My Wake Up Call

I can’t give you an exact year my ‘illness’ happened. Rather, it was an accumulation, over decades of nurture stress and lifestyle choices that yielded a slew of chronic symptoms. If I had to give myself a retrospectiove diagnosis, it would be support system burnout.

During the most difficult decade alarms were ringing: a pregnancy loss, a serve mast cell allergy, an elbow stress fracture, a collar bone dislocation. My digestion was messed, my liver was stressed, my back muscles riddled with knots, my head ached with brain fog, my immune system sucked and I was hooked on caffeine, gluten and dairy. I cover more of this in the Functional Genomics module.

What I intend to offer, as a kick off content for Nirvana Living, are my successes towards now living pain free. I’ll share the practical treatments as well a woo therapy explorations.

Also, there are many helpers and healers who helped me along the way. I look forward to introducing these practitioners.

Becoming Trained

As typical of immigrant families I was the first to go to College. Being bilingual, I did my best to avoid my linguistic weak spots. Science courses seemed the best path to become financially self sufficient. While I liked my biology courses there were no jobs. Chemistry seemed worth enduring. The environmental poisons course left a long term impression.

A medical lab director invited me as bench scientist for medical device research. After a few years I switched over to Marketing. A highlight was traveling back to Europe to observe surgeries and teach the sales teams about the product lines.

I was in the first wave of desktop publishing investigators with the single Apple Macintosh in the marketing department. In ‘86 I shocked hubby by taking a putty colored box home from work to typeset a sales catalog. Now hubby was a Bell Labs researcher, an electrical engineer and part of the first wave of computer scientists. The concept of lay people (me) easily taking a PC home did blow his mind a bit.

10 years later, in '96, while raising our boys in suburbia, I really did only need a laptop with a design program to begin easing life with hard copy reference tools called HandyGuides.

A Decade of Healing

I had to walk away from HandyGuide once my body made itself a top priority. My body hurt, my brain was fried and my dour emotions were rarely hitting neutral.

It took a couple of years to dial in the supplements now supporting me. Functional Genomics, Micronutrient Analysis, Digestive Protocols, Neurochemical Analysis and more was part of my journey to optimism.

Design Strategist | IrisDesignHub

My response to solve frustration puzzles has remained ever present. During my healing years I took on design challenges that expanded my skillsets. These days I find myself networking with a couple of tech builders where we share our tips to integrate AI for all manner of efficiencies.

Chemistry Major | Rutgers NJ

Medical Researcher | Oakland NJ

Medical Device Product Director

Professional Highlights

HandyGuide Founder

Marketing Publisher & Service Design | Bergen County NJ

  • New Business Retail Brochures

  • Business District Analytics

  • 250,000+ Town & Highway Directory Prints

  • 100,000+ Hotel, College & Hospital Way-finding Guides

Design Strategist | IrisDesignHub LLC

  • Medical Wellness Instructionals

  • Website & App UX & UI Integrations

  • Experiential Hospitality Products

  • Non-profit Collateral Refinement

  • B2B Startup Decision Coach

Formative Nurture

English was part of the outside world, German culture was dominant in the home.

My Omi dressed me as a Bavarian in 1960 Germany

Window shopping in NYC | 1963

Collecting moss while back in Germany | 1965

Germans settling in Fort Lee NJ | 1966

Back in Germany for a year of schooling | 1972

Socializing in high school | Fort Lee NJ | 1977

My grandmother’s recurring brain tumor was a four year death journey that disrupted the family dynamic.

My uncle dying of cancer at 38 was the next blow to the family.

HandyGuide Origin Story

We were in our early thirties with one house flip under our belts and moving to our forever home. This is the house my husband asked me to find that had not been ruined with shoddy home improvements. Yes, my super smart and uber talented husband was going to tackle adding on an extension to the new nest. We were young enough – or naive enough – to think this was all manageable. However the wrinkle in this ambitious DIY project was that he had a full-time job and I had a baby on each hip. So it was decided; he would make a list and I would head out during the week to have supplies ready for the weekends when family would show up to lend a hand with the build.

Now I loved being home with my bambinos. But I was filled with anxiety when driving to pick up the renovation materials. The highways were confusing in our new area and they were totally stressing me out on every single supply run. How was I supposed to remember hundreds of these stores along these miles? It seemed impossible. I was in perpetual panic. I’d sweat holding my breath constantly checking the rear view mirror and bare knuckling each drive. I made endless U-turns and burning precious time to find the lumber yards, the roofing supplier, the lighting stores, the flooring stores, the hardware stores, the kitchen appliance stores.

Three months into this renovation lifestyle my husband comes home early and pulls me aside with a nervous look on his face. He had good news: he had three months to work on the extension all day long everyday. He had bad news: he had three months time, meaning severance pay, to find a new job. Now what?

Looking back, those three months in 1990 were a precious gift. Weekend family help turned into daily family help. We played with the babies each morning. And he went out for the supply runs on the crazy highways, not me. By the end of the summer we had the roof on, everything was closed in, and he was back in corporate world. And I was back to making the errand runs. That’s when the returning highway panic turned me into a complainer. One evening, my overworked hubby finally blurted out: "well then do something about it!" What? Hmmmm, ok yes . . . YES, I do want to fix this problem. I can build things too. Challenge accepted. Now all I needed to get started was a Mac laptop and Adobe Illustrator.

Hubby's short job interruption was my wakeup call of how vulnerable a family is to depend on only one income. That realization, plus my highway frustration fire, fueled my vision for that first guide. That first guide led to many other HandyGuides for tens of thousands of my fellow neighbors.

Back then, before smart phones, the guides served as an anti-anxiety time saving navigation directories. These days, even with our GPS apps, the guides serve as a bird’s eye discovery tool. The tag line intention remains: Discovery Made Easy

Thirty years later we were happy to pass on our DYI build to another family.

Greetings from Asbury Park NJ

Downsizing to the City By The Sea has provided us a community welcoming all manner of creative expression.

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  • Analyst

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You know how to reach me. Ask me anything.