depression – Baltimore Magazine

Regenerative Medicine: The Body’s Ability to Self-Heal

Megan McGaha — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 17:45:11 +0000

“The potential for this innovative treatment to decrease pain and increase function is really compelling for me.”

Whether you’re an athlete, labor worker, or have a history of orthopedic injury, chronic pain can negatively affect your daily activities, disrupt sleep, and even cause depression. The good news is, there’s an innovative procedure using the body’s own healing powers that can provide long-term pain relief when traditional methods no longer work.

To find out more about this unique treatment, we spoke with Idris Amin, MD, from University of Maryland Orthopaedics.

What is regenerative medicine, also known as orthobiologics?
Regenerative medicine addresses the underlying root causes of injuries and pain, not just the outward symptoms. These procedures work by activating the healing processes our bodies naturally go through when we are hurt, and enhance their effectiveness.

How did you become interested in this clinical specialty?
I’m fellowship-trained in sports medicine and treat a wide range of musculoskeletal disorders for all types of patients, from the well-trained athlete to the weekend warrior and casual jogger. The field of orthobiologics has been around for more than twenty years and has grown rapidly in the past decade, fueled by exciting new research and development of new procedures. The potential for this innovative treatment to decrease pain and increase function is really compelling for me. Tell us about the regenerative medicine procedures offered. The most commonly known procedure is Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP). Platelets are derived from our blood and are packed with proteins which stimulate growth and healing. When injected into the injury site, platelets provide nourishment and signal the body to bring in other healing cells. PRP can be helpful for many orthopedic conditions, including tendonitis and arthritis.

Another common procedure is Prolotherapy. This is a mixture of sugar, water, and numbing medication. When combined, they act as an irritant stimulating the body to bring in healing cells to repair the problem at the injury site. Prolotherapy also targets and destroys some of the pain-causing signals. Patients suffering from arthritis, tendon or muscle strains, and joint or ligament sprains, may find relief from prolotherapy.

Who is a good candidate for regenerative medicine?
Patients with long-term chronic pain that has not responded to conventional treatment. For instance, patients with arthritis, long-term sports injuries, and tendon injuries that have not healed within three months.

How should patients prepare for their treatment?
It’s recommended patients drink plenty of water, follow a healthy diet, and avoid certain pain medications, like NSAIDs – Ibuprofen or Aleve, for at least a week. This will help maximize success from the procedure.

How many orthobiologics sessions are usually needed?

Depending on the problem, one treatment session may be enough to see positive results. A follow-up appointment is scheduled for six to eight weeks after the procedure, where we discuss the rehabilitation program further. At completion of the program, about three months post-procedure, we determine if additional treatments are needed.

Tell us about the recovery process.
Patients may experience increased pain for about a week, but the level of pain is usually mild and manageable without pain medications. I typically advise my patients to take things easy after the procedure, and not plan any strenuous activities.

How is University of Maryland unique in their approach to regenerative medicine?
Our understanding and involvement in research related to orthopedic uses for orthobiologics is unique for an academic medical center in this region. I believe it is important for patients to go to a provider they can trust, and one that is up to date on this constantly evolving field of medicine.

MEET OUR EXPERT:

Idris Amin, MD
Assistant Professor of Neurology and Orthopaedics, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Physiatrist & Sports Medicine Specialist

To schedule a Regenerative Medicine consultation in Columbia or Downtown Baltimore, please call 410-448-6400.

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Out of the Blue

Lauren Cohen — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 18:33:33 +0000

Food & Drink

Out of the Blue

As the pandemic wears on, experts weigh in on ways to stay positive.

By Jane Marion

Illustrations by Henri Campeã

WHILE MARY ALICE FALLON-YESKEY, a publicist at Johns Hopkins Press whom you may know from her stint on Ace of Cakes, is a famously sunny-side-of-life person, there’ve been times when the state of the world has gotten to even her. And when the clouds come, she gives herself permission to mope.

“I can have a night where I can be just be sad and drink wine and listen to mopey ’90s music,” says the 44-year-old mother of two young boys. “And that’s how I deal with it—just knowing that sometimes that’s a place I need to go.”

Between a killer virus, political chaos, racial strife, and encroaching environmental catastrophe, it is far from hyperbole to say that 2020 was a rough year for our collective psyche—for even the cheeriest among us. And as we’ve moved through spring, summer, and fall in a pandemic, now is the winter of our discontent.

In fact, according to a recent study, people in the United States are the most unhappy they’ve been in nearly 50 years. This sobering—yet unsurprising—conclusion comes from the COVID Response Tracking Study conducted by the research organization NORC at the University of Chicago this past May.

Among the findings: 14 percent of American adults say they’re very happy, down from 31 percent who said the same in 2018. That year, 23 percent said they’d often felt isolated in recent weeks. Now, 50 percent say that. (And the survey was taken just before the death of George Floyd, which led to nationwide protests, compounding the stress and loneliness caused by the pandemic.)

Of course, the pandemic has also been a mental health trigger to already vulnerable populations, including those who struggle with serious clinical depression and related mood disorders. As of late June, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report revealed that symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder increased considerably in the United States during April through June 2020, compared with the same time span in 2019.

In the survey, 40.9 percent of respondents reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition, including symptoms of anxiety disorder or depressive disorder related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same report, one in four young adults ages 18 to 24 had seriously considered suicide in the past 30 days when the study was taken. And certain groups—including unpaid caregivers, racial minorities, and essential workers, who also reported elevated rates of suicidal ideation—were disproportionately affected by pandemic-related stresses.

On a local level, calls to Baltimore’s Health Hotline have doubled since the pandemic, and calls and texts to 211 seeking mental-health resources are up nearly 50 percent since its start, while therapists and psychiatrists have long waiting lists and are working overtime to handle heavy caseloads. All of this adds up to one inevitable fact: We are experiencing a parallel pandemic of sorts, group PTSD from the fallout of living through one of the worst health crises of the past century.

“People are overwhelmed—it’s enough already,” says Karen Swartz, Director of Clinical and Educational Programs at the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center. “COVID depression is trailing the infectious epidemic. And the expectation is that there will be a concerning, worrisome explosion of psychological consequences from the pandemic. As the pandemic continues, with no end in sight, we are in a period of disillusionment, where people have a flagging of their emotional reserves, and they are bottoming out.”

Local therapists are witnessing the impact, too. “This is an event that has affected people’s mental health more than anything I’ve ever seen—there’s nothing that’s even close,” says Towson-based therapist Michael Bombardier, who has been in practice for 22 years. “We are in this uncertainty state that’s protracted, and that’s terrible for mental health.”

“This is an event that has affected people’s mental health more than anything I’ve ever seen—there’s nothing that’s even close,” says therapist Michael Bombardier. “We are in this uncertainty state that’s protracted, and that’s terrible for mental health.”

To be clear, clinical depression can be a serious condition that requires medical attention. But for those of us whose struggles are more situational, how can we learn to push through and put on a happy face? In order to know happiness, we need to know what it is.

“When we’re talking about happiness, we are talking about two different things,” says Bombardier, citing the work of Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. “One is an emotional experience—happiness is like a fleeting momentary experience of pleasure or connection or joy. And because we are social animals, those things tend to happen in the presence of other people.”

The other concept, says Bombardier, is related to a feeling of satisfaction: “That’s the longer-term story we tell ourselves about our lives, which is an entirely different process than the momentary emotional experience,” he says.

For many of us, the pandemic has stalled the narrative type of happiness, he says. “A lot of the stories we tell are achievement-based,” points out Bombardier, “and a lot of that right now is on hold for so many people.”

Also obscuring our happiness is the fact that, as the world around us has largely come to a halt, people tend to ponder. “When we sit around and think about things,” says Bombardier, “we ruminate and obsess about negative and unfinished things much more than pleasant experiences—and that’s a hard-wiring issue that most people think is evolutionary and helped us survive. How to just be happy is almost a new problem for humans. How do we sit back and really enjoy the ride now?”

In many ways, the pandemic has presented a unique chance to rethink, reset, and reevaluate what matters in our lives.

“If your basic needs are met, and your life hasn’t been disrupted to the core in terms of finances and health,” says Neda Gould, associate director of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, “this is an opportunity to reevaluate what matters in life, to practice gratitude for all the things we continue to have, and an opportunity to reframe and look within and develop new perspectives.” And also, acquire healthy habits.

“Do something as simple as take walks, instead of feeling stuck inside all day,” says Justin Halberda, a professor at both the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Department of Cognitive Science at The Johns Hopkins University, who delivers an annual “happiness” lecture to incoming Hopkins freshman. “You don’t have to take a big walk, you can take four small walks throughout the day, but that exercise has a cascading effect on your mood—and it can become habitual.”

Halberda also suggests learning a new skill such as baking or taking on a project that you’ve been putting off for years, like filing old print photographs in an album. “Humans find project-oriented work very rewarding, and part of it is because you can get into what is called a flow state,” he explains. “Activities that require some attention and engagement can give rise to a flow state.”

Fallon-Yeskey recently resumed her love of writing postcards. “I have now completely resuscitated my passion for sending letters in the mail, which I did as a teenager,” she says. “It’s just a small way to sprinkle delight around the world, and it doesn’t take much time. I’ve made it a priority now, and it’s absolutely a habit I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing.” And while letter writing is one way of forming social connection, there are others, as well.

