About Dr. Cynthia Garner:
Helping people come home to themselves through mindfulness, healthy boundaries, storytelling, and nervous system awareness.
I'm a mental health educator, mindfulness teacher, writer, speaker, and founder of Mindful Boundaries. I'm also a mother, an author, an artist, and a lifelong student of the human experience.
My work is devoted to helping people come home to themselves through practical mindfulness, healthy boundaries, and nervous system awareness.
Over the years, I've come to understand that caring for our own nervous system is one of the most meaningful ways we can care for others. That understanding has been shaped by lived experience, decades of mindfulness practice, and a deep curiosity about what helps people heal, grow, and flourish.
Today, I help therapists, educators, caregivers, leaders, and others who spend much of their lives caring for people cultivate greater presence, strengthen healthy boundaries, and support their wellbeing.
Whether we're working together through coaching, workshops, retreats, guided meditations, or my six-week Mindful Boundaries Foundations program, my intention is always the same: to create a space where people can slow down, reconnect with themselves, and develop practical skills that support greater presence, clarity, and sustainable wellbeing.
Rewriting My Story of Belonging
I was adopted as a young child after my birth mother left a violent relationship. I grew up in a family shaped by both love and trauma, where writing, music, and time in nature became places of refuge. Those experiences cultivated a lifelong curiosity about belonging, resilience, and the remarkable capacity we have to heal.
Over the years, I've served as a classroom teacher, Fulbright Scholar in Guatemala, leadership consultant, mindfulness teacher, author, and speaker. My work is informed by a Doctorate in Body-Mind Health, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction, professional training in mindfulness-based approaches, and more than twenty years of supporting people through education, coaching, workshops, and retreats.
One of the most meaningful lessons I've learned is that caring for my own nervous system is one of the most powerful ways I can care for others.
Simple, practical mindfulness and healthy boundaries have transformed the way I parent, teach, communicate, write, and lead. They continue to remind me that presence isn't something we're born with or without. It's something we cultivate, one moment at a time.
Speaking, Writing & Podcast Conversations
Stories have always been at the heart of my work.
Whether I'm writing an essay, speaking on a stage, joining a podcast conversation, or guiding a mindfulness practice, I'm interested in the places where lived experience, scientific understanding, and contemplative wisdom meet. I believe stories help us make sense of our lives, deepen our compassion, and discover new ways of relating to ourselves and one another.
My work explores mindful boundaries, nervous system wellbeing, burnout prevention, belonging, adoption, relational healing, compassionate leadership, and the everyday practices that help us cultivate greater presence while caring for ourselves and others.
As the author of Fierce Boundaries and the memoir Out of Grace, I write personal stories that invite reflection, challenge familiar narratives, and remind us that healing often unfolds through ordinary moments of courage, curiosity, and connection. Through my essays on Substack, I continue exploring these themes while offering practical insights, guided practices, and reflections on the beautiful complexity of being human.
Whether we're sharing a conversation, reading a story together, or practicing mindfulness, my hope is always the same: that you leave feeling a little more connected to yourself, a little more hopeful, and a little more at home in your own life.
If these themes resonate with you, I invite you to explore my books or join me on Substack, where I share new essays, reflections, and mindfulness resources throughout the year.
Fierce Boundaries: Somatic Exercises for Healing in a Traumatized World
Healing starts with you. You are enough. You are worthy of care. You are the work.
In a world filled with political turmoil, mental health crises, and environmental destruction, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless. But we can no longer afford to stay numb, hollow, or stuck. Now is the time to reclaim our power, re-inhabit our bodies, and honor the grief in our hearts so we can move forward with clarity, love, and resilience.
This book is a practical and compassionate guide for anyone ready to:
Reclaim their attention and mental real estate.
Heal their relationship with themselves and those around them.
Cultivate agency, resilience, and embodied kindness in the face of adversity.
Set and protect boundaries with strength and compassion.
Find joy, clarity, and purpose amid life’s chaos.
Filled with real-world therapeutic practices and deeply relatable stories, Fierce Boundaries empowers you to wake up, take control of your life, and create a brighter, more compassionate future. This book is not just about surviving—it’s about thriving and being a beacon of hope in challenging times.
Out of Grace: An Extraordinary Journey Through Guatemala’s Haunted Highlands
Guatemala City is officially classified as one of the most dangerous cities in the Americas, where murders make daily headlines, and men hiss at women the same way they hiss at dogs. Here, in the shadow of the country’s many volcanoes, a 22-year-old anthropologist embarks upon her Fulbright research—unraveling the mysteries of the Mayan Highlands, and unexpectedly losing her long-held Christian faith.
After a weekend climb of the Pacaya Volcano turns tragic, the author struggles to shake the helplessness and fear that haunt her. In the midst of searching for a new faith, she discovers the bewildering town of San Pedro la Laguna—a place where Mayan culture collides with globalization and a tourism industry fueled by the drug trade. As she navigates her own spiritual crisis, Cynthia is drawn to explore the haunting beauty of the rugged highlands, the stories of the Tz’utuji’il people, and their connection to the land.
This fast-paced narrative and anthropological field study is at once an adventure, a coming of age story, an exploration of spirituality, and a reflection upon the shadow of fear in all our lives.
Thrown from the Nest: A Memoir of Belonging, Recovery, and Generational Healing after Adoption
About the book:
As an adoptee, all Cynthia has ever wanted is to be the mom she didn’t get to have.
But navigating single motherhood amid her ex-husband’s mental illness, and his constant accusations and threats of self-harm, is more than her heart can bear. In the Spring of her seventh year of classroom teaching, when her daughter is still a toddler, her spirit finally cracks. Within a single semester, she unravels into crippling anxiety, panic attacks, job loss, illness, a back injury that temporarily confines her to a wheelchair, and addiction. Then, when she tries meditation in an effort to make peace with her fears, she is battered by images of violence and pre-verbal memories of men that paralyze her with terror and add fuel to her rage.
In this vivid, gripping, and at times explosively powerful narrative, Cynthia embarks upon a journey of reclaiming her power that takes her to the dream world, through the “death cave,” and into the desert where she comes face to face with the dark masculine inside herself, and an epic battle rages.
Thrown from the Nest is a story about fierce dedication to motherhood that triumphs over abuse and interrupting the cycle of generational trauma by choosing radical kindness, even towards those who have hurt her the most.
Release Date TBD: Currently Seeking Literary Representation
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