Personal Growth & Reinvention for Women | say YES to yourself!
If you're ready to stop living by everyone else's expectations and start creating a life that feels authentic, intentional, and fully your own, you're in the right place.
Say YES to Yourself! is a personal growth podcast for women navigating life's transitions and asking, "What's next for me?" Through honest conversations and inspiring stories, host Wendy Harrop interviews women who have reinvented themselves, trusted their intuition, overcome life's challenges, and created meaningful change—one courageous yes at a time.
Every Wednesday and Friday, Wendy sits down with authors, entrepreneurs, coaches, creatives, and everyday women to share honest conversations about personal growth, life transitions, and what's possible when you choose yourself.
Whether you're navigating a career change, an empty nest, divorce, burnout, caregiving, entrepreneurship, or simply feeling like you've lost yourself, this podcast will remind you that your next chapter is still waiting to be written.
You'll find conversations about:
- Personal growth and self-discovery
- Reinvention and life's transitions
- Building confidence and trusting yourself
- Purpose, fulfillment, and intentional living
- Career changes and entrepreneurship
- Relationships, boundaries, and people-pleasing
- Divorce, grief, healing, and resilience
- Creativity, courage, and living boldly
- Women's empowerment and authentic leadership
This podcast explores questions like:
• How do I reinvent myself when life no longer fits?
• How do I stop people-pleasing and start trusting myself?
• How do I rebuild after divorce, grief, or a major life transition?
• How do I find purpose in my next chapter?
• How do I create a life that feels aligned instead of expected?
• How do I build confidence after years of putting everyone else first?
• Is it too late to change careers, start a business, or follow a dream?
• How do I reconnect with the woman I've become?
If you're looking for encouragement, practical wisdom, and real stories from women who have chosen themselves—and found something even better on the other side—welcome.
Your best chapter doesn't happen by accident.
It begins the moment you say YES to yourself.
Personal Growth & Reinvention for Women | say YES to yourself!
Reinvention as a Way of Life: Following the Call Across Countries and Careers | Karla Freeman
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Fan Mail: Tell Wendy how you're saying yes to yourself!
In this episode, Wendy sits down with Karla Freeman, a therapist, somatic experiencing practitioner, writer, filmmaker, artist, tango dancer, and playwright. Karla's life is a masterclass in reinvention. She's lived in 5 countries, traveled to 40, and built multiple careers—each one aligned with creativity and transformation. But her story isn't about constantly running. It's about saying yes. To imagination. To calls. To the next chapter, even when the current one is beautiful.
They explore:
- How discovering your voice and realizing you have insight worth sharing changes everything
- Reinvention as a spiritual practice: following the call even when you have to leave wonderful things behind
- Living outside the box and what happens when you stop trying to fit into your family of origin's mold
Karla's philosophy is simple: fall down, get up, do it wrong long enough to learn the lesson. She's been a social worker, therapist, dancer, writer, and now a playwright—gathering all her experiences into one piece. She's lived in Brooklyn, Manhattan, California, Argentina, and Ecuador. She's followed her teachers, her instincts, and her imagination. And she's discovered that the universe supports the people brave enough to say yes.
