#182 A Diagnosis, a Divorce, and a Decision to Speak Up

Today, I interview Karen Rudolf who believed she wasn’t enough and learned early on to stay quiet, especially after being told as a child to stop asking questions. That moment shaped how she saw herself. She became very quiet, carried that into her relationships, and continued to feel small and unheard into adulthood.

Growing up, her curiosity was shut down, and with a mother who was also timid and a people pleaser, she learned not to speak up. She entered a relationship where her voice was again dismissed, reinforcing the belief that what she thought and felt did not matter.

Everything began to shift when her life circumstances intensified. Going through a divorce while raising three daughters, facing health issues like hair loss and a pre-diabetes diagnosis, and even being told she might not walk again forced her to confront how she had been living. These moments pushed her to listen to herself and realize she could no longer stay silent.

She began to speak up, ask for what she needed, and trust her intuition. Today, Karen uses her voice to help others uncover the root cause of their patterns and express who they truly are.

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Karen Rudolf is the founder of Tranquil SOULutions™, where science meets soul to support high-performing, heart-led women and leaders shift out of survival mode and into grounded alignment.

With a background in nursing and training in neuroscience-informed tools, somatic awareness, and trauma-release principles, she helps clients reconnect with their inner voice, regulate their nervous system, and lead from a place of embodied clarity.

Karen is also the creator of the Tranquil SOULutions Mind Mosaic™ and The Butterfly Technique, practical and intuitive frameworks for decision-making and inner realignment. She is the author of the upcoming book Spiraling UP: The Light You Command.

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Find Karen here:
https://www.facebook.com/officialkarenrudolf/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenrudolf/

https://www.instagram.com/officialkarenrudolf/

https://www.youtube.com/@officialkarenrudolf

Clarity compass: https://karenrudolf.com/free-clarity-compass-pdf-967946480054

Transcript

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode #182 Karen Rudolf

“A Diagnosis, a Divorce, and a Decision to Speak Up”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing. Welcome to the Find Your Voice Change Your Life Podcast, where I get to interview people.

Well, actually, it’s a conversation with people about their journeys. Their journeys about not having had a voice and what it is, the steps that they took to reclaim, discover, or anchor in the truth of who they really are, and then be able to express it and share their gift out into the world. Today, I get to introduce you to Karen Rudolf. Hi, Karen.

(00:38) Karen Rudolf: Hi. How are you?

(00:42) Karen Rudolf: Such a pleasure to be here.

(00:45) Doreen Downing: Yes, well, partly what I’m already smiling about is I feel like this is going to be fun for us today.

This journey to have a voice and not having had it at some point, the stories can be painful, but it’s also such a transformation. That’s partly what I feel that you represent, a transformational journey, and you’re leading people to the soul.

I want to introduce you. Is that okay to start that way?

(01:24) Karen Rudolf: Yes, absolutely.

(01:27) Doreen Downing: Today’s guest is Karen Rudolf, the founder of Tranquil Solutions. I want to say that because it’s not S-O-L-U-T-I-O-N-S, it’s Soul Solutions, founder of Soul, where science meets soul to support high performing, heart led women and leaders in shifting out of survival mode and into grounded alignment.

With a background in nursing and training in neuroscience, somatic awareness, and trauma release principles, Karen brings a deeply embodied approach to leadership and self expression.

Karen did not always feel free to speak up, and we will be hearing more about that today. Growing up with the belief that she was not enough, and in a world where children were seen and not heard, she learned to stay quiet and not take up space.

That’s a risky thing to do if you’re a child and your nervous system begins to move into a protective mode. I think that’s what happened with Karen.

Everything changed when her why became bigger than her fear. As a mother navigating divorce, she chose to step forward and find her voice, not just for herself, but for her children. That turning point shaped the work she does today.

Karen is the creator, as I said, of Tranquil Soul Solutions, Mind Mosaic, and the Butterfly Technique, and the author of the upcoming book, Spiraling Up the Light You Command.

