20. When you finally choose yourself

Welcome to She's Honestly Mental, a podcast for women who are done pretending they're fine when they're falling apart on the inside. I'm your host, Karina Rawlinson, ADHD brain medicated mind and proud mental health hospital alumni.

Still here, still showing up somehow. This is a space for the feelers.

The fixers, and the ones who carry it all and still wonder if it's enough. We talk about the chaos, the connection, and everything in between, because silent silence nearly killed me. And these conversations save lives. All right, cacao in hand, headphones on, chaos semi contained, let's get Honestly Mental.

Welcome to episode 20.

It is the last episode of this season. The first season of She's Honestly Mental is wrapping up today, taking a little bit of a break for a few weeks whilst we prep for season two.

I'm like, what a wanker.

I've got seasons on my podcast, but I think it's really important just for me to have a bit of a time to stop, reflect and just really cheer myself on for a really amazing 2025 wild. So one of my favorite ways to reflect is to be able to sit through and scroll through my photos to just kind of remind me of how amazing this year's been, all my mems. And yeah, it's been an absolutely wild one. I spoke about it in an episode.

Not long ago, just kind of how.

Shit things had been for Jared and I, and it was funny. I spoke to him after I recorded the episode and I said, hey, babe. I chatted a little bit about how crap things were for us, but I just wanted to talk about it in a way that I think is really fair and reasonable to help others understand relationships.

And he was like, you know what?

I trust you and I know that, you know, like, you've got this so funny. At the end of 2024 last year, a lot of people don't actually know this, so I.

Well, you know, I probably that I.

Joined Rotary, our local Rotary club, a few years ago and I was their first female member. I joined Rotary because there was three youth suicides here in Esperance over a very quick period of time. Two in one week and one a few months earlier.

And myself and some other moms got.

Together and said, we have to try and do something in town to help the kids process. You know, the high school was at capacity.

They had a lot of psychologists fly in. These kids were 16, 17.

So young, so much potential, but truly struggling.

And again, this is a lot of the reason why I share my story. So we Went to Rotary and said, hey, we can get some funding through this foundation here in town.

But we need, because us group of.

Mums are literally just a group of mums is we need someone to auspice, someone who can basically put their name on this, build the foundation for the funds and pay the bills from the project that we're trying to put together. And we had this group come to town called Armed for Life, Adam Pritzula was his name.

And they came in and went to all of the schools in town.

They did a talk at the civic.

Center to talk about resilience. And one of the really cool things that I learned mostly from Adam and.

His team was you have this scale.

So imagine a ruler kind of 1 to 10, and it's your resilience scale.

And when you have certain events in.

Your life, deaths, divorce, births, traumatic events.

It increases on your, like, resilience scale.

Like your resilience capacity.

And these things add up.

And generally when you have something traumatic happen, like a death or a divorce or a traumatic event, it can take months if not years to be able to reduce that kind of trauma on your resilience scale. So if you have multiple things adding up quite quickly, you can get to 10, you can be maxed out, you can be on your rev limiter of resilience, your capacity, it's just maxed out.

There is nothing left to give. And that was really, really powerful because.

We knew that it was going to.

Take time for our town to kind.

Of come back from this, to settle with this. And so with Rotary, I knew that.

This group had the power to be.

Able to make a lot of change in our town.

And I became really quite obsessed with it.

My dad was a Rotarian, and over the period of dealing with Armed for Life, I learned a lot about Rotary and just how amazing they are.

If you've been around for a while, you already know. My mornings don't start without my cacao. I've been drinking Invictus Apothecary ceremonial cacao since 2020. It's literally been everywhere with me across Australia, up to Broome and even in my inpatient hospital stays. It's my one little moment of sacredness each morning, usually brought to me, made with love by Jared, bless him. The beautiful humans behind it, Jody and Ben, AKA the Captain and the crew, also run Naturally Esperance, their gorgeous local store and dispensary. They've been part of my world for years, and I'm honestly so grateful for what they've created. And now they've given me a little something for you. My choose. Honestly, mental fan, you can get 10% off their 250 gram and 1 kilo cacao in store and online using the code SHM FAM. All one word. Just head to Invictus apothecary.com or pop into Naturally Esperance if you're a local.

So our club had been around for 60 years at the time that I kind of got to meet and get to know them.

And they had no women in their club ever. There was a couple of members that said, if there's anyone with a vagina that joins the group, we're leaving.

And of course, when I applied to be a member, my dad had said to me, you're going to be the first one.

And I said, yeah. And he goes, if you can, let's go. All right. And I haven't really had a lot in common with my dad.

We had a pretty rocky relationship going.

Through my teen years when my parents separated. But it was really fun to be able to have something in common with him and to be able to do something with him.

