Joanne Dougan, M.Ed.

November 3, 2015

As a little girl, when asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, my answer was that I wanted to be a teacher. My burning inner desire was to dramatically change at least one person's life. Growing up in NYC, I was in contact with strangers every day who shared their stories with me. It happened all the time. Many people said, "I've never told anyone this before...."

My family life was filled with contradictions: great intelligence, beauty, glamour (it was the 60's and my father was literally an Ad Man on Madison Avenue), education, culture...the inner life was verbally abusive and emotionally toxic.

At 12, my parents deemed me "too tall".... (more to come)