March 22, 2024 • 34 mins
Join Gia on an inspiring journey with Dr. Andrea Lein, a leading authority in mental health and positive psychology. In this episode, Dr. Andrea shares her remarkable story of overcoming challenges and redefining success. Discover how she empowers high-achieving women to embrace their superpowers and live a life of fulfillment. Gain insights on cultivating psychological well-being, breaking stereotypes, and nurturing the next generation. Uncover the power of positive psychology and learn how to transform your life. Tune in to this transformative episode and embark on a path towards authentic confidence and self-discovery.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now, the go-to podcast for
extraordinary women who are ready to step into their next chapter with
authentic confidence. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua, empowerment coach,
motivational speaker, children's book author, and girl mom. Whether
you're a corporate powerhouse or an entrepreneur, this show is
designed for you. Your Future Starts Now is more than
(00:20):
just a podcast. It's a movement, a movement towards rewriting
the rules of success for high-achieving women. Are you ready
to get unstuck and step into your next chapter? If
so, you are exactly where you need to be. Your future starts
now. Welcome to Your Future Starts Now.
I'm your host, Gia Lacqua. Thanks for tuning in. I'm so excited
(00:43):
to introduce you to Dr. Andrea Lein Dr.
Andrea is the leading authority at the intersection of mental health, positive
psychology, and giftedness. She has devoted her
entire career, spanning over 25 years, to studying and
helping exceptional individuals embrace their superpowers, nurture
their psychological well-being, and live a life of fulfillment and
(01:05):
significance. With decades of clinical and leadership experience,
Dr. Andrea uses her gifts to serve and guide some of the
most respected, brilliant and creative minds in
the world. Dr. Andrea, thanks so much for being with us
I'm really excited. Such an
interesting background, your experience. Tell us, how did you
(01:27):
first become interested in the field of mental health
It is unusual. It's so unusual that when I proposed
this idea in my early, like very beginning of grad school,
I had some professors sort of scoff at the idea
because it was about, it was over 20 years ago and I
(01:51):
had to actually create a program for myself. So I ended up
getting my master's degree in educational psychology,
specializing in the gifted. And then I did my doctorate in
clinical and school psychology because at the time, All
the research and work on gifted, and really we're
thinking of gifted students, like young, younger, you know, student,
(02:12):
kid ages, was focused on
the cognitive and the intellectual piece. And at the time,
I was like, well, That's all very important, but
I'm really interested in the social-emotional development, the psychological issues,
and there were no textbooks on it, there were no graduate programs
on it, so I did have one wonderful professor who
(02:35):
encouraged me, and then I had other professors who sort of looked at me like,
this is an odd you know, niche area. But
now, it's so interesting, you know, 20 plus years later, there
are many more people who focus
on this niche. Still limited, but many
more. There are programs out there, there are books being written, so it's
(02:57):
exciting. And I didn't, I had to, that was one of the first moments
I had to really trust my gut and what I
really wanted and what I believed in and not listen to the very,
intelligent, you know, credential degreed professors
What are you doing? Absolutely. And I want to take
(03:18):
a moment to just recognize what you just said. It's so important, especially at
such a young age. I feel like when we're in our 20s, we don't know which way is up. Right.
But like you have that intuition and you listen to
it and you followed it despite what other people might have been telling you. So I imagine
the support from that one professor who kind of leaned in. Yes.
Yes, and a funny little story about that was she
(03:41):
was my fourth grade teacher, who I
somehow our paths crossed again when I was at the University of Virginia. And I
went to a school for the gifted like a separate different school. And
she taught in that school fourth grade. So she
was she came back into my life in my early mid
20s. And that's, that's the path I took. So thank goodness
(04:06):
You really never know and such an impact that they have on us. That's
incredible. So tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to where
Yeah, well, first of all, just for context for your
listeners, I am a wife, I am a mom, I have
a gifted, twice exceptional, and we can talk a
little bit about what that means later, daughter who's very similar
(04:30):
to how I was growing up. So I felt like I was well equipped to
parent her. Really,
I think my journey started with
a difficult childhood that I was trying to make sense of, like
I think many people who go into a field of therapy or psychology, it's You
know, we're trying to sort things out for ourselves, but I also had
(04:52):
this deep, deep desire from a young age. I knew
as a teenager, I was looking at some of my peers
and my classmates who were brilliant people,
brilliant, creative, intelligent, and some
of them literally were like about to drop out of school. And
I remember thinking back then, and I was pretty demotivated in
(05:15):
school at that point, just because I thought, this isn't really challenging, even
though I went to one of the top public schools in the state at
the time. And I
just thought that if this is it, I mean, we're going to lose a
lot of talent because people are not challenge,
they're not, you know, they're, they're, they're bright minds aren't just
(05:37):
being sparked. And so that was the desire for me,
both from the school piece, but also that
social emotional piece, recognizing that a lot of my friends as
smart and as intelligent as they were and are,
um, there were other things going on in their life, like
trauma, difficult family situations, divorce.
(06:00):
And I was seeing through this lens even as a teenager, thinking, I
want to help this population. And that's literally what I have done
my entire career. And it's been such a gift to
see that unfold and to get to the point where I could really have all
the tools and the education that I needed to do what
my little teenage heart wanted. So I've
(06:24):
had the joy of over the years, primarily up
until the last few years, working with gifted,
bright adolescents and young adults, and they're very
gifted, successful parents from all over the world. who
really needed more support from that emotional, from the psychological
(06:46):
standpoint. So it's been a very fun
So fascinating. And then you mentioned your daughter is twice
Yeah, and so just as a sort of brief
explanation, and I usually don't even like to use the word gifted because it comes
with a lot of stuff that we carry with that,
(07:09):
but just as a catch-all term. So twice exceptional really
is someone who is deemed gifted, and
we can talk about how we define and how we actually sort
that out, but who are gifted but also
have some other, we'll call it
a diagnosis, whether it's ADHD, dyslexia, it
(07:30):
could be anxiety, OCD, like there's a lot of other things I could
fall into, but it just means they're really bright, they
have all these gifts and talents, and they have something else going on.
And sometimes what I often teach is,
you know, when you have a twice exceptional individual, you'll either mask
the GIFs, because especially in school, they focus on what's
(07:53):
the problem here. You know, if you have a reading disability or a math
issue or processing speed, they sort of focus on that. So
you can sort of forget about the GIFs or they don't get identified accurately.
or they don't get the services they need, or vice versa, they could be really
gifted and so bright that that other
(08:14):
issue gets masked for a very, very long time.
