Keeping Your Shape — Kari Brunson Wright on Reinvention, Boundaries, and Coming Back to Self

"The opposite is always the medicine. You people-please to others — so how do you people-please to you?" — Kari Brunson Wright

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from bending yourself into whatever shape a room needs you to be. Kari Brunson Wright knows it well — from a ballet stage, to a restaurant line, to running her own businesses. It took three full reinventions before she learned how to stop.

In this episode, Kari shares the honest story of walking away from a decade-long career as a professional ballerina, building and eventually selling a cafe and an ice cream company, and becoming a Psycho-Spiritual Leadership Coach. This is real conversation and authentic storytelling about identity, boundaries, and the whispers that show up long before the big changes do — the kind of personal growth for women that doesn't come with a tidy bow.

If you've ever bent yourself into a shape that wasn't really yours, this one's for you. New episodes every Thursday on all major podcast platforms.

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Timestamps

00:00 — Introduction — Heather welcomes Kari Brunson Wright

6:02 — Kari's decade as a professional ballerina and the injury that led her to walk away

12:52 — From the ballet stage to the restaurant line — falling into food

16:20 — Building a cafe and an ice cream company, and the decision to finally sell her shares

19:43 — "I want to be you" — the moment coaching became the next chapter

29:48 — Boundaries, energy, and what it means to "keep your shape"

About Kari Brunson Wright

Kari Brunson Wright is a psycho-spiritual leadership coach and regenerative business consultant who works with founders, executives, and leaders navigating the gap between who they've become and how they're actually living. Her work centers on alignment, integrity, and self-trust — helping people make decisions they can actually stand behind. She brings fifteen years of experience working alongside people through growth, pressure, and change, plus her own background as a co-founder of multiple businesses. Kari writes the Substack newsletter The Recipe for Being Well, and lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, their two kids, and a Great Pyrenees/Lab mix puppy named Bean.

Connect with Kari Brunson Wright

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Transcript

Kari Brunson Wright: It's so interesting, the opposite is always the medicine. So in that situation, you people please to others. But how can you people please to you? How can you do that opposite action to be able to be like, okay, this is what feels good for me. And yes, especially with children, we co-regulate with children until they're 8 and 9, and then they start to, it's hard to use adult-like principles when you have children. But really, all of us are just toddlers.

Heather Nelson: Welcome to Her Story Unscripted. I'm your host, Heather Nelson, a connector, business strategist, and someone who truly believes that the most powerful conversations happen when we stop performing and start being real. This podcast is a space for women to share honest, unscripted conversations about life, growth, and the experiences that have shaped who we are. No perfectly polished narratives, no pressure to have it all figured out, just real, authentic stories told exactly as they are. 

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Her Story Unscripted. I am really excited to have Karion. We just virtually met, but we have some mutual friends. And I think that's the power of this work that we do, and the community that we build is, everyone's like, you need to meet this person, or you need to connect with this person. And Allie was one of my past guests, and she was like, you need to meet Kari. I think her story is fantastic, and the work that you're doing, so welcome to the podcast. 

Kari Brunson Wright: So honored to be here. I cannot wait to dive in. 

Heather Nelson: We were briefly catching up. Kari and I sit at the same age, and we have kids, and we've had career pivots, and so I think this is going to be a beautiful conversation. But tell the listeners a little bit about who you are, where you live, a little bit about your family life, and we'll just get on to it.

Kari Brunson Wright: I'm Kari Brunson Wright, and I live in Seattle, Washington. I've lived here for 26 years, the longest place I've ever lived. I'm originally from the South, North Carolina and Virginia, and I moved to Seattle via New York City. I didn't plan to make this my forever home, but this is where I live now, and I don't see any move in sight. I'm married, I've just celebrated my seventh anniversary, and I've been with my partner/husband for 12 years. We have two children, an almost six year old boy named Ren, and a four year old girl named Ruby. They're 18 months apart.

Heather Nelson: I can't even imagine what that would be like.

