Meet Carington Cantarella

We were lucky to catch up with Carington Cantarella recently and have shared our conversation below.

Carington, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.

Mental illness start as something inhibiting your life, keeping you from functioning at full force. I let it take over, I let it consume me, and one day I realized I had only two choices left, I could let my Self die (live as a husk of a person surviving life working the typical job paying my bills and taxes and never dreaming of more-just surviving) or I could choose to live. So I fought my own brain day in and day out, slowly convincing myself I did want to live. I found my challenges and life experiences helped others. I am thankful for everything I have experienced because now I can help others choose to live. Choose themselves. Find empowerment. I let myself sink to the very bottom and I swam back up alone. The least I can do is make sure someone else doesn’t have to make that swim back up to the surface alone.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I grew up in the south on the ideology most people of similar ethnicity to me are raised on. Go to school, get a good job, be a functioning member of society. So I did exactly that. I excelled in school, I went to college on academic and athletic scholarships and played four years of collegiate level women’s lacrosse at the division 1 level. Graduated with my B.S. in Psychology and began work as a Behavioral Therapist for children with ASD. I loved my job & clients but it proved difficult for me to manage my ongoing health struggles with Crohn’s Disease under that level of stress. I moved to a quiet desk job as a patient coordinator at an Oral Surgery practice. I was well-off, admired, and respected in my communities. But I was miserable. Every decision was made to make someone else pleased with me or to out preform someone else. I realized I lived every single day for other people. I quit my regular 9-5 job, I spent my life savings on two trips to NYC in Dec 2023 for unpaid, volunteer positions and came back with paying jobs in the fashion industry. Every single person told me I was crazy, but I simply refused to go back to being miserable. I had never left better in my entire life. I spent all of 2024 dead-set on changing my entire life. I went through rigorous therapy, self-reflection, difficult choices, and so many sacrifices. September of 2024 I achieved my childhood dream of living in NYC. I made my dreams a reality off of sheer will and pure determination. Today I now am a full time content creator on Instagram and Tiktok. My fandom Tiktok page is my pride and joy, starting with Harry Potter and growing with my community from there. I also work with a foodie Instagram page called The Scene New York marketing for restaurants and bars all over NYC. My longest client is the phenomenal Eileen Pappas, a jewelry designer from Greece. I am incredibly proud of all the work I have a hand in producing. My greatest joys are the variety in my life and that I get to stay home with my cat while I work now. Because if I am really really honest, all this started because I would cry every morning when I would watch my cat watch me drive away for work every morning.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. The desire for knowledge was always incredibly important. My internal drive for understanding the world and increasing my knowledge has always driven me to new heights and successes. (i’m not kidding my grandma’s friend asked me what I wanted for Christmas when I was 8 and I said “knowledge” with no further explanation)
2. My determination has always been my favorite quality about myself. Without my determination I am no where and I am nothing. With it, I am anything I can dream.
3. Whimsy- don’t take life so seriously, when you get caught up on the rougher parts of life you forget to enjoy the small moments of your day. Keeping my whimsy, keeping the fun in my life was the difference in struggling and making it. When I really enjoyed what I did I found the most success.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

As creators we have a unique opportunity to impact our peers, communities, and society as a whole. I firmly believe all content creators should be conscious of this impact and consider it when creating. So for any creators that don’t just think “what is the most attention grabbing” and want to make a real impact on their community in a positive way, and create content because they want to make the world a better place for everyone and not just themselves. I would really love to connect on Instagram or Tiktok with anyone that feels the same way.

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