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Beyond a Whisper with Catherine Sipher · The Bridges and Beacons Podcast

• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bridges and Beacons podcast.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kelly Meyerson, and I'm here for this wonderful episode with my friend Catherine.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we have been trying to have this podcast for a while.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said to her, sometimes the timing isn't right.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And things happen.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I just have to trust that these conversations happen in right timing.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I will be telling you something in a little bit that will prove that that is true.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: But before I talk with Catherine, let me just tell you a little bit about her.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Catherine Cypher is a Boston-based poet, author, and journaling guide helping women reconnect with themselves through the written word.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Her poetry memoir, Barely a Whisper, invites readers inward, while her journaling circles create space for clarity, courage, and authentic self-expression.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Catherine, thank you so much for joining me.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And again, patience with all the reschedules.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I so appreciate it.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know my listener appreciates the experience of being a full-time mom, entrepreneur, teacher, coach.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're wearing a whole lot of hats for a whole lot of people.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely we we understand this experience very well.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I I love that your focus is journaling.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's become kind of one of those things that people just say now, like, oh, you should be journaling.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: But for someone who has never cracked the binding of a new journal and put pen to paper, I imagine that could feel really intimidating.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and maybe like, well, what am I supposed to put on this page?
• 2:47
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I felt the first time I started journaling.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was walking through divorce and the deconstruction of my faith all at the same time.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And a friend said, Why don't you start journaling?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think she was, you know, probably rightfully so, kind of getting annoyed with listening to me like jump on her.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know where to start.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was, it was terrifying.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember opening up the, yeah, exactly, a blank notebook and then going, Okay, now what?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now what?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I just happened to stumble across across.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I had just listened to the book Women Who Run with Wolves.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she had talked in there about like the crosses that we have borne throughout our lives, like those little things that have kind of created little hash marks against us, or like like I almost see like a kind of like a like you're like you're stranded on a desert island and you have a stick and you're keeping track of how many days you've been there.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: But like those kind of things that have just like created little pain points across your life.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started with that.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that that's like the best place to start, but I didn't know where to go and I was already going through so much.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I just started there and I went back to like my earliest memory of some form of wrongdoing and just kind of worked my way through just so I could visually see it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Later, I came across the book The Artist Way by Julia Cameron, and she talks a lot about morning pages.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I use that as one of my guides too.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so at that point, my journaling became okay, what was today?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: What am I facing today?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: What was yesterday?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it became a way of documenting my surroundings and my environment.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then gradually it became more of my inner thoughts and what I'm feeling.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I have more of a process and I can go through any number of ways of journaling.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: But absolutely, that very first time, it's scary because you don't know where to start because it's so big.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: It could be anything, it's so blank.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes we have drama, maybe with little T or big T from our English people teachers.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is how to write, this is how to do it right.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: We feel like maybe it needs to be eloquent or it has to be right, whatever right is.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also it it can be scary to actually look in.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do we really want to see what's in there?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if we pry that door open with our with our journaling, we might discover something we either didn't know was there, we don't want to look at, or something that is gonna make us deal with it in a way that we don't really want to.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so those can all be reasons that that blank page can be super scary.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so true.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think about that.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think about trauma, you know, big T, little T.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about trauma a lot these days too.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I love this.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love that the these words are used so frequently for me.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is nervous system, you know, as a as somebody who works in a field where I've studied the nervous system, worked on sensory processing with kids as an occupational therapist, you know, you can sometimes be concerned like, does this person really know what they're talking about?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, do they know what they're talking about in terms of trauma?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we've talked about it so much, but but it's different than somebody actually putting something on a page that was traumatic, is traumatic, and they don't necessarily have the capacity or the support or the strength to face the truth.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder too, I don't know, this is just me wondering, would anything come out of us that our mind didn't consciously know we were ready for?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: I that's that that's more a hypothetical.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I have an answer or you would have an answer to that, but it sounds like you were ready for this process, like you were saying, this reclamation that you were going through.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: That seems right.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: I have no knowledge behind that either.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if anybody does, but that seems like that would be right.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because I can tell you hands down, I was not ready for it a moment before I did it.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I mean, it could be.