Hi, I'm Cat.

And getting here took a few reinventions.

I'm an author, storyteller, host of Cat Unmuted, and the woman behind Beautifully Unhinged.

But those are the easy things to put in a bio.

I've spent a lot of my life becoming who I thought I needed to be, and quite a bit of the last few years figuring out who I am when I stop doing that.

I've closed chapters I thought would last forever. I've started over when I didn't have a map for what came next. I've grieved, rebuilt, changed my mind, found my voice, lost pieces of myself, found new ones, and learned that becoming yourself isn't really a destination.

Beautifully Unhinged is what grew out of all of that.

This is where I get to show up as I am, talk about what I'm actually living, write what I need to write, ask uncomfortable questions, change my mind when I learn something new, and hopefully give other people a little more courage to do the same.

I'm glad you're here.

Cat’s Beginning

I was born and raised in Japan, but I also got to live in Denver, Colorado for a year, where my grandmother on my father's side lived, and in Taiwan for several years, where my mother is from.

At the age of 26, in 2006, I moved from Japan to Denver, where my mother was living at the time. My grandmother had since passed away. I hadn't seen my mother since I was 13, so this was a very big deal.

I joined the military a year later and was stationed in Montana for all six years of my enlistment. No one on that base were happy, and eventually, I was sick and tired of all the miserable people and the snow.

My father passed away in 2013. For many reasons surrounding his death, I decided I was going to separate from the military unless the Air Force moved me first. My husband, Josh, whom I married less than a month after my father's death, decided to join me.

By November 1, 2013, we were both separated from the Air Force, left Montana and moved to New Mexico.

Before Beautifully Unhinged

I had a 9-to-5 job for about a year and a half before deciding I was done being employed. Josh made enough at the time for me to go back to school, so I quit my job and enrolled in a trade school to become a licensed massage therapist.

By April 2016, I opened my own practice, CHI Massage Therapy. CHI stood for Catherine's Healing Initiative. I LOVED my business. I loved the name. I loved what I had built. I ran CHI for almost a decade. By year nine, my little business had survived a pandemic and grown to the point where I was getting ready to hire.

But something else happened during those nine years.

I learned how to write.

I started with my monthly newsletters. I never thought I had the ability to write, although my husband had always told me I was a good storyteller. I guess I just didn't know how to get the stories out of my mouth and onto paper.

It took me years! At first, I thought that because I was a massage therapist, I had to sound professional. I needed to educate. Teach people about their bodies. Give them useful massage-related information. And I couldn't stay consistent with it.

Then I realized something incredibly simple: It's MY business. I can talk about whatever the fuck I want to talk about. So I did.

I started writing about whatever was on my mind and sprinkled in the body education instead of making it the whole thing. Suddenly, I became more consistent. And something funny happened.

More of my clients started reading my newsletters than ever before.

The Chapter That Changed Everything

A little while after the pandemic, Josh lost his job. He got let go because they decided they didn’t need the Albuquerque location anymore.

We went through serious financial difficulties for about two years before officially hitting rock bottom. And then, February of 2024, I got pregnant. One month after our positive pregnancy test, I miscarried in March.

Before, during, and after the miscarriage, we were receiving foreclosure notices on our house. On the same day we found out I had miscarried, we received the first packet of legal documents from a credit card company suing us.

From that point forward, I had an incredibly difficult time running my business mentally and emotionally.

In the middle of all of that, we drove to Pueblo, Colorado, because a close cousin of mine was there for business. He lives in Taiwan, so having him that close to us was incredibly rare. We took the trip. During the drive, we listened to an audiobook that lasted almost the entire way there and back.

By the time we were about 75% through the book and halfway home, something clicked. I had a vision for a book. I wanted to write about my miscarriage, but specifically through the lens of communication.

I started writing that weekend. Three days later, I finished it. Then another idea hit me. There needed to be a second book from Josh's perspective because there simply aren't enough books supporting the partner going through pregnancy loss alongside the person physically experiencing it.

For that one, I waited until Memorial Day weekend so I'd have more than my normal two-day weekend away from CHI. Three days. I finished that one too. And then I published them, one after another.

Becoming An Author

Months passed after those first two books were finished, but our rock bottom wasn't finished with us. That's when I realized something:

The miscarriage wasn't the entire chapter. It was part of a much bigger story. So I decided I wanted to write the whole thing. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next in my life, but I knew this book was going to happen.

And I didn't wait until everything was over to write it. While I was still struggling with the loss, postpartum depression, whacked-out hormones, finances, and everything else, I wrote. I wrote while it was still fresh. And the more I wrote my story in real time, the more I realized something else.

I loved writing. I wanted more of this. I loved the flexibility that came with it. I loved storytelling. I loved putting things into words. Is this it? Is writing going to be my new career?

Our financial crisis had already forced us to start talking about shutting down CHI. Somehow, though, I began feeling like life was pushing me in that direction anyway. Closing one chapter. Opening another. Massage therapy had been right for me for almost a decade. And now writing was arriving just as naturally.

