My Boston childhood was shaped by a father who was curious about almost everything and a trailblazing mother I lost too soon. I watched her, the first female medical intern at a Harvard teaching hospital, successfully navigate corridors not built for her. Questions about the human mind, our universe, and what makes life meaningful enlivened of our dinner conversations.

Under the covers at night, with a flashlight, I devoured stories that opened doors to new worlds and gave language to feelings I didn’t yet know how to name. At Swarthmore College, I organized the first Women’s History course, still reading into the wee hours and listening for quiet questions people ask themselves when no one is watching: How much of my future do I want to know? How deeply do I want to probe painful parts of my past? Am I choosing a life path that will satisfy me, or am I aiming too low?

I attended medical school at Johns Hopkins and later joined the psychiatry faculty there and then at Stanford before opening a private practice in Northern California. For years, I have interacted with patients as they wrestle with uncertainty, loss, desire, and the tug of stories that sometimes haunt them and distort their lives but other times inspire them. These experiences, and the ethical puzzles threaded through modern medicine, shape how I see the world.

Now, I combine my fascination with medicine, people, and narrative by practicing psychiatry and writing fiction about inheritance, secrecy, and fragile ways we make meaning together when the future refuses to come into clear focus.