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I always do tell people if you're gonna journal, make sure you do have people that if something comes out, you've got a support system beside your journal.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: But that being said, I do think that yeah, maybe we're we won't journal anything we're not ready to look at in some way, shape, or form.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we'll be editing before we even put it on the page.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's a lot.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot that you were trying to move through.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so funny because I'm sure now that you're deep into your journaling experience, do you do you have to hold yourself back from shopping for journals like I do?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm actually I I want the most boring journal I can find.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not one that likes the fancy, pretty ones because I think I get in my mind that if it's fancy and pretty, then my words and my handwriting needs to be fancy and pretty.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know, I've got a mental block on that.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I love journals.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're beautiful.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, wouldn't that be so inspiring?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: But then it never actually is.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I I use these, I use tiny little like refillable.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: These ones are your numbers, but they're like dot matrix.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I carry around the traveler's journal, and I you can put as many of these little ones in here as you need.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then I have a journal for like almost everything, like different aspects of my life.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that way I can just refill, I can carry my big journal around with me.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got one for business, I've got one for my yoga teaching, I've got one for my personal life.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have one where I keep track of just adventures I go on and places I go and things I see.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I got the journals.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: But that way I can replace, but for some reason, something about it being so simple allows me to be my purest and be my most unedited.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I personally like the dot matrix because it allows me to, if I wanted to actually draw something, it allows me to also get off the dotted lines, the lines a little bit.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm writing a little bigger because I'm angrier or I'm like whatever, like I don't feel as like confined by the the lined pages.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if I'm feeling a little more controlled, you know, I can take my time and write a little prettier, or I like I said, I could draw things.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Or I feel like then I could write not just across the page, but up the page, or I could create charts if I wanted to, or I can create maps.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I'll do mind mapping, and I just like having that freedom of being able to use the pages however I want.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm geeking out on this.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is really exciting.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so first of all, that you have multiple types of journals.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's exciting for me.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was doing a pretty good job because I did, I did a few years ago, my my friend and I got each other, like one of us got each other a really nice refillable pen and the leather bound, and then you can just, you know, replace the the insert, right?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it is lined.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I like it because it also has it.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You you put your date, you can number it, like if you've ever done like a bullet journal and number things, and you can mark what the weather was on that day, which I didn't do yet for today.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So let me do that today.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was very sunny by me.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: How about by you?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Was it sunny as well?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sunny, windy, sunny but windy.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Windy.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: The wind has been crazy.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can put the day, like mark the day of the week, which I I kind of like nerd out on that kind of stuff sometimes too.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I like to go back, like it was a sunny day, it was a Wednesday, you know.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: I keep track of that in my adventure journal.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I keep track of the weather and like yeah, where we went, sometimes how many miles we traveled, you know, those kinds of things.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and again, we were we were talking about your human design a little bit before we started recording.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that makes a lot of sense.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: The data, the numbers, the information that you would like to keep track of all that.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have to, I'd have to really feel into it.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do I have the organizational capacity to have several different journals for different purposes?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I have like my journal for meetings and talking with people.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I have like the journal I write in.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have one that's like an everyday for five years where I just write a little something every day.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, those are cool.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Then I have my morning journal for like the plan for the day, the feeling, all that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Then I have a notebook for context.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm like you are with calendars though.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I have quite a few calendars.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I yes, I do have a like a daily agenda notebook that's already kind of pre-set up to me.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I that's more like my calendar that I kind of operate on, like what my tasks are for that day.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's different than my my journals.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I was finding that I might have uh like a business brainstorm, but I actually want it in the same physical notebook as all my emotions.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Makes sense.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: But what if I what if I'm out in public and I'm like having my coffee at a cafe and I have a brilliant business idea and my business journalism with me, like panic.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: My biggest fear in life actually seems to be right now being someplace without a pen.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So every bag I own has like four or five pens in it.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because every time I leave the house, I'm like, well, what if I don't have a pen?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I better grab one.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I'm at home, I'm like, where did all my pens go?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where did my pens go?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you have kids, that's where they went.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's actually neat.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that it helped me like break it down, or there's been different times since my journaling has started where I want to think about a specific topic.