Change: the Good, the Bad & the Gooey

In this episode, we're wrapping up Season One of The Carin CONFIDENTial by talking about something every one of us will face if we decide to grow: change. It sounds exciting until you're actually in the middle of it.

Changing who you are means letting go of patterns that once felt safe, sitting in the discomfort of the unfamiliar and accepting that not everyone will come with you. It can feel lonely, confusing and even a little like you're dissolving into a pile of goo (yes, we're talking about caterpillars - I'm just over here becoming a butterfly, you guys! 😅). 

One more thing...in this episode, my beloved golden boy, Sonny, makes several appearances. A week after this was filmed, we unexpectedly had to say goodbye to him due to a spinal cord issue. He was the sweetest, most loving soul. I dedicate this one to him - for 7.5 years of loyal, unconditional love and the best snuggles. I know he's running free now - chasing all the tennis balls, swimming in all the pools, eating all the treats and getting all the pets. RIP, Sonny Lou - I miss you terribly and my heart will never be the same.

💥 Key Takeaways
-Why personal growth often feels uncomfortable before it feels empowering
-How your brain mistakes familiar patterns for safety, even when they make you miserable
-What it really means to live in the "messy middle" of change
-Why self-awareness alone isn't enough to create lasting growth
-The difference between recognizing your patterns and changing your behavior
-Why your growth can trigger the people around you
-How boundaries help you make peace with people who aren't growing alongside you
-Why creating a life you love starts with choosing yourself first

🔥 In This Episode, I Talk About:
-Why a caterpillar's metamorphosis is the perfect analogy for personal growth
-What the last two years of rebuilding my life have actually felt like behind the scenes
-Why leaving familiar misery for uncertain freedom is so much harder than it sounds
-How learning to embrace the quiet changed my relationship with myself
-The loneliness that can come with outgrowing old relationships and making space for healthier ones
-The self-awareness trap and why simply knowing your patterns isn't enough to change them
-Why some people become uncomfortable when you start evolving
-How to navigate relationships with people who aren't growing at the same pace you are
-What this podcast has really been about all along and what I hope you'll take with you into Season Two.

Transcript

Celebrating the Journey

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I've never been good at this. You guys, we're in the last episode of season one. We gotta celebrate. And of course, I'm pouring from my helper over there because we're drinking champagne. It's just an arm. It's just an arm. Jeers. Woo! This was a bad idea. I'm gonna be burping the entire episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

You want to say thank you for this? What? I'm trying not to.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I know. Wait till the end of the episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

This is fucking stupid. It's not the end. Okay. No. We've accomplished a lot. Do not get me this. He's gonna start crying. He's gonna start crying. I'm gonna have to hold his hair. He's gonna be barfing. Get it together. It's just shimping. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Welcome back to the Karen Confidential. I'm your host, Karen Campbell Smith. This is Real Talk about real life and better communication. And I am gonna do my absolute best not to belch at any point in this episode. But there's a lot of bubbles in the champagne. Well, it's actually Prosecco that we are drinking to celebrate season one of the Karen Confidential. So this is the last episode of the first season. Woo! Very exciting. But yes, I get a little burpee when I drink champagne, and I've had several sips of that. So if I do, please excuse me in advance. Okay, so did you know that when a butterfly, no, when a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, it goes into its little chrysalis, which I just spelled that one time for a spelling bee. I didn't even know what that was. Is that like a like do people know what chrysalis means? It's a little cocoon that a caterpillar goes into. So when the caterpillar goes into the cocoon and like builds that around himself, it actually like turns into goo inside of that. Like all of the parts that make it a caterpillar that it doesn't need to be a butterfly dissolve. And then in that process, all of the parts that need to be a butterfly, they were all part of the DNA the whole time, like form into the butterfly and then it flies out. And you're like, Karen, I didn't know this was a science podcast. It's not. I'm not even a science nerd by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm here to tell you that changing who you are as a human being feels a lot like metamorphosis. I've definitely had moments where I feel like I've been in a cocoon and turning into goo. Uh, I don't know if you can see my dog. He's behind us, and I think he just found cat on it.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

If he hates it. So gross.

