Speaking & Appearances
Ms. Geronimo-Galvan is a speaker, educator, and founder of Held & Seen, bringing more than a decade of behavioral health, research, and work alongside families and communities to conversations about caregiving, identity, belonging, and life after survival.
“The strongest conversations do more than inform. They help people see the system, their role inside it, and what becomes possible next.”
The work at the heart of Held & Seen.
Loving Them Should Not Mean Losing Yourself
When someone you love lives with serious mental illness, care can slowly become vigilance, responsibility, and self-erasure. This talk makes visible what caregivers and partners carry, and explores what it means to remain loving without disappearing from your own life.
- Recognize how caregiving can reorganize identity, relationships, routines, and emotional life.
- Separate compassion from over-responsibility and clarify what is yours to carry.
- Build boundaries, self-trust, and a life that includes your own needs alongside the person you love.
Belonging Without Performing
Many LGBTQ+ people become exceptionally skilled at reading rooms, managing risk, and deciding which parts of themselves are safe to show. The challenge is not simply “being out.” It is learning when that skill still protects you, and when it has started running your life.
- Understand identity management as an adaptive skill rather than a personal flaw.
- Examine conditional acceptance, strategic disclosure, and the cost of divided belonging.
- Move toward choices grounded in values, safety, and self-belonging rather than constant performance.
The Other Person in the Room
Mental-health systems are built around the identified patient, but serious mental illness rarely affects only one person. Partners, parents, siblings, and adult children often become essential to stability while their own health and emotional burden remain outside the frame.
- See how illness reorganizes whole households, not only the life of the person diagnosed.
- Recognize the invisible labor, isolation, grief, and chronic stress carried by family members.
- Reimagine family support so caregivers are treated as people with needs, not only resources for someone else's care.
What Recovery Actually Looks Like
Recovery after trauma is often described as getting back to who you were. But for many survivors, healing is less about returning and more about naming what happened, loosening shame, rebuilding connection, and creating a life that is no longer organized entirely around survival.
- Challenge the idea that recovery should be linear, fast, private, or defined by being unaffected.
- Explore the role of language, meaning-making, shame, safety, and connection in rebuilding.
- Shift the question from “Why am I still affected?” to “What helps me live more fully now?”
Built for the room you are actually convening.
Keynotes
High-level perspective with a strong narrative arc, practical framework, and memorable takeaway.
Workshops
Interactive sessions designed for application, reflection, discussion, and skill-building.
Professional trainings
Evidence-informed sessions for behavioral-health, peer-support, nonprofit, and service-delivery teams.
Panels & moderated conversations
Grounded, articulate contributions on complex human and systems questions.
Media & podcasts
Clear, accessible commentary for audiences who need context without jargon.
English or Spanish
Presentations, interviews, and facilitated conversations available in either language.
Selected talks
Signature topics reflect the current work of Held & Seen. This archive preserves Yoyce's existing conference presentations, media appearances, and prior professional speaking work.
Next on the calendar
Families, Friends, and Partners as Recovery Allies: Building Recovery Capital Through a Digital Helpline and Peer Support
Talks by conference
- 2025 La Familia como Agente de Cambio: Cerrando las Brechas en el Acceso a los Servicios de Uso de Substancias en la Comunidad Latina
- 2025Supporting Latinx Families in Addressing Societal Risk Factors for Substance Abuse
- 2025Pioneers of Change: Strategies, Triumphs, and Barriers in Latine Behavioral Health Outreach
- 2021What SUD Services do NY State Hispanic/Latino Families Need?
- 2025Building a Center of Excellence: Evidence-Based Peer Support for Families Impacted by Substance Use
- 2025Enhancing Family Peer Support with AI-Driven Training Simulation
- 2025Beyond the Individual: Empowering Families through Peer Support
- 2025Integrating AI into Training and Quality Improvement
Peer-reviewed research
Addressing a Critical Gap in U.S. National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs: The Acceptability and Feasibility of Father-Based Sexual and Reproductive Health Interventions for Latino Adolescent Males
Invite Yoyce to Speak
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