The one who tends to the ones who tend.

Bonjour, I’m Sandrine.

I’m the founder of Nourish Collective, a caregiver wellness coach, hospital chaplain, community builder, and lifelong student of what it means to care for one another.

I work primarily with caregivers and helping professionals: the people who are very good at noticing what everyone else needs but have somehow learned to leave themselves out of the equation.

My work is about changing our relationship with care.

Because I don't believe caring deeply for other people should require disappearing from your own life.

The winding road here

My path here wasn't exactly a straight line.

I grew up in France and began my professional life studying the brain.

I earned degrees in psychology and cognitive sciences and later a master's degree in neuropsychology. I worked as a neuropsychologist in France, fascinated by people, behavior, memory, identity, and all the complicated ways our brains shape how we experience the world.

Then life changed.

I became a mother.
We moved to the United States.
And eventually, I stepped away from my career to stay home and raise our four daughters.

For twelve years, caregiving wasn't something I studied or did professionally. It was woven into the fabric of my everyday life.

Meals. Appointments. School. Laundry. Emotions. Schedules. Bedtimes. Being needed.

So much being needed.

Finding my way back to this work

And somewhere within those years, my curiosity about health and wellbeing returned.

I trained as an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. I studied Reiki. Later came training in holding space, sexuality education, end-of-life work, advance care planning, and clinical pastoral education. I began working as a hospital chaplain, accompanying people and their families through illness, uncertainty, grief, death, recovery, and some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

I also kept cooking.
Gathering people.
Teaching.
Sitting in circles.
Having conversations about things that matter.

At first glance, these things may not seem particularly connected.

Neuropsychology. Food. Coaching. Chaplaincy. Touch. Death. Community.

But over time, I realized they were all teaching me about the same thing:

Care.

How we give it.
How we receive it.
And how easily the people who spend their lives caring for everyone else can forget that they need care, too.

When I needed care, too

I know something about that personally.

I am a mother of four. I work in emotionally demanding spaces. I love taking care of people.

And I know what it is like to understand perfectly well what would help me feel better, and still struggle to do it.

There have been seasons when moving my body felt incredibly difficult. Seasons when food became tangled with emotions. Seasons when the simple things I knew supported me (cooking, walking, connecting with people, slowing down) felt much harder than they should have.

And there have been seasons of depression when I could not find my way back to myself alone.

During one particularly difficult time, what helped me wasn't another piece of advice or someone telling me what I should be doing.

It was people.

A few people willing to stay.
To sit beside me. Hold my hand. Look me in the eyes. And reflect back the light and love in me when I couldn't see them myself.

That experience changed something in me.

It reminded me that we are not meant to do everything alone.

And it made me much less interested in giving people another list of things they should be doing to take better care of themselves.

A different question

Because most of us already know.

We know we should eat nourishing food.
We know sleep matters.
We know movement is good for us.
We know we need rest.
We know stress affects our bodies.

The question that interests me isn't simply, “Do you know how to take care of yourself?”

It's:

Why is it so difficult to offer yourself the care you so naturally give to everyone else?

For many caregivers, the problem isn't a lack of information.

We've learned a version of care that leaves us out.

We've learned to be useful. Dependable. Accommodating. Strong. Available.

We've learned to notice someone else's needs before our own.

And then, when we become exhausted, we assume we're doing something wrong.

Maybe we need more discipline.
A better routine.
A stricter meal plan.
More willpower.
A new self-care practice.

I believe there is another way.

Care includes you.

I created Nourish Collective in 2024 because I wanted to explore what becomes possible when we broaden our understanding of nourishment.

Food matters deeply to me. I'm French, after all. I firmly believe that good bread can solve quite a few problems.

But nourishment is so much more than what is on our plates.

It can be a meal someone else prepared for you.
A walk outside.
Rest.
Safe, welcome touch.
A conversation where you don't have to pretend you're fine.
Sitting around a table with people who were strangers an hour ago.
Being listened to without someone trying to fix you.
Moving your body because it feels good rather than because you're trying to correct it.
Laughing.
Pleasure.
Belonging.

Sometimes nourishment is simply having someone beside you while you find your way.

Through Nourish Collective, I bring together food, health coaching, gathering, embodied practices, compassionate presence, and community to help caregivers experience care differently.

Not so they can become even better at giving everything away.

But because they deserve to be nourished, too.

This is what I believe.

You don't have to stop caring for others.
You have to stop leaving yourself out.

I believe we can question the expectations that taught us that being a good woman, mother, healthcare professional, partner, or caregiver means always being available.

I believe receiving care is as human as giving it.

I believe our worth has very little to do with how productive or useful we are.

I believe good food can be simple.

I believe rest doesn't have to be earned.

I believe there are times when what we need isn't another solution, but someone willing to sit beside us.

And I believe deeply in gathering, because something happens when we put our phones down, pull up a chair, share food, tell the truth about our lives, and remember that we belong to one another.

That is the kind of care I want to help create.

A little more about me

I was born and raised in France and have lived in the United States since 2010. I am a mother of four daughters, which means my own relationship with nourishment, balance, and caring for myself remains very much a real-life practice rather than something I have perfectly figured out.

I'm the author of Simply French in America, a book about food, culture, and building a life between two countries. I teach cooking classes, facilitate women's circles and Death Cafés, support people through transitions, cater intimate gatherings and retreats, and work as a hospital chaplain.

I'm happiest when my house is full of people gathered around the table—even when I'm not entirely sure how many people are coming.

I love homemade bread, walking outside, returning to France, conversations that skip the small talk, and exploring the questions that don't always have easy answers.

I even carry a reminder of one of those questions on my body: a tattoo connecting me to nature and reminding me that my time here is finite.

Perhaps that's part of why this work matters so much to me.

We have one life. I don't want us to spend it only getting through the day, meeting expectations, and taking care of everyone else.

I want us to taste it.
To notice it.
To gather.
To receive.
To care deeply.
And to remember that we deserve a place at our own table, too.