I was 22 and unraveling in ways I could not yet comprehend when I first met Pat Mahoney. He wasn’t famous or a sought-after expert. Google him today, and you’ll find a dated WebMD profile with no reviews, no photo, just a generic silhouette of a man with a stethoscope. But to me—and to countless others—Pat showed us the way back to ourselves.
I didn’t know my life was about to collapse in the summer of 2005, but I knew I needed help. When my insurance couldn’t book me with their therapists, they referred me to Pat. In his 12th-floor office overlooking Farragut Square, two blocks north of the White House, I told Pat my goal for therapy was full consciousness in real time. Oh boy, he must have thought, this is going to be a long haul.
My life at that time was a powder keg in a match factory: managing a transitional house for recovering addicts in Adams Morgan despite no relevant experience, training or study. I earned $300/month that came with a sliver of a room in the transitional house. I’d not grappled yet with how my father’s alcoholism might be triggering in that situation, or how my own substance use issues would be disqualifying for this job. It was my first time living in a city. I was in a relationship that was breaking my heart.
The end of that job was even more humiliating than I could have imagined with that set up. I lost my job, housing, health insurance, and confidence in a single day—just hours short of earning the AmeriCorps grant I’d never receive. That first meeting with Pat was just six weeks earlier. He didn’t really know me or owe me anything, but he agreed to see me for $5 per session until I got myself back off the mat.
If I were to distill Pat’s magic to its simplest form it would be stories, neurofeedback, and presence. He sat with me as I began to rediscover my story, listening in a way that made me feel heard—not judged or labeled—and safe enough to feel emotions I’d long buried. When I said I wanted to learn to sit still, he sent me to Tara Brach’s meditation class on River Road in Bethesda, and she would become another teacher and mentor who would transform my life. Pat introduced me to the Insight Meditation Society, one of the birthplaces of the modern mindfulness movement, and within a year, every vacation day for the next decade was spent on meditation retreat.
Pat introduced me to neurofeedback, a method of training the brain to achieve healthier states. He’d hook me up to EEG technology that played symphonic sounds when my brain reached a calm, balanced state. At first, I tried too hard—silence. But when I rested as awareness of the sounds, the music flowed. For someone raised in hypervigilance, it was my first taste of true relaxation, confirmed by the graphs of my brain waves that Pat showed me. That relaxation reinforced a fledgling faith that change was possible, even for my frequently worried mind.
Advice reliably does one thing for me: incentivizes the opposite. Stories are the Trojan horse that can sneak an insight into my fiercely defended psyche without shattering my fragile ego, and Pat was the master.
The famed Notre Dame priest Reverend John Dunne was a guide to Pat and a regular in the stories. His life practice is something I’ve been working on for two decades now: Can it be okay that others are not who I need them to be, and I’m not going to be what others need me to be?
I regularly retell the story of Pat’s friends with the happiest marriage, partially due to their practice of having coffee together every Monday morning to decide if they’ll stay married another week.
The most touching one is about Pat and Beverly’s process of discerning whether to have a child: One day they realized that what they had was too good to keep to themselves. But they were in their late 40s at the time, and it was too late. It was heartbreakingly sad, but he carried no regret—he knew the timing had never been right. Myself and hundreds of others are the beneficiaries of that discernment and discipline.
I heard these stories and so many more in a place of brokenness, unworthiness, self-hatred, and doubt. Slowly, these stories rewired my internal compass, guiding me toward autonomy, openness, clarity, and trust I’d never imagined possible.
My parents gave me the gift of life, but no one taught me more about how I wanted to live it than Pat. Out of the rubble, he kept my eyes upon that glimmer of a path. “The world gets out of the way of a person who knows what they want,” he’d say, and I trusted him. He watched me regain stability, stumble upon a career at National Geographic, and land opportunities to write for their website and develop documentary films. He kept me grounded when I fell in love with people worthy of my love and (intermittently) trust my own worthiness of love. He cheered me when I took a huge career leap to leave National Geographic for a fellowship at the Insight Meditation Society.
It was during my time at the Insight Meditation Society that I realized my own calling to be a therapist. I’d walk around the pond with retreatants feeling acute distress, and discover my own capacity to listen with love, use stories (some of them Pat’s) to create more space for others to express their own experiences, and in doing so, creating new possibilities going forward. I loved it. I was good at it. I didn’t know that all of this time talking to Pat, sometimes twice a week, was not just for me. It wasn’t just a vital reimagining of my own life and path. It was an apprenticeship on how to truly be of help when meeting someone who is struggling.
During a stretch of good years—at the Insight Meditation Society and grad school—I’d only reach out to Pat occasionally, sending him a note of appreciation and letting him know how well I was doing. By the start of 2020, I’d been fifteen years sober, living in a beautiful home, equidistant to the communities I loved from grad school and the Insight Meditation Society, contemplative practices and dedication to service that filled my soul, and successfully launching my therapy career with a full caseload and great mentors. I never imagined my life could fall apart again.
Just before the pandemic, I got engaged to my beloved Paula, an Irish woman I’d met during my years at the Insight Meditation Society. When the U.S. border closed, our plans unraveled. Unable to marry or extend her visa, Paula returned to Ireland. The only way to reunite was to leave my home, career, communities, and savings behind for an unplanned emigration to the West of Ireland. I lost everything I’d built—the home I loved, the communities that sustained me, the career I’d spent many years planning. And our marriage began under unimaginable strain.
I reached out to Pat, and even though he was retired, he was there for me again, with those stories and presence, as much as I needed, for as much as I could pay, when I was able to pay it. Slowly again, I rediscovered the thread of my path. He was there for me when it felt like all was irreparably lost—again.
One of Pat’s favorite stories was that of Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul, a journey of comedian Tony Hendra about a priest who’d privately steered his life on the right course over and over throughout a lifetime—reminding Hendra of his own purpose, worthiness of compassion through sorrows, and seeing the light in him at the darkest times. It was only after Father Joe passed away that Hendra (who recently passed away) discovered the countless people Father Joe had also been benefitting.
I’ve known half a dozen other people who Pat has counseled through the toughest times in their lives, and I’m sure we’re just a stand in for the hundreds or more. I don’t know if Pat realized, as he told me Father Joe’s story, just how closely it mirrored his own life. But I do know this: My life is immeasurably better because of him—one of many quietly transformed by his generosity.