“People can get their social needs met by arranging phone calls with friends,” says James Maddux, a Senior Scholar for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. “I don’t mean just picking up the phone and calling someone, I mean sending an email or text and arranging a time on Zoom or Skype or by phone.” (It’s worth noting that so-called “Zoom fatigue” can be its own issue.)

That said, Maddux points out that, depending on your social situation, it’s equally important to disconnect if there are a lot of people in a particular household. “Sit down with a partner or family members and assess each person’s needs for some time alone,” says Maddux. “And try to schedule that in, where, for example, each spouse or parent gets a half hour a day of quiet time while the other parent takes over.”

Swartz echoes the idea of unplugging. “If there’s one thing we all need to do right now, it’s protect our sleep,” she says. “Exhaustion is going to make everything more overwhelming. A major issue for many who are working at home is that it’s hard to know that there’s an ‘on’ and an ‘off ’ switch.”

Swartz recommends using different areas of your home for different tasks. “Have one place where you do your work and then go somewhere else when you’re done with your day,” she suggests. “Having structure, giving yourself permission to stop working and transitioning to time with family is really important, especially when you’re working from home and it’s really hard to turn off.”

“If there’s one thing we all need to do right now, it’s protect our sleep,” says Karen Swartz, Director of Clinical and Educational Programs at the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center. “Exhaustion is going to make everything more overwhelming.”

Bel Air-based life coach Barbara Harman recommends volunteering your time with acts of kindness, large or small. “Anytime you help someone else—a child, your partner, a spouse—you are helping yourself,” she points out.

Among the dos, there are some definite don’ts. “It’s important to know what’s good enough,” says Harman. “For people who have to teach their kids at home and not go out to work, for instance, the things that you are doing during this time don’t have to be perfect. So many of us put pressure on ourselves to get it perfectly done or to have everything run smoothly. If you don’t adjust your expectations, all those things will bring your happiness level way down.”

Of course, the pursuit of perfection is only exacerbated by social media, so it’s also best to limit the time spent in front of a screen. “The positive aspect of being on social media is that we can connect with others,” says Gould. But everyone seems happy on social media, Gould reminds, and that’s just a snapshot of their lives—the one they’re choosing to share with the public. It rarely tells the whole story.

Above all, experts say that staying in the moment—whether you keep a gratitude journal or meditate—can be key. Yeskey says this has worked well for her.

“I had a Zoom meeting with an editor at work today, and I said, ‘How are you?’ And he laughed and said, ‘I don’t know why people even say that.’ And I said, ‘How are you today?’ And he said, ‘Today, I am great.’ In a nutshell, the only way to get through this is to compartmentalize it and parse it down—otherwise, it’s overwhelming.”

Harman says that if we pay attention, we will soon see that happiness is all around. “People experience happy things on a daily basis, but they let them go by without recognition,” she says. “It just takes practice to recognize the good things.”

“There’s science behind mindfulness meditation that it really does reduce our stress and encourages positive thinking and engages the parts of our brain that are engaged in happiness,” says Gould, who teaches a free mindfulness meditation class to the public on weekdays via jhjhm.zoom. “It’s helpful to learn to tell yourself, ‘This is the only moment I have to think about right now.’”

And that includes not fixating on the idea that a COVID vaccine is a cure-all to whatever ails us.

“It’s fine to say my life will hopefully go back to whatever normal was,” says Maddux, who points out that science bears out the theory that people have a set point that they return to, whether the event is positive or negative. “Lottery winners get a temporary spike in happiness, and then they go down to where they were before they won. Likewise, there’s a good chance that if there’s a vaccine that we discover that works on 90 percent of the people, the country will experience a brief spike in national happiness—but then we will all go back to complaining about the things that we did before the pandemic started.”

HOME SWEET HOME

By Jane Marion

In January of 2019—in other words, a lifetime ago—my husband and I made plans to travel to Bhutan and Nepal, where our daughter, Sophia, would be teaching for the year. I didn’t know much about Nepal’s neighbor to the east, the lush Himalayan kingdom isolated from the wider world for much of the 20th century. But I did know that Bhutan’s nickname was “The Happiest Place on Earth” and the birthplace of the Gross National Happiness index. It cost $250 a day to pay for the privilege of being a tourist in Bhutan, but I wanted in.

Then COVID hit, Sophia was evacuated, and our plans were canceled. Instead of traveling to this Shangri La, with its ancient cliffside monasteries and honey-colored hills, our Pikesville home, gun-metal gray with ambient traffic noise from I-83, was now a place for some kind of warped staycation.

To say that I was deflated doesn’t begin to describe it. Travel has always made me happy. Even the anticipation of it gets the endorphins flowing. I am ever grateful for having made alms with monks in Chang Mai, Thailand, communed with Galapagos turtles on the island of Santa Cruz, and explored the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu. But the flip side to my nomadic nature is that I equally enjoy the promise of coming back home with a new worldview, but one that affirms that I love the life I live here at home.

“I WAS SURE THAT BREATHING THE HIMALAYAN AIR WOULD MAKE ME A CONTENDER FOR THE HAPPIEST PERSON ON EARTH.”

A year ago, this house arrest would have been unfathomable. I’ve spent hours cooking in my kitchen, played board games, read books that had long been abandoned on the shelves. I’ve unfurled my yoga mat and stood on my head in the middle of my living room. I’ve invited neighbors to drink glasses of wine (at a distance, of course) under our newly installed string lights. And inside the bubble of what’s starting to feel like the world’s longest snow day, I’ve found pleasure in the ordinary.

I was sure that I’d come back from Bhutan a newly minted me—a person for whom happiness was a constant, easily achievable state of being and beneficence, as if the simple act of breathing the Himalayan air among Buddhist denizens would make me a contender for The Happiest Person on Earth.

Instead, the life lesson has been an unexpected one: Happiness doesn’t come from traveling to faraway lands. It’s a state that grows out of stillness—that I’ve been in the right place all along. And no one—not even a monk standing on some sacred hillside—could have brought me to this place. This epiphany fortifies me, and I’ll take it with me wherever I wander next.

IT’S THE SMALL THINGS

By Eddie Matz

“I have great news, Eddie—you have cancer.” It was 2005, and the words of my oncologist hung in the air like an August storm cloud. Although I was relieved to have a diagnosis after months of testing, I failed to grasp what was so awesome about the big C (aside from getting my wife’s blessing to shave my head again).

As Dr. Dan excitedly went on to tell me in his thick Romanian accent, the great news was that he was going to cure me. But as I soon learned, the real gift of my disease was the perspective that came along with it.

To be clear, I never thought cancer would kill me. After all, with a 75-90 percent survival rate, my Hodgkin’s lymphoma was one of the “good ones.” Still, a couple weeks into my six-month chemotherapy treatment, I was overcome by a newfound sense of clarity. I suddenly felt like I had permission to say the things I wanted to say and do the things I wanted to do. Not in a rude or selfish way. Not in a skydiving, Rocky-Mountain-climbing kind of way. Just in a very grounded, in- the-moment kind of way.

Instead of taking things for granted, I spent those six months appreciating life’s little moments. I played catch with my little boy. I took long showers with my wife. I sat down while peeing (sure, it takes a little longer, but there’s nothing in my life I’d rather do standing than sitting). In between those blissful flashes, I told anyone that would listen how I’d found the key to happiness and that I would never sweat the small stuff again. Turns out I was wrong.

“THE UPSIDE OF THE CORONAVIRUS IS THAT IT REMINDED ME OF THE IMPORTANCE OF APPRECIATING ALL THE LITTLE THINGS.”

At some point after “you’re cancer-free,” life gets in the way. In the process of raising three kids and paying the mortgage and changing jobs, all the perspective I’d gained flew right out the window. But this past March, when quarantine started, it flew right back in.

Do I wish the pandemic never happened? Yes. Would I do anything to spare my wife from the grief of losing her mother to COVID? Absolutely. But the upside of the coronavirus (there’s always an upside, if you look hard enough) is that it reminded me—and all of us, hopefully—of the importance of appreciating the little things. Like school. And sports. And hugs. Here’s hoping that when things get back to normal and we’re COVID-free, life doesn’t get in the way.

CELLO? IS IT ME YOU’RE LOOKING FOR?

By Max Weiss

I am, to put it mildly, a very verbal person. Words are my life, my stock in trade. I love to debate, to pontificate, to hold court. I love to discuss, to analyze, to break stuff down. In fact, I love words so much,

I’m literally a professional talker. (I worked in talk radio for many years.) But it’s not just talking, of course. I love to read and to write—I do both of those things for a living. And when I’m not reading, writing, or talking? I’m relaxing—by playing word games like the New York Times’ Spelling Bee.

Suffice it to say, my brain never shuts the hell up.

Except for when I play the cello. Cello playing, by its very nature, is a nonverbal pursuit. When you play music, you’re tapping into a different part of your brain, one that operates on emotion and instinct and physicality. Not to suggest that cello playing doesn’t engage the brain—of course it does. But it does so wordlessly.

In that sense, music is a form of meditation for me: It forces me to still my mind and look within. Music is also a social pursuit—or at least it can be. I love playing chamber music, which is truly a conversation without words. It takes a while to get into the rhythms of chamber music—but once you reach that simpatico with the other players, it’s magical. Watch chamber musicians when they play: The best ones are making eye contact, moving together, anticipating together, breathing together.

While chamber music is my favorite way to make music, I recently rediscovered my love of playing in an orchestra by joining the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra. Now, orchestras are a very different creature from chamber groups. First of all, there are a lot more people. Second of all, there is one boss—the conductor— and the goal of the ensemble is to follow his or her musical vision. Yes, there’s communication among the players, but it’s mostly in the service of one person’s interpretation of the music.