Kari Brunson Wright: Yep. People are like, oh, 18 months apart. How far along were you when postpartum, when you had your child? And I'm like, oh, 9 months postpartum, got pregnant, and then two little children. It's almost like raising twins. 

Heather Nelson:  So are you done? 

Kari Brunson Wright: Done. Got one of each. I had a C-section, things have been cut. Then I think it would break us if we had another child. We just got a puppy.

Heather Nelson: Which is basically like another child.

Kari Brunson Wright: My husband and I were saying, we're like, well, we didn't want a third, but we just got a puppy. And he's gigantic, so yeah, we have enough heart beating in the house that needs to be fed.

Heather Nelson: You're like, that's enough. I always say I can never keep plants alive until recently because I feel like my kids are now a little bit older and more self-sufficient. So now, I feel like I can actually keep a plant alive, and so that's like my new passion.

Kari Brunson Wright: There you go, like babies. So true.

Heather Nelson: So you've had three big career pivots. I want to hear the first two, and then we're going to dive into where you're at now.

Kari Brunson Wright: Yes. I had mentioned before that I moved to Seattle via New York City when I was 14 years old. I got into a very prestigious ballet school called the School of American Ballet, and it is the theater school for the New York City Ballet, which is probably one of the top companies on the globe. And so when I was 14, I moved to New York City. I lived in a dormitory, but I moved away from home. I was going into 10th grade, and I did that for three years. I went to school at the school called Professional Children's School for two hours in the morning, then I would go and would dance. I would go back to school for two hours in the afternoon, and then I would dance through the evening, and then I would do my homework, eat, go to sleep, and repeat it six days a week. I am quite tall, I'm five foot nine. 

And the New York City Ballet has different heights of dancers, but I was definitely more, like my body style was more in the style of this company in Seattle called Pacific Northwest Ballet. So every summer that I was in New York City, I would come to Seattle to dance, and there was like a six week intensive. And I ended up moving to Seattle in 2000, and eventually joining the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company. I danced for almost a decade with the company. It was incredible. Some of my very best friends are from that time. And just to be able to be like, I was a professional ballerina, and it's pretty cool. A lot of little girls' dreams. I had a really beautiful and lovely career that was a mixture of a lot of the quarter ballet sort of teamwork. (inaudible) in Swan Lake, and did almost every show of Nutcracker, but I also got a lot of opportunities to do solos on stage and have these really amazing experiences where I was in more of that principal role. And so I felt like when I ended up retiring in 2009, I made the decision for a bunch of reasons.

Heather Nelson: I was gonna ask, what makes you not want to do that? I would think it was like the hustle and bustle, and probably the wear and tear on your body?

Kari Brunson Wright: Sure. Well, when I retired, I felt like I really felt satisfied. There was a satiation of like, gosh, I've really lived this beautiful dream of mine and could I have more. I really, really could. I could have gone up the ranks and kept dancing for another 10 years, but I think there was a silent undertone of that. I didn't really know who I was, and I had spent so much of my life at that point. 24 years of my life just dedicating myself to this craft, and I was really struggling with my mental health. I had an eating disorder. I was so immersed in this single myopic point of view that it was really, really hard for me to extend my curiosity past what was serving just dance. However, while I was dancing, I was teaching myself how to cook, and I started a food blog, which is funny. Because at the time, no one was monetizing food blogs. It wasn't a thing. It was like 2005. The other day, I was listening to a podcast, say, in 2011, there wasn't even the internet. I was like, well, there was the internet.  

I stopped my blog in 2012. So I started this food blog. I started teaching myself how to cook to the point to just have more nourishment to perform better, and I really, really loved this end of the day ritual of coming home and then making this big meal, and then photographing it, and then writing about it. I got into this sort of mode. And the kind of months before I decided to retire, which was sudden, I got a small injury because I was sort of doing double duty. I was doing all these principal roles, but I was also in the quarter ballet dancing, and so that's usually what happens right before you become a soloist. You're doing just a lot of work. I got a tiny stress fracture in my foot, so I ended up going that summer and working in a restaurant, and it doesn't really necessarily matter the full connection, but it's interesting. But the people who hired me to move to Seattle, their son started a restaurant, and so I went, and I worked for him. He's on a big restaurant tour in Seattle, and I just fell in love. 

