Ep117- What grief really feels like and why it never leaves you- with Karen Whybrow

Grief changes everything.

In this deeply honest episode of Mad About, Maddy sits down with Sacred Life Coach Karen Wybrow to talk about what happens after unimaginable loss—and how you slowly begin to rebuild a life you never expected to be living.

Karen shares the story of losing her husband, Ben, to bowel cancer at just 39 years old while raising two young daughters. Together, Maddy and Karen explore the realities of grief that people rarely talk about, including what happens after everyone else goes home, why grief never truly disappears, and how spirituality, the universe and small daily choices helped Karen find herself again.

The conversation also dives into ADHD, addiction, money after bereavement, manifestation, Reiki, the moon, and why looking after yourself isn't selfish—it's essential.

This episode is emotional, hopeful and full of practical wisdom for anyone navigating loss, change or simply trying to find their way back to themselves.

Please note: This episode contains discussions around bereavement, terminal illness, death, grief and addiction.

In this episode we discuss:

•  Karen's story of losing her husband to cancer 
•  Why grief never really ends—it just changes shape 
•  The "ball in the box" theory of grief 
•  Parenting through bereavement 
•  ADHD, addiction and unhealthy coping mechanisms 
•  Giving up alcohol and finding healthier ways to cope 
•  The financial reality of losing a partner 
•  Bereavement support and why the system needs to change 
•  Why wills, life insurance and power of attorney matter 
•  Spirituality versus religion 
•  Reiki, intuition and trusting yourself 
•  The connection between the moon, the universe and our wellbeing 
•  Manifestation, mindset and changing the stories we tell ourselves 
•  Karen's book One Sacred Life

Connect with Karen Wybrow

Follow Karen for guidance on grief, spirituality, Reiki and reconnecting with yourself.

Instagram: @karenwybrowcoaching
 Facebook: Karen Wybrow
 TikTok: @karenwybrow

Connect with Maddy

Instagram: @maddytalksmoney
 TikTok: @madaboutmoneyofficial
 Website: The Maddyverse

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear this conversation today. Every review helps more people discover the podcast.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Mad About. I'm Maddie Alexander Grout, and this is the podcast where we talk all things that we are mad about. Mad can mean so many different things. It can mean frustrated, it can mean hyper focused, it can mean frustrated, it can just be all of the stuff that's shitty that's going on in the world at the moment. And we do it all through a neurodivergent lens. Um today I am joined by one of my business besties and one of my favourite people in the land. Fucking wonderful, beautiful, and fantabulous Karen Wybrow. Um Karen is the Sacred Life Coach. She has a membership called The Sacred Return. She also does Reiki. She does oracle reading.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

She is a grief counsellor, not counsellor, but like a grief guide. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

And she is one of the most supportive and wonderful people that I have in my world. And she's helped me through so many things. So it was only fair to invite her onto this podcast. I have been friends with Karen for like five years. Must be, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I wanna say.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

That's quite a long time, and you've never been on my podcast before. I feel like I'm a bad friend, like a bad businessman. Like also, Karen is one of my coaching clients as well. So I actually feel like I'm just a bad human for not having you on. But Karen, welcome to the Mad About podcast. Tell us a bit about you in your own words.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Thank you for having me. It's lovely to be here. Um, yeah, so I am the Sacred Life Coach. I help people who are struggling with grief, overwhelm, burnout, anything that's holding them back, keeping them stuck, to come home to themselves. I think we spend so long looking outside of ourselves for the answers and for some magic solution or pill or shiny object, whatever, whatever that thing is, that we forget that we have everything that we need right here within us. But we need to stop and give ourselves space and time to listen to our own intuitive wisdom that's inside all of us. We just don't listen.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

I love that so much. Um also I'm like considering like this, actually.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

I'm just gonna like just just hold a little bit of a mirror up to you there. Like, Karen, Karen, where are you? Can you see yourself there?

