Welcome to episode 303 of Live Happy Now. This week, we're celebrating friendships and learning how to build

stronger connections. I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and today I'm joined by Molly Galbraith,

founder of the Girls Gone Strong Fitness Movement, and author of the new book, Strong Women Lift

Each Other Up.

Molly looks at how supporting one another creates a ripple effect that generates new opportunities and deepen relationships.

Let's hear more about how she discovered the superpower called friendship and how all of us

can improve our own relationships.

Molly, welcome to Live Happy Now.

Thank you so much, Paula. I'm thrilled to be here.

You know, you've got an important topic for us to talk about. And in a minute, we're going to be

talking about the power of friendship and connection. But I really wanted to talk before we dive

completely into that, like why it is so important to you to have us support each other.

So early on in my life, I experienced probably like a lot of women and girls, some instances

of bullying and actually jumping in and being a bully at times and just really wanting to feel as though I was

belonged and was part of a group and, you know, as part of the in crowd. I grew up with a lot of

scarcity in my life. So my dad was an activist and a politician. And what he was an activist for was

not super popular at the time. And my family didn't have a lot of money. And my parents divorced when I was young. So kind of a little bit of a tumultuous childhood where I had to switch schools and, you know, didn't have a lot of friends and didn't have cool clothes and, you know, had this, you know, dad that, you know, some of the other parents of the kids thought maybe

weren't suitable for their, you know, kids to be friends with me and things like that.

So I just struggled a lot growing up with wanting to belong, wanting connection, and

wanting to be part of a group of people. And I know now as an adult that I have the language,

I wanted to be loved for who I was. And I was really

struggling and missing that in my early years. Well, what's interesting is so many times

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