We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katie Maloney. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katie below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Katie with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
I currently have an incredible chosen family who I know will never let my life fall apart. But that wasn’t always the case. There was a long time when I really only had myself to depend on—which was difficult and overwhelming and certainly led to some very unsuccessful times. But I’m also grateful for those experiences because I learned to take responsibility for my dreams, my wants, my success and my life. I didn’t have the option of depending on someone else to make sure that my life was what I wanted it to be. But I’m now in a really beautifully balanced place of accepting help and support while also knowing that achieving what I want in life is ultimately my responsibility.
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?
My mission is to create new conversations about trauma healing. When I first started working through the 18 years of childhood sexual abuse I experienced, I looked to trauma-healing resources for guidance. But the only tools available were either psychology books, heavily titled self-help books, or healing groups that focused only on retelling your trauma story. I wanted healing tools that included lightheartedness and even humor and that reflected all the other parts of me, not just the trauma. Through my work as an Author and Speaker, my goal is to remove some of the heaviness that often surrounds conversations about trauma and to start new conversations that feel like sipping coffee and eating cake pops while sharing stories with a trusted friend. You can check out my book “Cake Pops and Coffee: A New Conversation About Trauma” at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
When you realize that you have a dream and you start planning how to achieve that dream, it can be very easy to feel overwhelmed by the path ahead and freeze. Two of the most significant skills I learned (and they rely heavily on each other when working towards success) are patience and consistency. It took me eight years to write my book because I had different jobs and I was at different points of my healing journey throughout that time. But I never stopped writing. I consistently wrote pages, compiled chapters and edited. I didn’t allow myself to freeze under the pressure of a specific timeline in my head, but I also never allowed myself to stop working towards my goal of publishing a book. So, being patient while also consistently chipping away at your goal are closely intertwined skills—effort without patience can often lead to a rushed and lower-quality product, and patience without effort never leads to anything. So, letting patience and consistent effort dance together was very helpful for me. The third quality that has helped me on my journey is self-awareness. In my book, I talk about some of the darkest moments (both internal and external) of my life. Being able to reflect honestly on those moments and then find the words to articulate those experiences requires a lot of self-awareness. It’s also really scary to put those moments out into the world via a book, so being able to reflect on all the emotions that have come up since publishing has been a massive part of my journey.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I love collaborating with anyone who wants to change how we talk about trauma! I want to have conversations about healing that are lighthearted and funny. I want to share all of my very awkward stories of navigating healing so that others don’t have to feel so alone in their own experiences. And I want to have conversations with survivors that include all the other parts of ourselves—not just the trauma. I am always looking to collaborate with people who are having their own versions of these conversations or who are interested in getting started. So please feel free to connect with me via email or social media.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.katiemaloneycoaching.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiemaloney_author/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katiemaloneycoaching/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-maloney-bb165b219/
Image Credits
LeeAnn K Photography
