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My Story
My mom after the war
The Right to a Thrilling Life
I believe we all have a right to live a thrilling life—physically, emotionally, and psychologically.
My mother was a Holocaust survivor. She endured two concentration camps (including Auschwitz), two Nazi ghettos, and a death march that began in Poland and ended hundreds of miles away in Germany. Most of her family—parents and three siblings—were murdered.
When I was born, an enormous amount of hope was placed in my ability to live fully, as if my one big life might somehow stand in for the many that were lost. You could say every breath I take—from my first at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Hospital to the one I’m taking now at my Washington, DC desk (actually a chaise, because, well, pleasure)—is a quiet but determined response to destruction.
My mother taught me that living a thrilling life was the ultimate f*ck you to Hitler. It took me decades, and more than one personal reckoning, to understand how to translate that inheritance into my work.
From Performance to Resilience
Before I became a writer and keynote speaker, I was a performer. For years, I created and toured one-person shows across the U.S. and abroad, often tackling difficult subjects, like genocide and sexual abuse.
At the same time, I was working in wellness—as a corporate resilience trainer, trauma-recovery practitioner, and yoga instructor.
Being the child of a Holocaust survivor made me obsessed with this question: how do people survive profound adversity—and continue to live well afterward?
Over time, my performance and wellness worlds merged. Performance taught me how to hold a room, read an audience, and tell a story that lands. Wellness taught me what actually helps people regulate stress, recover strength, and stay present when life becomes overwhelming.
That intersection—science, storytelling, and lived experience—is what now defines my work as a speaker.
Pleasure, Sanity & The Thrilling Life
Growing up in a loving family didn’t protect me from trauma. I lived on a block shared by two (yes, two!) pedophiles. I did the best I could: I went to therapy, and believed I had “handled it”—until much later, when marriage revealed just how much healing remained to be done.
That journey led to my first book, The Pleasure Plan, which explored trauma recovery through embodiment and the nervous system. The research I did on pleasure, dopamine, and regulation became foundational to my current work, especially after my husband became ill: In 2019, my husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And, subsequently, he developed severe depression. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a trauma expert—I was a full-time caregiver.
I needed a way to protect my own sanity.
So I began applying what I knew about the nervous system—savoring, dopamine regulation, embodiment—combined with deep study in neuroscience and trauma recovery. Tea houses became my laboratories: small, elevated spaces where I could practice staying internally alive while my external world was falling apart. I began visiting them one by one, across the country, studying the mental health potential of delight practices. That journey is the subject of my forthcoming book SANITY: 50 States. 50 Tea Houses. One Quest for Wholeness in a World Gone Mad. The book codified the framework behind all my work today: The Thrilling Life™.
Resiience and Vitality in the Workplace
The Thrilling Life™ makes a counterintuitive case: resilience isn’t built by grit. It’s built by reclaiming small, accessible moments of delight that regulate the nervous system, restore psychological strength, and reconnect people to meaning—even when circumstances are brutal.
Life is difficult.
A thrilling life is our strongest defense. A thrilling life is our birthright.