Metamorphosis: The Journey of Change

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Okay. Okay, go lay down, buddy. Come over here. What? I don't know what you want from me. I don't know what you want from me. Okay, you gotta go lay down. Good, go lay down.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

I have been on a journey back to myself, and I think this podcast has been a peak inside of that process. Growth for me has been empowering for sure. Now my dog is drinking. Oh my god, Sonny. Or just keeping it real. My dog interrupts, my cats interrupt, my kids interrupt. That's life, man. I was saying, I've been on a journey back to myself, and this podcast has been a peak inside that process. And while it has been empowering to evolve as a person, it's also felt like confusion, resentment, loneliness, like all of the emotions that you can think of that aren't necessarily great, but like all of the emotions. So the whole gamut that's come up in the last two years of me being on this journey. Um, and I've absolutely had moments where I felt like a little like a caterpillar dissolving into gooey. I think so far this first season of the podcast has been like the good, the bad, and the gooey. I watched the first episode back, and I think my even in the even in the nine episodes since, and this one included, I feel like my voice is evolving because I'm integrating more of what I'm learning. Like you're very much seeing inside the process of somebody in metamorphosis, honestly. Because when I started this, you know, back at the beginning of the year, there was still a lot that I was figuring out and working through. And not to say that I haven't figured out I don't, but changing who you are as a person is extremely uncomfortable. It's really, really hard because it's giving up what you know. It's getting really uncomfortable in the unfamiliar. Deciding that you want to grow as a person, you want to change some not great parts of yourself comes with letting go of everything that's familiar and therefore comfortable, even though it's not really comfortable. But given that as humans, we want what's comfortable, we want what's familiar to make a conscious decision to go against that. There are times that I've definitely felt like every ounce of my being going, this isn't what you normally do. What are you doing? Like that is what it takes to rewire those deeply ingrained patterns that you've had your entire life. And I think it doesn't help that I'm pushing 50, which is rude. But I'm 49. So I've had 49 years of living the way that I've lived. So trying to like, you

