Stephanie: Hi, Karen. Thanks for coming to be with me today.

Karen: Hey Stephanie, I'm excited to be here.

Stephanie: I am too.I'm trying to figure out where to start today. You have so much good stuff in your story that I want to dig into and share with everybody, but why don't we just start at the beginning.

Can you tell me a little bit about the forces that shaped you into the person that you were in your mid thirties when our story starts? What's the prologue to our story?

Stephanie: I relate to that really, really strongly. I was very similar in that, there was always terrible boyfriends

Karen: Broken picker.

Stephanie: yeah, broken picker for sure. For sure. I've started recently being curious about what it is I was trying to do. And some of these, you know, were objectively, you know, nice men. They weren't all terrible, evil people. They were just very bad fits. I know I was emotionally not in the right place. And so I was, that's what I was attracting for sure. But also the, being outwardly, like for me, it was the same, you know, I worked for the Boston Globe and then I worked for the Mayor of Boston and then, you know, I did all these really cool, you know, great things. I lived in Ireland for a while. It's like all this like really amazing achievement stuff. And yet,for me it was, it was not only romantic relationships, it was friendships too. I think it was any close relationship I sort of had trouble with.

Karen: It's interesting that you say that. In my 30s,it occurred to me that I needed to start breaking up with some of my girlfriends. And I think my story across the board is,I have a heart of service,but I also have,an unhealthy side to that, which is the codependence.

And so I've found myself with a lot of friends in my thirties where the friendships,were very one sided and I wou ld show up and give, give, give. And it was imbalanced, which was the same as my romantic relationships. They were very imbalanced.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Karen: And I think that the other thing that I could say I didn't know it then, but now what's fascinating is, I always thought I was the lucky one. I never thought he was lucky.

Stephanie: Right.

Karen: I was the luckier one. And that just breaks my heart to think that way. Cause now I'm like somebody better be pretty darn good.

Stephanie: right,

Karen: to land me, but my whole life, no. No, I was the lucky one.

Stephanie: Yeah, right. They were the prize, you weren't the prize. Even though, again, if you look at all those external markers, you were the prize. What was your home life like that kind of set you up for some of these,not great patterns?

Karen: Yeah. So, in my household,mom was, first generation Italian, grandma, grandpa off the boat. Dad was first generation Irish,grandma, grandpa off the boat. And Irish Italian is pretty dangerous cocktail. My mom was very young. At 24, she had three kids in diapers. And dad,was a cop who also enjoyed,a drink. And so I think she was very lonely. She was very angry and I would refer to her as a rageaholic. In fact, in my household, the alcoholic was the nicer of the two cause dad was a really jolly drunk. And of course I didn't see him doing the nasty things like driving dangerously and,soiling the house and things like that.

I just, dad was jolly and mom, mom,was overwhelmed, I think from the get go. And, and her mother, my God bless grandmother,when mom and dad had problems, my grandmother would be like, what is your problem Margarita? Take care of your husband. So, so she had no support there either. So I grew up in this household where mom was very controlling.

She was very rageful. She was very reactive and dad was passive aggressive. And so, this is my experience of intimate love. And it had that ripple effect going through life. There was a lot of, if you don't want to upset mom, you know, walk on eggshells, be a good girl. What's so interesting, what I've learned is that coping mechanisms that we just brilliantly know to take on as children. We intuitively know the coping mechanisms that will keep us safe. Well, we then bring those into our adult life and they cause havoc because they're not healthy, but they've become part of us. It's the way we behave. It's the way we look at things.

And of course, I didn't go out into the world saying I want to marry. In fact, I was like, so certain I didn't want to marry an alcoholic. But it's the old, the subconscious. So it's it doesn't matter consciously what we're thinking. So I went and I recreated my family of origin in my household.

Stephanie: So you told me you got married a little on the late side. You said you were in your mid thirties when you got married.

Karen: And I left home at 19. So I I

Stephanie: on your own,

Karen: I was out on my own. I had a lot of different relationships. I had some great jobs. I was independent. I wasn't needing anyone. I have an older and a younger sister and I was like, I am never getting married and having kids.

I'm the only one who got married and had kids.

