Meet Rya Hazelwood

Life rarely unfolds exactly as we plan. Mine certainly hasn't.

 

I've changed careers, raised two boys, started over more than once and discovered that some of the chapters I would never have chosen became the ones that helped me grow the most.

 

Along the way, I became fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. What do we make of what happened to us? What do we inherit from the people who came before us? What do we carry longer than we need to? And what becomes possible when we decide to see something differently?

 

Those questions are at the heart of both my writing and my work.

 

I'm the author of Relentless Optimism & Other Life Goals, part memoir and part guide to moving through hard things without pretending they didn't hurt, and to deciding what to do next. My first novel, Natural Weather, is a multigenerational family saga inspired in part by my mother's life, including the years she spent raising a baby in an Army tent at the edge of a redwood forest.

 

A graduate of Vanderbilt University, where I studied English Literature and Spanish Linguistics, I have spent more than twenty-five years working in communications, marketing and executive leadership. I co-founded, built and ultimately sold a successful business, and today I serve as a senior communications and marketing executive for a national professional association.

 

I'm also the founder of Relentless Optimism, a speaking and writing platform built around an idea that began as a personal philosophy and eventually became a professional one:

 

Optimism is not blind positivity. It's the willingness to see what is true and still ask, "What’s possible from here?"

 

Life has given me plenty of opportunities to test that theory.

 

I've learned that resilience is rarely about pretending something is fine. It's about seeing clearly, finding your footing and deciding what you want to do next.

 

Sometimes that means rebuilding.

 

Sometimes it means letting go.

 

And sometimes it means realizing that the life you thought had gone completely off script may simply be taking you somewhere you didn't know to look.

 

That thread runs through everything I do.

 

Through my writing, I explore family, identity, relationships, adversity and the ways people make meaning from their lives.

 

Through my speaking and consulting work, I help leaders and organizations apply many of those same ideas to change, resilience, culture and leadership.

 

Different audiences. Different stories. The same fundamental question:

 

What is still possible from here?