The Art and Practice of Resilient Storytelling with Angela Soliz
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In This Episode
In this episode of When Bearing Witness, Maria sits down with Angela Soliz, a resilience coach, artist, and founder of Gela Road, a creative resilience agency helping people uncover their identity and build purpose-driven brands from the inside out.
Angela’s journey weaves together artistry, trauma-informed coaching, and the wisdom gained from scaling both real and metaphorical mountains. She brings a grounded and courageous approach to transformation that challenges traditional ideas of success and celebrates the slow, intentional work of healing.
Together, Maria and Angela explore what it means to tell stories from a place of resilience. This conversation serves as a reminder that stories do more than just inform. They transform, helping us reconnect to our shared humanity and the power of belonging.
About Angela Soliz
Angela Soliz is the founder of Gela Road, a creative resilience agency, and an artist, designer, educator, and trauma-informed speaker who helps people uncover their identity and build purpose-driven brands from the inside out. With a multidisciplinary background and a passion for climbing mountains—both literal and metaphorical—Angela brings a grounded, courageous approach to personal and creative transformation.
Connect with Angela Soliz
Connect with Maria
Speaking & Training | LinkedIn | Email
Transcripts
Maria Bryan:
On today’s episode of When Bearing Witness, we’re joined by Angela Soliz, a trauma-informed resilience coach, artist, and founder of Gela Road, a creative resilience agency. Angela helps people uncover their identity and build purpose-driven brands from the inside out so they can show up with more impact, authenticity, and alignment in their work and their lives.
Her approach is rooted in the belief that identity isn’t built — it’s revealed through truth-telling, courage, and a deep sense of self-belonging. We’ll explore how resilience tools can support storytellers in staying grounded and aligned with their values.
Angela, welcome to the show. I’m so thrilled that you’re here.
Angela Soliz:
Thank you, Maria. I’m so excited to be here. I love this conversation work.
Maria Bryan:
There is no better time to be honing in on resilience, and I’m here for this conversation. Your work at Gela Road is this beautiful niche that helps people become more impactful, authentic, and aligned through cultivating resilience.
I want to know your story. What inspired you to create Gela Road, and how did your own resilience journey shape its mission?
Angela Soliz:
That’s such a beautiful question, thank you. I have a real, deep understanding of how hard it is to navigate the industrial marketing complex as a creative changemaker. I have a really non-normative story myself. I’m second-generation Chicana, born in this country. I’m a trauma survivor in multiple ways and a creative artist — a Pisces sun.
I have a very sensitive heart, but also this real drive and desire to connect with people and expose the things that we don’t always see — our humanity. For every individual, regardless of what they’ve been through, it’s a battle to hold onto our humanity.
Seeing that and understanding my own difficulty in being able to tell my full story within the confines of traditional marketing is what drove me to start Gela Road. I wanted to work with impactful people with complex stories — people who weren’t being seen or understood in spaces typically run by white men.
One of the things I do outside of this is rock climbing, which has been a huge part of my own healing journey — moving beyond surviving trauma to fully thriving. I apply those lessons from the rock to resilience-building: learning how to fall, pick yourself back up, and get through hard moments. That’s what I love to do now — help business owners tell complex stories.
Maria Bryan:
One thing I love about your messaging is that identity is revealed through truth-telling and self-belonging. I think this is a journey we all go through, and I encourage folks to reach out to Angela if you’re on that journey.
I’m curious — what does this look like for storytellers who are working behind the scenes, telling other people’s stories?
Angela Soliz:
There are so many gifts in people who love to work behind the scenes, especially in marketing. You’re focused on helping other people tell their stories and carve out space.
Truth-telling, for me, is a constant internal discovery. We’re constantly asking ourselves: how do we feel? What is our truth in this moment? What is real?
When you’re working behind the scenes, one of the biggest things that goes into that is honoring lineage and lived experience. Our job in this industrial marketing complex is to break constructs and bring in different types of expertise.
The more we can help people honor their own lived experience — the expertise they’ve earned through life, not just degrees or titles — the more impactful and human our stories become. It helps us move beyond institutions and organizations and connect as knowledgeable beings.
Maria Bryan:
I love that you bring up breaking convention. You’ve mentioned it a few times. Can you give an example of what lights you up about breaking conventions in storytelling?
Angela Soliz:
Absolutely. I’ll draw from The Op-Ed Project, which I’ve worked with before. One of their tenets is that the world becomes more intelligent when it’s more inclusive.
Especially for women, when we’re asked to give our bio or talk about achievements, we default to listing degrees and titles. But I’ll use rock climbing as an example: over the last three years, I’ve trained six to eight hours a week — around 900 hours total. There are younger men who climb harder grades, but my lived experience as a woman in my forties becoming an athlete as an adult is its own expertise.
So even though I might not have the same achievements as others, what I bring to the table is no less impactful. That’s what breaking convention looks like to me — surfacing stories that honor that truth.