Stephanie: Okay. So what was it about this guy that went from being just, you know, another boyfriend to, okay, let's, let's go ahead and do this and build a life together. How did that happen?

Karen: Yeah. You know, I think that if I were, to be honest with myself, my age had something to do with it.

You know, I worked in the city, so it wasn't like I had all these girlfriends getting married and having babies. It was just like my biological clock. I was in an unhealthy relationship before I met my husband and I chuckled.

Stephanie: Yeah. Matter of degrees.

Karen: Yeah, so in comparison, he seemed healthy, but he's definitely on the narcissistic spectrum. And so when I met him, I was in real estate and he was selling his house and,he was just this charismatic guy. He had two waterview houses on the North Shore of Long Island. He had his own business. He had this whole presentation that wasn't very real.

And so I was like, Oh, here's a guy. He's he's handsome. It's funny. He's obviously successful. He was not successful. and he was entertaining and it seemed like a good fit. And I think that we were both at an age, we were one year apart and just, it seemed like the right way to go.

And I fell in love. I thought he was great. I was the luckiest girl in the world,really, until I wasn't.

Stephanie: Right. and by that point, you had a couple of little kids.

Karen: Well, actually the story is interesting if we could. So I was a real estate agent. His first house, we literally sold like 24 hours before the bank took it over. The second house. I had a buyer. I was like dancing,just trying to get this thing closed. And the bank took it about a week before we closed on the second house.

Stephanie: Oh, wow.

Karen: So that was, that was, those, those were some pretty big red flags. Like, how did you get here?

But then we were engaged to be married and I walked in one day and he talked about his mom like she was the Blessed Virgin Mary. Like I thought there is no way I'm ever going to be able to and she's lovely, lovely salt of the earth woman. And I walked in one day and he was screaming, yelling and cussing at her like no tomorrow. And I remember saying, please tell me that wasn't your mom. And are you going to call her back and apologize? Red flag. No, I'm not. She was wrong. And then we we're going to Aruba for our honeymoon. And it turned out that he didn't have a license. And I'm like, what do you mean, you don't have a license. I've been driving around with you for a year and a half. Well, my license was suspended because of X, Y, and Z, and I haven't paid my property taxes.

And so people sometimes say, you know, weren't there any red flags? And I like to say it was a little bit like the 4th of July grand finale, but me with my very lovely rose colored glasses. And I also had a feeling like this is, I said this to a family member once I said, Here I am, I've fallen in love with this man, I'm about to go in front of an altar and say, for better or for worse, until death do we part, and I'm about to bail.

That doesn't seem right.

But that was my mindset, was how loyal am I if I just bail because I see that he has some faults.

Stephanie: You're probably also able to talk yourself into this is just a phase. And if we get through this, we'll be on the other side of it and it'll make us stronger. And, you know, all of those things we tell ourselves when we're in bad relationships.

Karen: And I'm strong and I'm capable and I can help him change.

Stephanie: Right. Right. Right.

Karen: That word, change.

Stephanie: Do you have any sense today of why you ignored all the red flags? How you were able to convince yourself that they weren't flapping in the breeze?

Karen: You know, when I was in therapy,when everything started unraveling, one of the things my therapist said was, your pain tolerance is so high that I think you would stay until you were dead. And I wasn't in a physically abusive relationship. It wasn't like that, but she said, I think you would just stay. And so when I reflected on that, it brought me back to my family of origin.

And, you know, I feel like it's very easy. for us to beat ourselves up when we're in that position. And yet I believe that I was kind of predestined because the only intimate love I knew was so broken and had that. So my ex husband was the rageaholic that my mom was. Very, very, bad. Still does, terrible anger management. And he was a pot smoker, so he wasn't the alcoholic, but it was the same thing. And so I kind of, I remember saying to my best friend, I was like, I was trying so hard not to marry my dad.

