I am a practicing MD psychiatrist for the past 30 years in the New York City area, having moved here from my home state of Kentucky after medical school. I do evaluations, medication management, treatment planning, and consultation for all ages of patients and all diagnoses including addictions. I am Board Certified in my main specialty and 2 subspecialties. I am 58, and grew up Catholic on the liberal end of the spectrum in the Western Kentucky town of Owensboro, one of 4 children and the eldest boy. My father was a small town lawyer and my mother a college graduate and full time mother and homemaker. My older sister, Lynnelle, died by suicide in 1983 at the age of 20 while and undergraduate nursing student in Evansville IN. I am divorced, have 2 daughters and 4 grandchildren, and a son, Giovanni, who died of meningitis when he was 2 years old. I joined the Baha’i Faith in 1989 and continue to be inspired by it. I work in community mental health by day and run my own private clinic in the evenings with the same population. On most weekend days I am on call in a state children’s psychiatric hospital. It is there that I have ample time to think and write. I live and work in Mount Vernon NY.