone who had to slow down, heal, and confront the vulnerability of being in a body that wasn’t cooperating. I had to sit with fear and uncertainty about what my body could do.
For the second time in my life, OT (and PT) entered my world — not as ideas, but as lifelines.
The Facebook Post That Became a Turning Point
One day, in the middle of all this uncertainty, I made a casual Facebook post:
“Maybe I should be an OT or a PT.”
It was almost a joke. A passing thought.
But a friend from my undergrad cohort saw it and messaged me immediately: “I need to call you right now.”
She said, “Katy… you are absolutely an OT,” and then explained exactly why. She saw things in me — the way I problem-solved, connected, and paid attention to people — that I had never named in myself.
Her words nudged a door open that I didn’t even know was there.
And with that, I started down a brand-new path. At age 34, I entered OT school. Older than some of my classmates, younger than others, and yet somehow right on time for me.
The Early OT Years — Seeing What People Are Really Carrying
Once I began working clinically in a level 1 trauma hospital(read: very intense injuries, very medically complex patients), I realized quickly that many people are made of layers of difficulty and nuance that our healthcare system just doesn’t always know how to handle well:
Chronic pain
Trauma
Burnout
Sleep struggles
Stress
Overwhelm
The pressure to “push through” even when your body is screaming for rest
I saw people handed exercise sheets and specialty referrals instead of actual support.
I saw patients blamed for not improving fast enough.
I saw how misunderstood chronic pain, sleep struggles, and mental health challenges really are, even by the healthcare workers who dedicated their lives to helping.
And in all of that, I kept thinking:
We can do better.
People deserve better.
That was the moment my deeper purpose started to solidify.
Why Starting my Private Practice Made Everything Make Sense
Occupational therapy had become the perfect lens for me — a blend of science, compassion, practicality, and humanity. And yet, I realized that there was a huge gap in services -and I was the person to fill that gap. I love what OT allows me to do: it’s not a profession that looks only at what hurts. It looks at the whole life around the pain.
OT asks:
How is this affecting your identity?
What has this changed about your routines?
What do you need to feel safe again?
How can we restore your sense of agency and meaning?
When I began diving into pain science, nervous system regulation, sleep, and function, everything clicked. My martial arts background, my Coast Guard experience, my own injury and recovery — they stopped feeling like separate stories. They fused into one cohesive lens.
What My Work Looks Like Now
Today, through my practice Empowered Path Occupational Therapy, I support people who are living inside complex, real-world experiences:
Pain
Fatigue
Trauma
Burnout
Sleep disruption
Identity loss or shifts
Feeling disconnected from themselves
Trying to be functional in a world that asks too much
My work is not about “fixing” people.
It’s about helping them return to themselves — to their values, their sense of possibility, their confidence, their capacity to craft a life that feels meaningful and manageable.
It’s about whole-person health.
It’s about compassion and science working together.
It’s about giving people tools and hope at the same time.
Coming Full Circle
Every piece of my past shows up in my work today:
The discipline and awareness from martial arts.
The people-centered chaos management from food service and retail.
The mechanical understanding of systems from the Coast Guard.
The compassion that comes from my own pain, injury, and being the patient.
And the curiosity about human capacity that started way before I knew what OT even was.
All of it informs how I practice, how I teach, and why I believe so strongly in the potential for people to build lives that are meaningful, authentic, and sustainable.
Why I Started a Podcast (and a Blog)
This podcast(and the companion blog, for my friends who love to read) exists because people deserve to feel supported in a way that is human, hopeful, and grounded in evidence — not pressure, shame, or “just push through it” advice.
I want this space to be warm, educational, empowering, and deeply validating.
Whether you’re navigating chronic pain, stress, identity shifts, sleep issues, or just trying to build a life that feels more like you, I’m glad you’re here.
And I’m honored to walk this path with you.
— Katy