There was this moment of like, oh, there's so much more to the world. There's people with different mindsets and backgrounds. All of my dancer friends, we all had come from a very similar file, similar template, if you will, with very similar personalities, and that similar drive. And I think that the world of food was like a little bit of misfit toys, and I liked that. There was some curiosity that I was really digging into, and there were a lot of similarities to dance, just like the preparation. And then you have your service, which is like the performance. And then you clean up at the end, and then you start again the next day. It felt like the ritual of the work felt so similar, yet different so I suddenly retired with like zero strategy, zero plan. I also blew up a lot of parts of my life, other parts of my life, and got into the world of food. That was my first transition. You can do that kind of stuff when you're 28, just sort of blow up your life. 

Heather Nelson: Like, what do I have to lose? 

Kari Brunson Wright: Sure. Yeah, let's do it.

Heather Nelson: What did you do in the restaurant world?

Kari Brunson Wright: For a couple of years, I worked as a line cook. There's a position called garde manger. The restaurant tour that I worked on for a long time, he was really big into pasta, so I worked at the pasta station, and I would grill and butcher the meats. I was doing almost every kind of role in these open kitchens. But I knew it wasn't for me at the end of the day. I didn't realize how much of an entrepreneur you are when you're a dancer because there's a lot of autonomy. You're in this group, but you're also kind of your own brand. You're the dancer, you have this name, and I just found that I didn't need to feel special, if you will. I definitely needed freedom, more freedom than what this job was offering me. And so I was like, okay, well, what could I do? And so I started teaching cooking classes. I really loved that. I started cooking for the 1% in this very ritzy area in Seattle, and doing some private chef work. And then on top of that, I started what would become my cafe. But at first, it started out at the Farmers Market. It was a juice bar, and so I started after just two years. I was like, all right, I'm an entrepreneur. I had no idea, but I meant to do a lot of things. I don't know if you're familiar with human design, but I am a manifesting generator.

Heather Nelson: We have so much in common.

Kari Brunson Wright: So I'm an MG. And manifesting generators are not meant to just do one thing. And for so long, I wasn't able to claim and embrace that. It's almost like, why can't I just stick to one thing? I've always had so many different types of portals, not just my career, but just how my curiosity shows up, and different hobbies. I'm meant to do a lot of things. I'm not just meant to do one.

Heather Nelson: When I learned that, I was like, oh, that's why I can never just do one thing. Because people ask you all the time, I'm sure they're like, how do you do all of this? And you're like, I don't know. I just enjoy it.

Kari Brunson Wright: If I was just doing one thing, I'd be like, I'm still bored.

Heather Nelson: It's so true.

Kari Brunson Wright: I need that dynamic piece. So fast forward, I ended up opening up a cafe in 2013, then I opened another business in 20? Well, I started in 2015. Opened it in 2016 which ended up, we opened four locations of that business, which was an ice cream business. And then my cafe closed in 2020 for obvious reasons, which is the same year that I had my son. And as of probably when this gets recorded, or it's being recorded right now, but as this gets posted, I will have sold my shares in my ice cream company.

Heather Nelson: Oh, is that a good or a bad thing?

Kari Brunson Wright: It is a very good thing. Yes, and I will have tied the bow on this world of food that I embarked on in 2005.

Heather Nelson: Yeah. Closing that chapter completely.

Kari Brunson Wright: Closing that chapter. Yeah. Yeah. I identified for a long time as a chef, right? I had restaurants, and then sort of in that world. I transitioned from ballerina to chef, and then it was sort of like chef to entrepreneur. It's hard to be in the food business. I've been in hospitality for 25 years. My first job was at a restaurant, and I worked in hotels. I'm still around it. I'm still in events. I'm still in hospitality, which I do love. But I'm ready for the day to put a bow on it and be like, bye.

