Kez Stuk: Welcome to the Inbetween podcast, the space where the magic happens. I'm Kez, a former corporate lawyer turned holistic health, life, business and intuitive coach. Through my own journey of traversing many inbetweens, I created this podcast to share the tools, modalities and learnings that have transformed my life. Here we explore the spaces that exist between who we've been and who we're becoming through real, raw and expansive conversations with wellness professionals, entrepreneurs, Thank you so much for being here. It's truly an honor to walk this journey with you. If something resonated today, I'd love to hear from you. Your reflections and stories mean more than you know. Until next time, remember, the magic isn't in the final destination. It's right here in the in-between. Hello! ⁓ it's so good to be back on the podcast. Before we get into this epic episode today, just a little or not so little life update for those who haven't heard yet. My husband and I moved to Miami a week ago. So just a little bit happening in my world, but you know. Catherine, welcome to the podcast.

Katharine McLean: Thank you, Kez, it's so great to be here with you.

Kez Stuk: ⁓ yeah, I've been so looking forward to it. ⁓ Just for everyone listening, I had the pleasure of meeting Catherine at an event on the Sunshine Coast that I co-hosted and I remember looking at your birth chart because I was doing new moon readings for everyone and I saw this power and this depth in your chart that I was very drawn to. It's Aries season and this Aries moon is rearing to go. It's really exciting and I'm going to do a whole deep dive episode on this journey because there really is a lot to say ⁓ once we settle in a little bit more. But right now I'm recording live from Miami. ⁓ visionaries and everyday humans walking the path of awakening. Together we share transformational stories, insights and tools that activate healing, expansion and soul alignment. This is your portal to the in-between. Are you ready to step through? initially and following that ⁓ connecting with you online I just felt such a resonance with you and it was really interesting because we launched our podcast at a really similar time and I remember you sharing on your ⁓ page the light becomes her which in itself is so Scorpio coated just putting it out there. So today's episode is really, really inspiring. I speak with Katherine McLean, who I had the privilege of meeting at one of my events on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. I found her story so incredibly inspiring. Someone who has been through the throes of alcohol and drug addiction and has completely transformed her life from the inside out. Yeah, the alchemy in that statement, we'll get into all of that very soon. But ⁓ you shared a lot about your struggles with launching your podcast and sharing your voice and being seen. And I was also going through so many similar things at the same time. ⁓ And ⁓ I remember listening to your first episode and having ⁓ on my body as you were speaking and ⁓ What I loved about this conversation and also one of the reasons I really wanted to speak to Catherine on the podcast in the first place was we speak to the notion of addiction as a topic far beyond the confines of simply drugs and alcohol. And this is such a pervasive topic and theme and one that I don't feel we hear about a lot. We hear about it all the time in relation to drugs and alcohol, but not just, yeah, here they are now actually, just the resonance with your words and your essence and your journey. And in a different way to myself, I mean, and we'll dive into this, can't wait for you to share your story with everyone, but not specifically drugs and alcohol for me personally, but in so many other ways. And I think that's the beauty of your story is it's so applicable to everyone. how it affects other aspects of our lives in such a big way and how I think of addiction is anything or any area in our lives where we're not free. And this can apply to things like food, work, material items, feeling a certain way, chasing a certain high or low or state or even chasing unavailable people. And so I was just so excited to have you on today to really dive into your journey, which is really profound and inspiring. And I have no doubt will impact so many people listening today. which is also a topic we speak into today on the podcast, which Catherine shares about, and she speaks to it as a term and a word called limerence. So a bit more about Catherine. She is a holistic counselor, a business edigetics mentor, and trauma-informed practitioner with over 23 years of experience leading counseling and family support services in the not-for-profit sector.

Katharine McLean: Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting into it, Kez.

Kez Stuk: Yeah, so Maybe you start where, ⁓ what do need to know about your past and who you were and what you've been through to understand this person that sits ⁓ across from me today, who is this counselor, ⁓ who is this leader, this embodied woman, an energy healer, all the things that are today, ⁓ what do we need to know? After years of over-functioning across her relationships, career and family, while masking long-term addiction, Katherine got sober and began healing the deeper wounds that had shaped patterns of perfectionism, people-pleasing and emotional numbing. That journey became the foundation of her work. Through her business, The Light Becomes Her, she now supports coaches, healers and spiritual entrepreneurs to clear the subconscious and energetic imprints that

Katharine McLean: Well, I mean, it's I've had a what feels like a long life, you know, I'm 44 now. So I've been around the block a few times and there's a lot that I've garnered along the way. So I just feel really grateful. I've got to say to be 44. Like I feel, you know, it's such a great age, great numbers as well. Thank you. ⁓ But yeah, it just means that I've just had so much life experience and I've been able to really embody a lot of it in this last five years in particular.

Kez Stuk: Mm-hmm. their visibility, leadership, impact and income. Her work is rooted in the understanding that your business has a soul and when it's running on outdated programming it will mirror the same ceilings you've been unable to break. Using her Healing Origin Wounds method, HOWE, Catherine integrates somatic therapies, subconscious wiring,

Katharine McLean: I feel like my my twenties and my thirties, I was really just kind of fumbling around, if I'm honest, but I was following somebody else's blueprint. You know, was following somebody else's roadmap. And I think a lot of us fall into that trap, don't we, where we do what's expected of us, you know, finish high school, go into university, get into relationships, sort of just follow the path that's been trailed before us. And that was really what I was doing. You know, I, ⁓

Kez Stuk: inner child work and multi-dimensional clearing to dissolve ancestral patterns, karmic imprints and past life conditioning, creating identity level shifts that expand both personal power and business growth. So let's dive in to the in-between with Catherine McLean.

Katharine McLean: I always had a deep desire in my heart to serve and help others. That had been sort of very much innately, ⁓ you know, I think with a bit of mix of nature and nurture, I had been, ⁓ I guess, a caretaker and a bit of a rescuer throughout my childhood. And certainly that was some of the dynamics that I had picked up in my family of origin. And so when I left school, I always knew what I was going to do. I was going to go to university and I was going to, you know, get a qualification that would allow me to support and serve others. ⁓ And so I guess, you by the time I was 21, I graduated from university, I had a bachelor of human services majoring in child and family studies. And I very soon after that moved to the UK and I started working in the prison systems with young men, helping them rehabilitate and come back into the community. ⁓ I Yeah, had various other roles over in the youth justice sector over there, but sort of came back to Australia in my mid twenties. And then I worked in a housing and homelessness service for young moms. And ⁓ I went on to become the manager there and yeah, spent a decent amount of my twenties and early thirties there and sort of moved into leadership. And that was not something I necessarily felt I was qualified or ready for. ⁓ But again, I think some of that was probably in the chart sort of. destined for me on some level that, yeah, I was sort of thrust into and yeah, over the course of my thirties, I then continued to sort of move through my career and I went on to manage a children's mental health service and various other, you know, family support programs that had sort of child protection programs within them. And yeah, I loved my work. You know, I really, loved my work. It gave me a huge sense of purpose and a huge sense of satisfaction. I felt very sort of lucky in many ways that I was somebody that kind of always knew what I was going to do. ⁓ I didn't wrestle with, I on the right path? That kind of thing. It was just sort of like, this is who I am. It's not what I do, it's who I am. And ⁓ I guess though, on some level, what I was struggling with though was the conditioning of how the structure of a nine to five role.

Kez Stuk: Hmm.

Katharine McLean: looks and feels for the body. I was working outside of my design type, being a projector. ⁓ And I was running on kind of, guess, as I say, caretaker, rescue archetypes, where I thought that being needed meant that I was worthy. So, you know, having multiple programs and, you know, dozens of staff reporting to me and all these hundreds of clients and budgets and all these things like it on some level, it just like made that younger part of me feel like, I've made it, you know, like I'm special. I'm important now. But when we're operating our lives from a wounded aspect, it never actually feels satisfying on a deeper level. It feels like the engine's always running. And when the engine's always running, it means the nervous system's constantly dysregulated. And I never really ⁓ understood anything about the nervous system until I was in my late 30s when I retrained and went into ⁓ holistic counseling. Now I've left out a huge chunk of my story thus far, but I'll sort of weave that in now. I guess, you I had all of this on the surface and to the external, it looked like I had, you know, a great life. had a great career. I was very successful. I owned my own home. ⁓ but there were other areas of my life that were not what they appeared to be from the external. And those were my, ⁓ my relationships with men and also my drinking. So, ⁓ I'd always been somebody that loved a drink, ⁓ right from you know, probably my first drink is I drank to blackout. ⁓ Not intentionally necessarily, but I didn't have an off switch and I loved the effect that produced by alcohol. I loved the sense of freedom that it gave me because ultimately, you know, being a rescuer and a caretaker and somebody that holds responsibility for everybody else's experience, that comes at a cost. It comes at a pressure on the body. so alcohol gave me a feeling of relief, a feeling of I can just be myself. And I also, you know, was running from a deep, deep unworthiness in myself. I had a deep fear that I was just inadequate and wasn't enough and wasn't worthy, which is why I pushed myself so hard to, to be, you know, worthy to others. so yeah, so I guess the alcohol was, that was kind of like the reprieve to all of that heaviness that I carried. And eventually, you know, that became really problematic for me. But as I say, like my twenties and thirties, just, I blended the two in a way. And ⁓ I kept it at bay as best I could, ⁓ but it progressed into alcoholism and it had probably progressed quite, you know, quite early into alcoholism, but because the drinking culture is quite normalized here in Australia, all my friends were drinking in similar ways. didn't really label it as anything other than just binge drinking. ⁓ But yeah, it had gotten to a point, you know, with my relationship choices as well, where I really had to sort of look at myself and say, you know, there's echoes of my childhood here that are playing over and over and over again, and I need to do something about them. And I can't do it while I'm drinking. ⁓ And yeah, eventually I got sober at the age of 39. And that was the most transformative and life changing experience I could have ever, you know, embarked upon. I obviously, you know, I also had a drug habit as well. So it was for me, it was a bit of a huge, well, not bit, was it was a huge, yeah, life change because I gave up drugs, alcohol. Soon after I gave up men, I gave up coffee, cigarettes, TV. I just did a full detox, not, you know, not straight away with all the extras. But eventually, I just got really clear on the life I wanted for myself and I didn't want the chaos and the drama because that's what drinking used to bring into my life. It brought so much chaos and drama. I didn't realize that that was because it lived inside of me and all the alcohol was doing was just like opening up the lid, you know? ⁓ And I knew that getting sober meant that I was gonna have to open the lid and actually face it rather than, you know, trying to sort of push it down. ⁓ But yeah, it's just set me on a course of a completely different trajectory. And obviously I've started my own business as a result ⁓ and completely transformed many, many insecurities that used to plague me, you know, which led to the drinking as well. I had a deep, deep fear of being seen, like truly seen. I thought I was ⁓ worthless, useless, ⁓ didn't deserve to be alive. I had a lot of really dark, dark negativity that lived in me. And so to be where I am today, you know, just five years shy of sober and free of drugs and alcohol and to have been, you know, operating my business now for nearly three years and to have left my, you know, left my career in the not-for-profit sector after 23 years and even that going out on a limb and, you know, backing myself when all my conditioning was like, you can't do that. You need the safety and security of a, you know, a paid, paid job. can't, you know, take care of yourself. That won't work, you know, all those things. So. ⁓ Yeah, I've really had to face off with so much of myself since the kind of journey of deeper healing has begun. But my goodness, it's just been the best thing I've ever done. I just, but you know, it was all leading up to this as well. It's not like I was new to inner work. ⁓ It's just in my experience, I couldn't do inner work whilst also drinking. It was those things, they just counteract each other all the time. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: Of course, it's like these two double lives competing against each other and merging at some level as well until it feeds out into everything you do because it's so within, so without. And obviously it sounds like you got to a stage where you could do it for so long until your body just said, enough, enough running, enough hiding. ⁓ But in saying that, that is a huge...

