“Endurance sport was the scaffold that carried me through recovery — forty-five races that became both discipline and metaphor.”

Anna Hertel’s work lives at the intersection of resilience and story. A former endurance triathlete and current graduate student in Clinical Counseling at Saybrook University, she brings the same discipline that carried her through forty-five races to the work of healing, both on the page and in practice. Just as triathlon demanded endurance of the body, my counseling work is rooted in approaches that honor the endurance of the human spirit.

Her clinical training is grounded in approaches that honor the whole person — narrative therapy, existential therapy, internal family systems, and somatic awareness. Each reflects her belief that recovery is not linear but layered: shaped through the stories we tell, the choices we face, the parts of ourselves we learn to welcome, and the wisdom of the body itself.

Her debut memoir, Brick by Brick, reflects this same ethos. It is a story of endurance and survival, trauma and recovery, and the search for belonging. Across continents and finish lines, Anna writes about what it means to lose and rebuild, and how healing is both personal and communal — built one brick at a time.