Heather Nelson: You were great. I make so many great friends. I learned so much. I have a bigger appreciation for hospitality and service, and I don't think I'd be as outgoing as I am if I didn't have that as my career. But you reach a point, especially in hospitality, food and restaurants, this is it. You're at breaking point and you're like, I don't want to work this hard anymore. I don't want to get screamed out by somebody. It's so interesting that you go from, I just think of ballerina, elegant, calm and collective, and then you go to a restaurant. And if anyone's been in the back of the house in a restaurant, it's not that way.

Kari Brunson Wright: Well, if you've been backstage in a ballet company, it's not that way either. We're all very similar. There's a lot of that same level of intimacy. There's not a lot of personal space, and you get to know everybody's little picadillos, their way, and their energy, and you could really, really sense and feel their energy. I think that's something that I was really attracted to. It felt like another home for me. In this world of this career change to being an entrepreneur, I basically got a master's in business, and also a master's in psychology of my own self. Because if you ever want to know more about yourself, start a business and have a business partner, and you have a business partner through. I've had business partners in both companies, and this, I guess, third/fourth transition, my plan is to come back to self and do it on my own.

Heather Nelson: It's scary. I've never had a business partner, but I've done women's retreats with someone else. Or you've done these projects with someone else, and there's so much beauty behind that, and so much collaboration, and you learn about yourselves. But there's this freeing moment of just making your own decisions and doing things your way and building your brand on your own, and so I admire that. It's hard.

Kari Brunson Wright: It's hard. I feel ready to do it at almost 44. I feel like group projects, the only group project I'm doing right now is working with my husband, and I think that's the only one I have capacity for right now. 

Heather Nelson: That's a lot. What's the new adventure? I do have a quick question back to food because I was on your social media, and I was scrolling and was like, oh, my god, these beautiful foods. Do you like kiboshing food at all? Do you still enjoy it? 

Kari Brunson Wright: There's been a red thread of everything that I've done, and that red thread is like wellness. Originally, not that ballet was all about wellness, but there's a huge component of my life that it was just like eating well, working out and having the most optimized facility, if you will. And then moving into food, I ended up opening a cafe that was healthy food, but very, very good. Lots of vegetables, fiber, protein, lots of color, and really great for the microbiome. I really, really wanted to have someone come into my cafe or eat the ice cream. I had an ice cream company and really felt, first of all, that they were having an amazing culinary experience. But also like they left, feeling a little better, maybe emotionally with the ice cream, and maybe physically with the lunch or the breakfast that I had cooked for them. Then when they came in, that nourishment piece was still a huge part of me. And even if it's not manifesting through food, like that wellness and nourishment is like this red thread in my life of, I feel like I want people to, when I'm interacting with them, to like feel better than they did before I interacted with them either through dance, through food, and now through personal development work.

Heather Nelson: I love it. So talk about your new business and the work that you're doing.

Kari Brunson Wright: Yeah. So in 2019, I had this ice cream company, and I had this cafe. And in my ice cream company, I had taken on this role of CEO, founder, CEO. I was like, what does that even mean? We're doing multiple million dollars a year, and I'm not working, I'm not scooping ice cream anymore, I'm leading people. I'm coming up with strategies. There's a mission, there's a vision. A lot of that felt like my responsibility, and so I was like, okay, I need to hire a coach. I have a therapist that's so great. I like working on my stuff, my patterns, but how can someone hold space for me in business and kind of help me be a better leader? 

