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A Former People-Pleaser Speaks Up Without Shutting Down · The soulnotskin Podcast with Jen SluMac

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Going back to reading, drinking, drugs, sex, like whatever it was to numb out the pain.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Someone has always had to kind of like be in my life to create that sense of safety and security.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: And and really, I'm like, all right, cool, God.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: I've there's like nothing left.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: I've stripped it all away.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: We don't do anything anymore.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: We're not drinking, we're not smoking, we're not relying on outside sources.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's just me.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Soul Not Skin Podcast, a virtual living room, a safe, welcoming place to land where you can pull up a chair and share stories straight from the heart.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Jen Slumack, or as my students like to call me, Miss Jen.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about the real human experience, the hard stuff, the wonderful stuff, and the messy everyday growth that shapes who we become.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Real stories, real people, real insight, becoming who we are.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Settle in and let's dive into today's episode.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Katie Downey is a woman that I met many years ago, uh, when we were both sort of navigating our own recovery journeys.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And um who she was then and all she's gone through to become who she is now is exactly uh the meat of what Sol Nat Skin is all about.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So um welcome, Katie.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I guess I'd start with something super simple.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: What was she trying to survive?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm so happy.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: So happy to be here, Jen.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: So happy to be here with you.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a hot minute since we have seen each other, since we've chatted, but we go way back, way, way, way back.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so just seeing your face and seeing your smile and just being here hearing your voice, it's like it's like a warm hug.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm just really excited to be here.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I love this question because honestly, it's been quite some time since I've really thought about that girl and who she was, what she was trying to survive.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, honestly, I think she was just really trying to survive life.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: And when I think about that girl then and who I am now, we don't survive anymore.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like that word really isn't even part of life.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's more of thriving, right?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: But I very much was very lost, very, very confused, had the lowest self-esteem, very little confidence.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And many people on the outside thought that I was very confident.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, maybe I was good at appearing that way, faking it, just kind of putting on that facade.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: But on the inside, I had no idea where I was going, what I was doing.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: I spent most of my time trying to be like everyone else.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea who I was.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, even at a young age in elementary school, teenage hood, you know, but really like now, of course, at almost 50, I realized, okay, nobody had it together.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody had it together then, nobody has it together now.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: So in my mind, though, I mean, I felt like I had missed out on this giant, like this manual that everyone else got in life.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I waited in line and I didn't get mine.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, where is it?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was like this this battle of just trying to survive life, just trying to survive and really not knowing who who am I?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Who am I?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: And also just missing that component of like, it's okay to not know who you are.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay to, it's okay to be lost.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think that was was really the piece that if if I would have known that, maybe that would have just brought brought some relief, you know?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to have all the answers.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to know who you are.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna figure it out along the way.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the journey, right?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is thinking that we are the only ones who don't know what's going on, learning that nobody does, and then becoming comfortable enough with that to decide to lean into it, right?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: When I was little, there was there was drinking, there was divorce, there was church, there was all kinds of things that sort of helped me to really battle myself with who am I?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like which pieces of this world that are presenting themselves to me am I and can I be?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what were some of those for you?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: What were some of the things that your little girl got to got to move through as a as a child?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I love, I love how you say that too, right?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because that also has built, you know, the woman that I am today.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: So helped me with my story and sharing, you know, as a mother now, my children, the people in my life, the women that I coach in my life.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, like sharing that part of my my life has been very instrumental in, you know, creating not only me, but my business and who I get to help and what a privilege that is.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, very similar.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there was a lot of drinking, a lot of brokenness on the home.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: There was divorce.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then my parents had actually divorced and then tried to get back together.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they had like, you know, my sister, which was, you know, probably like that, like she'll fix it, baby.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then got married, they got divorced again.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but there was just a lot of like chaos in the home.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of, you know, my dad was in and out, my mom was um, you know, both parents working.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it was just like there was a lot of chaos, a lot of chaos in the home.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: And what ended up really essentially happening was I kind of became in charge.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll never forget when my parents split for good.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: And we went to my mom forced us into this like family counseling.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it was my sister who's almost six years younger than me, and I'm there, and my mom, and you know, my sister's doing what like all like little six-year-olds would do is they're just coloring in the corner.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, really, it felt like a counseling session for my mom and I.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: And the counselor, after talking to us, she was like, Okay, she goes, So, you know, Robin, you know, it sounds like you're the working parent.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Katie, you are the stay-at-home mom, and Elena is the little girl.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like the role that I was kind of pushed in because my dad was in and out of the picture, and my mom was trying to hold it together, but she was very self-absorbed in her life and what was going on.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had to kind of step into this role at a very young age.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember even later in life finding my diary at like 10 years old, and I was like, today I made a casserole.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's phenomenal.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I made a casserole.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm 47.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't make casseroles today.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like that took a lot of work.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Those were like the tasks, you know, because my mom was working.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: So like I had to kind of like like the therapist said, I was the stay-at-home mom.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: I would help to get my sister ready for school, bring her home from school, you know, help her with her homework.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'd have to help to get the dinner ready.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it was a lot of back and forth.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: So, like the instability in the house as well, going from my mom's to my dad's and being the older sibling, like, you know, anyone listening that is the older child will probably identify with this, but the older child sees so much more than the younger siblings.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my sister and I, my sister and I have like very different versions.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: We have, you know, similar versions, but some very different versions of family and childhood, because what I saw before she was around is is much different than you know, than her exposure.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, like that impact of just the chaos and the fighting and the instability in the home and really created, I think, a lot of my sense of of who am I?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Who, you know, because I didn't feel safe in the home.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know, you know, really like that that structure and stability that you find, you know, in a maybe a more peaceful, loving environment.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have that in it within myself.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: That was never established.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that really kind of created this sense of I, you know, loss of identity.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know who I am.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: And also for a long time, I was really good at becoming like the chameleon, shh, shape-shifting into like, who do you want me to be in this group?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: I will, I will become that person to keep the peace and make friends and fit in.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like a survival mechanism from within the house of like, who do you want me to be?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: How do I need to be to keep the peace here, you know?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's kind of just like what carried, carried on.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's, you know, that's that's such a wonderful introduction to sort of how you had to start or how you got to start.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I interviewed somebody a while ago, and she said that she chooses to believe that um life happens for her, not to her, because it's all been to build who she is.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so you sort of said that a minute ago too.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: But as this little girl who's making casseroles at 10 and um in a therapy session, a couples therapy session with her mother while the daughter is over there coloring.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what did you learn to be true then as that little girl?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, gosh, at that time it was just honestly just so much survival.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like as I piece that together, you know, like it just, I think really one of the biggest takeaways, which for a long time I felt mad at, but then it's become because this is this is what's funny about like characteristics, right?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like sometimes how they could be such a big liability, but then also an asset as well, you know.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like my mom was it was just such like a hustle mode, a survival hustle mode that we we grew up in and that I grew up in.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was my takeaway from that exposure of, you know, like my family, my mom, my sister, and just like this mentality of just survive, go, hustle.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: And as I've grown up, I actually was very resentful over that because I'm like, man, like I feel like I missed out on some like key aspects of how to like really truly live life.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: But really, that has become a really strong characteristic of mine because I can pivot, I can think quick, I can think fast, I know how to push through, I know how to shift gears, um, you know, I know how to just keep going, you know, like quitting isn't an option.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, like we we just we just push forward.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes that backfires, though.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's not always like the greatest place to, you know, survive from.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: How do you mean?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: How does that how does that backfire sometimes?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think one of the things that I've learned in life is to also like we don't have to be in operate from like level 10 kind of place, you know what I mean?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like that's where we were oper always operating as a family was just this heightened sense of just everything's level 10.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: There was no level five, level zero.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: We hang out, relax, we're just kind of chilling calm.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: It was always at this place of like uh, kind of like you're putting out fires.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: We're not fires constantly.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: We're just always putting out fires.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: So instead, like I've had to learn as an adult how do we not let these fires escalate?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: How do we, how do we keep our fires a little bit smaller?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: How do we extinguish fires before it works?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: How do we not set fires?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need to set fires anymore.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: But but really like having that in my back pocket, I know how to extinguish a fire.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: I know how, you know what I mean?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's full-blown, five alarm kind of fire.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: I know what to do, and I can operate really well in that place.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, like eventually, like that, that, you know, moments where it kind of backfires because I've had to, you know, again, learn we don't we don't need to set fires.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need to set fires.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need to be putting fires out all the time.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: We can we can find calm and peace in life.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and I love my peace in my life today.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: No more fires.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: No more fires except for in the fireplace when I got some tea in my hand.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, you said so much.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh I can relate to a lot of that, you know.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: We had seasons of of that type chaos in my world growing up for sure.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um what you described though, Katie, uh, not just the the level 10, but when you said that, I thought of hyper-vigilance, right?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: We sort of acquire this capacity for hypervigilance, like you said, always being ready, always keeping an eye out.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: I bet you I bet you can read a room too, right?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like that?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like super intuitive.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, today my hypervigilance this is the extent of where I use that superpower, is when I'm walking my 110-pound dog because she is always on a lookout for cats, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like always on the hunt.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, oh, I can play this game.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna scan with you.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: I like see the cats before she does.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: I know how to like, you know, get her to like sit next to me.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay, cool.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm gonna use this old skill.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm only using it when I walk my dog to like survey the street for cats.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Sure, that's where my hypervigilance is is used most often today in my life.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that's great.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's wonderful.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, you it also uh is preventative, right?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a skill set that a transferable skill that if you can take that level 10 childhood, the instability, the I'm a parent at nine, uh, my mom is struggling and I need to support her.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, my little sister is flailing.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you can take all of that energy and sort of turn it into um as a productive scanning as an adult, right?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think first you have to realize that you're safe to be able to do that.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's part of what we didn't have as kids if we were doing living that way at a 10.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: When did you realize?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when did you realize that you were safe, safe enough to maybe take it down to a seven on occasion?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: I would say, yeah.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just kind of scanning.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, gosh, let's scan my 20s, let's scan my 30s.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't really truly think that feeling of safety came in until probably somewhere when I got married around that time, when I got into, I mean, we were together.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think we were we dated six years and we're married six years, you know, until yeah, it was probably about like 11 or 12 years.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it was probably, you know, one of the more safe, safer structured, stable times in my life where, you know, I was able to, you know, my nervous system kind of come down.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, of course, though, as with with everything in life, right?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like you get in these relationships and then more of your own issues are brought to the surface.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's fun.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but definitely think that that's where, you know, I feel like it was definitely like that that intro in life where I felt some safety when I felt some security within myself.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a big deal.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big deal.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Both of the things that you said.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Number one is finding somebody and a space within which you finally feel like maybe you can, you know, put down the hustle, just even for five minutes, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And just breathe.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and secondly, you said something really powerful, which I'd love to talk about for a few minutes because it's part of what um I do in my courses and in my workbook that I have.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Heal What Raised You.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's how when you're in relationship, particularly intimate relationship, but relationship in general.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, all the stuff you thought you had figured out starts coming up as a fire again.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's unbelievable the things that reveal to us that we thought we had overcome when we're in a relationship.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: What were some of those things for you, Katie?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, all of my, all of, all of the trauma, the abandonment, everything, it just just all came out, you know, like the bus stopped and just, you know, when things got hard and we had our boys, uh, is when, is when it all really started to surface.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: And my, my, my mechanism for like survival is to, well, it used to be was to, you know, just kind of like stuff it down, put the walls up.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And again, like the level 10, I'm just going to pile drive through these problems and let's just keep going, going, going, put the fires out, let's go, go, go.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Where I'm going, I don't know, but I'm going in a hurry.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's I put my walls up.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so all of that came to the surface, especially when we had kids and things just started to get more complicated and difficult.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I just started to put walls up.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: I started to shut down.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: But that, and that doesn't work.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: That does not work in life.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't work in relationships.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: If you're not communicating, you're not open, you're not vulnerable.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it was um like the next level, like you said, you know, you I had thought, you know, I came in to that relationship in recovery.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: I had stopped drinking, and I, you know, was in a 12-step program.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm better.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I was better, but I wasn't the best me, not not quite yet.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: And still, of course, there's always more versions to evolve and grow into, but I definitely had a lot more work than I think I thought at that time.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so again, like those those survival instincts within me of when something gets hard, shut down, walls up, just pile drive through, extinguish the fires, go, go, go.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's what came up.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it was uh, I was like, okay, okay.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I I see we've got we've got another level layer of work to be done here.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because we're not all better.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's really humbling, isn't it?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wildly humbling.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when you've stopped drinking or something.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've also done that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh whatever amount of time you have, if it's past like 30 days, honestly, if you struggled with alcohol, past 30 days is miraculous.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: So any amount of time past that, you really do feel like what is there left to fix, right?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: I know where my car is, I'm waking up with my spouse, I'm I'm showing up to work on time.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm not drunk dialing or texting or whatever.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it does, it feels like you've reached a whole new level.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, we have, right?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's hard work, sister.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's so hard.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you got three kids in the mix.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I mean, tell me about that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of a journey was it in discovering what you needed to look at, what they needed to look at, and how did that ultimately play?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: You mean with my with my ex?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Or the kids, yeah.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: No, I mean, that was, yeah.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and one of the greatest things too is that, you know, my ex-husband and I, who we actually live three blocks away from each other now.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's so strange.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, it is so incredibly amazing, and we work so hard at just like maintaining a really positive, co-parenting, you know, loving relationship for our kids where they know that like they they know that mom and dad talk very regularly.