Kate, Where Have You Been?

If you're a regular podcast listener, you're probably like, hey, where have you been? Y'all, I've been here, but I've been fighting for my life.

In this rapid fire update episode, I'm getting you up to speed before the podcast gets back to regular episodes in 2026. 

I talk about the season of high stress that tanked my hormones, why I'm on hormone replacement therapy at 36, what happened when I more than doubled my audience in three months, and what it's like to experience your life muted or in black and white overnight.

If you're in a season where gratitude feels out of reach and someone telling you to just be grateful is shit advice.

If you want to know what nervous system work actually looks like when life is kicking your literal ass.

If you're a working mom who hasn't found peace in that yet.

Sometimes the goal isn't to find positivity in the suck. It's to find something else entirely.

HBA: https://www.mnmfitnessco.com/hba

Transcript

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to the dopamine Diaries podcast. This is Coach K. I'm sitting here working, and I finished eating lunch, and I, it's Monday, and I just can't help but notice, So much gratitude happening, and my body, and my life, and my head. And I know that when people, like when you hear people say like, oh, I just feel so grateful right now, like focus on gratitude. Like, listen, when you're in the thick of it, gratitude is like not the thing. You know what I mean? Like, when you are really struggling with something or you're in a season of just like, it feels like fighting for your life. Um, and someone tries to tell you like, oh, just be grateful. Um, it's like shit advice. It's like, why, like, that's not, no, like, that's not gonna help me. And I think 2 things can be true. So, one, I think gratitude is possible all of the time. But I also think that gratitude isn't the tool to use all of the time. And I think that when you're a season of life where things are just sucking, um, you're better off to just like find a way to feel pretty neutral about the sock instead of trying to convince yourself to find positivity and that suck. Sometimes there is no positivity in the suck. I should probably not use the word suck. It sounds a little bit weird. Sometimes there is no like positivity you can find when you are literally fighting for your life. It feels like, right? But it's a lot easier sometimes to think about just like, okay, well how can I go from? I fucking hate all of this to like kind of neutral. That's like a much easier mountain to climb, yeah? I talk to my clients about this all the time, and I use this for myself all of the time, and I want to be, like, very honest, because I do feel like I probably could do a better job at sharing the moments that gratitude is totally out of reach for me, because I know that I share a lot of the moments where I'm just feeling overly gratitude. This is a perfect example of that. Um, but I could, I could definitely stand and do a better job of, um, sharing the moments and the emotions and the feeling and and the nervous system state of what's happening when it feels like that gratitude is out of reach. So I'm going to do a better job about that. If you follow me on Instagram, um, you know that I pretty openly share there. And so maybe if you're an Instagram follower listening to this, you're like, no, okay, like... Here lately, you've been sharing more of the suck than the good. Um, and yeah, you know, I don't know, wherever you follow me, wherever you see my updates, um, just know, I've been very much both going through it, and also feeling really, really good. So today is the day where I'm feeling, um, really, really good. And I share this because Mondays used to not be that day. Um, and I want to rapidly update you guys on some things because if you're, you know, regular podcast listeners, you're probably like, hey, where have you been? Y'all, I've been here, but I've been fighting for my life, okay? Um, I'm gonna give you a rapid fight. like this will truly be like a rapid fire episode. It's just a like, let's give everybody up to speed before you start hearing from me. As frequently again. So things make sense. Okay? This is a prerequisite episode for every other episode to come in 2026. So, went through a season of high, high stress last year. And because of that, my body suffered. And when I say my body suffered, I mean, my nervous system and my hormones suffered. I am currently on hormone replacement therapy. Yeah. I'm gonna be 36 in like 2 weeks and I'm on hormone replacement therapy. Both testosterone and now progesterone. Um, and a couple other. Oh, I'm also using, um, an oxytocin nasal spray, a prescription grade. So, um, I am on hormone replacement therapy because, um, the particular events that I experienced, um, happening within the time frame of being 2 years postpartum. There were a lot of things. There was postpartum, there was high stress. There were some things in my personal life, and all of these things collectively at the same time, tanked my hormones. Now, some of you guys might be thinking like, well, how the heck, Kate, because this is like what you do for a living. Yeah, yeah, but trauma doesn't discriminate, you know what I mean? And um, because I do what I do for a living, it was very easy for me to identify quickly that something was going on and get me the support that I needed. That is the point of working on your nervous system and utilizing different emotional regulation tools and understanding what your capacity is and becoming really familiar with your patterns and gaining control over those patterns, that is the benefit. It's not to actually live a perfect life where you, you know, can go through a whole year or 2 years completely unscathed. It's actually to develop really good coping skills. Um, and, um, really solid uh, pattern awareness skills. So a couple of things worth mentioning. I was an avid wine drinker, and years ago, I was an avid weed smoker. I had my medical card. nobody freaked out. But even before I had my medical card, listen, I was smoking