Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelly Lynch

Hi Kelly, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.

I like to call becoming a therapist my ‘Bob Ross’ moment in life – it was a happy accident, and not something I planned on at all.

I grew up knowing that I liked helping people, but I was one of those kids who had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to do for a career, but I never had a clear plan.

I became an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) in 2003, during a time in my life where I felt really lost. 9/11 happened, I tried to join the military, and because of severe scoliosis that required surgery in my childhood, the military turned out to be a non-starter. I also had moved back to Connecticut after living in Boston for the first two years of my undergraduate experience, changed my major to general studies, and just didn’t know what to do with my life. I did know, though, that I felt called to give back to my community, and medicine had always interested me. EMS (Emergency Medical Services) seemed interesting, so I took my first EMT class in 2002, got certified in 2003, and started working in what would become my first true career.

I ended up being in EMS for a decade. Over the course of that time in my life, I realized I really liked working with people and getting to help them through challenges they faced. The more I did it, the more feedback I got from people I worked with that I seemed to have a way of talking with patients and their family members, to help them feel calm and confident in the care they or their loved one were receiving from me and my crew. This is where my Bob Ross moment evolved – I realized over time that working with people was my jam.

Becoming a therapist – and specifically, a social worker – was the next most logical step for me to take. While my two careers overlapped for a few years, I’ve now been retired from EMS for 12 years, and I’ve been in the mental health field for 15.

I started my first practice – Turning Point Wellness – 10 years ago, and I specialize in Acute Stress and Post Traumatic Stress Injuries in EMS professionals and other first responders. I’ve grown to become a subject matter expert, and I’ve consulted with the National Association of EMT’s on mental wellness programs for EMS personnel, along with consulting nationally with other therapists in private practice who want to build a speciality in working with first responders. It’s been a privilege to have contributed expert testimony to PTSD bills introduced in my home state of Connecticut, to advocate for PTSD coverage under worker’s compensation for first responders who struggle with the traumatic nature of being a public servant. This is work that has so much meaning for me, and I’m honored to be able to serve the community that I was part of for a quarter of my life.

In 2022, I started my second business – The GRIIT Project – after taking time to develop methods I use in the process of working with my clients. These methods, called GRIIT and POWER, aim to support people in bettering their mindset, developing deeper resilience, and having a really strong connection to their identity and inner authority, so they can face their problems confidently and competently. I also published my first book in February 2024, called F*ck The Rules, which became an overnight bestseller on Amazon. I break down GRIIT and POWER in my book, using both personal stories from my life, and anecdotal stories from my clinical work.

The GRIIT Project, which is a non-clinical coaching practice, has been a dream of mine for a long time. In being able to open up a coaching practice, I’m able to work with people from across the country – and the world – who are powering through their professional lives, but need more support in their personal lives and home.

I’ve always believed people are their own best expert – being able to offer The GRIIT Project to the world is my way of helping you, your friends, and anyone else who can benefit, the support we all deserve in exploring what it means to live life on our own terms.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

Life has definitely had its bumps!

I left my marriage in 2014, after experiencing moments I believed were frightening and felt that my safety and the safety of my child were at risk. The marriage had been challenging for quite some time, and I had a lot of my own demons to face, in dealing with insecurities, fears of being alone, and more.

I also left my marriage only four months after I started my first business. In the process of a contentious divorce that essentially skipped mediation and went straight into a trial, I was working a full time job, building a business on the side, trying to be a good mom to my then 1.5 year old daughter, and figure out how to live with my parents without imploding. It was HARD.

I ended up taking the leap full time into my practice during the divorce as well, leaving my last public sector job behind. It was scary to do that, in spite of knowing that I was achieving my goals, because there was so much unknown in front of me financially, among many, many other things.

One of the most important lessons I learned during the few years that I got divorced, and then got financially back on my feet while figuring out how to be a single mom was this – skills are transferable. I had to learn how to look for what I was doing really successfully in my professional life, and then figure out how to transfer those skills over into my personal life. In being able to do that, and realize what I could transfer skill-wise back and forth in different areas of my life, I started to feel far more confident in my ability to face and overcome the challenges that got thrown my way.