And yet, when an orchestra performs a great symphonic work, there is nothing like it. That collective, wordless language gives you a sense of connection—to other musicians, to generations before you, to the audience, to yourself.

Of course, the punchline to all of this is that the HSO season got canceled this year due to COVID-19. I also haven’t been able to play any chamber music. (Chamber music over Zoom is a non-starter—there’s a delay.)

Playing cello is still a balm for me—I still practice regularly and record silly videos on my Instagram page as I wait for this damn pandemic to be over. This is a stressful time for all of us. I’m so lucky to have a thing that gives me focus and joy and quiets my overactive brain.

More Health Tips

LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

The power of positive thinking is more than just a phrase. In fact, it has been studied. In one 2001 research project, scientists from the University of Kentucky examined the content of the journals of 180 Catholic nuns from the 1930s and 1940s through their entire adult lives. A key finding? A positive outlook can help predict health outcomes.

“The nuns who chose to focus on positive things in their journals lived about a decade longer,” says Justin Halberda, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University.

The takeaway from this study and others like it? It’s been scientifically proven that keeping a gratitude journal can lead not only to a happier life, but a longer one.

“A gratitude journal is something people can do as they are going to bed,” says Halberda. “It can be two minutes of asking yourself, ‘What am I thankful for today?’ Then you jot it down. The way we use our will and our planning to structure our lives can have a massive effect on longevity and the happiness we experience in life.”

MEDITATION 101

While meditation has been around for thousands of years—with the oldest documented evidence of it depicted in Indian wall art from approximately 5,000 to 3,500 BCE—it has experienced a relatively recent boom in the West. Meditation has ties to many world religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, and Judaism. The practice first came to Europe in the 1700s, when some Eastern philosophy texts were translated into various European languages. By the 20th century, meditation developed a following in the United States, removing it from its religious roots and, over time, making it more mainstream.

Now, with most of us isolated from the world we once knew due to COVID-19, there has never been a better time to take up this ancient art form that has been scientifically proven to help with depression, as well as other ailments. In fact, the word meditation, introduced in the 12th century, is derived from the Latin word meditatum, meaning “to ponder.”

“There’s so much uncertainty about the future,” says Neda Gould, associate director of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, “and, during times of distress, our brains latch on to catastrophic outcomes, so there is relief in coming back to the present when you’re feeling overwhelmed.”

There are many types of meditation, but the one that works well for beginners is known as mindfulness meditation. “Mindfulness meditation does not seek to cultivate any specific mental or emotional state,” explains Michael Bombardier, a Towson-based therapist. “Instead, mindfulness is an ‘open monitoring’ approach that trains you to apply non-judgmental awareness to whatever is happening in the present moment, be it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.”

Mindfulness meditation, he says, is all about acceptance of what is. “The technique is primarily a process of subtraction,” he says. “You let go of thoughts, you release your desire to fix or change things, and become a silent witness to all that arises.” Adds Gould, “People are surprised by how simple of a technique it is. It’s not this religious, intangible experience—it’s just the opposite. It’s about grounding. People are pleasantly surprised that it’s simpler than what they thought.”

“People can set aside a few minutes of the day to practice meditation and mindfulness,” adds Bombardier, who suggests using an app such as Calm or Headspace to get started. “The idea is not just that the 10 minutes you spend meditating are pleasurable, but that it helps you tune in to other pleasures, as well.”

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Susan’s Choice

Jess Mayhugh — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 01:32:18 +0000

Jim Harrison misses his wife. In his paper-strewn family room, the retired McCormick spice company bigwig widens his eyes until their cloudy blue irises swim in whites, like two eggs frying.

“I pray to God Susan comes back, but the odds of her coming back are not good,” says Harrison of his estranged wife, who vanished from his house on Friday, August 5, 1994. “It’s possible she went to Ireland.”

His face is all pathos and distance, a trans-Atlantic wrong number. Besides some of his relatives, Jim is the only person close to Susan Harrison who doesn’t say she’s dead, who doesn’t beg to learn how she was killed, who doesn’t volunteer haunting images of delicate Susan in a landfill, Susan down a well.

If you mention the common suspicion that Jim knows more about Susan’s disappearance than he’s willing to admit, you won’t cast a shadow on his broad, ruddy face. “The vast majority feel I have nothing to do with it, and they’re right,” says Harrison, curling back his lips to reveal his small, rectangular teeth. “Thousands of people have been very supportive.”

That Harrison will not name one person out of these thousands does not mean he knows where his wife is. It only means he stands alone, aloner by the day.

Monday, August 8, 1994, 4 p.m.

(Three days after Susan’s disappearance. Matt Gordon, the son of Susan’s dear friend Mary Jo Gordon, is trimming bushes at his mother’s Greenspring Valley house. Susan often stayed there after fights with Jim. Jim Harrison pulls up in a long, dark-blue sedan and sticks his head out the window.)

JIM: Is your mother at home?

MATT: No.

(Jim parks and gets out of the car. Matt notes that Jim’s face is puffy and flushed; his hands and speech seem unsteady. Matt smells alcohol on his breath.)

JIM: Do you know where I might be able to find your mother?

MATT: She’s at work.

JIM: Susan is missing.

MATT: I know. I heard.

JIM: I’m very worried. I have absolutely no idea where she might be. I thought your mother might know. Could you give me her phone numbers at home and at work?

MATT: Sure. Wait here. (Jogs inside for paper; writes down phone numbers; returns and hands them to Jim.)

JIM: Thank you. If you hear an thing, please, please let me know.

(They shake hands. Jim walks back to his car.)

What’s widely known: More than a a year ago, bright generous Ruxton mom Susan Hurley Harrison vanished. She was last seen by second husband Jim, from whom she was separated. He said Susan had been to his house several times that day, acting in turns loving and abusive—”going manic-depressive,” he called it. To Cockeysville police, this was a familiar description. It was how Jim usually explained the fights that had made the Harrisons’ home a frequent destination for their blue-and-white squad cars.

Susan had probably driven off a about 10 p.m., Jim said-he wasn’t sure, because he’d gone to bed to avoid her vitriol. Her green Saab convertible was found parked at National Airport with the key in the ignition and new gas in the tank. But no one has heard from Susan, and no body has turned up. Police searched Jim’s house, which was cleaned around the time Susan disappeared by a new maid who quit almost immediately. Bur if police found evidence of foul play. they’re not talking. Jim took a lie-detector test. Police told him he failed, but he’s sticking to his story.

Jim has cooperated with investigators and reporters. against his lawyers’ advice. But unlike Susan’s siblings who hired a private investigator and who call pol1Ce several times a week for progress reports, Jim Harrison has hired no one to look for Susan. And in the 15 months since her disappearance, he has called poke just a handful of times.

“I feel Jim holds the key to the mystery,” says Lieutenant Sam Bowerman, a specialist in criminal personality profiling. “He says it’s ridiculous for anyone to think anyone would have harmed Susan, because he loved her. But love really doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

September 1994

(About one month after Susan’s disappearance. In Jim’s family room. William Ramsey, the lead detective investigating the case, is questioning Jim.)

RAMSEY: So, Susan is down at the bottom of the stairs, screaming at you, and you just got to bed and fall asleep?

JIM: Yes, that’s right.

RAMSEY: And when you do wake up again?

JIM: About eight.

RAMSEY: Not four a.m.?

JIM: Four?

RAMSEY: A C&P lineman heard a car door slam on your property about then, heard a car start and drive off down Timonium Road, away from I-83.

JIM: How did they hear that?

RAMSEY: The lineman was up on a utility pole.

JIM: Must have been someone turning around in my driveway. People turn around there all the time.

Susan Hurley Harrison was talkative, a fragile blonde with an easy, contagious laugh. If a friend were blue, Susan would conjure a ridiculous image—a nun driving a beer truck, say—and present it for comic effect. “Now laugh!” she’d command, with just a vestige of a Boston accent. And she would laugh herself.

One of five children of a Massachusetts silver-company executive, Susan also had a creative, domestic bent. “There were always projects she was working on,” recalls brother John Hurley, eight years her junior. “When I was little, she’d let me help her lay out these big tissue-paper things she’d use to make patterns for clothes. Or she’d hold my hands up while she rolled up a ball of yarn off them.”

Susan studied art history at Manhattanville College, then found curatorial work in Boston. At 25, she married law student Tom Owsley, a Harvard chum of her older brother Bill. Joining Tom in North Carolina, Susan worked two more years, until Tom graduated and the couple moved. A year later, in 1970, her first son, Jonathan, was born.

Jon and his younger brother, Nick Owsley, entered Susan’s world at its center and stayed there. “Those kids were her life,” says Clara Arana, a friend and feliow craftswoman. “They were what kept her alive.”

As youngsters, Jon and Nick learned to expect their doting mother at every school event, every lacrosse game. Jon had to beg her to stay on the sidelines: “No matter what, never, ever run down onto the field if you think I’m hurt, I don’t care how bad it looks,” he said. “It’s not cool for a guy to have his mother run down on the field in front of everybody.”

She overwhelmed the boys with handmade gifts. “She’d make us sweaters, mittens, lamp shades, everything,” recalls Nick, now a junior at Middlebury College. “Sometimes you’d just mention something offhand, just admire it, and she’d make you one. You had to be careful what you said,” he jokes.