I’m so glad that I get to welcome you today, Karen, because I love the idea that voice comes from the soul. I think we need to journey back first.

We all start out with soul, right? But something happens early on that we don’t have the opportunity to flourish. That’s where I’d like to start with you today. Stories or anything you have to share about that.

(03:58) Karen Rudolf: Yes, I remember being a child, very curious. I was curious about everything.

I lived at the end of a street where there was a forest, and I was picking up things. I was just so curious. I would go back home and say, “Dad, look, what do you think?” He’d say, “Shut up. You ask too many questions. Shut up. Go out and play.”

The subconscious heard it as, it’s not important. What I’m asking and what I’m feeling and what I’m expressing just wasn’t enough.

Of course, as a child, we look for evidence to make that so, and I got very quiet. I got very quiet.

Fast forward, I moved into a relationship where I also felt like I wasn’t enough. Not only was I very quiet, but I was always thwarted in my thoughts. Like, “Oh, I think maybe I’ll go back,” I come from a nursing career, “maybe I’ll go back and become a doctor.”

“No, you won’t. No wife of mine will.” It just always had me feel small and play small.

(05:12) Karen Rudolf: And I had three daughters. It wasn’t until later on in life that I realized that small wasn’t enough because my former wanted to take the girls from me. All of a sudden, mama bear came out, and it was, “Over my dead body.”

I had no idea what that meant or what that looked like. I remember my paralegal said to me, “Karen, you can complain and victimize yourself all you want.” And I was playing into that victim role. I had no other way of being. I didn’t know any other way of being, and I was a product of my environment.

My mother, who had also gone through a divorce, was very much victimizing herself and really didn’t express herself. We are products of that. Indirectly, right?

Not knowing what I didn’t know, it was like, “Okay, how am I going to hold this family unit together, whatever it’s going to look like?”

I remember saying, “I will never ever be in a situation where I can’t have a conversation,” because my paralegal said to me, “If you don’t find a voice and you don’t ask for what you want and need, the judge is going to decide for you.” I was just like, “Why?”

(06:34) Doreen Downing: Why. Oh wow.

That’s a great overview of what we’re going to talk about today.

Going back to what you did mention, your mom also, as somebody who was not very much a model of powerful womanhood, and the situation with a parent saying, “You don’t matter,” or what you’re bringing doesn’t matter.

I could feel you out in nature, just being totally fascinated. That says something about who you are and why I think we’re going to connect that kind of fascination with nature to you as somebody who brings Tranquil Soul Solutions. I have to keep getting back to saying that.

I want to dive back a little bit deeper into any moments in childhood, other than your father, who said, you know, my image is him putting his fingers over his nose like this. It’s just like, “That doesn’t matter. You don’t matter.”

(07:51) Karen Rudolf: I don’t believe, looking back on it, I don’t think that he meant it derogatorily. Obviously, he worked. He came home from work, he’s reading the paper, and I’m like, “Look at what I found,” and it was like, “Shut up. Go out and play.” Like, give me some space.

I think as an adult, looking back on it, I believe that we don’t know what we don’t know. I’ve certainly said things to my kids that they’re still, as adults, coming back and saying, “Well, you weren’t there for me.”

We do the best we can. I’ve cut my parents some grace at this point in time. But it really shapes who we become as people.

(08:39) Doreen Downing: Yes. Both at the same time. I’m glad that you said that, that there’s an understanding and a perspective that you have now, that he was just busy and consumed with his own life, and really kids should be playing. So there’s a value around play. But he just didn’t see that this was your play.

(09:02) Karen Rudolf: Exactly. And actually, curiosity is always a sign of intelligence. It really squelched who I believed I was at the moment. It wasn’t until later in life that it was like, “Okay, Karen, you can let that one go.”

(09:18) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, we’ll be talking about how one lets go. But for right now, what about your mom?

