Brainz Magazine Exclusive Interview
Imagine a woman standing at the crossroads of despair and redemption. This is the story of Kelly Bazzani. From the cold, unforgiving confines of a maximum-security jail, Kelly unearthed a truth many spend lifetimes seeking: the power of transformation was always within her. Today, with 16 years free from the chains of alcohol and nine years liberated from prescription medication, her journey isn’t just a personal testament but a lighthouse for countless souls lost in the storm of addiction. With a dual Master’s degree in Psychology and as a Master Certified Addiction Coach, she’s turned her challenges into stepping stones, not just for herself, but for countless others. It’s about turning pain into purpose, shadows into stories that heal.
At the forefront of MAXIMUM RESILIENCE, INC, Kelly’s purpose is to craft legacies. She transforms destructive patterns into tales of triumph, ensuring that each story isn’t just heard but felt. Her approach? Deeply emotional, raw, and resonating. It’s not just about imparting knowledge; it’s about igniting transformation. With her unique blend of professional expertise, from her roles in mental health to her background as a Critical Care Nurse, Kelly embodies a holistic perspective on mental health, ensuring a balance of theory and heartfelt practice. She turns the darkest shadows into healing stories, ensuring each narrative touches the hearts of those she serves. As an addiction and recovery expert, Kelly Bazzani is a celebrated author, world-renowned speaker, and influential podcaster, sharing wisdom and inspiring transformation globally.
Kelly Bazzani’s dedication to educating, inspiring, mentoring, and transforming lives resonates deeply with her personal story and life experience of transformation. Her mission is crystal clear: to empower individuals to overcome adversity, discover their inner freedom, and achieve the results they desire. Kelly’s work embodies and exemplifies her commitment to mental health advocacy and her relentless pursuit of Maximum Resilience for all those she has the privilege to serve.
Can you start by telling us about your business and how it makes a difference for your clients?
I’d love to! I am the proud CEO of Maximum Resilience, Inc. I am an Addiction & Recovery Expert and my main emphasis when it comes to coaching clients is on emotional resilience and empowerment. I feel that how it really makes a difference for my clients is that because of my own personal life experience, they know that I am speaking WITH them and not AT them. We do one-on-one coaching sessions with both adults and adolescents. I also do family sessions and education. We offer a free 90-minute, “Reclaim Your Power” Accelerator that focuses on overcoming destructive patterns and addictive behaviors that is open to anyone. This leads to a private Mastermind for those that are wanting to further their journey. We delve into 12 modules in the free Accelerator where I go into depth on education and content on the psychology and “why” of addiction and “what” is the root cause. In the Mastermind, we explore the “how” of obtaining emotional resilience! The feedback that I have gotten from my clients is that it is put together in a very intelligent and logical sequence including a lot of depth and substance and they can tell it came from the wisdom of the personal journey that I have traveled on. Because of this, I have continued to build out from there and used a lot of that curriculum to bring into our educational school districts in my keynote speeches on behalf of Maximum Resilience, Inc.
I opened my business because when I was in the depths of my addiction and living within the confines of my own mental prison of merely surviving, my soul was wise enough to believe that there was a life I wanted to create based on love, light, hope, and everything magic is made of to THRIVE! I wanted to show those struggling with addiction that miracles happen and guide them through their journey in a shorter amount of time than it took me with much less pain! To me, being able to reach one person in addiction and being a vessel to carry the message makes me feel like the most blessed woman in the world. It still continues to do so! To date, I have guided hundreds of clients in battling addiction, finding their worth, leaving an abusive relationship, processing repressing sexual trauma, discovering their voice, shaping their sexual identity, stepping into their power, and facing their demons head-on and winning! I am in awe every day of this life I have been blessed with!
Share a bit about your journey so far. How did you end up where you are today in your career?