SPEAKER_02 2:34

This is a lovely mirror, by the way. I use it for my hair dyeing. Um, but I felt I felt like that was needed because like this is what I tell you all the time. Like you you've got it in there, like, and sometimes it just just needs a bit of space to come out, doesn't it? Um had you've had quite a journey. Um, also, we haven't mentioned your book, and we all talk about your book. Um, and I'm not going to ask you too much of your story because I know it's in the book, and I want people to actually go and buy it because I feel like it's one of one of the all-time greats. So it should have been a Sunday Times bestseller, and I don't know why it wasn't. Yes, yeah, of course it should have been. But it's still an amazing book. So I'll ask you a bit about that later. Um, tell me a bit about your journey. So my journey started. There's a trigger warning here as well, people, just so you know.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yeah, let's put a little trigger warning in there. Yeah. Um almost 10 years, well, just over 10 years ago now, which is ridiculous. Um I was my husband was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer when our daughter, well, well, when I was pregnant, six months pregnant with our youngest, and our elder daughter was two and a half. Yeah, just nearly three. Um, and we yeah, went on a bit of a crazy 18-month journey of pregnancy, birth, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, all the fields, like just this complete scale of opposites of I'm growing this life inside me, and my husband's like fighting for his life. Um, he he died when Harriet was 13 months, so about 18 months later, um, and Georgina was four, and he was 39, he died about three weeks before his 40th birthday. Um, and it all just everything stops when that happens, and it's this this complete just implosion of your world, that like everything that you thought you had, everything that you hoped for the future, everything that you hoped for yourself, the kids, the family, um, it's just all gone. There's not not a piece of anything that stays the same. And I think that's something that like you just don't anticipate. You just can't imagine until you're actually living that um the kind of the impact that it has is just so great, and nor should anybody have to imagine it because it is um people talk about um grief lasting forever, and I I believe it does, it doesn't go away, there's no there's no way to fix it, there's no like magic off button or it it goes away after a certain length of time. Um it's something that you learn to live with and grow around almost. Um and it's that that kind of like the people who don't understand should be grateful that they haven't had that type of loss. And and that's kind of I think the only way you can look at it, isn't it? Um when people make make comments about being over it and yeah, oh, you're still grieving or this or that.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

And I mean especially like especially for, and and I think I've and I've said this before, and I think I've said this to you before, but I feel like there's like levels of grief, right? And I mean this might this is obviously gonna change on depending on your family dynamics and the thing, you know, this is not gonna be the stage for everybody, but I feel like this is how it happened for me. Like, you've got the first level of grief, which is like small pets. So I'm talking like rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, you know, it's sad. Like, I mean, fish is obviously the top one. If you stick your eyes, you're like touch another toilet, although you're not supposed to do that anymore, apparently. Sorry, Southampton sewers. Also sorry to my kids that I just replaced the fish with the different fish. But yeah, so you kind of got fish, and then you've got like small animals, and then you've got like maybe like distant relatives, like maybe aunts and uncles who you're not really that close to. Then you've got like I reckon dogs and cats, like ones that have been with you forever, I reckon that they're more on a family level. They're like grandparents, you know, that kind of thing. Um then you've got your parents, um, depending on relationships. You know, some people might be like grave dancing when their parents die, but you know, like, you know, you've got your parents, then you've got your partner and your children, or your husband or your wife, or or whatever. Um, you know, loss of a child, obviously the worst one. Um babies horrendous. Like, and I think I've I've almost had that kind of grief journey where I've learned about jo like where I've learned about grief from having small pets dying to slightly bigger pets dying to having, you know, people that I knew from various circles who have just, you know, friends as well. Um, you know, I'm very, very, very lucky, touch wood, that I have still got my closest group of friends. Uh, but I have recently had a couple of, well, over the past few years, which has made my health anxiety horrendous, because I had one friend from university who died because he banged his head, he fell over and banged his head on the pavement. And doctors sent him home, said he was fine, but later on he died, brain hemorrhage. Yeah. Then I had another friend. This was God coming up 10 years now. Like I just had Ben. My friend Steve died, and he had an he had a brain aneurysm. He literally went out for a night out, came home, died in the middle of the night. Like nobody was expecting it. That was stupidly traumatic. Um, and then I've just had a just had a friend really recently die of cancer, and it's just it's those things are really horrible. But there is nothing ever, and I think those types of deaths you can, I mean, you you always think about them so that when it comes up to Steve's anniversary, I always think about him. I'll raise a strong bow and I'll be like, you know, cheers, mate, type thing. Um don't normally drink strongbow, it's fucking disgusting, but like that was his drink. Um or I'll listen to a band that we went to see together or something like that. Whereas like parents, I mean, like I'm definitely, you know, I'm si I'm six. Where are we? Six, seven, eight. Eight months in no nearly nine months into my dad dying. Yeah. Um, and there are things that catch me unawares. So one of one of the biggest things that catches me is I'll be watching a TV show and Landslide by Fleetwood Mac will come on, which is A, one of my favourite songs of all time, but it was the photo montage we had for my dad. And I don't know how, I've never fucking noticed it, but it's in every show I think I've watched since he died. I don't know if that's his little way of going hello, like, and just making me pick those shows, which is really weird. Also, I had he came to visit me a lot of times, but he hasn't since his ashes have gone, weirdly. So since his ashes have gone, he has not been in my house. I haven't felt his presence. I have it, and it's very strange, even though some of him is still here. Um, I've got a little pot of him, like a really small pot, and I'm thinking maybe that's his like big toe or something, which is not very spiritual. Um, but yeah, he's so he's he's not really not really been around for me. Um, but and then there's times where, like yesterday I got a message from my sister to say that we'd had probate approved. And I was like, oh, my dad died. I'm sad about that. And then I decided to go and listen to a load of voice notes from him, and I found a voice note from my dad that said Luffy Lots on it. And I was like, my dad never told me he loved me. He was quite stoic and quite like not a particularly emotionally available man. Um I think that's also connected to his autism. But he yeah, but he said it on a message, so I have forwarded that message to everywhere under the sun, so I didn't accidentally lose my phone or to beat it. I'm like, I need that to be preserved somewhere. But it but it was but it was interesting that it was like it was there. But but I think somebody explained grief to me once as like, have you ever heard the ball theory? The ball in the box. Yeah, like that's so important that we remember that. So it's like you've got a box, in the box is a ball and a button, and when it starts, the ball is massive and it bounces around and it hits that pain button all the time, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Um, over time it shrinks and it hits the pain button less as it's moving around the box. But then sometimes it can inflate for no apparent reason and just be like boom, boom, boom, hitting the pain button again. And I think that is genuinely the best explanation of grief I've ever heard in my life. Um, and it doesn't, it doesn't go away, it just temporarily maybe leaves your mind. But I can imagine that there isn't a day that goes past where you don't think about Ben.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