(09:26) Karen Rudolf: Mom had a mental IQ. She was brilliant, but she did not know how to apply it, nor did she use her voice ever.

She was very timid and a people pleaser. Thus, I became a people pleaser. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I didn’t know the adverse effect of being that people pleaser and what impact it would have on my life later in life.

(09:55) Doreen Downing: Yes, we already have a hint because of what you said in the beginning.

If you’re just joining us now, make sure and go back to the beginning to get a little bit more about the overview of Karen’s story today.

What about siblings?

(10:10) Karen Rudolf: I had an older sister and a younger brother. Everybody is impacted differently.

If I were to speak to my sister, she’s no longer with us, a product of her environment, and she dealt with it the way she dealt with it. Sadly, she’s no longer with us. It impacts our self-esteem and our self-worth for sure, and as a result of it, we make choices as we grow up in life.

My brother, if I have a conversation with him today, he’s five years younger than I am, he has a totally different perspective of his experience.

It’s not that I’m sitting here comparing. It’s my perspective, my story, my experience that’s going to impact me the way it’s going to impact me and my choices moving forward.

(11:04) Doreen Downing: I’m so glad you framed it that way so that the listeners can say, this is my truth, really.

Even what you just said a few minutes ago about the perspective of, yes, this is what happened to me. Yes, I understand what might have been going on for mom or dad or anybody else in this early environment. It still impacted you into not a lot of self-worth and silence.

(11:35) Karen Rudolf: Yes, absolutely.

(11:36) Doreen Downing: And you carried that. Anything else around the journey into young adulthood, through high school, around those themes?

(11:46) Karen Rudolf: One of the things I'm taking a stand for now is understanding that keeping our mouth closed has consequences.

There’s always a cause and effect. Everything is energy. For every yin, there’s a yang, an equal and opposite context.

For me, keeping my mouth shut always, always, always impacts the body in some way, shape, or form. That’s pretty much what I’m standing for today.

It impacted me in such a way where my silence showed up physically. I ended up with asthma. I ended up with what they told me was potential diabetes. They told me I had thyroid issues, and a lot of it was around the throat. The throat is involved with the voice.

When I started looking at that and really speaking into it, your body never lies. It’s always telling the truth. We just choose not to listen to it until it starts speaking louder and louder, until it hits us upside the head.

Then we’re on an EKG, or taking lots of pills, or whatever the impact is later on. Until we choose, and it’s a choice, to look at it, it’s going to keep escalating and manifesting differently in some way, shape, or form.

(13:21) Doreen Downing: You sure know this from the inside out. It sounds like the impact of the truth that the body doesn’t lie, and how to at least acknowledge that, if not take steps to work with coaches like you.

I’m curious about what you just said around the body, and then being in this marriage with, did you say three daughters?

(13:48) Karen Rudolf: Three daughters.

(13:49) Doreen Downing: Yes. These three human beings, these wonderful lights that are growing.

Here you come in with your own kind of pattern of not expressing. Early on, I don’t usually go this way, but I’m tempted to ask this question.

What do you think happened in the beginning? You were a mom with this pattern, and they were young. 

(14:27) Karen Rudolf: I taught them my pattern. Sad to say, but the truth hurts sometimes. I had an expectancy as I grew that they were going to grow automatically, and it doesn’t work like that.

They’re already set in their patterns. This is why I coach from a space of not mindset, but mind shifting. It becomes a choice, because the mindset is already set.

I had already set that pattern in them in motion. When they saw me changing and shifting, it was like, “Breaks on. Where’s my mom? We want our mom back.”

I didn’t know any other way of being other than looking forward rather than backward, because backward wasn’t working for me.

As I said, over my dead body, they were going to come take my girls from me. I remember declaring it right in the beginning. I declared that I would never, ever be in a space again where I couldn’t communicate.

As I was learning it, I was to them like an alien, and they called me that.