Connect with Karla:
Get her book, Creating Magic in Midlife: 101 Questions and Answers to Reinvent Your Work, Relationships, and Life!: amazon.com/Creating-Magic-Midlife-Questions-Relationships/dp/0976554003?tag=syty-20
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Hi friends, this is Wendy Harrup, and welcome to the Say Yes to Yourself podcast. On the Say Yes to Yourself podcast, you'll hear stories from women just like us who are adding the practice of saying yes in their daily lives in big and small ways, and as a result are experiencing the truth that everybody wins when you say yes to yourself. Saying yes to yourself is a graceful unfolding, an intentional becoming of the very best version of you. It is my hope that in these conversations we are able to find our truth and be inspired and empowered to live our very best lives. I'm so excited to go on this journey with you, and I look forward to finding a bit of our own story in each other's. Hello, friend. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you are having a wonderful week. I am in my absolute bliss in Edinburgh this week with my clients. It is so beautiful here. I love this city, and not just because the temperature is so much cooler than it was in France. It's just beautiful and expansive, and it invites you to be outdoors and walk and walk and walk and enjoy these ancient sites and this modern beauty. It's just such a fun place. I hope it is on your list to visit for the first time or return. It's just so great. We are having so much fun and we did such a lovely thing. I'll tell you all sorts of things that we did in the you know conversations to come, but we did this beautiful walking tour that is led by golden retrievers. It was so fun. And I had goldens for years, and it was just delicious to get a sweet fix, and it's lovely to know that you're only going to be walking as long as these Goldens can take it. So um it was just really fun and delightful. And I hope you are finding fun and delight in expected and unexpected ways as you are um entering into summer and all the good things that that means for you. Speaking of good things, oh my gosh, we have the coolest guest. I loved this conversation. I have so many notes all over her bio about how cool she is. We have Carla Freeman. She is an author, a trauma therapist, and a professional storyteller. After 25 years working as a therapist in Santa Barbara, she authored Creating Magic in Midlife, a roadmap to reinvention with worldwide distribution. She went on to reinvent her own life, living in Buenos Aires, Mexico, Ireland, and now Ecuador. Trained at the International School of Storytelling, Carla performs her solo show, Crossroads, A Mermaid's Tale, and leads workshops around the world on biographical storytelling and healing. Her novel, To Heal a Broken Heart, is coming out soon. Right? How cool is she! She's lived in all of these places. She's up to big, beautiful, bold things. I know you are going to love this conversation with Carla Freeman. Carla, I can already tell this is going to be a fun conversation. Thank you so much for being here.
SPEAKER_00Oh, my pleasure. Looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's so fun. I would love to start by asking how are you saying yes to yourself in this season?
SPEAKER_00In this season. Oh boy.
SPEAKER_01You know, there are seasons in a woman's life. So it can be any container of time you choose.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Okay. Well, in the present moment, I'm becoming a playwright. And as of um the 28th of the month, we will have the fourth or fifth, what you call a table reading, where the actors are at a table. They have the script, they don't have to memorize, and there's an audience. And after it's read, uh this director, playwright, friend will lead a discussion, and then we'll have a little reception. And it's so close to finishing. And I'm saying yes to gathering all the resources, experiences of a lifetime into a way that my uh contribution is gonna be global.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness, what a giant, gorgeous yes. I love that for you. So tell me, as the poster child for reinvention, how did you get here?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. So uh I was thinking, I wonder how far back she's gonna want me to go. I am along for the ride, Queen. Take me wherever you want to go. Okay, so um I read before I went to school. My mother said, How can you read that sign? I grew up in Brooklyn. I said, I don't know. And that was the beginning of saying yes to my imagination. Any book I read, I could be that. I don't know. You're nodding, so you probably relate. And that led to um first time I was standing on the corner. This is in Brooklyn in an area called Kenorsey, where really nobody wanted to live there in those days. So I'm standing there getting on the bus, and I'm thinking there's more to life than this. Okay, so now fast forward, um, I was married quite young and divorced in my 20s.
SPEAKER_01Happens to the best of us.
SPEAKER_00My mother said, Too many boyfriends, you have to pick one. So that was 17.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Got married at 19.
SPEAKER_01Wow, I my first marriage was at 23, and I thought I was young. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Well, you were, and so was I. Yeah. So, you know, after I got divorced, I moved into Manhattan and I lucked into saying yes to a teacher friend who said, uh, come with me to this group. It was called a leaderless encounter group, where we sat in a circle and I started to reflect to me, you have insight. I said, What's that? Uh I don't even know that I had a voice. So, anyway, that was the alternative life of healing, holistic practices. Uh, we formed a group that had like a little growth center in Manhattan, and I was teaching Gestalt, and you know, it was early days of consciousness slash healing slash alternative growth. And then I um said yes to leaving New York, which was a big deal. I I had was a social worker at that point. I had an MSW and was an administrator of a psychoanalytic mental health center training program, and they kept saying yes every time I had an idea for a you know, I said, let's do uh transactional analysis. They said, Okay, you set it up. Okay, this okay, let's do that.