No, there isn't, I don't think. And even if it's like a like laughing about something, you know what I mean? It's like it's not we've got that, we have that duality where we can hold both. We can hold both the grief and the joy, and we feel guilty for it, don't we? And we shouldn't feel guilty, but we do. But yeah, there's there's always something, especially, and I mean, I'm so fortunate that I've got the children and I see Ben in them all the time. Yeah, their mannerisms, the things that they say, even though they've both spent most of their lives without Ben, there's still that there's still that connection.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Not in a sexual way, that sounds weird.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Well, me, like I check in and yeah, think, oh, what would what would Ben do in this situation?

SPEAKER_02 12:54

And say, how was it when, like after he died? Because I I always find that there's that there's that grief period. Like, it's like the grief, the brief grief period, where like people are so like, oh my god, what can I do to help you? Like, you know, before the funeral, it's like all hands on deck, and you've got the biggest support system, and then it almost fucks off like once the funeral's happened. Yeah. Like, then you're left with like an 18-month-old baby, 14-month, however old you said, and then like a four-year-old. Psomoparenting at the best of times is fucking hard. Like, but when you're grieving, I mean, how did you deal with that?

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Yeah. Um, really badly, I think. I didn't, but I did, but I just did what I had to do. I I was in that place where I couldn't not, I couldn't stop because I couldn't let the grief in because I didn't know what would happen if I did. Um, so I just kept going through the motions. I kept, I kept showing up. Georgina started school in the September. Ben died in the August. Georgina started school, so I had to take her to school. Nobody at school knew. Obviously, I told her teachers. Um, like nobody in the playground knew I didn't know like people from school.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

Um that might have helped because it's kind of a bit of normality, and people don't, you know, no, they're not not constantly going, oh, it's it's the dead, the dead husband woman, you know, like yeah, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

