Twenty years of clinical practice had not prepared me for my encounter with Rebecca Hasbrouck. Working in the outpatient department of a large psychiatric facility, I had encountered hundreds of people whose stories would move me, but for some reason, Rebecca's seemed unusually troubling. Perhaps it was her similarity to me in so many ways that stirred me up.
Like me, she was in her mid-forties and had mothered two sons when she was in her early thirties. She had been raised in a middle-class family and attended excellent schools. In fact, when I first spoke with Rebecca, my attention was drawn to the faded Polaroid photo that she grasped tightly in her fist. It was the picture of a jubilant 22-year-old Rebecca on the day of her graduation from an Ivy League university. She stood beside her parents and her older sister, everyone gleaming with pride about all that she had accomplished and filled with the greatest of expectations about all that would lie ahead for her.
I later learned that she was planning to attend one of the most prominent law schools in the country, where she would pursue a specialization in maritime law. Everyone, including Rebecca, assumed that a life of happiness and personal fulfillment would lie ahead.
