I did not grow up in the Buddhist tradition. I grew up Catholic, but it didn’t fit for me. In my 20s or so, I started looking at other things, and I read about Zen and Buddhism, and I really liked Buddhism. It really spoke to me.

I’m also a licensed clinical psychologist, so I was learning a lot about new research in neuropsychology and children’s neurodevelopment, and honestly, a lot of the Buddha’s teachings aligned with that. When I became a parent to my first child, it really fit for me—trying to integrate everything I was learning about parenting, neurodevelopment, and being empathic and compassionate. I really turned even more to Buddhism to help me be a better parent.

I was kind of plugging along as a nightstand Buddhist. I had my second child, and I always wanted to find a place to go. I came because I wanted to be a better person. I wanted to be a better parent, and I felt I couldn’t get that from books. I deeply felt a need for a community where I could be immersed with people who were trying to do what I wanted to do, or who were how I wanted to be. In my mind, Buddhists were all calm and compassionate.

And I have definitely gotten that from being here. But as a licensed psychologist, I’m very familiar with emotions and how to manage them, and I thought I was pretty good at that—except that now that I’ve been coming here for, I think, nine years, I realize how much fear and anxiety were driving my life and causing suffering that I didn’t need to be experiencing. That just doesn’t happen like it used to.

I feel this joy and peace from being able to see things more clearly, and I really wish others could experience that. Because I can now see more clearly so many times when people are spinning about a problem, thinking about how it can be so bad and how it’s getting worse, and I’ll think, actually, nothing’s happened yet. This is just an idea they have about what might happen.

Because of coming here, I very often can quickly see, “Oh, there’s nothing actually wrong. This is just a thought that popped into my head.” So that’s what I like about coming here and the impact it’s had on me. There are just so many benefits for me that it’s hard to describe them all.