So it kind of has its advantages, but it's just that always just being on, isn't it? And having that front on, and just yeah, so I just went through the motions and I it was like groundhog day, just every single day. And even when I did like try and have counselling and try and talk to somebody, I still couldn't let the barriers down because you have like an hour to, and I was obviously Harriet was being looked after for me, um, probably with the child minder, um, but you have like an hour, and then you need to go back to what like to life. So you can't, you can't even for that time because you don't know. So it was just this constant breast for impact, basically. I mean, my Fitbit, I had to stop wearing it because it thought I was running when I was trying to go to sleep. It was that level of stress that I was under constantly. I don't know how I did it, but you just do, you don't have a choice.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Adrenaline, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Adrenaline, cortisol, those are the things that kind of fight or flight the hormones that keep us going. Constantly in that fight or flight, and I didn't dare switch off from it because I didn't know what would happen if I did. Um did you ever did you ever switch off from it? Not really. It took me um probably about 10 months before I started to actually go, this is I need to do something different here. This isn't like this isn't serving me, this isn't serving the kids. I need to, I need to change something. Um and I so I was drinking at that time, I was drinking like not a huge amount, but I would put the kids to bed and go straight and have a glass of wine.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Um, and that was kind of my downtime, but it wasn't that's what m a lot of parents do who are not grieving. So like I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. And you know, booze, booze isn't a bad thing until it is. Like I I always say it's not. I mean, so for for full disc for full disclosure um to my audience, who most of you will know anyway, I've just started taking Moonjaro, the weight loss medication. Now, the reason I've started taking it is not because I care in any way, shape, or form what I look like. Because actually, I'm really body positive. I actually think I look pretty good in a bikini. I don't care, but I know that I know that I am obese. I know I've got weight that I need to lose. Um, and that's that's not because anybody has told me I have to lose that weight. That's me, and that's an internal decision that I've done. Um, drinking is something that I have that I stopped doing a long time ago. Um, as you know, like as a rule, I don't drink. There is, it's just uh like I'm not I don't say I'm sober because I was never an alcoholic. I don't feel like I can claim that title, but I did have issues with alcohol. Um, I did have an unhealthy relationship with it. I I would go for weeks on end where I didn't drink at all, and then I'd go out and drink like 14 pints or whatever, maybe not 14 pints is a bit of an exaggeration. But I'd go and drink like four. It's there, yeah. Yeah, no off switch whatsoever. So I had to learn how to manage that off switch first. Um and when my dad died, I was like, I want a foster's to raise a glass to him. So I basically I set as I set a rule in my brain. Anytime I'm anywhere that has a foster's, I'm allowed to have one for my dad. Just one, no more. And that has happened because luckily there's not that many pubs that sell fosters anymore, because it's fucking gross, really. Um, so that's happened twice in the last in the last like nine months. Once at Christmas, I was on a pub, a pub crawl where I was sober and I had one foster's for my dad. And then the other time was I went to an emo fest thing um down at um a kind of not this sort of a nightclub stroke gig venue down in Southampton. Um the uh what's it called? I can't even remember what it's fucking called. Engine rooms. And they have they have fosters down there. So I had one down there. And but the good thing was I knew I was driving. So I kind of I set that rule around it. Um but you had to change your relationship as well, didn't you?

SPEAKER_03 19:10

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which made it about that.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yeah, so I I realised that I wasn't like helping myself by what I was doing, and also that I couldn't keep going. I think the question that I asked myself was coming back to that, what would Ben do? What would he want me to do? As a guide, he would have kicked me up the arse and told me to stop being so fucking ridiculous and get on with it. So I was like, okay. So I stopped drinking because at that point I didn't have an off button. I had um I had like three months, so it was like ten months after he died, and I knew I had these all these firsts coming up. So like the first time we were told that treatment wasn't working, the cancer had spread, that like Ben needed a wheelchair because he couldn't walk, he couldn't go up the stairs, he couldn't do this, and all these like firsts leading up to like when we had to go into when I had to get him to hospital, when I had moved him to the hospice, when he actually died, and then leading up to the funeral after that. So I had this like list of opportunities where everybody around me would have said, it's okay, have a drink. You know what I mean? It's like have a drink because you've got this perfectly valid excuse. So how I looked at it was I'm gonna spend the next three months drinking too much because I have no off button, because in those circumstances you don't have an off button because you've got every excuse possible to just drink the place dry. Right. So I stopped.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

And um that's I love the fact that you said you stopped rather than you gave up. Language is so important when it comes to things like addiction. Stopping is the it's it's great, it's great. I I like I like that word. And it it just it it it hits differently. Like if because I always used to say, Oh, I'm giving up smoking. I mean, I said I was giving up smoking for a really long time before I actually stopped.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

So did I was still smoking when I gave up drinking, and everyone would look at me and go, Why are you still smoking if you've given up drinking?

SPEAKER_03 21:44

They go hand in hand, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Like So I gave myself three months of not drinking, and then I stopped smoking. That was my kind of go to in my head.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Yeah, I I think I stopped drinking, I'd stopped smoking. Smoking first, which was helpful, I think. I was still vaping, and you know, for the record, I still vape now. However, however. And I don't know if this is the same for everybody, but because I because in my vape I have sweet strawberry and my brain is not craving sweet things now because of the Manjaro, I'm not craving the vape at the moment. Okay. I mean, I'm not saying I'm giving up. It's like I'm gonna give up. It's like not giving up, we're stopping. Stopping. I might stop. Yeah. I I mean I don't want to at the moment, but I mean, even if I'm doing it less, that's that's a good thing for me, I feel. Because I think a lot of ADHDers have these little crutches that they will go to. And, you know, especially when something bad is going on. Um, and I knew that that would be the worst thing in the world for me. Like, if I started drinking again when my dad died. And everybody that that knew me commended me for staying strong. And like, I was just like, no, I I know how weak I am, actually. And like, and I don't normally call myself weak, and I don't think that I am weak as a person, but I knew that I would become weaker if I did that and I and I went down that down that hole. It it is a it's a bit of a slippery slope.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah, and it's not a weakness, it's an addiction. It is. Alcohol is an addictive substance.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Yeah, there's no And we are we are prone to that with our with our wonderful spicy brains, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Yeah. Well it is just, yeah, it's an addiction. And that once you have that first drink, that off button goes. It's not like the the twelfth drink isn't the problem, it's the first drink. It's the first one and it's it's the floodgate, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 23:44