Katharine McLean: Yeah.

Kez Stuk: huge testament to who you are because people spend their whole lives in that cycle and so for you to have this ⁓ I see it as such like arising from the ashes and then spending your life now serving and helping others to go to the depths of hell that you you went through and you had to go through that first like it's it's so beautiful it actually like yeah makes me feel quite emotional ⁓ yeah so just

Katharine McLean: Yeah.

Kez Stuk: It's yeah, it's truly beautiful and it's so interesting because delving into your chart, like as I said before, like you, are that double Scorpio. You have your sun and your moon, both in Scorpio, but both in the 12th house and the 12th house is all about our subconscious. It's the psyche, the psychic gifts. It's our dream world. It's our, it's our almost like our escapism. So what I've witnessed so much with Scorpio's is

Katharine McLean: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kez Stuk: you know and not to generalize of course but it's you feel so incredibly deeply and that is your greatest gift but if you aren't supported in those emotions or if you aren't validated for your feelings or trusting that it's safe to have these I don't want to call them big emotions because they're not big they're just emotions so felt in the body ⁓

Katharine McLean: Mm. Mmm. Mmm.

Kez Stuk: This is what leads to addiction because it is the only way that a lot of the time you can manage the intensity of the internal world and the external world because you feel everything at such a deep visceral level. I know if that resonates.

Katharine McLean: Mm, mm. Hmm. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And I think it's, know, it's fascinating from a soul level, you know, how we choose our parents and we choose the exact environment that's going to, guess, put us, you know, in the conditions where we're going to, I guess, have those parts of us shut down, repressed and not to be able to be safely expressed so that we can come out the other side and alchemize the whole thing. ⁓ but yeah, I guess, you know, those conditions of what I grew up in around, ⁓ very similar probably patterning in my parents who it wasn't safe for them growing up to express emotion and they had a lot of that shut down which as we know when you repress emotions particularly things like anger it doesn't go away it spills out and that spills out in highly reactive highly ⁓ aggressive responses in people and yeah I guess that's sort of how I grew up was witnessing that. those sorts of displays of emotion. And so emotion to me equaled unsafety. It equaled, if I go there, I'm gonna lose control. And if I lose control, bad things happen. ⁓ And so the drinking, yeah, it was a coping mechanism to keep those feelings of powerlessness at bay. ⁓ But it's such a catch-22 because you end up becoming trapped by an addiction that you got into to feel free. Um, but it ends up, you know, taking away any sense of agency and autonomy and you're a prisoner, you know, you're a prisoner to it because you don't know how to feel and live your life without it. And it slowly erodes, you know, slowly erodes your, sense of safety anyway. So it's not like you end up, you know, being able to kind of be better for it. Um, but yeah, it is, it's fascinating. I think, and so many of us have different.

Kez Stuk: year.

Katharine McLean: responses to emotions as children and how that then gets metabolized in the body and then how we then go on to cope. ⁓ But yeah, but I think addiction, it's often, you know, born out of a need to regulate and soothe. Yep. Yep.

Kez Stuk: Soothe and numb, especially when you're not held in those emotions.

Katharine McLean: Yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%. And then they become unsafe to us, you know, and we become very afraid of our own emotions. I mean, I've yet to meet an addict who isn't terrified of emotion. You know, like, and I see it at the fear in their eyes, you know, like they're more afraid of feeling their feelings when they get sober than they are of staying addicted and being homeless and losing their loved ones. You know, and that's what keeps them going back. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: And do you help a lot of addicts in your work? Is that something you're drawn to?

Katharine McLean: Um, it's not probably my core business. Um, I've, I got sober in a 12 step, 12 step recovery community. Um, so I have worked with a lot of, um, women mentoring them and obviously a lot of peers that, know, I'm very friendly with a lot of people in those communities. So I've, and also, you know, on a side note, my brother was, um, heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol for 20 over 20 years as well. We both have now gotten sober together.

Kez Stuk: ⁓ that's so beautiful, Catherine.

Katharine McLean: so it is, it is, it is because, you know, I say that I followed him, him into addiction, but I also followed him out. yeah. And I guess, you know, I've always been exposed to this sort of stuff. And in many ways, my brother's addiction became something I could kind of hide my addiction under because it never looked like his from the external, you know, again, I had the

Kez Stuk: Wow.

Katharine McLean: the life that looked like I had it all together. Whereas his did not look like that. His was the complete contrast. And so you could tell, I guess, you you would call that, ⁓ that's an addict, you know, whereas I didn't, I looked more functioning. ⁓ So yeah, so anyway, I'd spent, I guess, a lot of my career also helping people, yeah, navigating their own drug and alcohol histories and their own habits. I'd also, you know, helped my brother significantly. He'd been in, you know,

Kez Stuk: Mm-hmm.

Katharine McLean: dozens of rehabs. So yeah, so I wasn't new to, I guess, the concept of addiction and how it played out in people's lives. ⁓ So yeah, so when I got sober, it, you know, naturally, and I started talking about, you know, my own sobriety journey on my social media page, I was attracting some people and I still do, you know, some people, ⁓ you know, will say this is my issue. But interestingly, what also I see happen is people come to me not with that as their issue.

Kez Stuk: Mm.

Katharine McLean: ⁓ But throughout the course of working together, maybe six, 12 months in, they start having these epiphanies of, wow, I think I actually have a problematic relationship with alcohol. And yeah, it's sort of just the way the universe works. You know, it pairs us with the right people that we need so that in due time we can start to gain a shift in perspective. And that's something I love the most about some of the women I work with. Like I would never preach to anybody about, know, you've got to problem with anything. That's not how I work. I certainly don't ever, you know, promote 12 step recovery to anybody. but that's naturally been where a couple of women have, kind of come to me and said, this is what I'm thinking now. And one of my clients just celebrated her 12 month, ⁓ anniversary of, being sober. So yeah, it's just beautiful. Cause when we started working together, she, she, that was not what she was coming to me for. It was for anxiety. was for relationship issues, you know, but yeah. So it's beautiful to witness, I guess, people's transformation and it affects all areas of their life when they start doing the deeper work and realizing all these things are coping mechanisms and they're actually keeping them trapped in these inner child wounds. They keep us developmentally delayed. So we need to sort of start, you know, working with those developmental delays. And then when we work with that, then all the things outside of us start to fall away.

Kez Stuk: Yeah, absolutely. And even just with addiction, extrapolating that out further, think something I loved that you shared and I resonated with deeply was when we think of the word addiction, we think of alcohol and drugs, but it extends so much further than alcohol and drugs and it permeates so many parts of our lives. It's essentially something that we do. It's an area of our life that we're not free in. So anything where we're not free, it's like you create this addiction.

Katharine McLean: Mm.

Kez Stuk: two things and something that I've really witnessed and I noticed with a client recently was they...

Katharine McLean: Mm-hmm. Mm.

Kez Stuk: had this compulsive need to shop. And when we dug into that a little bit deeper, really what was coming through was this person was struggling with their purpose. They didn't feel fulfilled in their life. And they had such this creative energy, this surge of creativity, but it had nowhere to go because it wasn't coming through in their life. And so that suppression of

Katharine McLean: Mm.

Kez Stuk: creativity and desire was coming out in shopping and them expressing their creativity through shopping and what I realize is that we have this in all parts of our lives and whenever we're not allowing our purpose to come through when we're suppressing our desires

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yes.

Kez Stuk: they manifest in either addiction or self-sabotaging behaviors, places where we're essentially stuck. And I just loved that you were shedding a light on that when you were explaining how addiction extends so much beyond like simply drugs and alcohol.

Katharine McLean: Mm. Yes, absolutely. And definitely to speak to that, I think because it's not a commonly understood manifestation for a lot of people around this creativity. You know, it's like it's a it's a block to creativity. And when you were speaking about that, it made me think about limerence, which I don't know if you're familiar with that limerence. But I did a post on it last year that went viral. And I got all these, you know, thousands of new followers and people were like, oh, my God, is that is that the word for what I do where basically they get

Kez Stuk: Wow.

Katharine McLean: hooked into these obsessive loops where they become ⁓ addicted in many ways to unavailable people, know, to people who are unrequited in their love for them so they can get sort of heavily attached to somebody that's not showing them 100 % of interest and they're kind of not quite sure where they stand and so they ruminate on the back and forth and that becomes a chemical addiction in the body because of the...

Kez Stuk: Mmm.

Katharine McLean: ⁓ I guess the anticipation and the and they'll often get, you know, a reward or the dopamine reward will come when the person does respond to the text or whatever. But ultimately they're living in a fantasy and the fantasy, which is the whole like, ⁓ this is going to be my forever person. And the way that they, you know, looked at me last week in the office means that they must love me. And, know, they create all of these, these fantasies as a way one to kind of try and complete a loop that never got completed in childhood where they experienced emotional neglect. But it's also like you say, it's an outlet for a creative spark that's just got nowhere to go, you know? And so we're not giving ourselves enough permission for joy, number one, but for creative outlets where we can actually truly just self-express through the imagination and through play and through, you know, just all of those beautiful childlike qualities that again, a lot of us didn't get access to as children because we were thrust into a kind of responsibility to young or had other experiences happen that kind of

Kez Stuk: Yes.

Katharine McLean: made us not feel safe enough to play. So yeah, it's just a fascinating topic. And I guess I just wanted to touch on that around that creative piece, ⁓ because I do think it comes back to a lot of what we're looking for in life and why we latch onto things, ⁓ because we're not actually giving ourselves permission to fully self-express in all areas of our life.

Kez Stuk: I love that. I'd never heard of that term and that is incredible. There's so many ways I want to go with that. One, ⁓ I resonate so deeply. I definitely experienced that heavily in my life. That phase of limerence, I was someone who very much sat in the ⁓ avoidant ⁓ anxious attachment style. that confused attachment style when

Katharine McLean: Yeah.

Kez Stuk: you know, so I danced between the two very much. so, yes. And so very much for me, I definitely felt that addiction, particularly when I was younger, that dopamine rush. ⁓ It felt like, and similarly to you as well, I had this savior complex. So I had to rescue everyone. I had to, you know, save others coupled with ⁓ chasing unavailable people. And that...

