HER STORY
Childhood
Hilary was born to a loving family in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up comfortably beside older brothers, Jeff and Brad, with little trauma or upheaval in her early years. But she knew that she FELT things, too much, entirely too much, and she later learned there was a term for this, hyper empathy. At five years old, Hilary told her father, Howard, that when she looked into other people’s eyes she saw EVERYTHING. All of their pain and joy and anger and sadness and longing and loneliness and triumph. Like Krishna in the Hindu myth, when people opened their mouths to speak, she felt the whole universe and time continuum pour forth, almost as some cosmic creator force. Hilary had to turn off this hyper empathy to just survive. She embraced a young life being seen as an ice queen, because feeling SO MUCH would utterly drown her. Feeling billions of people’s fresh pain and exhilarating joy, ALL THE TIME, will bring you to your knees.
Young Adult Life
Hilary was a high school three-sport athlete and star student at Norfolk Academy. She was more at ease with her parents’ friends, excelling at adult successes rather than enjoying teenage friends and fun.
Norfolk Academy was a great school to graduate from, but a difficult school to attend. The normal high school ups and downs plagued all of us, and Hilary had real problems with insomnia and anxiety.
At the ten and twenty year reunions, the Norfolk Academy 1994 classmates made peace with that high school turmoil and became good adult friends.
But damn, high school is hard isn’t it?
College Years
Hilary attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, just like Howard and her brother, Brad. Her volleyball career there was outstanding; she earned four-year first-team all-conference honors, she was 1995 state player of the year, and in 2024, Hilary was inducted into the W&L Athletic Hall of Fame.
She paired that volleyball success with heavy partying, drinking, and ballooning credit card debt. It was a rollercoaster time. The crash was coming. And boy, did Hilary crash hard.
Diagnosis
On Valentine’s Day 2000, Hilary went out to dinner in her new home of Richmond, with her boyfriend and his parents, but she found that she could not eat a bit of her favorite tomato basil penne. She was not nauseous, but nervous. What followed was six days of not sleeping or eating, marked by psychosis, hallucinations, paranoia, and near-death (you can die from lack of sleep). Scared out of her ever-loving mind, Hilary voluntarily admitted to Norfolk Psychiatric Hospital on February 20th 2000, where she spent time locked in the room with the padded walls, among other frightening things. The doctors there told Hilary’s parents that she had the “good diagnosis”: Hilary was bipolar, and not schizophrenic. There was treatment to be had for this chronic lifelong chemical imbalance. Hilary spent three weeks in the psychiatric hospital.
A golden energy and hope, intertwined with that nascent hyper empathy, resided in Hilary’s core, and that golden motor led Hilary to believe that treatment would work: long-term compliance was the only answer, and the only way to keep from living in her parents’ basement for the rest of her life. That golden belief proved right.
The reality is that finding the right mental health providers and the right recipe of medication is a process that takes not days or weeks, but years. Some days you white knuckle it, and somedays you can barely brush your teeth. Hilary vividly remembers sitting on the floor of her kitchen, flicking the boning knife against her wrist, wondering how long it would take to bleed to death. Then there were the euphoric highs, the heavenly mania that stayed for weeks at a time.
But with consistent treatment and acknowledging to others that she had a mental illness, Hilary survived and eventually thrived. Sharing her story became cathartic, and in 2013, Hilary wrote her award-winning memoir, Through the Open Door: A Bipolar Attorney talks Mania, Recovery, and Heaven on Earth. It helped many people who were living in their own mental health morass.
Family Life
Over a quarter century has passed, and in that time Hilary attended law school, failed the bar exam, and married her fairy tale husband, Nathan Chaney, a patent and data science attorney from Arkansas. The Chaneys settled in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 2005, and she proceeded to get fired from three law firm jobs in three years. But she didn't quit. Hilary and Nathan had two beautiful sons (Hilary suffered from more psychosis and 18 months of postpartum depression). After moving to small town Arkansas, she and Nathan racked up $300,000 in student loan and credit card debt by 2015. But they followed their financial mentor's advice to get better-paying jobs in Little Rock and to use credit counseling to dig out and build a nest egg. Nathan's bywords were Discipline, Commitment, and Consistency, and every day they planned and saved for a beneficent future. By 2021, they had dug out of debt and then some. Life was sweet for the four of them.
Alas, stage four colon cancer took Nathan in tragic fashion in 2023. Cancer caretaker at 46 was not in the plans. Watching Nathan suffer, as he beheld the boys' great shock and sadness, was excruciating. But as a young widow, Hilary pushed ever forward, buying five investment properties in Arkansas by summer 2025. With treatment, including taking some combination of Lorazepam, Trazodone, Lamictal, Risperdal, Wellbutrin, and Buspar, every day for 25 years, Hilary found a way to harness and thread out her hyper empathy for good, taking calculated risks based on thoughtful professional advice. Having a stable of smart attorneys, financial planners, accountants, realtors, lenders, doctors, and therapists was the blueprint. Hilary found: lasting mental and physical wellness, sobriety, a way to partner with her grief, success as a federal law clerk, entrepreneurial excellence, financial stability, and a safe and supportive home life for her two teenage sons. Hilary films an episode of Women in Power on Inside Success TV in late 2025, to highlight her story of finding peace and personal success. Mental Illness is not a death sentence!
Hilary knows that seeing and believing the golden core in all people elevates her own game and brings out a glow in those around her. The trick, Hilary has found, is not giving unconditional love, which is so hard as humans. The trick, dare I say, the “magic,”is receiving unconditional love. BELIEVING unconditional love, BELIEVING that you each are worthy of unparalleled love from other people. You are that perfect and beautiful, all of you, every inch of you, exactly as you are right now at this moment. And right this second, a TON of people love you without end.
This website will elaborate on Hilary's journey, and she will share the tidbits, tips, and tools that she has learned from others. In receiving the generous love from others, Hilary has found strength and calm, and has actualized a life beyond even her greatest manic dreams. You too, can find this peace, no matter your trauma or test. Come along, learn some insider tricks, and believe in your own true gold!
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |