Maryam Rezaei
Chrissoula Manolakaki
Panos Chreppas
Stamatis Tsagias
Asimeni TountaHelen Galerakis
As many of you know, I often say that one page is never enough to capture the soul of the people I meet. Well, believe me — one page is definitely not enough for this breathtaking woman: Helen Galerakis.
Due to the distance — Helen living in beautiful Crete — I had to hear her story through a screen. But there were so many moments when I wanted to leap through it, just to give her a hug.
A woman of tremendous courage, with an infectious sense of humor, and so incredibly down-to-earth... Her story is like one of those inspiring movies that you laugh, you cry, you feel goosebumps…I can only hope that my words do her story justice. Here it goes…
Some people spend their lives building ladders to the top.
Helen Galerakis built one, too — and then, at the very peak, she did something only a handful of people dare to do. She walked away.
Born in England, the daughter of a Greek father and Welsh mother, Helen always carried two worlds in her heart. Yet it was the bright, earthy spirit of Crete that pulled at her soul — even when life kept her anchored under gray English skies.
Tragedy shaped her early years. Her parents divorced when she was just a child, and at fourteen, Helen received a call that shattered her world: her father had died in Crete, a victim of a senseless accident. By twenty-six, after years of fighting, she would lose her mother to cancer as well.
Where others might have broken, Helen did what strong souls do — she survived. She became the "good girl," the "responsible one," the achiever.
By her mid-thirties, Helen had reached the kind of success most people only dream of.
She was CFO for a major company in the Hong Kong branch, managing millions, leading teams across Asia, living in a penthouse overlooking the city.
From the outside, it looked perfect. But inside, something wasn’t right.
"Every six months, this feeling would come back," she recalls. "It’s not quite it. It’s not quite right."
Helen had everything society told her to want — the title, the house, the car — but not the one thing she craved most: authenticity.
So, at the height of her career — when everyone else would have tightened their grip — Helen loosened hers. She packed her life into a suitcase and left. No plan. No job lined up. No backup. Just a deep, stubborn belief that there had to be more.
"If I don't get off the merry-go-round now," she said, "I'm never going to get off."
She landed in Greece, the place her heart had always whispered about. There, under the Cretan sun, something unexpected happened. Helen, the high-flying CFO, started running.
At first, it was clumsy. But something in the rhythm, the simplicity, spoke to her in a language no boardroom ever had. One step at a time, Helen ran her way back to life.
From short jogs to finishing the historic Athens Marathon, Helen kept pushing her limits — not to prove anything to anyone else, but to meet the woman she was becoming.
And then came the unthinkable: She set her sights on the Arizona Trail — 1,300 brutal kilometers through mountains, deserts, and canyons. A challenge so extreme it would demand running the equivalent of two marathons a day for 17 days.
Most wouldn’t have dreamed it. Helen didn't just dream — she did it. It wasn’t easy. Far from it.
"I developed an injury on day two," she remembers, "so I had to hike my miles instead of run. I'd be on my feet 12 hours a day, barely sleeping... but I refused to stop unless someone chopped off a leg."
Helen didn’t just finish the Arizona Trail — she shattered it. She became the Women’s World Champion, setting a record that stands as a testament to grit, heart, and an unbreakable spirit.
But the real victory wasn’t the title. It was becoming the woman who could live without needing one. "For the first time in my life, I wasn't defined by a job title, or how much money I made," Helen says. "I was just... me. And that was enough."
Today, Helen lives her truth on the island of Crete, where she founded Cretan Wild — a project dedicated to reconnecting people with nature, movement, and their own inner freedom.Through trail running retreats and outdoor adventures, she leads others along the same hidden paths where she found herself.
Helen’s journey teaches us something most of us spend a lifetime forgetting:
Real success isn’t climbing the highest ladder — it’s having the courage to leap, and trust that life will catch you.
https://cretanwild.gr