Katharine McLean: The disorganised, yep. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Kez Stuk: is an addiction in itself. Like you have absolutely and you know it's interesting I definitely healed all of that ⁓ on my own journey but I never associated that with being an addiction but you're so right it is.

Katharine McLean: 100%. Hmm. Yeah. Well, it's the same chemical loop in the brain, you know, that we're kind of recycling, and, getting high off in terms of the reward center. And so the chase, you know, the chase of, the unavailable person, when we get that little rush of dopamine, when they respond or when they give us some sort of sense of, you know, validation, which is usually a breadcrumb, well, let's be honest, it's not a full meal. ⁓ because honestly, the full meal, our nervous systems never, never received it. So we're actually not looking for the full meal. We're looking for the breadcrumb because that's what feels familiar. That's what we learned to do as children to feel loved and anything beyond that we're not interested in on a subconscious level. So that's why we chase the unavailable. It feels resonant, but it's also painful. This is the thing. It's such a confusing place for so many women to find themselves. Yeah. So it's It's painful for women ⁓ because it's highly confusing the that we will chase after an unavailable person. ⁓ You know, it, it ⁓ make sense to the mind and a lot of, know, again, the women that I work with and myself included, we're not unintelligent women, you know, and we can read a room like we can read, you know, when a person's not interested, but yet there's something biologically inside of us that says, ⁓ I'm drawn to this person. I'm drawn to, you know, their unavailability in some way. And, and we can loop in the rumination of, I think there might be something here and we kind of make up scenarios of what we want it to feel and look and be like. And that is how we sort of bathe in the, the oxytocin. Like a lot of the time we're actually bathing in self-generated oxytocin, let alone, sorry, not, not actually the, the generation of with the other person. We're actually creating it within our fantasy. ⁓ And that's how we kind of get hooked on this person. And we think that the person is someone we're in love with ⁓ when really it's a projection of a fantasy that we're in love with. And then those people can never really measure up. But again, a lot of that's childhood stuff because we're trying to recreate what we missed out on. And we're trying to complete that loop where we're actually chosen, you know, so we're addicted to not feeling chosen so that we can. eventually alchemize and come back to be hot to wholeness and and realize that the only person who can choose us is us. ⁓ It certainly won't be the unavailable person, that's for sure. ⁓ But yeah, it's us. It's always been us. And the love we seek is is the love that's within. And when we really truly accept that and work with that, and understand that the co regulation that we're looking for starts between us like our higher self and our inner child.

Kez Stuk: Be chosen. Totally.

Katharine McLean: from a re-parenting capacity. That's actually how we start to stop these trauma loops from recreating themselves. And we stop these, yeah, these avoidant, anxious, chasing dynamics where we're looking for love outside of ourselves all the time.

Kez Stuk: Yes, I love that and honestly that was such a big part of my own journey because even with the love I have welcomed into my own life now, there is no way that past version of me when I was stuck in those loops could have welcomed this into my life. Like I would have become avoidant and shut down and not be able to receive what I have now.

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Kez Stuk: And that's, and this love is transformative. Like this love is everything that I could have ever dreamed of a more. And it's just so sad that we can get trapped in those loops. And I actually want to speak to this ⁓ so much. It's so funny. I had someone message the other day asking to speak to the love journey. So this actually wasn't what I had planned, but I love how this is coming through.

Katharine McLean: Mmm. Yes.

Kez Stuk: Let's dive into this reparenting of self because this is the exact process that I did ⁓ to really break my own cycles and to become the person that I am now and to have welcomed this love into my life. what you're speaking to is so deeply resonant for me, this reparenting of self connecting with the higher self. becoming ⁓ parents that ⁓ never had ⁓ allowing ⁓ ⁓ be a whole complete cycle within the self so that you're not seeking that externally.

Katharine McLean: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Look, it's the, it's the foundation, isn't it? And I love that, that you obviously have a strong embodiment of this yourself, you know, to be able to speak to it in that way. And it is a journey, you know, I think even just hearing you speak about it, it almost makes it sound like it's complete. ⁓ but I think, you know, it's, it, in my experience, that relationship is ever evolving. ⁓ the, the inner, inner child and the higher self and, know, that reparenting relationship.

Kez Stuk: Mmm.

Katharine McLean: particularly as you're navigating a new intimate relationship, know, there'll be things that come up that, you know, will be activating. But I think, you know, for me, it's been, yeah, it's been the bread and butter of not just my method in terms of how I work with clients, but it's been how I've healed myself is through doing that deeper work. And as I say, I started doing inner child work at least a decade ago, probably, you know, 12, 15 years ago even, ⁓ doing, you know, work with... photographs of my younger self and you know connecting with her on a you know on a sort of conversational level. ⁓ I'd done some past life regressions, I'd done some other things to kind of connect with her ⁓ but I couldn't really go deeper than that because I would then you know five minutes later go and pour a wine and check out of my body again. ⁓ So I think you know when you do this this work it's about making a commitment to knowing that anytime you get triggered That's an inner child. That's an inner child that's speaking to you. And so that's your entryway. You know, that's your doorway in. So in order for you to want to start a dialogue with your inner child, you need to be able to build your capacity to be with emotion. You need to be able to build your capacity to hold space for whatever's present without labeling it as wrong, without judging it as too much or, you know, damaged or all the things I used to say, like, ⁓ God, what's wrong with me? Like, why am I so reactive or why do I get so... know insecure or whatever and what I've really learned is like every time I say that I'm saying to my three-year-old self why are you insecure you know why can't you just get it together like you know so I just don't do that anymore because I'm like wow she's listening you know like she's truly listening and she you know this is another way I love to explain in a child work is your emotions are your inner children and your emotions live in your body so you when you develop a relationship with your body you are developing a relationship with your inner child. You're starting to listen to the cues, the signals, and sometimes those signals can come through as threat. Other times they can come through as safety, but we don't really know what safety and threat even looks and feels like if we've been dissociated, like if we've been cut off from the neck down, which a lot of us have been. So we live in our heads. We think our way through life. We don't feel our way through life. And so when we start to sort of talk about inner child work, people then stay up here with it and they're like,

Kez Stuk: Mm-hmm.

Katharine McLean: ⁓ so I need to write a letter or I need to look at a photograph or I need to, you know, do some sort of practice. And again, if you're coming from here, coming from the head while you're doing these things, the body's not coming online. And so therefore the inner child doesn't feel that embodiment, doesn't feel the resonance of being truly seen ⁓ because you can say to yourself all you want, I'm safe now, you know, it's, I'm not a little child anymore and it's, it's okay for me to ask for what I need. all of those things, but the body doesn't respond to language. responds, it responds to resonance of, of, of a felt sensation. And this in my experience, only comes through attunement. So attuning to your body and attuning inward and noticing sensation, noticing, you know, giving it a color, giving it a, um, a texture, you know, just really being curious with whatever's coming up and starting to dialogue with the body and letting it lead. you know, letting it tell you like with a curious stance, you know, what, what is it that you want to share? How is it that you truly feel? And you can also at that point, you know, ask, is there an age, for example, like if you're triggered about something, it's like, okay, is there a color? Is there a sensation? Is there an age? And sometimes you'll get an age or you'll get a little image or you'll get a photograph in that'll pop into your head and you'll be like, ⁓ there she is. There's that little girl. That's just so afraid, you know, and then you can start communicating with her and asking her what does she need from you? You it's really important that we don't tell her what she needs. Because again, that's a lot of how we were parented is we were told, you don't need to do that. Stop crying. It's okay now. You know, and that's well-intentioned parenting, but we don't want to fall into that trap and repeat that same cycle. We want to be curious. We want to like, let this be child led, let this be body led, let this be emotional, you know, attunement. where we bring that all online and then we start to connect and allow our inner child to tell us what they need. And sometimes it will be as simple as I want a hug, you know, and you can start to co-regulate internally through connecting with your child, your inner child in that way where you just visually hold them, hold them in an embrace. Or they might even say, I want to go to the park and I want to play on a swing. So you go down to the local park and you play on a swing. And while you're there, you hold them in your heart and you say, I'm here and I want you to know you're cared for and I love you and I'm not going anywhere. You know, so they're just like a couple of mini examples of how we can kind of reparent ourselves in the moment. but as I say that the entry way in is a trigger, you know, anytime you experience an emotion, you've got an inner child online. So talk to them, don't banish them, don't judge them. Don't label them as bad or wrong. Find out what they need from you. And then that's how you can start to shift your entire experience of reality.

Kez Stuk: Beautiful. I absolutely love everything you said and resonates so deeply and I think something that has really helped me on my journey and I actually think will help a lot of people listening as well is my strongest way to connect with my inner child is really through the subconscious and through either meditation or hypnosis or ⁓ self-hypnosis. I am depends where you are on your journey like

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yes.

Kez Stuk: I can definitely do those things now connecting on a cognitive level of feeling that in my body but I was that person like you said before completely disconnect from my body. was so much safer for me to live in my mind, intellectualize everything that was safe and that was what I could do.

Katharine McLean: Hmm.

Kez Stuk: I didn't have the access to that felt sense that you speak of and my way of delving into that felt sense was through ⁓ subconscious work and getting into ⁓ meditative states, feeling comfortable there, self-hypnosis, hypnosis journeys, like all of that really enabled me to go there in a way that I can now. So I'd really

Katharine McLean: Mm. Mm. Mm-hmm.

Kez Stuk: recommend that as a tool because when we try and access that from the cognitive brain as you say we're completely not able to connect with our body and so it becomes really cognitive rather than felt and

Katharine McLean: 100%. Mm, 100%.

Kez Stuk: Yeah, the only way that in my experience that I've been able to access my inner child is as you say through the body.