SPEAKER_01All of this that you were exposing yourself and really growing in this new movement, right? Self-actualization and all of these things with this group of people, you were immediately getting to integrate that into your day job as a social worker, and people were seeing the results, right? And your patients, clients were also seeing the results.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm glad you're saying it that way because the word tribe flew in my head that we are in a tribe of people who live, I say not even outside the box. There is no box.
SPEAKER_01Right, yes, yes, yes. My um second husband is brilliant and such a fabulous person, but not the person for me. And so much of his uh life as a finance person lives in a spreadsheet. And the the form of a box, the that everything has a place brings a lot of peace and serenity and safety to him and to his existence. Just imagine being married to a person whose box has no lid. And, you know, as I became aware that my box had no lid, I just thought I was doing it wrong this whole time. So I kept, you know, conforming to ways that, you know, I was more pleasing to the people that were important to me, and to be aware that it's okay to not have a lid. And for you, like you didn't even have a box, like it's just it's so good to give yourself that permission to not even permission, but to allow yourself to remember what you already know on some level, in that you don't fit, quote unquote, and it's not the you part that is out of alignment, it is the trying to fit that is what was out of alignment for you.
SPEAKER_00Right. Right. And I relate to that more about my family of origin that I felt I didn't fit, and I um later had the thought, since I didn't want to be that way, I'll just make it up. Right. Brilliant, brilliant, yeah. So um the other thing I've learned about myself is uh for the good or the bad, I always have a foot out the door. And the good is that I've lived in five countries, I've traveled to forty, uh, and I've had uh lots of careers all uh aligned to creativity, transformation, uh different venues, you know, being a speaker, being a writer, filmmaker, an artist now, tango down, you know, it's like playwright. Playwright, yeah. So yeah, so when I um decided to leave New York, I was leaving a wonderful life. And yet that was the call.
SPEAKER_01Right. What was calling you?
SPEAKER_00Uh well changed. Um I had been to California and I was doing Tai Chi with a teacher, and he was gonna be in Hawaii, and I um I don't know that there was exactly something, Wendy. It just felt like time. You know what I mean? It's like something's changing, and because uh this is kind of a psychological term.
SPEAKER_01I'm here for it.
SPEAKER_00Okay, we call it counterphobic, meaning I don't feel fear, I just do. Meaning I might take risks that could be dangerous or not, you know, in in the adult sense of some kind of discernment. It just feels right. But the good thing is I always had guidance.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So I I would love to just pause there for a minute. This idea of counterphobic, which I'm gonna speak to it as an idea, not a quote unquote truth, you know, because it's something that it sounds to me when I hear that is ooh, that sounds like the term that someone would like to label me with because my freedom is threatening their safety in some way, that they're worried about me, or you know how some people I mean, they just say it about anything. When I moved to Massachusetts, people were telling me, Oh, you don't want a bed and breakfast. That will just you'll I'm like, I'm sorry, have you met me? I think you don't want a bed and breakfast, which is totally fine, you know. And then people tell me, Oh, you don't want to get a divorce. Like, you what are you gonna do? You don't want to buy that property next to you. And what are you gonna do with 30 acres? I'm gonna have it. That's what I'm gonna do. You don't want to buy a property in France. Well, yes, I do. Yes, I did. Here I am. So it's sometimes people put their own feelings about their own growth or choices that is totally fine, they don't have to, but making another person wrong for following their own inner wisdom and their own inner guidance, which you had.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. So maybe there's two parts to this. So the part you're talking about, I totally relate to. I um I find myself hardly sharing a lot of expansion only with a few select people. And the little story when I was leaving, uh I lived in Santa Barbara many years, is when I had my longest career, like close to 30 years. Wow. So my neighbor, who happened to have Holocaust background, her parents, uh, she said to me one day, what's gonna happen if you go there in that? What's gonna I was about to go to Buenos Aires and I I was selling my condo and starting again outside the US. And uh what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? I said, you don't know her, so I'll use her name. Monica, I have my own anxiety, I don't need yours. Right. So I'm gonna say that it's the normal range uh feelings that we have when we know we need to make a change, and it's not about necessarily one feeling or another, it's this transitional time in our lives when we feel like the cocoon is breaking open and we're about to be the new butterfly, but we're kind of shaky about it, and we're going, I don't know if the wings will work, you know. As a playwright, I had that image. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never been a playwright. I wrote a novel, a short story, I mean short stories, a nonfiction book, articles. You know, I'm a writer, so I know how to write, but place is a whole different animal.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So, you know, that thing where you have your house now, people are probably looking at you, admiring your courage, whatever they say, you're inspiring me, your blah blah. You know, you have your wonderful place. I looked it up, it's gorgeous. Thank you. Yeah, it's amazing what you've created, it's really there's so much more to come. Yeah, yeah, around the corner.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's all so good. So, in your and just again to pause from the story because I want to hear all of it, in your um decision to be selective about whom you share your expansive next moves with, how how is that process for you? For me, I get a lot of um like I feel like I'm having a conversation with one woman who has said yes and it inspires me and my next yes, and I have good ideas during those conversations and I'm saying them into a microphone. And who knows how many hundreds, thousands of people are listening to that? And if I had to tell a thousand people as if I needed their buy-in before I could do it, that would be a completely different experience. So, how are you finding the people that are supportive that aren't just uh yes men that think everything you do is magic? And you know, how are you balancing that being in community and having an accountability through um aligned relationships?
SPEAKER_00That's an amazing question. And I think as a speaker, that topic would be wonderful to share about the process. So two things. One, I have a uh solo show. I was trained as a storyteller in England and Greece, and it's it's a story I wrote called Crossroads. I perform it, and so cool. It came from travel and the Mapuche indigenous group in Chile. I one day uh was there, and that's a whole long story, but I came back to where I was living in Buenos Aires, and I wrote this story about a seahorse, a mermaid, and a tree, and it has the elements of fear and crossroads to where healing can happen. So I say the second thing um about discernment, trust, discernment, decision making, they're all lined up to I trust the flow and my guidance so much more, I don't have to overthink as much. I don't go, I don't attract the wrong people hardly. Right? That's right, right. So um I'd say um sacred space would be the container, right? Yeah, so if you uh and I and whoever has a place, an inner place, an outer place where we feel safe, quiet, it's taken me a long time to feel quiet is okay. Yeah, I I see when that. Yeah, validation, premature, sharing an idea, then using up the energy, you know, these are all like life lessons over time, right? And practice. Yeah, that's number one. I don't need to tell a lot of people. I did, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, how did you balance uh telling? So I am newer to this work than you, so I'm so um enlivened and enlightened by this conversation. Thank you. So as you were moving more into this certainty, this self trust, this discernment, the same discernment that told you it was time for a change was also the same. Discernment that told you who needs to know about it and what the next logical step is. So as you were practicing this in the early years, how was it for you? When I feel like that this is such a long way to a question, I'm formulating it as I ask it, in that I feel like there are this, there's a list of the people that you're supposed to tell big things to, like your parents, your siblings, your cousin, like the people that are bound to you by blood or by just what your history has been. And that is intersecting with I'm living a life that is very different than the one that I used to live. And so some of those people have fallen off, we're just not on the same radio station at all. But I feel like there's also is there an obligation to tell them, like, how did you work through that? Because I don't want to be rude and say, like, listen, people, this ship has sailed, and you can watch me on Instagram if you want to know what's up. But um, but I think that that's something that sometimes holds us back.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah, well, two things again. One is um, I was watching this um solo show this woman uh gave, and she had characters, and she had this treasure chest, and she put on this shabby clothes, and she was a homeless person, and she said like repeating uh every every time anybody passed, she would repeat this fall down, get up, fall down, get up. The main thing is get up. Yeah, be willing to do it wrong long enough to learn the lesson. Prematurely, I'm gonna make all the mistakes. Uh, if it's like the new thing with playwriting, I would attend to this group and I went, I don't think I belong, but then it was premature, and I thought, you know, I'm rushing to think I'm not safe with these people, blah blah blah. Fall down, get up, get back to the meeting and be quiet and really listen rather than look for my needs. The second thing has to do with the other person. So most family only want to know you're okay, they get bored. Right. If they're not in your world and your creative venues, even when I went back to Santa Barbara after I was living uh outside the US and my beautiful sacred space friends, when I started to talk about my life in Buenos Aires, their eyes glazed over. That they care about me. How can they relate to leaving the U.S., going with two suitcases to a city that you know no one, and establishing a life? Okay, I knew two people, Tango teachers.