pot. is what it is. Most people do. But my coping skills years ago were wine and weed, and I would interchange those. Um, and that was how I coped, right? And that's just, that's just what I did. Now, it's crazy to me that now as a mother, um, I do neither of those things. Well, I have the occasional drink? Sure, but where I was probably having, um, you know, a couple glasses of wine every weekend and even a couple of times through the week, weeknights, the weekday, I now probably have a alcoholic beverage, I don't know. once every 3 weeks, once a month. It's really, and I don't even finish it. Um, I just don't feel the need to use that anymore. And that's not everybody that drinks wine and alcohol uses that as a crutch, okay? So I'm not I'm not pointing fingers, but for me, that's what it was. Um, and so I do think that it's worth noting that even in the most stressful season of life that I've had in a while last year, My coping skills were actually coping skills that were really, really healthy for me. I took time off from things that I was giving a lot of energy to, such as this podcast. I rested more than ever before. I started to create more hobbies outside of just work and mothering than ever before. I got into therapy. I hired more coaching support. I was open with my family and my husband about what I was struggling with. I was persistent on getting so much blood work done to like really identify what was going on. So, like, when I say do the work and prioritize your nervous system, I'm not saying it from a place of do it, because it's going to make you feel perfect and keep your health in tip top shape, and you're never going to have a hard day ever again, and you're just going to be hashtag regulated. Know what I'm saying is, when you do enough nervous system work, you start to realize really quickly what your patterns of behavior are and you do have more control over them, even in seasons, that are kicking your literal ass. And so even though my hormones are tanked, even though, um, I'm now on hormone replacement therapy, even though I'm still dealing with the aftermath of some very significant things that happened in my life. Um, my coping skills for those, night and day difference compared to what they've been years prior. And I'm so incredibly proud of that. And that is such a testament to nervous system work and the type of work that I do. So I just want to say that now. A couple other things, rapid fire updates. In the last three, 4 months, I have more than doubled. My audience on social media and let me tell you, um, that has been interesting. I, it started happening because I had a couple reels go pretty viral. I'm talking like over a 1000000 views. I think at this point I now have 8 or 9 videos over a 1000000 views, which is crazy, crazy. Never in my life. Um, but all of those videos, um, blew up because I talked about a very uncomfortable thing about motherhood that most people are too afraid to say out loud. But me being a redheaded Aries, I don't give a fuck. I think all of you guys know that. I will say the shit because the more I say the shit, the lighter it feels in my body. Some of the things that, um, have blown up on my page. The one most recently this weekend I talked about pet aversion. And, um, motherhood and specifically postpartum, and boy, oh, boy. Does that ruffle some feathers? Because let me just say, just go to my Instagram page and if you need a doom scroll, doom scroll my comment section because you will find some shit. But that said, um, I've started to be very, very open about the things that I struggled with, um, postpartum the 1st 2 years, postpartum. Um, my child is now uh, 25 months old, almost 2.5 years old. I hate when people call 1st of all, 1st of all, I will not be that mom that is like, 0 yeah, my kid is like 68 months old. No, just say she's like 2.5 years old. She's almost 2.5 . okay? She's not two, she's almost 2.5 . But she's also in that weird spot where I feel like you have to use the months. But like over my dead body, will I be like, yeah, she's 68 months old. Just say the fucking years. Nobody cares. Um, but I've started to be very, very open about the things that I've struggled with postpartum. Um, I'm a very high functioning person, and so a lot of the things that I struggle with, I would just struggle with them. Um, and I would just work harder on top of that. And it would start to really eat me alive. And so I've started being open about that. Um, online because why not, right? Part of, again, part of the work that I do, is around helping people better manage their patterns and emotions. Like this is like the whole point, right? So, but in that process, my account has blown up. Um, in both a good way and a bad way. And I will say back to like the benefits of doing nervous system work. Um, I think when a lot of people think about going viral or even think about if you use social media at all, think about the 1st time you got to hate comment or think about the time someone like question your integrity or your character, right? It felt it like triggered you. Like, 0 my gosh, like your heart's racing, your chest gets really tight. You feel the need to defend yourself. Now imagine that happening, um, over a 1000 times in the span of 24 hours. That is what has happened to me over and over and over and over and over again in the last 4 months. And what I will tell you is, When you grow your platform on social media, it is a crash course, an understanding how other people's perceptions of you will trigger you, and also understanding how to find neutrality. Back to what I was saying at the beginning of, like, hey, sometimes the goal is to not be positive. Sometimes the goal is to be very neutral. I've started to see that since my account has been growing and I, you know, I think there was one month where I reached over 8000000 people, which is insanity. Like my account has always been around like 4000 followers for the whole time I've been on Instagram. I had a different account back in like 2015 and it had over 30,000 followers and then I deleted it and then started fresh. And it's