Here to Thrive is back! Season 3 has landed.
In this update, Kate gets raw and real and explains why she went quiet, what has been going on for her personally, and where to from here.
Kate mentions the Certified Authentic Leadership Coach (CALC) certification she completed recently through the Raleigh Coaching Academy. This program can be completed online via a virtual live classroom. To learn more: https://raleighcoaching.com/rca/courses/certifications/calc-program/
To learn more about the host, Kate Snowise, head to her website: www.thrive.how
For a full-episode transcription, you can see below.
Season 3 Intro – Transcription
Hello hello. Oh my gosh, I am just going to start with how excited I am to be back in front of a microphone and talking to all of you wonderful listeners out there. Thank you for listening, and thank you for still being here with me. Now of course I decide now is the time, it is one of those little moments I have when I’m going to record season 3 intro, and then my next door neighbor, who is never home during a usual year, decides to mow his lawn. He’s never home during a usual year! Love him dearly, I apologize if you can hear him in the background, but the reality is, I was tossing up, do I miss the moment that I have and maybe never record this? No screw it, I’m just going to go for it, lawnmowers and call.
So Here to Thrive is back people. Many of you have messaged me and have said how much you have missed it, and I appreciate you. Thank you for the messages. You did help get my butt back in the chair, I’m not going to lie. I’m reinvigorated. I’m feeling really good and I’m going to talk to you a little bit more about that, but I just want to celebrate how awesome it has been over the past few months when we haven’t been releasing new episodes to still have Here to Thrive continually popping up in the top 100 personal development podcasts, thank you, thank you people. Thank you for sharing Here to Thrive with your friends and family. It means so much to me.
We have some awesome guests coming up this season. I can’t wait to share them with you. A little bit of a new update actually. The show is going to have full transcripts available from now moving forward online, so for anyone who can’t listen well, there is going to be the written transcripts. That is important to me in terms of accessibility. So from now moving forward you’ll be able to find that on my website. You just need to go to Thrive.How/podcast then type in the episode number, so podcast 135 for example. This one will be under thrive.how/podcastseason3. So if you want the show notes for this one, thrive.how/podcastseason3.
Okay so coming back to that question where have I been? I’m super conscious that I didn’t tell you guys that I was going anywhere, I just went kinda quiet. If you were paying close attention it was right around the time we went into lockdown for COVID in March and wow, so many things to say about that right? I will start with something that didn’t occur to me that some of you might have quite rightfully been worried or concerned about which is my health. And if you’ve been listened for a while you may know that a little over two years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer which will come up again later in the story, but I do want to say this ahead of the update. I am well and healthy. So thank you so much for those of you who sent me messages and gently checked in to see if I was okay. I took note, and yes, I am absolutely okay and I am in great health.
So now, where have I been then? Well…my oh my. I wish my response could be simple, but there are layers to this one. We’ll start with the Covid lockdown craziness of 2020. Honesty..it shoved me into a little cave where I felt I was ducking and just taking cover from the world, on so many levels. To start, this podcast is a labor of love. I’m sure if you have been listening you will note that there is no advertising on this podcast. Along with that fact, there is no huge big production budget or team making this run like clockwork. The majority of the work around Here to Thrive falls into my bucket and I do it for the love of it. I do it because I want to share important truths and bring conversations to the world. But covid right?! I also have two small boys, a 6 and an 8 year old, a husband who works in healthcare, aka was still working outside the home right through all of this, and a decent list of coaching clients that I had to take care of. So when covid thrust us into lockdown it became a case of, what are the absolute bare minimums I have to keep going right now? My clients, my family, and yeah homeschooling. Oh I’m feeling you people. Homeschooling a 6 and an 8 year old. Ughhhh. The rest of the things on my list just had to be put on hold, and that included the podcast. So I apologize for the lack of communication around that, but yes, covid did play a part.
