Like many who choose the mental health profession, I experienced considerable trauma and loss growing up. And like many who’ve experienced trauma, I didn’t truly understand the full impact it had on me and my choices until well into adulthood. While my early experiences were painful and led to many challenges, they set the course for what has been an amazing life and career. 

My father – a first generation American – served in WWII. He came home to Los Angeles, married my mother and together they had my three older brothers and me. Shortly after I was born, he moved his young family to rural California – to give us a better life. He had no way of knowing that the stress of the move on my mother – in addition to unseen internal vulnerabilities – would trigger a psychotic break. She was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. 

For the next 8 years, my father did his best to care for my mom and raise us – a very difficult job for a single dad who had his own trauma from the war. My parents divorced when I was eight and although I saw my mother a handful of times over the next few years, she eventually fell through the cracks of society and I didn’t see her again until I was 57 years old.  

In addition to my mother’s mental illness, there was much more suffering to come. Between the ages of ten and fifteen, I lost my step-sister in an automobile accident and my step-brother to a rare medical condition. The most devastating loss, however, occurred when I was a junior in high school when I lost my beloved brother David in a drowning accident. 

I could say it was a miracle that I survived ….but it wasn’t. I survived – because I had what many kids don’t, an extraordinary father who provided security, stability and love. Despite the periodic – and frightening - storms caused by my father’s post-traumatic-stress, I always knew I could count on him. I knew he loved me and I knew he believed in me. He told me that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. 

I set my mind on becoming a child psychologist and moved east to attend graduate school. My father died when I was 27 – before I graduated – but I know he would have been proud of what I have done with my life. 

In 2001 I had two thriving private practices in the Washington DC area and two beautiful girls of my own. And then 911 changed the world and the trajectory of my life. I knew we were going to war and I knew that Service members would be coming home with invisible injuries. In the summer of 2004, after hearing a story about a Veteran living in his car after coming back from the war, I packed my girls into my suburban mom van and drove to a local bookstore. I read “Non profits for Dummies” and founded Give an Hour – a national non profit that in 2005 began providing free mental health care to Service members, Veterans and their families. 

By the time Give an Hour launched, I was a single mom going through a challenging divorce. I needed to provide for my girls, so I continued my private practice during the day and ran Give an Hour at night and on weekends. Give an Hour began receiving financial support from donors and corporations so that I was eventually able to close my practice and focus full time on our mission.

Give an Hour was the beginning of an incredible journey. I saw a need and decided to solve it by entering a sector I knew nothing about. Because of that decision – and the solution I created -  I’ve had the honor of working with Presidents, First Ladies, movie stars, rock stars and a Prince. I built a successful non profit from the ground up, launched two national public health campaigns, created a Community Blueprint to welcome our Service members home from war and led a Presidential Task Force focused on ending the tragedy of suicide. 

My personal journey has been extraordinary as well. In 2010, I married Dr. Randy Phelps -  a respected psychologist and senior leader in the mental health community who I’d met during the early years of Give an Hour. We built a life together – and he became the father my daughters needed and deserved. 

I’ve been told that I’m a social entrepreneur – a term I had never heard before Give an Hour. If being a social entrepreneur means that I identify and implement innovative solutions to big challenges – specifically mental health challenges in my case - then the label fits.  And if being a social entrepreneur means building big tent efforts, facilitating collaboration and creating coalitions whenever possible – that fits as well. 

I don’t agree with the saying, “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” because trauma typically does far more damage than good. I wish my family and I had been spared some of the pain and suffering we survived. But I know that I am who I am because of how those painful events shaped my life – and more importantly, because of the love and support that helped me heal from them. 

I’m grateful that I’ve been able to pursue my passion – to deliver mental health and well being to those in need, wherever they are and whatever their means. We do indeed have much more to do but we are definitely making progress.