Family: My husband Nick, and our kids, Cameron, 4½, and Olivia, 8.

How did you meet your husband? We met in Mrs Roberson’s second grade class at Sandy Hook School and were friends from age 7. We were in second, fourth, and fifth grade together. We were both band kids in middle school, and by high school we were in the marching band together. We started dating junior year of high school, in 2006. I was the drum major and he was the trumpet soloist senior year. We’ve been together ever since.

Pets: Ella, our dog, a black Lab; and Norah and Melody, our cats.

How long have you lived in Newtown? I was born here. Most of my life, aside from college and graduate school, I’ve been here. I went out to Indiana for college for four years, and then came home and moved back in with my parents. I saved money and worked in Stamford for two years, and then moved to Manhattan for grad school, and then slowly made my way back to town by way of New Rochelle, then Monroe, and we bought our first house in town in 2017.

Work: I’m a physician assistant. My background is neurology — I did that for eight years, and for the past three years I’ve been doing consulting at some area nursing homes. The specialty I work in now is physical medicine and rehabilitation, which entails working at skilled nursing facilities within their rehab department, making sure the patients who are there for physical rehab are doing the best they can without physical limitations. I help with pain management, steroid injections, and kind of optimizing their care while they’re at the facility.

Are you a member of any organizations, clubs, and/or communities of faith? I recently started an organization called Moms Show Up with my friend Kira. We’re trying to not be political. It’s a social activism group within town that came out of Kira reaching out after seeing some of my sentiments online about the direction things were going with immigration, and after Minneapolis. We wanted to show up for moms in town, and find out if there are other moms who were feeling the same way. It developed from there and now we have about 200 women in the group as of about a month ago. We’re involved in protests and trying to advocate for our neighbors who are at risk, doing whatever we can to help.

Do you have a favorite podcast? Pod Save America is probably my #1. It’s speechwriters and people who worked directly with Obama during his administration. It’s wonderful. Sometimes I need to get out of that headspace, though, so I’ll listen to Good Inside with Dr Becky. She’s like the mom guru of late, so when I need to switch to lighter listening, I’ll switch over to Dr Becky.

Who would you like to be stuck in an elevator with? If I had a chance to be in an elevator with my grandmother again, who passed away when I was 12, I would take that opportunity.

Favorite TV show? The Pitt is one of my favorites right now. It’s so good and probably the most accurate I’ve seen out of all the medical dramas. It’s fascinating. My happy show is Friends. Whenever I’m happy or stressed, I’ll watch that. In PA school I did a lot of surviving by just rewatching Friends year after year.

Friends got me through so many difficult times, probably since high school, and I got a lot of my high school friends into it. It’s funny to see some of my friends, some I haven’t seen in years, post something about that show now. There’s always a reference you can go back to from an episode.

Favorite actor? Currently Noah Wylie is at the top of my list. He’s great. My long-term is Jennifer Aniston. I love her in Morning Show. She’s become so dynamic over the years. She never pigeonholed herself into one role. You see her in Friends, and now in Morning Show, and what a difference.

What do you like to do in your free time? Anything artistic. My mom and I used to take painting classes when I was in between undergrad and grad school. Recently we said goodbye to our family dog — my parents’ dog, who was almost 15 years old — so art has helped me get through the past week, looking through her pictures and drawing things. Painting, drawing, sometimes even Legos — expressing myself in artistic ways.

That and activism, apparently (laughs).

What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given? It was the school motto when my husband and I were both going to Sandy Hook School and it resonates with us still, every day: “Think you can. Work hard. Get smart. Be kind.”

Do you have a favorite travel destination? My happy place is Disney. It’s nostalgic one, from growing up and now seeing my kids experience it.

What is your favorite thing about Newtown? It’s special. There’s such a sense of community. A lot of us came home after 12/14. It’s funny, I’ll meet newer people in town, other parents who just came here recently, and they’ll say, “There’s a lot of people that still live here.” I don’t think it was always like that though. I do think there was a bit of an influx. There’s the warmth of the small town but it’s big enough that you don’t have to always run into everybody all the time. It’s a good mix of things, and over the years it’s become developed so that there are things to do. Growing up, it wasn’t like that. It’s been cool to watch that evolution.

Do you have a personal credo? Learn from yesterday. Live for today. Hope for tomorrow.