Today we’d like to introduce you to Sheryl Boyle.
Hi Sheryl, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I didn’t grow up in a family where authenticity was safe or encouraged. What mattered was how things looked on the outside: composed, acceptable, and presentable, no matter how abusive, painful, or emotionally chaotic life actually was behind closed doors. I learned to survive by adapting, numbing, and hiding parts of myself, which eventually showed up as alcoholism, obesity, and a deep disconnection from my own truth.
The real turning point came when I finally told the truth to myself: I had to address my alcoholism and get sober. Without alcohol to numb the pain, the emotional weight of my past surfaced fully—and I had to learn how to live, feel, and regulate myself in entirely new ways. That search for healing didn’t just change my life; it gave me a path.
That path led me into psychotherapy and coaching—not as a reinvention, but as a reclamation. Today, I support women who are done performing, done shrinking, and ready to live from their authentic center. My work is rooted in lived experience, deep psychological understanding, and the belief that true empowerment begins when we stop managing appearances and start honoring what’s real.
Becoming authentic, empowered, and fully claiming my voice has shaped every part of my life and work—and now I help other women do the same, so they can feel genuinely alive, aligned, and expressed in every area of their lives.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, it was not a smooth road. I came from a highly manipulative and controlling family system that expected me to live a life that looked impressive rather than one that was authentic. I was pressured to become an attorney and pushed toward choices that were never truly mine. Control was often disguised as support, including promises around student loans that were later denied and repeatedly used to pressure me back into a path that didn’t align with who I was.
I got sober while in law school, and that clarity made it impossible to stay in an environment where truth, integrity, and emotional reality were not honored. Leaving law school meant returning home labeled as a failure, with no genuine emotional support—only performative concern designed to protect appearances. That experience made it clear I would have to find my own way.
I did, many states away. I had never been taught how to care for myself financially, emotionally or trust my own decisions, and learning to do so took time. I also had to confront patterns in my relationships, recognizing that I was unconsciously recreating the same dynamics of control, misogyny, and emotional abuse I grew up with. I made a conscious decision that I would no longer abandon myself to keep the peace or preserve a façade.
Building my life on my own terms required courage, distance, and patience. Over time, I learned to trust myself, claim my voice, and choose a life rooted in authenticity rather than approval. That hard-earned self-trust is now the foundation of both my personal life and my professional work.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Empowering To Thrive PLLC?
Empowering to Thrive PLLC is a company that offers both psychotherapy and An Empowered Lady™ coaching program, recognizing that healing and growth require different forms of support at different stages. Psychotherapy is medically necessary work that focuses on healing past adverse experiences and trauma, stabilizing the nervous system, and addressing symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and dissociation. Coaching, by contrast, is not about treating the past—it is about forward movement, strategy, expansion, and helping clients step into their goals, identities, and lives they are actively choosing to create.
I am known for my clinical background working with complex PTSD, including anxiety, depression, and unrecognized dissociation, up to and including dissociative identity disorder. Most people only know the myths about dissociative identity disorder, and many professionals never recognize it because the vast majority of individuals with it do not present it visibly.
That depth of work led me into advanced training in neuroscience, nervous system regulation, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and ego state parts work. Through these lenses we understand that we are not a single, fixed personality, but a dynamic system of parts, each shaped by experience and each carrying memory, protection, creativity, pain, and joy.
An Empowered Lady™ is the coaching evolution of this work, created for women who have already done significant healing, and know there is more life waiting for them on the other side of survival. While psychotherapy is essential for healing trauma and restoring internal safety, many women reach a point where they ask “Who am I now?”’ and “How do I live fully from here”. My coaching work exists in that gap between their healing and into their authentic life.
What sets my work apart is how I translate this deep psychological understanding into forward movement. In An Empowered Lady™, women learn to recognize and work with their internal parts: the inner critic, the overachiever, the performer, the self-doubter, the skeptic, the joyful child, not to pathologize them, but to integrate them. This integration creates clarity, self-trust, and authentic expansion rather than internal conflict.
The An Empowered Lady™ coaching program includes thoughtfully designed training materials, audios, videos, individual coaching, and evolving group experiences. Unlike psychotherapy, which focuses on healing the past and is bound by medical necessity and insurance frameworks, coaching is about growth, strategy, alignment, and becoming. It supports women in actively shaping the lives and identities they desire—personally, professionally, and creatively. For many business owners, this work is also tax-deductible, and importantly, the personal and professional are never truly separate: what shifts internally inevitably transforms how women show up in their work and leadership.
What I am most proud of brand-wise is that An Empowered Lady™ honors both depth and possibility. It is not about fixing women—it is about supporting women who are ready to live from their authentic center, expand beyond old roles, and embody the fullness of who they have already worked so hard to become.
Any big plans?
My future plans are centered on growth, depth, and meaningful impact. I’m expanding An Empowered Lady™ into a group coaching experience, creating a powerful space where women can grow together, reflect together, and step more fully into who they truly are without shrinking, masking, or over-functioning. This evolution is about community, momentum, and learning how to make lasting changes that carry into everyday living, not just insight.
I’m also preparing to launch the Authentically Empowered Radio Show, a streaming radio platform devoted to real conversations, real solutions, and real empowerment. The show will spotlight voices, leaders, and practitioners who actively support women in living as An Empowered Lady™—in their work, relationships, leadership, and inner lives. It’s designed to inspire, educate, and offer grounded support for people who are ready to move beyond surviving or coping and into living with clarity, agency, and self-trust. I’m deeply looking forward to building this platform and connecting with those who believe empowerment should be lived, not just talked about.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.empoweringtothrive.com/; https://anempoweredlady.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empoweringtothrive/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61559086053415
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@EmpoweringToThrive
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherylboyle/