The Messy Middle of Growth

SPEAKER_01 6:07

know, you think about you're walking through a forest and you're trying to create a new path. Like, that doesn't happen from walking through it once. You got to like repeatedly walk through it to wear it down. That's the same with like changing a pattern. You have to find yourself in these situations, have that instant urge to react the way you've always reacted, make a conscious decision, be intentional about not doing what you've always done, but try this other thing that feels completely foreign. That's fucking hard. And that's what I've been consistently trying to do for the last two years. That's growth. Most people prefer to stay in what's familiar, even if they're miserable in it. That's a reality. I was that person for a very long time. Even when it sucks, it's familiar. And your brain associates familiar with safe. So when you want to get out of what's familiar, your brain's like, uh-uh, not safe. Abort, not doing it. Why are you doing it? Like you've you have like a visceral reaction to going against what you've always done, what's familiar, because it's what your body thinks is safe. We as humans generally prefer predictable misery over uncertain freedom. Predictable misery over uncertain freedom. I lived in predictable misery. I created it myself. I chose to stay in what was familiar, even though it was making me miserable, rather than take a chance on something that was uncertain that would give me freedom. That's how we're wired. Like, how screwed up is that that we're created to basically default to familiar misery. It takes so much time and effort to change that part of your brain, to change that being your natural reaction to things. Yeah, that sounds exciting, but it's unfamiliar and scary, and I don't like scary. I want to be safe, so I'm gonna avoid that. That's what we all do, like without even thinking about it. That's our default. So I stayed in uncomfortable patterns for years, for like my entire life, because it's what I knew. I was too scared to like wade into the waters of unfamiliar. Yes, I was miserable, but my nervous system knew chaos. So that's what I chose to live in. That's what I actually created through my actions and through my lack of boundaries. I created chaos because that's what felt safe to me, even though all I wanted when I lived in chaos was peace and ease. Then you get it, and it's so foreign that you're like, but I don't know what to do with it. What do I do with it? So, where I am in the process, I would say is the messy middle, the messy middle, which I think that's a term that's used relatively frequently on social media. But it's entering the era where you're not who you used to be, and I'm definitely not who I used to be. I am not the version of myself that I was six months ago, even, but certainly not like a couple years ago. But I'm also still a work in progress, and I don't think I've quite landed where I'm headed. So I'm in this weird, like, middle place where I've gotten far enough along to get out of chaos being my norm. I don't create that chaos anymore. In fact, I would say that's why I'm not dating right now, because I started trying to, and what it very much showed me quickly is that I was attracting the same bullshit that I left my old relationship over. It was just in a different form and in a different person. Immediately I knew what that felt like, and I knew because I fought so hard to get out of it, this is not what I want. I'm absolutely not signing up for this again. So fuck that. Nope, not doing that. And I finally just, it was over a year ago, it was just like, I'm I don't, I'm not interested. I don't want to entertain it. I gotta work on fixing this so that I attract different. I don't want that chaos. And in the last year, specifically, in not attempting to find somebody or attempting to go on dates or even putting myself out there, I have been able to take that time and attention and that quiet to sit with the emotions that come up. It's what I talked about in episode eight, to get to know myself, to change my default reactions to things so that I am a different person and so that my energy is different, so that hopefully, because I'm not there yet, but when I do get there, I will bring in a different sort of person. Also, I think it's important for me to understand that I can build a life that I love without being chosen by somebody else being involved with that process. I want to love my own life, which I do. I want somebody to add to that. I don't want to center my worth and the quality of my life on being chosen by somebody. Because when you do that, I did that. I all of my happiness, all of like if he wasn't in a good mood, then I couldn't be in a good mood. If he was struggling, I was struggling. And I realize that's part of a relationship. Like, yes, you become entwined, you know, intertwined with somebody. But I think it's especially hard to separate that and let somebody have their thing and struggle with, you know, what they struggle with and have a boundary with. I can offer help to you, I can support you, but in the end, it's yours to handle and manage. If you have a good concept of that for yourself and you do that for yourself,