Susan told her boys they were her best friends, that they understood her like no one else did. The boys say she offered a steady stream of solid guidance; even in college, she was the first person they turned to for comfort. At a memorial service in June, Jon read a remembrance of Susan, written as a letter to her. Here is part: “When our teammate died my junior year, I picked you up at the airport just hours after I found out. I was completely distraught, suffering in a way I could not comprehend. ‘Oh, Jonathan,’ you said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ And you held my hand the whole way down from Burlington to Middlebury.

“And true to form, always thinking of others, you told me to make sure that his mother had a Mother’s Day card—it was only three days away—signed by the entire team, so that she would know she was not alone.”

November 22, 1994

(Almost four months after Susan’s disappearance. In a Towson courtroom, at a hearing to name Jon the guardian of Susan’s belongings. Her husband is legally the first in line for that task, but the family wants Jon to be named instead. Jim does not challenge the request, but he has nevertheless been asked to testify. Carey Deeley, the attorney for Susan’s four siblings, first husband and sons, is questioning Jim.)

DEELEY: Your wife, on July 27, 1993, checked in at the hospital to be treated for a bruise on her right forehead, down into her eye, with swelling noted to the doctor in the hospital. Her knees were scraped and sore. Her wrist had been twisted. Her right eye was almost swollen shut.

DANA WILLIAMS (JIM’S LAWYER): Objection.

DEELEY: Does that ring a bell?

WILLIAMS: Objection.

JUDGE CHRISTIAN KAHL: Overruled.

JIM HARRISON: I don’t remember that situation. DEELEY: Showing you what’s been marked for identification—

WILLIAMS: Can I see that, Mr. Deeley?

DEELEY: —as—

JIM: Black eyes? Is that what you’re going to show me?

DEELEY: Let’s see what I’m going to show, sir. (Shows two photographs of Susan with a blackened eye.) That’s your wife?

JIM: That’s Susan.

DEELEY: And those are fair and accurate representations, are they not, of what she looked like after the July, 1993 incident. Right, sir?

WILLIAMS: Objection, your honor.

JUDGE KAHL: Overruled.

HARRISON: Oh, her eye was much blacker than that. In fact, both eyes were blacker.

DEELEY: And how did her eyes come to be black like that, sir?

WILLIAMS: Objection.

DEELEY: What did you do to her on that occasion, Mr. Harrison?

WILLIAMS: Your honor, that’s two questions.

JUDGE KAHL: One at a time.

DEELEY: What happened, Mr. Harrison, in July of 1993?

WILLIAMS: Objection.

JUDGE KAHL: Overruled.

HARRISON: We had come back from the beach, from Ocean City, and she had been manic depressive on the way down, and then recovered. And when she got back to 610 West Timonium Road where we live, she went berserk again. And she ran around the house. She was smashing stuff around the house. She was yelling. She was screaming. And she was running so fast and had been drinking again.

And she ran out the door of the new sunroom that we have, and she fell on the steps as she went out. Because I saw her stagger and fall as she rushed out the door. And she banged her head, as I recall, I guess it was right here {points), really banged it. And it resulted in an artery or a vein or whatever, pouring blood, so that this particular eye, her right eye, really got black, and the left eye became sort of lightly black.

DEELEY: Do you deny, sir, the report of the emergency room of July 27, saying that you hit her in the head with your fist at that time?

HARRISON: That is an absolute lie.

James Joshua Harrison Jr. was born in 1936 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. His father, who grew up in rural Virginia, was working as a chemical engineer, and the family lived on St. Paul Street. When Jim was five, his parents bought a house on Morningside Drive in Towson and moved there with Jim and his sister, Ann.

Jim’s parents sent the boy to the Gilman School where he excelled. In his senior year, the football coach nominated the 145-pound end to be Baltimore’s unsung sports hero of the year, an honor bestowed by McCormick & Co. Jim’s connection to the school endures—in the year before Susan disappeared, he co-chaired his class’s 40th-anniversary fundraising drive, the most successful reunion drive in the school’s history.

Jim studied engineering at Cornell, taking a semester off when his grades began to suffer from too much partying. While on hiatus, he met a high-spirited Goucher student named Molly Darden. He returned to Ithaca, and a year later Molly joined him as his bride. By the time Jim graduated in 1960, their third child was on her way.

After a stint at Whiting-Turner and six years at Martin Marietta—during which earned a law degree from the University Baltimore—Jim got a job as assistant counsel at McCormick. There, he rose to general counsel, then chief financial officer treading one proven path to the president’s office. Along the way, Jim earned an M.B.A. from Loyola College, finishing first in his class.

Jim stood particularly tall at McCormick in 1980when he learned that one division had been cooking books to swell its bottom line. It was he who urged corporate brass to come clean, launch an outside investigation and re-issue profit figures for several years past. He also distinguished himself during an unwelcome takeover bid by a Swiss company in the early 1980s, and by his sale of McCormick’s vast real estate holdings to the Rouse Company in 1988.

Jim was known as a brilliant businessman. But some say he could play the fool when it served him. When plotting an acquisition, says one observer, “he’d play this ‘Oh, I’m just a poor old country boy’ shtick. The next thing you know, McCormick owns the company and he’s rocking in his chair like Grandpa.”

March 31, 1995

(Almost eight months after Susan’s disappearance. Cocktails before a dinner to open the golf season at the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club. In the member lounge, Susan’s first husband, Tom Owsley, stands in a group near the bar by the door. Enter Jim Harrison, also a member. Tom notes that Jim is red-faced and unsteady; then Tom turns his back.)

JIM: Oh, Tom, how are the boys?

(Tom says nothing.)

JIM: Jonathan has Susan’s car?

TOM: Yeah.

JIM: If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.

TOM: All we need is to find Susan’s body.

JIM: Oh, I pray to Jesus that’s not what happened.

(Tom walks away.)

When Jim met Susan in 1976, both were married. Susan had her two sons with Tom. Jim had six children with Molly, plus a five-bedroom house in Lutherville and the inside track to the helm of an international corporation.

In the following years, the couples socialized at conferences of corporate executives (Owsley is a vice a president at Crown Petroleum), and then the Owsleys moved from Reston, Virginia, to the Greenspring Valley in 1982, the Harrisons were ready to welcome them to Baltimore.

By then, Susan’s school-aged sons didn’t need her constant attention, and the domestic applications of her art training—needle-point seat covers for the dining set, hand-painted lampshades for herself and friends, a home-sewn down jacket for Tom—stopped seeing like the makings of an adult’s whole life. In the same position, some of Susan’s contemporaries struck out on their own; others stayed married but started careers. Susan just for restless.

In stepped good-time Jim, admiring Susan’s face and heart, playing to what many say was a lifelong lack of self-confidence. “He showered her with attention,” recalls Tom Owsley. “He knew how to put on the big push.” They started an affair in June of 1983.

The fall of 1984, the two couples saw a play together. Sitting around the Owsleys’ dining room table afterwards, Jim and Susan revealed their relationship to Molly and Tom. “All hell broke loose,” recalls Molly Harrison. That October, Jim and Susan left their families and moved in together.

The first person who called 911 about Susan and Jim’s troubles was probably Tom. He recalls trying to help Susan during early strife, and once again even drove her to the police station. In October of 1986, Susan called Tom at work, despondent, saying she had take a lot of pills. Paramedics arrived at the Lutherville house she shared with Jim, but Susan was gone. Jim told paramedics they’d had a fight and said she might be at Tom’s house. An ambulance found her there, but she refused treatment, so they called Jim to come get her.

In December, 1988, Jim and Susan married. By that time, she already had suffered a broken arm—she said at the time she’d fallen off a bike, but years later told her family that Jim had broken it. She had also called police numerous times, claiming Jim punched her in the eye, Jim punched her in the mouth, Jim threw water on her, Jim raped her. He routinely denied the charges; she usually dropped them. Shortly before their wedding, Jim was acquitted of two counts of battery against Susan. After their wedding, this pattern of injuries and calls for help continued.

In October, 1989, as part of a McCormick sponsorship, Jim and Susan played host to two teenage girls from the perky traveling stage show “Up With People.” Susan left the company’s welcome-to-Baltimore dinner early. When Jim and the girls arrived home later, Susan immediately began berating him, accusing him of sleeping with both of the girls—at least, that’s what one of the girls told police she had said. The visitors’ luggage was emptied and their clothes strewn about the house. For some time afterwards, Susan was unwelcome at McCormick company functions.

“She was horrible,” says Molly Harrison. “She misbehaved constantly. Her family is completely blind to it.”

According to Molly, Susan’s portrayal in the local press has been misleadingly gentle. “We’ve been calling her ‘Saint Susan’ since the Towson Times story came out [in May, 1995],” she says. “It’s the joke of the city.” Molly says she has seen Susan “go off manic” many times, running off into a thunderstorm once after Jim.

Molly also says that after Susan and Jim fought, Susan would call Molly and her children each “30 times,” looking for him. Sometimes she’d ask for Jim, sometimes she’d just pause and hang up. Molly says phone company records prove the hang-ups came from Susan. (Jim says he does not remember Susan ever using the phone in this way.)

“She stalked us,” Molly says. “Every time the Owsleys say they wish Jim had never met Susan, I say it five times. Frankly, I don’t wish anybody dead, but I hope I never see her again.”

Wednesday, July 12, 1995, 1:30 p.m.

