Conversations with Catia Hernandez Holm | Voyage Austin
Today we’d like to introduce you to Catia Hernandez Holm
Hi Catia, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Therapist. It was the first thing I wrote down on my grade school questionnaire when asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But life took me on a winding path before I found my way back to that calling.
My first career was managing high-end restaurants and bars, where I developed leadership skills and learned the art of connecting with people from all walks of life. While I thrived in that environment, deep down, I knew there was something more I was meant to do—something more personal, more meaningful.
Trusting my heart, I took a leap and wrote my first book, The Courage to Become: Stories of Hope for Navigating Love, Marriage, and Motherhood. Writing a book, publishing it, and getting it into the public was a transformative experience. It taught me that I could set my sights on a goal, be derailed, and keep going. The three years it took to write, edit, and publish the book taught me that patience is a key ingredient when creating.
Being an author and having my book on the shelf at Book People(!), next to authors I had always admired, among other respected bookstores, opened doors to public speaking and eventually led me to TEDx.
Writing and speaking connected me with so many incredible women, and I quickly realized how much I valued these connections. These women, their stories, and their strength taught me so much about resilience, vulnerability, and the power of community.
In those moments, I felt a true calling to serve others on a deeper level. That desire to be of service drove me to become a Certified Conscious Parenting Coach, where I learned how when one person decides to heal their wounds, it can transform their family system. Right away I knew I was on my path, and I wanted a more profound knowledge and resource base for my clients. So at 37, I applied for graduate school, and in 2020, I went back to school to earn a master’s in marriage and family therapy.
Balancing my family, career, and studies was difficult, but my commitment to helping others heal pushed me forward. While I was in graduate school, I felt the call to write again, and A Gentle Return: A Mother’s Meditations on Embodying Fulfillment, Pleasure, and Worth was the answer to that call. Writing it was quite the creative experience, and finding out it was a #1 bestseller was the cherry on top.
Now, as a trauma-certified marriage and family therapist associate (LMFT-Associate under the supervision of Susan Gonzales LMFT-S, LPC-S), I combine all of my experiences—from my coaching background to my years of public speaking—to help individuals and families break cycles, find peace, and embrace their authentic selves. Every step of the journey has taught me that following my heart, being of service, and connecting with others creates lasting change.
Kirkus Book Review | The Courage to Become
I am thrilled to bring you the Kirkus Book Review for The Courage to Become: Stories of Hope for Navigating Love, Marriage and Motherhood.
Enjoy!
A debut book intertwines an inspirational manual with the autobiography of a young wife.
Early in her narrative, Holm recalls the impatience and near desperation she felt about wanting to find a good man, marry, and start a family with him. For far too long, prospects seemed grim, but then she met a man named Anthony, who eventually (although not soon enough to suit the author’s impatience) proposed to her. The two were on their honeymoon when they received news from their doctors about prospective pregnancies: each of them carried a recessive gene for a deadly infant malady, meaning that there was a 1 in 4 chance any baby of theirs would be born with the disorder and die within a year. The news was devastating, and Holm tried to calm herself through a combination of personal balance and lessons gleaned from various self-help authors. She recounts events that happened during this and every other stage of her marriage while at the same time trying to impart lessons to her readers about the things those incidents taught her. Thanks to her considerable narrative gifts, this pairing of story and lesson works unusually well throughout. “When your mind begins to race and your heart starts to feel the weight of fear, you are either gripping onto the embers of your past mistakes, or your thoughts are reeling for a future that cannot be controlled,” she writes about those horrible days spent trying to make herself enjoy her time with Anthony regardless of how her future pregnancies went. “In order to get a hold of your anxiety, you must learn to become present.” Each of the book’s chapters ends with a “Trail Journal” of questions designed to get readers thinking about how Holm’s experiences might raise issues in their own lives. The pedagogical aspect of this is saved from any hint of condescension by the approachable way the author tells her own tale, warts and all, and by the frequent glints of humor. “Germany was surprisingly pleasant,” she writes. “It wasn’t as German as I thought it would be.”
A winningly personal guide to dealing with life’s pitfalls.
Kirkus Review can be found online here.
Thank you!