We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carm Pileggi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Carm, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

Working at as a child and youth care practitioner for 7 years, I had been afforded the incredible opportunities to work with hundreds of young individuals and in various sectors including schools and group homes. The pandemic, of course, brought on many challenges for mental health professionals and the clients served. I had worked frontline supporting the development of young individuals navigating various barriers from learning and mental health challenges to inaccessibly to services. My work at a non-profit community based organization serving marginalized youth was probably my greatest professional challenge but the most fulfilling one. After experiencing burnout in early 2023, I was reminded of the several other times I had experienced this complete mental, emotional and physical depletion in my previous jobs as well. This forced a pause that I had fought off for as long as I could, but I had nothing left in me to give. I re-evaluated where I was at in my life and decided to take a risk and apply for a graduate program in Counselling Psychology. At 30 years old, I felt conflicted whether I wanted to go back to student life and the pressures that came with that including student debt or to continue on in my field. Naturally, I compared myself to where my peers were at in their life. I felt like I would be starting all over again but then again it would be an opportunity to continue to grow professionally and I deserved to feel fulfilled again in a new way.

Carm, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Girls Gotta Heal (GGH) emerged from my own experience with grief and loss as a teenager. I lost my dad when I was 18 and several other significant figures in my adolescence. As I created this online mental health community, I was also pursuing education and a career in mental health. Girls Gotta Heal was an opportunity for me to tell my story and connect with others who also experienced similar themes in their life with loss and living a life after tragedy (navigating relationships, work, and, health). In my experience, I isolated quite a lot after loss. This was a way to protect myself and also make sense of what I was going through without resources available to me. I wanted to create the community and voice that I needed as a young person navigating grief. GGH offers virtual peer support groups and recently expanded to offer self-help materials.

I wrote the Affirmation Journal for Women: Powerful Prompts to Transform Your Outlook on Life to offer wellness and daily practices into one’s everyday life. Journaling is a common practice we hear of to promote wellness but it can also be challenging to know when, where and how to even start. Using a guided journal is more structured while still allowing you to write and express yourself freely. In addition to this guided journal, I also created the Connecting Through Grief card deck. This deck is created from the lens of a mental health professional who has lived experience with grief and loss. Our loved ones sometimes don’t know how to approach us or engage in conversation about our losses. The griever often craves this presence and acknowledgement. We usually do want to talk about it, with people who make us feel safe and allow us to be present in our feelings. This deck promotes connection and conversation around losses ranging from death to relationship loss. It’s versatile in that way as well as how it is used. It can be used solo as self-reflection and journal prompts, with a partner or close friend and even with a larger group. I’m most proud of the beautiful connections made and meaningful work within the virtual peer support groups as well as the self-help products I have created for this community. I always want people to feel empowered, equipped with the tools they need to improve their relationship with themselves and to feel less alone in what they are going through.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Growing up I learned and truly believed that simply consistency and persistence will lead to success. But that guarantee does not factor in all of the messy and blindsiding things that life throws at you. You might be on track to getting that job or launching a campaign on your social media platform when you get rerouted. You have to pivot and there’s not one clear cut formula for everyone to follow. Success is not linear and it is subjective to you. To me, a successful mindset comes from a willingness to always go back to the drawing board and giving yourself permission to change your mind. Owning my experiences and being clear with who I am has led me to feel more comfortable in falling back on myself. I am consistent and persistent when I need to be but also have learned to be flexible. In the past when I felt like I had done everything correctly and even followed the same steps as someone else who had success in a certain area, I felt incredibly disappointed when it didn’t work out. Managing an online mental health community requires you to adjust and adapt to your audiences needs. This is especially true with creating content and products. What works one month might not the next. Getting curious instead of taking things personally, understanding the needs and even engaging with your audience to ask them directly, can all be supportive ways to adapt.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

From what I have been hearing from my peers, many millennials are making professional career changes (and unapologetically too!). Working through a pandemic certainly shifted perspectives and put many people in a position to reevaluate what they want and need from a workplace especially when themes of mortality were coming up more frequently. More people have been making changes to better align with their needs. I have been fortunate enough to stay within my general field despite leaving my job this year and getting into grad school.

I have loved creating for GGH and look forward to continue to so in a way that aligns with the growth and needs of my community. I would not change anything about my career path and the experience I have gained working various jobs as a Child and Youth Practitioner. I have always felt like my previous work experience has helped me in my current work, there was always something to take away and apply to the future. I hope to continue expanding my capacity to counsel young individuals and fulfil my dream of becoming a Registered Psychotherapist.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.girlsgottaheal.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/girlsgottaheal/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/girlsgottaheal/
• Other: https://girlsgottaheal.buzzsprout.com