And I think even today, it's fascinating to me how many adult women,
gifted, bright women, it's like an
explosion because of TikTok or something. And everyone's like, oh,
I think I have ADHD, or I have undiagnosed fill
in the blank. Um, that is basically if, if,
(08:36):
if, if it resonates with you, whether you
were identified as a child or not, but you're thinking, I'm, I think I am probably one
of those gifted souls in the world and you have something else going on,
then you qualify for being twice exceptional. And I am one
I have seen that explosion of specifically
(08:57):
adult women being diagnosed with ADHD. I'm curious, what
are your thoughts around that in terms of, um, you
I think there's probably a lot of reasons, but I think with increased access
to information, and if
it's through social media, even if it's even just the internet, right?
(09:20):
When the internet exploded, we had at our fingertips, we could Google things.
But I think information gets passed very
quickly and in a way that's really accessible to people. And
they read a little snapshot. And I'm not saying that they don't
have undiagnosed ADHD because it is, it has been historically
very underdiagnosed in girls because
(09:42):
they don't present the same way like a young boy with
ADHD would present. So I don't think it's totally
untrue, but I think with all things it's like the medical student syndrome
where you, you know, all the first year students think they
have every diagnosis in the book because you just, you
know, it's just a natural human thing. So I always encourage people get
(10:04):
a get a full assessment before you jump to any
Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. I'm curious, from your experience, what
are some of the most common messages that we as
parents, as teachers, as mentors, what
are some of the messages that we maybe inadvertently are
(10:25):
giving to our children and the next generation? Yeah.
Well, in my work with families, and now
just to clarify, many years ago, so I'm
trained in a traditional clinical psychology
background. But very early on
in my career, at the same time I was deciding to do gifted, I guess I was a little bit rebellious
(10:47):
because the field of positive psychology was
birthed, like literally as I was beginning graduate school. And
I remember reading the first article by Martin Seligman, who's sort
of known as, you know, kind of the father or the grandfather of
that field. It's relatively new. And I read
the article that he wrote in APA, the
(11:10):
American Psychological Association. He sort
of cast this vision and I thought, that is what I'm all about. And
I was in a clinical psychology program, which is very focused on diagnosis and
intervention. And I'm glad I had all that training. But really, even
throughout my training, through my clinical internship and through all
my clinical work, I was always integrating
(11:32):
positive psychology. It's sort of just like it feels like
it resonates with me. And so for your listeners, positive
psychology really is like the other spectrum of what psychology
has sort of historically focused on researching the negative, positive
psychology focus on like, what are the positives of
human psychology? And let's research and
(11:54):
study those things so that we have this more comprehensive
view of what makes life worth living and
what are the factors that play into that. So I
come to my work now as a coach with sort
of more that, that's at the forefront. So having said that,
working with families over the years, one
(12:17):
of the things, especially the families that I worked with who were, you
know, the parents were and
are sort of like leaders in their fields oftentimes,
like top, top, top in
their profession. and highly successful. And so I
think the challenge for successful high
(12:38):
achieving people and the cultures and
the families in which we raise our children is
how do we encourage and nurture our
children's gifts and talents without it
becoming sort of the sole focus and
priority? And even if families do
(13:01):
a pretty good job with that, what about the school
system? What about the community, the neighborhoods? With
my dissertation, a lot of the research I was looking
at was actually focused on affluent families. And
it's fascinating because the researchers
stumbled upon this truth, which
(13:23):
is that they were actually studying disadvantaged kids, but
found that the kids from the most affluent homes
and communities had skyrocketing, you
know, in incidents of depression, anxiety, substance
use, I mean, much more than the kids in the middle. So
(13:44):
you had kids on either end of the extreme. And so they started looking at why,
why might that be true? Yeah. And I and so I think some
of those messages are your worth is tied to what you do, right?
That's like a typical one. We as adults, we as high achieving women
are still, probably many of us, I can raise my
hand to that, like unraveling that and
(14:05):
separating out our value from what
we do. And I think it's a tricky thing for parents because we
want them to do well. And yet we need to be
really careful, not just what we say to them, but what we model in our own life.
I think that's at the end of the day, that's what I would say to every high
achieving woman who's a mom out there, or even if you're not a mom,
(14:26):
maybe you're an auntie or you're a mentor or something,
it's being very careful with
the messages we're sending through just how we live our
life. That's what they receive more than what we say.
Absolutely. That's such a powerful point. And I want to recognize that,
(14:48):
you know, we can all reflect on those experiences in our family
of origin. Right. Not only what we were explicitly told,
but what were the lessons that we were indirectly taught?
Yes. Right. About who was doing the dishes, who was doing the laundry, who
was preparing dinner. Right. So I I'm
a firm believer, for clarification, I'm not a parenting coach, but
(15:11):
I am a firm believer in role modeling the
behaviors that you want to see. I have two girls. And so,
you know, I think it is important. Sometimes I do have to
take a step back and realize that when I'm setting a boundary or creating time
for myself, it might be difficult, but I'm teaching
(15:33):
For themselves. Exactly. And so I think it's really important to
keep that in mind. And I love what you said also about the self-worth piece
is so true because we're so tied up and wrapped in our identity,
right? For me in the corporate world for 20 years, that
was my identity, right? I almost like didn't know who I was outside
of that. I was a mom, And I was a businesswoman, right?
(15:54):
And outside of that, I couldn't tell you. And I
think we all get stuck in that trap of being defined by our roles as
opposed to sitting in our self-worth and knowing who we truly are
Yes. And I would 100 percent, I agree with that.
And it's been my journey as well. And my daughter. So
(16:15):
I part of the interesting part of my journey as a as a high achieving,
driven woman was that I very unexpectedly got
pregnant when I was 19. And
when I found out I was having a daughter, at first
I thought, oh my goodness, because I really had dreams of
(16:35):
getting my PhD. And I was the first person in my family to
even go to college and graduate from college. So neither of
my parents, my father immigrated from the Philippines. My
mother was from the small little farm town in Wisconsin. They
had four children and they gave the best that they could to us,
but neither one of them had a college education. So I
(16:59):
didn't even know if I could get a PhD, but I thought I
was surrounded by people in school. That was one of the benefits of the school that I
went to, where it was sort of normalized. Not that everyone
had a PhD, but that you could get one. And so
when I got pregnant and I decided, OK, I'm going to
raise this child and I and I consciously knew
(17:20):
I was not going to be getting married. I was going to do this as a single parent.