(Almost a year after Susan’s disappearance. Owings Mills District Court. Jim has been charged with drunk and disorderly conduct in Garrison. Later today, Jim will request and receive a postponement. Jim, his lawyer, and his two grown daughters, Betsy and Wendy, are waiting among the blond wood pews in Courtroom No. 1. There to watch the proceedings: Carey Deeley, the lawyer for Susan’s siblings and sons; detective William Ram-sey; lieutenant Sam Bowerman; a reporter.)

BETSY: Dad, I had a dream that Susan was found alive and well in Missouri—

JIM: Missouri?

WENDY: —and that her boyfriend’s left her and she can’t decide whether to come back. (Laughs.)

JIM: (His eyes widen.) I pray to God you’re right. Uh, that God is talking to you in your dream.

In late 1991, Jim learned he had been passed over for the job of McCormick CEO. Ironically, Harrison was beaten out for president by a man who had joined McCormick as head of a California spice company that Harrison had been instrumental in acquiring. Says Harrison in the third person, an idiosyncracy: “A lot of people, including Jim, figured that Jim was going to be the successor to the McCormick [company]. But Bailey [Thomas] and Gene Blattman became very close friends. And Gene Blattman, who was a fine guy, beat me out.”

After news of the promotion broke, Harrison took “early retirement” and stopped going to work, two years before his pension kicked in.

Jim began spending days at home, and the couple calls to the police became more frequent. Often, both had been drinking. Each claimed the other was the attacker, though Susan is the only one whose bones were ever broken. (Jim once showed police a yellowing bruise, saying Susan had just caused it. But Susan said a doctor had caused it days before, and the doctor confirmed this.) Susan began telling friends and family about these confrontations, but would later soften her words. Had Jim yelled at her? She’d provoked him. Had he shoved her? She’d exaggerated the injury. Besides, he had been ever so sweet to her since.

“When she would first call me, she would be extremely distressed and disoriented,” recalls sister Molly Moran, who lives in Georgia. “Then later, she got defensive, blamed it on herself, glossed over the whole thing. I didn’t know what to believe.”

Susan saw several counselors during her marriage to Jim. One Boston doctor—a cardiologist, the family points out—diagnosed manic-depressive illness, and a local doctor prescribed lithium for it. But her family says the psychiatrist Susan was seeing when she disappeared had rejected this diagnosis. Susan was anxious and confused and filled with rage against Jim, they claim, but she was not bipolar. The psychiatrist they name declines to comment, however, citing confidentiality rules.

Jim and Susan each claimed the other had problems with alcohol, and they went to Alcoholics Anonymous together for a time in the early 1990s. Susan’s family says Susan did not have an alcohol problem, but that Jim does. Jim denies he has an alcohol problem, but says Susan did. For Christmas. 1987, one of Jim’s relatives gave him an Alcoholics Anonymous manual. The inscription had nothing to do with Susan.

The summer before she disappeared—the summer of the black eye—Susan got a 10-day court order to keep Jim away from the house. She asked a judge to extend the order to 180 days, but the judge refused to do so, because Susan had accepted a ride from Jim while the order was in force. If Susan went willingly with Jim, the judge ruled, the government could not keep him away. The order lapsed, and Jim came home. To celebrate their reconciliation, the couple bought a $47,000 racehorse. Susan picked her out, so they named her “Susan’s Choice,” a strangely melancholy echo of a book Susan loved—Sophie’s Choice—about the choice between two children’s lives. The main character, bone, Sophie, lives and dies with Nathan, a charmer with an irrational, abusive temper. The most memorable line from the movie is hers: “The truth? I don’t even know what is the truth, after all these lies I have told.” In spring of 1995, Susan’s Choice broke her back in a Florida stable and was put to death.)

Why did Susan stay with Jim? For one thing, she was used to living well—she flew Jon to college in the McCormick jet; she had a closetful of evening gowns. In her divorce over from Tom, she had foregone alimony, and it had been many years since she had worked. And there was Jim, a $4-million man, ready to take care of her. When they weren’t fighting, he was extremely attentive. On the 27th of every month for years—in memory of the date when they started their affair—Jim sent Susan a gooey card.

Besides, after his retirement, Susan felt sorry for Jim. Calling from home to the friend who had sheltered her after one blowup, Susan explained her return: “This morning, he got up, put on a tie, he put on a jacket. And where did he go? To the post office.”

Monday, July 17, 1995, 9:15 a.m.

The picture-window lobby of the Ocean City District Court. Jim has been charged with drunk and disorderly conduct in a hotel parking lot. His lawyer has just arranged for the trial to be rescheduled at the circuit court in Snow Hill, so Jim can have a jury. The attorney and Jim’s daughter Betsy, also a lawyer, are conferring earl by the entrance. Lawyer Carey Deeley and a reporter are sitting outside the courtroom, on a long wooden bench. Jim walks over to Deeley, the man who had questioned him for two hours at November’s guardianship hearing.

JIM: (Kindly, pulling a small notebook from his jacket pocket. What’s your name?

DEELEY: Carey Deeley.

JIM: (Writes this down.) And who do you represent?

DEELEY: I’m with Venable, Baetjer and Howard.

JIM: (Writes this down.) You were at the other one, weren’t you?

DEELEY: Mr. Harrison, I really can’t speak to you.

JIM’S ATTORNEY: Jim, come here, please.

JIM: (To the reporter, brightly.) How are you?

THE REPORTER: Just fine. What’s up?

BETSY: Come on, Dad.

(Detective William Ramsey rounds a corner from the district attorney’s office.)

RAMSEY: Hi, Jim.

JIM’S ATTORNEY: Jim, why are you hanging around with those people? Those people are not on your side.

In the fall of 1993, Nick left for college, and Susan consulted a divorce lawyer. She also began planning a business to produce the hand-painted lamp shades she’d been making for friends for years.

The Harrisons’ calls to the police that fall include accusations that each had attacked the other; had destroyed things in the house; had stolen belongings; had trapped the other by parking behind them in the driveway.

Finally, on December 29, Susan called police from Mary Jo Gordon’s house. She had planned to meet Gordon for dinner the previous evening, but told police that Jim had held her captive in their house most of the night. She said he had punched her and shoved her into the Christmas tree. Each said the other had tried to run them down in the car, and police found tire tracks on the lawn. This was it, Susan told friends. She rented a carriage house in Ruxton and took everything from the house she could take, including the washer, the dryer, both stereos and all the drapes.

Susan served Jim with a request for support, enumerating the injuries she’d received during their relationship. She blamed Jim for them; Jim denied responsibility.

But before long, Susan and Jim were dating again. “Theirs was a really destructive relationship, but addictive, you know?” Gordon says. “It was just a matter of time before they would make contact, and then the whole thing would start all over again.” Shortly after Susan moved out, Jim helped her negotiate a lease for studio space at the Mill Centre in Hampden, next to Clara Arana’s art-jewelry studio.

Jim says that when Susan disappeared, she was on the verge of moving back into his house. He points to his dining room curtains, which Susan had re-hung, as proof. But a Realtor the couple consulted after their separation says it was he who suggested re-hanging the drapes, to make the house more marketable. Her family says she returned them reluctantly, so the house would sell and she could get her halfshare of its value. And she could get away from Jim.

But no one disputes that a week before she vanished—July 25 to 27—Susan and Jim took a holiday together in Ocean City.

“It was like she was in two worlds,” says one good friend. “She wanted to be her own person, but even when they were separated, she was still wearing her big diamond ring.”

Sunday, July 30, 1995, 7:30 p.m.

Dinner in the enclosed porch at the Turf Inn in Timonium. Along one wall of the narrow room, windows display cars streaming down York Road. On the opposite wall hang china masks of movie stars: Bogie, Joan Crawford, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe. Jim Harrison is having dinner with a reporter.)

THE REPORTER: Have you ever known anyone else who was manic-depressive?

JIM: There was somebody at Cornell, but I don’t remember who.

THE REPORTER: So, apart from Susan, you’ve never known anyone who had manic-depressive illness, never seen the symptoms?

JIM: No.

THE REPORTER: Do you realize that the symptoms you describe as Susan’s “going manic-depressive” aren’t generally considered symptoms of manic-depressive illness?

JIM: Not symptoms? (Pauses.) It was embarrassing.

THE REPORTER: How so?

JIM: She would call the police, the police would come, and nothing happened.

THE REPORTER: Nothing happened, but she would have a broken arm, broken ribs, black eyes—

JIM: The black-eye thing was ridiculous. She fell and bumped her head. It had nothing to do with me. She’d gone berserk, started running around. Then she fell.

THE REPORTER: Did you ever think something besides manic-depressive illness made her do these things?

JIM: No.

THE REPORTER: According to psychiatrists—

JIM: Psychiatrists?

THE REPORTER: I called a few experts, and they said that manic-depressive illness involves moods that come and stay a while; you take it in and out of the room with you. Most said that what you describe—this sudden, very limited rage, directed at one person isn’t classically a symptom of manic-depressive illness, let alone the only symptom. It could be borderline personality, maybe, or just someone who feels violated.

JIM: (Pauses. Picks at his cuticle.) When she wasn’t manic-depressive, she was great.

On Sunday, July 31, 1994, Susan called police. She said Jim had come to her house at 12:30 in the morning and asked her to dinner. When she declined, she said, he twisted her fingers until he injured them. She told police she would press charges.

Jim also called police that day, to complain that while he was out playing golf, someone had let herself into the house and cut up his summer clothes with scissors. He suspected Susan—and in fact, an embarrassed Susan confessed to a relative that out of anger, she had done this. Jim also said he was missing a wallet containing $4,000 in cash—a wallet that he now says is still missing.

