I’ve been honored to write for multiple publications, including WebMD, HealthyPlace and WEGO Health. I’m also thrilled to announce I’m writing my first book.

I picked up the creative pen at nine, but I started writing about mental health when I was in the throes of four impossible years of postpartum mental illness. Even while being incredibly ill, I still had the power to help others. I also realized I was not alone.

I was hospitalized twice in 2014 and after undergoing a non-invasive brain procedure, I slowly got my life back. I stopped blogging and started doing stand-up comedy. I was still writing, but now I was writing jokes. It shifted my perspective to what was funny rather than what was wrong. It was a huge part of my healing and I loved it.

Three years later, my life came to another screeching halt. I became so sick I could barely walk. At 45, I was diagnosed with late-stage neurological Lyme disease which I found out I contracted as an infant. I was bedbound for several months, in a wheelchair at one point and had tremors and involuntary movements that were so dramatic my family feared I had Parkinson’s.