The clinic that treats the cause.

I grew up in Holland, studied kinesiology and psychology at Hope College, and earned my doctorate in physical therapy at Midwestern University. For five years I worked at another clinic treating two groups of people who rarely end up in the same room: orthopedic patients with backs, necks, shoulders and knees that would not settle, and pelvic health patients dealing with leaking, pelvic pain, pregnancy and postpartum recovery.

The longer I did the work, the more those two groups looked alike. The runner whose knee kept flaring and the new mom who could not get through a workout without leaking had usually been told the same things: stretch more, strengthen more, or wait it out. Often nothing was torn and nothing showed on a scan. The problem was how the whole body was organized, so treating the one sore spot kept failing. I learned that firsthand when I went through my own unexplained pain, with clear imaging and no answers, even as a trained physical therapist.

That is why I opened Ruther Health + Wellness in 2021: one clinic where orthopedic care and pelvic health are treated together, one-on-one, by therapists who look at the whole person. The people who do best here are the ones who fix things: their houses, their teams, their families. This is where they finally fix the thing they’ve been putting off: themselves.

“I believe in solving the puzzle rather than blaming the patient.”