Growing up in the Bronx, I was surrounded by people from vastly different backgrounds — different ethnicities, abilities, and life experiences. Some of them became close friends. That kind of closeness gives you a real understanding of people whose lives look nothing like your own, and it shows how I write my characters.

My Aunt Sally, who passed away in 2008, was paralyzed on the left side of her body as a result of surgery on her spine. Yet she held an office position at a Manhattan bank and commuted daily by public transportation. She lived her life almost as if she had no disability at all. Her husband, my Uncle Donald, had cerebral palsy that significantly affected both his speech and mobility. Despite this, he worked as a messenger in Manhattan, did most of the grocery shopping, and handled the outside chores. My Uncle Abe was mildly intellectually disabled. He commuted two hours each way to a factory where workers made flags from different nations. He struggled with reading, writing\ and had a limited vocabulary, yet he faced the world with quiet dignity. When someone called him slow, he responded, "Maybe I am, but I have a heart."

These were not characters I invented. They were people I loved, and they taught me that the fullest, most honest portrayals of people with disabilities begin with exactly that kind of knowing.

I hold an M.S. in Education from SUNY Albany and a New York State Reading Teacher's License, launching a career in elementary classrooms and later at a state psychiatric hospital, where I guided adolescents to channel difficult emotions through writing. Now living in New Jersey, I write for Medium and Dancing Elephants Press, and have authored articles for The Jewish World—Albany's only Jewish newspaper—and NY Trend, which remains the largest and only black woman-owned metropolitan newspaper in New York.  My 2025 essay on Bronx poverty appears in the anthology "The Invisible Lines of Poverty" (Dancing Elephants Press, 2025).