But there were a couple of other things that I think are really worth mentioning. Many of you may not know, but a lot of the specialist work I do outside of Here to Thrive is focused mainly on stress management, burnout and resilience, and primarily in corporate workplace settings but also with individuals who have burned out and are looking to regather and reenergize. Now if you didn’t know that, well there you go. I clearly need to do a better job of communicating some of these things. Along with that I do deliver workshops in a corporate environment about stress management, resilience, etcetera. And people…holy oh my crap. When covid hit, I was just overwhelmed. Not necessarily by people wanting my services, there was some of that, but literally the energy of panicked coaches and professionals all having something to say about how to cope with this, and stress management, and how to be resilient, and holy crap. Just woah people. My LinkedIn profile, my feed on Instagram, Facebook, everything was just inundated with people’s desperate, panicked energy and that overwhelmed me, and it also made me hesitate to add my voice to the mix. I didn’t want be yet another coach shouting at you and telling you how to live your life.
Now many of you have since reached out and shared that you’d love to hear what I have to say about managing and thriving through this period, and gosh, I realize I have let you down by not adding my thoughts to the mix. So I will. And I am back. You can stay back. You can stay tuned. But I have been really grateful that there have been so many back episodes of Here to Thrive that I know many of you have been downloading over this tough period to keep your spirits high.
Okay. So coming back to that hesitation idea though. The reason I hesitated is that I didn’t want to appear that I was trying to capitalize off this collective strain. I didn’t want to be another voice shouting at you. I never want to be another voice shouting at you from the craziness that is the internet these days right? So I do apologize if you feel it would have been really useful for me to say a couple things. I’m sorry if you felt letdown. But I’m back, I’m back.
Alight, now the third element. The Covid thing, the inundated and overwhelmed thing, and then the third element. This is the most important one. I told you this was layered. It is kinda like a layer cake now that I’m coming to think about it. By the way, if you like chardonnay one of favorites at the moment, Layer Cake, it is worth a try. Okay, back on task. The third element has been my own healing.
Now as I mentioned, a little over two years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. To catch those of you up who may not know about this part of my journey, I was 35 at the time. I’m 38 now, and I have no family history of breast cancer whatsoever on either side of my family. I also don’t have the BRCA gene. Now a breast cancer diagnosis at 35 is going to be shocking any which way you look at it, but even though 1 in 8 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in during their lifetime, that’s high people, 1 in 8 women will have breast cancer, I wouldn’t have expected looking at my family history that I would ever ever be one of those 1 to 8 women, even into old age, let alone be the about 1 in 200 women who are diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35 or under. I was incredibly lucky it was caught early, but it was still a life shuddering event for me and one that really did rattle me to my core.
Now when I was first diagnosed I can just recall, I was traveling for work, I was in a hotel room by myself in New York city, this was literally days after I was diagnosed. At that point I had no idea how advanced my breast cancer was, I just knew that it was what they call Invasive Ductal Carcinoma which means it’s the spreading type. And my heart was aching. It was such a bizarre space in my life to know I was sick with something that could possibly kill me, but not have any idea how sick. I just remember that evening I sat in meditation desperately asking for some reassurance from I don’t know who or what, but literally begging the universe to give me something. I can remember at that point I had a feeling or a thought I guess you could say, when I asked to know how sick I was I got back was this understanding that what I was going through was an initiation. I knew in that moment that I was going to be okay but that I was going to come through this changed in some way. That to say, holy crap have I been changed through this experience.
I think I may have mentioned it in passing on the podcast at times, but I know I haven’t really gone into a ton of depth, but my emotional healing, I think we could probably term it an existential crisis, has taken a lot of real hard work on my part, but I’ve noticed that I’ve also been sent the resources and the people I’ve needed at exactly the right time. So a little before the year anniversary of my diagnosis I found a therapist for the first time in my life, she is epic, I love her. Because at that point I realized I was not doing a great job, even with all the knowledge I had, of bringing my own broken self back together. I was feeling a bit disconnected, discombobulated and just unsure how to take the fragile parts of me and put them back together in a way that felt powerful and true having gone through what I had been through. I literally walked into my therapists office. I sat on her couch, and it was probably a few weeks in at this point, I had to get comfortable with her. But then I said to her, and I will never forget this – “Look, I understand the concept of post-traumatic growth, I get it. Now can you just help me get there.” Truth, I thought that just going through a hard experience I just come out the other side with these hard earned gains like “look, look at my wisdom”. Uggghhhh. Post traumatic growth does not just land in your lap people. I was so naive. What I have since learned is that sometimes you actually can’t rush the real, deep healing, but also that it takes work people, it takes real work. And I’ve been doing the work for the last year and a bit. So the final bit of why I went quiet people – I’ve been doing the hard work of healing.