I thought, how how will I do this? Do
I have to give up on my dream? But I immediately knew
there's no way I'm giving up on my dream. And if anything, because
I'm going to have this little girl, I do not want her
to grow up with a mother who just
(17:43):
threw her dreams in the trash and, you
know, tried to piece together whatever little job she
could because that's what she felt she had to do. And
so I just didn't take that path. And I was like, I'm not going to be a statistic.
I'm not going to, I am not doing that. And so on the
one hand, She gave me even I mean I
(18:04):
was already very driven, but she gave me that extra push like
I'm gonna show the world I'm gonna break all the stereotypes I
was I never met another person in grad school who is also a single parent
But I was you know, it was definitely a lonely path So
that being said I wanted her to learn the lesson of you follow your dreams
you go after your dreams no matter what on the other hand fast-forward
(18:27):
in my mid to late 30s I I started having
a lot of health issues that partially
my mother and my grandmother also were dealing with, you know,
it was like fibroids and endometriosis and femoral issues
like that. But on top of that were other things going on
that the doctors, I was going to doctor after doctor and they're like, do
(18:49):
you have a stressful job? Like so many doctors asked me
that and I would laugh because I had an extremely stressful
job. Every day was a stressful day. And
so I struggled through
that for quite some time before I finally got the clarity and
the courage, really more the courage. I had the clarity before the courage
(19:11):
to leave what I was doing because I loved it so much. But
that was that other lesson that by that point, my
daughter was a teenager. And I
remember thinking, it's important for her to know to follow your
dreams, but you cannot sacrifice yourself
on the altar of those dreams. Like you have to figure out another
(19:35):
way. And so I was presented with an opportunity really over the last, I
don't know, five, six years to figure out that
other way. How do I continue to dream in my life? And
I have new dreams, right? How do I do
that at this stage? And now show my daughter, you
have total permission to get really creative and
(19:57):
take care of yourself in a way that I hadn't learned to do very
well because I was so focused. And
I think a lot of high achieving women are constantly, I think
we're doing better. I think even the discussion around
it is a discussion we were not having 10 years ago, 15 years
ago. So that's great. But I hope that
(20:18):
for our daughters growing up there, this will become
more the norm of their path going forward. I mean, I think the younger generation
is already making that very clear that they're just, they're
not gonna be down for all the craziness that
It's good. Yeah, they know there's a better way. It's so true. It's a
(20:38):
great point. Such an inspiring story. I love, you
know, love hearing about your journey. I'm curious when you think about
other, you know, the women listening to this podcast, you know, mothers or
mothers to be, what can we do to cultivate more
psychological health and incorporate positive psychology, right,
(21:00):
Well, I think that my big
mission, even though I focus on working with
adults now, part of that reason is
because I know that when,
especially the moms, but dads too, but I work with
a lot of moms, really successful, beautiful, wonderful,
(21:21):
amazing women. and our intentions are so good.
Of course, I remember in grad school,
again, my advisor said at the first year of feedback, the
only thing we're concerned about is you
feeling like you need to be a superwoman. And
I remember leaving that meeting and thinking, well, I don't know
(21:43):
what else I'm supposed to do because I want to be the best mom and
I want to be the best in what I'm learning, right? So where
do I drop a ball? I mean, back then I just thought I don't know how
to do less than trying to go for the best. But
I think when it comes to high-achieving women who
happen to be moms, or maybe moms-to-be, focusing
(22:06):
on our psychological well-being, and even
if you don't have... The piece about positive psychology is
I'm hoping to teach people wherever you're at,
whether you're struggling with depression or
whether you're just kind of in the middle and you're
not, you don't have like a diagnosis per se, but
(22:29):
you just know it could be better. Life
is a little gray, you know, and you want it to be vibrant
and you want to feel joy and you want to feel, you want to be your fullest self.
When our kids see us living that out and when we
embody that and we're doing it, they get
(22:49):
a tremendous amount because the atmosphere we're creating
influences them. And I think a lot of my work in family systems
was really helping the parents shift just
how they were living their life, separate from parenting, totally separate
from parenting. Because when you shift from the inside out, you
(23:12):
are emanating, when you have joy, you're emanating
joy. When you have peace, you emanate peace,
right? When you have hope, you can give away hope. When we don't really have
those things, we can't give them away. And who do we want to
give those things to? We want to give those things to our children. So when
we have stress and we're holding on to stress, we're
(23:33):
creating an atmosphere of stress. When we have anxiety, we're
creating an atmosphere of anxiety and it's contagious. It's literally
contagious. So that is how we transfer these you
know, moods of depression or anxiety or
even just like blah, like lifelessness gets transferred from
generation to generation. And I'm so passionate about
(23:56):
not only we as women having really abundant,
beautiful psychological well-being, but it's because
I want the next generation who are going to take
over things. In the next little while, we're going to blink our eyes and they're all
going to be in charge. And I want them to be full of joy and full
of peace and full of hope and optimism because they're, they
(24:18):
are, we have so many issues in our world and they're going to be
the leaders to solve the problems. So
we have to lead, we have to lead and we have to,
the way I think of it is we have to build the psychological wealth, whether
that means Maybe it's working with a therapist. Maybe it's talking with
a friend. Maybe it's working with a coach. I mean, there's so many different ways
(24:41):
to go about that. There's not one path, but it's just developing. It's
like you fill your cup, you fill it so full. You're
so full. It just overflows. You're
really, you're just overflowing. And then your family, your community gets
that beautiful overflow. That's to me what positive psychology
is. is really well positioned to help people with. And
(25:06):
It's incredible to think about because we often, I think,
compartmentalize or put pieces of our lives in silos. Right.
And so I think it's really important awareness that parenting
is not just what you do in terms of guiding your
children. It's who you are holistically. Who
you are. It's how you show up. It's, you know,
(25:27):
what you represent, what you stand for. And so when you
are, you know, coming back from a bad meeting
or, you know, having a bad morning, how
Yes, and learning how to shift. I mean, if
you think about your own upbringing
(25:50):
with your parents, you probably both, whether it's
a positive or negative, can think of ways that you might not remember the
specifics of how they parented, or you might, but you
remember how they were, right?