Katharine McLean: Mm hmm. Yes. Yeah, no, 100%. I agree with you on all of that. And I ⁓ was the same, guess, in the sense I didn't, I didn't know how to feel. I only started feeling my body. I don't know, probably when I started this deeper work. for four years ago or so, and I was the same as you, I guess, around meditation. That was probably how I would connect. ⁓ But I think, what we're sort of speaking to here, Yeah, I, you know, I slightly different in terms of like reparenting is some of that stuff you can do in the moment. But I do agree with you that like you actually need to do some, a lot of people anyway, need to do more of that deeper inner child healing work first. And then they can apply reparenting in their day to day, you know, life, because the deeper work will often be that it's, you know, it's the only way that we can access some of these memories that are really painful in many ways. And it's those painful experiences that live in the subconscious that manifest in our patterns of behavior and our limiting beliefs today. But we, unless we go into the subconscious, we often don't know that they're connected. And so that's one of the modalities I'm trained in is called matrix re-imprinting. And it works kind of with EFT and helps clients to access the subconscious to follow the feeling. You know, there's a few different ways we can go into the subconscious, but when we get in there, we're kind of, I guess, looking to ⁓ into the subconscious like we're entering a movie, you know, we're entering a scene in a movie and we're going in as a protector, as our adult self and we're connecting with our younger self and we're having a dialogue with her and yeah, bringing her out of the experience that she's in and bringing her to safety and using, you know, tapping as one of the methods to do that. as well as then some belief rewiring. So, you know, you do need a skilled and trained facilitator to do that type of subconscious work because, you know, again, like for a lot of us, when we've got a lot of these traumas and we have these really strong inherent core beliefs that we're flawed and defective and broken and damaged and all these things, or even just as simple as I'm not lovable, ⁓ to go in and I guess rewire that from the adult self to the young self. A lot of the time we're blended and so we actually still believe what the younger child believes. So we actually still, you know, a lot of clients will say, I actually do think I'm unlovable. So I can't tell me in a child that she's lovable if I actually don't believe that I'm lovable. So yeah, so you really do need to be able to work, ⁓ you know, with, with the subconscious in a really kind of, ⁓ you know, in a held way with a, with a facilitator, with a practitioner. And in my experience, like, I love the way that my method works in terms of like, we've got an ongoing relationship. I never take people straight into a matrix on the first session, for example, because I need to be able to know more about them as a person and need to understand their history and need to develop that trusting relationship. Because eventually when we do go in, I'm going to help, I guess, in a really gentle way, redirect and reframe some of the stories they've been telling themselves about who they are as a person. And that can be quite challenging if you don't have a relationship with that practitioner and they're coming in going now tell you're in a child that you're lovable now tell them that you know everything's gonna be okay and what happens to a lot of us is we just go into like performance and we just go okay I'll just do what the practitioners telling me to do I'll just tell her that I love her and and it kind of doesn't land ⁓ so yeah and look I'm speaking from experience when I say all this because I've been in the receiving end of that where I'm like this isn't

Kez Stuk: ⁓ me too. Absolutely. And it's so interesting because I think it's that really old world to manifesting of, know, if you speak these positive thoughts and beliefs and affirmations, things will shift. And there's just such a huge missing link to that. I don't know if you resonate with this, but when The Secret came out back in the day, I was a little girl and

Katharine McLean: Yeah, this isn't connecting. So yeah. Mmm. Mm, yes.

Kez Stuk: It was so funny. It was like this side of myself was so secret. I grew up in a really conservative family. Like I went on to become a lawyer. Like it was just not, I had no space for my spirituality and like my true essence. and so I would watch the, I watched the secret really young. I don't even remember like how old I was, but it was like this, this affirmations, you know, and as being the key and obviously the secret opened up this beautiful world, but you know, it did really lack in a lot of

Katharine McLean: Mm-hmm.

Kez Stuk: in a lot of the ways that it didn't. get to this body based subconscious reprogramming that is so essential to what you actually need to heal. Like you really do need both. ⁓

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you need to understand what the payoff is to holding on to that belief. You know what I mean? Because the subconscious is it's a it's a protector. It's not going to just, you know, hand it over and be like, Okay, let's just be lovable. Now, if it believes that feeling unlovable is actually the best way to keep you safe, to keep you protected from more harm, you know, because there's there's a there's a motive behind why we hold on to these beliefs. So yeah, so I think looking at it just from a conscious lens and saying, I'm just going to tell myself I'm lovable until, until such point that I, you know, finally believe it. Um, yeah, I think there's a, there's, there's a place for repetition. I think it's, you know, it's a, that's yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: Mmm, because it rewires the brain, absolutely, but you have to have dug up that initial loop, pattern, interrupt it and be held in that new belief.

Katharine McLean: Yes, you do, you do. Yes, yeah, exactly. And to go back there and I think through meditation and to keep connecting because again, like my inner child, and I didn't believe in myself. I really truly didn't believe I was capable of building a business of anyone wanting to work with me privately. Like, I had my own success in my career, but even that I thought was a fluke. Like I just didn't think anything was happening because of my inherent worth. And so I had to do so much work with her. was not just one, you know, subconscious rewiring where I was like, okay, I'm, you know, went in and found like a root cause, you know, event or whatever. It's yeah. And I think for some of us, it's different, you know, we can't say it's a one size fits all. And I think I've had some women over the years to approach me and they're like, could you just tell me, you know, what it takes to heal? Like what are the steps and what do I have to do? ⁓ And yes, you know, we can. obviously create our methods and things that we think are going to be ⁓ effective, but it's nuanced, know, like you can't say that this has worked for me, so it's going to work for you. ⁓ Because yeah, we've all got our motivations, our subconscious motivations for holding on to certain things. And there's always a knock on effect when you change and alter one program, it can change and alter another and that will change and alter a relationship. so the subconscious is aware of all that. It's like, well, if we do this over here, what's that going to mean for what? mum and like what's that going to mean for your dynamic with mum? You know and mum is important to you so we've got to make sure that we stay in this helpless little victim role even though it's making us suffer in our relationship with our husband and at work but it's how mum sees us and it's how we feel safe and connected to her. you know we've kind of got to always be aware of those things and not just force a new belief over the top of it because there's an intuitive wisdom ⁓ to everything that's happening under the surface. And if we just bring a lens of curiosity to it rather than force, can actually, yeah, in judgment, we can actually start to soften and unravel in a really natural way anyway.

Kez Stuk: or judgment. Yeah. Absolutely and even you know when you speak about that protector part it's it's almost like with your alcoholism there was such a strong protector there because it was like you know I obviously don't want to assume what that was for you but it sounds almost like I'm not safe to feel in the world so I'm going to numb.

Katharine McLean: Yes.

Kez Stuk: with know, XYZ substance and that was your protection. So you felt like you could show up and you could, you know, be yourself. And so it's like, if in you, the key to your freedom there was truth and facing yourself and your truth. And it's like, to do that required you to give up alcohol, but you had to be ready. And that's not force, that's an evolution. And I think what you said,

Katharine McLean: Tarderle. Mm, mm, yeah. Totally.

Kez Stuk: particularly about having someone, a practitioner to see you and to witness you and hold you through that space is really how you can transform as well.

Katharine McLean: Yeah, yes, 100%. And yeah, I think we can walk people towards, you know, their own evolution, but like awareness is such a personal thing, you know, like I can't force you to take on a perspective if you're not, your psyche isn't ready for it. ⁓ And I never would, you know, it's not who I am, but I think it's, yeah, it's something that a really beautiful, ⁓ you know, professional alliance can happen between know, a therapist and their client when, yeah, when you really let them lead in many ways in terms of, you know, what's feeling most true and alive for them and what they need to work on first and foremost and how that can evolve in time. Because as I said, I've seen it happen multiple times with clients where they come in for one thing, but 12 months later, it's not that that we're, you know, working on and it happens organically. It's not because our we've made a decision we're going to look at this next. It's like, oh, over here, this thing was just unfolding in a way that it's now, yeah, it's now like magically in a way sort of sorted itself out. Yeah, so it's a beautiful thing really to work in that way.

Kez Stuk: Yeah, it really is. that's like such a beautiful segue into how you hold clients through their journey through your method. Like I'd love you to share a bit about that.

