Overcoming Abuse ft. Kaitlyn Vail

Kaitlyn is the founder of Supporting Smiles, which is a mental health based organization based around the awareness and education of mental health and its surrounding topics. Her reason for starting her organization came from her own mental health journey and narcissistic/emotional abuse. Her father abused her mentally and emotionally for a couple of years and after almost 2 years, she got the courage to leave and not stay with him again. After she left, she spent a year trying to find herself and grow herself mentally until about a year later when he started contacting her. From April-June 2020, he was contacting her and things were going downhill, until her mother started to notice, leading her to go back to counseling. In late June, she came up with the idea of her organization and ran it past her counselor and she loved it! Her organization helped her cope while researching and educating on different aspects of mental health. That brings her to now, where she is still venturing through her personal growth journey and loves her organization, team, and the projects they are working on, and she is still completely surprised about how much they grew in little time. In today's episode, we cover different, heavier types of topics, focusing on abuse, the stigma around therapy and mental health, and how Kaitlyn managed to use Supporting Smiles as a way to overcome these struggles.