Navigating Relationships During Change

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I think you have a lot better chance of having boundaries with somebody else in a relationship with that. And again, this is all theoretical. So as these seasons continue to come out and I do find myself in a relationship, I'll report back. But that's my theory right now. So when I was at the beginning of this, where I was making different decisions and I was setting boundaries, I started to lose people. The friendships that I had just were not fitting anymore. They were chaotic. A lot of the relationships that I had in my life were chaotic. It wasn't just my marriage. That's how I operated. So that's what I attracted in every facet, not just romantic relationships. So when I landed, started losing people, like landed in the place of like, damn, it's really quiet. Like, I what do I do with this? Because I was so used to constantly bracing, dealing with stuff, changing myself, contorting myself, anticipating needs, you know, like that was my entire existence. And so all of a sudden I found myself in this quiet place where none of that was happening. And I think that's where a lot of people end up reverting back because it is uncomfortable to find yourself in that place, even though that's the whole, that's that's what you want. Like, that's the goal. It's like, I just want peace, I just want ease. But then you find yourself in this quiet, peaceful place and it feels foreign. It feels wrong. I have made a concerted effort to sit in that. And I haven't gotten on dating apps, and I haven't tried to find something to fill my time. I've tried to sit in that quiet and get used to it so that it becomes my norm. And it has like more weekends than not, I don't have plans. I don't go out a lot, I don't have a big friend group anymore. And as an extrovert, that's been challenging. But at the same time, I believe, and again, this is a place where I'm still integrating. Um, hi, Sonny. He's pacing. Oh, he has a ball. It's always time to play. He still has a herniated disc, so he still can't chase his ball. And I think he's bored. But anyway, back to the point. What was I talking about? I think what I was talking about is that I'm in the middle of figuring out if I let people go who are chaotic who fall in line with like the old version of me, then that will make space for people who are in line with the new version of me. I am in the messy middle. I haven't yet become who the version of myself that I'm becoming. I feel that. So I think it's very quiet and a little bit lonely, but I think that's part of it. I rationalize it that I have to get okay with myself. I have to get okay with the quiet. I have to make peace and ease my new norm completely. And that's like rewiring a pattern, which takes a lot, but I have to land firmly in that place in order for those new people to start coming in. And I have seen a few new people come in. So I believe that. Like that's part of, I think that's also part of growth. And maybe that's just me, but I think there's some blind faith involved. I believe that if I keep showing up for myself in this way, my life is gonna improve. Better people are gonna show up, more opportunities are gonna show up. I believe that. Like, I think that's part of landing where you want to land. I think that's part of the messy middle, is faith. I believe that I'm on the right path. I believe that I'm taking the right action, and I believe that I'm gonna land where I want to land. So the process of change starts with self-awareness. It is incredibly important because you can't change something that you're completely blind to. However, there's a thing that I like to call the self-awareness trap. I was in it for most of my life, probably until the last year or so. I lived in the self-awareness trap. I've always been a very self-aware person. I think there's a lot, there's a relatively good amount of self-aware people out there. Now we've all run into people who have no freaking self-awareness, and there's not much more that's frustrating and will send me into a fury than somebody who is completely unself-aware. I am self-aware, I always have been. The thing is, though, just because you have self-awareness doesn't automatically mean you're on a trajectory of growth. You can actually get stuck in a place of self-awareness. Just because you're really good at naming all of the places where you don't show up well, I could always take accountability. That's self-awareness. Like, I know that I'm reactive and I can pop off when I'm pissed off. I'll take accountability for that. I'm self-aware of that. Where I got stuck is what did I do to change how I was reacting in those moments? I acknowledged it, I knew about it. I could tell you all about it. I would take accountability. Yep, I sure did that. But then what happened after that? Nothing. I kept showing up the same way. That's where I think a lot of people live. That's where my ex lives. And it's it's dangerous when you're in a relationship with that because it gives you hope that the follow-through is coming. It makes you think, oh, but they're self-aware. They know what their issues are, and then it makes you think you project onto them, but it's a choice. All they have to do is choose to behave differently. That's how my brain worked. Well,