And there's a book called,Getting the Love You Want with the Hendrix.And they say that we attract a lover or a partner that has the wounds of our parents, in order to heal. So in a healthy relationship, two people can come together and say, I see your inner child, you see my inner child. And, and. And we can create space and love and, and grace for healing. Mine was a toxic relationship and so it went very much, and I equally participated in telling him how bad he was and him telling me how bad I was. And so,

Stephanie: Your comment about pain tolerance is so interesting to me. I was just telling you this before we started, but in the fall, I had, a surprise spinal surgery. Now, how you have surprise spinal surgery is beyond me, but I've had neck issues and trouble with my neck since I was a little kid, like 15. And so I've been seeing my chiropractor since I was 15. And so they're practically family. When I finally got to the point where I was seeing a surgeon and I saw two surgeons within a week for, you know, first and second opinion, the first one said to me, had a patient who was in the same situation that you are physically with where my neck was from a degenerative standpoint.

He said she had been in a wheelchair for 2 years. She was not able to walk, but you look at you, you're like carrying on. This is now I'm extrapolating from this, like, but me, I was, running a business and starting a podcast and, running a home and being in a marriage and managing some chronic illnesses on top of all of this.

And so your statement about pain tolerance really kind of hits me in the gut a little bit because I definitely think that I have an element of, be strong running through my,character as well.

So you get married and then you have a couple of little kids. How were the first, you know, two, three, four years of that marriage while you were having babies.

Karen: So, I mean, in some ways, it was beautiful and lovely. One of the interesting things was,my ex would bring flowers home all the time, he would bring me cards, my friends would be like, Oh, you're so lucky.

Stephanie: Hmm.

Karen: Flowers and cards are really easy. And so, I was a full time working mom. I didn't want to after the second child, but,we had other problems,anyone who listened so far would go, yeah, were they financial?

Yeah, they were financial. So I was in sales and I would come home. I was selling commercial printing. I come home and I finally landed that account and they buy a million dollars worth of printing and I'm going to get a little piece of it and I come home and I'd celebrate with him and he'd go out and spend like $25 - $30,000 before I landed the first job, and got the first commission check. And then he'd be like, you're so cheap, like you never spend any money.

And I'm like, I can't spend what we don't have. And it's gone by the time it comes in. And so I never get to enjoy. And so this was such a big issue for us. We bought a house that we ended up refinancing five times and never putting a penny into it.

Stephanie: Wow.

Karen: So we bought this gorgeous English Tudor. It was just like a crown jewel. And because of his propensities, you know, we had to always have,brand new cars that were leased and the nicest house on the block. And, you know, all the trophies. The trophy kids and trophy car and the trophy wife and all of this. And we had 2 cents in our pocket and the bill collectors were calling all the time.

So, even in those early days, it was so confusing to me because some things were so lovely. And I had my family, my little babies, and I was getting flowers and cards. And I wasn't sleeping at night and there was no money in the bank. And so it was just this very confusing time. I can soldier on just like you soldiered on with your spinal injury.

I was like, I can make this happen.And so I made every effort to make it happen and it really deteriorated me. I became like the worst version of myself. I became my mother. I looked in the mirror one day and hated myself.

Stephanie: Let's move on to your 40th birthday.

Karen: That was another telling story. So my ex turned 40 the year before me and big, big friend group. So I threw him, I remember throwing him a surprise party. And when my girlfriend said, you know, let's put a whole, poster board of pictures together. And I said, if you want to do that, you can. I'm not bloody doing that.

I don't want to look at those. So it was already, like, at the end of my rope. And then when mine came around, I said to him, whatever you do, do not throw me a party. We haven't been away since our honeymoon, so we need time alone. And he would never go. He was the dad. He was like, nope, not leaving the kids. And his parents live 10 blocks away. They practically raised my kids because we both worked. But he wouldn't, he wouldn't. And so I said, I'm telling you, we need a second honeymoon. And if you're going to do anything for me, I don't care if it's even on Long Island, let's do that. And I walk into his parents house and surprise!

Stephanie: Yeah.

Karen: I put on my best face and I think I decided that night like that I was done.

Yeah. You don't see me, you don't hear me, but you keep giving me flowers and cards.

Stephanie: So you must be a good guy. what point did you finally realize, you don't see me? You're not listening to me. Like at what point did it go from just being how it was to you understanding that he wasn't listening to you?

Talk about like. Action before it crosses your like prefrontal cortex. I was across the room with my greasy hands around his neck. I'm screaming at him to never ever speak to our children or say something like that again.

