What Happens When You Show the World the Real You | Katherine Dudtschak
(YouTube Transcript)
Aneta (00:03): Katherine, welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. I'm so excited that you're here with me today.
Katherine (00:09): It is amazing to be with you. Thank you for the invite.
Aneta (00:13): Of course, there's so much for us to cover. as we were talking, of course, before we even hit record, it's so interesting because I get so excited to be able to say, no, we have to save this because there are so many interesting between your experience and mine, but I want to cover all the things doing but the interesting part that maybe we could start with is that both you and I started in corporate. Started in banking. And so you had this incredible, successful corporate career. Tell me a little bit about what you were doing in corporate, and for how long were you there?
Katherine (00:51): Okay, so we're starting in the material world, are we?
Aneta (00:54): We are a little bit, yes.
Katherine (00:56): Yeah, what I call the extractive and performative world that, as humans, we've built over several hundred years, thousands of years. been a bank CEO twice, once leading a bank in the Caribbean across 19 countries. My corporate job was the CEO of a bank called Home Equity Bank.
It's a bank that serves aging Canadians and offers a unique product that helps the savings embedded in their home to be able to help them live a better aging life. And it's not abnormal at midlife when we retire, I don't care for that word. When we retire, our sense of dignity drops, our sense of independence drops, and our empowerment drops. We don't find purpose; we don't have purpose. And then we're worried. All the health experts are saying, you're gonna live to 100, and you're 60 years old, and you're going, I don't know if I have enough money to live for two more years, let alone live to 100.
So I was CEO of Home Equity Bank, helping Asian Canadians. And I was executive vice president of personal and commercial banking for Canada's largest bank for eight years as well. So I've had all kinds of different corporate jobs in Canada's largest company and bank. And I wanted something higher purpose-oriented after I came out in the summer of 2019.
And I wanted to prove that I could get another job in the world as Katie and only Katie, or Catherine and only Catherine. Like many of us, and you'll probably relate to this, I came out of childhood and teenagehood, promising myself that I would build a better life than my parents had. We grew up on a very humble farm.
I promised myself I was gonna prove to my teachers that I was smart enough to have a meaningful career. And between those things, I went on a pathway in the corporate world to take every job I could to prove I was smart enough and capable enough and to create a better life than my parents had. And being.
I'm in midlife, well, in midlife now at 60 years old, and I stayed in the corporate world for 40 years. I did every banking job you can think of, from risk management to operations to sales and distribution to human resources. If I sense that you didn't think I knew how to do it, I was gonna prove to you that I could do it.
Aneta (03:28): Did you have a recognition or a moment where you realized that you are enough and you don't need to prove anything any longer?
Katherine (03:37): Well, recognition of self-love, journey to self-love is not a transaction, a journey. So when I think of a moment of recognition, I think, light bulb moment. don't think I had a light bulb moment. I think I had an awakening that played out over the last 10 years.
Aneta (03:51): Yeah. Did you come out first and then have the awakening? Or did the awakening happen, and then you felt like you could?
Katherine (04:10): Yeah, so funny, I'm just still sitting with the moment work. There have been many moments in my awakening, and I think there are many moments in everybody's awakening.
And at Sincerely, and we'll talk later about Sincerely, the platform that I've launched, there's a model that I call the coherence model. It is the journey to being coherent between our essence, our physical body, and our inherited self, and our lived experience self. And I think now, finally, I'm at this place of coherence, living from my essence or soul. Yet the journey to get here multiple moments of what I would call collapse, and that ultimately results in awakening. One of the more meaningful ones is that I led the restructuring of a bank in the Caribbean after the financial crisis. And I had this belief that all the answers to the world were in leadership and senior management.
And if I got there, I would be enlightened. Yes, exactly. And then I get there, and I'm leading this restructuring and seeing the short-term decisions that leaders had made to lend money to people in developing countries that wouldn't have the money to repay the debt over the medium to long term. And following the financial crisis, everything collapsed. And the US saw this with the housing crisis, and the US after the financial crisis.
