Please join us in congratulating and learning more about our Mom of the Month. Catherine always shows up for our community in every way - classes, checking in, and helping with our volunteer projects. We are so happy you found us when you moved here and are in our community!

• Tell us about your family!
• My husband Kevin and I have been married for 12 years and we have a 9yo son (4th grade) and a 6yo daughter (1st grade). It’s wild to me that we now have two kids who are undeniably school aged! We moved back to the Midwest (where we are both originally from) from the East Coast (New Haven, CT) three years ago to be closer to our families, so we are now fortunate enough to also be within driving distance of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

• Current/previous career?
• I’m a psychiatrist with a specialty in college mental health. I worked at Yale University for 12 years and have worked at Northwestern University for the past 3 years. I treat undergraduate and graduate students and also collegiate student-athletes. The commute to Evanston isn’t great, but I love my work, find it very meaningful and fulfilling and I feel so fortunate to have a job where I get to work with bright, talented, hardworking college students every day. Plus, working on a college campus keeps me (sort of) young- haha!

• What does motherhood mean to you?
• Wow- this is a big question! In a more global sense, it means raising kind, ethical, good citizens of the world— members of the next generation who will make the world a better place. Our kids are our legacies. But on a more local day-to-day level, it means having a close and loving relationship with my kids, making sure they feel secure and firmly rooted, and helping them grow into happy, independent people. Motherhood has been the hardest job I’ve ever had— harder than medical school, harder than residency, harder than 24 hour shifts in the hospital. I’m constantly humbled and challenged by it and have grown so much myself by being a mom.

• Favorite local spot?
• There are so many good ones! Courageous Bakery, Broken Tart, the enchanting outdoor patio at Maya Del Sol, and I love the vibe at Lively Athletics and everything they have there! (Awesome bonus that it’s now owned by one of our very own Fit4Mom moms).

• How did you find Fit4Mom?
• In January 2023, about six months after moving to Chicago, I was feeling pretty bad— isolated, out of shape, achy all over. In a somewhat desperate act, I randomly responded to a Facebook post about the upcoming 8 week session of Body Boost. I emailed the generic Fit4 Mom email address provided in the post and I swear, 30 seconds later, Melissa had texted me the warmest, encouraging welcome and offered to talk on the phone later that night about the different Fit4Mom classes to find the one that would be most appropriate for me. I was so shocked that someone responded so quickly (really, I swear, it was like 30 seconds after I sent the Email) and so touched that a mom would take time out of her busy schedule to talk with me on the phone (gasp!) about who I was and what I was looking for in an exercise class. Needless to say, I started Body Boost a week later and the rest is history…

• What's the best part of Fit4Mom?
• The nonjudgmental community and the fact that wherever you are, whatever you can do is not only enough, but is also celebrated! I also love the great feeling exercise gives you (even when every part of you is sore afterwards), the knowledge that you’re taking good care of your health, and the modeling we do for our kids that exercise is important and should be a routine part of our lives. My kids hate it when I leave for my Monday night exercise class, but they also know it is important.

• Favorite class/exercise?
• Body Boost, hand’s down! (I will say, I also have a much greater appreciation for weight training as I get older and for that reason, love the Body Ignite classes as well).

• Proudest moment?
• This is another big question! I can’t think of a proudest “moment” but reflecting while answering these questions, I am proud of how our family took the plunge and made a big cross country move three years ago to be (geographically) closer to our families. It was very scary and incredibly difficult in the beginning to re-establish our lives here. However, three years later I can say that I’m proud of how we have navigated this big change, settled in, and I’m proud of the lives and connections we’re building here. On a less profound note, I’m proud of learning to downhill ski in my mid-30s! I had resisted learning for years, but my then-boyfriend, now-husband loves to ski, so I learned so we could ski together. It wasn’t easy learning as an adult (in fact, it was kind of scary), but I’m so glad I did it and now it’s an activity our whole family enjoys together!

• What is something that would surprise us?
• When I was pregnant with my son 10 years ago, I joined a pregnancy fitness class called Dancing Through Pregnancy. I’m sure we looked ridiculous heaving around our very pregnant selves, dancing around a hospital conference room twice a week. But it was the most wonderful experience of exercising with other (expectant) moms. The ten or so of us all had babies within 6 months of each other and then hung out with each other through our maternity leaves- “mommy and me” exercise classes, library story hours, baby sing-a-longs, coffee dates, “play dates” with our infants, etc…. We became an incredibly close group of mom friends and it all started through exercise! New Haven, CT is a very transient city and at this point, we are spread out all over the world (England, Spain, Brazil, Germany, California, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Illinois), but are in near daily contact via WhatsApp. We’ve supported each other through births (literally), serious illnesses, first steps, ridiculous potty training incidents, awful sleep regressions, job changes, the highs and the lows of parenting… all of it. If we can pull it off, we dream of having an in person 10 year “reunion” this summer. When I learned about Fit4Mom I was like “exercising with other moms?!? Where do I sign up?? No convincing needed here!” My Dancing Through Pregnancy mom friends have been such a lifeline (ESPECIALLY when I was a new mom) and we never would have met without coming together through exercise. So, even though I’ve only been doing the Fit4Mom thing for 3 years, I feel like I’ve been part of a community of moms doing this for a decade.

FIT4MOM Oak Park River Forest offers fitness classes for women in all stages of motherhood, including prenatal, stroller & moms only classes. Your first class is free! Click here to try a class.