And he, he grabbed me, threw me up against the cabinet and told me to never lay hands on him again. And I went upstairs, he took the kids. Mommy's crazy. I think he took them to Wendy's or something to have a little meal. Mommy's crazy. And I went upstairs. I looked in the mirror. That was the moment that I hated myself. I cried my eyes out.

And whatever day that was, the next business day, I was on the phone with the therapist. And,I was like, I am very lost and I'm very scared and this should be the happiest time of my life. I have a two and a four year old,and they're adorable and I love them and I'm miserable. And things have gone so far off of the rails. It was just shy of seven years.

It was six years.

Stephanie: Wow. So, from the time you called the therapist and started that process,how long until you started,divorce proceedings?

Karen: Yeah,

Stephanie: happen around the same time or?

Karen: Not at all. As you know, as is, is so, typical actually, especially in these high conflict situations. And so I went to a therapist for a while and then I asked him to go to marriage counseling and we went to 1 or 2 or 3 marriage counselors. And,I remember one of the marriage counselors, the third one probably, I asked him if we could, and my ex husband,is verbose, so just getting a word in edgewise is hard. It's we'd go and I'd sit there and I'd listen to him.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Karen: So I met with the marriage counselor and it was funny because I remember the guy saying to me, so, so what is it that you want to know? And he said to me at the end of the session, he said, Karen, he's not hearing you. He's not seeing that there's any problems or certainly not on his side. And so, you know, what do you need? What do you want to do?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Karen: And he was very gentle about it, but kind of blunt in the same way. I think he kind of went to say, do you expect me to fix him? Like, I really got the sense that he was like, you're a pretty sharp woman. Aren't you seeing what I'm seeing happening in these sessions? And,and I ended up hiring an attorney. So that was, geez, that was, two years later that I hired the attorney. And then he went ballistic terrible story about what happened when I hired the attorney if you want me to go into it.

Stephanie: Yes, please.

Karen: So my mom went with me. I found an attorney. I hired an attorney and he found the papers. And so I go to his parents house for Thanksgiving dinner and he has shown the divorce papers to his entire family and I walk in and I am like, I am the evil one. And I think I got thrown out, I don't completely remember, and that was Thanksgiving. And then I put the whole thing on hold because he begged me. He would beg and plead and beg and plead after our whole marriage. The first, every time we fought, he would throw divorce at me and my parents got divorced. So, you know, that piece was in there. So I thought, you know, what,I owe it to myself and my kids and him to try. So we went through Retrovai.

Retrovai is, it used to be called Maraging County years ago, but it was this three day, 30 hour, christian run program. And we both found the spark of what we had fallen in love with. And then there was a program that went for a couple of months after that. And one of the things you had to do is dialogue every day you would write and then you would dialogue.

And it was like the key component of it was the communication. And he would go get high and then sit down to dialogue. And I'd say, I'm not dialoguing with you.

If we're going to dialogue, we're going to dialogue sober. And at that point, that July, so it was seven months later. I was locked in my son's room the entire July 4th night and he was on a rage and I was scared for all of us. I remember calling my attorney, whatever the next business day was and said, move forward. And if I ever call you to tell you to pause again, don't listen to me.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Karen: I almost don't trust myself, but I don't think I'm going to turn back. And I can't because, you know, 1 of the things in these kinds of situations is my family was really worried for me. And I was like, he's just angry. You know him. He just gets angry. And so, and that was only six years. But first my tolerance from my childhood and then the normalization. It's like, I live with him calling me these nasty names and having a short fuse, and screaming and yelling at the kids. Like so you live with this and it becomes, so sadly, normal. So the outside goes you're in danger and you're like, oh don't overreact. It's not that bad.

Stephanie: Right, right. He's just a blowhard. He likes to let off steam. He's a yeller.

Karen: and he never laid a hand on me. So I was like, I'm not actually in danger. But the truth was, you're supposed to be my guy. You're supposed to have my back. Like I'm supposed to feel more safe with you than anybody else. You're supposed to protect me.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Karen: So once you moved forward with the divorce, then the conflict amped up?

