Recently I did a radio interview about working moms and talked about why I stopped working. My closest friends said I downplayed my nervous breakdown, making it sound like a really bad day (instead of a really bad year).

It’s true that I played it down. I was embarrassed. It’s one thing to write about it, it’s another to talk about it, live. On the radio. With a million people listening. But I’ve realized that if I’m going to talk about what happened to me at all, I should be more specific. I should define what "nervous breakdown" meant in my case.

I’ll start with what it did not mean. I did not feel suicidal or psychotic. I did not get strung out on heroin, walk around downtown Berkeley yelling at garbage cans, or act outwardly crazy in any way. I simply stopped, the way a watch stops when the battery dies.