And so here I was leading a bank, for money back from people who didn't have jobs, to loans that had been lent to people. And here I am with the leadership team restructuring the company and sending people home, 40 % of the workforce, home in 24 months in countries where the likelihood of getting a job was pretty low. And I've always been a sensitive, empathic soul from childhood. And I would cry with employees because they were going to the media to complain about the company, because they were worried about their jobs.
I could see the hurt that they were carrying and the fear that they were carrying for their own jobs, their ability to provide for their families, wanting to keep their own homes. And down. I just got to the point with those employees where I can't tell you how many jobs we're going to eliminate, but what I will tell you, and I will guarantee you, is I will do everything in my ability as a human being to save this company and as many jobs as humanly possible.
And broke my heart. It was a soul-crushing experience. I don't think you can crush a soul. I think our souls are all love and all complete. Yet it was a crushing experience where I saw how political leaders are motivated to make short-term decisions and how company leaders are incentivized to make short-term decisions.
And I got to see the effect of short-term decisions on the well-being of citizens in a community and the well-being of employees. And it broke my heart. So that was my first collapse because this dream of having all the answers as a CEO got shattered. And 17, when my oldest daughter had an accident with a life-threatening horse, my mother died, and I was seeing all kinds of media popping up around gender. I was such a straight-laced banker living this very proper life, but it spoke to me. These gender posters and articles spoke to me.
And by August of 2017, I'd mustered up the courage to ask an LGBT colleague, Who the heck is Caitlyn Jenner, and what is transgender? And within 15 minutes, he explained how gender isn't body parts, gender is the feminine and masculine characteristics that live inside of us. And then he explained to me that gender is who you go to sleep as, a deeper, more soulful aspect of identity. And that's who you go to with, it's different, and it's sexual orientation. And that was August 25th, 2017.
And by the end of that lunch, my life was changed forever. Within hours, my anxiety went through the roof. I felt like I had an answer to something I had wondered about since childhood. I began researching it differently than I had before. And within basically 10 days, I told my spouse at the time that I think I'm wired female on the inside. And that was the shock, and then within a year, I was suicidal. I wanted life to be
Aneta (09:35): What was happening that caused you to feel like life was too difficult to keep living?
Katherine (09:41): Yeah, two things can be true at the same time. And gets kind of your original question around there's the awakening, yet what usually occurs is a collapse before the awakening. I'm onto my second collapse, and I've got a couple more for you.
What happened after I finally had a definition for how I had felt for 50 I went on this journey to prove it or disprove it. And part of me wanted it to be true. And one of the things that I would say to any human being on their journey to wholeness, to their soul, to their essence, to the unique gifts that are in every beautiful human being, part of that journey is you test your way into it. So every step I would take to express my feminine essence felt like home.
It felt as if I was able to let my body move, and I was able to let my hands move, and I was able to express myself in a more feminine way, which was so natural. And at the same time, I am fearful for my life. I am fearful of judgment and rejection, and that I'm going to be homeless because I don't think the corporate world can handle a woman like me. And I was equally fearful that I was going to hurt my spouse and hurt my children.
And again, I was midlife. I was within a decade of retirement. And I wanted to make sure I could finish putting my kids through school. And I wanted to make sure that my spouse would be okay if our marriage didn't work out. So from 2017 to 2019, I was carrying this deep fear of abandonment and rejection, fear of hurting the people I love the most.
And every step I would take felt like home, felt closer and closer to my soul or to my essence. And so when you're on a journey like that, and you've got an insurance policy in place. It's not abnormal to go; I've had a perfect life. I'm 50 years old. If I'm gone and an accident happens, my spouse would be able to begin a new life with a new partner. My children would remember me fondly.
My colleagues would remember me fondly. And I wouldn't have to face the risk of persecution, the risk of abandonment, and rejection. Talking about it in my book, being gay or gender diverse or indigenous or whatever makes you unique that you're hiding or that you're ashamed of is not a mental health issue. The mental health issues arise from being disconnected from your soul or your essence.
And the mental health issues primarily arise from a fear of rejection and abandonment. So, the best way to build a kinder, more inclusive world, or the best remedy, is to build a kinder, more inclusive world where people have psychological safety, to express more of their natural self to the world, go a long way to dealing with the mental health pandemic that exists within society.
