I built a real career first: forty years as a research physicist, much of it spent compressing materials between diamonds to measure sound waves no one had measured before — work that helped map what the interior of the Earth is actually made of. From the outside, I had it together.

Underneath, I was married to someone I loved who could also turn into someone I didn't recognize behind closed doors. I became the quiet one. The one who held things together, who tried to keep the peace, who got good at making everyone else comfortable so I wouldn't get yelled at. I didn't know yet that I was allowed to be angry — I'd been punished for it my whole life, so I swallowed it instead. I kept swallowing it, until my body did what I wouldn't let myself do. It stopped.

A friend brought me — reluctantly, on my part — to an energy healer. Within weeks I was functional. Within months, I was myself again. Then I spent thirty years doing what a physicist does: I needed to know why it worked.

I also spent years in Al-Anon, learning what I now teach every client: anger isn't a character flaw, it's a boundary alarm. When I feel it rise, it means something in my life has been crossed. That single reframe — from anger as the enemy to anger as the protector — changed how I live, and how I help other people heal.

My father used to call me his “little toughy” — nobody could keep me down for long. It took me years to find her again. If you're the quiet, steady one everyone leans on while you quietly run out of yourself — I've been there. I know the way out, because I walked it.