Katharine McLean: Yeah, look, I think what it is, it is different, I guess, to my traditional training and how I've used to work, having worked in, you know, not for profit organizations and government funded frameworks and guidelines and all sorts of things that we had to ⁓ adhere to. ⁓ It's very different when you can operate your business, you know, from your own lived experience and from your own, ⁓ I guess, awareness of what's worked well for me. And ⁓ what I do, I guess differently is it's a mentorship. You know, it's not your traditional talk therapy where we have a set session. You come in once a fortnight and you know, we talk about what's triggering you and then give you a strategy and then you go away and you try and apply it over the next two weeks. And then you come back and you tell me whether it worked or not. ⁓ Cause we've all been there. I've certainly been in those ⁓ dynamics with, with counselors and things in the past. And that's kind of how I practiced as well with case management, with my clients. And it was, you know, slow, slow work. Um, and I was seeing, you know, a lot of families coming back into our services, you know, over, over the years, and some of them would come back in with more children or they'd come back with a different partner, but it'd be the same struggles. And yeah, so I was getting a bit disillusioned by, it felt like surface level, um, band-aids that we were putting on people looking at it from a lens of behavior change, even though, you know, a lot of my training was still around, um, I guess, childhood and things coming back to childhood. But it was like the people I guess I was working with, their capacity to look at those things was limited because a lot of them were living in such chronic survival and such chronic conditions of unsafety that, you know, as we know, it's very, challenging to look at any other area of your life if you don't have the basics in place. So now that I work for myself and I have, I guess, a lot more... ⁓ scope to, I guess, draw in people and specifically speak to them through my content, you know, that's been quite, quite enjoyable for me to kind of figure out, who is it that I wish to work with? Who do I wish to draw in? And really, like, I've drawn in people that are, I guess, past versions of me, you know, those kind of high achieving women who might be working in corporate careers, or, ⁓ you know, are often either coaches or healers and mentors themselves, often that happens. ⁓ but they're sort of struggling with things like imposter syndrome or perfectionistic tendencies and always struggling with self doubt and thinking, are they doing enough and pushing themselves to burn out? And they might also be coping in really unhealthy ways through other addictions and things. yeah, so when I connect with women, as I say, it's a mentorship. So I really do share and lead with my lived experience. And so people know that this is what I've navigated and I... created a method that's you know about getting to the origin. I call it my healing the healing origin wounds method ⁓ because it really is about recognizing that everything that we've ever experienced lives in our body in our nervous system ⁓ but also in our energetic bodies and that kind of you know opens up the the method a little bit more to some other leanings we haven't spoken in too much yet but ⁓ I guess the more spiritual and energetic world which I have always been into. Like I've always been a deeply spiritual person but could never never dream that I would be able to work and use I guess some of these things in my work. ⁓ So it's very very exciting that this is now my reality. ⁓ But I blend I guess yeah energy healing into my method and what that looks like is I guess testing the origin of a person's guess trigger. For example, as I mentioned earlier, a trigger is always a doorway. We don't wanna push them away, we wanna bring them in. And so when we start working together, we look at what are the current triggers and what's going on for people. And I use ⁓ energy healing methods to test those origins and we can get to an origin age. We can get to whether it was connected to mom and dad. We can connect, is it about abandonment? Is it about a feeling of powerlessness? Is it about ⁓ repression of your voice? Whatever it might be. And I guess from there, you know, we start, start offering them support and guidance to move through those triggers. The most important thing I need to say though is, you know, this work, it's about building safety first and foremost, like we need a safe and secure, you know, ⁓ vessel, I guess, in order to, to start transforming. so nervous system work and establishing safety is the baseline. We don't kind of move, you know, straight into this work until that's, know, instead of working on that. I've incorporated a lot of somatic practices and things into helping people in those first initial weeks. ⁓ And I have a voice noting component, you know, to this mentorship, so people can get support outside of the fortnightly session. And that really is where the transformations happen. They happen in real time because people jump in and they'll say, I've just had this experience or this, you know, trigger or whatever. And I can give them that kind of guidance and insight around what the origin of it is actually about. And then I will offer them, as I say, like a guided practice, which is usually intuitively channeled, ⁓ which I'll, you know, based on the energy healing ⁓ testing that's come through and I'll give them a practice, which is about connecting to their inner child. And then they will move through that. And then, you know, I guess start to see some transformations, which can happen really quickly. ⁓ because we're all connected energetically and when we heal one thing, it ripples out into the relationships with the people around us and we start having different conversations with people and then they start showing up differently. And so it's a really beautiful thing to witness. ⁓ But I guess just to sort of speak to another element of the method. So we've got the somatic approach, obviously, nervous system safety, inner child work, emotional regulation. ⁓ subconscious reprogramming because I obviously weave in the matrix re-imprinting and emotion code. That's another modality I heavily use which is about clearing trapped emotions from the energetic body. And sometimes these are past life trapped emotions, sometimes these are inherited emotions, sometimes they're just absorbed from others ⁓ but they affect us, they affect our thoughts, they affect our patterns of behavior and so yeah so we really work energetically with clearing a lot of that. ⁓ And then I guess the other element that I bring in is the Akashic Records. So I tune into a person's Akashic Records, which is like the library, the book of life, I guess, is some of the ways it's described, ⁓ where, you know, all information about all souls and all life paths, know, relationships, ⁓ thoughts, feelings and emotions that have ever, you know, happened, past, present and future. have been stored in this book of life, these scrolls, these ancient texts, I guess, as we could kind of language it if we wanted to put language around it. ⁓ And yeah, so we can tune in, we can tune into these books and we can find out information about our past lives and how they might be affecting some of our current relationships. And I guess more on a bird's eye view, what I love about it, obviously being a double Scorpio, I'm sort of, I love to know, I guess, from a more, what are we here for? Why am I actually here to go through this? Like what is my sole purpose and why is my ⁓ life trajectory looking like the repetition of a certain archetype and why am I still gravitating towards these relationships? And what is my higher purpose in it all? Like it's not for nothing. It's not just to experience pain. Like, come on, I wanna know like what's the alchemy in this? So yeah, so I kind of really love being able to bring that. element into the work to help people to see that you know this abandonment wound for example that you might be experiencing like you've chosen it on a soul level well the wound has come with you I should say and the family that you've chosen is the exact family to kind of activate it so that you can then embody the virtue on the other side and that can look slightly different for people around what they're here to embody what that virtue is that they're really looking to learn but a lot of the time it's you know, connection to source and connection to self. For example, if you've got an abandonment wound, it's about learning to stop attaching to others and you know, addictions and all sorts of things outside of you in order to avoid the truth. That is you are connected to something much, much greater and you are connected to self, you know, and that is your source of love and of safety. ⁓ Yeah, so anyway, so the virtues I think is something that I really love being able to help people see because you know, again, a lot of us come in with these archetypes, the wounded inner child, the victim, the saboteur, and we're just here kind of playing them out over and over and over again, not realizing that we're actually here to ascend, but we've got to do the, you know, some of that we've got to like give permission, I guess, on a soul level to, to participate in that way, rather than just staying in the lower frequency of, this happened to me and this is hard and I can't change and nothing's ever going to be any different. And Yeah, so I think, you when I offer clients a different perspective around some of this, it gives them some insight, gives them some relief, and it gives them something to move towards, which again is another part of my method is, you know, this future visioning and really having an anchor for where we're going, who we wish to be. Because if we don't have an anchor for where we're going, the subconscious will just keep recreating the past because that's all it knows how to do. That's all it knows is to just draw from the library in our, you know, access point at the back there and say, well, this is how relationships work. This is how careers work. This is how love works. And it just keeps, you know, bringing us back to the same thing. ⁓ So yeah, so when we have a future vision and we do some, you know, really deliberate ⁓ work to expand our nervous system capacity to hold something different, which, know, you touched on earlier about relationships. Like we, if we want a successful business and we want, you know, great love, but we've never known what that feels like in the body, we can do all this great deep healing work, but we're still going to push those things away when they try to come in because we don't know how to receive and we don't know how to interpret them as safe because they've just they're unknown. And so to the to the body, the unknown is unsafe, so it will reject it. So that's why we need to do, you know, that work to kind of allow more tolerable doses of these new feelings, these new experiences. And that's why visualization is a great way, you know, to start to create that in the body, to start to be like, ⁓ what would it feel like to just bathe in joy, even if just for 60 seconds, you know, to bathe in a visualization of me receiving a really deep, like a deeply held hug from a safe man, you know, it's like some women can't, can't do that for 60 seconds, you know, that's very unfamiliar. So yeah, I guess they're the things, you know, that, are really important. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: Hmm. Yeah, it's like exposure therapy for the mind. That's such a, that's such a good way to articulate it because that's exactly what you're doing. And that's why meditation visualization is so impactful because our body believes it's happening. And so, yeah, but sorry, just to go back to everything you just shared, that is so incredible because from my own lived experience, everything you mentioned has been

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yep. Yes. Yes. 100%. Yep.

Kez Stuk: a step of my own journey and what I had personally used to get to where I am. But then to hear it in one method with one person is honestly phenomenal because I, in my own journey, I felt so, I've had to figure out everything myself. Like I've really navigated this life. There's been a lot of loneliness and not knowing how or where to go. Like I really felt like I had to go on a journey alone through everything. it's like similar to what you said. It's like for me now, it's like the most empowering thing I can do is to really see people, see their essence and hold them through their journey so that they don't have to navigate it alone, which I felt very much like I had to. And so to hear someone like yourself doing

Katharine McLean: Mm.

Kez Stuk: all of these things that have literally transformed my life in one method, your signature method. It's so special to hear that. It actually gives me so much joy and warmth to hear that. ⁓ I knew you were incredible and I love connecting with you, but I actually hearing the intricacies of what you do, it's just so special. I think just touching on that last point about ⁓ the energetic work and ⁓ really, it was really for me understanding that every hardship that I ever went through and everything, every single experience has led me to the exact moment that I am in right now, the person I am right now. And that is, there's so much empowerment in that. And I think that's you know, it's like when you can really look at that from not a victim perspective, but from a this is what my soul chose and came here to do. There's just something so paradigm shifting in that. And you realize who you are and your purpose. And interestingly, I think there's, I mean, I've had a lot of Scorpio's in my life, but I'm a, North node and in astrology, your North node is your life purpose. It's what you're here to do. it's what you're walking towards. So mine's in Scorpio. And so I think, yeah, that's why I've really drawn in that depth and that, my own version of alchemy. So I really see that path of, Scorpio is because I've avoided it to be honest for so long and not accepted that within myself. And it was like really once where I started accepting that, that within myself, it was interesting that types of people I started welcoming in and some incredible Scorpios into my life. ⁓ Because previously I've had a lot of Scorpios who were in that shutdown stage where completely repressed their emotions and numbed out and a lot of addictions and I noticed how deeply they felt but how much it was internal and how much they could not access. ⁓ And so yeah. just integrating that part within myself ⁓ has been so impactful for me to really step into who I am here to be as well. And so that aspect of your work about really understanding beyond the suffering, beyond the pain, like what you're here to do and that it's all for a purpose as perverse as that sounds, I know that, you know, listening when you're going through hell and you're like, what, what do mean this is here for a purpose? Like it's almost angering hearing that sometimes and I get that because I've been there. ⁓ But one day there is this light that you do access and you can see when you transcend beyond the physical realm and you do access source wisdom and you can see beyond yourself and your physical reality that there is so much wisdom strength in that. And yeah, so just the fact that you incorporate that within your work like

Katharine McLean: Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Kez Stuk: It's super transformative.

Katharine McLean: It is isn't it I think you know because we are all here for something greater and you know I truly do believe service is is at the foundation of that so it's here you know we're here to alchemize you know the experiences that are our most challenging so that we can then teach others how we how we did it ⁓ and you know some of us do that in different ways some of us do it in a more public way or in a more like you know structured kind of ⁓ practitioner led way but others do it. you know, in their day to day lives as mothers and as, you know, hairdressers or, you know, mechanics even like there's just so many different ways that we can show up as teachers. It doesn't always have to be in a formal sense. ⁓ But I do ultimately believe, you know, we are connected energetically in that sense. And I'd also believe, you know, we travel as soul families. So we choose to do these lessons over and over again with each other. ⁓ So, you know, we might have like my brother, for example, I always knew as a child that there was something I was like, you've been around before. Like, I don't know what or how or what that meant, but it almost felt like I'd been married to him before. You know what I mean? I was like, not that I, you know, obviously romantically had any feelings for him, but I just knew there was a love there that was so, so profound. ⁓ And yeah, so I do believe like, you know, if we can understand that this isn't a solo journey.

Kez Stuk: Hmm

Katharine McLean: We don't come here as individuals just trying to make our way through life and trying to force our way into healing. Like we're actually, and it's touching on what you say, like we can feel so alone in our journey, you know? But we're not meant to be alone. Like we're not, and we're actually not alone, you even from a spiritual lens, like we've got a spirit team who's dedicated, you know, so dedicated to us and only us, you know, in order to serve and help us to reach our potential. ⁓ so when we really like start to like soften into what that would feel like to receive that support and to know that we've got each other that we can lean on and to find your tribe, like to be deliberate about I'm calling in my soul tribe because I want to heal. want to evolve. want to expand. want to grow. I don't want to keep repeating cycles. I don't want to keep having the same conversations with trying to force my opinion on people and trying to get them to see it the way I see it. Like let that go, you know, and just embody who you truly are and let the people that are meant for you be magnetized towards your truth because they're your sole tribe and they're the ones that you're actually here, you know, supposed to be doing this great work with.

Kez Stuk: Yes, amen to absolutely everything you said and it's, you know, I think it can be really hard at times to let those things go and really allow what is meant for you to come to you. But it's really, I think one of the most important things we can do as individuals is to feel comfortable in uncertainty.

Katharine McLean: Mm, yeah.

Kez Stuk: because we are constantly met with uncertainty every single day. We don't know what's around the corner and there's something so magical about that. Like I personally love that, that you know even when I met my partner like it was like he dropped out of the sky. Like you know it's it's I always joke about that but that's how it really felt like you know and that you know obviously there was a journey and a story in that but

Katharine McLean: Mm-hmm. There is. Yeah. Hmm. Mmm.

Kez Stuk: It's one of those things where we literally don't know what's around the corner. And there's something so magical and exciting about that. And at the same time, there's something terrifying about not knowing, you know, what's around the corner or what's next. And it's, you know, being comfortable in that uncertainty and knowing that what's meant for you will come to you at the right divine time.

Katharine McLean: Yes. Mmm. Yes, yes. And being able to build your tolerance to be in that uncertainty and reframing it, as you say, like reframing it as, you know, what's coming for me will always be in my highest good and I don't need to manage it and control it. And in fact, if I let go and I allow, it's going to manifest in such a divinely, you know, orchestrated way that'll be beyond anything my mind could have ever, you know, conspired to materialize. And that's the thing like we're so hooked into the mind trying to, you know, forecast how a conversation is going to go, what that person's going to say or what it's going to look like. You know, we're always wanting to know, but what will happen when I do that thing? And it's like, well, can we just be okay with not knowing? You know, and yeah, I do believe that the more sort of, I guess, unpredictability and, you know, trauma, if you will, that you've experienced in childhood.

