In December 2015, I had an experience that changed my life forever. I lost my mind.
Eight months after the birth of my second baby girl, postpartum psychosis hit me like a freight train. My rational mind suddenly vanished: replaced by a nightmare I couldn’t wake from in which I was fighting a powerful cult for my life and the lives of my children.
Just before my efforts to save us turned deadly, the NYPD handcuffed me and took me to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital.
Two weeks later I reentered the stimulation of New York City completely changed. Trauma redrew my internal landscape. And Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) made me more comfortable on the inside of a psychiatric ward than with my family or in the city where I’d built a life. Yet on the outside I looked just fine.
My Story
Healing necessitated reckoning with all that was unseen:
both the aching fear and shame, and the narratives of never enough, an indoctrination of doing instead of feeling, and a system that values producing over well-being that had pushed me to the edge. And that practice—of seeing the thoughts and conditioning instead of living from it—was freeing.
I think a lot of us look just fine.
It was then that I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life focused on helping people be well. Letting our insides be seen—the joy, the trauma, the grief, the boredom, the humor—so we don’t feel alone, so we know just how much we have in common, so we can live well.
I’ve spent my entire career in education—I know the ins and outs of the literacy and math standards—and I still see myself as a teacher.
It’s just that the paradigm of what I think is most important to teach has flipped.
To feel it all and be seen, held, and healed together.
I meditate, practice yoga, and write so that I can see clearly what’s on the inside and bring it out.
I teach to hold space for others to do the same. To feel it all and be seen, held, and healed together.
I share my writing so that I can be honest with others in this messy human experiment.
Motivated by social justice, I worked in public education for twenty years: teaching, working at the nation’s largest school district, founding a successful nonprofit consulting agency, and working as an independent consultant.
I hold a bachelor’s from the University of Michigan, a Master in the Science of Teaching from Pace University, and a Master in Public Policy from Georgetown University.
In December 2015—while running a consulting firm and welcoming my second baby—I had a before-and-after experience. I suffered postpartum psychosis (PPP)—suddenly losing the mind I'd spent a lifetime collecting fancy degrees and accolades for—and narrowly escaped hurting myself or my family in the throes of psychosis. Afterward, I worked for myself as a consultant in public education while pivoting to spend my career teaching, speaking, advocating for, and writing about the things I learned from experiencing PPP and finding my way back to myself.
I'm now a certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher (via the Awareness Training Institute in Collaboration with the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley), a trained sound practitioner, and a 200-hour certified yoga teacher with over 22 years on the mat.
I live in my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio, with my husband and three wonderful (and needy) small children. When I’m not writing or teaching mindfulness you can find me chasing joy with—or without—my family outdoors.