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: We are on the same page when it comes to love, discipline, you know, accountability, support, parenting, all of the things, we are still together.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: We're just not married.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I adore his his new wife.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she's, you know, also a little baddie who horseback rides and she's just like amazing, right?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just, it's fantastic.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's really, really amazing.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I think like really when when things kind of came down and you know, the kids were in the picture, and you have two kids under two, it's a lot.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, as a mom, a lot of women feel like they lose themselves in that process too.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: Who am I?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: What am I doing?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's actually when my next layer or next level of transformation kind of took place because I had done so much work around my drinking and, you know, my my spiritual uh way of life and you know, taking care of just some of like some, some, you know, the first part of, you know, emotional trauma and baggage that I'd been like dragging with me for years, you know, and so it was kind of like taking that next level of growth and what was to come.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like now you have these two kids in the pictures.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm struggling with, you know, as a new mom, and who am I and what is this new life looking like?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: And my ex and I had some difficulties and a lot of problems that we we weren't really addressing or talking about.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's hard when you have two little kids in the picture.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: The last thing you're doing is like, hey, let's talk about our problems.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's like, hey, let's just get these people to bed.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm exhausted, you're exhausted, you've been working, you know what I mean?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like you're just kind of surviving.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but when we landed in couples counseling, you know, there were some big moments in couples counseling.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: One, I felt the extreme discomfort within myself of how how much I shut down, of how like even a point where I I remember, and I don't remember the question, but I remember being asked a question in counseling.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I had so much defiance within me.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: I could almost feel like this tightening of my fists and my whole body, my nervous system.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted so badly to shout out the vulnerable truth kind of like answer.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I couldn't.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like that survival instinct of just shut down and protect was so physically like rigid in my body.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I hated it.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: I hated it.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, this is painful.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: This is a painful place to live.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I remember the counselor, she separated us.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: She said, I want to see you guys like have a session separately.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And she met with my ex-husband separately, and then she met with me separately.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then we came back together.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, um, you know, Katie has a lot of trauma.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Katie needs some some therapy.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it was all highlighted pointing at me, you know, like he was fine.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: No God.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're right.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: You're right.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: I do have some trauma, you know.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, at the end though, and our marriage, our marriage didn't survive.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Our co-parenting did, and we've got great kids and a good relationship.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but what the the ultimate question that I came out of that marriage asking myself was what do I need to do in order to have successful relationships in the future?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: What do I need to change in myself?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because I couldn't blame him.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: I knew it was me.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it was that moment of feeling so physically like in pain in my body, shutting down.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I knew I was like, this is it.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: This is it.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: This is the next level of growth that I have to like open up to tackling and moving forward and working through.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: And this is going to be painful.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and it really was like it was probably one of the one of the most painful things I think I've worked through because communicating is hard for me.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's very hard.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: And again, it's almost like when I was little and people, when I was younger, and people will, you know, they thought, what do you mean you don't have any self-esteem and you're not confident?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: You come off as like so energetic and happy and like you got it all together.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I'm so lost.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you you see that on the outside.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what I'm doing on the inside.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the same thing.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: People are like, oh, you show up and you you're so open and you share.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, yeah, because I don't know you.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna see you again.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm not so concerned about creating a connection with a stranger, but someone who's in my life for one, two, five, ten years, that's terrifying for you to really see me.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so, like, that was the next level of growth for me and the end of like our relationship, the takeaway, what I had to like really, you know, pause and look at what was happening within me.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm like, I that's his journey to figure out what he needs to do.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: I can't stay stuck in blaming or anything like that.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: But what do I need to do?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because I would like to be in a relationship that's healthy.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: And what am I bringing to the table?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Man, if more of us could learn to, but it takes so long to get there to realize that all the stuff that's swirling around me uh in this like tornado of dust and chaos, so much of it I could make stop.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: If if I made different decisions.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is so hard because the things that you described, the abandonment and the going inside and the shutting down, all of that stuff is so profoundly survival focused.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's so profoundly uh protective, it becomes unconscious.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it truly moves to the part of the brain where uh my breathing lives, right?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Where my heartbeat lives.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's that automatic that this is how I respond when uh, you know, I'm talking to you and you walk away.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just the little things, right?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I had an epiphany a while ago, and I got so upset.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a relationship, and I got so upset because um they went out to do something, and I thought we were going to hang out that night.