During a phone call that evening, son Nick gave Susan a familiar ultimatum: Choose Jim or choose your sons. We want no part of him. Characteristically, Susan waffled, Nick says. It’s not as easy as that, she told him. There are financial considerations.

On Monday, August 1, Nick says, Susan called back. “I’ve made my decision,” Susan told him. “I want to be with you and Jon.” The two talked eagerly about their plans to visit her brothers in Boston that weekend.

On Wednesday, August 3, Susan called Clara Arana. “I want to take you to lunch Monday, when I get back from Boston,” she said. “I have something to tell you.” Replied Arana: “I hope it’s the news I’ve been waiting for”—that Susan’s vacillation had ended. “You’re going to like it,” Susan replied. “But I want to tell you in person.”

On Thursday, August 4, Jim changed the lock on his family-room door, to keep Susan out of the house she co-owned.

On Friday, August 5, Nick and Susan decided not to drive to Boston that day, as planned. Instead, they would take an early plane on Saturday. Nick spent part of the day with Susan in Ruxton, then went to pack a bag at his father’s house and pick up Chinese takeout. Susan gave him her ATM card to get cash for the trip; she had only $5 and almost no gas. She also offered Nick her Saab to drive-if he had accepted, she would have been stuck at home, because she didn’t drive his stick-shift car-and told him she would nap until his return.

At 5 p.m., Susan called her brother John in Boston. She sounded worried, but he was running out the door, so he promised to call her back at 7:30. When he called back a half-hour early, Susan didn’t answer.

When Nick arrived back in Ruxton, Susan was gone. The door was ajar, and she had taken only her wallet and the spare car key.

Jim’s older daughter Wendy saw Susan arrive at her father’s house a little before 7 p.m. Then Wendy left. And Susan went inside.

(At the Turf Inn)

JIM: We fell in love. We couldn’t stop it. It just couldn’t stop. Thank God. Because I love her so much, and she loved me so much.

THE REPORTER: A lot of people say she was addicted to you.

JIM: It’s really neat. Life is full of so many different people. But then you meet somebody who is the person above all. We couldn’t stop it, so I had to leave my wife and six children. She left her husband and two children.

THE REPORTER: What do you make of people saying she was addicted to you?

JIM: That’s called “in love.” If you’re really deeply in love with someone, that’s addiction.

The year since Susan’s disappearance has not been a good one for Jim.

In December, his second son, Bill, fired a shotgun in his Florida apartment complex, drawing a SWAT team.

In January, his first wife, Molly, sued him for failing to make an alimony payment. She told the judge Jim cut her off because she wouldn’t let him celebrate Christmas at the house she owns with a ‘ companion. (Jim denies making this threat.} Jim paid about half of the alimony right before he received Molly’s lawsuit. When a judge ordered him to pay the rest of it, he paid.

In February, son Bill turned up in the Appalachian mountains with frostbite. Jim brought him to the hand clinic at Union Memorial Hospital, where parts of his fingers were amputated.

In March, after talking to Tom Owsley at a golfers’ reception, Jim had words with someone else at the club and was asked by the management to leave. According to a police report, he stumbled across a nearby road and got in a tangle with an officer trying to help. At the Garrison precinct, Harrison shoved an officer and “continued to sing loudly ‘F-k you’ over 45 times in succession.” His trial on these charges has been rescheduled for October 2.

In May, son Bill and a stranger died of gunshot wounds on a bus in Florida. Police say Bill fired the shots. Jim isn’t sure. “There were six people on the bus,” he says. “I wonder if something else happened. Like, they killed him and the other guy.”

In June, at an American Bar Association meeting in Ocean City, Jim’s car bumped into a parked truck on a hotel lot, and he was arrested for driving while intoxicated. The arresting officer said Jim slapped him and offered him a bribe. His jury trial has been scheduled for November 8.

(At the Turf Inn)

JIM: It’s much ado about nothing. I was patting him on the shoulder, trying to make friends.

THE REPORTER: He said you slapped him on the wrist.

JIM: I never did.

THE REPORTER: He said you offered him money to let it drop.

JIM: In Ocean City?

THE REPORTER: Yeah.

JIM: No.

THE REPORTER: Does that mean you did offer the Garrison cop money?

JIM: No, neither. I just don’t think you should be involved in that. You’re making me look like a horrible criminal. And I’m not.

Jim Harrison is forever offering people things. Admire the electric Santa by his hearth—he bought one for each of his twin granddaughters last Christmas, but the parents were content with just one and he’ll quickly ask “Want it?” He really hates being treated to dinner. “Please let me buy,” he begs endlessly.

Some, including Jim, say he’s just a generous guy who gets pleasure out of helping people. “I just love people and I love to help people, whether it’s children or whatever,” Jim says. Others, including Susan’s family, say Jim wants people to owe him. “He’s much more willing to buy someone’s friendship than be someone’s friend,” Jon Owsley charges.

When it came to Susan, Jim was generous to a fault, ladling gold jewelry onto her the way she pressed homemade sweaters on her boys. In return, Jim expected single-minded devotion. Jon Owsley says that once, during a conversation in Jim and Susan’s sunroom, Jim told him that men and women could not be platonic friends. Any man who befriended his wife had more than friendship in mind. (Jim denies ever saying this.)

Susan once told a friend about a tiff at a baseball game. While Jim went to fetch her a snack, Susan began chatting with a couple nearby. When Jim returned, he chastened her for speaking to another man. (Jim says this never happened.) Sometimes, Jim punished Susan by leaving her stranded, says a friend who periodically retrieved her from a restaurant or her country club. (This, Jim does not deny.)

(In Jim’s family room)

THE REPORTER: You’ve got a lot of people hallucinating around you, Mr. Harrison.

JIM: What do you mean?

THE REPORTER: Well, sometimes I’ve got three or four people saying something happened one way—that you said a particular thing—and you tell me you never said it.

JIM: I can’t help it if people lie.

Whether Susan is dead or alive—and whether or not Jim was involved in her disappearance—she’s clearly stranded again. And what troubles her family most is not being able to bury her. “Where is she?” wonders Tom Owsley, rolling up his brown linen napkin after dinner at home. “In a landfill? An abandoned well? Just covered over with branches?” He clicks his tongue and turns away.

“She is just someone who shouldn’t ever be in the situation she’s in right now,” says son Nick. “She should be up in Massachusetts, next to her mom and dad. Not for my sake—I’ve done enough grieving. But for her sake. Right now, there’s no stone, no way for her to be remembered.”

Police investigators say she has almost certainly been murdered by someone close to her. No random stranger need go to the trouble of hiding her body, they reason.

If that’s the case, then someone close to her knows where she lies. Someone can visit her grave. And that someone is the only person to whom Susan now belongs.

(At the Turf Inn)

THE REPORTER: Nick says that he saw you attack his mother. That one night when he was 12, he was staying at your house. Jon and Tom—

JIM: Who?

THE REPORTER: Jon and Tom Owsley were out of town. And Nick heard you arguing with Susan, so he called Jon, and Jon called his girlfriend to come by the house and get Nick.

Nick was down at the bottom of the driveway, waiting for Julie, and he saw his mother run out of the house carrying a bunch of her lamp shades, one torn and the rest unharmed. She ran to the trunk of her car with them, and you ran behind her. Before she could get the key in the trunk, you grabbed her and started shaking her violently.

When Nick yelled at you to stop it, you just stopped short, gave him a little smile, and walked back into the house. Do you remember this?

JIM: No. It didn’t happen.

THE REPORTER: Why would he say that it did?

JIM: She turned the boys against me.

THE REPORTER: Enough for him to remember things that didn’t happen?

JIM: He’d been brainwashed.

THE REPORTER: Why would she want to turn the boys against you?

JIM: When she went manic-depressive, I she’d say bad things, she’d call the police. As far as the boys are concerned, she didn’t want to be a liar. So she let them believe things.

Like his brother Nick, Cornell law student Jon Owsley is a self-possessed, good-looking Gilman School grad. Jon’s girlfriend, like Nick’s, is pretty and slight and wears a blond pageboy.

Jon is sitting in his father’s Homeland sunroom, fiddling with two stubby screwdrivers, one slotted and one Phillips-head. He’s talking about Jim Harrison. “When I was a sophomore in high school, I knew he was full of crap,” says Jon, remembering Jim’s attempts to be cordial, to act like a family. “I said, ‘Wednesday night I was picking my mom up from your house, telling you to stay the hell away from her. I’m not going to make nice with you on Sunday.”‘

Police say that Susan’s killer is better off revealing her whereabouts now. “When that person is able to admit that they’ve done something, there’s a huge sense of relief,” says Lieutenant Sam Bowerman. Besides, he reminds any guilty party who’s reading, a cooperative killer might face a lighter sentence: “Once we find the body, we won’t be interested in your side of the story.”

So if Jim Harrison knows where Susan is, and if he reveals this and ends her family’s restless search, will Jon be grateful? Will Jon feel mercy?

“I will never, never, never, ever, ever, regardless if he got ripped to pieces by wild wolves, never feel a moment of care for what happens to him,” says Jon, who is studying to become a prosecutor.

As he speaks, he slides one screwdriver absently against the other, as if he’s sharpening a knife.

(At the Turf Inn)

THE REPORTER: Most of the people I’ve talked to are really upset that they don’t know where her body is. It hurts them to think of her not getting a proper burial, not having a tombstone for people to visit. Do you ever think about that?

JIM: Oh, my God. That’s terrible. I’ve been praying so hard that she comes home. I haven’t really thought about that.

