About
I’m Sara Pam Neufeld, a writer working on my first memoir after years as a multigenerational caregiver. I have a background as both a journalist and a yoga teacher. These might seem like wildly different pursuits, but both have truth as their essence: laying it out for people or helping them find it within themselves.
I spent 15 years reporting on public education with a focus on racial and economic inequities. I have taught yoga in studios, a corporate conference room and an after-school program and volunteered for numerous yoga service organizations. I put both my careers on hold to raise my two young sons, care for my dying mother and bring my grandmother to live in our building. At a time when I was overwhelmed by grief and responsibilities and suffering from postpartum back pain, I embarked on a long journey to learn a freestanding handstand. This has required me to rebuild my body and reprogram my nervous system. I hope sharing my story will help others struggling with grief, anxiety and pain to reimagine what’s possible.
If you’d like to know a bit more…
I grew up in the suburbs of New Haven, Connecticut, with two immensely supportive parents and a Bubbi who introduced my younger sister and me to daytime television. On a family vacation in Florida circa 1983, my mom tried her first yoga class to soothe her ailing back. She went on to become a beloved yoga and meditation teacher, Sanskrit scholar and Reiki master. I followed her path to yoga teacher training in 2006 despite the frantic pace of my job covering schools for The Baltimore Sun.
I started on the education beat in 2000, following my graduation from Northwestern University. I was an intern at the San Jose Mercury News, and my editor figured I couldn’t mess up too badly covering schools that were closed for the summer. Then a superintendent got indicted, and I was off to the races.
When my older son was born and rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit in 2014, my nervous system went into overdrive and stayed there. When my mom got cancer in 2017, all my yogic training was out the window as I felt it was my responsibility to save her. I was struggling with back and digestive problems that only worsened as my mom died and I brought Bubbi to live with us. In 2018, I registered for an online program teaching a press handstand, a wildly unrealistic goal for me at the time, in attempt to reclaim a sense of strength and power. And then came Covid…. Handstand training became my source of sanity as I homeschooled my two little boys and cared for a 94-year-old in the virus epicenter while my husband, a pediatrician, reported to work at the neighborhood hospital.
Bubbi died in November 2020, and life is a bit calmer now that my sons, Maceo and Paxton, have returned to school in person. When I’m not writing, you can find me participating in daily handstand classes over Zoom with Nook Movement Studios.
Professional Bio
Sara Pam Neufeld is an award-winning journalist and yoga teacher working on a memoir.
She spent 15 years reporting on public education with a focus on racial and economic inequities for The Baltimore Sun, San Jose Mercury News and The Hechinger Report. Her series on a Newark school’s attempted turnaround, published by Hechinger in collaboration with NJ Spotlight and WNYC Public Radio, won first-place awards from the Education Writers Association three years in a row. She has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, National Public Radio and NBC News. She lives in Queens, New York City, with her husband and two sons.