just been at 4000 forever. And it was private for a really long time too. So, Now that I'm almost at 11,000 followers, it's like, wow, there's a lot more opportunity for people to, um, question my integrity or question my character. And that has happened. I've had men come into my comment section and call me, you know, the C word, call me the B word. Um, you know, just horrible things. And again, I've really started to notice that the more I've flexed my voice, the more I've just said, hey, this is how I feel. This is what I experienced and I'm going to put it out there because I got to believe somebody else. Some other working mom feels this way too. Every single time I've done that, it has actually been such a beautiful opportunity for me to practice using my voice in other aspects of my life. It sounds so cliche to say, but I'm being more vulnerable and transparent in therapy. I'm being more vulnerable and transparent with my husband. I'm being more vulnerable and transparent with myself. honestly, because I've now opened myself up to being that way in front of strangers. knowing that my system and my nervous system can handle and has the capacity to handle people questioning me or handle people, um, questioning my character, right? And so it's just been a really interesting. I look at it as like an experiment. When I decided to start growing my account, I made a decision. I was like, okay, I'm going to grow. This is how I'm going to do it. This is the strategy, and I like, kind of took the emotion out of it from the jump. But the minute I started to go viral and the minute I started to get met with, it was like that emotion all came back. And so it's been such a beautiful practice for me too. One, practice what I preach. Practice what I've learned in the last year, as I've had to really find neutrality in my life as a whole to just kind of get through the season that I was in. and basically implement that online. And it's now just become this thing where I feel like I have people DM me all the time saying like, thank you for saying that. I thought that I was the only one. Thank you for saying that. I feel so seen. Thank you for saying that. I've never had the balls to tell anybody that and you just made it real about it. And just immediately, I just felt like I wasn't crazy. Like the amount of moms that come to me and say, I just thought that I was crazy. When they look at some of my content now is just wild because that's how I felt before I started sharing it. So it's been really cool to see that. What else? Oh, okay. So I'm getting ready to launch my next program. It's the sister program to HBA. I am so excited about it. And that was something, you know, back to why I'm feeling so grateful today. So, You know, I have really had a hard time finding joy in things in the last, um, hmm. I would say 9 months. In the last 9 months, it's been really, really hard. For me to feel the same level of joy and excitement, both in my personal life and in my work that I've always felt. And that has been really difficult to walk through. And again, I'm in therapy. I've got coaches, I've got multiple coaches. I'm more open and honest than ever before with the people in my life, but, um, man, it's really hard to experience your life kind of, um, muted or like in black and white, just, you know, overnight and feel like you have no control over that. And so, It has been really tough. It's been really tough because all of the things that I feel like make me me, um, who I am outside of work and definitely my work, suddenly, um, just felt hard, hard is not even the word. Um, Felt painful, to be honest. And so it's been so much to work through that. And obviously hormones have something to do with that for sure. But as I've worked through that, and as I've started to build the curriculum for the HPA sister program, um, I'm not telling you what it is yet because Instagram's going to be the 1st one to know, but I've got like 15 people on the wait list already, which is so cool. Um, but as I built the curriculum, and as I'm like writing the website for it, and I'm, you know, coming up with all of these different like content ideas to start to tell you guys about it. Like, I am so excited. Like, I am so excited and I'm feeling that same familiar feeling of energy and just like vibrant and like zest for my work and my life again. And, um, I just can't explain what that feels like. Like, I really can't explain what that feels. I had bad days last week where I didn't feel this way. But I'm really starting to notice the days the days where I feel the joy and excitement are starting to kind of trend upwards again. Um, and it truly is like just the coolest and most rewarding feeling. Um, given I try so hard in the work that I do to help create that type of environment, environment for other people, right? Um, and then to then feel like I'm in a situation where, okay, I now need to apply all of the things that I apply to other people to myself. But honestly, like, this is why you also can't self-coach yourself. Um, and it's so funny because every time I'm in therapy or talking to my coach, we're like talking because I have both a therapist and a coach. I know that is a privilege to have both and I do not take that for granted. Okay? Please do not feel bad if you cannot have both. It is a privilege. I'm aware of that. But every time I'm talking to them about things, I'll like voice something and as I'm saying it, I'm like, dude, this is like, I know this. Like, I know this. I know this to be true. I know this is why. I know this is what I need to do. It's like there's nothing in therapy or coaching has been like life-changing, um, revolutionary for me. But the reason why it works so well to have someone outside of yourself is because other people, other people that are safe. can help to co-regulate you enough to drop you back into what we call your capacity to change. When we're living in such difficult seasons of life, literally trying to come out of that on our own, is never going to work. And it's never going to work because you're never going to get out of that feeling