I am a neurodivergent Black woman living with a chronic illness, and my life has required more than one reinvention.

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I married a naval officer in 1996 and gave birth to three children in four and a half years. Much of my twenties was spent raising babies while quietly trying to grow myself, learning how to carry responsibility and longing at the same time.

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In 2014, my eighteen-year marriage ended, unraveling an identity I had worn for most of my adult life. Two years later, I lost the ability to walk without support and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Physical limitation brought a different kind of reckoning, one that could no longer be pushed through by force of will. I had to learn how to recalibrate, how to listen to my body, and how to rebuild at a different pace.

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After a year of unemployment and uncertainty, I regained my mobility, returned to work, purchased my first home, and established my private practice in 2020. Those milestones were not simply achievements; they marked a decision to be intentional about building a life that was sustainable for me.

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In 2025, I received a late diagnosis of autism that reshaped how I understood my life.  It gave language to parts of myself I had lived with for decades, allowing me to see my history with greater clarity and respond to myself with more understanding than criticism.

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I share this because the women I work with are often living versions of chapters I have already walked through;  the grief of a marriage ending, the identity shift of a diagnosis, the quiet mourning of a life that didn't go as planned. I don't work from a distance — I work from experience.