If you take the time to recognize what skills you possess that help you realize your own success, and then start transferring those skills into areas of struggle in your life, things become a lot more manageable. Just remember – it’s simple, not always easy.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about The GRIIT Project?

I founded The GRIIT Project in 2022, after realizing not only was there a specific way I had been working with my therapy clients in my other practice, but that the way I worked really, REALLY worked.

I specialize in helping high performing professionals, especially entrepreneurs and executives, bridge the gap between work and home.

So often, high performers are incredibly successful at work, all while their home lives are falling apart. These are people who are either at the top of their game professionally, or they’re well on their way to quickly climbing to the top. But at home, it’s a very different story. Their relationships with romantic partners are suffering, their kids don’t want to spend time with them anymore, friends aren’t really around anymore – or if they are, the friendships aren’t quality relationships – and they’re exhausted from being wound tighter than a compressed spring, all because they’re waiting for the next argument to happen. These are also sometimes the people who want a family, but never really give themselves time to settle into a relationship in order to discover what healthy partnership actually looks like. Instead, they skip from relationship to relationship, never being alone, but always feeling incredibly lonely and personally unfulfilled.

What these high performers struggle to realize is that somewhere along the way, they forgot about what it means to work to live, instead of living to work, and they’ve lost themselves. That’s where I come in.

I help my clients calm the chaos of their personal lives by teaching them how to get their mindset squared away while getting back in alignment with their values and core identity, while learning how to solve problems in their personal lives as confidently as they solve them at work. I do this through my two methods – GRIIT and POWER. GRIIT stands for Growth, Resilience, Identity, Integrity, and Training. Through GRIIT, this is where I teach people how to really get back in touch with themselves, instead of who the world has told them to be, so they can truly live in aligned, authentic ways. POWER stands for Pause for Perspective, Observe and Organize, Work the Problem, Express the Impact, and Recover. Through POWER, I teach people how to approach problem solving in a slower, more organized and cohesive way, so that they’re actually solving problems instead of just creating more chaos.

I’m so proud of this brand, because it’s not just about the methods I’ve created – it’s about watching people reclaim their lives and live in inspired, empowered ways. So often, people don’t need to learn a new, fancy method for dealing with things. They just need a new way to say or do an old thing. GRIIT and POWER are built off basic psychotherapy methods and behavioral skill sets that all people can benefit from, no matter where they come from or what they know.

After all, when the foundation is solid and stable, the house will stand strong. It’s as simple as that.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?

Determination!

I’m the third of four daughters in my family, and I can remember being very young and listening to my mom say to people that I was the kid that was determined to march to my own drummer.

While I certainly come from a family of driven, determined people, I’ve never really fallen into line with what people expected of me or told me to do – and in the moments that I did, I was miserable. I’ve always needed to do things my own way, on my own terms, in order to feel satisfied with the outcome of a task.

As I got older, it became a running joke in my family that I was stubborn – which is accurate – but that I was stubborn in an ‘I’m my own worst enemy’ kind of way. I learned all my lessons the ‘hard’ way, and definitely got knocked to my knees more than my fair share of times.

With each lesson, though, I learned – stubbornness exists on a spectrum. And as with any spectrum, there’s extremes. I thought for a long time that it was as simple as stubbornness vs determination, but after a conversation recently with my partner, I’ve come to realize it’s really this –

At one end of the spectrum is pure stubbornness. This is where people get in their own way, and never make the progress they truly desire because they’re committed to a level of struggle that’s often unnecessary. At the other end of the spectrum is self-abandonment, as my partner pointed out to me. This is where people abandon their desires, their dreams, hopes, and wants for their lives, for the sake of falling into line with the demands the world places on them.

In the middle, though, is determination. Determination is the fortitude to keep on pushing, even (and especially) when things get hard, while also accepting and giving grace to the reality that sometimes a pivot is necessary. Realizing the value of determination has helped me give myself the grace and patience that sometimes my goals will take longer to realize than I’m planning on, and that it can be ok for things to look different than I initially expected. Things don’t always have to turn out the way we planned on, in order for them to still be really cool.

And remember – not now, doesn’t ever have to mean not ever.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thegriitproject.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkellylynch/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamkellylynch/

Image Credits

Jamie Bannon Photography