So yeah, in that second collapse, the bottom was me wanting life to be over. And all it takes is one person who can see the hurt you're carrying to call you on it and to hold your hand. And I had a friend who called me on it, and do you want to know about the intergenerational trauma caused by suicide that you're going to create for your children if your perfect life is now over? And so I made a promise to myself to live.
And from that September, October to June, 2019, when I actually did come out, I went on a journey to plan my coming out in this methodical way that I would care for my children. I would bring my friends on the journey, and I would bring 80,000 colleagues of my company on the journey in the most thoughtful, inclusive way so that they would have time to learn and get used to the idea that I'm a really weird female on the and that I was going to show up at work as Katherine.
And it worked. Up until the day I came out on June 17th, 2019, I still expected to be judged and rejected by the world. I met with, and I do believe, because I showed a lot of vulnerability, on video, I shared my life story and the secrets that I had been carrying, I shared with 80,000 people by way of a video. And I encouraged people to ask me questions. I encouraged them not to be shy. I asked for their patience in showing them that I can be as capable, if not more capable, than ever.
And I received an outpouring of love and support that I could have never imagined. And so experience the deepest of fears and suicidal ideation at one point, and then nine months later experience this outpouring of love and support was beyond mind-blowing.
And then the greatest gift of my life happened. It wasn't. It was the fact that countless human beings started to tell me their own stories of hurt and hardship, their own stories of aspects of self, of identity that they were hiding from the world. And as a senior responsible for stewarding a workforce of 25,000 people, I thought I was the only broken human being at that point. And what I saw was that most of us have hurt that we're not sharing, because it hurts, but because of a fear of being judged by something that happened in childhood or an aspect of identity that might be shameful, that might cause them to be rejected. I imagine I could see through my own life experience that, as much as I became a senior executive, the company didn't get all of me.
They got 60 or 70 % of me. They didn't get all of my creativity, they didn't get all of my love, they didn't get all of my intuitive abilities. And I spent a lot of time being an empath and a highly sensitive person, reading the room and being a chameleon. And I could see for myself that, as much as I was senior and I performed, the company was missing out on a lot of my ability, and I could now see the same across almost everybody in the workforce.
And I go, my goodness, could you imagine a world where it's okay to talk about hurt and hardship? And could you imagine a world where you get to express at work all of your intellectual and all of your creative and emotional capacity and potential in pursuit of a purpose, a purpose of making a difference in the lives of communities or society, or the And my mind went, my God, we are missing out on so much human potential. And so I could no longer, this was a big moment. This is probably the biggest moment of awakening in my life.
And I go, my goodness, there is so much human potential available to us if we build a world not based on survival and fear and ego and power and hierarchy, if we builda society and a world that is more regenerative and more coherent, where people can live more from their natural gifts and ability, and where we lead from a place of kindness and curiosity and listening to understand and less hierarchy and wanting perspectives from all angles on the problem or the mission
I remember a year after I came out, as I reflected on all of this, going to one of the board members of Canada's largest company, and I went, There's a whole other way of leading and being in this world available to us. And I think we're getting near the end of exploiting our planet. And I think the level of social fracture and economic divide is getting near the end. I go, I think there's an evolved way.
And the board member says, " Yeah, I think you're right. And she said, Yet the power of the system that you just grew up in is so entrenched that it's gonna be really difficult for you. It's gonna take a lot to do what you're describing. And I stayed in that job for three more years and became a very different kind of leader, much more compassionate, heart-centered, what I call a higher purpose-oriented leader. And we went on to achieve record results, holistic results, customer, community, employee, business, and it worked. And I go,
And then my next collapse happened. I left that company after 37 and a half years because I wanted another chance in the world to be Katherine and all of Katherine to be chosen as a senior leader as a woman, not somebody who grew up in a man's world and became a senior leader. And that's what I went on to Home Equity Bank.
