Today we’d like to introduce you to Sandi Morse.
Sandi, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve lived in Texas for 13 years now. You know that bumper sticker—“I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could”? That’s pretty much my story. I was born and raised in New Jersey, where many of my family and lifelong friends still live. I miss them often (along with the pizza and bagels) but Texas has become home in ways I never expected.
What surprises people most is that I never had a grand career plan. My first jobs were in the restaurant industry, and for much of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do professionally. That changed during my junior year when a representative from Montclair State University visited my school to talk about their Music Therapy program. At the time, I was studying classical piano, but I couldn’t imagine what a career in music might actually look like. The idea of helping people heal through music felt like a dream come true and in many ways, it was. More than twenty years later, I still remember breakthrough moments with patients through Creative Arts Therapy.
But after working in large healthcare systems, I began to understand how much patient care depends on the systems surrounding it. That realization led me to pursue my Master of Social Work at Fordham University. While most of my peers focused on counseling, a small percentage of us were enrolled in the management program. And I absolutely loved it.
After that, I never looked back and have been working in healthcare administration ever since. I obtained my clinical license because I deeply value those skills, but I always knew I wanted to serve in leadership capacities. It has been an exciting (if sometimes stressful) ride. Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to lead both adult and adolescent mental health and substance use treatment programs, direct the eating disorder program at the The Renfrew Center in Texas, manage the outpatient psychiatry clinic at UT Southwestern Medical Center, serve as a Senior Manager at Fitbit and a Senior Clinical Specialist at Google, and now work in clinical development at Connections Wellness Group, where I have the honor of supporting and training other clinicians.
If there is something that sets me apart, it is the perspective I’ve gained from working both directly with patients and behind the scenes in healthcare leadership. I’ve seen how systems shape healing and how important it is to never lose sight of the person at the center of the care.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s funny because people often assume therapists have life figured out. Wouldn’t that be nice? Hopefully, we do have a bit more emotional resilience, tolerance, and coping skills, given what we talk about all day. But life is still hard.
One of my biggest challenges came when I was laid off from what I thought was my dream job at Google. I was devastated. It wasn’t just the job itself which I genuinely loved and found invigorating, but also the identity I had built around ambition, achievement, and climbing the corporate ladder. For a long time, I had invested deeply in the idea that my life’s success would be defined by my life’s work. Losing that role so abruptly brought very real grief.
As cliché as it sounds, though, everything really did happen for a reason. Without that experience, I’m not sure I would have stopped long enough to take inventory of what I truly wanted from life. Of course, I still care about success. My work matters to me, and it is deeply meaningful. But I also want a life fuller than my career. I no longer want my work life to be my whole life.
And so, things changed. I started taking drumming lessons and discovered I’m actually pretty good. I ran another half marathon. My wonderful husband and I began taking Italian classes (“Andiamo a prendere un gelato”—let’s go get ice cream!). We travel all over the world. I spend the kind of time, love and attention with my dogs that they deserve. I go out to brunch with my friends and have spaghetti nights with my family. I read about a book a week. And perhaps most notably, I finally started writing a book of my own.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am the very proud and recently published author of Feed Your Purpose: Intuitive Eating as a Spiritual Practice. It took more than two years to complete the first draft and another six months to finalize it, but seeing an idea I carried for years become a published book has been one of the accomplishments I am most proud of.
For a long time, I never thought I would have the time, or honestly, the mental bandwidth, to write a book, let alone see it through to publication. But after shifting my mindset toward building a fuller life with broader goals, I decided to go for it. I committed to writing every Sunday, and sometimes more often when inspiration struck.
What I learned in the process is that writing is hard. It requires discipline, consistency, and a willingness to keep going even when self-doubt creeps in. But I believed deeply in the message of the book, and the possibility that it could genuinely help people is what kept me moving forward.
As a clinician and healthcare leader, I began to notice that healthcare and counseling are often highly compartmentalized. Mental health is treated in one space, nutrition in another, and spirituality somewhere else entirely. Yet in both my professional and personal experience, I saw how deeply interconnected those pieces really are. That realization became the foundation of my work and ultimately of Feed Your Purpose: Intuitive Eating as a Spiritual Practice. The book draws from my clinical work, research, and lived experience to explore how intentionally addressing mental health, nutrition, and spirituality together can help people build deeper, healthier, and more joyful lives.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.feedyourpurposebook.com
- Instagram: @feedyourpurposebook
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandimorse
