Amy Paulson is a writer with a story that moves through shadow and emerges with hope intact. A Cornell University graduate, she spent twenty-five years in a relationship that was defining and formative, and twenty years building a life in California, before returning to her East Coast roots, where life is loud, tender, and happily shared with her children and animals.

She is not an educator, an activist, or a policy expert. She is a mother and a witness, someone who watched from inside a marriage as the California public school system slowly pushed out the person she loved most. She came to this book through lived experience and with a story she could no longer keep to herself. Her hope is that readers, whether they’ve dealt with a difficult workplace, loved someone who was struggling, or felt the weight of holding a family together through hard times, will find something of themselves in these pages.

Behind the Educator: Finding Light When Life Unravels is her debut memoir.