Like what was the atmosphere they created in the home? That's
the thing that sticks with you, that literally sticks with you on a cellular
(26:13):
level when you don't even remember specifics. Your cells
remember. That's why it's so hard sometimes to deprogram. But
I want to be, and I just want to be the first one
to admit, I was not a perfect parent. I say this to
every parent I work with, and I have such empathy, such
deep empathy for parents because it's hard. It's like the hardest thing
(26:36):
you've ever done, right? But
I always say it's never too late to learn. It's never too late to change. And
my daughter and I, like we can talk back. I mean, I was the
mom that totally came home stressed and
like had a stress ball around her all the time. I mean, and I
even knew tools. I was a psychologist. But
(27:00):
it doesn't matter. You can know all the things, but
you have to really start applying them. So
when I was able to do that, things start to shift. And
it's great. So I always just encourage people, just start where you are. Start
where you are. And even start, I had a conversation with my sister just
this week. She has four kids. She runs a business. She's amazing
(27:21):
in so many ways. And, you know,
it's a winter, it's long winter. She just launched a new business.
She's been going full speed ahead for like a few months. And
I just encouraged her, you know, just like do one small little
thing different today. And she had a walk with a friend scheduled and
she called me up later and she was like, yeah, it's amazing. She's
(27:44):
like, I don't have to change my entire life right now. I just had to
do one small thing. She went for
a walk in the sunshine, had a good talk with a friend, and it
was enough to start shifting her to start thinking about the other
parts of her life. you know, that she wants to shift right
now. It's just one little baby step, one little baby step.
(28:04):
So whatever that looks like today, I say,
you know, joy is not a luxury. Connection
is not a luxury. It cannot be seen that way. You
have to find those moments of joy and connection like
as consistently as you can to fill your cup. Yeah,
(28:26):
Taking a small step, right, to shift from feeling stuck
to feeling empowered. And even if it isn't something you stick with,
trying different things, right? Seeing what
I also love this concept that you talked about of, you know, of course, there's genetic
and there's a biologic component to mental health. But to your point, there's
so much more. There's the behavioral aspect, the cultural aspect and
(28:49):
the families that we create and and how you
know, how we were raised. And that also informs how we want to raise our own kids,
Yeah. And I think the empowering piece about this that we know so much more
now with the research is
that I don't mean to diminish the
(29:09):
role of genetics But it
actually, we have way more opportunity
for change and the neuroplasticity of our brain based on
environmental conditions. We didn't fully understand that before.
And so the idea that we are sort of
stuck with a certain path
(29:32):
from a mental health perspective. When I was a teenager, I really did struggle with
that. I had a lot, there was a lot of mental illness
in my family line. And I was struggling. I was depressed. I
was anxious. I was suicidal. And I just thought, oh, it's
genetic. So therefore, I guess this
is my lot in life. I was such a negative person. I like to
(29:52):
tease. If you knew me as a teenager, you would say I would
be voted least likely to become a positive psychologist, like
least likely. Like I was wearing all black and
I was so jaded and cynical and not a
happy person. Wow. So, and
I've done, I mean, and I, I want to say this very,
(30:14):
uh, I say this not to boast
or even diminish the role of medications. I
say this for any woman who is
even struggling with that thought of like, is this
the way it's just gonna be? I have transformed
(30:35):
truly the inside, the core of myself through
other methods and never using medication. And
again, I'm not saying there's always, there's a place and time for that. And so
I'm, I'm not against it, but I think in
our society, we believe that that
is sometimes like the only thing we need, or it's like a quick fix. It's just not
(30:56):
going to fix the deeper thing. Yeah. So it is possible to
go from like where I was like very, very deep in
the negative to now I'm like that kind of annoying, you
know, I'm very optimistic. You know, the glass is
always half full. I was annoying in a different way before and now I'm
annoying in the positive way, but it's fine. I'll take it because
(31:17):
I would
rather be an optimist. But honestly, when I was younger, I never
Oh my gosh. So fascinating. And I never would have guessed,
right, in a million years. What a
(31:37):
Dr. Andrea, tell us about your, you know, we talk a lot about success and
redefining success in this podcast. Tell us a little bit about how
you define success for yourself and how
Yes, such a good question. I feel
very grateful that through this
(32:00):
chronic health journey I've been on probably for the last, I don't know, almost a
decade, I have been forced
in a wonderful way by the universe to
redefine my idea of success. And so I'm grateful for
that. And for me now, I really feel
success when I know I'm living wholeheartedly,
(32:23):
when I'm living my life fully and I'm walking in the calling. that
I'm uniquely meant to do, like that is it. And
as long as I can stay true to my highest self and
I just walk, and I walk in that, I'm good,
I'm good. So it's very different than I
(32:46):
And I think how we were, what we were raised to believe and how we start
living our lives and then being able to step back and figure out what that
means for us individually. Yes. So powerful.
Yes. Dr. Andrea, thanks so much for being here, for sharing your insights, your expertise
and your personal story. So inspiring. How can our listeners
(33:07):
Yeah, well, they can find me on my website. It's just my name, Andrea
Lein That's L E I N dot com. And
they can find me on LinkedIn. They can find me on Instagram. I
do have a little link there too. If you want to go, you can take like a little quiz
on how much are you flourishing and, you know, character
strengths and different positive psychology tools that I have. And if
(33:28):
you, if anyone wants to just even chat with me, they're more than
welcome. You can book a call and I'm happy to share more and see if there's
a way that I can help individually or I also work with organizations
Love it. Love it. Great. And of course, you can visit my website at
gialacqua.com. Reach out on Instagram at gialacqua on
my homepage or on the website. You can download your
(33:48):
complimentary copy of From Chaos to Clarity, a
30-day journal for self-discovery and healing. This
is Gia signing off with gratitude for your time and energy. Our mic
drops, but the movement continues. Until next time, your
next chapter is waiting. Take care. That
concludes another empowering episode of Your Future Starts Now.
(34:09):
Before we wrap up, I want to thank this incredible community of high-achieving women.
