Verunka's Voice

My mother’s room has pictures of me scattered all around; she is definitely a proud mother. Well, the other day she told me that she walked into her room and saw that all of the pictures were missing. In the past, Daniela (my schizophrenic sister), would often tear up or throw away pictures, so my mother was a bit worried. She walked over to Daniela’s room and was amazed. Daniela had taken all of the pictures from my mother’s r...

“One of the first reasons I wanted to play the trumpet is that it healed me.” -Tom Harrell, trumpet player. Jacob and I went to the famous jazz club in NY, Village Vanguard on Friday night to watch the Tom Harrel Quintet. We were lucky enough to be sitting in the front row. Anybody that has never seen Tom Harrel perform, if you have a chance to watch him perform, DO NOT MISS IT. I have always had a passion for jazz and especially for sensit...

On April 25, 2010 there will be a Mental Health Film Festival at St. Francis College 182 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights (For tickets call Carla at 212-780-1400 x7726) $5.00 if bought ahead of time and $7.00 at the door. This starts at 12:30PM and here are the movies: LENS & PENS shows those with criminal backgrounds changing their lives due to an art program. TO SEE WHAT I SEE depicts mental health recipients telling their personal reco...

I do earn the bragging rights here! My fiance, Jacob and his partner Vijay at Oorby Studios, created an amazing Music Ear Training App for the iPhone and iTouch called Music Head- an Ear Training Game. Anybody that studied music in their life knows how it felt studying for all of those music exams with the same boring games…now this is different! It is a card matching game, but instead you match sounds. As you match the sounds (pitches,...

Ok. If I am telling somebody something that is a beautiful day and they are quick to tell me about how too bad there is dog poop everywhere in the street…well, that annoys me.

I have been called “the counselor” many times in my life.

I wrote a post awhile back about Susan M. Brackney’s book The Lost Soul Companion. I also told you that I sent her an email and she replied to me and told me that she would be sending me one of her books as a ” gift to the cause”. So, I was excited to receive it and when I did, I was in heaven!

Anybody that deals with somebody that has a mental illness knows how it feels to live on a roller coaster. One moment they are great and then the medications plateau.

Today was my second Columbia presentation to the medical students and I had a huge realization at the end…

I wrote Susan Brackney, the author of Lost Soul Companion an email telling her how grateful I am for her book and she wrote me back! ( I wrote a blog about this wonderful book a few weeks ago.)