It's the it's the opening of like all of the other things.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

And possibilities of, oh well, I could just have one and I can just and I can just, and it's like, mm-hmm, yeah. Just is a bad word. We don't like just.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Just is like exactly where that will end up. Just is a bucket bucket word, exactly. It needs to be in there for sure. Um so let's talk, because the the other thing that we talk about on this this podcast a lot is personal finances. How what did you have in place before Ben died, like to to help you and to protect you?

SPEAKER_00 24:19

We had very little in place. So Ben was self-employed when he died. Um and there was no, we didn't have any savings, we didn't have anything like that. He was the main breadwinner, and I worked for the business, um, doing their finances and their accounts like two days a week. So you have no skills.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

I mean, long as we're looking at Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Um so I did that two days a week, and I was mainly the person at home. I was like looking after the kids, and I was on maternity leave as well. Um Ben obviously hadn't worked for um a while. For a while, yeah. For he sort of worked on and off throughout his treatment, but he would he would have like a week where he was like laid up because the chemotherapy just fucked his whole body over. Um and then he'd have a week where he was okay. So he'd what did he do? Um he was a builder. So so yeah, we we relied on his his his wage. And after he died, we had he had life insurance, luckily. So that paid for the insur the mortgage. That was kind of it, you know what I mean? That was it. So how I did it was I I saved so I didn't pay it all off the mortgage, and I kept some, so I kept the mortgage and kept some money, so I had a some money to live off.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Um, a bit of a buffer to live off, but it doesn't bloody last long. Um and you get um bereavement support from the government. How this is this is you'll you'll love this, this is just fucking um so you get bereavement support from the government in the April and Ben died in the August, they changed it from you got support until your youngest child was 18. And in the April, they changed it to you got 18 months of support. So I got I think I got you get like a lump sum payout of like about £3,000 I got, um, and that paid for Ben's funeral or some of Ben's funeral. Um and then I got £350 for 18 months, and apparently I'm fixed, you're fixed after 18 months. Yeah. And um you are able to go like magically reproduce this two family income that you had previously. Um and and yeah, everything's fine. So it's it's a real it's a real sticking point, and there are a lot of there is work being done to try and I say overturn it, but to try and get the government to see how absolutely fucking ludicrous it is because like yeah, one of my kids wasn't in education when the 18 months was up.

SPEAKER_03 27:50

So how you're supposed to work, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Yeah. Yeah, and I mean Ben and me have obviously paid national insurance tax all the way through. And I Ben'll never get a pension, I'll never see any of his pension.

unknown 28:06

No.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

So that money has been paid into the system and not seeing anything. Yeah. Yeah, so it is really, really frustrating. Um, so that's a whole nother a whole nother like level of shitness. Luckily we had wills in place, but we had to um we didn't have wills in place, and I had to um we we got them in place in time and like wills and um what's the word? Um I don't know. Power of attorney.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Yeah. So so I was yeah, power of attorney. Um but literally the guy came to the house with them ready to sign, and I had to take them upstairs for Ben to sign because he wasn't capable of coming downstairs to sign them. So that was how like Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Um I I sorted one with my dad on the last day that I saw him. Yeah. When I went to Clareto's flat, I found them on his desk, signed by him, not witnessed by anybody else.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Fucking hell, dad. I know, and that's the thing. Yeah, I mean, my will I I had redone recently, um, and it took me so long to actually sign it and witness it because it it was just a block of I remember what happened last I know it was so traumatic doing it last time, and we just put these blocks in our way, don't we? Um but we all really so yeah, if anybody hasn't got a will in place, especially if you're not married, because that causes all sorts of other issues when your um other person dies, then yeah, do you thank God for the insurance?