Kez Stuk: Yeah.

Katharine McLean: the more instability you can feel in your nervous system at the thought of the unknown because it's wrapped up in so much potentiality for threat and for harm. And so I think we've just got to have some, you know, compassion for that if that's our experience of relating to the unknown and to recognize that those younger parts just need a little bit more soothing, a little bit more reassurance that, yeah, there is a divine plan. And I think for me, it's probably been the most transformative ⁓

Kez Stuk: Hmm.

Katharine McLean: belief system to be able to adopt at a younger age was that we're not alone and that there is a higher order to it all. Even when it looks absolutely ridiculously chaotic and just, you know, pain for the sake of pain, it's still something that I've been able to go, okay, even if it doesn't make sense right now, I'm choosing to believe that it's all working out for my highest good because that's a choice. You know, I can choose to believe that.

Kez Stuk: Absolutely.

Katharine McLean: Or I can choose to believe that it sucks and it's hard and it's painful and it's someone else's fault and it's never going to get any better. And you know, all those things. And then going into complete panic again about trying to figure out how it's going to look and how can I fix it how can I change it? it's just like, none of that feels very easeful. It certainly doesn't feel very ⁓ joyful. So yeah, we get to choose how we wish to show up in this world. And I really do think our relationship with uncertainty is the biggest precursor to whether we can access those feelings of joy and safety in our body.

Kez Stuk: Absolutely. And when did that drop in for you? The notion of, yeah, that, that shift in consciousness, if it really feels like.

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I talk about it as like ⁓ a spiritual awakening of the educational variety because it was through books and I was young. I was probably about 19, but ⁓ it was the Seed of the Soul by Gary Zukav. It was also ⁓ Louise Hay, You Can Heal Your Life So they're books. ⁓ Open something up in me to the point where I'm like running into my mom's room one night so I was still living at home at that time I was at uni. I like waking her up to tell her like oh my god like no one no one else is is to blame. It's all us you know like I'm responsible for my emotions like all these really like foreign concepts remember looking at me like what the hell's wrong with you. But. You if I didn't grasp on to those things I was going down a really dark place and unfortunately for my brother he he you know he didn't get to grasp on to these things until he got into sobriety but I got access to them when I was on the precipice of starting my my drinking career as I call it ⁓ and so I straddled yeah I straddled the two of them the whole time I was in the spiritual world where I was like I am a creator I am creating everything and then I'd be like but I'm a victim and I don't know how to help myself you know and so I was just constantly playing out that dance, that push-pull. And yeah, so I can't say that these spiritual concepts necessarily like, you know, made everything disappear, but I lived in two truths a lot. ⁓ yeah, but as I say, like I was always the one that, you know, my friends would, you know, be coming to for advice and I'd be giving these kinds of spiritual kind of answers to them at a young, young age. And even like I remember when I had one of my first clients in my

Kez Stuk: Mmm.

Katharine McLean: my career, I printed out the, ⁓ you know, in Louise Hayes book where she's got the ailments and what they all mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I was like, this is profound. Everybody needs to know this, you know, and it's got nothing to do with my, university training, but you know, and my supervisors certainly haven't given me permission to do this, but I was like a 24 year old, like even probably younger.

Kez Stuk: The body. In the body, yeah. Yeah, yes.

Katharine McLean: 21 year old and I was like people need to know, know, so I'm photocopying it and I'm giving it out to clients and You know, they're looking at me like what two heads but it was it was just so profound to me, you know that that we had all these ⁓ I Guess like just these these concepts that Yeah, we're not conditioned into us as children, you know that we could create our own reality and that we were self-responsible and that ⁓ as Louise, you know so eloquently put it in the beginning of her books like her trauma history was significant. And I just so resonated with what she had endured. And then the way she just spoke to, is how I healed, I was like, ⁓ my God, like this woman, like I just, I'm so inspired, you know, and that changed, it changed my life. It truly did.

Kez Stuk: got goosebumps everywhere because I felt the exact same. Yeah it was so profound and just for everyone listening this book is You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay and she has a section in the book where she speaks to every single body part and an ailment in that body part and what it represents from a spiritual lens and it's so accurate. I remember Like for instance, yeah, I will go there actually I was thinking of a story there was like in a previous relationship I remember just feeling so unsupported and on and just so frustrated and angry about Following a situation where I just felt so alone in the relationship and I remember like I'm someone who really needs to Let that energy out of my body like through movement And so I remember I was like, I'll go do a workout. So I did a workout and my back went. And it's like, you just can't make this stuff up because the lower back is all about support and feeling unsupported. And I just remember like being so acutely aware of that at the time. But also it's like, I think the other part is, and you know, we've spoken to this quite a lot today. It's like, you can be cognitively aware of that. And then there's like a dissonance between action as well.

Katharine McLean: ⁓ wow. No. Mm-hmm, yep.

Kez Stuk: because for me to actually act on that, I had to admit to myself how not right this relationship was. And that was a whole other journey in itself. you know, it was a catalyst for sure, but as we speak about today, like it's all a journey because, yeah, I had to come to the truth of my situation, just, yeah, circling back to Louise, hey, like I just, yeah, it's...

Katharine McLean: Mmm, yeah. Mmm... Yes. Yes. Yes, yes.

Kez Stuk: our body is so wise and intelligent and it's always delivering these messages to us and it's really about tuning in and ⁓ connecting with its wisdom and trusting in it. think that's such a trusting our body as well because we often, when we have so many ailments in the body, it's we...

Katharine McLean: Hmm. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: disconnect from our trust with our body. think our body's against us and it's failing us but really it's delivering these beautiful signals for us to be aware of.

Katharine McLean: Absolutely. It's always communicating with us. And yeah, I've got another book by Inna Segal. I don't know if you've ever got into her stuff, the language of the body. Hers is very, very similar. Yeah. So they're kind of like my little bibles, you know, I have by my desk. So if a client's got a particular thing going on, I'm like, let me just check on that. Because it's there's always a spiritual meaning and you know, it's yeah, it's it's very rarely what we think it is. And I think the the Western

Kez Stuk: Yes!

Katharine McLean: Medical model doesn't allow us to see and treat us as a whole being. ⁓ so we think, you know, a broken arm is just a broken arm, but no, if it's on the left side of the body, then it's, you know, it's got a certain representation if it's got it on the right. And so it's like all that stuff. And you want to know like, yeah, just, I want to know about the whole experience of why that's been, you know, or how long that's been happening for and what sort of context does it happen? And then giving people a practice to actually start working at it from an emotional level.

Kez Stuk: feminine. Yup.

Katharine McLean: know, everything physical is emotional. There's just no way around it, you know? ⁓ And I think, even with Louise Hay back then, like, she'd inspired me so much that I think I must have got her other book around mirror work. And I then just started doing mirror work. ⁓ Again, even though I had such self-hatred, I would stand in front of the mirror and I would, you know, tell myself I loved myself and all those things. And yeah, again, because the body's listening, like it's truly hearing, ⁓ okay, we've put a new, we're putting a new narrative in now, we're putting a new dialogue in now because yeah I started like really knowing and trusting in my body that if I didn't do this, if I didn't tell myself I was lovable, I was never going to receive love on the external. You know, I needed to be able to love myself first and foremost and then that's how you change and shift the imprint you know that then is the the magnetic field that draws people in to match up with how you truly feel within. So yeah, there's just so much great stuff isn't there in her work and in all of these, you know, teachings that are just so freely and readily available to us now. And I think, you know, spirituality has hit the mainstream and it's probably only going to get more and more, you know, common, I guess in the next 10 years, five to 10. So yeah, so it's a great time to be alive really, to know that this is kind of just most people know now who Louise Hay is. Whereas before I couldn't, you know, I couldn't talk to her about it. I couldn't talk to anyone about her.

Kez Stuk: Absolutely, it is where it's such a pivotal turning point in history and it's such a beautiful time to be a part of and to really embrace the holistic healing method because it's so important to incorporate all aspects. Like we are a physical body on this physical earth so it's really important to ground into that and not be too in the spiritual realm where we're not realizing that we're a physical body and that you know we need to ⁓

Katharine McLean: Mm. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: connect with that and what our purpose here but really integrating all levels of healing in one and it's just so important.

Katharine McLean: Yes, absolutely.

Kez Stuk: Yeah ⁓ and so you started when that came through when you were 19 and then when did that really like hit and circle back was that after your sobriety on your sobriety journey?

Katharine McLean: in terms of my spiritual practices and beliefs or awakening. You know, it's an interesting one. think like, you know, I had a psychic reading not that long ago where she said to me, you know, you, you had your awakening really young. And I looked at her like, what? was like, did I, you know, I, it's like, I forgot, you know, that, had happened because I probably did go back to sleep. You know, I probably did. Even though I, you know, I had all these kinds of, I had knowledge.

Kez Stuk: Awakening, yeah, yeah. Mmm.

Katharine McLean: didn't have embodiment. And so yeah so I guess for me it was always something I was drawn to. I was always doing like full moon rituals or I was you know handing things over and I was you know communicating with my spirit guides. I would was doing automatic writing you know but I was doing it drunk for example you know. Yeah and I remember one particular one particular time

Kez Stuk: Wow.

Katharine McLean: I was really, you know, in my sort of victim about the relationships that I'd been in and the men that I was attracting and I was really, you know, upset and crying and writing, you know, to my guides. And, and I would always start it with, you know, to my guides of the highest truth and compassion, I call on you to write through me now. And then I just let the pen flow and then their words would come through. And so was writing, you know, why am I only attracting men that hurt me? why can't I meet a man that just knows how to love me? And then I got back in, you know, it was me writing it, but as anyone who knows automatic writing, the channel that, you know, this wisdom and this guidance kind of floods through. And so what started happening was the pen just started writing in big capital letters and it spelled out the word ethanol. And that's all. That's all they wrote was ethanol, which is alcohol. ⁓ And so I was like, okay, that's what you're telling me. So me being me and where I was at that point in my life, just, put the pen down and I closed the book and I went back to the fridge and poured another wine ⁓ because I wasn't ready to hear that it was what I was doing to myself. That it was my, you know, the poisoning of myself. ⁓ Yeah, so I think, you know, as I say, I was I was still spiritually minded. was still spiritually connected, but I was still, you know, I was coming with the energy of an alcoholic towards everything that I did. ⁓ So when I let go of of that, which, you know, this is not an easy thing to do, but I did that. ⁓ Yeah. And I found myself in 12 step recovery with people where I was able to speak freely. ⁓ we all were, you know, about our relationship to a higher power. That's when, you know, I was just, I felt so free, I felt so accepted, I felt like finally I found my people. And it's kind of, it just became the mainstream where it was just normal that we could talk about, you know, all of these things. And I remember just getting so like inspired by like, I'd love to be able to share some of this stuff, you know, with others. And, you know, bring some of these concepts into

Kez Stuk: Hmm

Katharine McLean: into everyday life for people so that they can build a relationship with their higher power too. And then we can, you know, they can incorporate that into their day-to-day life. Because I am a really big believer that if you don't know how to surrender and if you don't have an awareness of what you're surrendering to, your resistance is going to be quite high towards allowing life to unfold, you know, in a way that is going to be for your highest good. Because you're gripping, you're holding on. And that's what creates a lot of the dis, you know, disharmony and the disease.