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: I caved in, and I was just like all of that subconscious stuff that I learned about a long time ago that I've learned to recognize and see, I could see it, but I couldn't do anything with it until I got this like adrenaline push.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought to myself, hey Jen, what if you got the same adrenaline push?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you notice yourself shutting down instead of continuing forward, you're abandoning yourself.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Why doesn't that make me that upset?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started using that kind of how you use your hypervigilance to uh beware of the cats.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um you learn to use these things, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: God, it's such a journey.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: Which that's exactly it, right?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like it becomes, it can become like these skills that maybe we don't necessarily want, you know, that we've acquired from our childhood, you know, that can become your greatest liability.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it's it's like I feel like we're all kind of given in a way like these superhero powers, you know, and like I know where my superhero powers lie and they could be used for good.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, how are we using them today?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um before we go too much further, I do want to touch on one thing.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that is having both been children of divorce, uh, you mentioned that your first marriage didn't survive.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, my relationship with my son's uh mother did not survive.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I hated it, man.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was so disappointed in myself because I wasn't gonna do it, I wasn't gonna let it happen.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I know I can see the impact that it had on my son.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: What was that like for you?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Either for your your boys on the other end of that.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you were very fortunate that you and he were able to remain strong co-parents.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but did you have any reaction to to that saying, okay, we gotta, this is this is it, we're done.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: What was that like for gosh?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, like immediately, I I just think back like the the layers and levels of parenting guilt over the years, you know.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, first I have I have an older son who is now 27.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so and he he he is a product of of the old me, the uh just you know, survival, just trying to make it through life.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Me.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we kind of grew up together.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then, and then, you know, and then fast forward, I was like, oh, I'm gonna do it the right way.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna get married.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna, you know what I mean, like have a cute house, and then I'm gonna be a wife and a mom.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, and then I was like, oh, have a couple kids, and then I did that.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh, but still not working.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like, here we go again.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just like I feel like the the parenting guilt within my heart was it was just so compounded of just, you know, feeling like a failure.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: A failure, a failure, a failure.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: I, you know, and for I wasn't a little girl who ever dreamed of marriage, and probably because of the example of my parents and the dysfunction in the home and uh, you know, all of the chaos and stuff.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, my my cousins still to this day, they're like, oh my gosh, Katie, when she was little, used to tell everyone, I'm never getting married.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm never getting while other little girls are like playing wedding in the backyard.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, no, I will never get married.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, when I grow up, I'm gonna be a gypsy.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, there's something wild and you know, whatever.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: But right uh, yes.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: So when when going through the the divorce, you know, because my oldest son, I was never married.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I didn't I didn't deal with that part necessarily.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: I dealt with a different bucket of guilt and you know, feeling like a failure.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: With my boys, the the the guilt of divorce and two homes, it that that was really, really heavy, really heavy and hard.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: And was something that's always and still to this day is difficult to navigate is when they bring it up, they see this example of my ex-husband and I and how well we get along.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a weird little something I didn't see coming, you know, like him and I genuinely as humans love each other, love each other as parents, speak very highly of each other.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and and it's from an honest place.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have, you know, anything poor to say about each other.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I think sometimes it almost makes it a little difficult for the kids because for like a child's viewpoint is if they knew, oh, my mom left my dad because he beat her, that would be a clear-cut answer.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: My dad left my mom because she did XYZ.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: My mom left my dad because, you know, it's almost like when something really bad happens as a child, you can cling to that because it's a very crystal clear kind of answer.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: My boys, it's hard because how do you explain to a child, you know, your mom and dad had some undealt with trauma and weren't really good at communicating and eventually snowballed and affected the marriage.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, so those are all really big concepts for children to grasp.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: And they probably won't be able to fully understand that until they're older.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: So when they even still come to me, like, gosh, like, you know, but why did you divorce?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I don't, there's no clean cut kind of answer to give to them.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Which also is that's a little bit of a struggle.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very strange place to be.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um so that has brought on a little bit more guilt because then I'm like, I don't know why we divorced.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I know why we divorced, but when you ask me, I feel confused.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that's wild.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's very strange.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, but the the the guilt of you know having the two homes, and you know, even though I know we do such a good job at it, um, the the good part is the more I show up as a good co-parent and a good mom, and we, you know, continue, like that parenting guilt is nowhere near as loud as it used to be when they were little, you know, when they were little and that was really challenging, really hard.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have that same parenting guilt.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's it's and and you parenting guilt is never absolutely gone, but it's pretty quiet.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think it's like grief.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a kind of grief, I imagine.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's like grief in the the jar theory.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've ever heard that.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I knew off the top of my head whose theory it is, but that there's uh your grief sort of sits in a jar and it's takes up most of the jar.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: And not that the grief gets smaller, but your life grows around it.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and yeah, you learn how to live with it differently, right?
