I’ve set this up as a place to gather my writing from various outlets and to share other, more personal thoughts.

A little about me: I live in DC where I work, parent, write, and occasionally find time to play my guitar. I have three wonderful, sometimes exasperating kids. When it snows — as it JUST did, in the record-breaking #Snowzilla, I mean, Jonas — I like to hit the trails on my cross-country skis.

A little more about my writing: My interest, passion, and curiosity revolve around the field of environmental health — where science, people, nature, medicine, and politics intersect. It started as an intellectual fascination. I was a student of cultural anthropology in college, and a student of public health in grad school, and those two disciplines deeply complemented each other. How we structure our human interactions and endeavors – also known as our culture – has profound impacts on our health. I studied pesticide policy and farmworker health. I researched malaria eradication campaigns and land use. I learned about industrial chemicals and birth defects. All of this seemed very important to me, and still does.

Then I became a mom. That’s when environmental health became something more than an academic interest. It became personal.

My baby girl was among those children exposed to lead in the public water supply during the DC lead crisis in the mid-2000s. I knew well the profound health impacts that lead poisoning has on children, and this time my child was one of those at risk. It galvanized me. I talked with other parents in my community, attended Senate hearings, and brought my daughter to rallies.

That was more than ten years ago. Since then, I’ve written about some of these issues from my point of view as both a parent and a public health professional. I’ve written on flame-retardants in couches and the heavy metals in Halloween face paint; the mercury emitted by coal plants and the health impacts of urban smog; and, increasingly, the climate change situation we’ve gotten ourselves into (hint: not good) and the need for parents to wake up and smell the coffee. (I actually prefer Earl Grey tea myself, but coffee is such a good smell.)

I’ve also worked on these issues at several organizations – right now, as Public Health Policy Director of Moms Clean Air Force – and I regularly deliver public testimony at hearings, attend rallies, write fact sheets, strategize with partner organizations, and look for new ways to create pollution fighters.

I feel I’ve come late to the blog universe. Here I am starting a blog about being a mom — or at least highlighting and examining my identity as a mom — and my daughter, the one I strapped to my front at rallies about lead in the water, is already taller than I am. But I guess I’ve never been an early adopter. I’m more of a scrutinizer, an examiner, a look-before-you-leap kind of person. Which is another way of saying I have three kids and it takes me a while to make stuff happen.

But here we go, and thanks for reading this. I appreciate it.