My journey took me through taking on communication courses. In school, we learn English, grammar, conjunctions, adjectives, all that.

But the art of communication—

(15:54) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(15:54) Karen Rudolf: Was not taught until we chose to take it on.

My kids were sort of left behind in that because I was thinking about survival. At the time, I wasn’t thinking in terms of thriving, and I wasn’t thinking about the impact on them because I wasn’t aware of that. As I said, as parents, we do the best we can. Once I became aware of it, they became resistant because they were already set into their rhythm of life.

Some of them have chosen to look at it, some of them have been suffering. It’s part of the journey. It’s part of the learning journey for all of us. I look at it as if there's nothing wrong. We’re at where we’re at, and we get to choose.

(16:41) Karen Rudolf: We get to choose how we’re going to empower ourselves and what’s going to work for us and what’s not. It doesn’t work for everybody.

(16:47) Doreen Downing: A couple of times already today you say we get to choose. Choose seems to be one of the themes I’m hearing. I would like to ask more questions about that, both your body experience, how that woke you up, but also more about the divorce process and the fierceness that you found inside of you, the voice that you found to go forward in life.

I’m going to take a quick break, and we’ll be right back.

Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing. I’m here again with Karen Rudolf. Already there have been some wonderful nuggets. Karen is very wise, and if you go back and listen from the beginning, you’ll hear a few things that not only give you perspective about your own life if you are struggling to find your voice, but also lead into what we’re going to be talking about right now about choice.

Most of us have these patterns, but we don’t realize that we have a choice. So, Karen, what happened that you woke up, that you had a choice?

(18:06) Karen Rudolf: Like I said, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and that became my theme. Of course, that stems from childhood experience. I used to think I was stupid.

I had an incident in school where my parents got divorced and we moved when I was in fifth grade. In Massachusetts, they were learning their five times tables. We moved to New York and they were already up to their seven times tables. I’m already thinking I’m not enough, and I’m already behind.

I mean, number one, I didn’t like math. Number two, I made it mean that I must be stupid because I just couldn’t catch up. The teacher would ask me questions, and I would have that pause moment where I had to really think it through because it wasn’t a progression for me.

I started looking at those patterns later in life and saying, wow, everything builds upon everything else. The theme of my book, as you mentioned earlier, Spiraling Up, is that most people, when they think about spiraling, they think about spiraling down. But I would always ask myself, since I was young, what can I build with this?

If I learn this lesson, a lesson is just a lesson unless we apply it, same as what we learn in school. What can I build with this? It becomes that spiraling up of expansion, which to me was the choice.

When I was going through my divorce, I kept looking for excuses that it was going to change, that things were going to change, that it was going to get better. What am I doing wrong, and what can I do to improve, not just myself, but my marriage? It was always looking outside of myself and asking myself, which just gave me more evidence that I was making myself wrong.

It was exhausting. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.

(20:17) Doreen Downing: Were you literally sick though? Because you did mention…

(20:20) Karen Rudolf: I was getting myself sick. Yes, I was sick, and what took me to the doctor was my hair. Stress kills, and my hair, you can tell, I have a big thick mane, and my hair was coming out in clumps. I’d be taking a shower, I’d look down, and it would be like handfuls of hair.

I remember going to my hairstylist at the time, and she said, “Karen, this isn’t normal. You need to…” That’s when I went to the endocrinologist, and my adrenals were shutting down. Not only my adrenals, but when they did the blood work, they said, “You’re pre diabetic.” I was at the point where it wasn’t computing.

Then I remembered back from my nursing days, incidents that have happened that have gotten me where I am today. I remember when a doctor would say, “Karen, discharge this patient, here’s a script,” and I would look at the script and say, “But you’re not getting to the root cause. What’s going on here?”

They would say, “You’re replaceable, and if you don’t do your job, we’ll find somebody else to do it.”

I thought, what’s wrong with this picture?