SPEAKER_02 30:02

I mean, if you hadn't have had that. Yeah, I know. I I actually insure my husband, I pay for his life insurance because I know that if he'd never do it, so I pay for his life insurance. And I he's insured for more than I am, selfishly. I'm like, he can cope if I die the other way around, not so much.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Yeah, not so much, yeah, exactly. Um, but yeah, it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

If we hadn't have had that, I think it could have been very different because yeah, it um But you but you did manage to get on your own two feet and you did start a business and you started a business off the back of your own trauma.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Yeah. So so yeah, so I realized um when when I'd stopped drinking and came to this like whole other world of like coaches and people there, like all this solution focused stuff, because obviously I mentioned grief counseling, I'd had counselling and it was it was hideous. Um the guy who my my counsellor wasn't the right person for me um and I wasn't open open to receive it. Um but he compared my loss to his wife leaving for work early and him having to get his, I think, I think his son was like nine or ten at the time. Right, and this kid would like build breakfast down himself every morning, and he was like, This is what I have to deal with, so I don't know how you cope. I was like, oh my god, this is just not so my my opinion of counselling went quite.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Yeah, right. I mean, then aren't counsellors not supposed to bring their own stuff into it anyway?

SPEAKER_00 31:50

I think the there was yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

I mean coach coaches, yes, I can see that. Because you know, when when I'm coaching, I often bring my own experiences into things. If people are happy for me to do that, and most of the time they are, um, I mean, tell me if that's different. Like, I mean, you know, we've we've we've been friends and and working together for long enough that you know that I bring my my own experiences in. But I think that that helps. But I would never ever use that to make somebody else's experience magnified or like misunderstood. You know, that's that's not cool at all.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

So I was when kind of my eyes were opened to these, like all these like solution-focused things and the fet forward facing. And I was like, well, why can't I why can't I do something like this for people in a similar situation to me, um, who are struggling and who who have loss, whether that's bereavement, um, whether they're just struggling with life, because so many people, we've got life so busy, isn't it? Um so that's kind of that was for me to interrupt that.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

I was just saying, it's just something that pup picked it pinged into our head. We don't just grieve for people who have died either. No. Like especially as especially as ADHDers, we grieve for past relationships, for past friendships, for past things that we may not have done in the right way. Like, I mean, I grieved for a business once. I mean, that seems a little bit ludicrous now, but I ri but I really did because it was a it was a process. I'm still grieving for friends that I've lost over the years. Like, I actually I've got a Facebook memory that popped up today of one of my friends that I was friends with from when Ben was really little, who I used to be really close with, who I just don't see anymore. And like, you know, we've tried a couple of times to move to to get together, we haven't done it. Um, I grieve that relationship because nothing happened, you know, neither of us did anything wrong. It just we just kind of drifted apart. Um, you know, I I grieve relationships that I've had where, you know, one or other of us has done something wrong, or both of us in in quite a few cases, where like actually, you know, I know that probably it's better off that we're not friends, but it doesn't mean you it doesn't hurt at the time.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

So exactly. It still hurts, doesn't it? Um so yeah, so that's kind of so I trained to be, I trained to be a life coach and looking at things like manifestation and the law of attraction. Um and then I I got into hypnotherapy. So I'm a solution-focused hypnotherapist. Um, and then kind of Reiki had always been there and thereabouts. The first time I had Reiki was when Ben was in the hospice dying. Um, and they often in these places they have volunteers who go in and offer holistic treatments, and I had Reiki there, um, and didn't really think anything of it because obviously yeah, my head wasn't where it wanted to be, but um that night after so I had my Reiki treatment in Ben's room with him in there, and obviously Reiki goes where it's needed. Um and that night I I said goodbye to Ben, good night to Ben. Me and Harriet were sleeping in like a little pull-out bed next to him. Um, Harriet was already asleep, and I said goodnight to him, and I just said, look, you can go now. And he died in the night. Um so it's all like, yeah, there's all so many synchronicities and so many like arrows pointing to it, I guess. Um, but it just kept getting louder, and the the people kept mentioning it, and people came into my world that, yeah, were the right people for me at the right time. Um, and so yeah, so I introduced Reiki, or I trained to be or became attuned to Reiki.

SPEAKER_03 35:59

Um I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yeah, one of us was. So yeah, so I I use um solution-based, science-based. They're all everything. I mean, I'm a I'm an environmental chemist um by trade. So everything that I do is science-based. It's all rooted.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

No, but you're an environmental chemist. Which is not.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Yeah, so so like I know I know it works, and I can tell you how it works, and I can tell you why it works, and I can give you the research to show uh the like peer-reviewed research to show that it works, because I need to know for myself if this woo-woo magic actually works and how it works on a like quantum physics or a like molecular level. I need to understand it for myself.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

Um so I mean let's on that note, let's talk about the universe because I do genuinely believe that the universe has a plan for us. Like I'm not I'm not a religious person, nothing against anybody who is. I've got best friends who are incredibly religious, and I, you know, we all have to find the thing that that that means something to us, you know. We have to connect, we don't have to, you know. I mean, some people like different things, but you know, for for me, spirituality is is quite quite a big thing, and I do believe that the universe has our back and you know what what will be will be. And actually, that sometimes keeps me grounded, it helps my nervous system, it helps me to understand what's going on in the world. Like I feel weather as well. Like I I am very much like I'm I get I get charged by storms.

