I grew up in El Campo, a small Texas town with a population of 7,000 and working-class parents. Many of the local families had farms on which they grew rice. During my freshman year I was the “girl boss” of the flute section in the marching band for, I kid you not, the El Campo Ricebirds football team.

My single parent worked extremely hard to expose each of her four daughters to experiences that matched their interests. Those included art, singing, and math for each of my younger sisters, and for me, reading, ideas, and conversations with her and other adults which I loved. It was in one of these conversations when I was about 10 years old that she told me about a man named Sigmund Freud who had new ideas and tried to help people by listening to and talking with them. She added that Freud also wrote about his ideas and taught them to others. Apparently, I responded to this information by telling my mother that I wanted to be Freud when I grew up. True story. Of course, my childhood fantasy matured into an ardent desire to imitate Freud and become a professor of clinical psychology. Again, true story. I was a pretty serious kid.

Adolescence changed all of that. I spent my teenage years in Salt Lake City and attended the University of Utah with many of my good friends. My friends were smart, creative, and funny, but I only qualified for the first of those categories. I quickly became identified as the group “good listener” and what we would today call a peer counselor. But I also joined the debate team at the height of the second wave of feminism and marked political conflict in America. I continued to be the only rebellious kid in my friendship group when the Vietnam war and political conflict in the United States, and the death tolls of young men, became reality.

I completed my psychology college major, largely due to an inspirational undergraduate psychology professor, and headed off to beautiful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where I entered the doctoral program in clinical psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. I immersed myself in the department’s scientist-practitioner model of research, teaching, and clinical work. I loved all components of this model, but especially loved teaching and clinical work, both of which were quite ego-syntonic for me. Eventually, I made the very painful decision not to purse an academic career in psychology. The key element of this decision was that, having been in the academic environment for so long, I did not think that I would be happy or succeed in an academic environment. Despite my sense of loss, it became clear that this was the right decision for me.

The process of jumping the next hurdles that we all must jump.

After I obtained my masters and doctoral degrees at Pitt, I did my internship and a fellowship at what is now The Oregon Health and Science University. I then did a 2-year residency focused on psychological assessment and research. I finished the process of licensure in 1987 and became Oregon Psychologist license number 721. I then launched an independent, intense private practice with an object relations and empathy-based model (i.e., Kohutian) of self-understanding and using that insight to facilitate personal change by my clients. Although I loved doing my clinical work, by year 15 of my practice, the emotional demands of doing 30-plus hours of empathy-based psychotherapy prompted me to recognize that I needed to change the emotional and intellectual balance of my work.

After careful introspection and consultation with colleagues I pursued additional training in the then relatively new specialization of forensic psychology while continuing my clinical practice. I further specialized in the forensic psychological assessment of criminal defendants, including many women. Most of the psychological evaluations focused on aspects of a defendant’s life history, their experiences of neglect, abuse, violence, trauma, addiction, and other factors that played relevant roles in their alleged criminal conduct, their potential for rehabilitation, and development of a picture of the individual that would assist judicial decision-making regarding sentencing of the defendant. I began teaching students in Pacific University’s advanced clinical and forensic tracks and developed a teaching and supervision model for advanced doctoral students focused on forensic psychology in a real practice situation. This led to another amazing addition to my practice of psychology: 10 or so years of teaching and supervising very smart, gifted, motivated, compassionate human beings who inspired me and added layers of meaningfulness to the last chapter of my life as a professional psychologist.

And now I am retired.

I retired in December 2021 after a very satisfying 35 years of practicing my own version of the scientist-practitioner model of clinical psychology. I had always thought that retirement would be a difficult transition for me and that I would not know what to do with myself. I am pleased to report that is not the case. I relish spending time with my talented, funny, loving partner and our two marvelous Cairn Terriers, Henry and Hollis, who suit my personality wonderfully and make me laugh. I enjoy doing exactly what I want most of the time and letting my thoughts drift to what might be interesting and ego-syntonic for me to pursue during this amazingly free time.