Sure! So, I actually started as a Critical Care Nurse. Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a nurse. My grandmother Vivian was a nurse and I was always so mesmerized by all her nursing books and her stories about the nursing shift so I applied to one college (Arizona State University) with one emphasis (Nursing.) I was very clear that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I graduated and went immediately into the Critical Care Unit at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix and loved everything about it! I then moved back to the Bay Area to work at the hospital where my grandmother had worked. In 2006, I broke my back lifting a patient. I underwent eight spinal surgeries with one of them resulting in the loss of feelings in my legs. I found myself with generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, PTSD and a severe opioid and benzodiazepine addiction over the course of these 8 years. I also found myself making very poor choices in my addiction such as driving under the influence. By the time I entered my last rehabilitation center in 2014, I was facing prison; unemployable; surrendered my nursing license; not a penny to my name; and was just existing. What is ironic is that while in nursing school, psychology was something that I always veered away from. Now I found myself dancing with all of these uncomfortable emotions that had been locked away in Pandora’s box that desperately needed to come out and be processed. So did my other repressed traumas such as eating disorders, sexual trauma and all the underlying causes of my untreated alcoholism and addiction. When the prescription medications were removed and I no longer had physical pain, I realized I was taking them for all of the emotional pain.
The day that I got out of rehab, I walked up to the community college and started taking classes to be a drug and alcohol counselor. I then decided to pursue a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and Professional and Clinical Counseling to specialize in Addiction. I had to go serve my time and while in maximum security, I saw that all the women were in there for either mental illness or addiction. We were in our cells for 23 hours a day and out for 1 hour a day. I had my sponsor in recovery send my materials and for that 1 hour out in the yard, I started taking the women through the recovery steps. When I was released, I started my Master’s Program and graduated and although I liked the therapeutic process and modalities, I wanted more! I went to the beautiful town of Healdsburg, California and started taking self-mastery classes to continue working on myself and found an inner freedom that I wanted to be able to share with others. I then went back and coached these programs. I then decided from there that I wanted to open my own coaching business so I did. I obtained both my Life Coach and Master Life Coach Certification and Resilience: “Life’s Gift” was born. My grandmother Vivian's name means “Life” and my mentor Jon Daily’s name means “Gift.” I set off on my journey to build Resilience based on my book knowledge of my Master’s Program but more importantly my life experience of Resilience and coaching others to empower themselves that life is happening for them and not to them if they choose to perceive it that way, get rigorously honest with their current reality, and take radical accountability for their life.
We all face challenges. Can you talk about some tough times you've had in your career and how they've influenced your path?
Ralph Waldo Emerson beautifully quotes, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” This has resonated with me throughout my early sobriety and throughout my career to date so I found it so fitting for this question. Early on in my career, I kept hitting roadblocks. I wanted to apply for my dual Master’s Degree program and had to wait because I had to serve my time in a maximum security jail because of my past. I then obtained the 3000 hours needed for MFT licensure and then found out I had to wait because I was still on formal probation because of my past. I did not always have the finances early on in my career to pursue the passions in my heart because I was building my life from the ground up being new in recovery to serve the way I wanted to serve. It was in these times of isolation and loneliness, that I truly found my path to clarity and my set of core values that has led to the successful entrepreneur I am proud to be today. I am grateful for each trial and tribulation because not only did it happen for me to show me the strength and resilience that resides within me; but it has also guided me to empower my clients in my practice to know they can do the exact same thing!
Everyone has something that keeps them going. What motivates you in your work?
Without a doubt, my sobriety because without that, I am confident in my heart none of this would exist. My “why” is to stay clean and sober so that my mother and father can now lay their head down on their pillow every night and know that their baby girl is safe and thriving. Because of this “why”, my approach is servant-based leadership and I want each of my clients to never feel alone and afraid in their addiction like I did and so I do everything in my power to keep creating content, educational programs, keynotes, podcasts, etc. with that purpose in mind. Most importantly, I create a safe, non-judgmental environment with unconditional positive regard ensuring that my clients feel seen, heard, and validated. I am humbled by my client’s willingness to show up every day and I learn from each and every moment. To both hear and hold another's pain is a privilege to me I hold sacred.
Your book, "The Change - Insights into Self-Empowerment," sounds interesting. Could you give us a glimpse of what it's about and the key ideas you want readers to take away?