So I did something I never intended to do. I closed the business I had worked so hard to build. In January 2025, I was pushed to the decision. By February, I had relocated my practice into a chiropractic office for the final three months. I chose to close at the end of April because April was when I'd opened CHI nine years earlier. It felt like the perfect, bittersweet ending.

From May through October, I finished my third book, completing the three-book Lucky the BYRD series.

Finding My Voice

Before I even finished the third book, I started asking myself what exactly I was doing with my life now. I knew I wanted to help people. And I kept coming back to communication.

Not just communication with other people, but communication with ourselves. I'd gone through a lot of shit in my life. And I'd gone through a whole lot of shit recently. But somehow, I kept finding healing. Resilience. Hope. So I decided to start a show.

And the thought terrified me. I didn't want to sit behind a camera and pretend I'd figured out life. I wanted to show the opposite. Yes, I've figured out a lot of things. But that's not because I've figured out life.

Figuring things out in real time is messy. It isn't clean. It isn't easy. Most people show off how they did figure it out through social media, but how did you get there? 7 easy steps to figure it out? it is not that easy. I wanted to show that. I wanted people to see that the mess is part of it.

So with a shaky, quiet voice, I started recording Cat Unmuted. And if you know me personally, you know shaky and quiet are not exactly words people use to describe me. I was that terrified. But I made a promise to myself, and I kept it.

Now, as 2026 keeps moving along, I haven't stopped. And with every recording, that shaky, quiet voice has become a little more powerful, a little more certain, and a whole lot more confident.

Becoming Beautifully Unhinged

Before I closed CHI, while I was still figuring out this new identity I was apparently birthing, I created IWR: Inner Water Reflection.

I wanted to create a space where reflection was central. Where we could learn to love our own reflection, even down to the literal reflection we see in water. I started creating things around that idea.

Then Josh started exploring things he'd never really explored before, including yoga and breathwork. We thought our work could fit together beautifully. We could work together! The power couple!

So I changed everything to represent both of us. Inner Water Reflection became Josh 'n' Cat — Steady Under Fire.

A couple of months later, we realized something. Well...mostly he realized something. He had fun doing it, but he didn't actually want to do it professionally. So I fired my husband.

And suddenly the business needed to become mine again. But IWR didn't fit anymore either. I'd changed. Sometime after firing Josh, I was reading, researching, thinking, or probably doing all three, and by the end of the day a name came to me:

Beautifully Unhinged.

And THAT felt like me. With IWR, I had been so focused on how I wanted other people to feel that I created the entire identity around that. Beautifully Unhinged was different. It described me. Not because my life is a disaster, but because I've stopped believing that a good life has to look perfectly put together.

And I had a feeling I wouldn't be the only person who connected with that. It fit perfectly with the words I'd already been carrying with me:

Through Courage Comes Bliss.

A few things you should probably know about me

I love Jeeps, water, dogs, cats, my family, and especially my husband. How did we end up in New Mexico? We actually know exactly why. Josh wanted the opportunity to get to know his biological dad better, and his dad lived here.

We've now been in New Mexico for 13 years, and we're ready to say goodbye to the dry climate. 😂 We are so ready for something tropical.

My mother is from Taiwan, and my brother and I grew up in the Tokyo area. My brother moved back to Japan last year, so Okinawa started feeling like a natural possibility for our next adventure.

Josh is from South Carolina and, thanks to the Air Force, has lived in just about every corner of the United States. He's ready for a change of scenery too, and apparently moving to Okinawa with me sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea.

We also love Jeeps. We have a Wrangler and, yes, lots of ducks. That's actually how Lucky the BYRD came into existence.

After my miscarriage, I wanted the biggest inflatable rubber duck I could find to put in the back of my Jeep. It was something ridiculous and joyful that I hoped might help me through postpartum depression.

And it worked. But not only because it made me smile. This ridiculously oversized duck started making complete strangers smile. People waved. People laughed. People took pictures. Their happiness made me happy. And somehow, a giant inflatable duck became part of my healing and eventually part of my books.

Then there are the animals. I've had cats throughout my life, but since marrying Josh, we've mostly had dogs. Three of them, actually. Our third, Maya, recently became part of one of the hardest decisions we've had to make.

We found her a new family. As I'm writing this, she's been with them for an entire week. To both my delight and my sadness, she's adjusting amazingly well. Better than I could have hoped. And now we're preparing for another goodbye. When our house sells, our plan is to head to Taiwan to spend time with family and then on to Okinawa to explore what life and business might look like there.

My journey as Cat and Beautifully Unhinged has already begun. But this isn't a website documenting a life I've already figured out. You're meeting me in the middle of it.

You'll get to watch us figure out what comes next as we try to build lives we actually want to live, instead of lives based on what we thought they were supposed to look like.

And I have absolutely no idea exactly how it's going to turn out.

I think that's part of the fun.