The Self-Awareness Trap

SPEAKER_01 18:02

he knows about it, he can speak about it, he's got all the words about it. That's the other thing with self-awareness. There's so many tools online, there's so many people who can speak fluently in self-awareness talk. And that's great. The problem is self-awareness isn't really shit unless there's action associated with it. You can name all of the ways that you're not a great person. You can even take accountability for that. Yes, I'm so sorry. I did that. If you're not doing anything to change the behavior associated with those patterns, that self-awareness doesn't benefit anyone. This is especially important in leadership. I just did a post about this, and I feel very strongly about it because I've been, I've been that person, and I've also been under that person, that leader, who could tell you all the ways that they're not a great leader. Okay. Yeah, self-awareness again is important. You can't change what you can't see. But seeing it and changing it are two totally different things. So you need self-awareness and behavior change. They have to go in tandem for you to grow. Knowing what your patterns are, choosing different behavior repeatedly, you know, it takes more than once. You gotta like forge that path over and over again to get it ingrained in there. That is change. That is growth. Self-awareness alone does not equal that. I will step down off of my soapbox talking about self-awareness. Why do people get so triggered by change, by you changing? I have definitely experienced this. How dare you change? Who do you think you are? Oh, she's doing this dumb stuff on social, that little thing she's doing. Oh, she's doing a podcast. Ugh. Like, so dismissive, so much shade thrown. Like, why is that someone's default response? Somebody who's known you a long time. New people are like, cool, I love what she's saying. This is great. I'm following her. They don't have any frame of reference. The people who've been in your life who knew former versions of you, there are definitely going to be people that are gonna be like, who in the actual hell do you think you are? Like, what are you even doing? I have certainly encountered that. Why is that? Like, why do people respond that way? Well, first and foremost, if you're changing, and it includes you having boundaries, I talked about it in the last episode. That's gonna trigger people who benefit from you not having boundaries. So if you're changing and you're evolving and you're showing up in a different way that no longer benefits them, of course they're gonna be pissed about it. If they don't have emotional capacity to see it for what it is and realize it's actually a good thing for you. That requires emotional capacity, that requires empathy, that requires getting outside of your own head. Not everybody has that. So that's one reason that somebody might not react well to you changing. The other big thing is by you changing, you're showing that it's possible. And how freaking dare you show me that it's possible to change when I've convinced myself that I'm right here in this familiar misery that I'm choosing because I've convinced myself that I can't take the chance on the unknown freedom. But you're in front of me showing me that it's possible. I don't want to see that it's possible. There's a lot of people that that sums it up. There's a lot of people who don't want to do the hard work of facing all of those emotions, of growing as a person because that. What it requires. And so if you're standing in front of them and you are doing the hard work and you are changing and they're witnessing that, that is going to be very triggering to them. And that's where projection comes in. That's where they're going to project onto you that what you're doing is wrong. Because in their mind it is. I can't do that for myself. That's what they tell themselves. It's not true. That's what they're telling themselves. So they're going to project that onto you. You can't do that for yourself either. But I go back to in those situations with those people, you have to ask yourself do I want to continue to live my life, giving up parts of myself to make them comfortable, to keep them in my life, or do I want to change and start showing up for myself and allow those people to go? Because I'll say it again. I've said it before. I consider that human clutter. They are clogging up your ability to have a good relationship with yourself. You don't necessarily have to go straight to cutoff mode, but with those kind of people, you have to have boundaries. You have to stand your ground. You have to not question yourself. You have to reassure yourself. Yeah, I'm chasing this thing that makes me feel joy, that makes me feel alive, that makes me feel like I was put on this planet to do. And if they don't respect that and they want to not support me in that, then they can go. Or at a minimum, they're not going to get full access to me. That's part of that relationship with yourself, is being able to do that. Because honestly, they don't belong where you're going. They're not going to support you in where you're going. And they're holding you back. And with certain people, no matter what you say, no matter what you do, you will never see them change. You can model it for them, you can support them, you can suggest it. There are people who don't either don't want to change, don't have the capacity to change, don't have the willingness to change, whatever it is, they're not headed down the road of change. You have to accept that. You have to accept that no matter

