I am a Lady Doc.

The biographies of my sister lady docs are replete with sterling credentials, exotic homelands, Ivy League educations and fancy fellowships.

This biography is different.

I am a retired psychiatrist. I practiced psychopharmacology both because I saw chemical equations in my head, and because psychotherapy bored me. Not that it’s not valuable, it surely is, but one of the qualities of a good therapist is the ability to keep one’s mouth shut, something which escapes me.

I grew up in Miami and got derailed early on following the unexpected death of my mother following routine surgery when I was 12. Smart little girl full of promise morphs into wild adolescent, skipping school, taking drugs, staying out all night and flunking out of high school.

There was a drug rehab along the way and I eventually reacquainted myself with the little girl full of promise, graduating with a BA in English from University of Miami, and a degree in general studies from Columbia.

On to GW medical school, marriage to a literary agent, and two lovely daughters, who luckily did not follow me into academic debauchery.

I’ve been published in Annals of Internal Medicine, spent ten years as an adjunct professor at GW, and had a successful private practice for many years, until I retired five years ago.

And now, I live the life. I am a lifelong equestrian, and own two dressage horses, Ajax and Nikita. Dressage is physically challenging. One’s body is in synch with a 1000-pound animal, telling it not with words, but with a shift of weight, how to move.

A good life made richer by the Lady Docs.