When Cristela Carrizales, an educator, actor and stand up comic from Norman, Oklahoma, was struggling to find a framework for a new solo show that would allow her to talk about her journey through infertility, alcoholism, divorce and dating apps, she started thinking about “all those Girl Scout badges we earned as children that did not prepare us for life as adult women.”

“What we need is an ‘Avoiding Narcissists badge,’” she joked to a friend, a playwright.

“There’s your premise,” he said.

That became the catalyst for the creation of “Begin Again Badge,” an 80-minute one woman show which opens June 11 as the third vehicle of the nonprofit Lifeline Productions, an organization that taps the power of theater and storytelling to openly address mental health challenges and eliminate the self censorship and isolation that often accompany living with a mental health condition.

“I started thinking about how, as a girl, all those badges were validations, visible proof that you could see it lit up across your chest,” says Carrizales, sitting in a Sarasota coffee shop a week before opening night. “For someone like me that was starved for external validation, it became the most perfect premise for how I maneuvered through my life.”

If you made a list of all the factors that might put a young child “at risk,” Carrizales would have checked off nearly every box.  A Mexican American only child born in the early ‘70s to an absent father and a mother who’d experienced a “difficult upbringing” of her own, her childhood was full of the kind of complex, chronic trauma that can lead to mental and physical health challenges later in life.

Despite the “lazer beam of attention that was my mother’s love,” Carrizales says she still felt “overlooked, invisible.” At a young age she discovered singing and acting was a way to get attention and affection. That was the coping mechanism she carried into her adult life.

After marrying, she longed to have her own baby “to pour my love into and who would love me back.” But when infertility dashed that dream, it became “the 2 by 4 that broke the camel’s back,” unleashing the suppressed impacts of a traumatic childhood, domestic abuse and an unhealthy relationship with food and alcohol.

“It started wanting to write about infertility, which I realized nobody talked about,” she says, “But the impact of my infertility exacerbated my addictions. So I thought, if I’m going to talk about the things that scare us, I’m going to talk about ALL the things that scare us.”

Still, Carrizales is quick to assure that the show is “not all sad.”

“We run the gamut of emotions,” she says. “There’s a lot of humor in it because humor is a coping mechanism and it turns out all this trauma made me funny. I like to say it’s a play meets an inspiration meets a TED talk, with a little bit of stand up comedy thrown in.”

The performance even concludes with an original song, for which a friend set Carrizales’ words to music.

This is the third stage production for Lifeline, which was founded by Joel Ehrenpreis as a vehicle for his son, Scott Ehrenpreis, an actor, to share his experience living with Asperger’s, bi-polar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety. The nonprofit’s next production, “Entangled,” was Lifeline Managing Director Will Luera’s own story, which addressed the therapeutic benefits and hazards of accessing buried emotions through theater.

“Scott’s message is powerful: ‘You are not alone,’” Luera says. “In my show the message was it’s OK to ask for help. As we moved forward, we wanted to keep hitting different stories, different perspectives. It was time to have a female story and one from a person of color.”

He and Carrizales have known each other for more than 15 years and have previously worked together professionally. So when he started reading her social media posts about a new show she was creating for the fringe festival circuit, he thought it might be the perfect next step for Lifeline, which has also expanded its scope to provide theater workshops and opportunities for anyone to share their mental health stories in a safe, supportive atmosphere..

“I was a thousand miles away looking at these social media posts, but I thought it would work so I reached out,” says Luera. “I just cast a wider net than we normally had. I hadn’t seen the show, just descriptions. But it felt right. There was a lot of kismet involved.”

Initially Carrizales thought Luera was contacting her as “Will, my friend, not producer Will.” She had never heard of Lifeline. But serendipitously, she just happened to have an upcoming trip to Florida planned. By the time she returned home, she’d agreed to take on a 10-day run at the Cook Theater at the FSU Center for Performing Arts and expand the show to 80 minutes, with the help of writing coach Jason Cannon.

“That process was even more cathartic, because I remembered so many things from my past,” Carrizales says. “This show really is about healing in real time.”

Today Carrizales is in a much different place. She is divorced, has lost over 100 pounds, was promoted at work (she is in charge of professional development and training for academic advising at the University of Oklahoma) and has recently celebrated 3 ½ years of sobriety. Last November, at the age of 53, she met her father and step sisters for the first time.

“If you had told me even a year ago I could be this happy and free, I would have smiled at you and said ‘Thank you’ and not believed you,” she says. “I’m in a beautiful place.”

It’s a place she’d like everyone who’s suffered as she has to experience and she hopes “Begin Again Badge” might be the catalyst that triggers their own healing.

“I have a line in the show I say often in real life, that I wish addiction on no one, but I wish the recovery process on everyone, because we all have things to recover from,” she says. “That’s what I want with this show, is for you to look at me and know it’s possible for you.”

“Begin Again Badge,” a one-woman show by Cristela Carrizales presented by Lifeline Productions at the Cook Theater, FSU Center for Performing Arts, 7777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. June 11-21. Matinees 2 p.m.; evening shows 7:30 p.m. Tickets $37. https://lifelineproductions.ticketspice.com/begin-again-badge