Your energy, resilience, and commitment to growth are the driving force
behind what we do. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate
it, leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your
feedback fuels our mission to empower high-achieving women just like
you. And of course, share Your Future Starts Now with the extraordinary women
(34:31):
in your life who are also on a journey of healing and empowerment. Connect
with us on social media, share your thoughts, let us know what topics you'd like to
explore in future episodes. Stay connected on Instagram at
GiaLacqua. I encourage you to carry the energy of this conversation
into your day and keep on supporting the incredible women around you.
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now, the go-to podcast for
extraordinary women who are ready to step into their next chapter with
authentic confidence. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua, empowerment coach,
motivational speaker, children's book author, and girl mom. Whether
you're a corporate powerhouse or an entrepreneur, this show is
designed for you. Your Future Starts Now is more than
(00:20):
just a podcast. It's a movement, a movement towards rewriting
the rules of success for high-achieving women. Are you ready
to get unstuck and step into your next chapter? If
so, you are exactly where you need to be. Your future starts
now. Welcome to Your Future Starts Now.
I'm your host, Gia Lacqua. Thanks for tuning in. I'm so excited
(00:43):
to introduce you to Dr. Andrea Lein Dr.
Andrea is the leading authority at the intersection of mental health, positive
psychology, and giftedness. She has devoted her
entire career, spanning over 25 years, to studying and
helping exceptional individuals embrace their superpowers, nurture
their psychological well-being, and live a life of fulfillment and
(01:05):
significance. With decades of clinical and leadership experience,
Dr. Andrea uses her gifts to serve and guide some of the
most respected, brilliant and creative minds in
the world. Dr. Andrea, thanks so much for being with us
I'm really excited. Such an
interesting background, your experience. Tell us, how did you
(01:27):
first become interested in the field of mental health
It is unusual. It's so unusual that when I proposed
this idea in my early, like very beginning of grad school,
I had some professors sort of scoff at the idea
because it was about, it was over 20 years ago and I
(01:51):
had to actually create a program for myself. So I ended up
getting my master's degree in educational psychology,
specializing in the gifted. And then I did my doctorate in
clinical and school psychology because at the time, All
the research and work on gifted, and really we're
thinking of gifted students, like young, younger, you know, student,
(02:12):
kid ages, was focused on
the cognitive and the intellectual piece. And at the time,
I was like, well, That's all very important, but
I'm really interested in the social-emotional development, the psychological issues,
and there were no textbooks on it, there were no graduate programs
on it, so I did have one wonderful professor who
(02:35):
encouraged me, and then I had other professors who sort of looked at me like,
this is an odd you know, niche area. But
now, it's so interesting, you know, 20 plus years later, there
are many more people who focus
on this niche. Still limited, but many
more. There are programs out there, there are books being written, so it's
(02:57):
exciting. And I didn't, I had to, that was one of the first moments
I had to really trust my gut and what I
really wanted and what I believed in and not listen to the very,
intelligent, you know, credential degreed professors
What are you doing? Absolutely. And I want to take
(03:18):
a moment to just recognize what you just said. It's so important, especially at
such a young age. I feel like when we're in our 20s, we don't know which way is up. Right.
But like you have that intuition and you listen to
it and you followed it despite what other people might have been telling you. So I imagine
the support from that one professor who kind of leaned in. Yes.
Yes, and a funny little story about that was she
(03:41):
was my fourth grade teacher, who I
somehow our paths crossed again when I was at the University of Virginia. And I
went to a school for the gifted like a separate different school. And
she taught in that school fourth grade. So she
was she came back into my life in my early mid
20s. And that's, that's the path I took. So thank goodness
(04:06):
You really never know and such an impact that they have on us. That's
incredible. So tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to where
Yeah, well, first of all, just for context for your
listeners, I am a wife, I am a mom, I have
a gifted, twice exceptional, and we can talk a
little bit about what that means later, daughter who's very similar
(04:30):
to how I was growing up. So I felt like I was well equipped to
parent her. Really,
I think my journey started with
a difficult childhood that I was trying to make sense of, like
I think many people who go into a field of therapy or psychology, it's You
know, we're trying to sort things out for ourselves, but I also had
(04:52):
this deep, deep desire from a young age. I knew
as a teenager, I was looking at some of my peers
and my classmates who were brilliant people,
brilliant, creative, intelligent, and some
of them literally were like about to drop out of school. And
I remember thinking back then, and I was pretty demotivated in
(05:15):
school at that point, just because I thought, this isn't really challenging, even
though I went to one of the top public schools in the state at
the time. And I
just thought that if this is it, I mean, we're going to lose a
lot of talent because people are not challenge,
they're not, you know, they're, they're, they're bright minds aren't just
(05:37):
being sparked. And so that was the desire for me,
both from the school piece, but also that
social emotional piece, recognizing that a lot of my friends as
smart and as intelligent as they were and are,
um, there were other things going on in their life, like
trauma, difficult family situations, divorce.
(06:00):
And I was seeing through this lens even as a teenager, thinking, I
want to help this population. And that's literally what I have done
my entire career. And it's been such a gift to
see that unfold and to get to the point where I could really have all
the tools and the education that I needed to do what
my little teenage heart wanted. So I've
(06:24):
had the joy of over the years, primarily up
until the last few years, working with gifted,
bright adolescents and young adults, and they're very
gifted, successful parents from all over the world. who
really needed more support from that emotional, from the psychological
(06:46):
standpoint. So it's been a very fun
So fascinating. And then you mentioned your daughter is twice
Yeah, and so just as a sort of brief
explanation, and I usually don't even like to use the word gifted because it comes
with a lot of stuff that we carry with that,
(07:09):
but just as a catch-all term. So twice exceptional really
is someone who is deemed gifted, and
we can talk about how we define and how we actually sort
that out, but who are gifted but also
have some other, we'll call it
a diagnosis, whether it's ADHD, dyslexia, it
(07:30):
could be anxiety, OCD, like there's a lot of other things I could
fall into, but it just means they're really bright, they
have all these gifts and talents, and they have something else going on.
And sometimes what I often teach is,
you know, when you have a twice exceptional individual, you'll either mask
the GIFs, because especially in school, they focus on what's
(07:53):
the problem here. You know, if you have a reading disability or a math
issue or processing speed, they sort of focus on that. So
you can sort of forget about the GIFs or they don't get identified accurately.
or they don't get the services they need, or vice versa, they could be really
gifted and so bright that that other
(08:14):
issue gets masked for a very, very long time.