SPEAKER_01That's cool. I don't know anyone else who has followed their tango teachers to Buenos Aires. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00So, you know, change is a moving target, safety is a moving target. Fall down, get up, do it wrong, experiment. Nobody's taking a part of my flesh if I say something and they don't understand and they say the wrong thing. I go back and I go, yeah, well, okay. They don't really interested or but a lot of people surprise me with the fact that um I wouldn't say my neighbor is bored, but you know, she doesn't have the creative life I do. Yeah. And I've been sharing with her the play, she's been helping me. She was a teacher. Today we'll read it out loud and see how long it is for the stage reading. I've been, you know, I've I wouldn't say I've enlivened, but I've enhanced her view. And when I first met her, I thought we had nothing in common.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's such a gift. It is. I think that you know I mean, you know this. We are learning this, that we are the only ones who are in our way. And sometimes we put different people's faces on that. But if we follow this uh inner wisdom, if we're following the guidance for what's next, we don't have to know 15 steps ahead. We don't have to know or have some guarantee of its wild success before we uh do the first thing. We're just what we're what we're looking for, what we're looking for the certainty is, is that I trust me and I trust God. And I know that if it feels good, it is good. And I'm gonna keep moving toward what feels good. And anybody else's opinion of the optics from where they sit, that's their work. And I also don't have to make up some story that everyone thinks I'm crazy, and everybody nobody cares what I'm doing. Like you said, they care about me. Nobody cares, they care about me. Oh, she's safe. Oh, look, she's on a plane. Oh, look, there she's and then that's it, like they're done thinking. So anyone who is holding off on living the life that is bubbling in their heart because of what someone else is going to think or do or say, it's just a blip. Let them let them think or do or say whatever they're gonna think or do or say because they're gonna do it, whether you get on a plane to Paris or not.
SPEAKER_00Right. And Wendy, uh I feel so lucky that I did the trauma therapy training with the top people. This was when I was a therapist in Santa Barbara. I knew I personally was still broken in places that like therapy wasn't enough. And this system, Peter Levine started somatic experiencing. I trained, I was uh assistant many years integrating some of that self um regulation way of life. So what you were saying, which was like how someone who has a core that's making sense to them, has a certain way of talking about meaning. And it's you use the word story. So we have our old stories, which are important to understand who we are. No, you know, like, oh God, this happened, you know. You get to a point where you can hear yourself saying things that self-motivate, self-you know, I'm tired, I need to rest. This is the beginning. I know it's gonna be a learning curve. I'll need certain kind of mushy friends to say, keep going, you're okay. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to do this. It looks like oh god, I'm gonna be starting something new again.
SPEAKER_01Oh so you know, the whole thing is such an uh adventure when you have tools, yes, and it's so beautiful because you didn't know when you left Brooklyn for Manhattan, you didn't know yet what you learned in Manhattan, and when you left Manhattan for California, you didn't know, and then you got there, and then you learned like you're in the pioneer of all of these things that I'm swimming around in. So, first of all, thank you. Thank you for that. Yes, that has paved a beautiful yellow brick road for me to follow, but having all of this training and all of the somatic work, which you could then integrate for yourself, regulate your nervous system while you follow your tango teachers to Buenos Aires, which is so cool. So, did you leave Santa Barbara for Buenos Aires? Or did that happen?