But that second collapse after I Kenner's Largest Bank was actually deeper and more difficult than the collapse around my gender that I experienced in 2018 and 19. We're now in 2022. By then, my partner and I chose to separate. I was divorced. My four children had grown up and left home. I just chose to leave a work family that loved me and supported me during my coming out, which I had spent 37 years with. And I hadn't grieved my coming out.
I hadn't grieved the countless stories people told me, and I hadn't grieved and healed from my most fundamental childhood fear or trauma, which was not just a fear of abandonment, but a fear of being alone. And so for the first time in my life, I got to be alone. And that was the third collapse, which was the divine, the universe orchestrated it. And I felt it coming. I go, you're not gonna do this to me, are you? I just went through this corporate collapse, this gender collapse, and re-emergence.
And now here I am, I'm gonna leave the corporate world without a partner at home, with kids no longer at home, and you're gonna let me sit with myself. And I sat with myself in solitude, solo for 18 months, grieving, learning to meditate, learning to be with myself. And learning to find my deeper self, my essence. And that third collapse was the deepest, hardest, and most important and liberating experience of my life because I found my soul. And
It allowed me the space to fully go back to my inner child and my childhood, and yes, grieve the hurts that I experienced in my childhood. My parents were loving people. They just, like many people, ran a farm. mother was very loving, and then she would disappear for hours on end to go to the farm, and I experienced deep love and then a vacancy, a deep love and a vacancy. And then I also grew up in a lot of anxiety because they brought post-war trauma from the second world war to our home. So I was experiencing deep love, nothing, aloneness, and constant anxiety. So I became this hypersensitive person who didn't like to be left alone.
But on the other side, what that time gave me was an ability to go back to who I was before I adapted to fit into my family structure, before I adapted to fit into my school, before I adapted to fit into my friend group, before I adapted to fit into the corporate world. Who was I?
And what I discovered was that the identity of a title and a company and money and the street you live on and the number of kids you have was not the real me. That was my lived experience self.
But what was sitting underneath it was this two-year-old who was fiercely curious and asking why about everything, trying to make meaning in the world, and putting puzzles together in her mind. And that two-year-old was also very affectionate and loving and playful and sensitive and creative. And in those 18 months from 2022 to basically 2024,
I got to this place of saying, could you imagine if I just learned to love and embrace every aspect of that two-year-old? And that's who you get now. That's the ultimate moment that I think every human being is on a journey to, is to find the soul, to re-find the soul or the essence within us and heal enough of the hurts that you can learn to love the person you are and love expressing the person that you are. And that's who I am now. That's who I always was. I just lost her for a while.
Aneta (24:59): and for me. It's a remembering, I think, of who we are. And so much of what you've talked about is the work of identity, which I think is such meaningful work because it's really getting down to asking all those questions. Like you said, like, who am I beyond this? Who was I before I believed this or before I feared this or before someone conditioned me to believe that this is who I am?
And then who rewarded me for those behaviors? It's just like a lifetime in the making, and then we start to unravel it. And I'm so curious, cause I want to go back to some things that you talked about in your story earlier. When you finally came out at work, you weren't sure how it would be received. And yet you're so thoughtful about how you chose to communicate.
Tell me what happened. You said that people started coming to you and sharing their stories. Were they reaching out and wanting to schedule time with you? Were you getting that look, like as people were one, acknowledging and celebrating and appreciating you and your story, and you sharing it with them? But then how did it permit them to come and to share with you what was going on with them as well?
Katherine (26:19): Yeah, great question. So some of it was one-on-one. I kept myself fairly available for a week or two. So people would just walk into my office, close my door, and say, and I was always a fairly accessible executive. I was busier than a one-armed paper hanger, but I had space, and people would just come into my office, and I'll never forget this woman, and I don't remember her name.
She worked on the floor that I was on at the time. And she goes, Katie, because you've been open about your journey, I feel less alone. And I go, well, what are you talking about? She goes, I have an amazing husband who is so loving, and I'm so grateful for him. Yet every day I think about the emotional and physical abuse of my first husband.
