Grey Street

liz

I’ve been on a music kick this week and wonder if it’s related to the hints of authentic emotion I’m feeling now that the medication taper is taking effect. I am particularly sensitive to Prozac, which is the medication we are working on reducing first. In my experience, Prozac kicks in fast, but seems to take forever to leave my system. After months of numbness, it’s disconcerting to feel like the world is suddenly uncomfortably loud, as if I went to sleep with the dial at three and woke up with it turned up to seven (but it goes to 11!). There’s so much more to process with a wider range of emotional responses at my disposal. People want to understand and sympathize, but it’s tough to explain how ambient feelings overwhelm me right now. I think that’s why I keep returning to music, because there are songwriters who know of what I speak and have given voice to it in a way that communicates all I want to say, but don’t quite know how.

Over the years, Dave Matthews has spoken publicly about his own experience with suicidal thoughts and feelings of detachment and isolation. He is breathtakingly candid. In 2002, he wrote a song called Grey Street and recorded it with his band for the album Busted Stuff. Partly inspired by the poet Anne Sexton and her prolonged struggles with mental health, Grey Street contains the best description of depression I’ve ever heard.

Oh look at how she listens

She says nothing of what she thinks

She just goes stumbling through her memories

Staring out on to Grey Street.

She thinks, “Hey, how did I come to this?

I dream myself a thousand times around the world,

But I can’t get out of this place”

Now there’s an emptiness inside her

And she’d do anything to fill it in

But all the colors mix together

To grey

It’s that sense of a monochromatic, monotone world that Dave Matthews captures so well.

Now, though, I feel like a hatchling poking the first hole in the shell. What for so long seemed impenetrable is beginning to crack. I’m starting to see in color again.

Want to listen? Click here.

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Published by liz

From history major, with side quests in Medieval Studies and chemical engineering, to nonprofit finance leader, Big 4 tax partner, technologist, researcher, and now co-founder of Divine, nothing about my career has been linear. The throughline has always been systems: financial systems, organizational systems, technological systems, and human systems. I have an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management and a PhD in Organizational Leadership Psychology, and I’ve spent my career trying to understand how complex systems shape people’s choices, opportunities, wellbeing, and sense of belonging. Today, my work sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, human-centered design, and digital trust. I am co-founder of Divine, an open-source, decentralized social video app built to put creativity back in human hands and replace doomscrolling with joyscrolling. Divine is part of a bigger question I care deeply about: how do we create online spaces that support safety, creativity, identity, and belonging without defaulting to surveillance, extraction, or control? At Divine, I wear a lot of hats across engineering, finance, operations, and strategy, while helping shape the app’s trust, safety, and values work. I focus especially on teen online safety, human-generated content, participatory design, and healthier relationships with technology. I am a postdoctoral alum of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Computer Science, where I worked with Dr. Pam Wisniewski’s Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab. I continue to write, speak, and research at the intersection of online safety, digital trust, decentralized technology, and youth wellbeing. I was named a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Data Integrity in 2023. In 2025, I had the honor of serving as President of Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Consulting Psychology. I also live with major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2020, I took a leave from PwC to focus on my mental wellness, and I now speak and write openly about mental health, especially in the workplace and in relation to digital wellbeing. This blog, Seriously Jerk Brain, chronicles much of that journey.

2 Comments

  2. Hello Lizzie,

    I hope you’re enjoying your day. I came across this book and wanted to share the link .

    The Inflamed Mind A Radical New Approach to Depression Sending warmest wishes for inner peace and calm.

    ~ Cynthia

    “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future, while the learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” ~ Eric Hoffer

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