I hired this coach, she's lovely, and we're still in touch. I would call her this mentor expander position in my life. I was with her for a couple of years, 20, I guess it was like late 2018, early 2019. She really helped me work on imposter syndrome and the exact kind of leader that I wanted to, and what my values are. Some of these really basic kinds of coaching principles. And as I was sitting with her, I was like, gosh, the work that she's doing and how she's asking me these questions is the exact way that I lead my people. I'm always asking what and how, and it's so much like self-inquiry. What do they want to do? How can I support? And I've always been more of that democratic leader, and coaching transformational leader versus authoritative/authoritarian style of leader. And I just realized that for so long, my natural style, my natural inclination was to be in that coach coachy role. So as she's sitting there across from me, I'm like, I want to be you. How do I become you? 

And again, this is that manifesting generator part of me that's like, what's next. Just got the CEO title, what's my next thing now that I'm working on my side hustle to turn into my business because that's, I guess, my formula. I started researching coaching schools in very early 2020, then we all know what happened then. And then I had my daughter in 2022, and I knew that during maternity leave, I was going to go to coaching school, and so I found a program that worked with me sort of a la carte, and I got fully certified through the International Coaching Federation. Started a side hustle, even though I hate that term of coaching in 2022 and just, gosh, I just came alive. It took me many, many years now to really figure out who my people are, what kind of coach am I actually? What is our bigger why? How can I be of service? I have figured that out just in time since I am selling the shares in my ice cream company. The last two transitions have not been strategic at all, and this has been strategic to a tee. It's all been very thought through. Timing not so perfect, but--

Heather Nelson: What I love about your story is that we find the things in our life, and our time, or that season of life that brings us joy, right? Being a ballerina, that was like filling your cup. You loved it.

Kari Brunson Wright: It was my hobby.

Heather Nelson: It's like accepting that, okay, now I'm done with that season, and now what's next? And being okay with that transition, and finding the things that bring you joy, and being okay to say, you know what? This isn't filling my cup anymore. Let's move on. And a lot of people just get stuck in that forever. You see it, and then they're miserable, they hate their lives. Life is too short to be stuck in something that you're not proud of, and that you don't find joy in. That's what I love about you. I've done that, I'm in that process as well, but there's so much power in that.

Kari Brunson Wright: It's so interesting,  I think this is what happens, but I've kind of become the coach that I need in 2018, 2019. I go very deep on values. We really do a lot of future casting, we do a lot of work on identity unblocking. I'm certified through the internal family systems model, and so I use a lot of that work, it's called parts work, in my coaching conversations just to get to excavate those questions. Because I don't know about you, but I didn't learn that. I had a mother that was extremely successful, and my father was extremely successful, and all I saw was a very linear path to success. This is what it looks like, but it wasn't ever going inward and being like, what does it feel to feel satisfied? What do I want my nervous system to do? What interests me when no one else is looking, not pain, shame, programming, society, etcetera. When I just sit with myself, like, what do I want? What lights me up? And to really quiet all that noise, and the societal noise, and especially nowadays with all the AI stuff that's happening, and people losing their jobs, we're gonna have a huge awakening to back to this new paradigm of self, and how can we contribute as self? How can we be more satisfied, not just in career, but in more of this eudaemonic framework that is about way more than just what we do for a living.

Heather Nelson: So good in your title, though, you had psycho spiritual. What does that mean? Tell us what that means.

Kari Brunson Wright: Yeah. I identify as a Psycho-Spiritual Leadership Coach, and I put that in there because I am not an executive coach. Can I coach executives? Yep, 100%. I was an executive. I'm happy to have that sort of framework. But what I bring in is I'm a therapist adjacent in the fact that we are not just, I'm not coaching you on KPIs and have this extractive business that's all about a bottom line, right? I can look at a P and L, I can tell you how to help your business. I can create structure and framework. 

I do consulting in that exact realm. However, I'm extremely into this idea of regenerative business and thinking about how we can also do that for ourselves. And so when I think about, okay, this idea of core values and what's your personal why, and what is this recipe for being well that you have that takes more of this  psycho spiritual approach because it's psychology modalities and techniques with some spirituality involved in there too. And for me, spirituality does not mean religion. It means there is something larger and greater. How do I intuit from universe sources to know what's right and what's not right for me? Some of my clients and I are like, we pull a tarot card at the beginning of our time together. Other people, we don't do that. But every single person is working in like an energetic modality, whether they call it boundaries, or whether we call it auric edge. I can meet each person where they're at, but the essence of it is the same, which is like, this is more than just career coaching, or just business coaching, or just executive coaching. This is like the full whole person, and that the psycho spiritual model feels like the most congruent to what it is that I do.

