This changed how I think about mental health 🧠

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In this profoundly moving episode of How I Ally, host Lucinda Koza sits down with Navi Hughes—a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, therapist, emotional intelligence coach, and mother of five—to explore the intersection of personal transformation, emotional intelligence, and parenting with presence.

Navi’s journey is layered with reinvention: immigrant, teen mom, widow, remarried partner, and now a mental health leader and emotional intelligence educator. Each chapter of her life is marked by resilience, reflection, and a refusal to be boxed in. “I don’t know when the turning point was,” she shares. “There are micro turning points in each journey.”

At the heart of Navi’s work is a radical rethinking of emotional intelligence—not just as a buzzword, but as a life-saving, clarity-giving framework. From her experience in psychiatry and coaching, Navi noticed a troubling gap: too many people were reaching for therapy, medication, or external fixes without ever being taught how to actually feel their feelings.

So she built what didn’t exist: a blueprint for emotional literacy that helps people move beyond survival mode and into self-regulation, presence, and empowerment. “People with high emotional intelligence are harder to manipulate,” she explains. “They know their truth.”

One of the most gripping parts of the conversation is Navi’s perspective on parenting—particularly as a mother to a child with autism. “Each child got a different mother,” she says candidly, acknowledging the learning curve and growth over time. She emphasizes parenting as an invitation to ego death: allowing your children to be themselves, even when it challenges your beliefs or image.

She calls out the common pitfall of seeing children as “mini-me’s,” which can lead to control, projection, and a lack of authentic empowerment. “Your job is not to be needed. It’s to raise children who need you less,” she insists. “That’s real empowerment.”

Navi also bravely addresses the troubling cultural shift she’s witnessing in the South—a growing stigma around autism that is discouraging diagnosis and treatment. “It’s heartbreaking,” she says, recalling a therapist who told a client not to use the autism label. “That is such a disservice. You are asking someone to hide a part of them.”

Her message is clear: acceptance is the antidote to fear. And when it comes to neurodiverse children, the role of a parent is to create a felt sense of safety, not to control behavior or suppress identity.

Throughout the episode, Navi and Lucinda reflect on what it means to connect without an agenda—whether with colleagues, friends, or even children. “I just want to meet humans where they’re at,” Navi says. “Not for what they can give me, but for who they are.” It’s a philosophy that stands in stark contrast to the performative, curated culture of parenting, success, and influence.

In a world flooded with noise and fear-based narratives, Navi’s voice is a grounding force. Her call is both simple and revolutionary: tune into your body, define your emotions, and build a life rooted in emotional clarity. Whether you’re a parent, a partner, or a person navigating your own healing, this conversation is a blueprint for coming home to yourself.

The episode is not yet released, but this preview should suffice for now: