North Star Sleep Health

We say “go to sleep” — but sleep isn’t a destination. It’s what happens when we remove what’s in the way.

Sleep isn’t supposed to take effort. Unfortunately, the harder you “try,” the further away it gets — your nervous system reads the effort as a signal that something is wrong, and responds accordingly.

The resulting loss is bigger than just the hours. Sleep is load-bearing in ways we don’t fully appreciate until it’s gone, or significantly compromised. It can affect everything else — including the slow erosion of trust in your own body.

Whatever brought you here, you don’t have to keep white-knuckling through it.

About

Hi, I’m Marissa.

I’m a board-certified Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner, certified in CBT-I through Stanford’s Sleep Health and Insomnia Program — and I found this work because I needed it myself. Sleep completely fell apart for me during my first pregnancy, and it took over a year postpartum to find my way back. It eventually resolved on its own. When insomnia returned in my second pregnancy, I knew I wanted to deal with it head on. That’s when I found CBT-I.

Now I help women do the same thing — less sleep managing, more easy, restorative sleep.

About Marissa

The practice

North Star is a specialized sleep health practice for women, offering Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) — the first-line recommended treatment for chronic insomnia by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American College of Physicians.

Insomnia is more common in women. It often arrives with a hormonal transition — pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause — and just as often gets written off as a normal part of that transition. But hormones are only part of it. The roles women carry and the logistical and psychological demands of our time shape sleep as much as biology does. It can also follow a significant life event — a breakup, the death of a loved one, a job loss, worry about family or finances. What starts as a few bad nights of sleep can become routine, and chronic. That whole picture is my expertise — and the context I support you from.

We work with CBT-I, supported by practices drawn from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction — retraining the patterns keeping insomnia going, and rebuilding your confidence in your body’s own ability to sleep.

What changes

You fall asleep without bracing for the night ahead.
You sleep through more of the night — and if you do wake up before your desired rise time, you know what to do.
You stop building your days around how you slept, or hesitating to make plans based on how you might sleep.
You reduce or come off sleep medication, if that’s your goal.
You leave with tools that hold long after we finish — and a clear written plan for what to do on your own if sleep challenges arise again.

Evidence-based

Women’s sleep health

Holistic care

The process

How it works

01 · Free phone consult (15 minutes)

A short conversation to hear what’s going on and decide together whether CBT-I is the right fit.

02 · Comprehensive sleep health evaluation and intake (75 minutes)

We start our work together here through video visits, with a detailed review of your sleep history, patterns, and holistic health context — and the start of your treatment plan.

03 · The program (6–10 sessions)

Weekly 50-minute sessions over 6–10 weeks, depending on your situation, progress, and needs. We work through the full treatment program together — behavioral changes, cognitive restructuring, nervous system support. We adjust as needed, at a pace that feels manageable.

04 · You sleep.

Not perfectly every night — no one does. But with tools you trust for the harder nights when they come.

You can trust your body
to sleep again.

Hi, I’m Marissa.