Absolutely! The title I used in this was “Resilience in Recovery: Phoenix Risen.” To rise like a phoenix from the ashes symbolizes To rise like a phoenix from the ashes symbolizes emerging from a catastrophe wiser, stronger, and more powerful! Throughout my life, there have been many catastrophic events that all led to me now sharing my transformational story of Resilience. I have taken all the obstacles I have endured and turned them into the greatest and truest unique gift I get to give to the world. My Cinderella story of overcoming addiction and mastering the ability to soothe my internal pain and free myself from my mental prison is a gift I am blessed and grateful for every day. I wanted nothing more than to share this gift with my book! I was born to be on this journey, to lead and teach from my wise experience. It is my talent and my birthright. Unfortunately, this was not always my attitude and not always my mindset. I was a victim of my circumstances for a long time with a fixed mindset, always wondering, “Why is this happening to me!?” This thought was because of my intense perfectionism, rigidity, and obsession with labeling myself with specific identities to define who I was. So throughout the book, I take you on a journey of what I noticed within myself from an early age. I define my self-sabotaging behaviors as seeking approval and acceptance and doing that by overachieving and defining success by accomplishments. I write about how by focusing on the validation of others, I ignored approval, acceptance, and validation of myself and this led to suppression of emotions, anorexia nervosa, alcoholism in high school, and ultimately the spiral of my addiction when I broke my back.
There is so much to speak about but the key takeaway for anyone struggling with addiction or addictive behavior is said best in my book when I quoted Carl Jung, “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” I genuinely believe the dark led me to light again, which is why I can shine it on you today! When I started to challenge my internal narrative, thinking errors, and belief system, it led to bringing all my unconscious fears and insecurities to the surface and my conscious mind healed.
Getting out of your comfort zone is something we all deal with. How do you handle situations that make you feel a bit uneasy?
I absolutely love this question! I LEAN into them! Just as cement hardens over time and becomes solid, so does my resilience when faced with challenges & adversity. Resilience does not just define bouncing back but also the ability to propel forward. For me, it's about taking those hits, those challenges, and using them as stepping stones to elevate myself. It's the elastic band I like to visualize when faced with those uncomfortable situations that stretch but don’t break. This to me, is imperative in service-based and conscious leadership because it is about “waking up”. It's about leading with intention, purpose, and a deep awareness of oneself and the environment around me. It’s about not choosing to react when things get uneasy, but rather pause and respond with clarity and vision. When faced with uncertainty, I don’t want to go backward to my old behavior and my comfort zone which is going to lead to a very uncomfortable life for me. I choose to get uncomfortable and practice new behaviors that I know will lead to a very comfortable life for me. Resilience is my compass that guides me down a road filled with endless potential and possibility!
What are the current goals you have for your business? How do you plan on reaching them?
Hmmm. I think I am going to share a few things here. Last year, I found myself getting lost in pursuing other people’s dreams. I was traveling and making sales for them and marketing for them and losing myself in the process. I found myself in November emotionally burnt out and further and further away from my goals. So, in December, I remembered, “Physician heal thyself.” I went back to soul care of body, mind, and spirit and started energetically shifting back to where I needed to be. When I cleared out whatever wasn’t a vibrational match to my goals and values, everything started to align again! The focus and clarity came and you are reading about it all here in this article as all the beautiful manifestations started to flood in!
My biggest goal moving forward this year is to bring my coaching program into addiction/recovery centers. One of my favorite sayings is, “If you think you are the smartest person in the room, find a different room.” So, I am always seeking mentorship from those smarter than me to learn and grow. I met with a mentor who guided me in the right direction of how to reach out to these addiction/recovery centers. I am also taking a Power Goddess Coaching Program with an esteemed mentor who has us clearly defining our goals over 90 days. My curriculum is ready and I am looking forward to my goal coming to fruition so I can then meet my big hairy goal of traveling internationally to build recovery centers for underserved communities.
Are there any exciting projects on the horizon for you? What's next on your plate?
