Introduction, a summary of where I have been and what I have since Yale:
After earning a BA with a major in Religion at Barnard in the 1960’s – before Yale had women undergrads – I married, worked as an executive trainee at Bloomingdale’s, became a mom, continued to do lots of volunteer work (which I had done since childhood), taught teenagers who could not handle a classroom, took graduate courses in school psychology, then in 1976 began the PhD program in clinical psychology at Yale. After fabulous experiences at Yale (and a divorce after 16 years of marriage), I applied for academic positions, was interviewed at 13 universities from Stanford to Harvard, turned down two excellent offers to protect my kids from a custody fight, opened a private practice, taught at Yale as a Lecturer until the late 1980’s. During that period, I remarried, and my second husband died young and suddenly. In 1992 I began a 3-year NIA post-doc in Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale, where I continued as a Research Affiliate until 2006.
In 1998, following a two-year transatlantic romance that became the topic of my 2016 memoir, I moved to Paris to live with David, a divorced American attorney living on a converted barge moored in the center of the city. He has been my treasured companion ever since. After moving to Paris, I hoped to begin a career as an author for general audiences, while continuing to write up scientific papers with my Yale collaborator. The last in our series published in 2002.
After David and I moved from Paris to rural Connecticut, September 11th led me to design and offer trauma-and-coping workshops for corporations, nonprofs, community groups, all as a volunteer. A teaching job as half-time core-faculty in the graduate programs in clinical psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, opened up and for the next five years I was an Adjunct Assistant then Adjunct Associate Professor in the program, mentoring six dissertations, sitting on seven more
dissertation committees, and mentoring countless Master’s essays and projects, teaching two courses each semester, and supervising Externships, designing then collecting internet data on a follow-up study, “Love and Longevity”, from more than 2400 respondents, even running the Master’s degree program one semester when its permanent Director was on leave. I wrote papers for referred journals, sat on committees, and earned half of a “real” salary. Midway through, David and I moved from New Milford, Connecticut to Tarrytown, New York. Soon we welcomed six grandkids, all living nearby, often.
Five years later, I retired, learned to quilt, tried to relearn to play the piano, dabbled in writing up our unique love story, using primary data of fax correspondence, agendas, journals, calendars, photographs and memories we held. Through a bizarre series of events, the memoir was published in October of 2016 and I suddenly became an author. The following spring my book won a gold medal from Independent Publishers Book Awards (an “IPPY”). Finding myself In a foreign industry, I learned to write a blog for PsychologyToday (one million views as of November 7th!), regular articles for BonjourParis, a few other essays here and there, and to give talks at libraries, literary salons, bookstores, book clubs. I even reluctantly opened a Facebook page, designed a website, and gradually learned what aspects of publishing I could be comfortable with and which violated my sense of what was okay for me or my priorities for how I wanted to use my energy, training, and experience.
During all of this, I have volunteered – in leadership roles at Yale and as a synagogue member, as a mental health specialist for American Red Cross since 2012, and for the Surrogate Decision-Making Commission of the State of New York since 2005. I am a dedicated yogi, enthusiastic Francophile, proud member of and supporter for 1stGen at Yale, and a very grateful wife, mom, step-mom and grandmother. My goals are to teach, inspire and heal; to do so by listening, writing and modeling; to cultivate qualities of compassion, patience and boundary-management; and to help us all live with courage, joy and integrity.
1. What is your current profession/job? What did you study at Yale? When did you graduate?
Now I am a writer. At Yale GSAS I studied (and taught) clinical, social, developmental and organizational psychology and then at YSPH, psychosocial epidemiology. While a doctoral student, I worked at GSAS, SOM, and in psychiatry at Yale Medical School.
2. What do you like best about your current role? What do you find most challenging and/or rewarding?
The most rewarding aspects of what I am doing now are reaching people in meaningful ways, following ideas and experiences that intrigue me, having control over my time and location, and articulating new ways of thinking about old things. I love that my PsychologyToday Editor retitled my blog “Life, Refracted” from “Relationships, Refracted.”
The most challenging aspects of my work revolve around living in a digital world that requires ease with technical skills I do not have; begets expectations of speed that argue against patience, reflection, discrimination; and required a steep learning curve because I entered the industry without preparation, any formal or informal introduction, training, background or understanding of its different culture. It helps that my goals at this time in my life need not include earning money to support my family. This is a perfect “Third Act” for me and I thank Yale for helping me believe that I could make this dream too come true.
3. How did your time at Yale shape your career trajectory?
Perhaps most important, Yale brought me (1) skills – research, clinical, analytic, communication, and even early computer skills! (2) inspiration – for ways to teach, ways to be a professional, ways to be the kind of woman I aspired to be, and faith in the process of discovery; (3) autonomy – support for defining what I need and want and learning ways to go about pursuing those needs and wants; (4) collaboration – the joy of working with others and being able to learn from and share with them.
4. What are the main skills that you acquired as a Ph.D. student that help make you successful in your current career?
Initiative, courage, resistance, and graceful failure so I can keep learning to do or make my work better.
5. Did you acquire any professional experience related to your line of work while in graduate school (either through part-time work, volunteering, networking, or other forms of training)?
I got practice in teaching through weekly meetings with Edie McMullen, who had headed
up the MAT program at Yale (there was no Teaching and Learning Center or even program back then, pre-MacDougal Center, but we were able to ask for and be given this precious resource) as well as from being a TA; making presentations at Yale, across America, and internationally; supervising graduate students’ clinical work; and, later, mentoring dissertations. I expanded my ability to think about something from multiple points of view by being surrounded at Yale by so many students and faculty with varying outlooks, being able to attend talks by and gatherings with people offering different perspectives and being able to work with people from a very broad range of backgrounds. By teaching and learning inductive, organic, qualitative research skills as well as more quantitative methods, I developed a sensitivity to situations in which one approach or the other might be useful and how to move between them.
6. What is the biggest challenge that you face in transitioning to different working places/cultures? What do you suggest current students do to prepare for those challenges?
Perhaps the greatest challenge for me has been -and continues to be – “fit”. My values are strong and deeply personal and often at odds with a work setting, especially one focused on profit rather than freedom or well-being, finding balance among multiple aspects and needs of the individual self. I advise students to monitor how they respond to a range of situations and
experiences and, through that observational process, to discover their gifts, dreams, and vulnerabilities, so that they can make choices leading to lives filled with meaning and joy.
