The End of a 7-Year Cycle
When I started my physical therapy clinic in 2019, I asked for its name. I asked several times, over several weeks. It didn’t come. I recalled what the author Elizabeth Gilbert shared on a podcast about when she was looking for the title of her infamous Eat Pray Love. She apparently said something to the effect of “The book won’t tell me it’s damn name!” to a friend, who responded: “Well I wouldn’t either if you talked to me like that.”
So I asked kindly, and I waited.
When it wouldn’t give me an answer, I decided to just own it in the most literal way possible and named it simply, Dr. Mandi Murtaugh Physical Therapy + Yoga.
Fast forward to 2023. When I opened Thresholds Collective, I knew its name immediately. The name just…was. Even though it was just me by myself at that time, no collective in sight. It didn’t completely make sense at the time, but I listened to it and sure enough, the collective part did come later.
Sometime in 2025 I started to get the feeling that the clinic needed a new name. Other changes came about that were more urgent; both businesses went through some big transitions earlier this year, and now the clinic is thriving on the other side. So now I find us at another threshold and a new season.
That I’m in my 7th year of business is not lost on me. An email newsletter came through my personal inbox today from Elise Loehnen titled The End of a Seven Year Cycle. In it, she reflects that seven is a number revered in many traditions, and that at the end of a 7-year cycle a shift occurs–maybe subtle, maybe not. She invites readers to look back at where they were exactly 7 years ago today.
So I followed the invitation.
I’ve always called this clinic my first baby. I had wanted to start my own business for many years, but always thought I needed to become a mom first. Every spring I would start putting energy toward starting something, and every year had a reason to stop. Most often those reasons revolved around not yet being a mother.
Seven years ago in April, I saw my first patient at Dr. Mandi Murtaugh Physical Therapy & Yoga. A couple weeks later I had my first positive pregnancy test after 5 years of trying to conceive. Apparently the Universe needed me to take the leap before my family could grow. However, a few weeks later I was devastated when I lost that pregnancy.
I followed Elise’s suggestion and looked back in my photos to see what I was up to at the end of September, 2019. The ones that came up are of my dog, Reba, lying next to some freshly turned dirt, where a little tree had just been planted. We had planted the tree in honor of the baby we lost. In early October I published a blog post about my miscarriage, the first I’d shared about it publicly.
So here I am at the end of this 7-year cycle. This is where the new name comes in. I want to de-center myself as I’m starting to grow my team beyond just me. I want to step off the navel gazing merry-go-round of answering the phone with “Thank you for calling Dr. Mandi Murtaugh Physical Therapy & Yoga, this is Dr. Mandi Murtaugh speaking.” Honestly–it’s a mouthful. I want to honor where the business has been, and open the doors to where the business is going.
The name came pretty easily this time. As we turn this corner into Autumn, into a new 7-year cycle, the clinic is becoming Thresholds Pelvic Health.
I’ll be sharing more about what’s behind the name, but if you’ve been around for a minute I’m sure you can already see some of the threads weaving together.