Only somewhat magical to begin with, something has happened that's made her magical abilities stronger than her own ability to control them, which ends up painting a bright red target on her to magical entities.
Being an intimidating woman her entire life, all Kalmia really wants is to feel like she fits in somewhere, not that such a thing is immediately obvious from her constant attempts to be more intimidating than she is already.
Her goal is to break away from her family and stand on her own two feet, something that might explain why she's bullheaded. While outside of her family she's quite scary, inside of it she's actually treated like a docile kitten.
She's poor and has trapped herself in her own situation by being stuck in a loop. Every step forward is two back, and suddenly being more magical than normal is more of a problem than a help.
In the end though, it's the boost in magical power that helps her, because now she's finally forced to face the fact she's not a creature that exists entirely on her own and she has to ask the Palladino family for help.
Nothing about Kalmia's situation makes her life any easier: she's a waitress at a bar that's frequented by demon hunters who end up getting her wrapped up in their messes, she's chosen to live in the dirt cheap apartment complex owned by her family in order to save money, and that same complex happens to be the epicenter of an experiment that's boosted her magic and made her a target of an energy stealing creature. If it weren't for being friends with said demon hunters, she would likely be just a victim in the background of the story. Luckily she lived, because in the end it's only because of an agreement to train her new abilities and trip to go retrieve her things that the mastermind of the entire problem is even discovered.