Looking back to when I was getting divorced, I remember very vividly saying I never looked from weaknesses. I don’t know why, but I just never did. I always looked from strengths.

I remember creating a list while I was going through my divorce. What am I going to do? I’ve been a stay at home mom. Okay, I did six hours of carpooling, I can become a taxi driver. No, check that off.

I started looking at all these strengths, and I started seeing the pattern. That became my life purpose, getting to the root cause.

(22:12) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(22:14) Karen Rudolf: The root cause has been my driving force for years now. I’ve been in business since 2007. I started Tranquil Solutions with that and shifting perspective, shifting the stories we tell ourselves that no longer serve.

That story of me being stupid as a child was protecting me from a class that was laughing. I personalized it. It didn’t mean it had to follow me forever, but in the moment, it was protecting my innocent little ego.

When we start looking at these stories we’re telling ourselves and ask if they’re serving us today as an adult, chances are they’re not.

That’s where choice comes in. This is where we can say what’s working and what’s not. If it’s not working, we have the power to choose.

It’s a decision, and if you look at the root of the decision, it means to cut. So what are you going to cut out that’s no longer serving you to empower you to move forward into who you’re meant to become?

We don’t know what that is until we step into that little bit of the unknown.

For me, it used to be scary to think, if I left my marriage, who’s going to talk to me? Who’s going to want me with three kids? What am I going to do with my life? All that chatter.

When I took that deep breath and opened up my soul and allowed myself to be in the present moment, I got still and I said, wow, what can I do with this? What can I choose that’s going to not just support me, but support my kids?

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be a choice to move you one step further, one step more.

I’m so grateful I took the journey because I ended up, two or three years ago, with horses. My horse just passed two years ago. I had my horse in 2008. It got struck by lightning.

(24:28) Doreen Downing: Oh.

(24:29) Karen Rudolf: My voice, right?

In 2008, my horse got struck by lightning, and the vet is in front of me saying, “Karen, you’re going through a divorce, and it’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to recoup him and bring him back to health. Put him down.”

I remember getting still, closing my eyes, and listening to my intuition. We all have intuition, that little voice inside of us, and that was the choice that I stepped into, which created the solutions part of my business.

When I listen to my intuition, nine times out of ten, it’s your internal GPS system. It’s going to take you to where you want to go, what you need to do.

I remember opening my eyes. I don’t know where the words came from, but I looked at the vet and said, “Not only is he going to survive, but he and I are going to thrive, and we’re going to be a catalyst for change together.”

I looked at him, he looked at me, and I thought, I don’t know where that came from, but we’re going to do that.

That was the beginning of the platform that moved me into the next level of purpose. I had no idea what purpose was. I remember going through my divorce, and my girlfriend said to me, “What’s your dream?”

I looked at her and said, “Dream? What’s that?” I didn’t have a dream. I went home crying, and I had to look up the word dream. I cried my eyes out because I had no concept of what that was.

Yet I had this horse, and he and I became a catalyst for change. That was the platform in which I started building trauma release from the stories we tell ourselves. I would do all this work alongside my horse.

I went down to Costa Rica after COVID because I had been in the house and doing most of my work on Zoom. I had a major accident there where I was told the chances of my walking were going to be slim to none.

(26:30) Doreen Downing: There you go. I know where you’re going now.

(26:35) Karen Rudolf: Word creates reality, right? As a child, I thought I was stupid, and that created my reality.

As an adult, I’m told I can’t walk. I don’t speak Spanish, and I’m stuck in Costa Rica.

Thank goodness for the training that I have because I was able to create a team and say, “I’m going to focus on my wellbeing, and I would like you all to support me in getting home safely.”

I learned to delegate. I couldn’t walk onto an airplane. Delta wouldn’t let me on. United was the only one that would carry me, and I didn’t care how much it cost. I opened my mouth and was able to ask for what I wanted and needed.

