Mary Meduna-Gross, Ph.D. has spent most of her life inside high-stakes systems — as a U.S. Navy Reserve hospital corpsman during the Gulf War, as a special educator working with children with emotional and behavioral challenges and their families, as a school leader doing everything right and still being told it wasn't working.

That is where everything she knew turned out to be necessary — and not enough.

Her school superintendent called her in. Told her she was doing all the right things. Told her she wasn't getting the right results. Told her to figure it out or go.

She already had the master's in community mental health counseling. The doctorate in leadership. Years of clinical training, of working with systems from the inside, of understanding what runs underneath presenting behavior. She was doing everything she knew how to do.

What do you do when the right things aren't producing the right results? When the problem isn't effort, knowledge, or commitment?

That question is what sent her looking.

Along the way, she found NeurOptimal® the way most people find the things that actually help them: sideways. She thought it would be good for other people. She was still there — looking outward, trying to solve other people's problems while she justified her own.

Then she tried it herself. Just to see.

After four sessions, something shifted. She felt like she had just come back. She didn't know where she had been. But she felt like she was in her body — maybe for the first time.

That's what she offers now. Not a framework. Not a methodology. An experience she's had herself, and has been helping others find their way into ever since.

Mary works with individuals at SolFlo, 1834 W North Ave, Chicago.