SPEAKER_00Okay, and then and then so then um, you know, because I wrote the book and I was listening to the 101 questions and answers. And if we have time, I'm gonna do a little uh magic thing with you. Yes, we always have time. Okay, so um I was back and forth. They say uh two ways to make a big change rip the band-aid off slowly or rip it up. So I was the slow back and forth, uh 10 days a month in Buenos Aires, seven months, six months, still had my condo, still had all the stress of burnout with Alzheimer's father, mentally ill sister on the street, uh, you know, mother really compromised, and I was flying back and forth. And I mean, I was got I can't stretch anymore.
SPEAKER_01Moment, you're using all the tools, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I made it enough to get to Buenos Aires, and and then I thought South America's so big, I should go somewhere else. Here's a magic story, and then I'll do the little exercise with you. Yeah, I thought it's so big, and I gotta look at the map like we do, and go like this. So, Ecuador and Cuenca, indigenous. I was always interested in shamanism and all that. And so when I went, it was Christmas here, that's where I live now, Cuenca, Ecuador. And they have a children's parade that starts in the morning, goes on till the evening, and the the little girls have all the outfits on, and the parents are smiling, walking along proud, and the boy with the hat and the painted mustache at four years old. I mean, it was so delightful, but the magic was that my friends from Santa Barbara were here.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I love that.
SPEAKER_00They were visiting their son, who's now a doctor, so this is over 10 years ago, um, who was doing this project, which in itself was amazing. Mobile surgery into the the Boonies, where the communities didn't have health facilities, so they had like hernia surgery in the van with the Minister of Health who started the Centurandes project. And Jonathan, uh Mark Honduras' son, was volunteering, so they were coming for Christmas to visit them. I had no clue they'd be here.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I say their city found me because I didn't pick it and I didn't, you know, decide to settle anywhere. I was still kind of healing and not needing to be making big decisions. So I was back and forth until one day I said I have to have a base. And I came here, and you know, my life is not the same as when they left the US. So the two main things I'd say was that they fix things, they're not consumerists, and uh, you know, the thing of you lead with who you are in work, they don't ask you who you are, they ask you how old you are, are you married, and they don't care.
SPEAKER_01Right. They're more inclined to ask about the person than the accomplishment.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. So the relief was I could walk around and see the indigenous women with their big feet in the mercados with all the fruits and vegetables. They're sitting on the floor. They had picked the naranas, the uh tangerines, and then they were, you know, sitting there just selling vegetables and fruit.
SPEAKER_01How beautiful!
SPEAKER_00And some of them had walked down the mountain to get on the bus to bring it there, you know. Humility gave me humility to live here.
SPEAKER_01Wow, not that important, right, right, and you've been there for 10 years.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm getting the renewal of my immigration, so I left after five years, and I was in Mexico, in Oaxaca, six months, and then I went to Dublin six months, and then I went back. And as a writer, when the second time I went to Dublin for six months, I went, I have to try and live here. This is the city of literature, open mics, retreats, uh, writing, uh, storytelling, music. Have you been there?
SPEAKER_01I have been to Dublin, but I haven't spent a lot of time there. Only like one night.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, the people and the way of life. So, anyway, I uh during the pandemic, I applied to get a master's in creative writing. You're so cool. And um, you know, I think it and I do it, but I now think about it before I do it. I gotta tie up the horses. So, anyway, um that changed my life yet again because of the storytelling and the performing, and I'd been to went to Edinburgh, the storytelling. I've it's too much in one lifetime, how much I've done.
SPEAKER_01It's so amazing. I love it, and I want I'm gonna ask you some questions as if I'm from Ecuador, because I think this is really important for people to know again, because it dismantles narratives that are not in service. How old were you when you left the US to live in South America the first in Buenos Aires?