And I think even today, it's fascinating to me how many adult women,
gifted, bright women, it's like an
explosion because of TikTok or something. And everyone's like, oh,
I think I have ADHD, or I have undiagnosed fill
in the blank. Um, that is basically if, if,
(08:36):
if, if it resonates with you, whether you
were identified as a child or not, but you're thinking, I'm, I think I am probably one
of those gifted souls in the world and you have something else going on,
then you qualify for being twice exceptional. And I am one
I have seen that explosion of specifically
(08:57):
adult women being diagnosed with ADHD. I'm curious, what
are your thoughts around that in terms of, um, you
I think there's probably a lot of reasons, but I think with increased access
to information, and if
it's through social media, even if it's even just the internet, right?
(09:20):
When the internet exploded, we had at our fingertips, we could Google things.
But I think information gets passed very
quickly and in a way that's really accessible to people. And
they read a little snapshot. And I'm not saying that they don't
have undiagnosed ADHD because it is, it has been historically
very underdiagnosed in girls because
(09:42):
they don't present the same way like a young boy with
ADHD would present. So I don't think it's totally
untrue, but I think with all things it's like the medical student syndrome
where you, you know, all the first year students think they
have every diagnosis in the book because you just, you
know, it's just a natural human thing. So I always encourage people get
(10:04):
a get a full assessment before you jump to any
Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. I'm curious, from your experience, what
are some of the most common messages that we as
parents, as teachers, as mentors, what
are some of the messages that we maybe inadvertently are
(10:25):
giving to our children and the next generation? Yeah.
Well, in my work with families, and now
just to clarify, many years ago, so I'm
trained in a traditional clinical psychology
background. But very early on
in my career, at the same time I was deciding to do gifted, I guess I was a little bit rebellious
(10:47):
because the field of positive psychology was
birthed, like literally as I was beginning graduate school. And
I remember reading the first article by Martin Seligman, who's sort
of known as, you know, kind of the father or the grandfather of
that field. It's relatively new. And I read
the article that he wrote in APA, the
(11:10):
American Psychological Association. He sort
of cast this vision and I thought, that is what I'm all about. And
I was in a clinical psychology program, which is very focused on diagnosis and
intervention. And I'm glad I had all that training. But really, even
throughout my training, through my clinical internship and through all
my clinical work, I was always integrating
(11:32):
positive psychology. It's sort of just like it feels like
it resonates with me. And so for your listeners, positive
psychology really is like the other spectrum of what psychology
has sort of historically focused on researching the negative, positive
psychology focus on like, what are the positives of
human psychology? And let's research and
(11:54):
study those things so that we have this more comprehensive
view of what makes life worth living and
what are the factors that play into that. So I
come to my work now as a coach with sort
of more that, that's at the forefront. So having said that,
working with families over the years, one
(12:17):
of the things, especially the families that I worked with who were, you
know, the parents were and
are sort of like leaders in their fields oftentimes,
like top, top, top in
their profession. and highly successful. And so I
think the challenge for successful high
(12:38):
achieving people and the cultures and
the families in which we raise our children is
how do we encourage and nurture our
children's gifts and talents without it
becoming sort of the sole focus and
priority? And even if families do
(13:01):
a pretty good job with that, what about the school
system? What about the community, the neighborhoods? With
my dissertation, a lot of the research I was looking
at was actually focused on affluent families. And
it's fascinating because the researchers
stumbled upon this truth, which
(13:23):
is that they were actually studying disadvantaged kids, but
found that the kids from the most affluent homes
and communities had skyrocketing, you
know, in incidents of depression, anxiety, substance
use, I mean, much more than the kids in the middle. So
(13:44):
you had kids on either end of the extreme. And so they started looking at why,
why might that be true? Yeah. And I and so I think some
of those messages are your worth is tied to what you do, right?
That's like a typical one. We as adults, we as high achieving women
are still, probably many of us, I can raise my
hand to that, like unraveling that and
(14:05):
separating out our value from what
we do. And I think it's a tricky thing for parents because we
want them to do well. And yet we need to be
really careful, not just what we say to them, but what we model in our own life.
I think that's at the end of the day, that's what I would say to every high
achieving woman who's a mom out there, or even if you're not a mom,
(14:26):
maybe you're an auntie or you're a mentor or something,
it's being very careful with
the messages we're sending through just how we live our
life. That's what they receive more than what we say.
Absolutely. That's such a powerful point. And I want to recognize that,
(14:48):
you know, we can all reflect on those experiences in our family
of origin. Right. Not only what we were explicitly told,
but what were the lessons that we were indirectly taught?
Yes. Right. About who was doing the dishes, who was doing the laundry, who
was preparing dinner. Right. So I I'm
a firm believer, for clarification, I'm not a parenting coach, but
(15:11):
I am a firm believer in role modeling the
behaviors that you want to see. I have two girls. And so,
you know, I think it is important. Sometimes I do have to
take a step back and realize that when I'm setting a boundary or creating time
for myself, it might be difficult, but I'm teaching
(15:33):
For themselves. Exactly. And so I think it's really important to
keep that in mind. And I love what you said also about the self-worth piece
is so true because we're so tied up and wrapped in our identity,
right? For me in the corporate world for 20 years, that
was my identity, right? I almost like didn't know who I was outside
of that. I was a mom, And I was a businesswoman, right?
(15:54):
And outside of that, I couldn't tell you. And I
think we all get stuck in that trap of being defined by our roles as
opposed to sitting in our self-worth and knowing who we truly are
Yes. And I would 100 percent, I agree with that.
And it's been my journey as well. And my daughter. So
(16:15):
I part of the interesting part of my journey as a as a high achieving,
driven woman was that I very unexpectedly got
pregnant when I was 19. And
when I found out I was having a daughter, at first
I thought, oh my goodness, because I really had dreams of
(16:35):
getting my PhD. And I was the first person in my family to
even go to college and graduate from college. So neither of
my parents, my father immigrated from the Philippines. My
mother was from the small little farm town in Wisconsin. They
had four children and they gave the best that they could to us,
but neither one of them had a college education. So I
(16:59):
didn't even know if I could get a PhD, but I thought I
was surrounded by people in school. That was one of the benefits of the school that I
went to, where it was sort of normalized. Not that everyone
had a PhD, but that you could get one. And so
when I got pregnant and I decided, OK, I'm going to
raise this child and I and I consciously knew
(17:20):
I was not going to be getting married. I was going to do this as a single parent.
