Nearly twenty years ago, I began as a classroom teacher in Richmond, VA. Many of my students struggled due to community and domestic violence. - Amanda Lynch

I loved theater and writing short stories as a child. I was always a creative and energetic child.

The communities that I serve are plagued by violence and substance abuse. A few years into my career, my best friend, Angel Jackson and her father Herbert Levi Sharpe, Sr. were murdered. This changed the trajectory of my entire career and I began to focus more on mental health and mindfulness in the black community.

This double marginalization of pregnant patients limits their autonomy and unduly exposes them to the criminal-legal system. Given disparities in prenatal drug screening, Black pregnant patients are at greater risk of such double-jeopardy.