Oh, three and a half years. I lived in the attic of my house and thank God we had a beautiful English Tudor. So there was a finished attic and I had asked him to leave the master bedroom, which he did, but then he came back pretty quickly. And I realized I just need to leave and my kids were so little. I didn't want to be on a separate floor from them. But we went through 3 and I couldn't leave because it was the marital home. So he could go to school on Monday and pick up the kids and take them home. And then I'd be living someplace else and they'd be living with daddy. And I was like, that's not happening. They are not living there alone with this unhinged man.

And so I stayed for three and a half years. At the end, I remember calling my attorney and saying, I am going to jump out the third floor window. You do whatever you have to do. I have got to leave with these kids. We're dying.

Stephanie: Yeah. Wow. There's a part of me, and I've never been through a divorce, so I don't understand this. But there's a part of me that doesn't really understand. I mean, I've seen divorces, friends, family, you know, and it's like, Oh, okay, now the kids split their time between A and B.

Karen: There was no custody agreement. He wasn't going to agree to anything. And so they had one legal home and that was the marital home. It's not the case everywhere. I'm in New York and,he was hell bent on keeping those kids. And I wasn't even fighting over custody so much.

I wanted to have more like 60 40, like I wanted them to be with me a little bit more because dad was pretty unhinged.

But, he was a little OCD. And so he would actually sit and count the minutes, like he needed to have them as many sleeping minutes as I did.

Stephanie: Wow.

Karen: Like, it had to be 50, 50 down to the last second. My attorney who had already been doing it for 30 years was like, he was apoplectic about my soon to be ex. He was like, I have never in my life,

Stephanie: Wow. So, three and a half years you are living in the attic of your home, and I think you told me you had walkie talkies.

Karen: Yeah. Very heartbreaking. So I, my daughter was just such an innocent little thing. But you know, they just say what they think too. So I tried to make it fun. And so they had walkie talkie. So if they needed me, they could call me and either they could come up or I'd go down and we'd have little play dates in the attic.

The attic was like 110 degrees, 12 months out of the year too, because heat rises.

But there were two locked doors. So on the second floor, there was a door with a staircase and then there was my bedroom door on the third floor. So for me, I was at least a little safe behind the two locked doors. They would get walkie talkies.

One of the things I say that my clients now is don't assume,that the good child is,that's flying under the radar, don't assume that they're good. And so my daughter was a straight A student and, she used school as an escape and she dove in and she was very self sufficient. My son, there's about four, four or five years where you'll see every picture of him. I was just showing him pictures the other day. his mouth is smiling and his eyes are dead.

And so it really, it just had, it's heartbreaking to even talk about and remember, because it had, it had such a debilitating impact on everybody.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Karen: Yeah.

Stephanie: I'm very curious, and I don't usually go this direction with these conversations, but because you were so clear about what your childhood did to you when you came out of this marriage and understanding that you had kind of recreated your childhood home, what kind of things did you do to make sure that your kids ended up on a better footing than you did?

Karen: Yeah, I put them in therapy right away. So they were in therapy from the get go. As soon as I was willing to acknowledge that we had a big problem. And then I went to the school and our school district had,a Banana Splits program and it was group therapy for kids. And so I went to the social worker and told her my story and she said, I have no interest in your opinion. I'm not taking sides. I care about your kids. She became my biggest advocate. She was so upset with what the kids were dealing with. So they had that. So they had therapy. But my ex, there's so many things that he did against the rules. One of the things that everyone's told is, certainly don't tell the children anything about the divorce. You know, keep it age appropriate. And so he, at one point, he told my son, if you ever tell anyone anything that goes on in this house that might seem negative, I will get arrested and you'll never see me again.

Stephanie: Oh my god.

Karen: So CPS was called three times, and so we had to go through the CPS thing three times on me, all three times on me.

No, no, I'm sorry. Once the first time, I think a court person did it on us, and the other two, my ex did on me. But my son, the, the CPS workers would go to the,school with the social worker and sit down and my son would cross his arms and he'd take the fifth. And the CPS person said, I have never had a child do that before. And he was so like he had all this power, like he was so afraid that he could destroy his father's life, that he just, he just swallowed it and swallowed it and kept it in. He used to be like, everything would roll off his back, he was happy and jolly, which he is now again. But for years, he was a walking raw nerve. It was just heartbreaking.