SPEAKER_00I can't remember. I'm gonna say 60-ish. Amazing.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and how old were you when you got your master's in creative writing in Dublin?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I can't remember 70, maybe 70-ish. Brilliant. Yeah, brilliant.
SPEAKER_01And how old were you when you wrote your first play?
SPEAKER_00Well, now, yeah, yeah. So this uh age thing is kind of interesting to talk about. So when I wrote this book, I did all the research on aging, age wave, how people do and don't retire, uh, what is the meaning of reinventing yourself in the second half of life? Uh, how you view money, passion, and work. It's 101 questions and answers, two-page chapters.
SPEAKER_01It's so beautiful. And the the name of it is Creating Magic in Midlife: a roadmap to reinvention.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 101 questions and answers to reinvent your work, relationships, and life. So when I was here one time, the shaman I was working with, I said I wrote a book. He took it, he goes like this. This is a really good book. And this is how to use it. And I'm gonna do it with you.
SPEAKER_01Yes, please.
SPEAKER_00Pick a number, first number that comes into your head between two and two hundred and nine.
SPEAKER_01Fourteen.
SPEAKER_00So that is your question. It's not okay. It's not question number fourteen, it's page.
SPEAKER_01Oh, got it. Okay.
SPEAKER_00So I'm gonna tell you your question. And then I tell you what happened with him when we did it. Okay, your question is good. What is synchronicity?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I love that.
SPEAKER_00And how does it create midlife magic?
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, it's 1212 on my clock. Okay, this is such a beautiful question because just today I woke up and when I wake up and it's I get up at 4.45 every day anyway. But when I wake up and it's before my alarm, I check my watch because I want to see, ooh, do I have a lot of time left or is it almost time? It was 3.33. I woke up the next time just before my alarm at 444. I came out of meditation at 55. I looked at the next time I looked at my clock to watch to do something was 623, which is my birthday. And today, no joke, I've got 1111 and today just 1212. So then to get that gorgeous question of what is synchronicity and what does it mean for me in midlife? To me, those numbers don't like I don't look up and say, oh, what does 1212 mean? And that angel number means whatever. What it means to me is I am connected to source energy, and my steps are in alignment with who I am and who I am becoming, and I I'm just so excited. I'm just so excited.
SPEAKER_00Can I read the first paragraph?
SPEAKER_01Please.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I define synchronicity as happy, a happy accident that occurs when you just show up for love. If you want more of these positive happenings, practice opening up to the magic. You'll find yourself, quote, accidentally running into people you need to see. You'll be at the right place at the right time, and you will start attracting more fortunate circumstances. Synchronicity is an event where two forces meet in a convergence of energy. Jung saw that synchronicities happen all the time.
SPEAKER_01So the book is set up with 101 questions, and you have expounded on each of those to help people move through the answering that question for themselves.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And when uh uh people uh have it, I usually say, don't feel like you have to read it. Right. Look at the questions in the table of contents. You can open to a page, you can think of a number. That's your question. So the shaman did it, and my friend who was sitting there, who was a geographer, did it, and he his number was the only map in the book.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00I have you know, Substack and I'll take parts of it and update it a little bit, and I just go like this where I think of a number, and it's fun back to our fun. You know, it doesn't have to be all that serious with rules and guidelines and bullet points. Do this, then you do that. Maybe you do the vision first, then you figure out what's in the way. You have your vision. Maybe you see what's in the way first. Maybe you create your team first. Who cares?
SPEAKER_01It doesn't matter if it feels good, it is good. Oh it's so fun. Like you said, I need to expand my vocabulary, but it is just it's all happening for us. And when we are committed to ourselves, to the practices that are having us feel connected and aligned to our higher self, to God, to our inner wisdom. Although we are Are the deliberate creators of our experience, although we are the ones that are moving toward the things we want, there's so much surprise and delight along the path of how it comes to us and who brings it and when it comes and where we are when that happens. We're responsible for the what and the why, but the who, the how, the when, and the where that is on God's to-do list. And oh my gosh, immeasurably more than all I could ask or imagine in the way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I'm gonna tell you a story, and it has to do with my uh year's theme. Well, it's love, but it's divine timing.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful.
