About Kat
Meet Dr. Kat Thigpen, DACM, L.Ac.
I'm Kat: an acupuncturist, herbalist, and business strategist, and honestly, someone who's burned out more times than I'd like to admit.
For most of my career, I was the person who figured everything out alone. Oldest daughter, perfectionist, ADHD brain that can problem-solve circles around almost anything... but somewhere along the way, "I can do this myself" turned into "I have to." Asking for help felt like admitting I couldn't handle it. So I didn't ask. I just kept going until I couldn't.
The Meaning Behind the Name
A sunshower is a rare moment when sunlight and rain appear at the same time. It's proof that hard things and good things aren't opposites; they can exist in the same breath. Growth is rarely linear, and healing is rarely tidy, but that doesn't mean warmth and clarity aren't there too, right alongside the hard part.
And when rain falls, it never falls on just one person. It falls on everyone standing nearby. That's true of struggle, too. When a practitioner burns out, their patients feel it. When a founder is running on empty, their team feels it. When any of us stop taking care of ourselves, the people who depend on us feel that absence, even if they can't name why.
Sunshower Collective exists because healing was never meant to be a solo act. Working with you also means working, indirectly, with everyone your work touches. That's the collective: the ripple every one of us creates, whether we mean to or not.
Why I Became a Burnout Recovery Coach
It took a full-stop burnout, halfway through medical school, to finally learn what I now help my clients with: boundaries aren't a nice-to-have. They're the thing that keeps you upright and keeps you in the work you love. I also learned that the generic advice everyone gives ("just meditate," "reward yourself for good habits") doesn't work the same way for every brain. It definitely didn't work for mine. I needed real structure, but I also needed room to breathe inside it. Meditation does work for me... but only when I let it look different than what everyone else says it should look like — and it took me years to find that balance.
From Clinical Practice to Business Consulting
That search is what led me here. Almost two decades moving between finance, marketing, staffing, property and business development, healthcare operations, and now acupuncture and Chinese medicine. They were never separate careers. They were all training for this: helping people and practices build something sustainable, instead of running themselves into the ground to prove they can.
Why Sunshower Collective
I'm not interested in coaching-as-hustle. I don't believe burnout is a personal failing, and I don't think "pushing through" is a strategy. That's the thing I had to learn the hard way, and I don't want you to have to learn it the same way I did. I wanted to create a space where people feel safe to show up authentically, no matter what they're feeling at any given time. A place to step away from a world that sometimes feels like it's moving way too fast. And I especially wanted to create a space where rest isn't something you should feel guilty for taking, but a way to honor and love the version of you that may have been lost along the way.
Somewhere along the way, a lot of us forget why we started in the first place, the curiosity, the purpose, even the joy of it. Sunshower Collective is also about finding your way back to that. Not just recovering from what's hard, but remembering what drew you here to begin with, and making room for play again, not as a reward for surviving, but as part of how you keep going.
Credentials & Training
Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine (DACM)
Master of Science in Traditional Oriental Medicine (MSTOM)
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Licensed Acupuncturist (L.Ac.), Illinois
Diplomate of Oriental Medicine, NCBAHM
Clinical training: RUSH MD Anderson Cancer Center (integrative oncology acupuncture), Jesse Brown VA Medical Center (veteran care, PTSD, chronic pain), Pacific College of Health & Science student clinic internships, and clinical practice at Moon Rabbit Acupuncture in Chicago
5 years of hands-on wellness practice operations: billing, credentialing, staffing, marketing, and business systems
Two decades of business, marketing, business development, and operations experience across healthcare, education, real estate, finance, and entrepreneurship
I'm currently based in Lisbon, Portugal, and work virtually with clients across the U.S., whether you're a wellness practitioner, a founder, or someone just trying to find your way back to yourself.
Outside of work, you'll usually find me taking photos, at a concert, playing volleyball, traveling somewhere new, reading, or just outside enjoying wherever I've spontaneously landed.
I believe in showing up authentically, and that's not permission to be careless with people. It means being honest about who you are while still choosing kindness. I believe in treating people the way they want to be treated, not just the way I'd want to be treated. I believe in play as much as I believe in work, in equality and respect, and in people getting to be exactly who they are. And I believe healing, and most good work, happens when people feel seen, supported, and truly heard.
Whatever brought you here, I'm happy you found this.