I remember lying there in Costa Rica. I live in Florida, so it’s flat. I looked out the window and saw what looked like a mountain, which was actually a volcano, but it might as well have been a mountain.

I looked down at my feet that weren’t working, and all that was working was my big toe. I could barely wiggle it.

I remember saying, “Okay, God, how am I going to traverse this mountain and begin walking again? Because I am not committed to lying here for the rest of my life.”

I love to dance. I want to be with my kids. I looked at my foot and said, with my little wiggle, one little wiggle at a time. One little wiggle. One foot in front of the other, and you will traverse it.

Within eight months, I was walking again, against all odds, because I kept believing. Not only believing, I chose. I chose that I was going to walk again, that my words have weight.

Words create. So I kept saying to myself every day, “Every day in every way, my body is healing. On a cellular level, my body is healing.”

I’m so grateful because gratitude is very important in that space. I’ve been grateful along the way for having these experiences. As difficult as they were, and some of them were painful, it’s a commitment to self to find your voice.

(28:55) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(28:56) Karen Rudolf: I went to the doctor when my hair was falling out, and they said to me, “You have diabetes. We’re going to put you on metformin.”

From a nursing perspective, I knew exactly what that was, and I was like, mm-hmm.

(29:15) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(29:17) Karen Rudolf: I was like, watch me. Give me three months.

I said, I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but in three months, I do not have diabetes. I declared it. I don’t have diabetes, and my body’s healing itself.

She looked at me and said, “Karen, you’re a nurse. Come on. You know this stuff.”

I went for three months, and I remember going to the gym. I laugh at it now, but I remember going to the gym those first two weeks. She had scheduled blood work two weeks before my next appointment. I got on with life and completely forgot about it.

My alarm went off for the blood work, and I went. I kept repeating, my body’s healing. It’s healing. It’s healing.

I went to my appointment with her. She looks at my chart, she looks at me, she looks back at my chart, flips it over, and says, “What did you do differently?”

I said, “What are you talking about?” She said, “You’re the same exact weight, and your blood work is absolutely perfect.”

(30:17) Doreen Downing: Beautiful, beautiful.

You not only proved it to her, but you proved it to yourself. In terms of what I said earlier about you living it, meaning the Soul Solutions, when you had that accident, it feels like you did what you talked about before. You quieted yourself, you went inward, and you listened.

The friend who said, “What’s your dream?” It feels like for you, Karen, the dream gets lived, and then you realize you’re in it. You’re making it happen.

It’s not like it’s something far away. In a way, you saw the mountain and saw yourself doing it, but it feels like you’re living in such a way that the dream reveals itself, as opposed to chasing something outside of you.

That’s one of my observations today.

We’re coming to an end, so I want to make sure people can find you and work with you if they feel called to what you’ve shared today. There were really wonderful nuggets around choice, perspective, and tapping deep into ourselves, not just intuition, but what lives inside us, our natural power.

(31:52) Karen Rudolf: Absolutely. It’s embodiment, and that’s what manifestation is. You create the life you love.

(32:02) Doreen Downing: Yes.

(32:03) Doreen Downing: That’s exactly what I was trying to say. Creating the life you love rather than having it out there someday. It’s every moment. Every moment, I am.

That’s what I’m learning from you today.

We’ll have show notes, but where can people find you?

(32:26) Karen Rudolf: I’m across all social media. It’s Rudolf with an F, R-U-D-O-L-F, and I’m on pretty much every platform.

You can also go to my website, www.tranquilsoulsolutions.com. I have a free gift there for anyone listening, and I’d love to offer that because we all have questions that are unanswered.

When you’re open and willing to look at it, that’s when awareness and possibility start expanding. I love that part of it.

(33:04) Doreen Downing: The awareness and the possibility expanding. Wonderful.

Last words. Thank you so much, Karen.

(33:10) Karen Rudolf: Thank you. What a pleasure. Thank you so much