I spent countless weeks of my summers as a young girl visiting my grandmother in her tiny Ohio river town. The highlight of my time there would be the hours we’d search the stacks of books at the town library. I’d bring bundles back to her house, and they generally fit into two categories: suspense novels with feisty female protagonists and heady psychology texts. 

In their own ways, these varied books started to shape answers to the questions that I found myself wrestling with. I was insatiably curious about people, wanting to understand how we become the humans we are – how our motivations, our interests, our struggles develop, how people could overcome even the most seemingly insurmountable trials. 

The stories enveloped me. The science intrigued me. I was hooked, heart and mind.

I found myself especially drawn to the stories of women who summoned their courage to challenge the status quo. I was a shy and sensitive girl, and I’d feel inspired by the idea that even the voices that seemed small could create waves.

I started using my own voice, testing the waters of what it meant to take a stand. I wrote letters as a second grader to board game manufacturers about their gender biased commercials. In fourth grade, I challenged our school board on unequal funding for boys’ and girls’ sports. 

I began to piece together that the only way systems would shift is for enlightened individuals to recognize and honor their own power and direct it in service of the world.

Meanwhile, as I looked around inside myself, my community, and the world writ large, I could see that women had internalized a whole host of voices that were keeping them from doing exactly this.

We were bound into the systems that were holding us back from making the real, incredible contributions we were destined to make.

I arrived at college with a commitment to elevating the stories of girls and women and declared myself a journalism major. I loved the research and the writing. But I also realized that this path meant reporting the story as it is. I longed to be part of the stories – to help shift the narrative.

I also began studying psychology and women’s studies. I work in research labs studying new approaches to trauma and learned how to work with children with differently-wired brains. It invigorated my scientific brain while keeping me rooted in my most sacred calling. By graduate school, I’d focused my efforts on researching and treating people experiencing eating disorders, helping individuals and families get out of the torturous boxes trapping them. 

For the next decade, I treated people with eating disorders at all levels of severity. I also had the opportunity to create and lead these programs around the country, which let me guide large teams and major initiatives in a way that felt so meaningful. 

The births of my kiddos, a journey unto itself, deepened my own commitment to getting my purpose right. With a battle for motherhood under my belt and and then a battle through motherhood underway, I could see in a new way the challenges and opportunities women experienced. 

There were too many women caught in cycles of self-abuse, too many of us tormented by incessant pressures to be perfect, too many of us overwhelmed and burnt out. And everyone feeling like an imposter, always.

We need those voices more than ever.

In 2018, I founded Galia Collaborative as an organization dedicated to helping women people to heal in any of the broken places, grow into the identities that they want to inhabit, and to lead the wave of the future.

Heal. Thrive. Lead.

Galia has grown into a place – a community – that has a lifeforce of its own. We are a team of specialists in women’s mental health committed to changing the narrative. I’m deeply proud of our work, and I remain insatiably curious about how we can continue to move the needle for women and families. 

When I’m not working or spending time with my own big blended family, you can find me curled up with a good book. I still love my feisty female protagonists and always looking for a new recommendation.