SPEAKER_03 37:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Like electrically charged. I know that sounds really weird, but like I really do get charged by storms. Um, when it's cold, I feel flat. When it's sunny, I feel like and I don't I don't have sad. Like I am not a seasonal affective disorder person, I don't think. But weather impacts me a lot. Like the weather is one of my hyper focuses, like it's one of the things that I'm mad about. Things that happen naturally in the sky, like northern lights, hence the hair. Like obsessed with northern lights. I'm obsessed with things that I just I don't understand, that I always try and understand them because it they just, yeah. Anyway, sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there. But let's talk about the universe because I think, especially when it comes to money and life and the things that are happening, planets aligning, and stars and the moon, etc., you are the go-to woman for this. And I love that because I'm like, Karen, I'm feeling really weird, and you're like, it's this planet interacting with this planet, and blah blah blah blah blah. And I'm like, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Someone has to know it.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Yeah, so I think like the universe, we are human beings, we are spirit having a human experience, I believe. Um, and the universe is this amazing, magical, expanding place, and we have in us like the same molecules, the same like chemical composition, and the same like core components that the stars have. We are all made up of the same stuff. Like our cells, the liquid in our cells is pretty much the identical composition to seawater. And it's like we we see the tide move twice a day because the moon makes it move with its gravitational pull. And we as beings that are made up of pretty much 60 to 75% water, depending on how old we are and the yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Um I might hydrate myself.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Yeah, hydrate, hydrate, keep drinking. Um, and we we think that we're not going to be affected by this huge great rocks that moves oceans. So it's like, how can we not be affected by it? And often it's this something feels off, like you say with the weather. We we we are electrical things, we're we're charged, aren't we? Um and like like people feel calm at the oak by the ocean because of the negative ions that the salt water emits. Is that why that happens?

SPEAKER_02 40:43

I just thought it was because it's smell, it's got like a familiar smell, and the like I like the sound of the waves, but I didn't realise that.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

There's a lot of things, yeah. So like like the it's a safety thing as well, because we can see what's coming. And if you think of it from a historical point of view, you want to be able to see what's coming. It's a source of food that people tended to settle near the ocean, so the and the soothingness of the waves and that repetition of the noise, there's there's so many things that like attract us to it, but yes, that is one of the things as well, the um comp the negative ions from there as well. So, yeah, so we when we have when we're just going about our day-to-day lives and getting bombarded by all the external stuff, we forget that we're human beings. Um that we're connected to all this, and we we are part of this huge great web, and we different things affect us, like the moon. But when we give ourselves that moment to just take a breath and like ground ourselves and just ask these questions like, what's happening with the moon? Where are the planets at? What's likely to be affecting us? And we actually can go, okay, so I'm being impacted by this and this, and maybe I'm not the worst fucking person in the world, and maybe I'm not really shit. These things are happening and they're impacting me. And how can I support myself through that? Rather than reacting, we can respond and we can make better choices depending on what's going on. And it's those choices that when we make them often enough and like come back to ourselves often enough that build up and and make those lasting and significant changes in our lives. They're just tiny steps, but those tiny steps are the things that stick as well. Because if we say we're going to change the world overnight, it doesn't happen. We need to do it in incremental steps and things that support us and feel good to us. So we're just the universe reflects back at us what how we are and how we're feeling. We are we are like that radio station, like mass, that's the word. And we are emitting that signal, and we do that through our vibrations, and our vibrations are it's emotion, so it's our feelings, emotion. That's what we're emitting out to the universe, and the universe is just giving us that back. So we want to be we want to be emitting a real positive and like joyful. We want to be emitting what we want. It's like people say, Oh, well, treat others how you want to be treated. We need to. We need to do that, but we need to do it with ourselves. And it's it's often easier to do it with other people. But we need we need to start with ourselves. So those words, those thoughts that you have about like, I'm not good enough, I don't have enough money, like you said the other day about uh earlier about I'm broken, those words and those things that we say to ourselves, that's what our brains believe. That's what our subconscious mind takes in. And when we say them enough times, and we say them on repeat often enough, that's what sticks, and that becomes a belief, and then that becomes what we are emitting out. And it's it's really fucking hard. Some days it's really hard. It's like banging your head against a brick wall, but it's coming back to it's having a few, like it, and it like people talk about affirmations and mantras, they don't have to be these huge, great, like life-affirming things. I am enough, I am loved, the universe back, I'm supported, I'm open to receive, that just need to be like when you notice those those like repeat stories, the shitty things that you tell yourself on repeat, you just need to have uh like these go-to, like I am enough, and just uh keep coming back to that because that is then what the universe will give to you and show back to you because we are just this this mirror. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