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I want to be able to re-I want to find those thoughts again on that topic.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: So if I knew that I was journaling about something, I'd put it there.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, sometimes journaling starts one place and you end up in a place that you didn't expect.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's different.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I'm in my writing group and I know I'm sitting to write, or I know that there is a topic or a prompt or an essay that needs to come out of me, I use a completely different journal.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: But when I'm writing my normal stuff, like of course, stuff comes out that sometimes ends up becoming a piece of poetry or is published down the road.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes it can be hard to keep track of all the different journals or like find the thing.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I know I had a thought and I put it somewhere.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Which journal is it in?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: It just, it just helps me to kind of separate them out a little bit that way.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I'm assuming then you've got lots of complete journals that are full.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So do you have like a system?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is it chronological?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a bin and you just put them in there and come back when you want to?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a giant bin with a whole bunch of these inserts in them.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing that I, the only thing I do really to organize it is I put on the the cover, the start date and the end date.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: So at least if I wanted to try to explore a specific time period in my life and I know that I'm hunting for it, then it happened in April of 2021, right?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can maybe go find it.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the only system I have on that one.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've I've tried the the bullet journaling.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I what I've settled on, you know, for myself is these little tabs.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So like if I uh like a retreat that I went on, you know, my podcast episodes that I've done, like somebody that I've spoken to, I'll I'll tab it and then I have it if I wanted to go back to it.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I I have bins of journals, and I just moved just a couple months ago.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to go through and and purge things.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: The journals were not something that got purged.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I just came across, I couldn't find my journal from college, and I really wanted to find it because I'd written some poetry in there that I wanted to revisit.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I did find it just last week.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: We were going through Simbins, and I was like, this is where I put it.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: So so yeah, so uh I have this vision of being able to organize them in some way, but there were time periods where I was literally journaling.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, 20 pages in a day wouldn't have been like an exaggeration, right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: If I was really moving through some stuff COVID times, like there was a lot of time at home to reflect and go through things.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I was already into some transitions in my life at that point.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I was already deep dive into journaling and writing poetry at that point in time.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been interesting to watch my ebb and flow because I didn't start journaling until it was November of maybe either the tail end of November or the beginning of December 2019.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it was before COVID hit.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't stop at that time because for me, at least where I had been in my life and the transition I was going through, it was as if I could not think unless I was writing.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had no access to my thoughts unless it was coming out in ink.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I was processing so much, and it was just like spiraling.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: The only way to find words for it was to channel it onto a piece of paper.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I was journaling at every point I could.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the kid was in the bathtub and I'm sitting on the toilet and they're playing with their rubber duckies and I'm like frantically writing.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, that like you haven't fine?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna keep writing.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that was literally what I was doing.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then moments, you know, it's interesting because I'm not in that level of crisis anymore.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't need to write quite as frantically, but I still find myself turning there if, you know, like for everything.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I'm making a decision or I'm really processing something, I'm there.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I also go there just to record the regular things too, because sometimes I need that check-in that says, okay, yeah, where am I right now?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: My if if I need it, I've got a list of prompts that I can use daily.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't use them daily, but like I can go to if I feel stuck.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And like the first one is what am I feeling today?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like I am feeling dot, dot, dot.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and that can get me started if I feel stuck or feel like I need to explore.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not even sure what's going on.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with that question.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: So repeat that prompt again for the listener because I know they're gonna want to they're gonna want to borrow that one.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: That one's just today I'm feeling.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's simple.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, today I'm feeling to often start with tired because today I'm feeling right.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can go there.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Another great place to start is like yesterday was or yesterday held, or today is going to hold, or if you're writing at the end of the day, like today held.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes journaling can be, yeah, like a record on what happened in your day.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes if we start just recounting what happens, if we're trying to get to the emotions under it, just starting with, you know, today was a tough day, or today I did this, and then you're there, there's all these emotions that can come out if that's what you want to process and where you want to go with it.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm, I love that.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me more about your poetry.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: When did you start writing poetry?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: How did that come about for you?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Journaling.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea I was a poet.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: I still can feel very insecure about my writing if I let myself go there, because I didn't take advanced English through all of my schooling years and felt like I was a slower reader and not a good writer.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I took all the other advanced classes, and so it was like my deficiency, you know, like the the topic I was the weakest in.