Dealing with Triggers from Change

SPEAKER_01 24:12

what you do, no matter what you say, you're not going to be able to will them into changing. And it's really hard because once you start doing the work and you start feeling the benefits of it, which is feeling more comfortable in your own skin, being happier, being more peaceful, being more confident. All of those things come when you do this work, but it's really uncomfortable and it's really hard work. Those are the payoffs, really great freaking payoffs. But it's it never gets easy. There's always going to be hard moments where you have to reassure yourself. Like it's a lifelong journey. There are people who aren't interested in that. You can't change that for them. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, even though you're on this side of it going, oh my God, it looks so much better over here. It's so much easier. Like, here's the map. Follow me, please. You love this person. There's people in your life that you adore. There's people in my life that I have really cared about. My ex-husband included, honestly, that I had to let go. Because I was going this way and they were gonna stay right here. Now, if they respected me enough to support me in that, they would still have a place in my life. But there's a lot of people who don't. And so there's a lot of people who aren't in my life anymore. I've had to get okay with that. That is a huge part of growth, and that is a reality of change. So, what do you do with the people who you don't want to cut off and you don't want to lose? There are people in your life. Okay, so I posted about this like lack of emotional capacity, be quiet because you're not gonna change it. That's like the viral post that I have on Instagram. It's up to like 3.4 million views, 200,000 likes. Still freaking crazy. Like, holy crap, amazing. That is this, though. In the comment section of that, there were quite a few people that were like, cut them off. Don't even think twice about it. It's not that simple. There are people in your life that you can't just cut off. I mean, you could, but like, do you really want to? I haven't been able to completely cut off my ex. I have two kids with him. I still interact with him. We're cordial. I have huge boundaries. I feel very guarded because I don't want to be manipulated. So he's still in my life, but it's on very specific terms. I didn't have the luxury of just saying, fuck yourself. I never want to see you again, because I have kids with him. I have a dog with him. I we spend more time talking about the dog than our kids, but that's another freaking podcast episode. But anyway, at some point I will have my mom on this podcast. We've had some serious issues, and we'll talk about it. I know she'll be honest about it. She watches every one of my episodes. So when I start talking about my childhood, know that my mom watches these. She does support me. Yes, we've had Rocky patches. Yes, we've had to come up. Well, like we've I had no boundaries with anyone, including my mom. She respects my boundaries. She's done work on herself. The only reason that we are where we are right now is because we've both worked on ourselves. Thankfully, I'm so thankful for that. I don't, I don't want to have to cut off my mom. And there are people who do have to do that because I'm fortunate enough that I have a mom who has worked on herself to where we can have a relationship. That's out of my control. I couldn't have control, I couldn't have made her do that. I did give the ultimatum. If you want to have a relationship with me, you got to do some work on yourself because you're not showing up well either. And she did. And she is. I understand there's people who don't. But with people in your life that you want to keep in your life, you have to have boundaries and you have to have somebody that can respect those boundaries. It could be a relative that you really do care about and you want to have some sort of relationship with. You set the terms. You don't have to be, well, this is my boundary and you will uphold it. No, because your boundaries for you. So you have to know how much time you can spend with them that doesn't make you crazy. You have to know what you can talk about in conversations. You have to know all those things, and you have to set guardrails around it. So you have to also understand that there are going to be times. There might be people in your life that are just really freaking annoying, but you love them. Like there's annoying and there's toxic. It's a different, the two different things. You can build up a tolerance to annoyance. You can say, you know what? I love this person. They don't have a lot of self-awareness. They mean well. They're not malicious. I'm going to set boundaries around how much time I spend with this person, but I do want to have a relationship with this person. So I'm going to decide how much time, how much energy, how much access I'm going to give to this person. That's a healthier way to interact with somebody in your life that's challenging. It's not always cut them off. That's not always the answer. Life is more nuanced than that. Life is not that black and white. And I will go on a sidebar and say it drives me freaking crazy to see online, especially knowing that most of it's AI written, because this is how AI works. Black and white when it comes to behavior and conversations and relationships. It's nuanced. You can't just make a rule across the board for every person in your life that's problematic. You shouldn't. You