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: So true.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: So try.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what that sounds like to me.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I get that too.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: I get that too.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: So what's next for Katie?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where does she go from there?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you what are you what are you facing in yourself on the next journey?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because it sounds to me like you've already done a lot of work.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think that's kind of like once the divorce hit, and I was like, oh, Tada, here's the next level of growth, you know, because again, like, you know, rewind stepping into that relationship.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: And like you said, it's very true.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: When you come from a place of like trauma, abuse, abandonment, you know, chaos, all of that, and you've learned to deal with your feelings coping through external methods, whether it's, you know, sex, alcohol, drugs, you know, uh, my my coping mechanism started as a young child.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was reading, I would read for hours and hours to check out of the family, the home life, right?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then eventually that bled into the sex, alcohol, and drugs.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it was whatever I could numb so I wouldn't have to feel because I didn't like how all of it felt and I didn't know what to do with it.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then you get to that next layer underneath.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, there was like another layer that came in as a result of my divorce.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it was on like, you know, in so many different ways.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think my my this last decade has been really focused on finding because I mentioned when you asked that question of like, when and where did you feel that's that sense of like safety?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: And my answer was with him.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: And my answer today is with me.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that has been the next level because I again going back to reading, drinking, drugs, sex, like whatever it was to numb out the pain.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Someone has always had to kind of like be in my life to create that sense of safety and security.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and really, I'm like, all right, cool, God.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: I've there's like nothing left.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: I've stripped it all away.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: We don't do anything anymore.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: We're not drinking, we're not smoking, we're not relying on outside sources.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's just me.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's just me and finding safety and security within myself.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a big part of that has been really listening to like my intuition, my inner voice, which is so funny because my entire life I can scan back and I'm like, my intuition, that inner voice, like the all-knowing, like inner voice that we all have.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, she's amazing.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: She knows.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: She knows.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: I've my whole life have just chosen not to listen to her.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_02: We don't, we don't question it anymore.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: If I get the gut, the instinctual feeling, I listen.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: Are you able to say what you need to say now?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: I am.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like it, but I am.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: And again, like that instinctual child in me, she wants to shut down.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm gonna put the walls up.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: But my my biggest um like tool that I use is to pause.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: And in the past, in the past, I used to pause very differently.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: I would pause to regroup, collect myself, and dim my voice so I could say what you wanted to hear.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I mean?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was saying what you wanted to hear, to make it right, to do whatever needed to happen in that situation.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Today I pause, I'm still pausing, but I pause long enough to take like a really big, courageous breath and say what I need to say with some sort of love tact, however, you know what I mean?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like to to, you know, like I'm not uh you know, you you meet those people that just speak with no filter.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: So um that's been a big journey.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it is for a lot of us the uh knowing the intuitive self is onto something, but the the way that I thought felt needed, wanted.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: So stifling ourselves and then resenting the people who don't know what we want is a huge piece of being human that we have to untangle ourselves from, right?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, did you ever use food?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, as one of your comforts, past yeah.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 100%.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that was that goes right in there as well, you know.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and then the yo-yo dieting and chasing the quick fixes my whole life, uh, and which, you know, when when my divorce, the last couple of years of my divorce, uh, was it the last, yeah, it was the last two years, is when my physical transformation started to happen.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I had always yo-yo'd up and down with my weight.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: Gained 20 pounds, I'd lose 30.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'd gain 40, then I would, you know, it was just a constant up and down.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I was never, I was never able to keep the weight off because everything I was doing was slightly insane.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was just like running on a treadmill at 10:30 at night.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just like everything was like, you know, again, the frantic, frenzied, like quit, quit, get the weight off, you know, put the fires out, but nothing ever stuck because I my approach was always slightly insane.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just the reality of it.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I started to lose the weight and keep the weight off and food for me, I was definitely a binge eater and you know, would feel wildly out of control and then would try to control it.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just this vicious cycle that was ugly.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, same thing.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there were many times in my life where I felt, you know, I felt my body, I was so ashamed of my body.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: I felt trapped in my body.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was always like, how could I take such good care of myself spiritually and pour into this area, but physically look and feel this way?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: Why, why don't I care for that the same?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: Why don't I get it again?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was like so these moments of like, where was the manual when it was being passed out, like to everyone else on how to eat.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how to take a bite of a cookie.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, my sister, I always use this example because my sister, I remember, you know, we were like in our 20s or 30s, 20s, and she she took a bite at a party of like this cookie, and she's like, Oh, that's good.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: She's like, I'm full, no thanks.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, No thanks.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: No, who says that?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, even if it would have tasted like garbage, I would have eaten the whole thing.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like there was no off button at all.