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: But as I was journaling in that time of crisis, I what started to come out, I guess, was poetry.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't even realize that that was what it was.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Things just came out.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it was through that journaling process that I realized that, you know, some changes needed to come in my life.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that I somehow decided I wanted to do was to use my words to help encourage women.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so part of that process for me was getting a writing coach and I joined a writing group.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And every time they gave us a writing prompt, poetry is what came out, not prose.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I had no idea.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the writing coach is like, Catherine, that's poetry.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are you kidding me?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because my poetry is free verse.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I know I'm not a rhymer and I don't do the rhythm and like all the cool stuff that people can do.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: But she told me it was poetry, and I was like, okay, well, we're just gonna roll with it.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, I didn't, I didn't know that I was I was a poet and that I was writing poetry.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: It just it was literally just my journal entries.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I find sometimes that what I start writing as a journal entry evolves into a poem.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And like and sometimes I'm sort of chasing the joy and excitement of finding the right words that feel right together.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes I like to I play with alliteration, I like to play with rhyming the end of one line to the beginning of the next.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like mine also is not, it's not very formulated.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, like what you were saying before about how we've been so conditioned to believe that good writing looks one way, or like you were just saying, like I wasn't in advanced English, so mine might not be good enough.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, what a shame.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: What a shame.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: How many writers have we missed out on enjoying because of that notion of like there being like a true measuring stick for what is good writing or not?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now I feel like with with the dawn of AI, and I mean that could be a whole other conversation.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And people using a lot of AI for their writing.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now I feel like those things that were edited out of us that made us feel like, oh, well, I just need to get in line with the right form and format, were really the things that make us stand out as an individual writer.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And now I find myself not censoring my writing.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like I, Mrs.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Jones, you know, 12th grade English.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Your sentences are too long.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like I mean, and listen, Mrs.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jones was a wonderful teacher for those students of Mrs.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jones.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: She was a wonderful teacher.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when I went to college and we had to write two to three page papers, I had done so much practice my senior year of high school.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a breeze for me, super easy.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate her.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, I was always a creative writer, whether I was writing a serious paper for science, like I would always want the words to be fun.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that was my natural existence for them to kind of come bouncing out of me.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I did take a poetry class in college.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember being in that poetry class, and this, you know, you know, middle-aged white man was like, Yeah, you can't do it that way.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's not right, you know.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't, he didn't know.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know, we forgive him.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know, you know, he had a curriculum to follow and and a syllabus that said we were gonna learn to do certain kinds of poetry, but it kind of edited out some of the joy to to have to be like, oh, you should pick a different word for that.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: It should be something different.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not, I don't really follow those constructs anymore.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, I'm like, it's just gonna be what it's gonna be.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't even know that I have control, to be honest.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: What comes out onto the page?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: It just comes through me.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's what mine is.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't, I don't really play with words.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like a lot of other poets do.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe it's I don't know, really simple, but my goal is to get the emotion on the page.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll use the words that seem to share that emotion.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I play less with the literary devices and more about how I can explain what I'm feeling right now and get it on the page.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you went from being someone who had never cracked a journal binding and written in it to discovering that you're a poet.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so, how did you then move into having your own book highlighting all of your poetry called Fairly a Whisper?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it was in that writing group where poetry kept pouring out at me week after week after week.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I was saving them and putting them in Google Docs and all that.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I said to my writing coach one day and said, Rebecca, like I've got X number of poems.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember how many it was.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do I do with these now?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I just don't even why what am I doing?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do I do with this?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Well, why don't you just throw them in one document instead of them living in all their individual documents, throw them in one document and we'll take a look at them together and we'll just see what you have.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's see if you have a collection, let's see it, let's just see.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you have nothing, maybe you have something.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I did that, I actually printed all of them out and then spread them out on my bed and sat there for a couple of hours.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I I organized them and put them in the order of the voice of the author, obviously it was me, that was the weakest at the time.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I put them at the beginning and then gradually allowed them to gain their strength, the poems threw them all in one document, and pretty much that order stuck through.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then I gave it to her.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, You don't have a collection of poetry here, you have a poetry memoir.