I've learned a lot about living in a woman's world and how her story is not that uncommon. And, I was just stopped dead in my tracks, going, whoa, because I shared my gender story. You feel less alone as a woman who was abused by your first spouse. I didn't see them as the same yet, in essence, it's the same because she could tell that I had been hurting, that I had been hiding, and that I had been hurting. And because I was so vulnerable in the way that I communicated it, she just felt she's not the only one who's hurting. Others are hurting. And so that moved me deeply. Then I ended up working before remote work. After I came out two weeks later, I was still living in a man's world at the time, remote for a couple of months through July and August.
And I promised myself that I was gonna return every email I got from people in the company and beyond. And I noticed a trend. About two-thirds of the emails were, You're courageous, and you're brave. And I didn't like those emails. Cause I go like, this isn't fun. I wouldn't wish my journey on any human being because of the darkness and the fears that I faced.
Because romanticize the word courage and bravery, when in reality, what courage and bravery really means not about moving forward in the absence of fear. It's about moving forward towards what calls you in the presence of profound fear. And so about two-thirds of the emails were about courage and bravery. And then about a third were long emails. A more junior employee who grew up in India says, Katie, I've never told anybody this in my life. My best friend in my teenage years back in India told me he was attracted to boys.
I didn't know what to do with it. So I ostracized him. And then five years later, he was put into an arranged marriage. And within 12 months, he took his life. He died by suicide. And he goes, I've carried the guilt of ostracizing my best friend. And you're the first person I felt safe to tell it to, and because you're claiming your truth, your wholeness, I like my best friend live. I hope fewer people take their lives, and I hope the world becomes kinder. And I got an email from a woman who grew up in the Caribbean. At the time, some countries would stone people if they found out you were gay.
And she talked about her uncle, who was gay, yet never came out publicly, moved to Canada, and lived gay secretly. And she shared three or four examples of this. And she goes, because of you, I hope that the people I've referenced in my note here get to live more freely in the world for being the beautiful human beings that they are. And so, men were telling me stories they've never spoken in the workplace, cute stories like I like fashion and shopping more than my female spouse does.
And I would never tell a man at work that I like decorating and fashion more than my female spouse does because I'd get bullied by the guys that I work with, to men telling me stories of watching their sibling die in childhood and how that death and that loss was still with them, to a man telling me that his mother died by suicide when he was 24 and how growing up with her mental health challenges really shaped him. The blonde female executive colleague who tells you that she's the one who packed the car in teenagehood to get mom away from an abusive relationship. And so, all of these stories came out to me either one-on-one or by email. And of the
Probably the video went out on the 17th of June. I stayed away from meetings because I didn't want attention. I went to my first leadership conference for somebody on my team. There were about 5,000 leaders on my team at the company, and there was a conference happening that week.
And I was invited to go to the conference to give a talk. Well, now my news is out. I'm still showing up in the man's world. But they had all seen a photo in the video. I showed a photo of what I would look like. And so I went to this conference to be one of the keynote speakers. And we had security guards hired at the company because we didn't know what would happen.
Katherine (32:38): You don't have to go far to see horror stories around how races or different cultures or different people from the LGBT community can be persecuted. And so the security guy is waiting for me, and we're outside the conference room. There are 600 leaders in the room,
Aneta (32:40): Yeah.
Katherine (32:59): And it was one of my team members who was leading the conference. And I built up the courage, and I opened the door, and I extended the back of the auditorium, and the gentleman's name is Matt. Matt was leading the meeting, and he shifted to begin introducing me, and all the heads turned to me in the rooms at the back.
And then they stood up, everyone, and they started applauding. And I'm gushing in tears, and trying to meander my way to the front. And they kept standing and hugging me. I go, I came out to be me. I came out to save my life. I came out to be around for my children for the next 50 years. I chose to live. This is an important thing about a personal crisis. Hope is a powerful tool.
I don't think it keeps you, but gives you reason to be. And my reason to be was one: to keep my job, to provide for my kids' education. And the other reason was that I said, I'd like to be around for another 50 years for my kids. I'm not gonna take my life. As I said earlier, eventually I found self-love. And so I was embarrassed.
I was embarrassed by the outpouring of applause when I had zero desire to get that kind of attention. And yet I think the most important message of all of this that I saw at scale was two things. At scale, most of us, if not all of us, either have hurt or hardship or aspects of essence, deeper identity, true identity, that we're hiding from the world, that we're conditioned out of us, as you talked about, causing us to be less aligned and less healthy.