Kez Stuk: Hmm.

Katharine McLean: the dysfunction in your life. ⁓ Yeah so I do really believe we need a spiritual relationship with a higher power, ⁓ whatever we want to call it, however it needs to look, it doesn't really matter. It can be with nature, know, your high power can be nature, it doesn't have to be God as what some people refer to. And I'm obviously not a religious person but I do use the word God but I interchange it with universe or you know it's whatever I feel that I you know.

Kez Stuk: Totally.

Katharine McLean: resonate within that moment and I don't worry about how that lands for others. ⁓ All I care about is that you know that I have that relationship and it's there and ⁓ it sustains me and it reminds me that I'm not alone and yeah I've had so many beautiful encounters you know since getting sober in particular where I'm just continually reminded of you know there's a bigger ⁓ path unfolding for me and all of it was divinely orchestrated you know. every single hardship, every single breakdown moment. My guides have been there the whole time and they've been saying this is where you're being built. You're being built in these moments, you know, because you're here for something great and you're here to make an impact and just keep going.

Kez Stuk: So beautiful, yeah, it resonates so deeply Yeah, and It's yeah, it's it's one of those things where when we are poisoning our body It's like our channels not as clear So I'm not surprised that like post that experience and like you having that channeled writing of ethanol coming up so clearly it's like You had to go through all of that, but now your channel is clear and you you can really tap into who you were always here to be and express your psychic gifts and your abilities to share and teach that.

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: And it's interesting as well, ⁓ in your chart your North node, I mentioned mine was in Scorpio. Yours is in Cancer in the Ninth House. And Cancer is like the mother, the protector, the empath who just wants to nurture people. And being in the Ninth House is all about knowledge and higher wisdom and sharing and teaching and being that teacher through guidance and support. And when I saw that, it just instantly reminded me about one of your goals that you did share with me. And it's just so aligned with your destiny.

Katharine McLean: Hmm. Yeah, it's beautiful. Isn't it? How it all works like that.

Kez Stuk: Absolutely. ⁓ And yeah, it's up to you whether you want to go there. I can cut this out if we don't want to go there. ⁓

Katharine McLean: because I think, you know, for me, ⁓ my ⁓ in terms of my business, it's evolving, you know, it's, ⁓ it's always been a, ⁓ guess, a passion project in many ways, but it's also been like, it's the, it's been the birthing of a new identity of myself, you know, this new version of me who ⁓ working through some really big blocks in real time, you know, and we haven't really touched on it today, but ⁓ had like significant

Kez Stuk: Mmm.

Katharine McLean: fears of being seen. And so when I started my business, the whole social media thing, like it was just torturous for me, like exceptionally torturous. And I had amazing support. So I had an incredible mentor that was helping me throughout that. And I don't know where I would have been if I tried to do it on my own, I probably would have given up. ⁓ But it just brought all of my wounds up to the surface. you know, it was like all of my, I guess, attachments to validation and how

Kez Stuk: Mmm.

Katharine McLean: I constructed such a masked version of myself and how I thought I needed to be perfect in order to be accepted and I couldn't make mistakes. And if people liked me, then I was safe. And I was, you if I was approved of, then I would be loved. And like social media just was this baptism of fire where all of that stuff came up really clearly of the, of the belief systems that I had running and all these falsehoods, you know, like everything I just said then it's not true. you know, validation doesn't. keep you safe. know, connection to others through abandoning yourself is not true connection, you know, and so, yeah, I'm so grateful that I, my soul chose this journey for me, because it was like, okay, you're sober now. So let's throw you into the fire and actually like, let you alchemize all of the stuff that you've been operating from. And we'll put you on display in front of people while you're doing it. And we'll, you know, we'll let you truly transform under the heat. And yeah, it's like, I've just let go of so much now, you know, like I used to be so afraid of speaking on my stories, doing reels, like I used to sometimes spend eight hours, like one particular day, I spent eight hours getting a 60 second reel recorded because the pressure that I would put on myself, the inner critic was like, not good enough, start again, not good enough, start again. You said the word wrong, do it again. You know, so that was so, strong in me that I've really had to, as I say, like work through so much to come out the other side and just be able to soften into safety and be like, you can show up in the messy middle and you can be yourself and you can be authentic and it doesn't matter whether you're received, you know, well or not well, it's not an indication of your worth, your truth, your lovability, your deserve ability. Those things are inherent, you know, you don't get them from the external. So Yes, I'm so grateful that I went through this really significant journey and these visibility, you know, wounds and fears. I think, you know, again, these things were childhood related, but they were also past life related, where I had a deep fear of harm, like physical harm, using my voice and being seen maybe with an opinion that might not be liked or agreed with. ⁓ I would have like full visceral reactions in my body to the feeling of being physically attacked. ⁓

Kez Stuk: Mmm.

Katharine McLean: So I had to work through a lot of this stuff with mentors as well to clear through what I call witch wounds basically, to ⁓ kind of heal that aspect of what I was still carrying, not to mention my own ⁓ intergenerational lineage of the women that have come before me who've been in really unhealthy and unsafe environments with their partners, where their voices have been constricted and their truth has been shut down and they've been gaslit and they've been abused. And so it's like, I'm here as the cycle breaker to end this all, you know, but I've had to really, yeah, meet and face off with all those parts of me that didn't believe I would survive it if I was to let myself be seen. so coming out, guess, the other side of all of this, it's really shown me that this is part of my calling. This is part of what I'm here for is to, you know, alchemize what, lives within me so that I can be a teacher of it to others. So I am feeling very called, you know, to draw on the experience I've had in my previous, you know, career where I was a team leader for 10 years and supported many psychologists and social workers and counselors. And, you know, really to bring that experience and blend it with my current, you know, method and start actually working with the current day healers, coaches, therapists, mentors, guides, leaders out there who are doing this work as well. but like me, perhaps watering down their message or hiding behind some of their more bold truths or want to show up more brazenly or even just show up, but just holding back, know, or holding back from what will people think and have I said it the right way? And, you know, these feelings of being an imposter, you know, all that stuff that holds us back from our true authentic expression. I really want to support women to step into their full embodiment, their full self-expression and really to be, you know, the next generation of these, these incredible healers and coaches that, you know, I've always, I believe had it in me to, mentor and guide. I do believe I'm here to, to, to mentor and guide the light workers and to blend, you know, our spiritual truths and our spiritual knowings with, ⁓ you know, really evidence-based but also really profound ⁓ subconscious tools and methods to create ripples and change in the lives of others. So yeah, so I guess, know, sort of as a long way to answer that question, there is a slight, you know, transition that's going to be happening in my business to start drawing in more of those people. I already have been organically anyway.

Kez Stuk: Mm.

Katharine McLean: but it's probably gonna start looking a bit more deliberate in how I start to change some of my messaging to really let people know that, this is what I do, this is what I offer. ⁓ And then putting together something that people can come together in a group setting, because I really do believe the transformations that happen when we connect as women as a collective, it's just the ripple is profound versus when we're doing it on our own or even just one-on-one.

Kez Stuk: ⁓ I couldn't agree more. That's so beautiful and said as such a cancer North node ninth house, ninth house. Like that is literally what, what you're here to do. And it's yeah, it's so special that nurture that mother bringing women together. And I think, yeah, I've really noticed as well when we connect as women together, it's, we realize how human we are.

Katharine McLean: Ha ha.

Kez Stuk: which I think people we forget we can feel so isolated in our emotions and it's remembering the humaness and that everyone else has experienced some version of what we've experienced and we're actually not crazy or alone or however we may have felt in the world and to do that in a collective really is so transformative and I've had the pleasure of witnessing too so so beautiful yeah.

Katharine McLean: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: such a watch this space.

Katharine McLean: It is, it's very exciting and it's the year of the horse so you know what better time to take action and you know change a slight direction than this ⁓ year.

Kez Stuk: absolutely love that. That is so exciting and ⁓ before I let you go I did want to ask you because you have such a array of wisdom from so many sources who were maybe three mentors or spiritual teachers or writings that you really anchor as you know transformational along your journey and your path.

Katharine McLean: Yeah, love this. There's been so many, but you know, I think I've sort of touched on those ones that woke me up, you know, right from the outset. ⁓ So I think, you know, we've covered those. But in addition to that, ⁓ Michael Singer is probably a very ⁓ profound, you know, sort of teacher of, you know, spiritual wisdom. I loved his book, The Untethered Soul ⁓ and the Surrender Experiment as well, of course.

Kez Stuk: Yes. Mmm.

Katharine McLean: ⁓ I'm really into the Kabbalah teachings as well, if I'm honest. And I think David Guiam has been someone that's kind of introduced me into that. So it's a bit more, I guess, mainstream in some ways, the way he's ⁓ articulating a lot of these concepts, which, know, back in my day, Kabbalah has been around forever in terms of like, used to be everyone wear the red string when Madonna was into it and ⁓ Demi Moore and all the rest. you know, I've been exposed to it, but never really got into it. And

Kez Stuk: Hmm.

Katharine McLean: Yeah, it's just resonating with me on a really deep level. ⁓ And I guess though the other, you know, spiritual teacher that for me personally was just, you know, incredible because of her ⁓ journey is Gabby Bernstein. So Gabrielle Bernstein, ⁓ because she was also a woman who's in recovery, you know, from drugs and alcohols addiction. So when I got sober and I found her, it was like I was looking at a future version of me.

Kez Stuk: Mm.

Katharine McLean: ⁓ And it was strange. It was like my guides were showing me, you know, like she would come through in meditation a lot and these visions of being on stage ⁓ would come through and I'd be like, what on earth am I doing in a stadium? Like, that's weird. Like I'm terrified of public speaking, get me out of the stadium. ⁓ But it was like I was being shown through her and through her body of work. ⁓ that there was something there, you know, maybe in a parallel timeline that I was going to, you know, emulate in body in my own way, because she just has such a unique way of, guess, blending the concepts from the 12 step recovery model with spiritual teachings. And a lot of my, you know, connection to my spirit guides and all that sort of stuff has come through her teachings too. So yeah, so she's definitely been a game changer for me. Yeah, I mean. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous was also another life-changing text for me too. I it's a channeled mean, so is A Course in Miracles too. That's another good one that I've loved, but yeah.

Kez Stuk: Yes. Yes, the AI, yeah. Yes, so much you just said there particularly. I absolutely love that your guide showed you a future version of you that was relatable enough that you could see your life through that. that is amazing and I've actually had that experience myself. It is so impactful. Like it's, you know, it just feels so real and you're like, ⁓ I can see it now. So I believe it, you know, and it's such a beautiful anchor to walk forward with.