So I became a member in Feb 2021, I want to say.

And it was so good.

It was so fun being the first female member in 60 years.

And now the club has, I feel.

Like close to 10 women. I recently resigned, but this is after I've been able to help implement some really awesome projects. And the biggest rules with Rotary is family first business and then Rotary. And just for the season that we're at in our life for us, the club normally meets Mondays and the children, the children, our kids have basketball, swimming.

And all of those things. So long story short, I digress was.

New Year's Eve 2024 and New Year's Eve 2023.

Our club was handed the New Year's.

Event from the other Rotary club in town. And I said to our team, I.

Was like, right, we can do this. It's going to be really great. One of the biggest things was that the local shire didn't want to do fireworks anymore because they're not environmentally friendly. Little old me was like, right, let's suss this out.

And I managed to find some fireworks.

That were environmentally friendly and we got the approval from the shire to go.

Ahead and do that. The problem was that these cost twice as much as the normal non environmentally friendly fireworks.

Don't even go down the rabbit hole of what's in fireworks because you'll never be able to find an accurate ingredients or MDs because fireworks companies don't Give out those information because that's their recipe of their fireworks.

Anyway, so we did the fireworks, and.

The problem was they never went off. We literally had paid for 10 minutes.

Of fireworks, and we got maybe a minute, and they were delayed by over an hour, which was horrific in itself.

And, oh, I just can't even. It was so bad. We had people on Facebook being like.

What a waste of time. What a blah, blah, blah.

Like, we just got absolutely hammered.

Like, it was yuck.

And we would say that it was.

A really big learning curve for us in our club. But then for New Year's 2024, I decided we'd do something different.

Let's do a laser show. The thing was that the laser show.

Was three times as much money as fireworks, but it was something different. We didn't have to worry about the weather.

All of the rest of it.

It was really, really cool. But the whole event cost us nearly $120,000. It was wild.

It was epic. We had music in the sound shell. It was like, music and band and a great photographer, and we had awesome markets. And the laser show went off and it was. It was so good. And there was definitely things that we.

Could have improved on, but the abuse.

And the distasteful comments that we got.

On social media following that event was horrid. So, anyway, I rang in 2025 or 2024. 2025 for this epic laser show.

And it was cool. I was really proud of myself for.

Bringing that together with our team, but also being able to enjoy that moment.

Of learning of, yeah, I can do.

These things, but do I really need to?

No.

Which is kind of what led me to my resignation with Rotary was because. And definitely that kind of person that will just get in, get things done. And I just needed to not do that. So as we scoot into January, January was definitely all about the beach, all about surf club. It was fantastic. It was fun. We just spent so much time in the sun.

The kids went surfing.

And, yeah, at the time, I was still working pretty much full time in my bestie's bookstore. She was really unwell with some chronic illness. Well, not some chronic illness with multiple chronic illnesses.

And, yeah, I just did what I.

Could to help her as much as I possibly could with my retail experience.

We headed off to Albany for the.

Weekend for the kids to do a surf club carnival. I did it solo, so it was my first solo trip with all three kids lucky enough to have a friend travel over with me with her kids.

And it was awesome.

Now, if you know, you know. And you're in the world of fantasy. Romantasy with having the bookshop. We hosted a launch night for Onyx Storm. So it's a third book in.

Gosh, I can't even think of what the series is.

I want to say like Iron Flame and Fourth Wing. Yeah.

So we did this midnight launch party and it was insane. I remember working most of the day.

And then I went home and then we had like 40 people turn up in the middle of the night to.

Purchase their pre orders of this book.

It was wild. And unfortunately my bestie was really not feeling well. So I remember doing that and that was super cool. We then scoot around to the beginning.

Of Feb. Oh no. At the end of Jan Celeste, who.

Works in our office, got married. So it was really fun. I was kind of their last minute mc and let's just say that party was lit.

I slayed.

It was fun. It was so fun. Obviously being a podcast host and someone that loves talking shit all day long. Being an MC was a dream come true. My big kids started school. They went into year five and year six. I attempted swimming lessons with the two year old. Not great.

And I really struggled with trying to.

Get my electrolytes, potassium, magnesium and things settled in my body. I spent a fair bit of time in Feb, kind of in and out of hospital trying to sort myself out. I was having dizzy spells and stuff. Surf Club had our grand opening for the new club rooms. I raced some go karts and just as Surf Club wrapped up, we had our final club event. Graydon got an award and it was like most consistent nipper in his age group. That afternoon we came home and the little legend went mountain biking with some friends, fell off his bike and broke his collarbone.

Ugh.

Not fun at all. We ended up having to head through to Perth that weekend because Austin was competing in a surf club competition, State champs. And so we managed to get Graydon.