I I love that so much. Like we're we're already like coming up to time. Um, Karen, tell us about your book before we before we close.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

So my book, I have got a copy of my book here. My book is One Sacred Life, and it is a journey of remembering, rebirth, and returning to yourself. So it's basically my my story in in the book, and it's based around the cycle of the moon. We've touched on the moon briefly, um, and it's that it's that cycle of the moon rises, she sets, and she's done it thousands and thousands of times. And when everything around you is in chaos and falling apart, it's having something to come back to. And in my my case, I came back to the moon and came back to that and really focused in on that. So there's there's the moon, it teaches you about the moon. So it's it's a book, you can read it from cover to cover, but you can dip in and go, oh, where's the moon at? Find out where the moon is and read that chapter to learn about what things might be affecting you, what might be showing up for you. And there's a little guided ritual at the end um to support you with that moon phase and also to support you with with the story or where you are in your life journey as well.

SPEAKER_02 47:03

That's really cool. It's a really good book as well. Like I I really love it. Um, and yes, I have my my copy. Actually, I found it in a in a box, my one of my moving boxes that was up in Harriet in Harriet's room. So I bought I bought it down um so I could have a have a reread. Um, but it it is really good. I definitely recommend it. Also, um Karen is a fucking legend at doing oracle cards as well. Um, she has the most beautiful deck that I really, really love.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

And she does that for me regularly.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Oh, you've got them there. Okay, fine, pull me one, you know, you might as well.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

So let's see what Maddy needs today.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

I mean, apart from a new back and some new bowels, like definitely the King of Swords has come out for you today. So the King of Swords is sat on his like mountain throne, and he's got all these winged, like um birds around him, but like um guides. That's the word he's looking for. All these guides around him, and they're all really wise. Um, and he is he's really poised, he's got real, a real firm hold on his emotions. So come back to like your emotions, if your emotions are feeling heightened, I want you to pause and stop and go, right, okay, what is this trying to show me? What is this, what is this associated with? Rather than reacting to it, really come into your body so you can respond from this like poised and controlled way rather than just like flying off. You want to come in so you can respond and make make a better choice.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

I love that. I definitely have thoughts and feelings about what that could be about. Um, and I think it actually, I think it it relates back to my recent change. So I've recently done some some changes to the Maddiverse, which is my free community. Um, by the way, for anybody who's listening, if you have um neurodivergent conditions, if you have hidden disabilities, hidden struggles, life crap that you're dealing with, the Maddiverse is a safer space for you to come and basically hide from the realities of social media but still get support from people who actually get it. Um and that is a free-to-join place. Um and actually this morning I have been thinking about how we stock up the documents library, how we do some more trainings for the Maddiverse, um, how we do some some little little free kind of 10-minute taster type things. Um and actually that really works really well with um with with that. So yeah, I'm thinking I just need a few guides, don't I? Like a couple of people to do some different some different things for me, little courses, little workshops.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Um we'll have you come in and do one. So that will be amazing. Thank you, my love.

SPEAKER_02 49:59

Well, it has been a pleasure to have you on. Um, where can people find you?

SPEAKER_00 50:04

They can find me on Facebook, Karen Wybrow, on Instagram, Karen Wybrow Coaching, um, and on TikTok, Karen Wybrow as well. So yeah, just look up Karen Wybrow. And you won't go far wrong.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

Yeah, we will. Thank you. And thank you for being so honest and so open about your journey. And like, I'm gonna tell you this. I'm gonna say to you, go and fucking rest this afternoon, because that's that talking about all of that, that's a lot. That's that's pretty heavy. Like, I always recommend that, and for anyone who's listening as well, make sure that if anything has triggered you in today's episode, you go and have a have a rest, find some people who you're close to, speak to people. Um, we never mean to trigger people, we do talk about some deep things on this podcast. Um, and I think that there are th they are things that will help people and they're things that that need to be said. So I appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much. Um, for anybody who's listening, if you've enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe. Um, also give us a rating, like give us a review, like love the ratings and reviews. Um, and just come back again for next time. Um, I'm Maddie Alexander Grout. You can follow me on Instagram, Maddie TalksMoney, TikTok, Mad About Money Official, and everywhere else, Maddie Alexander Grout. I will see you all next time.