It is with great sadness that I must report the passing of Kristin Romano MSW, my partner in Greenpoint Psychiatric Services and the Greenpoint Group Therapy Program. Over the past five years, as she struggled with a particularly aggressive cervical cancer, she also struggled to create a group practice and a group therapy program dedicated to the treatment of adults with ADD.
The dozens of individuals who worked with Kristin over the past 3 years are a living testament to how one makes meaning in life, even in the face of relentless illness and tragic loss. Her patients knew about her illness; her elusive ever-changing schedules told them that; they knew that she might/would leave them sooner or later. But they took that risk, and to a man and woman I believe that they are glad that they did.
For those of you who knew her, her patients and colleagues and friends, we will be holding a gathering at the Greenpoint Reformed Church at 136 Milton St. this Thursday evening at 8pm. I will say a few words and anyone else who wants to will be welcome to do the same.
For any of the rest of you who may be reading this blog, for whatever reason, I will tell you that the work we have done and were doing together continues. The MIndfulness Hypnotherapy Groups that Kristin helped create are in fact the wonderful therapeutic tools that we hoped and dreamed they would be. Watch this space in the coming year, and you will see how we will honor the memory of this fine strong woman. Right now almost 40 people have participated in these groups; a year from now it will be 150, and in two years 300, and every one of those people will owe something to Kristin Romano, a woman who wouldn’t stop trying to make meaning right up to the last weeks of her life.