Stephanie: Mm

Karen: Yeah. But I was in a 12 step program. I went into Al Anon,and I was in therapy constantly. They were in therapy and I began to learn about boundaries. And I really used all of these difficult situations where the kids got hurt by their dad. Never took, I never talked about their dad.

I talk about what happened. I'd say. You know, what happened? What did you do? How did you feel? How would you have liked to behave? And I just thought I'm going to use every challenge as an opportunity to increase their emotional awareness and intelligence and ability for my daughter. I remember saying to her once, you know, tell daddy and she goes, no, he's going to yell at me. And I had so lost my voice. I said, Dominique, he yells at you all of the time. I want you to hold on to your voice. So if that's how you feel, you open your mouth, you say it, and then you call me back, but don't lose your voice.

And to today, my daughter's 25 years old and nobody can shut her up, man. She speaks her mind. She's one bold badass and I'm really proud. And my son, I thought if I could raise a young man that I'm proud of, he's a beautiful human being. And they have their issues. I'm not saying they did not emerge unscathed, but I believe that one healthy parent can make a world of difference. I just did everything in my power to get healthy because I was in such a bad place.

Stephanie: Yeah. Wow. this whole situation took up the better part of your forties.

Karen: Yeah.

Stephanie: From your 40th birthday, you said it was a couple more years before you actually pulled the trigger on the divorce, and then it was three and a half years. I mean, so we're talking like late forties by the time you're coming out of this.

And I will tell you that the day we moved out, was just talking to my kids about this. It was a barn really. We called it a carriage house or I did because it sounded nicer. But it was, it was really a barn and with like indoor, outdoor, shitty carpet on the floors and stuff.

And we went in and we brought a box of pizza. My daughter took that little table in the middle of the pizza pie. And she was like, look at first piece of furniture. And we camped out and we had a pizza on the living room floor. And, it was overnight that I felt like an elephant had stepped off of my chest to not have to drive back home, to not have to walk in that door, to not have to avoid or confront or whateverwas the most liberating experience I've ever had.

Stephanie: Yeah. Wow. How long from then until you felt healthy, good, because I know you said you'd been in therapy during this whole process, but you know, I mean, you don't just shut the door on that and go, all right, I'm good. How long did it take you to recover from that?

And,I think that for me, at some point during that journey, I decided that my primary goal, I had 2 goals in the world. 1 was to raise 2 very healthy humans that I could be proud of. And the other thing was that my only job was to spend every day trying to be the best human being that I could. And so I was going to spend the rest of my life, refining myself. And,and I can't tell you how often I'm in coaching sessions and I hang up the phone or get off of zoom and go, yeah, that one was for me too.

Stephanie: Oh my God, Karen, I do that. Like I say that about the podcast, I've said this over and over again. You know, every third or fourth interview I hang up with somebody I go, yep, that one was for me.

Karen: Right. Yes. So, so it's kind of like built in.

Stephanie: Yeah. I've found for me, it's,cyclical too. Right. I think, you know, the first time I kind of even opened my eyes to any personal development kind of stuff, I might've been like 27 or 28. And then, a lot of stuff happened in my life, you know, 36 or seven 38.

And then 40 was a big transition for me. And it was after I went through that transition that I came to understand that this is actually a developmental stage that most of us go through,sometime around age 40. And so I went through it and, I like to say at the end of my 40 drinks project, my life was completely changed there was some smooth sailing for a while, but then it's, It's like an onion. It's like a renovation. We're doing some work on our house now. You know, we've been there 5 years and, you know, last year we redid the bathroom upstairs and then we're like, okay, we're done with projects. That was a lot. And this year we're like, well, we don't want to do the kitchen, cause that's too much based on what we did last year and how big of a project that was, well, what if we just painted the dining room and the living room? And then next thing you know, you've like, peeled back a layer almost accidentally and you're like, oh, well now we're going to get furniture and now we got to do this. And that wall's got to come down.