THE REPORTER: You don’t wonder where her body is?

(Jim stares at the reporter. The reporter stares back until the waitress comes.)

Editor’s Note: Since this story’s publication, Susan’s remains were found in rural Frederick County by two hikers on November 29, 1996. Her death was subsequently ruled a homicide by the state medical examiner, but Harrison was never arrested, tried, or charged. After two years of handling the case, the Maryland attorney general’s office called off the criminal investigation into her death due to ”insufficient evidence.” A wrongful death lawsuit filed by Susan’s sons against Harrison ended with a confidential settlement.

In the fall of 2007, Harrison died of pneumonia at the age of 71.

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Ravens Tight End Hayden Hurst Shares His Journey With Anxiety and Depression

Jess Mayhugh — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 12:16:00 +0000

Five years ago, long before he became what he is today—a rookie tight end with the Baltimore Ravens—Hayden Hurst stood alone on the elevated dirt of a pitcher’s mound in Bradenton, FL, the center of attention, as a 6-foot-5 hard-throwing major league pitching prospect making his first-ever spring training start.

The anxiety began in warmups. His thoughts raced. Who was watching him today? What would they think about him? The Pittsburgh Pirates had paid him a $400,000 signing bonus. How disappointed would they be if he didn’t live up to expectations?

Hurst’s heart pounded. His right hand trembled. His stomach was queasy. He felt blood rushing from his arms and legs. And his palm dripped an inordinate amount of sweat onto the baseball in his grip. Then he tried throwing it across home plate, 60 feet away.

Nerves rattling more than he ever felt before, Hurst walked all five batters he faced and threw two wild pitches in one terrifying inning. And that was just the beginning.

“It happened all the time, for three years. I was having panic attacks,” Hurst says. “I wanted nothing to do with being out there. I wanted to get away. I wanted to escape.”

Like he’d done as a high school star, Hurst just kept throwing hard, listening to his coaches, and hoping it would change—that what he’d always known how to do since he was an eighth-grader on the varsity team, to throw hard strikes (as a freshman he threw 90 miles per hour and was the winning pitcher in the state title game), would suddenly come back. That the dreaded yips, as the sudden loss of a skill is often called in sports, would disappear. But they never did.

Hurst’s thoughts of pitching in the major leagues quickly unraveled. That game, Hurst’s first professional start as a 19-year-old, was his last.

For the next two years, unbeknownst to even his family, any time he stepped near a mound, Hurst’s mind went haywire. But he attempted to fight through it, like he was trained to do as a young, tough, strong athlete in and around the private Bolles School in Jacksonville. He masked the type of anguish he really felt.

“Everything’s fine,” he told his parents when they called to ask how things were going. These were physical issues, he said. He believed that, too, even though the anxiety from the pitcher’s mound had begun to translate into depression off the field. By the spring of 2014, Hurst’s preferred way to spend a day was in the dark watching television inside his dorm room, avoiding people.

Then, one day in a practice game, Hurst unintentionally hit an Orioles’ prospect, coincidentally, in the helmet with a 94 mile-per-hour fastball, a pitch hard enough to knock the batter unconscious. That made everything worse. Hurst had totally lost control. Of his fastball. Of his mind. Of his body. And, with no exaggeration or hyperbole, his life.

“It’s such a darkness that comes over you,” Hurst says of the depression he sunk into, his baseball dreams disappearing with no alternative outcome in sight. “You don’t want to go anywhere or do anything, and you don’t ever think you’re going to get out of it. It’s the worst feeling in the world, and I don’t wish it upon anybody.”

Hurst’s pitching coach with the Pirates, former major leaguer Scott Elarton, phoned Hurst’s dad, Jerry: “You need to come see your son.”

“He didn’t want to disappoint us,” his mom, Cathy says. “He didn’t want to feel like a failure, so he internalized everything. We were shocked at how far down he’d gotten.”

This is what the yips looked like for former MLB prospect Hayden Hurst, now projected by many to be the first tight end taken in the NFL draft. pic.twitter.com/eP7owr3z7P
— Dan Pompei (@danpompei) April 4, 2018

Sitting across from Hurst at an outdoor patio table overlooking the practice field at the Ravens’ training facility, it’s clear that brighter times have now arrived. He appears more imposing than he does on television, where he runs alongside athletic giants of his similar 6-foot-5, 245-pound size.

When he’s on the football field, with a red beard and a long mane of ginger shoulder-length hair that protrudes from the back of his purple and black helmet, paired with mammoth muscular arms, Hurst is downright Viking-like. He certainly doesn’t fit Hollywood’s stereotypical description of a person who has struggled with his or her mental health.

But that’s really the point—of why he’s here on a sun-splashed afternoon in Owings Mills, calmly describing the painful details of his history with anxiety and depression, and why it’s so important for him to talk about it—instead of addressing more trivial locker room topics like curl routes, blocking assignments, or next Sunday’s game.

“In sports, you hear, ‘We have to be tough men, we can’t talk about mental health.’ Or ‘If you seek help, it’s weakness.’” Hurst says, wearing his purple number 81 jersey, his elbows on the lunch table making straight eye contact. “I think that’s a load of crap now. It’s incredible that it affects so many people, and in so many different ways. It needs to be talked about.”

So he’s talking. Hurst wants other people to learn from his story, to help rip the stigma off mental health treatment, to encourage teenagers, young adults, or anyone else to find some hope and support in his tale. He was a teenage, multi-sport, all-star athlete. “He was always the big-name guy, the big pitcher,” says his friend and former high school teammate, the Orioles’ D.J. Stewart.

Hurst felt pressure, then confusion, fright, and hopelessness, when everything he worked for slipped away. Then he found awareness, of what anxiety and depression really is, and make a choice to triumph, by finally accepting what was tearing him up inside and ditching a professional baseball career to head to college at almost 22 years old with the idea of starting over as a football player.

Just months after the official end of Hurst’s baseball flameout—when, at the start of his third year of spring training, he walked off the mound after hitting the fence with yet another pitch in a practice session and sobbed in the clubhouse, he walked on the football team at the University of South Carolina.

And after just three years there, two as a starter, Hurst became one of the top collegiate tight ends in the nation. He joined the Ravens in April when they selected him in the first round of the 2018 NFL draft, seven picks before quarterback Lamar Jackson.

Hurst may still be making his name on the field—he missed the first four games of the season with a foot injury and, as the second tight end on the Ravens’ depth chart, his stats for the year are 10 receptions for 102 yards and a touchdown. His best game came against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this past Sunday, when he caught three passes for 20 yards, and screamed and pumped his fists after one of them. He’s not a superstar (yet), but as a more mature and hardened 25-year-old rookie, he’s already embraced the visibility and platform that comes with having an NFL roster spot of any kind.

In September, Hurst launched The Hayden Hurst Family Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to help adolescents in Baltimore, as well as Columbia, SC, where Hurst went to college, and Jacksonville, his hometown, deal with mental health struggles. His mom has retired from a 30-plus-year sales career to help run the foundation.

Approximately one in five adults in the United States experiences mental illness in a given year, according to the National Alliance of Mental Illness. And one in five children ages 13 to 18 have or will have a serious mental illness, with 75 percent of all cases beginning by age 24.

Yet a stigma about addressing mental health in public, or private, remains, especially in the testosterone-inundated world of pro sports. “When I was going through it, I didn’t think that I would have ever talked about it,” Hurst says. But add his name to growing list of elite athletes that are speaking out, doing their part to soften the taboo, and shed some light on why and how to seek help.

Former Ravens players Steve Smith and Jamal Lewis, basketball’s Kevin Love and DeMar Derozan, and hockey goalie Robin Lehner of the New York Islanders have all shared their stories. Like Love, Hurst wrote a first-person account of his struggles in The Players’ Tribune. It’s titled “The Things You Can Control.” And he’s talked about it in articles for BaltimoreRavens.com and Bleacher Report. Other high-profile athletes like former world No. 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic are more private, but have cited their mental health as reasons for stepping away from their respective games.

“You never really know what someone else is going through,” Hurst says, “Even my own family.”

It wasn’t until almost two years into his pro baseball nightmare that Hurst honestly spoke to his family, first his father, about his real struggles—and that he then learned of theirs.

His father, a former Jacksonville University baseball player, still suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, that also began when he was in his 20s. “My dad told me his history, how he saw therapists, and how it helped him,” Hurst says. “My sister as well. I had no idea she had seen therapists all throughout high school.”

There were tragedies, too. Hurst’s uncle, Dennis, was an alcoholic and committed suicide. So did his cousin, D.J. Hurst. Both struggled with anxiety and depression. Becoming aware of the family history—some research suggests a majority of mental health disorders are inheritable, but they can be caused by other circumstances, too—was one of the first steps for Hurst to start addressing his own struggles.

“When I was younger, I didn’t really notice it. I thought it was just nerves,” Hurst says. “The older I got, I could see some things in myself, and some signs in my dad, but we really didn’t talk about it until I started going through it, where we felt like we could relate and we could talk about it.”

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Happy Father’s Day to my dad and best friend @j_hurst10 I wouldn’t be where I’m at today without you. What a journey it’s been for these first 24 years. Could not have done it without ya Pops

A post shared by Hayden Hurst (@haydenrhurst) on Jun 17, 2018 at 8:05am PDT

In Florida, as Hurst tried to figure out what was wrong with him, he visited eight different doctors and made more than 70 different appointments, spending thousands of dollars.