Heather Nelson: I thought the spiritual thing was a little, I talk about a lot like very woo woo. That was not in my world, probably a few years ago, and then I started to do women's retreats and be in the presence of women who see a bigger thing, and manifesting, and vision boarding, and all of those things. And man, it has changed my life. It's just so cool to like, it isn't a religion. I'm not religious. I don't believe in that stuff, but I do believe that there's somebody up there in the world watching over me. And the more I pour out there, the more things come back. It is one of those things that have absolutely changed my perception of life and made me more of a happier person and grounded person.

Kari Brunson Wright: Sure. I use a lot of energetic modalities. If you think about, for example, the moon being able to pull the ocean back and forth with the tides, is that science? Or is that spirituality? It's science, but so much of it is also energetic. But energy is also spiritual, and it's also scientific, and so I don't really think that there's. It's not binary. It's both. For example, manifestation really is just us tapping into what's called our reticular activating system, which is similar to, okay, let's say that you think to yourself, I want this thing. It's very similar to, if you were to buy a red car, and then all of a sudden you see red cars. Are there actually more red cars? Are you just now noticing that thing? And that's what manifestation is. You're saying, I want to start noticing this thing because I've put it out into the world. And then you go, and your compass starts turning towards that thing that you're putting out there so you're having more opportunities to say yes. So that's how I see it. I coach people on manifestation all the time, and it's not passive. It's extremely active through aligned action, and unblocking, and making sure that you have people that are expansive to you that show you that it's actually possible. And with all that, that is how manifestation happens. It's more of a scientific approach, truly.

Heather Nelson: I love that. What a great person. I didn't even think of it that way. It's so funny, when you're pregnant too. It's like, as soon as you're pregnant, you see all these pregnant women. It's always like that weird thing, but the car thing is definitely relatable.

Kari Brunson Wright: Exactly.

Heather Nelson: So with your coaching, do you do one on one coaching? Do you do group coaching?

Kari Brunson Wright: Yeah. I do a combination. I mostly do one on one. I work with people on retainer, which I think is really unique. So once we work together, I'm like your person. I text with my clients, and I email, I give homework, and I can usually tell it pretty quickly, like within the first month or so, if it's working for someone in how they engage, and I find that the more effort that you put in, the more you're gonna get out of it. So yeah, I work on a retainer model.

Heather Nelson: You only work with women?

Kari Brunson Wright: No, I work with any gender. It doesn't really matter. The only thing I guess I ask energetically is that they have a good balance of both masculine and feminine energy. Again, a lot of people are coming to me for a career, and it feels like a very masculine energy having nothing to do with gender. Very action-oriented, and wanting the job, and wanting the thing, and wanting to do the resume and all that. Then also, we have to balance that with that yin energy of that feminine as well, and knowing that we need to go inside and have that self-inquiry. And doing a lot of the internal work as well. So really, I don't care who you are. There needs to be a desire to have both of those at the same time.

Heather Nelson: What are you seeing in the work that you're doing the number one problem, or the number one thing people are working through?