I thought, how how will I do this? Do
I have to give up on my dream? But I immediately knew
there's no way I'm giving up on my dream. And if anything, because
I'm going to have this little girl, I do not want her
to grow up with a mother who just
(17:43):
threw her dreams in the trash and, you
know, tried to piece together whatever little job she
could because that's what she felt she had to do. And
so I just didn't take that path. And I was like, I'm not going to be a statistic.
I'm not going to, I am not doing that. And so on the
one hand, She gave me even I mean I
(18:04):
was already very driven, but she gave me that extra push like
I'm gonna show the world I'm gonna break all the stereotypes I
was I never met another person in grad school who is also a single parent
But I was you know, it was definitely a lonely path So
that being said I wanted her to learn the lesson of you follow your dreams
you go after your dreams no matter what on the other hand fast-forward
(18:27):
in my mid to late 30s I I started having
a lot of health issues that partially
my mother and my grandmother also were dealing with, you know,
it was like fibroids and endometriosis and femoral issues
like that. But on top of that were other things going on
that the doctors, I was going to doctor after doctor and they're like, do
(18:49):
you have a stressful job? Like so many doctors asked me
that and I would laugh because I had an extremely stressful
job. Every day was a stressful day. And
so I struggled through
that for quite some time before I finally got the clarity and
the courage, really more the courage. I had the clarity before the courage
(19:11):
to leave what I was doing because I loved it so much. But
that was that other lesson that by that point, my
daughter was a teenager. And I
remember thinking, it's important for her to know to follow your
dreams, but you cannot sacrifice yourself
on the altar of those dreams. Like you have to figure out another
(19:35):
way. And so I was presented with an opportunity really over the last, I
don't know, five, six years to figure out that
other way. How do I continue to dream in my life? And
I have new dreams, right? How do I do
that at this stage? And now show my daughter, you
have total permission to get really creative and
(19:57):
take care of yourself in a way that I hadn't learned to do very
well because I was so focused. And
I think a lot of high achieving women are constantly, I think
we're doing better. I think even the discussion around
it is a discussion we were not having 10 years ago, 15 years
ago. So that's great. But I hope that
(20:18):
for our daughters growing up there, this will become
more the norm of their path going forward. I mean, I think the younger generation
is already making that very clear that they're just, they're
not gonna be down for all the craziness that
It's good. Yeah, they know there's a better way. It's so true. It's a
(20:38):
great point. Such an inspiring story. I love, you
know, love hearing about your journey. I'm curious when you think about
other, you know, the women listening to this podcast, you know, mothers or
mothers to be, what can we do to cultivate more
psychological health and incorporate positive psychology, right,
(21:00):
Well, I think that my big
mission, even though I focus on working with
adults now, part of that reason is
because I know that when,
especially the moms, but dads too, but I work with
a lot of moms, really successful, beautiful, wonderful,
(21:21):
amazing women. and our intentions are so good.
Of course, I remember in grad school,
again, my advisor said at the first year of feedback, the
only thing we're concerned about is you
feeling like you need to be a superwoman. And
I remember leaving that meeting and thinking, well, I don't know
(21:43):
what else I'm supposed to do because I want to be the best mom and
I want to be the best in what I'm learning, right? So where
do I drop a ball? I mean, back then I just thought I don't know how
to do less than trying to go for the best. But
I think when it comes to high-achieving women who
happen to be moms, or maybe moms-to-be, focusing
(22:06):
on our psychological well-being, and even
if you don't have... The piece about positive psychology is
I'm hoping to teach people wherever you're at,
whether you're struggling with depression or
whether you're just kind of in the middle and you're
not, you don't have like a diagnosis per se, but
(22:29):
you just know it could be better. Life
is a little gray, you know, and you want it to be vibrant
and you want to feel joy and you want to feel, you want to be your fullest self.
When our kids see us living that out and when we
embody that and we're doing it, they get
(22:49):
a tremendous amount because the atmosphere we're creating
influences them. And I think a lot of my work in family systems
was really helping the parents shift just
how they were living their life, separate from parenting, totally separate
from parenting. Because when you shift from the inside out, you
(23:12):
are emanating, when you have joy, you're emanating
joy. When you have peace, you emanate peace,
right? When you have hope, you can give away hope. When we don't really have
those things, we can't give them away. And who do we want to
give those things to? We want to give those things to our children. So when
we have stress and we're holding on to stress, we're
(23:33):
creating an atmosphere of stress. When we have anxiety, we're
creating an atmosphere of anxiety and it's contagious. It's literally
contagious. So that is how we transfer these you
know, moods of depression or anxiety or
even just like blah, like lifelessness gets transferred from
generation to generation. And I'm so passionate about
(23:56):
not only we as women having really abundant,
beautiful psychological well-being, but it's because
I want the next generation who are going to take
over things. In the next little while, we're going to blink our eyes and they're all
going to be in charge. And I want them to be full of joy and full
of peace and full of hope and optimism because they're, they
(24:18):
are, we have so many issues in our world and they're going to be
the leaders to solve the problems. So
we have to lead, we have to lead and we have to,
the way I think of it is we have to build the psychological wealth, whether
that means Maybe it's working with a therapist. Maybe it's talking with
a friend. Maybe it's working with a coach. I mean, there's so many different ways
(24:41):
to go about that. There's not one path, but it's just developing. It's
like you fill your cup, you fill it so full. You're
so full. It just overflows. You're
really, you're just overflowing. And then your family, your community gets
that beautiful overflow. That's to me what positive psychology
is. is really well positioned to help people with. And
(25:06):
It's incredible to think about because we often, I think,
compartmentalize or put pieces of our lives in silos. Right.
And so I think it's really important awareness that parenting
is not just what you do in terms of guiding your
children. It's who you are holistically. Who
you are. It's how you show up. It's, you know,
(25:27):
what you represent, what you stand for. And so when you
are, you know, coming back from a bad meeting
or, you know, having a bad morning, how
Yes, and learning how to shift. I mean, if
you think about your own upbringing
(25:50):
with your parents, you probably both, whether it's
a positive or negative, can think of ways that you might not remember the
specifics of how they parented, or you might, but you
remember how they were, right?
