I am a native New Yorker and although I’ve lived in various parts of the United States and in Paris, France, New York is where I always come back to. I have always been a writer, and I have been an actress as well, appearing on stage and screen at various times of my life. The through line throughout everything I’ve done in my life, however, has always been helping people. I suppose that began officially a couple of years after I was raped in Central Park at gunpoint. That was in 1981. I moved to Denver, Colorado shortly thereafter to live with the man who I eventually married, and I was lucky enough to find help and support at a place called Ending Violence Effectively. I was suffering from trauma and PTSD. The help I received at EVE was so effective and healing that I decided, upon moving back to New York a year later, to enter into training and certification programs at St Lukes-Roosevelt and St. Vincent’s Hospitals so that I could become a Rape Crisis Counselor in the Emergency Rooms at both hospitals, and also be on call for the Rape Crisis Hotline in NYC.
Since that time, and during the period in my life that I was living in Los Angeles and acting, I took the plunge into the Martha Beck Life Coach Training Program and I became a Life Coach. My writing and life coaching took precedence over acting, and so I continued on with Intensive Grief Training with Our House in Los Angeles and earned my certification as a Grief and Loss Counselor. This brought new meaning to my life. I had experienced deep losses in my own life and wanted to help people live with grief and still be able to live full and happy lives. My sister died at age 33 of breast cancer and my mother suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease for 11 years before she died. I wrote a book about my sister called MY SISTER’S PICTURE, which was published by Simon and Schuster in 1986.
MY CREDENTIALS
Our House/Grief and Loss Certification
St. Lukes/Roosevelt Hospital Crime Victims Treatment Center/Rape Crisis and Domestic Violence Advocate Certification
Martha Beck Life Coach Training