My name hints at things I have always loved: Sylvia, meaning “forest,” and Kuzman, derived from “cosmos.” I love forests, stars, and the questions that live between the visible and the unseen.

I’m a writer, mother and lifelong student of consciousness, reality, and what helps us grow through the lives we have been given. 

At fourteen, I was a shy immigrant girl worried about fitting in. Then I nearly died in a car accident; the months that followed changed the course of my life. During that time, a neighbor— physicist Tom Campbell—helped me see that how we perceive and respond to life may matter more than we realize. Over the next fifty years, that relationship became one thread in a much larger inquiry: what consciousness is, how reality may be stranger than we were taught, and what any of that means for how we live. 

Life, of course, became its own teacher. Harvard Business School and my years as a management consultant taught me logic and discipline. Health scares, for me and my children, taught me to face fear and look beyond it. Renovating homes nurtured my creativity. Marriage taught me collaboration. Motherhood expanded my compassion. Time in nature deepened my connection to something vast and mysterious.

Through the wins and losses alike I came to see that the way we perceive and respond to life’s challenges is what helps us grow up emotionally and spiritually, deep down where it matters most. We don’t usually write that part in our bios or say at barbecues, “You know, this tough season is teaching me to be less reactive,” or “Through my suffering, I’m finding humility.” But that is  the good stuff that fuels my storytelling.

We’re all figuring it out.  I think the work is best done together.