About Me
I’m Cynthia Garner, mental health educator, disruptor, writer, mindfulness meditation teacher, single mom, artist, songwriter, author of Fierce Boundaries and Out of Grace, and founder of Leading to Heal. I am also an adoptee and survivor, deeply devoted to breaking the cycle of generational trauma by being the mother I did not get to have, and through helping people come home to themselves and lead with presence in a divisive world.
I specialize in nervous system regulation, trauma-informed leadership, and soul-centered approaches to personal and collective healing. With over two decades of practice, professional certifications in secular mindfulness, and a Doctorate in Body Mind Healing, my intention is to bring depth, warmth, and real-world insight to every space I enter. I support women, educators, survivors, and soul-driven leaders who are ready to create purpose-driven lives rooted in truth, tenderness, and aligned action.
Narrative Consulting & Mindful Brand Storytelling
I help you hold a large vision and communicate it with clarity, authenticity, and purpose. My intuitive and empathic approach reveals the core patterns, beliefs, and strategies that shape your creative process and influence how others experience your work. Together, we refine your message so it resonates deeply, aligns with your values, and reaches the people you are meant to serve.
Speaking & Media Engagements
I offer keynotes, panels, and interviews that bring mindful awareness to leadership, workplace wellness, and embodied healing. My talks explore how trauma-informed systems and sustainable leadership practices can restore humanity, compassion, and collective care in our institutions.
Workshops & Creative Facilitation
Through workshops, talks, and writing, I help individuals and communities reconnect with the body’s intelligence and recover their inner authority. These experiences blend mindfulness, creative process, and nervous system wisdom to cultivate belonging, emotional regulation, and authentic expression.
1:1 Therapeutic Support for Soul-Led Women
For women ready to live with greater boundaries, authenticity, and ease, I offer personalized support that integrates mindfulness, expressive arts, nature, and body-based practices. Together we create space for truth to emerge, helping you move through old patterns into a life grounded in presence, purpose, and embodied wisdom. My work carries the energy of ferocity and tenderness, inviting depth, aliveness, and genuine healing.
A Life Lived Fully: From the Margins to the Heart
My story begins before I had words. I was adopted at 18 months, following my birth mother’s separation from a violent partner. Raised in a home shaped by both love and trauma, I learned early to seek refuge in writing, music, and stillness. The wisdom I share now has been hard-won—earned through a lifetime of listening deeply to what hurts and alchemizing grief into wisdom that heals.
Over the years, I’ve worn many names: Fulbright Scholar, archaeologist, bluegrass musician, educator, survivor, single mother, eco-therapist, and narrative nonfiction author. But beneath every title was a deep longing—for safety, for worthiness, for a place to rest.
My journey has taken me from lightning storms on volcanoes in Guatemala to heartbreaks in quiet suburban kitchens. It has included divorcing a depressed alcoholic, healing from a body shut down by chronic pain and relational trauma, and reuniting with my birth family decades after being relinquished. Along the way, I’ve learned how to interrupt the cycle of generational harm, embody my soul’s higher calling, and claim ownership of my story.
If we want a bright future for our grandchildren, we need kindness, strength, and engaged action now more than ever. However, witnessing the collapse of our political and educational systems, the unraveling of our loved ones’ mental health, and the destruction of the planet’s exquisite beauty has left many of us feeling helpless and in despair. But we cannot wallow in the darkness or let ourselves be numb, unmoving, or hollow any longer. There is too much at stake. We have work to do and our children are counting on us.
It is time to wake up, take control of our minds, re-inhabit our bodies, and tend to the grief in our hearts, so we can light the way forward with clarity, conviction, and love.
I’m Dr. Cynthia Garner, a somatic psychotherapist, leadership coach, author, former classroom teacher, single mother, and survivor of complex relational trauma. In this book, I shares my experience and expertise to provide a field-tested pathway for reclaiming attention and cultivating a sense of agency and embodied kindness in troubled times. I offer proven therapeutic practices for healing our relationship to ourselves, and a new narrative for those of us willing to try a different approach — believing that healing is possible, that there is a future worth saving, and that we all have the power within us to pierce the darkness with our radiant light.