And then the other thing that I saw at scale was the profound level of love and kindness that exists in humanity. And yes, every one of us can go to survival mode, fear mode, ego. You need an identity to survive in this physical world. Yet you don't need to live from ego all the time or from survival or from fear all the time.
And I got to see a level of heart opening and love and kindness in humanity at scale across 80,000 people that blew me away and just opened my heart and opened my mind to this more regenerative, more coherent way of being as human beings that's available to us when we learn to calm our nervous systems and shift from anxiety or fear, kindness to curiosity, to presence, to elegance and to harmony. I feel like the luckiest human being on the planet for the lived experiences that I've had.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (35:52): Yeah. And that's the hero's journey, isn't it? Like we go through all of this, and then if we get it right, we then become the guide to help others. And so that's where you find yourself right now in your own life, because you're helping other leaders move from the performative, move from feeling that we have to only bring parts of ourselves, like you said, 60 % ourselves. So
Share a little bit about the work that you're doing today because you have a show, the Sincerely Show. You have a book called Sincerely, Katherine, and you've built the most amazing space and retreat center. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about how you're using your own journey to continue to help others.
Katherine (36:52): Yeah, thank you. I'd love to talk about it now. As I alluded to earlier, after 2022 and that 18-month period, I did go back into the corporate world for another 18 months. And it was important. And the reason I say this before I talk about this chapter is that I call it the coherent cycle. Our consciousness doesn't rise or evolve beautifully like this. It's more like this and then up and then this and up. It's a see-saw type effect. It's a spiral that has dips that awaken us, humble us, and then you refine part of yourself.
And for me, I went back to the corporate world I was still externally referencing. I wanted to be chosen, the woman I was on the inside all along. I wanted to be chosen. And the other is to prove that this heart-centered, more human-centered, more kind, curious, inclusive way of working together as human beings in service of harmony, a sustainable world, worked.
That it wasn't an accident what happened in my old company in the new company. Within no time, we were achieving record results, and people were working together more kindly and more effectively than ever before. Yet within a year, I go, no, this isn't, I know banking, I know the corporate world. And it doesn't inspire me the way it used to.
And so in the summer of 2025, I started to make arrangements to leave that company. And I took a short sabbatical to really reflect on it. And then I officially left that company. And at the same time, sincerely, Katherine was getting ready to be published. Sincerely, Katherine. The platform that
I launched SincerelyInc.com, which was being birthed, and I had always had this dream to host my version of the Oprah show. From childhood, I've been drawn to the human story, to stories of human transformation, stories of hope.
And when I wrote Sincerely Katherine, my book, I will do it as an offering. And if it saves one life or helps one leader, it will be worth it. It's just that I feel called to express and share my story without expectation or attachment to an outcome. Sincerely, Katherine will go where she's meant to go in the world.
But I said, I don't want it to be about my story. It goes back to my coming out. Because I know and knew that there are countless stories of collapse, of awakening, of journeys back to wholeness, to remembering ourselves and what has always been within us and re-recognizing ourselves emerging out the other side feeling spared that I get to live, that I didn't die, feeling spared, feeling so much gratitude for the love that's been shown to me that what I would love nothing more than is to be able to show that love and play it forward, but not just through my story, through countless stories of others. So the Sincerely Show launches on May 11th, 2026, and it'll likely drop a new episode every week. It'll be on Spotify, it'll be on YouTube, and every week I will interview somebody from across the planet who has come out the other side of their journey, living a life of service, living a life of contribution towards humanity and our planet. I've already recorded 20 episodes, and the people who are agreeing to come onto the Sincerely show and much like you, the interviewed by me, are so beautiful, and it's so humbling.