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: So um, that eventually led me into my own personal transformation, losing the weight, keeping it off.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then that was my like jumping off point when I had my boys and I was going through the divorce.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like I felt like I was at this turning point.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, well, I could go back to corporate America that I hate.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: I hate it, I hate it so much.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Other people love it.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: I can't do it.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like, oh my gosh.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and like we're we hook her right and we go chase our dreams.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, that's what I did.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because I thought if I if I could struggle as much as I did, and as much as I have with food, eating, exercise, and lose the weight, keep it off.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I can help other people do the same thing.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: We take our journeys, particularly the challenging piece, like tangle them with love, and they become our greatest ass.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um your story is so valuable because of the work that you do now.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'd love you to tell us about that.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I know you've got your own company, Katie Fit.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you can you tell us about that.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and again, it that all started from my transformation.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I, you know, it's it's my my jump into my business.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: I had this idea, but again, the the layers and levels of like growth that needed to happen.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: It just it took it took a long time.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started, I started teaching uh group fitness classes, you know, and just to get some experience.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that was wildly fun.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: I have an abundance of energy.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's like one of, it's one of my superpowers, right?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got tons of energy.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I love teaching classes and get in there.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like the hype train, I feed off their energy, vice versa.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's great.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I always knew, so I like I was working at all these different gyms, teaching these classes, but I had a bigger vision in my head of what I wanted to create.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think I've been, I've been at it like 10, 10-ish years, 10, 12 years now, something like that.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, teaching classes, working in fitness and health, and just building, building, building, building, building the bricks.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so I didn't just jump into creating my business.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was, you know, I jumped into let's get some experience.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: Really, what this has been is like been a giant process of building my confidence up of you can do this.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can absolutely do this.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because when I stepped in, I was like, who do you think you are?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: Who do you think you are?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: You think you're gonna go do this?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know, you don't know anything, you know?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the more I grew in the fitness industry with these gyms, boutique gyms that I was working for, the more my confidence grew, the more my my skill set, my coaching abilities, all of my past shut down, put the walls up, enable to communicate, all of that became very valuable because as a coach, I have to be really loving and honest with how I coach other women.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: I have to be able to communicate clearly.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't have the option of shutting down uh in my in life at all anymore, especially in this profession.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's just been like a really incredible building block, uh, building process of, you know, finally getting into my business and just growing it from there.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: So as I as I gained experience though, working in these gyms, I knew I'm like, okay, I could do this.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: I can 100% do this.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh launched Katie Fit originally as whole health fitness, because I didn't have a better name.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, that sounds nice.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then I even sound nice for you.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm nice.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, because like you, you you reach these moments when you're trying to build something where you're like, if I sit and think about a name any longer, I'm never going to do anything.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I could sit and think about a name for six years.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm just like, whatever.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: At this point, I like the name, let's go with it.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: I had that name for about Three years.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there's nothing like being like an entrepreneur that forces you to like take action and grow personally.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, literally, that's just what it's it's just like take the action.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have the answers, who cares?
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Take action.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: Show up.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: The rest is gonna follow.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: You're struggling in this business, you know why?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Because personally, you have to grow.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay, here we go.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: We're growing, we're we're doing the thing.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so the beginning of 2020, whatever, or it's 2026.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: So technically, the beginning of 2025, I went fully on my own.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: I quit.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: So even though Katie Fit has been running in the background, yeah, it was really cool.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've just been, I've been juggling both things.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was teaching fitness classes while kind of like launching my own thing.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd been doing that for years.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say at least five years.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: But it was such a struggle because I'm like, I can't fully grow this thing when I'm constantly running to teach classes and working at these gyms.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: So it was just like that ping-ponging.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: I finally uh just pulled the trigger and did it.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, here we go.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna do it.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's do or die.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: And was I ready?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_03: But was I ever gonna be ready?
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, no, I didn't, you know, you hear some people, they're like, well, you know, I saved up three months of salary and then I left my job so I could launch the business.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I saved nothing.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: It was just the time.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I it's like it's just the time.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to jump and go and do it, and you got to take a lot of action.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of action.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: And um, my mom, you know, when you said starting out, you were like, Who, who do I think I am?