SPEAKER_00So I wrote the play, I didn't know what I'm doing. Uh, well, I've been a therapist, so writing dialogue, I've listened to thousands of conversations, so it takes place in the Anne Frank house with a descendant of a Nazi and a descendant of a Holocaust survivor, and Anne Frank is a character.
SPEAKER_01I have full body chills, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_00And this is my mission now, Wendy. It's called restoration. I'm calling it restoration theater because it's more about the interaction after it's it's got a study guide, it's all about growth now, about healing and restoration. And it couldn't be more current in the culture now. Fear of the other and generational trauma. So I've had, you know, shepherding this along. I'm in playwright group, and I, you know, whatever. You know, I have a mentor, and I was in Santa Barbara networking, and I still didn't know what I was doing, where it's all going, not making any money, and yet it feels like a legacy project. Like I want to finish it and have people use it. Uh so anyway, uh synchronicity. We have an art center, and they had some event with art and people showing their goods, and they had a raffle. So I walk in the door and I see the raffle ticket, you know how it's a line of tickets. I go, that's the winning ticket, and I bought it, and I I won first prize. Of course you did. Guess what it was? Hmm, I can't wait to hear the use of the performance space for my table reading, free, $250. I'd have to pay. And then I took the acting class because I needed to cast the roles, and sure enough, the teacher who's a playwright and an actor and a director, he's gonna moderate the discussion. People from the acting class are gonna read the roles up in the front, and it's so guided that I have no doubts. You could tell, right?
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, all the forces of the universe are conspiring on your behalf. It's so beautiful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I like I said, I'm shepherding. So as far as like the collaborative me, I had to come out of hiding because as a writer, you don't want to talk to a lot of people because they're asking you the wrong questions about how are you gonna publish it? Let me finish writing. You know, anyway. In the acting class, I got up on the stage, we had to introduce ourselves, and I was shocked, my knees were shaking. And by the end, we all had monologues. I was in the groove, and he said, I don't know why you're such a good actress. I said, I don't know either. But, you know, it was a transformational month with a very kind and skilled person holding space for all of us. He only said positive things to everyone. We all did great at the recital, and now it's like I'm asking him, even though in the even in a month ago, I was why would he want to help me? You know, I'm just writing a play. I don't know what I'm doing. He changed his uh commitment for that day to do it.
SPEAKER_01That's unbelievable. It's so beautiful, and you're doing such amazing, inspiring work, and I would love to lovingly invite you to reframe that you don't know what you're doing. Okay, you are being guided so beautifully, and you know exactly what to do to receive the guidance required. So you know exactly what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna listen to that and write it down.
SPEAKER_01Every time you say, I don't know what I'm doing, then you can't just wait. Oh, wait a minute. I actually know exactly what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, kind of sound guided. You're right.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. A great reframe. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's my great pleasure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Carla, I love you so much. I loved this conversation. I cannot wait. I know this is the first of many, and I think they're all gonna require a passport and for sure a ticket to a play. That's so fun. Please tell everyone where they can find and follow you, how they can get the book. So they've got their 101 questions, everything we need to know, please.
SPEAKER_00Carla Freeman Storyteller.com. Perfect. And um, yeah, so I guess that's the best way, right?
SPEAKER_01The book is available from your website.
SPEAKER_00My book is on, yeah, and it's also on Amazon.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. All right. Well, we will link everything down in the show notes, and I just can't wait to speak again. Thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_01I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. As always, any links or notes mentioned can be found at PhineasWrighthouse.com in the podcast section of our site or in the show notes below. And if you haven't connected with me personally, come find me on Instagram at PhineasWrighthouse and let me know you listened to this episode. I'd love to get to know you. Thank you for sharing this time with me. I know your days are full, and I'm really grateful that you chose to spend some of your precious time right here. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss any of these delightful conversations. I'll see you next week.