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: You are telling a story.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: There is an arc here that you are telling through poetry, and so that's how it came to be.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I really wanted to put myself out there, claim the word writer for myself, and that's the way that I did it.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's so amazing.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: So amazing that you had someone who recognized that and could mirror that back to you.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, really like stood there and said, This is a memoir.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: You have a memoir.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't just say, Oh, this is great, this is nice, but like really just gave you those words and that affirmation.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I didn't even know what a poetry memoir was.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what the heck's a poetry memoir?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so hearing that, like it made sense because some of the poems, I mean, they might not make sense by themselves sometimes, or they might not have the impact that they have if they're not in the full storyline arc.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: So in there, you'll see, yeah, the quietest voice, the one that's barely a whisper, the ones like, I don't even know if I can hear you, like, what's going on to the place where, like, there's there's some parenting poems in there watching me as a parent try to figure out how to help them when I'm still struggling to help me in the midst of these massive transitions we were going through, and like the fallout and and the tears and the questioning to you know, where I finally have the the voice and the the agency to really own who I am at the end.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, some of those poems might feel a little weird if they're just by themselves, but they there's an arc, yeah, yeah.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love that, I love that so much because so many women are going to relate to that, that you know, and maybe it's not the same story as you're you know going through your journey, detaching from your faith and background, going through divorce, you know, figuring out who you are and what you want out of life, right?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that that that arc going from the whisper to the like strong speaking voice is something that I think a lot of women are hoping for to be able to move through to that that level of I love the the word agency, I think being so strong in themselves.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the interesting thing, and I I put it, I think, in the preface of the poetry memoir was that they they they aren't in the book in chronological order, right?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: They are placed in order of the weakest to the strongest voice.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there were times when there might have been a stronger voice earlier in the chronological order that is in the end, or one that has more of the questioning that maybe was towards the end of end of the journey, placed more in the middle.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's important because our life and our transition that what I call our rebecoming is not linear, it's not just going like this, it is the rise and the fall through it.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: So in my book, I do share a lot of that rise and fall.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: And in some of the poems, you can hear it, you can hear the struggle throughout the poem itself, which I think is helpful because sometimes we we think that we have to have arrived or we have to get there, wherever there is, or we see people and they're giving their beautiful, like, this is who I was, and this is who I am now.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: But how often do we hear and see the raw middle?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that messy middle.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: We all I feel like we want to see that because we want to be able to relate and feel seen through somebody else's vulnerability.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was making me think of like chutes and ladders.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like the journey is like sometimes you're climbing up that ladder, sometimes you're sliding down the chute.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard it described like that that personal journey and growth as more like a spiral that you're climbing up with, you know, clear walls.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you're coming back and you're revisiting the same thing, but it's not you're not in the same place.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: So so your growth is cyclical in that way.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: So either of those are that's those are the two things that came to mind.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, healing is not necessarily linear.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I love what you shared about, you know, writing and like healing through that writing process.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: I would find sometimes, like if I was feeling a certain way, you know, if if my emotions were high, I would just kind of like start writing from that emotional place.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I would almost write myself through to the end of the healing.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like by the end of the poem, I would have resolved something there.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it would be something then that I would be like, oh, okay.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of healed myself through that poetic journey.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: My man, I'm feeling better.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a good chunk of my poems did that.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: I had to edit them for the poetry collection because the can't all end on the high.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that is definitely what I do.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And even one of my journaling prompts, again, if I'm if I feel like I need the help or like I'm doing a rapid-fire journaling prompt, one of my journaling prompts is a word of encouragement.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I call it a woe.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: What is my woe today?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: And often I that is like my higher self, my future self.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's some kind of almost exterior voice that gets channeled through me that ends up being my cheerleader for the day.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think there's something about journaling through the muck that somehow we eventually get to that voice that's like, you got this, don't give up.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it might not be that day, I'll be honest.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: There were days where it was just life is hard, life is hard, life is hard.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't seem to get out of that storyline.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: But usually there'd be some little nugget of hope or truth that would pop in somewhere that would point me towards the next steps.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love that so much.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is like asking, do you have a favorite child?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a favorite poem that you've penned, or or maybe a top five, one from your top five?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: One I like to share a lot is called I'm at the threshold.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's this idea of like, what am I gonna do?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have a choice at the threshold.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's one, that's one that's in the book.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: We'll just say that.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: But as you were talking about that other idea, I do have one, I don't know where it's published right now, but about this idea of a labyrinth.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: I had an experience where I walked through a labyrinth in this random place nearby.