And like, so for me, this, this personal growth stuff, it's cyclical. You deal with an issue or with something in your life, a pebble in your shoe. And you get through it and then you have a period of calmness, of integration, of, you know, enjoying your growth.

But if you're open to it, there's another pebble in my shoe. Maybe I should, maybe I should address that one. And, you know, like, Oh, I'm in, once you start opening your eyes, you start seeing things. Friendships. Maybe I should understand what's going on there. It really is an ongoing process of, evolution once it begins.

Karen: Yeah, I absolutely think so. I mean, one of the really big things for me going through my divorce was,I was raised Roman Catholic. I kind of went in and out of the church through the years.Went back when I had the kids, you know. But then after the divorce, I just leaned in hard and I just, during the divorce, I had no place else to go.

So I just thought,I have to have faith because I'm in so much fear that if I don't have faith, I'm going to just crumble. And, and that's been a huge part of what's directed the rest of my life too. Me and my sisters were assaulted by a neighbor, sexually assaulted by a neighbor when we were young.

So we all started in therapy very young. So those, I think, were the 2 pivotal things, the broken household, and then this horrendous human being,who hurt us so badly. And so, so that's part of why I thought I'm pretty evolved. I've been doing this a while.

It really, I really was a little taken aback by my own,my own shortcomings because I thought I've been in therapy. I've been talking about my mom issue. I've been talking about, you know, the rape. I've been talking about these different things. And yet here, there was so much more and I think that that's part of what,we really need to honor is when we have these traumas, they're in ourselves. They're in our subconscious.

There's so much that goes on. And I think now, in recent years, there's so much more of a honoring and understanding of trauma and unconscious belief systems and how we're often driven by things that we don't even know are driving us

Stephanie: Yeah. And the thing that I have been learning over the last six months to a year, is that trauma can mean a lot of things and it doesn't have to mean huge traumas, capital T traumas. It can mean, being yelled at to stop crying because then you learn not to have emotions. You learn to swallow your emotions. You learn to shove them down and you learn to relate in a way where you're shut down. Trauma is something that most of us have, no matter how good or bad our childhoods were, or our families of origin were. I mean, because I

Karen: Because everyone's human, right? So, our human parents only have their own experience.

Stephanie: A friend of mine, a former guest, Mitch Webb, just recently was posting social clips from the, from the podcast. And I was saying something in one of the clips and I was like, wow, look at how smart I was. But it was like, I was talking about trauma and I was saying trauma can be anything that shook you, and the shook got stuck.

Karen: Absolutely. One of the things my mom would do the most, and she was a therapist, is she would tell me to stop being so sensitive. And so one of the patterns in all my relationships was, Yeah, I wasn't low maintenance. I was no, no maintenance. you needed to do nothing for me. And so I met men who did nothing for me.

Stephanie: And imagine how, beautifully sensitive you actually are and what a superpower that can be when it's tended to appropriately.

Karen: I remember my mom telling my daughter that once she was maybe seven or eight and you know, the girls you'd cry easily and what have you. And she came running upstairs and I practically threw my mother over the balcony. I was like, don't you ever, ever, you therapist, don't you ever speak to my daughter that way again.

I was like, and it made me realize I was like, Oh, my goodness. Don't I have a trigger there? Like, I was so viscerally angry that she would do that to Dominique and not, be kind and gentle. But you know, and then again, my mom only knew what she came from.

Stephanie: Yeah. So what is life like for you on the other side of all of this, Karen? What did you learn? What are you doing?

Karen: Being a single mom, co parenting with an angry, hostile ex was,was hard. So I'm now, I just had to tell my story, which is why I know I'm 18 years post divorce, and my kids are 25 and 27.They went through severe problems. And so the 1st thing I decided where,they didn't ask for this and they're my number 1 priority.

And so I spent a lot of years, even while I was building my coaching business, keeping my daughter alive, helping my son, being truly the only parent that they had. And so you find coping, like my best friend was at both of their births. So I called her and I said, you are my new co parent. You lasted the long run and he didn't. He's not here. He's not showing up. And so she became the person that I could lean on and talk to and worry with and what have you.

And I got into coaching. I went through the coaching program, you know, they said pretty early on, think about a niche. And I, I was like, let's see, coaching is about transition, child of divorce, adult of divorce. I'm going to be a divorce coach. And I just knew. I hit the ground running.

