HER STORY

Hilary was born to a loving family in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up comfortably with little trauma or upheaval in her early years. But she knew that she FELT things, too much, entirely too much. 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, ALL THE TIME, will bring you to your knees. 

 

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? 

 

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 and drinking, and it was a rollercoaster time. The crash was coming. And boy, did Hilary crash hard. 

 

After graduating from W&L, Hilary got a good job at Capital One in Richmond, Virginia, and she settled into life with a nice salary, a charming place to live on Monument Avenue, and simple pleasures. But drinking and insomnia plagued her, and she started to feel that hyper empathy again, mixed with a revved up engine and boundless energy. Racing thoughts and spinning gears… the documents in Hilary’s own mental hard drive were shuffling and reshuffling like a deck of cards. If you know anything about mental illness, you probably know where we are headed…

 

On Valentine’s Day 2000, Hilary went out to dinner with her boyfriend and his parents, but 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 quite some 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. 

 

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. For 25 years, Hilary has taken her prescribed five to seven psychotropic medications, every morning and every night, without fail. In this, Hilary was very lucky, because many Bipolars stop medication when they feel great. Hilary found that sometimes the medications were dead wrong and sucked hard, leading her to: fail the bar exam; get fired from three law jobs in three years; obliterate relationships; and be socially ostracized from the small southern Baptist town she lived in for a time. 

 

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 remembers vividly sitting on the floor of her kitchen, flicking the boning knife against her wrist, wondering how long it would take to bleed to death. 

 

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. 

 

Over a quarter century has passed, and in that time Hilary married her fairy tale husband, Nathan, and had two beautiful sons (along with 18 months of postpartum depression). She lots jobs and she and Nathan racked up $300000 in student loan and credit card debt by 2015. But they followed Howard’s stellar advice to get better jobs in Little Rock and to use credit counseling to dig out and build a nest egg, but stage four colon cancer took Nathan in tragic fashion in 2023. As a young widow, Hilary pushed forward, buying five investment properties by summer 2025. Hilary used Nathan’s tenets of Disciplne, Commitment, and Consistency to play the long game and find lasting mental wellness and sobriety, success as a federal law clerk, entrepreneurial excellence, financial stability, and a safe and supportive homelife for her two teenage sons. 

 

Beyond those three tenets, Hilary has found 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. 

 

Hilary’s blog will elaborate on her 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 peace, 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!