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I noticed that I had traveled through most of the labyrinth and I kept going forward, right?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then at some point, I'm like nearly back at the beginning.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was parallel to the beginning.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like, why how am I back at the beginning if I've never turned around?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I can see the beginning, but it's just a slightly different perspective.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it ties into what you were saying there about this the spiral, our journey, our growth experience.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it feels like we're going back, even though we never went back.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're still going forward, but we've got this wealth of experiences now that we're carrying with us that now, even when we're running parallel to what feels so similar, we can see it with a different perspective and then maybe take some different steps.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, still going forward, but I've got a poem that kind of plays around with that idea as well.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Would you happen to have any poetry at hand that you'd be open to sharing with the listener?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: I can read At the Threshold or the one that's about from the title of the book, Barely a Whisper.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: How about At the Threshold?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: That that is definitely piquing my interest.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's called At the Threshold.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: A doorway, an entry point, an exit point, a change of scenery, a going, a coming.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: We all make a choice at the doorway to go or stay, to enter or to remain, to cling to the past or to enter the new.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Time to make a choice.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Time to find the joy, to heal, to grow, to find the hope.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I must walk through.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: At the doorway I stand, still hurting, still clinging, yet desperate for more.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm beginning to trust my voice.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: I choose to move the foot, shift the mind, take that step, leave the past, unlock a new future, open the door.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think what I love most is I feel the imagery of that, that literal standing at the doorway, you know, and getting ready to take that first brave, terrifying step into something new.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've all been there.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: All been there.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we will all be there again many times.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: Many times.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you have some exciting news to share that I I teased about at the beginning, but you have just recently published a companion journal that goes along with Barely a Whisper.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us about that?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: So Barely a Whisper came out and it surprised me with how well it did and the responses that I got from it, and was thrilled that my words were making a difference in helping people feel less alone in their journeys because that was the goal.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I was thinking, what else can I do to help people not only feel less alone in their journey if they read along my poetry along with their journey?
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: But what if I gave them a way to engage with the poems as well?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: And knowing that my poetry came literally out of my journals.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like I could show you the journal page that these poems are on.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, what a better way than to create a journaling companion guide to go along with a poetry memoir.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did, I don't have my actual pretty author copy yet because it's that fresh.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: It still says, not for real sale on this one, but it's available on Amazon right now.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: It came out last Wednesday.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: And in it, you will find a little bit of information about every single poem, like the history, what was going on in my life, kind of behind the scenes picture of what was happening in my life, and then a couple of journaling prompts for every single poem so that you too can not only hear the poems and explore the poems, but like really get into that yourself.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that is something that I also do in my journaling circles is we gather together online.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: I root us in a little bit of seated movement, meditation, and then I offer a piece of my poetry as inspiration, and then we journal in silence.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then with journaling prompts that I offer, it's always like take or leave.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is just kind of an extension of that idea as well.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I give some tips in the beginning of how to journal, how to get started, what to do if you run into a journaling prompt.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, that prompt is not for me.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: Totally fine.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can always explore why this prompt is not for me.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, becomes a journaling prompt.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why am I so reactionary against using this prompt?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Can sometimes like bring up some interesting things too.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really excited to have that out in the world too.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, I think that it will it could potentially make an even bigger impact for the person that's reading the poems.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: So what does all this mean to you?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you think about like your journey, like where you started the first time you put pen to journal, to where you are now and how much you're using this as a process for your own continued healing, well-being, you know, collecting information, like what does that feel like to have all that?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's beyond my wildest dreams.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you had asked me like six and a half, seven years ago now, that this is where I would be, I would never have believed you.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Never, never would have believed that I was a two-time published person with a number one best-selling poetry memoir with journaling circles, never, because at this point, seven years ago, I was in the throes of the confusion, not knowing anything and barely even hearing my voice.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the fact that I now spend so much of my time advocating for women in particular to carve time out of their day, to hear their own voice, is just phenomenal to me because I spent so many years having my voice silenced and advocating for my voice to be silenced.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was the way of truth and like the path to God was to silence my voice and to trust him.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I believe that's so important for us not to abdicate any of our power to any form of external forces, power.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't, I'll very boldly say, I don't believe we should be giving up any of our power to any guru either.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, thought leader.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like I truly believe we need to be our own thought leaders.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: And all that we need, I believe, can be found within.