Like what was the atmosphere they created in the home? That's
the thing that sticks with you, that literally sticks with you on a cellular
(26:13):
level when you don't even remember specifics. Your cells
remember. That's why it's so hard sometimes to deprogram. But
I want to be, and I just want to be the first one
to admit, I was not a perfect parent. I say this to
every parent I work with, and I have such empathy, such
deep empathy for parents because it's hard. It's like the hardest thing
(26:36):
you've ever done, right? But
I always say it's never too late to learn. It's never too late to change. And
my daughter and I, like we can talk back. I mean, I was the
mom that totally came home stressed and
like had a stress ball around her all the time. I mean, and I
even knew tools. I was a psychologist. But
(27:00):
it doesn't matter. You can know all the things, but
you have to really start applying them. So
when I was able to do that, things start to shift. And
it's great. So I always just encourage people, just start where you are. Start
where you are. And even start, I had a conversation with my sister just
this week. She has four kids. She runs a business. She's amazing
(27:21):
in so many ways. And, you know,
it's a winter, it's long winter. She just launched a new business.
She's been going full speed ahead for like a few months. And
I just encouraged her, you know, just like do one small little
thing different today. And she had a walk with a friend scheduled and
she called me up later and she was like, yeah, it's amazing. She's
(27:44):
like, I don't have to change my entire life right now. I just had to
do one small thing. She went for
a walk in the sunshine, had a good talk with a friend, and it
was enough to start shifting her to start thinking about the other
parts of her life. you know, that she wants to shift right
now. It's just one little baby step, one little baby step.
(28:04):
So whatever that looks like today, I say,
you know, joy is not a luxury. Connection
is not a luxury. It cannot be seen that way. You
have to find those moments of joy and connection like
as consistently as you can to fill your cup. Yeah,
(28:26):
Taking a small step, right, to shift from feeling stuck
to feeling empowered. And even if it isn't something you stick with,
trying different things, right? Seeing what
I also love this concept that you talked about of, you know, of course, there's genetic
and there's a biologic component to mental health. But to your point, there's
so much more. There's the behavioral aspect, the cultural aspect and
(28:49):
the families that we create and and how you
know, how we were raised. And that also informs how we want to raise our own kids,
Yeah. And I think the empowering piece about this that we know so much more
now with the research is
that I don't mean to diminish the
(29:09):
role of genetics But it
actually, we have way more opportunity
for change and the neuroplasticity of our brain based on
environmental conditions. We didn't fully understand that before.
And so the idea that we are sort of
stuck with a certain path
(29:32):
from a mental health perspective. When I was a teenager, I really did struggle with
that. I had a lot, there was a lot of mental illness
in my family line. And I was struggling. I was depressed. I
was anxious. I was suicidal. And I just thought, oh, it's
genetic. So therefore, I guess this
is my lot in life. I was such a negative person. I like to
(29:52):
tease. If you knew me as a teenager, you would say I would
be voted least likely to become a positive psychologist, like
least likely. Like I was wearing all black and
I was so jaded and cynical and not a
happy person. Wow. So, and
I've done, I mean, and I, I want to say this very,
(30:14):
uh, I say this not to boast
or even diminish the role of medications. I
say this for any woman who is
even struggling with that thought of like, is this
the way it's just gonna be? I have transformed
(30:35):
truly the inside, the core of myself through
other methods and never using medication. And
again, I'm not saying there's always, there's a place and time for that. And so
I'm, I'm not against it, but I think in
our society, we believe that that
is sometimes like the only thing we need, or it's like a quick fix. It's just not
(30:56):
going to fix the deeper thing. Yeah. So it is possible to
go from like where I was like very, very deep in
the negative to now I'm like that kind of annoying, you
know, I'm very optimistic. You know, the glass is
always half full. I was annoying in a different way before and now I'm
annoying in the positive way, but it's fine. I'll take it because
(31:17):
I would
rather be an optimist. But honestly, when I was younger, I never
Oh my gosh. So fascinating. And I never would have guessed,
right, in a million years. What a
(31:37):
Dr. Andrea, tell us about your, you know, we talk a lot about success and
redefining success in this podcast. Tell us a little bit about how
you define success for yourself and how
Yes, such a good question. I feel
very grateful that through this
(32:00):
chronic health journey I've been on probably for the last, I don't know, almost a
decade, I have been forced
in a wonderful way by the universe to
redefine my idea of success. And so I'm grateful for
that. And for me now, I really feel
success when I know I'm living wholeheartedly,
(32:23):
when I'm living my life fully and I'm walking in the calling. that
I'm uniquely meant to do, like that is it. And
as long as I can stay true to my highest self and
I just walk, and I walk in that, I'm good,
I'm good. So it's very different than I
(32:46):
And I think how we were, what we were raised to believe and how we start
living our lives and then being able to step back and figure out what that
means for us individually. Yes. So powerful.
Yes. Dr. Andrea, thanks so much for being here, for sharing your insights, your expertise
and your personal story. So inspiring. How can our listeners
(33:07):
Yeah, well, they can find me on my website. It's just my name, Andrea
Lein That's L E I N dot com. And
they can find me on LinkedIn. They can find me on Instagram. I
do have a little link there too. If you want to go, you can take like a little quiz
on how much are you flourishing and, you know, character
strengths and different positive psychology tools that I have. And if
(33:28):
you, if anyone wants to just even chat with me, they're more than
welcome. You can book a call and I'm happy to share more and see if there's
a way that I can help individually or I also work with organizations
Love it. Love it. Great. And of course, you can visit my website at
gialacqua.com. Reach out on Instagram at gialacqua on
my homepage or on the website. You can download your
(33:48):
complimentary copy of From Chaos to Clarity, a
30-day journal for self-discovery and healing. This
is Gia signing off with gratitude for your time and energy. Our mic
drops, but the movement continues. Until next time, your
next chapter is waiting. Take care. That
concludes another empowering episode of Your Future Starts Now.
(34:09):
Before we wrap up, I want to thank this incredible community of high-achieving women.
Your energy, resilience, and commitment to growth are the driving force
behind what we do. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate
it, leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your
feedback fuels our mission to empower high-achieving women just like
you. And of course, share Your Future Starts Now with the extraordinary women
(34:31):
in your life who are also on a journey of healing and empowerment. Connect
with us on social media, share your thoughts, let us know what topics you'd like to
explore in future episodes. Stay connected on Instagram at
GiaLacqua. I encourage you to carry the energy of this conversation
into your day and keep on supporting the incredible women around you.
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