of just like survival long enough, briefly enough, to make any forward actionable change. Other people, leaders, coaches, therapists, whatever it may be, that are safe, because let's be honest, not all therapists, not all coaches are safe, and that's a whole nother episode. I do later. But when you find people that are steady and are safe and can see you and hold that space for you, it makes such a change, even if you know the things you need to do. And so this is not a, like, this is not me trying to tell all any of you, like, if you know you've been wanting to work with me or work with someone else, you need to do it. Like, this is not that. Like, I trust your judgment. I trust your intuition. I just want to share what my experience has been like and really what I've learned from reflecting on this. having given time, given time in both of those arenas, doing it myself, not really getting anywhere. And then doing it with support and getting so much further than I ever could have imagined, simply because they gave me moments of feeling safe, you know? It makes me think of, so every other week in my hive, um, group. So the hive group, these are people that have been with me for over a year. And they've done HBI. So when you do HBA, you get invited to the hive. So shameless plug, if you've done HPA and you're like, well, I'm not in the hive, well, that's because you didn't accept your fricking invitation and you should. So DM me or email me and I'll get you in the hive. Because you get access to all my programs and you'll get access to the sister program for free plus like everything else. Um, but every other week we do co-working calls and these co-working calls are literally just body doubling calls. And it's really cool and it's so fun to see the feedback every other week because people are like, man, this like works so well. I needed this. And it really just goes to show the power of having another person in your line of view, in your presence, borrowing that energy, borrowing that safety from. And on these coworking calls, um, borrowing the productive energy that some of us bring and other others of us struggle with. So it's just, you know, it's been really, really cool to just see. Um, how transformative having coaching or therapy or both or one of the other really can be for someone. I've obviously gone through these things before, but the, the valley that I just went through was unlike any other valley I've been through, um, in my life. And really, um, put me in places mentally that I thought I would would never be back in. Um, and so it's just been really, really cool to reflect on that now that I'm out of it. So, um, yeah, so other rapid fires. I am reading fiction books now. Yeah, part of my, like, um, you know, being very intentional about how I heal my body and really come out of this season and taking the rest and finding more hobby hobbies. I'm reading fiction books. I most recently read Haunting Adeline and Hunting Adeline. I read each of those books in a day each. Yeah, if you know, you know. I definitely have a book hangover. I have not picked up another one yet because truthfully, I cannot. But I really enjoyed reading fiction. It's tapped into a part of my brain that, um, I typically don't access because I'm usually like, all business, all the time, or all mothering all of the time. So, um, I think that's it as far as rapid fires, rapid fire goes. Motherhood is the best thing I've ever experienced in my life. Also the hardest, but like, I pinch myself every single day when I look at my child because I'm like, how did I get so lucky to be this person's mom? Like, how did I get so lucky to feel a love and a joy and just a purpose like this? Like, how what did I, like, what cards did I play? Like, what karma, you know, came over me to give me such an incredible relationship with this tiny human. It is just the best, like, it motherhood is just the best thing I have ever. I have ever experienced in my life. I truly get so overwhelmed sometimes when I think about how much I love being a mother. Um, It's the best. Um, I could go on a tangent, but then I'll probably cry because it truly is just the best. I've loved it. And really, final, final update, and then I'll wrap this up because this is a bit longer. Um, is, you know, I have found peace in being a working mom. And at the beginning, I did not have peace. Um, I had a lot of guild over daycare. I had a lot of guilt over missing things. I had a lot of questioning over am I doing the right thing? And I've worked really hard to find peace in the fact that I'm a working mom. And I look at it from the perspective of, I'm, I'm doing everything for this child. I'm doing everything I can right now as a working mom to make sure that she has the best life possible. And I think as she continues to get older and she can understand that, that's going to be what I communicate to her. So she understands. Um, how this is all for her, right? It's, sure, I have my ambitions and and I think that's where the working mom narrative gets to be kind of wrong. It's like you're allowed to have ambitions outside of motherhood, totally. Um, totally agree with that. But, I also think that when you become a mom, all of your ambitions still in some way trickle back too. Um, your legacy as a mother and what you want to show your child. And so I don't really love using the ambitions outside of motherhood. I think it really needs to be you're allowed to have new and big and lofty ambitions because of motherhood. Um, So, yeah, it's the best thing ever and and finding peace in the fact that, you know, I'm, I work and I don't get to spend all day with her. Um, is a priceless feeling. I still have days where I have mom guilt. It's not perfect, but there's an overwhelming sense of peace, and I think a lot of working moms, um, don't have that. And I'm on a mission to help them figure that out too. So that has been my update. This has been chatting with me. You are going to start to get more regular episodes now. I just had to kind of like get you guys up to speed on what was going on. Um, but yeah, love y'all. Bye.