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now that might mean I need to pull in a friend or I need, you know, but that wisdom really is inside of us.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: I talk a lot now about how we need to find our inner hero.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is when I say a hero, you think about community heroes, Superman, firemen, like, but what do they all have in common?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: They believe that the cause that they're fighting for is worth it.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm gonna have my own inner hero, like I have to believe that I matter.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: For me to believe that I matter, I have to even know who I am and what I'm even thinking.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have to have that connection to myself.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I see journaling and a couple of the other things I do in my life, but I see that as one of the biggest tools for us to be able to silence everything else, really hone in on what is going here.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when we can hear our own voice, like everything changes.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely everything changes about how we view ourselves and then how where we fit into this world and how we interact with this world.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: And those are all ideas that are absolutely contradictory to where I was seven or eight years ago.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad I asked that question because that was such an incredible response that you had.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's worth, if you're listening, to just rewind and listen to Catherine speak through all of that again, because I I love the idea of you becoming your own hero because you have a cause that's important and you're the cause.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't really know yourself well, how can you support a cause?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is just beautiful.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: I love that so much.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely gonna have to repeat that and say, my friend Katherine said, be your own hero, and here's why, and here's how.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I think connecting and silencing all that outer noise, there's a lot of outer noise.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we we have so much at our disposal.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's, I mean, 24-7, we can tune into news, social media.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like we have to consciously choose to focus our attention elsewhere, to to turn things off and to tune into ourselves and to be aware of how precious that is, and that nobody is bigger, better, or more important than we are.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And our voices need to be heard, they're really important.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Every single person's voice matters.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: That that's a huge.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: Huge piece of the puzzle, I think.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: And especially hearing your story, I think one of the things that I find so exciting and empowering about having a podcast is broadcasting important voices, voices for good, voices for healing, voices that envision a much better, healthier planet for everyone for generations to come, not just for this moment here and now.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the work that you've done and continue to do and the way that you're expressing yourself is giving so much permission to other women to also express themselves and to trust their voice and to allow it to come out.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's something really key in there that you said as a first step is when you start to write, you're you're giving yourself an opportunity to listen to yourself.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you feel like there's nobody else who is willing to hear what you have to say.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to yourself, you're finding your own voice.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that is such a beautiful reason to pick up the habit.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we can be our first witness.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: We can put it on the page and we can witness ourselves.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: I just feel like there's so much healing in that alas.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, Catherine, that's amazing.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was thinking to myself while you were sharing all that and sharing about the memoir and sharing about the companion journal.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking, if you're a listener and you have someone in your life, a woman who's going through something, what a beautiful gift to give them.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe one of those really pretty journals or a blank, you know, go with go with what you feel like for that person.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a pretty journal and a and a nice selection of beautiful pens, you know, and if it's the refillable kind, a bunch of refills, like what a wonderful gift to give someone.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna make sure that in the show notes we have all the links to your memoir with all the poems and the companion journal for barely a whisper, because I think that is an incredible gift to give someone.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: That someone might be you.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: It might be you.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: You might be able to just get that for yourself.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: We spoil ourselves with a lot of things sometimes, but this is something that will contribute to our healing and open doors for other possibilities, you know.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we look at your story just as a huge overview, like the potential for you to completely change your life is absolutely possible.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't necessarily envision it from the beginning.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: But when your intention is to share your voice, to heal, to become your own hero, then you're gonna get there.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: You absolutely will.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love this.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Catherine, I appreciate you so much.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll come back again and we can geek out on more things.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um much more to talk about, especially when you're talking about poetry and journal and giving women a voice.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: But if you could give one more piece of advice to a listener who's maybe somewhere in the same space that you were seven years ago, what would you say?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing that came to mind was trust yourself.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can, you really can take the time to listen and begin to trust yourself because you matter, you matter.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I love that.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, thank you so much for being here.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Listener, thank you for being here till the end of the podcast.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: Again, make sure you get the journal and the memoir, barely a whisper.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Support Catherine in her, you know, plight to really make sure all women have a voice and a means for self-expression.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were really inspired by this episode, please share it with a friend, pass it on.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're putting lots of good vibes out into the world.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I always appreciate a share, a like, a follow.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you again, Catherine, for being here.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a wonderful conversation.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see you next time on the podcast.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.