Yes! There are so many exciting projects I am currently working on! My dear friend and mentor, Misty Kerrigan and I just completed the adolescent coaching program that we will be launching in March! We will begin training our first set of coaches on Feb. 8th, 2024 and are looking forward to empowering our youth and as we build out our business, we will be implementing the adult education program into it as well. I am also now a new instructor at UC Davis in Continuing and Professional Education. I will get the opportunity to share my curriculum and train our future thought leaders AND collaborate with some of the most brilliant minds! I will be speaking in Paris, France at the Global Women Power Summit and Expo 2024 in March and that forum will be Empowering Resilience: Mastering the Path to Success. I will also be speaking at the 2nd Global Women Power Summit on Leadership in New York in July and that forum will serve as a catalyst for positive change and aims to promote gender equality, economic empowerment, education, health, and political participation for women worldwide. I will also be speaking on the upcoming ‘The Los Angeles Tribune’ Quantum Leap 2024; Lead Your Life; Lead Your Business Global Broadcast.
Looking ahead, what do you hope to achieve personally and for your business?
This year is a huge year for me personally! I will be celebrating 10 years clean and everything will also be off my record! The emotional weight that will be lifted with this is unexplainable! The journey that it took to arrive here has been awe-inspiring and I am grateful for every moment of it! Misty and I decided in our adolescent coaching program that we will be donating a percentage of our profit to mental health organizations so that is something for my business that reflects on my integrity personally. When I first got clean, my sponsor said, “It is important that you revolve your life around your sobriety, not your sobriety around your life.” I want to share that when I was sitting in maximum security jail I was judging my cellmate for being in there for 1st-degree murder and my Higher Power spoke to me and said, “If you would have hit a child or a family while driving under the influence you would be in here for life so what makes you think you are any better?” I instantly went from ego space to heart space and decided that when I was blessed enough to regain my freedom, I was going to dedicate the rest of my life to doing this service-based Resilience coaching and I do it with passion. When you love what you do, you do it with purpose on purpose! I am looking forward to being a lifelong learner, seeking out mentors who have gone before me and absorbing their wisdom, creating powerful collaborations and strategic partnerships, and always remaining humble as to where I came from, present in the moment, and confident as to where I am going!
To wrap things up, could you share a proud moment from your career? Also, what would success look like for your business in the long run?
A proud moment from my career that I feel set me on my trajectory was when I was asked by Dr. Pat of the Transformation Network to start sharing my story via podcasting. This really took me outside of my comfort zone as I never thought of myself as creative. All of a sudden, I was working with her production team to create banners for my show, come up with the title, create the content, and be interviewed. As I gained momentum, I then hosted my own show and brought my own guests onto the show and delved into topics to reach a broader audience. This experience really brought clarity and organization to my coaching. My mother and I did a podcast on the two sides of the addiction coin and this was so healing for both of us as we revealed our authenticity and vulnerability to guide families that were overcome with addiction. This experience helped me to grow as a digital creator, writer, influencer, and podcaster, and mature in my practice to benefit my clients. I then continued from there to receive ‘Best Life Coaching’ and ‘Top 10 Resilience Coach’ from the Coaching Foundation. From there, I set off on my speaking career and felt prepared to do so!
Success can be defined differently depending on who you ask. For me, I define success as staying true to my values of integrity, connection, empathy, compassion, work ethic, and discernment. Success to me is being in alignment physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually so I can serve at my greatest capacity. Success to me is defined by surrounding myself with individuals at both the personal and professional level where there is no competition, only collaboration and how we can help each other succeed. Success to me is coming from a place of abundance and not a fear of scarcity. This world is big enough that we can all root for each other and promote each other. None of my work is copyrighted. If it can leave somebody’s life better personally or professionally, it is theirs! I am here to craft legacies. So, success for my business, in the long run, is to continue to guide people to overcome destructive patterns and addictive behaviors and reclaim their inner freedom and do it with grace, integrity, servant-based leadership, and by creating my own path. My goal is for Maximum Resilience, Inc. to travel far and wide to serve underdeveloped and underserved communities and continue sharing my personal story of Resilience. I will continue to pick up the lamp within to light the way of love, light, and everything magic is made of! My soul will continue to SHINE from the inside out, leading the way for others so that they may too discover their light and SHINE ON!
