Hi from Rebuilt Movement & Rehab
Hello! Amber here, owner and lead therapist of Rebuilt Movement & Rehab! It is so exciting to be making this first blog post and I truly can’t believe the time has come to open our doors and begin helping people to make movement fun and life giving instead of painful and dreadful.
I always love to hear people’s stories and how they got to where they are, so here is mine:
I grew up in Chelsea, MI - a town just west of Ann Arbor. Growing up I was always active, loved to learn about the body, and knew I wanted to help people in some way. I then got injured a few times playing sports which lead me to PT. And I fell. in. love. I loved how much they knew about what was happening to my knee/elbows/shins/back/shoulder/foot and so much more! My PTs listened to me, they spent time getting me comfortable and confident on my injured limbs, and they made me feel excited about all the cool things my body was doing whenever I move around. This was the start to my journey to becoming a PT.
Cut to attending the University of Michigan (GO BLUE!) for a degree in Kinesiology [the study of body movement] and then proceeded to get my Doctorate in Physical Therapy at the Medical University of South Carolina. Unfortunately once I graduated and got a job in Charleston, SC, I found out that it is difficult to find an outpatient PT job where I would be treating patients one on one. In my first job I was required to be treating 2-3 people at a time. This left me constantly feeling frustrated at the inability for quality one on one care; tired of having to choose between conversations with my patients and not doing notes or leaving work before 8pm; burnt out from seeing what sometimes felt like a million patients a day; and feeling like this dream I had always had of being an awesome PT was just flying away and that I would never be happy in this career. I was reaching a boiling point and decided I needed a change.
Then COVID hit and it seemed like planning a big change or anything in the future was impossible aaaand not super smart. In July 2020, my husband and I got COVID and had 2 weeks of being in our house together and going for lots and lots of long drives. One of these drives lead to the discussion of the future and where we wanted to be in the next few years. We decided it was time for us to dig out our winter coats and finally move home to Michigan after 5 years of being southerners….. but more importantly we decided it was time to take our professional happiness into our own hands and finally work towards our big dream: opening a CrossFit gym with a out of network physical therapy clinic inside.
So here we are! Great Lakes CrossFit and Rebuilt Movement & Rehab!! It has been a long road to get here and we have already learned SO much along the way… and know we have much more ahead of us, but we are incredibly humbled, blessed, and excited to be opening our doors and makin’ it happen!
From now on, blogs will mostly be related to physical therapy, this practice, and movement & rehab things! Feel free to leave comments, questions about anything, or your story in the comments!
