I wrote my recent memoir In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide over eighteen years. In the middle of the night I tried to resurrect my mother, to have her come alive across time, to create someone that the reader cared deeply about. It was a private exploration.

My mother died by suicide when I was four years old, after a protracted custody battle with my father in 1963. As a child psychiatrist, mother, and daughter I had a missionary's zeal (and sometimes dread) of what I might find out. I pursued any lead, combed through newspaper articles, and interviewed my family and my mother's friends with the curiosity of a detective investigating an unsolved mystery.

Neither my teenage patients nor my colleagues knew anything of this private process. I thought at times of William Carlos Williams writing his iconic poem The Red Wheelbarrow on a prescription pad. My healing and my dogged determination to understand about my mother's life and suicide seemed separate from my day job as a child psychiatrist. I never considered that In Her Wake could become a platform for me to speak to prevent another suicide, but it brought me opportunities to reach out to community groups, professional meetings, and even TV and radio audiences. I found unanticipated benefits from taking the risk of sharing my story.