Maria Bryan:
I still get stuck when I’m applying to speak and have to write my bio. My learning lineage feels really important, and I think about all the certifications I’ve gotten in trauma. The lived experience and books I’ve read are probably more impactful, but the certificates hold more weight. That’s the culture we’ve built.
I love when people light up when I share other parts of myself — like being a mom, a caregiver, someone who moved from Queens to the suburbs of Tallahassee without a driver’s license. Those details give people a fuller sense of who I am and what I’ve overcome.
Angela Soliz:
Yes, absolutely.
Maria Bryan:
Especially when we’re helping others tell their stories, we tend to downplay our own expertise — especially as women, people of color, or marginalized beings. Society feeds us this way of being. Our ability to hold up someone’s individual knowledge as valuable is a gift.
Angela Soliz:
Right.
Maria Bryan:
I hope we can all rethink our elevator pitches — how we introduce ourselves and what we include in our bios. The more we talk about meaningful experiences, the more weight they carry. Sometimes, I choose to work with people because of shared lived experience.
Angela Soliz:
Yes, absolutely.
Maria Bryan:
You’ve talked about being trauma-informed and working in resilience. Many of our listeners hold space for people who’ve experienced harm. What do you wish storytellers knew about holding space for others’ trauma?
Angela Soliz:
I love this question. It’s rare to meet someone who hasn’t experienced some form of trauma. There’s a spectrum and degrees — how fresh it is, what coping mechanisms exist, or whether someone is still in it.
I wish people would move beyond the healed/unhealed dichotomy. Anyone, no matter how well-regulated, can become dysregulated. When we recognize that in ourselves, we can better make space for others.
Responding to trauma isn’t about performing care or being soft. What helps most is when someone can simply sit with me — not fix me — when I’m triggered, upset, or having a bad day. Giving me the space to return to baseline is powerful.
It’s about having patience and presence — sitting together in camaraderie.
Maria Bryan:
What you’re saying reminds me not to make assumptions when holding space. When we know we’ll be discussing specific harm, we come prepared with tools — but we might not if we’re not expecting it.
How about we just always hold space with vulnerability?
I once gave a training and decided not to include a content warning before a video because I didn’t think it was upsetting. Afterwards, a woman of color shared how upsetting it actually was. That moment reminded me that I can’t always know what might be triggering for others.
We don’t always know what someone brings into the room — something they heard, saw, or felt moments before.
Angela Soliz:
Exactly. We never really know. Dysregulation can happen anywhere — at a coffee shop, in traffic, at work. Even when we’re equipped, preparation doesn’t guarantee that triggers won’t happen.
Sometimes we assume that if we’re well-prepared, there should be no triggers — and if someone gets upset, we’ve done something wrong. But it’s not about that. It’s about holding space for whatever comes up.
Your story shows how those moments can also empower others to voice their needs. Vulnerability helps us grow and heal — without it, we can’t do either.
Maria Bryan:
This is hard work — holding space for trauma while navigating our own. We can’t work in spaces of trauma without our own trauma surfacing.
You talk about resilience tools — tell us how storytellers can stay grounded and values-aligned when navigating complex interviews and storytelling.
Angela Soliz:
For me, resilience is staying focused in the middle of a storm — being able to pick yourself up without applause when you fall. It’s about getting back up after mistakes and embracing imperfection.
Resilience tools are about regulating your nervous system, and that looks different for everyone. For some, it’s deep breathing; for others, it’s movement. Sometimes I literally need to pause and do pushups to ground myself.
The key is recognizing that everyone gets knocked off center — all the time. Resilience isn’t about never falling; it’s about coming back to center.
When we can laugh, play, and experiment, we make room for imperfection. That’s hard for high achievers and people steeped in institutional culture, but it’s essential. Anything that helps you relax, play, and let go is a resilience tool.
Maria Bryan:
I feel that deeply. Thank you.
What’s your dream for the future of creative work and storytelling, especially for those rooted in healing and social impact?
Angela Soliz:
So many dreams. I dream of a future where creative storytelling is more playful, has more ease, and feels less high-stakes. I want us to keep breaking constructs and making space for our own stories as well as others’.
Our society is deeply traumatic. My hope is that the healed/unhealed duality fades as we learn to play and embrace joy. For many trauma survivors, feeling joy again can be one of the hardest climbs of all.
Stories connect us. They’re gifts we give to one another. As this industry grows, I hope we remember that storytelling isn’t about saving — it’s about sharing.
Maria Bryan:
Angela, thank you so much for your wisdom. Where can listeners connect with you and learn more about Gela Road?
Angela Soliz:
You can find my resilience training and brand work at gelaroad.com, and my creative work as a fine artist at Angela Co. Find me on Instagram — I love connecting and having these conversations.
It’s been such a joy to be here, Maria. Thank you.