My path to psychiatry was paved via Internal Medicine. As an impressionable young intern on the medical floor, I understood that my patients wanted to know more than just their test results; they wanted to talk about their lives. My journey started with having long discussions about relationships, dignity and strength in the face of often devastating chronic illnesses.

Through my courageous patients, I learned that love, pain, anger, remorse, guilt and forgiveness are universal human languages that transcend cultural, ethnic and racial divides. They taught me to recognize anxiety, depression, and grief as well as hope, faith, prayer and optimism to be valuable clinical tools that silently made a difference to their attitude towards treatment. Understanding this made me realize that I could make a difference in their course of treatment and in their lives.

After this spark of interest, I applied for a Psychiatry residency where I was trained in the art of listening. Through invaluable supervision I learned what makes a person who they are. The underpinnings of nature – heredity, genetics, temperament when combined with the incredible force of nurture in the form of early childhood experiences and current life circumstances determine our response to adversity.

Upon graduation from psychiatry residency at New York Medical College, Valhalla in 2008, I tended to my young family for two years while relocating back to my favorite city of Atlanta. My work as a psychiatrist has been a source of great joy and ongoing learning because of the uniqueness of each individual and every situation.