And the conversations on the Sincerely Show, like you, are not short. They are 60-minute to 90-minute long arc interviews. I'm hoping that people sit in bed on a Sunday morning and they calm their nervous system and they just sit with someone else's journey to essence, to contribution as a way of finding hope, insight, inspiration, and lessons for their own journey. And I refer to it as a story as a sermon. I am not a preacher. You don't need a priest or a preacher telling you what to think or believe. If you literally just sit
Katherine (42:05): similar to what indigenous cultures would have done in the past, sit quietly without judgment from a place of love and curiosity with other human stories, what you're meant to receive will automatically emerge from within. Storytelling is a big part of Sincerely, and it is the Sincerely show, but it is a big part of Sincerely, the overall platform that I've launched.
We'll run salons where we come into a sacred space together to be present to big questions that we're sitting with and create this judgment-free space of discovery and facilitation of awakening and healing through presence and curiosity with one another. retreats.
I dream that the show turns into a docu-series, kind of like a Netflix series, where we go to places and interview people in their environment to be able to bring their stories to life in even a richer way than a beautiful podcast can do so. Here I am back to your question, the book sincerely goes. The space that I'm in right now is a retreat space and a gallery at my home. My home's name is Maison Mille Fleurs. Mille Fleurs means thousand flowers. My home is the house of a thousand flowers. It's a place where our planet and humanity can bloom. And so
Katherine (43:44): Over the course of the last couple of years, from the spring of 2024 through till now, I said, number one, I'm never retiring. Number two, I'm gonna tune into the things that really inspire me, and I'm gonna live from a place of essence, from a place of wholeness, which for me, as I said earlier, is extreme curiosity, systems thinking, being playful, being loving, and being verbal, a storyteller. So sincerely lines up with all of those things. The home I live in lines up with all of those things. And I invite you to come visit. I invite all of your guests to explore sincerelyinc.com to order Sincerely Katherine. It's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any bookstore. And like you, I think...
I see a world where, from childhood on, we're able to flower more coherently from the beginning. Yes, we need an identity inside of this physical world to be able to. Yet so much human potential is lost through trying to fit into the world that we've built. This extractive and performative world we've built tends to be less male. It's more masculine, more linear, logical, mechanical, performative. And I know that there's a way of being that is far more aligned to true human nature. For the rest of my life, I'll dedicate my life to being part of fostering that more coherent, more loving, more whole way of being that's available to us.
Aneta (45:43): So beautiful. Katherine, just thank you for being such a bright light and for just for really honoring your own truth and then being able to share that with others because what you've shared today is just how when we do that and others observe us being able to do it, it gives others the courage to maybe to step out and to have that conversation or to share something that they were ashamed of or they felt guilty about that allows us to unburden ourselves and really create more for more blessings and for us to be able to do more in the world as well. I definitely want to come and visit. You showed me around a little bit before we started recording. It's stunning. Go to the website, take a look at it. It's so beautiful. We will include all for the book, for the show, and the show notes. I can't wait to listen to the conversations.
Katherine (46:22): Look at the black and their fat on the back. can see the clothes.
Aneta (46:34): Your podcast launches a day after my birthday, so that will be fantastic. can't wait to listen. Thank you. And I ask the final question, which is, what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
Katherine (46:48): My goodness. Today I get to live the width of my life. I experience the fullness of human emotion every day. It's not suppressed; I get to experience all of it. And I get to experience with a level of presence the beauty of this planet, the beauty of the human soul, and the human being in a way that I could have never imagined. And one of the things you hear on our spiritual journey is I am. I amness, or to be, capital B. I feel so blessed to be who I am. And it's not the space. It's not the lavender rose behind me. It's just to be curious and sense-making and loving and expressive through writing and through creating space for other human planet's nature stories. That's the greatest gift. It's not even, it's width, it's wide, it's deep, it's five-dimensional, it's 12 dimensions. I feel so blessed to have met you.
To see what you're doing in the world. And I feel so blessed to just be, to be able to be and express all of me in my I am-ness. And I wish that for every human being. I wish for a level of self-love, self-expression, and homeness that is available for every human being. And if my small part in that is my story or helping create a platform for other people's stories that contribute to the awakening that's available in everyone, I'll do that for the rest of my life.
Aneta (48:42): There you go. I love that. Thank you so much, Katherine. Until we meet again.
Katherine (48:48): Thank you so much.