Katharine McLean: Mmm. Mmm, yeah. Yeah, but it was equally terrifying because I was wanting to shut it down because I was like, that's just weird and there's maybe a glitch in the matrix. I don't know what you're showing me this for. It was sort of that type of response. yeah, the amount of people that have told me, you remind me of ⁓ Gabby Bernstein. You look like her or you've got similar sort of ways of communicating things. And sometimes

Kez Stuk: I love that.

Katharine McLean: Sometimes I see her, catch a glimpse of her on a reel or something and I do go, that me? Like it's weird, you know? ⁓ So I think there's just, there is some sort of resonance there and you know, we're very different in many, many ways, but you know, as any kind of, I guess, expander, she's not, I'm not here to emulate her and be her. I'm here to be expanded by her. Yeah.

Kez Stuk: No, you're your own unique human who will embody your wisdom and that expands you and shows you what you're capable of, which is amazing. And we all need those people. I think that's actually something, a really good point. Like it's so helpful to have those people that you can aspire to be, but not to copy or it's more to bring into your own body and your own wisdom.

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Exactly. And I think we, you know, we often shut ourselves down around that as well, because we think, I learnt that from that teacher, so I can't copy them. again, like if you just trust in in letting yourself absorb all this information from as many different sources as you need to, like I had been reading Eckhart Tolle for years and I was very well-versed on the ego. And so when I started reading Gabby Bernstein and I also when I started reading the Alcoholics Anonymous book, I was already like changing some of the wording in the AA book because I was like, you know, yeah, just the way they describe certain words. was like, no, that's the ego. What they're talking about there is the ego. And I think just, you know, you're not really meant to do that because, you know, that's like, they would say that's probably quite egoic of me to change words. But but I was like, no, but I know what what that means. And that's how I interpret this. And that's actually how it helps me to integrate this wisdom.

Kez Stuk: Mmm.

Katharine McLean: And again, it's why it became one of the foundations of my teachings when I developed my first group program. It like, we need to understand we have an ego. We need to understand that we need to give it a name. We need to understand it's operating from a place of protection. ⁓ And then I would start weaving in things that Gabby had taught me around, speaks first and loudest and ⁓ all this sort of stuff. So I think, yeah, again, I work with some women who are so afraid of, don't want to copy that. And it's like, you're not copying. This is not what this is. It's about keeping your channel open, but knowing that, you know, what comes through you, you have your own energetic signature. And so it, when you communicate, even if you might say the same exact words, it's not landing in the same exact way anyway, because you're a different human being with a different frequency. And you will always, if you get out of your own way, you will get, you will put a different spin on it. You know, it's just how we are as humans. We're here to create, you know, we don't just manufacture and repeat words. I mean, we can, but it's. doesn't feel good in the body and I've trust me I've been there like even on my podcast where I was reading my own words but reading it and I was like this doesn't feel right there's something not you know flowing here um so yeah so I think no matter what we we feel called to share on even if it is something we learned in a book or whatever it's like just speak about it just speak about like start speaking and let like the words flow and what you'll find is the more that you do that your own take on it just

Kez Stuk: Mmm. Hmm.

Katharine McLean: comes through naturally, you know? And that's, yeah, that's what we're here for.

Kez Stuk: Totally Like let life move through you like a hundred percent and I think that's what I struggle with Like I think AI is amazing and I think it's here to revolutionize us in so many ways and I'm such a big proponent of it but I just really struggled lately with that Surgence of it's so obvious when things are coming through AI Online like be your authentic self like no one is looking for a robotic version of the truth

Katharine McLean: Yes.

Kez Stuk: And it's like your essence is what attracts people to you. And it's just such a shame to hide behind that.

Katharine McLean: No, no. Yeah, it is. It is. And you're promised people can't find you if you're pretending to be someone you're not, you know? So it's like if you're running a business, you're basically putting a shield in front of your magnetism, yeah, and you're kind of blocking those people from finding you. And you might still, you know, capture clients, but I still feel like ⁓ the, not the quality, but like, you know, the type of client might not be resonant.

Kez Stuk: Totally. Authenticity in itself, yeah.

Katharine McLean: know what I mean? It might not be a client that you're necessarily wanting to call in because they might have different types of you know issues that they're faced with. So it's like yeah you've just got to show up authentically and trust that it's not about force either. You know it's not about forcing your your stance on everything onto people but it's just about being true and you know knowing that what you have to share matters and you matter and you're important and you don't need to prove it you know.

Kez Stuk: Mm.

Katharine McLean: ⁓ Yeah, these are all things I had to learn along the way.

Kez Stuk: absolutely and even just you were saying before about the 12 steps and AA are you familiar with ⁓ David Hawkins work?

Katharine McLean: Absolutely, another one of my favourite teachers, yes.

Kez Stuk: yet. me too, the great man. But it's so interesting how so in his work he speaks about, ⁓ he really speaks about addiction and how the 12 steps were a channeled method. And I have so much admiration for the 12 steps and what they show us about life. Like I don't think people understand how impactful that journey is that you go on and

Katharine McLean: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, 100%.

Kez Stuk: had life changing, could be just beyond alcoholism. Like it's literally teaching you about life. And I just, when I read that through David Hawkins' work, I was just so amazed by it. And just for anyone listening just really quickly, David Hawkins established a map of consciousness. He was a renowned psychiatrist who went into ⁓ deep into spirituality, dedicated his whole life to it and channeled through him.

Katharine McLean: Hmm.

Kez Stuk: map of consciousness where he was able to scientifically measure the frequency of emotions and basically the frequency of love is it vibrates at 500 Hertz and you can actually calibrate texts and wisdom and teachings and the 12 steps was calibrated at 540 Hertz which is just so beautiful like that He speaks about how that group, which you shared earlier about sitting together in a group calibrates at 540 Hertz because it's pure love and truth and connection and sharing wisdom and feeling safe and held in that space. And in being truthful and vulnerable in your addiction, in what you're going through, that's how you transform because you're being seen and you're being.

Katharine McLean: Yes.

Kez Stuk: showing that you're safe to be seen in that vulnerability.

Katharine McLean: Yeah, yeah. ⁓ that's profound. I love all of that that you're sharing. ⁓ Because it is it's something you can't put you can't put a price on and then they don't it's price. It's free. That's the that's the the magic of it is like you can anyone can walk in at any time of day there are you know, hundreds of meetings on every single day online or in person and you know, there will always be a door open for a struggling alcoholic or addict and the teachings and the community and the healing that happens in those rooms is beyond anything that happens out here in the real world. And it, you know, I, yeah, my brother and I have been brought back to life and not just brought back to, you know, our past life. We're like, you know, it's like we've been given a new life and it's, yeah, it's, not everybody makes it through ⁓ because again, it's, it's down to what your capacity is and your readiness is to take in these teachings. But it's not about alcohol. It's not about the drug. You know, we've got to realize that it's, it's always been about our relationship to self and to the ego and you know, how those things are ⁓ operating in our psyche. yeah, like Carl Jung was heavily influenced or heavily, you know, influenced the teachings and the, the 12 steps as well. And so when I discovered all of that, when I first got sober, I was like, ⁓ my God, you know, again, being the double Scorpio, like I was eating it up. was like, ⁓ shadow work, let's get in, let's get stuck into it. ⁓ and that's what it is. It's, it's just, you know, shadow work. ⁓ and it's not for everyone because not everyone likes to look at themselves in that way and take responsibility in that way. But when you do, ⁓ my goodness, like everything starts opening up for you. And yeah, not just that, but as you say, you get to calibrate with other humans who are also doing that work on themselves. And so no one is having a go at you about anything like, you know, people aren't just. ⁓ like the way we do in the real world, guess, we kind of cut people off in traffic or we bitch about our boss and say they didn't give us the right, you know, pay rise or whatever. But in the community and the fellowship of AI, we don't we don't work like that. You know, we take responsibility for if something's coming up in me, that's for me to manage. And I'll go and talk to my mentor or my sponsor about that. I would never project that onto another human being because it's not about them. It's about me. You know, so that like foundational stuff like people underestimate, you know, like they think that

Kez Stuk: Totally and that's

Katharine McLean: Yeah, that those of us that have struggled with addiction are kind of, you know, in those rooms, you know, crying about, you know, we want to get a drink and stuff. It's like, no, we're learning how to take responsibility for ourselves and we're doing it and we're doing it with, you know, great success. So, yeah, it's an incredible program.

Kez Stuk: Yeah, I just really felt like shedding light on that. Something in me just said like I want to shed light on that and just ⁓ destigmatize it. Not, know, for anyone listening that feels called to it. It's ⁓ yeah, just from what I've read on it from maybe more of a spiritual perspective, because that's how my understanding has come through. ⁓ Has it's come through to me through that way is just how like the power of turning shame into love really because I imagine that you feel so much shame about this secret you're hiding and then to go in a room where you're actually loved in that space like I couldn't imagine anything more transformative than that.

Katharine McLean: Yes, yes. 100%, 100%. And I was just sharing it with a client the other day. It is, it's, I've never felt it anywhere in the world. And I probably, you know, never will again in terms of like the, the cathartic experience and the unfolding, you know, of all of that shame and just to be held and accepted. Cause I had some, you know, horrible things that I was holding and to let them go and let them be turned into love. Like, yeah, you can't.

Kez Stuk: Hmm.

Katharine McLean: You can't even put words around that, the way that feels.

Kez Stuk: Mmm, yeah, because shame just is so heavy in the body

Katharine McLean: Yeah, it is, it is 100%. It's the lowest frequency of them all. Yeah, and it's a magnet. All of our emotions are magnets. So the more shame you hold, the more you're gonna keep seeking out experiences to bring that shame back up to the forefront. So yeah, we've got to take responsibility at some point for what lives within us so that we can alchemize it.

Kez Stuk: The lowest, yep. ⁓ Yeah, beautifully said. I love that. And Katherine, where can people find you?

Katharine McLean: Yeah, they are welcome to find me on social media on ⁓ Instagram or Facebook or TikTok ⁓ at The Light Becomes Her. But I've also got a website as well, which is my name, KatherineMcLean.com.au.

Kez Stuk: Beautiful and if people wanted to ⁓ work with you in a mentorship capacity how would they do that?

Katharine McLean: They can just reach out to me via Instagram or via my website and yeah, they can send a message and we can have a chat.

Kez Stuk: Beautiful. Thank you so much. I've absolutely loved this chart. It's been so special.

Katharine McLean: It has. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it as well. And thank you for connecting and, you know, seeing something in me that I, you know, wasn't aware was so visible to, to certain people, but obviously you saw my chart. So I was like, Ooh, she's read into my soul. ⁓ So now it's been amazing to be able to connect with you and your podcast is doing such, you know, such brilliant work. So yeah, I'm really inspired by you as well, Kez. So thank you for having me.

Kez Stuk: thank you as I'm as am I to you thank you