Kari Brunson Wright: Yeah. Last week, oftentimes, like universally, there will be like these client themes. And I'm not so much into astrology, other than I know my top three and all that, and I know my north node and south node. But there seems to be these themes. And right now, I keep seeing this, how do we keep our shape? How do we not bend and mold to the boss or the business partner? What does it feel like to be us? So I'm really working with my clients on that. And ultimately, that's boundary work and identity work, and so that feels like a big theme right now. What does our shape feel like to us? What does it look like? What color is it? How do I keep it when I'm in a situation that my natural pattern would be to compromise and to get small, or to wrap around that person, or whatever it is. So that seems to be coming up a lot. And then I'm bespoke in my practice. The exercises for each individual person are gonna be very different. Having one person sit in her energy for five minutes every day, what does that feel like to you? And then next week, her practice is to bring in her business partner energetically, and her mind just comes next to her and sees if she can keep that shape. Whereas another person, it's like they're using more of their cognitive boundaries. They're still keeping their shape, but what does that feel like in conversation? What do you actually want to say back so that you're practicing? You're almost like doing a dress rehearsal of something that you could say that is you with no risk because you're practicing it on your own. And so those are just two very different models of how I would work with different people and where they're at to keep their shape. 

Heather Nelson: I think there's this really cool conversation about boundaries. And I think, especially as moms and in the age that we are, is setting boundaries, whether that's with friends, or kids, or husbands, or work, I feel like at least for me, that's something that I'm struggling with is how do you set those boundaries. But it's almost like the conversation around shaping yourself, it's like knowing who you are, knowing where you're sitting, and where you can bend and not bend. I've always just bent because I'm a people pleaser, and I want to make everybody happy. My kids - I'm not with their father anymore so I don't see them all the time. I bend because I want to make them happy, but it's literally ruining everything because I've done that so much. And so now, I'm trying to figure out what those boundaries are to bring things back home.

Kari Brunson Wright: It's so interesting. The opposite is always the medicine, right? In that situation, you people please to others, but how can you people please to you? How can you do that opposite action to be able to be like, okay, this is what feels good for me. And, yes, especially with children, we co-regulate with children until they're eight and nine, and then they start to, like, it's hard to use adult-like principles when you have children. But really, all of us are just toddlers, right? If there's a toddler that's having a temper tantrum, or an adult that's acting like a toddler, how do we actually keep our shape? What I mean by that is not absorbing their energy. When your daughter or son is on the ground having a full temper tantrum, are you gonna go next to him and have a temper tantrum too and become that person? No. We can separate from having a hard time right now, and that's not mine. It's a concept called like me, not me. 

It's actually a little bit easier to do. It's like my highest self, and I know better, that right now, I'm not going to give you a popsicle before dinner. I think that same, if you think about it in that parenting modality of like, I actually know. I can see strategically what's better here. If we can think about that for our own selves, I know myself so well that this is a pattern I'm gonna get into. If I do this, then all these things are gonna happen down the road that actually don't serve me very well, and so, like, that is how I would interact with boundaries on a personal level. It's like, well, I'm gonna say no to this thing. Let's say that I'm gonna say no to a late night drink because that is going to make me feel hungover the next day, which is then going to put me in a bad mood, which then my partner and I aren't going to get along, and I'm gonna be short with my kids. And it's like, is that worth the thing? That's not the best example of boundaries, but a boundary for yourself is like, I'm not gonna go out late. I go to bed at 9:00. That's my boundary with myself, which you ultimately can then say to other people. 

Heather Nelson: I love what you say about energy, because there's so many times where somebody is arguing with you, or like there's some kind of power struggle, right? And you're like, I'm not going to give you my energy. My new motto the last few months is like, I could give them my energy, get worked up and be in this ugly cycle. Or I could just bless and release. I'm not gonna give it to them. 

Kari Brunson Wright: It's interesting. I like the way you think about that, like giving your energy. Because that to me is like giving fragments of yourself. If we're a whole person and we almost like to break open and give little pieces of ourselves. But there's also taking other people's pieces and putting them inside of us. And so a lot of the work that I do, and again, I really like the way you're like, I'm giving my energy to someone, not necessarily absorbing theirs. But pulling back those fragments of yourself, that's really beautiful work. That helps with your own boundaries. But then also, like you said, composting, or getting rid of their fragments that they gave to you, that energy exchange that isn't necessarily. Because we can still exchange energy, right? We can put our shape right up next to someone, and touch it, but we're still us. We're not going to absorb someone else's bad mood or negativity.

