Somewhere along the way, I started asking myself:
What’s missing? What’s working? What isn’t working? What do I need?
Sometimes the hardest part isn’t getting through what happened to you. It’s becoming aware of how life is happening for YOU.
It’s waking up and realizing how much of your identity has become tied to the roles you’ve played, the titles you’ve held, and the survival tools you are still carrying because part of you is afraid you may need them again.
A Lifetime of Growth
Through Personal and Professional Experience
What we live through can become more than our history. It can become the lens through which we see ourselves transform, find our purpose and joy, and imagine what we want our future and legacy to look like.
That journey is part of my why and what shaped G.G.R.O.W., Girlfriend’s Guide to Recovery, Outreach and Wellness, into a community rooted in connection, growth, and what comes next.
We believe growth begins when we allow
ourselves to be rooted in the mud like the lotus,
while connecting with ourselves and others
through grace, love, and compassion.
In 2021, I moved to Las Vegas for a new job, another career transition, and a chance to rediscover who Carol was.
Ten months later, I returned home to Connecticut to become a grandma to triplets, one of the proudest turning points in my life, second only to becoming a mom.
Coming back also forced me to face the parts of my life that no longer fit. I could no longer keep pretending or shrinking myself to hold everything together.
At 60, I realized I had entered a new season of healing. The old survival tools that had carried me before were no longer enough. I had to pull back the layers, show up, ask for help, be patient, do the work, and lean more on faith and hope than fear and despair.