He didn’t really like talk therapy, but it helped. “I didn’t want to admit that I was weak,” Hurst says. “But the biggest thing is just talking to people, getting it out there, and addressing the issue.” He tried anything in addition, though, even hypnotism. That didn’t work, nor did another technique called tapping—on his forehead to unlock his mind.

A psychiatrist that the Pirates recommended diagnosed Hurst with attention deficit disorder, and recommended he take Prozac. Hurst balked at medication, primarily because he thought antidepressants had contributed to his cousin’s suicide, though Hurst understands that antidepressants have helped other people.

The Pirates’ sports psychologist suggested that Hurst keep a journal as a way to express his emotions. Of all the suggestions for addressing his mental pain, that’s the one that worked most for him. He wrote every day for two and a half years, “just to get it out, kind of like I was talking to somebody,” he says.

A sampling: “I do not know why but I feel as though everything has gone to shit,” Hurst wrote in mid-June 2014. “I feel nervous and unable to focus. I can’t get remotely close to obtaining the badass in me. And I have been doing a poor job at separating it on and off the field. I am lost, losing faith, and searching for answers and stability in my life. This is getting hard to face each day and to be honest I feel like giving up. Why me? What have I done to deserve these 2 years of confirmed hell?”

Hurst signed himself up for a third and final year of spring training to try to make things right in his baseball life one more time, afraid of disappointing the organization and his family. He tried and tried until he finally gave up after yet another unsuccessful throwing session. He and Elarton cried when Hurst couldn’t even have a simple catch. He’d had enough.

In May 2014, he called the Pirates’ director of minor league operations Larry Broadway to tell him he was quitting. “Well, I hope there’s something you can stick to in your life,” Broadway said. The words stung.

By this time, Hurst had already started to seriously think about playing football. He bulked up by 20 pounds lifting weights in the Pirates weight room, and had already called one of his childhood friends, Perry Orth, who was the backup quarterback at the University of South Carolina, to ask him how things were going there, and float the idea of joining him.

Hurst played only one year of football in high school, as a junior at Bolles, before his mom told him he should really decide between baseball and football, in case he got hurt in the latter, which would have prevented him from pursuing the former. And baseball, after all, was what everyone told him he would make millions playing, his natural talent for throwing a 95 mile-per-hour fastball and all. It was an ambitious pivot.

“You’re crazy,” Cathy Hurst told her son when he said he wanted to head to college and try to play football. But it was what he wanted to do. She now reflects back on the turning point and says, “It gave him hope.”

“I knew that I wasn’t ready to stop dreaming,” Hurst wrote in The Players’ Tribune. “As long as there was the smallest chance that I could keep playing sports, that was enough.”

Given Hurst’s size and speed—he could run the 40-yard dash in about 4.55 seconds—Orth convinced South Carolina assistant coach Steve Spurrier Jr. to consider giving Hurst a chance, and he was offered a walk-on spot.

“I always had a feeling deep down that I was going to be really good at football,” Hurst says. “I got burned out from baseball, going through that for three years. And maybe having baseball taken away from me fueled my fire for football. It made me pretty determined. That’s kind of why I play the way that I do.”

At South Carolina, Hurst played wide receiver for a year before a new coaching staff led by Will Muschamp took over and moved Hurst to tight end. He put his natural athleticism to work right away, setting program single-season records for catches (48) and receiving yards (616) by a tight end, and was the first sophomore to be named a captain in team history.

“The fear and anxiety I’d at one point associated with pitching had been replaced by a sense of joy and freedom I experienced on the football field,” Hurst says. “I felt in my element again.”

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A night I will never forget. My first NFL touchdown. Many more to come :pray::skin-tone-3:

A post shared by Hayden Hurst (@haydenrhurst) on Aug 3, 2018 at 1:34pm PDT

After catching 44 passes for 559 yards as junior, with one year of college eligibility remaining, he declared for the NFL draft, and was considered one of the best prospects at his position. He was a captain again and a first-team All-SEC pick. Former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, a college football TV analyst, even named Hurst his “Freak of the Week,”—a compliment—during the season.

On draft day, he hugged his mom and dad hard after Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome called, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced Hurst’s name on television as the 25th overall selection. The millions he thought he’d always make in baseball now came from a football team, and he was happier. His four-year contract guarantees him $10 million.

“As awful as it was for those three years in baseball,” Hurst says. “I’m kind of thankful I went through it, because it made me stronger, that’s for sure.”

The foot injury, a stress fracture which occurred at the end of an impressive preseason, set Hurst back and he’s essentially blended in this year as part of a four-man tight end rotation, but just this week coach John Harbaugh spoke with optimism about Hurst’s future, and his three catches last Sunday.

“His confidence has been good all along, but he was chomping at the bit for an opportunity to prove it,” Harbaugh said. “He made a couple big, tough catches out there, and you could see it in his emotions [that] it mattered to him. Like, ‘Finally, I had a chance to show what I can do here!’ That’s just going to make him even more hungry to do more. That’s what you want to see as a coach.”

About three months ago, on a warm mid-September Monday night, an off day for the Ravens, Hurst stood inside on the basketball court at Towson University’s SECU Arena, looking up in the bleachers at close to 500 of the school’s athletes, not at all much younger than his 25 years.

He was there as part of an event put on by the “We’re All A Little Crazy” Global Health Mental Alliance, which has visited college campuses nationwide to raise awareness and break the stigma associated with talking about mental health. Hurst is one of many athletes and celebrities to serve as ambassadors.

Thank you to @AllALittleCrazy for speaking with our student-athletes as we #OwnYourRoar at @towsonu. #SameHere ???????????? pic.twitter.com/kRZb3478Fi
— Towson Athletics (@TowsonTigers) September 18, 2018

“How do you work through your depression and anxiety now?” Darren Rovell, the former ESPN sports business reporter and the event’s moderator, asked Hurst as part of a question-and-answer session.

He leans on his family—The Core Four, they call themselves—of his parents and sister. And his dog helps, too, a Border Collie. Hurst also talked about his journal, the pages and pages he began writing at rock-bottom in Florida.

Afterward, students asked questions and Hurst fielded one from a Towson softball player.

“How do you find time to write in a journal?”

Hurst, on this night his Viking hair tied back in a bun, looked right at her.

“You make time,” he said. “For me, that’s my therapy.”

So is football.

Back at the Ravens’ training facility after a mid-week practice, Hurst explains that for as nervous, anxious, and panicked he was on the pitcher’s mound all those years ago, he’s just as excited to wear a helmet and pads and run out onto M&T Bank Stadium’s field.

“I never had an issue in football with it,” Hurst says. “It’s two separate sports. Baseball is slow. When you’re a pitcher, you have the ball in your hand and you control the flow of the game. For me, tight end is different, and football is such a different sport. You get to run around and hit people, catch a pass. I feel like I can take out my aggression out there.”

When he returned home to Jacksonville after quitting baseball, broken-hearted, gut-wrenched, and unsure exactly where he was headed, Hurst had one question: “Can I have that picture?”

He was looking at a painting that had been in the family for decades. A Phoenix, the mythical bird that symbolized rebirth and renewed youth. A friend of Hurst’s parents painted it when they were all in high school together. The Phoenix was their mascot.

“Absolutely,” his mom said, and the painting now hangs in Hurst’s house in Baltimore. He walks by it after every practice and game. The Phoenix, rising again.

“It’s a reminder of how strong he was,” Cathy Hurst says, “that he could pull himself out of the embers, and have this opportunity in a whole new life.”

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We Try Out the Ancient Healing Practice of Sound Therapy

Jess Mayhugh — Tue, 22 May 2018 08:30:00 +0000

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Some people like to unwind with a long hot bath at the end of the day. Some people prefer a sound bath. We’re talking about sound therapy, an alternative healing therapy which uses ancient singing bowls to decrease stress, anxiety, and chronic pain levels. We talk to Elaine Wujcik, a registered nurse and certified sound massage practitioner at Metta Integrative Wellness Center about the ins and outs of this ancient practice.

What is sound therapy?
I don’t really like to refer to it as sound therapy. I like to use the term sound massage, because what I’m doing when I am in a session is allowing a person to relax and get in touch with his or her own self-healing capacities. I’m not going to heal you with sound, but I will help you relax with it. I also like to refer to it as a soundtrack for self-healing.

How is it beneficial?
The biggest benefit with sound massage is that it can help with letting go of stress in your life. I believe there are so many conditions that are connected to having a high level of stress, so just to be able to let go of that allows your body to help recover or come back into balance. It can provide results for sleep disorders, anxiety, PTSD, depression, and types of pain management.

What is the process like?
The entire process is very calming. First you start to relax by lying down and slowing your breath. You are then told to think positively during the experience. You are able to move and stretch a bit while lying there so that you are able to be as comfortable as possible and listen to the sounds. I think it feels like getting a massage without the skin contact.

What instruments do you use?
I mostly use the Himalayan singing bowls I was trained with, which make really soothing noises. I also use a gong, chimes, and little bells. I don’t really like to start off with a gong, because it’s not as calming as the singing bowls. They are a lot louder than singing bowls, and some people like that, but I really like to work my clients up to it. The bowls really do help take down the layers of stress and clients are more receptive to them.

How long is a session?
I like to keep each session around 90 minutes, especially when you are first starting out with sound massage. Trying to do those sessions in just 60 minutes ends up being very rushed, so if you are trying to create a space of relaxation and letting go, I recommend the full 90. I also try to work with people and their schedules because people are busy, so after your first 90-minute session we can make our way to 30 if requested.

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