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: type thing.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: Which that imposter syndrome will really come up for a lot of folks.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's also a human thing, right?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it's real and it's powerful.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um Katie, my mom uh passed away in February.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to be with her on and off for the year before she died, um, most notably in the last two months of her life.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: And dementia to kick in.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember one of the times I was sitting in the hospital with her, um, she was still pretty much there.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but physically she had gone through chemo and radiation, all sorts of things.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: And she was just looking weaker and weaker.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: But she looked at me and she had been saying this for a couple of years.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Honey, I think I'm getting more forgetful.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Bill says, her husband says I'm not, but I feel like I am.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Long and short, we're sitting in the hospital one day and she looks at me very clearly.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the most clear was the last time she looked at me that clearly, and she said, Honey, I'm forgetting things.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be like my mother, who was completely gone by the time she passed.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: She said, Are you scared for me?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I told her, I said, You know, mom, I don't know what that's like.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but know that I will be here and that I will love you and I'll be patient and I'll be kind and I'll take care of you.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Okay, and she was just looking at me so intensely, Katie.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've never been more clear that as my mother was losing her faculties, that I had a responsibility to use my voice.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: I have never been more clear.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so much so that I want to just sort of make that call to anybody in the audience, right?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just a little bit more today than yesterday.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I imagine a lot of the folks that you help, I'm guessing 35 and over females primarily.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine a lot of them step into the work asking for your guidance, not so sure that they can do it.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, 100%.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: I love that you just shared that because that's so powerful.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because like really, I think that like that's that's like the greater calling of like our life, right?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like we we have this one life.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: What is that saying?
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: What are you gonna do with this one your one your one wild and precious life?
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: Is some quote like that.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are you gonna do with your one wild and precious life?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think that we have these greater callings and they may change over time, but we need to be, we need to be listening to them.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: We need to be adhering to them, we need to at all costs, you know, every day, every day.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: How are you showing up?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: How are you using your voice?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like you have this moment, this epiphany, like how powerful is that?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the same thing with my my business.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this is it.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: I spent years like with uh working with someone, I mean, taking tests, reading books, taking, you know, again, tons of tests basically on what is my purpose?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like that was literally the books, the guidance, the coaches I worked with, the tests and the quizzes.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: What is my purpose?
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: What is my purpose?
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: What is my purpose?
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so funny because I'm like, you know, you had this moment with your mom, and you're like, this is what I need to be doing.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: This is what I need to be doing at all costs, at all levels, every day using my voice, right?
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, that's the answer.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like when I stepped into my coaching, that was the call as well.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, every day I have to remember that I'm getting up to do that, to serve and help other women.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not just like the weight loss and getting fit and strong, it's everything that goes under.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's the self-worth, the self-esteem, the building the confidence, building the trust in yourself, empowering yourself.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and like I have to continue to fulfill that in my life, that calling, so I can help the next woman feel that way in her life.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I love to hear I lost five pounds, I lost 10 pounds, you know what I mean?
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: Or like, I do want to see my bicep.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this is all exciting too.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: I love that stuff uh for sure.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's our goal.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: But really to be able to help build up other women and see them trust themselves, like themselves, love themselves, feel a little more empowered than where they started, that is that is it.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: That is what I'm here for.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I love that you just shared that though.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: That just like really like hit because that's been like my uh my my driving force lately is like it's it's I can't I can't keep my purpose, passions locked inside because I'm afraid.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: I this is what I'm supposed to be doing in life.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have always had resources that many people do not have.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have a responsibility, I feel like, to raise the voices of those folks, to raise um the consciousness of the rest of us, to to bring uh humanity to sort of the others, right?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and to do what you're doing, Katie, is so important to empower women because this world is a different place if there's more empowered women.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, 100%.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for what you do.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, thank you.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you for spending this time with me.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this has been so wonderful.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe we'll talk again soon, huh?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Jen.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're welcome.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Katie.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: All right, have a wonderful day.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: You too.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, bye.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: If this conversation sparked something for you, or if you want to dive deeper, head over to soulnotskin.com and take a look around.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: Grab a copy of the book, Soulknot Skin, free resources, or get on the wait list for our next workshop.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you'll pull up a chair next time to hang out with us again.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're figuring out this world and ourselves at the same exact time, growing as we listen to the stories of others.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's keep getting to know each other.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: After all, we are in this together.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: See you next time.