Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Penny.
Lisa, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today?
I began my career in early childhood education, working in preschools for over 20 years after earning my undergraduate degree in Child Development. That foundation shaped my understanding of emotional safety, behavior, and how we learn to feel seen, secure, and understood. From there, I became a licensed therapist in both California and Oregon, with extensive training in addiction recovery, anxiety reduction, pain management, and trauma support. I’ve also served as a hypnotherapist, group facilitator, and surgery counselor, helping patients before and after major operations, and even wrote a surgery support manual still in use today.
Over the years, I’ve worked in inpatient and outpatient programs, created sober parenting groups, taught wellness and anxiety-reduction classes, and supported families through grief, substance abuse, and transition. I’m certified in multiple therapeutic approaches, and I write all my own emotional support animal letters with intention and clinical backing, because I believe deeply in the power of animals to help us heal. Every part of my work is personalized, direct, and rooted in real-life experience.
Today, my business, Getting to Better™, brings everything I have lived and learned into one space. Through Penny Power Thoughts™, I create affirmation decks, a 365-day affirmation book, and therapeutic tools that speak to people in creative recovery, emotional flux, or spiritual rebuilding. My work is about more than insight. It’s about resilience, direction, and choosing yourself over and over again.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not even close. The road has been anything but smooth, but it has absolutely been worth it. I have had to rebuild my life more than once, sometimes while holding everything together for others. I’ve navigated divorce, loss, financial stress, burnout, single parenting, chronic pain, and professional reinvention. And I’ve done it while continuing to show up for clients, family, and my own healing process.
There were times when I was working multiple jobs just to stay afloat while also going to grad school. Times when I was writing in the margins of exhaustion, or learning new licensing systems across states while managing full caseloads. I know what it’s like to be the therapist and the patient, the caregiver and the one who desperately needs care. That duality has shaped the kind of work I do now.
Although I don’t like to lead with it, I’ve had many many spine surgeries and has struggled with chronic pain for decades. I’ve used hypnosis meditation and Breath Work to avoid taking pain medication. The struggle gave me language that people can feel. It gave, empathy, and the courage to speak directly to pain without sugarcoating it. So no, it hasn’t been smooth. But the bumps gave me my message. They gave me my voice. And I would not trade that for anything.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
One of the creative projects I’m working on right now is Getting to Better™, a do-it-yourself therapy guide that gives people the tools they need outside the therapy room. Not every therapist is going to love that idea, but I don’t really care. You are in therapy, what, maybe 50 minutes a week if you’re lucky and focused? So what are you doing with the other sixteen hundred and something hours?
If you are not taking action in between sessions, nothing changes. In my world, therapy is not just about insight. It is about traction. That means behavior, language, accountability, self-talk, habits, healing, and sometimes letting go of the story completely so you can actually move.
I believe people need practical tools. They need to hear things differently. They need language that sticks and something they can turn to when the session is over and the hard part kicks in. That’s what my affirmation work does. That’s what this book will do. It is therapy you can pick up off the floor when you are crying, or throw across the room when you are mad, and still come back to when you are ready to make a different choice.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is when you stop dragging old pain into new chapters. When you stop trying to heal through performance and start choosing peace because you earned it. It’s being able to walk away from resentment without needing a parade or a prize. And it’s forgiving people who never apologized, just so you can stop carrying their weight in your damn nervous system.
I’m doing better than the generations before me. That’s not shade, that’s math. I’ve taken the pain I inherited and turned it into something that helps people. I have broken cycles, sat in rooms, cleaned up messes I didn’t start, and learned how to look myself in the mirror with respect. That’s success.
And let’s be real. Some days success is just saying the loving thing when you want to scream. Not texting back. Not spiraling. Not trying to get someone to understand what you’ve already outgrown. Sometimes it’s sitting your butt down, owning your choices, and saying the affirmation out loud even if your brain rolls its eyes.
Success is showing up for your damn self, again and again, with love, humor, and a little bit of righteous fire. That’s the best definition I’ve got. And it works.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://pennypowerthoughts.com