I felt like I was in God's flow of my life and, I've never regretted it.You know, my divorce is so far behind me. People are like, why would you want to be talking about and dealing with divorce? It's just, people are at their sloppiest. And I feel like I've been given this gift of being able to see someone in their brokenness and help them see the possibility of what life could be.

And sometimes people hire me because, they'll say to me, I have no hope, but you seem to have so much hope for me, I'm actually going to hold on to that.

Stephanie: Right. I'm going to let you see it before I can see it.

Karen: Yeah. And I have a beautiful series on my podcast, Voices of Celebration, and it's not celebrating the divorce. None of it celebrates the divorce.

It celebratesthe journey. Because there's really no destination, it's just a journey. And so the journey to find your voice, to set boundaries, totamp down your fear, to find your faith, to whatever it is. And, I could pinch myself that I get to touch lives in such a special way. And I can make a living off of it.And I keep learning and growing and so. I remember calling Sue my best friend and saying, this was right after the divorce. I said, as hellacious, and that's the best word I could use as the last three and a half years have been, I am so surprised and pleased with the human being that I've become, that if I had to do it all over again to be who I am today, I would do it on a dime.

And to me, that's when I realized. Everything is for us. It's all for us. It's just really damn hard sometimes. And it's never on our time frame, but when you face trials and tribulations and you can keep the focus inside on what's my part and what can I do and how can I be better, how can I take care of my kids, whatever it is.You're growing in such a beautiful way.

We have a saying,to turn the shit of divorce into the compost of a new life. And it really is such a nice metaphor for being able to take what can be so hard,and devastating and use it as fuel,to create a better life. And that's what I feel like I've done and what I try to help my people do.

Stephanie: Oh, I love that. It's so funny to me through all these conversations that people say it different ways, right? My mess becomes my message. My, pain becomes my purpose. Sometimes it almost sounds trite,but so many people that I've met through this podcast, go through that messy time, the messy middle, and come out of it in a way that they say, I can help. I can help people do it better than I did. Frankly, it's what I'm doing as well. People who are turning 40, or somewhere around that, right? 35 to 45, don't know that this developmental stage is coming for them that they're going to go through a transition.

And it could be in any part of their life. It could be at any point. And so, I'm taking the mess that I made and hoping that I can make it easier for someone else, just the same way that you're doing and so many others as well.

Karen:

I've had people say, just get real angry at me. Are you freaking kidding me? She's the problem or he's the problem. And I look at my ex husband and maybe he's just not capable because of his mental health issues. But he went through the same hell that I went through and he doesn't have anything to show for it. And so, you know, for your listeners, it's like, even if you're resistant to doing the work, it's like, whatever your hell is, whether it's career or health or relationship, you're going to go through it. Why not grow through it? Why not use that as the fuel to be a better version of yourself?

Stephanie: 100%. I mean that when you were saying that a moment ago, I was thinking, yeah, we're all going to go through a mess. What are you going to do with it? It's up to you to make it mean something or to make it matter or to make it have a reason. to use it, to make sure that the next steps and the next stage are better, stronger, happier, more successful, all of those things.

Karen: You know, I just recently, Forbes came out with a report last year, and they said that divorce rates for first marriages are around 50%. And you think, okay, well, a lot of people get remarried. What's second marriage divorce rate? 67%. Some people get married a third time. Are we doing it right the third time? 73%.

Stephanie: Wow. It goes up.

Karen: So, if you don't do the work, you marry the same person with a different face and a different body, you rinse and repeat, and at that seven year mark, you're going to say, why does this keep happening to me? And it doesn't happen to us. We participate. And I think that for those who are bold and courageous enough, because it, takes courage to look at yourself and own your stuff. they're the ones who can remarry and it can be beautiful.

Stephanie: Oh Karen, I have loved everything about this conversation. It's been so wonderful to have you and I, I just want to thank you for being so generous with your story.

Karen: Thank you. It's my pleasure. And thank you for what you do. I think that this is a beautiful podcast. I've really enjoyed listening to the stories.

Stephanie: Thank you.