I really don’t believe that the universe makes mistakes, and the last part of what I now consider to be my healing journey, coincided with a coaching certification I was already doing, or signed up to do, on Authentic Leadership. Gotta keep your skills current people. What I didn’t realize when I signed up for it was that perhaps I was going through that process for my own healing as much as for all of the skills I was about to learn. So take note, I will just do a sidebar here, if you’re considering coaching as a career I would highly recommend Kathleen at the team who are leading the authentic coaching certification through the Raleigh Coaching Academy. I will put a link in the show notes, but that is the Authentic Leadership Coaching Certification at Raleigh Coaching Academy in North Carolina…but I did mine online, it was epic. Okay, but coming back though…so going through the formal process of training to be an authenticity coach has bought me back to my own authenticity. Nice work. It really did help me redefine and reconnect with my mission and purpose in this world and reinvigorated my spirit, and it’s really helped me get ready to truly step into what I now see is my potential and be a leader. This was the part that I recognize now, in hindsight, was left for me to do of my healing. And as I said to my therapist a few weeks back, I feel like I’m coming out of a really long winter season, aka two years of healing (chuckle), and spring is finally emerging. It is a really exciting place to be.
Now I share all of this with you to simply say that I am so excited about what I have here with you and the Here to Thrive community of listeners. I’m really really happy to be back and I never ever thought that I would have the honor to speak with so many of you, but this platform has allowed me to do that, and you’ve allowed me into your minds and hearts and wow, that is just so fucking cool. Here to Thrive is quickly approaching a million downloads and it has regularly been in the top 100 personal development podcasts and that just blows my mind, but I chuckle gorgeous people as this was a bit of an accident in terms of I never planned this out and I never expected Here to Thrive to be what it is, and I think that is part of the beauty of it because I never had any expectations from this podcast and it has always just come from a place of love.
But with never having any expectations of it, there is also this strange vulnerability and responsibility that I never really intended to be sitting where I am today and it’s kinda cool, but like woah at the same time. Along with that there is no way in hell I will ever go back and listen to those first episodes all those years back. Gosh…aye um wow. Not going to do it! Not going to do it people.
So I hope you can hear it in my voice but I’m really just saying that I’ve never actually felt so passionate or inspired or on-purpose, on my mission, as I have right now and what we are doing together with Here to Thrive. I am so excited about this podcast and community and I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you have been listening to me rattle on about how we can live into our humanness and have more fulfillment in life but I do take it as a great honor, and I want to make sure I do it well. God almighty, I want to make sure I do it well for you.
So that is where we are at. I’m back and as cliché as feeling more passionate and invigorated and excited than ever…gosh if I can get to that point in the midst of 2020 and this shit-show of a year who knows what’s next?! (chuckles). Bring it on people.
So this season I’m going to try and be more considered with the content I am bringing you, and put even more of my heart and real soul into this podcast for you. So trying to sum up the intro to this season for you, phew, roundabout long chit-chat there…just thank you for being here. Thank you for sticking with me. Thank you for your time, your appreciation and your energy. I read every one of your reviews and honestly, thank you so so much. You’ve helped me realize how impactful this show has been and those reviews and ratings are also what help more people find the show so I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to share such kind words and feedback with me. Bring it on. Bring on the rest of 2020. People…I know it has been a shit-show but we’re in August and 2020 is not over yet okay. So I’m ready to roll so we’re going to take this Here to Thrive thing and we are going to rock it okay? We are totally going to rock the last part of 2020. So stay tuned for season 3. The first episode is going to be released this Friday on the 21st of August. Love you people. It’s great to be back. So let’s get back to thriving. (music playing)