Heather Nelson: Do you do a lot of work around meditation? I know you had said you have your clients kind of sit with themselves for five minutes, is that part of the work that you do?

Kari Brunson Wright: It depends. If I was to be a coach doctor, it's like, some people need different kinds of medicine, if you will. So some people do need to sit. To other people, that would be really, really activating for them, and so maybe they then go on a walk. I'll have them do a mindful walk where they're not on their phone, and they're just identifying five different colors, and like smelling some flowers, or maybe they're picking flowers for a bouquet. That's a meditation in itself. It's more of an active meditation. Really ultimately, all meditation is how you focus on one thing, whether that's your third eye center, or a mantra, or whatever. It's like, how do you have stuff come in, but have it almost be like seeing it like a cloud that passes you by, but the blue sky is still what you're focusing on, and you're like letting all those things just sort of be as they are. Some people need it, and other people don't, or they're not ready. But again, I don't think there's one prescription for everybody.

Heather Nelson: That's what I love is that you curate that based on your client and what they need, and that there's not one size fits all, and we all are in different walks of life or different seasons. How do you work through that?

Kari Brunson Wright: I do my own personal development work, which I do lots. I have this gigantic toolbox of different things. And sometimes, I'm like, gosh, I don't have an answer for you right now, but I'm going to think about maybe over the next couple hours what I think would be helpful for you based on what I know. Because so much of the work that coaches do, or should do, even though I hate that word, is actively listening and being like, I think this is what you might need. Put it on, try on these clothes. If it doesn't work, that's okay. I can come back with something else.

Heather Nelson: Trial and error sometimes. I love that. I know you don't work exclusively with women, but a lot of my listeners are women. Maybe my husband might listen once in a while. You've gone through massive up and flow in your career and in your life, so many really cool things. But if you could think back, what was the one thing or one advice that you could give someone that's sitting in a place of messiness right now to help inspire them? 

Kari Brunson Wright: I'm always just such a fan of getting quiet and coming back to self. And I think there's so many different ways to do that. But gosh, when we just quiet and we can start listening to the whispers, they've always been there. And there's this quote that the universe whispers until it screams. And if most of us, if we look back on, we heard the whispers, and we just kept, like we pushed him down. And then all of a sudden, the universe is like, okay, fine. I have to scream now. I have to do something really big. But this whole time, you knew intuitively. I think that that's the piece of advice I would give. I think I'll use this transition out of food. I have had these whispers for years and years knowing that it was time. It was time for me to move on. And those whispers could sometimes come in a somatic way. Not excited about the work, or they also came in where I noticed myself being lit up by something else like, ooh, there's so much curiosity that I'm having at this particular thing. Or even just watching myself play small. Knowing that, and yet still doing it, but then later being like, that was a moment right there. Why did I do that? Why did I go into my patterning? Why did I silence myself? So yeah, I think we all have that inner knowing. It is there, every single person has it, and we have to quiet ourselves down and really spend time with ourselves to be like, what do I like? What do I want to do? What feels right for me? And that can feel really, really uncomfortable, but that's the medicine. 

Heather Nelson: That's so good. I love that. I want to leave that there, because I think that many women need to hear that. And it was so beautiful. I love your story. I love your journey. There's definitely so many bits and pieces of it that I can relate to, especially restaurant space. Chaotic as it is. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for telling your story, and I can't wait to see what's next. We'll put in the show notes how everyone can find you. And if you know somebody who feels connected to you, hopefully, you can make some connections for some potential clients. And yeah, so thanks for being here.

Kari Brunson Wright: Thank you.

Heather Nelson: That's a wrap on today's episode of Her Story Unscripted. Is something you heard today made you feel a little more seen, a little less alone, or just got you thinking that's exactly why we're here? If this episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to share it with another woman in your life who needs to hear it. And if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe wherever you listen, or catch us on YouTube so you never miss a conversation. I'm Heather Nelson, thank you for being here, for listening, and for showing up for real stories. I'll see you next week.