Building Boundaries and Acceptance

SPEAKER_01 30:06

need to have that nuance. You need to take the person in front of you, evaluate them. What is the value to having them in my life? If I want to have them in my life, what are the boundaries that I'm going to need to keep them in my life? That's all yours to control. That's all part of your growth. That's all part of building an ecosystem that you're comfortable living in on your own terms. You also have to lower your expectations. You have to stop expecting things out of the people in your life that they're not capable of giving you. You have to accept them for who they are. If you're going to decide to have a relationship with them, part of your work is seeing them for who they are, not who you wish they would be, accepting them for that, and then building boundaries around that. So season one, episode one, started with me telling you all about my failed marriage and how I abandoned myself and how I lost myself. But I'm realizing now that I'm on episode 10 of season one, the last episode, what this podcast is really about is my journey of not abandoning my abandoning myself anymore, of coming back to myself, of being honest about the process, of sharing my wins and the nuggets of information that I'm picking up and learning about myself in hopes of it helping someone else who's also struggling with something similar, knowing that my story is obviously different than yours. But this isn't necessarily about what's funny is the people in my life who don't understand this, who don't understand my growth, have said, What are you doing with your podcast and what are you doing online? Because all you do is talk about your ex-husband. That's not true. And I actually went back and I looked at all of my posts, and I did. I spent one afternoon and I looked at everything I posted after I got that feedback. I'm self-aware, I told you. So I wanted to see. Maybe I'm not seeing it. So I looked at all the posts that I've posted since I started doing this, and I've listened to all of my podcast episodes, and I can say with certainty, I know that that's not what this podcast is about. This podcast is about a person who is doing the work to become the version of myself that I want to become. It's welcoming people into that process. It's being totally transparent about not having everything figured out. I don't. I feel a lot more equipped to live my life now than I did six months ago, a year ago. And I'm confident that that will continue and I will just keep building confidence in the choices that I've been making. But the purpose of this podcast is to share all of that and ultimately to have it resonate with other people, to have someone go, I see myself in that. Wow. Okay, maybe if I try to do that, maybe it'll help my situation. Or I haven't thought about it that way. Seeing yourself in what I'm sharing. That's my goal. Connection. Because I was disconnected from myself. I was disconnected from everyone. So my purpose in life now is connection. In every scenario, I want to be connected with myself so that I can connect with other people. And that's what this podcast really is. It's me putting myself out there in an effort to connect with you. And so I hope that that's what it is. And I hope that that's what you're taking from it.

Looking Ahead: Season Two and Beyond

SPEAKER_01 33:53

If there's one thing that I hope that you take away from this first season, and it's something that I wish I could say to my younger self, it's you're allowed to change. You're allowed to become a different version of yourself. You're allowed to lose people in that process. You're allowed to go into hermit mode and metamorphosize into the version of yourself that you want to be. You're allowed. For so long I felt like I wasn't. So if nothing else, if I'm reaching a person that doesn't believe that and hears me say that and says, you know what? I am allowed, then that's my reason for being here and talking to you. So with that, I also would be remiss if I didn't say thank you to the person who helps me put this podcast on. He's sitting right over there. I could not do this by myself. I wanted to do a podcast for a really long time and it was too intimidating. Like, yes, I have a degree in broadcast journalism, but like to do all of this yourself is odd. So I was like, it's too much. I know too much. I know how much it is. So his name is Pedro. He's one of my favorite humans on the planet. So, Pedro, I poured the second glass of champagne for him because I would not be here doing this with you if it weren't for him. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

I'm not gonna cry. It's really cool. Thank you guys so much for being here every other week and tuning into these episodes and giving me your feedback and doing this with me and letting me be vulnerable and letting me be myself and finding value in what I'm sharing. Like, this is the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. And I've done some pretty cool shit, but this is it. Being a mom is pretty cool too. And that'll be my cliffhanger for season two. Next season, I'm gonna have guests. It's not just gonna be me talking at you. And my goal is to have my kids be my first guests. We'll see if I can talk them into that. I'll be making they're not gonna have a choice. So next season is gonna be different. It's gonna be a different vibe. I'm gonna be further along. Hopefully, I won't be so in the messy middle, but we'll see. So, with that, that is a wrap on episode 10. That is a wrap on season one. I'm proud of us. Cheers to us. Cheers to you, and we'll see you next season. Bye. One more thing, I got off sentimental and forgot. In between this season and next, I'm gonna pick some of my favorite moments, key takeaways, one-liners, funny moments from this first season, and I'm gonna be pushing those out with the help of Pedro. In between now and when season two lands, just to keep us, you know, interacting and to keep this thing going. So look out for that. And I hope you'll watch it, and I hope you'll let me know what you think. Okay, this time I mean it. Bye. Hey, thanks for watching. Can't get enough Karen? Well, share, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for new episodes. You can also follow me on social or visit my website. And if you want to connect, send me an email. Okay, bye.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Let's go.