In to have surgery at the same.

Time that we're in Perth for Surf Club champs.

It was just so typical of us.

To head to Perth to be doing all of the things at once.

And it just, it was a lot.

There was a lot of me being very overwhelmed, overstimulated. But we just had to get in and get the stuff done. We came home and that's a bit of the season where Spotty was struggling and we weren't in a super great place relationship wise. Financially. I kind of had to really step away from the bookshop and there was a lot of guilt around that. My bestie and her fam were also not really in a great position to be dealing with it. And yeah, I felt like a proper like shit person walking away, but I needed to be able to prioritize us and our family. Typical me though. I decided that I would try and.

Start like a new gym routine and.

Get into some exercise stuff but it just was really like what the hell are you doing, Karina? I see. It's definitely a bit of a theme for me, but it's settling down now. I walk into 2026 with the definite want and need for more ease and.

Flow and less trying to do all of the things because why I'm doing.

It for everyone else and not for.

Me and all it does is fucks.

Up my capacity to be a good mom, a wife, a person and to prioritize me and who I am. I wrapped up March with Jared and I starting a coaching program with mechanical kind of business.

We spent time really trying to focus.

On prioritizing ourselves and our business and it was rough.

It was really rough.

There's loads of books that I read. I love taking photos of those. I traveled to Albany for Go Karts to officiate. I was asked a few weekends before that to step up and actually sit on the executive committee board for carding wa. That is a whole story in itself. Ugh. Not happy Jen.

Lots of lessons there and again lots.

Of lessons around how to handle my adhd, how to not fly off the handle, how to really recognize when I'm at capacity, and how to really recognize.

When I just need to sit the.

Fuck down, take a breath and just.

Have a moment to myself.

Wild. We really stepped up our marketing era. I learned a lot. I onboarded an ea, an executive assistant that didn't last super long because I was not ready to have someone working that close to me. I had too much on my mind. I had too much on my plate and to try and offload that with anyone else was a lot. But this was my era of stepping into She's Honestly Mental. So at the beginning of May I.

Shared a little TikTok where I literally cried like a little bitch because I was so scared of putting myself first. So scared. I was scared that I was about to lock myself into a three hour meeting to talk to someone about our brand and our brand strategy for She's Honestly Mental to talk about the purpose.

And the meaning behind it.

However, it was the turning point for me to really get into this space of owning something for me. So fun. So we did a little Trip away down south for Jared's bestie childhood friend's wedding. It was amazing. It was in this beautiful winery. Being down south, beginning of May, it just rained the entire time. And it was whilst we were away there that some family members. I was sitting, working, had my laptop out, building on some strategy, building my social media plan, working on different bits and pieces that a family member said to me, you shouldn't be talking about this stuff online because no one wants to hear it. People will use this against you. And I was gutted. I was absolutely gutted. But I knew wholeheartedly that this is what I was meant to be doing. As we jump into May, we had the 30th anniversary, 30 years of racing for our local go kart club, which I've been a part of since I was quite young. It was great. We had a massive state event where we had 120 drivers come down. It was a lot, it was full on and it definitely pushed my capacity. But I was very excited to see the end of that weekend. As we scroll through May, there's just so much more marketing and traveling and winter stuff and going wood chopping and just spending a bit more time with our fam. My eldest went on his first school camp. Oh. I joined her new hockey team. That was fun. That was the best. I played my best hockey this year and I truly, truly loved being able to do that. I went to Perth and played hockey country week and it was epic. We came fifth overall. We went to Dockers and North Melbourne footy game and one of my friends said to me, I was like, yes, I'm gonna get a North Melbourne, some North Melbourne merch. She said to me, if you do, I am like, you are dead to me. And of course that was basically a like, let's go do this. We were sitting at the game and of course typical jockers, they didn't show up until like halftime, three quarter time. The jockers fans were sitting on the edge of their seats. Every time North Melbourne scored, I jumped up and I was like, yes, bring it on. And my friends behind me literally wanted to smack me in the face. We had the best time. Whilst I was away, the boys raced go karts.

And on our last game, I got.

Absolutely slammed, body slammed by this woman who just didn't stop. She ran straight through me. There was a penalty against her and I ended up with a full blown concussion. Would not recommend. Came home and we had our first delivery of a massive self propelled sprayer. So if you're not a farmer, obviously you're not going to know what it is, but it's a big machine tractor that has a boom on it and sprays the crops. That was super epic because this was a brand that Jared and I had been working with four years previously. But when we changed business directions, we lost that brand. And so it was great for us to be able to get that back. Whilst this was all going on, I was dealing with some serious governance stuff with a few different groups that I was involved in and this stuff was taking up my brain space. It was crap. It was a shitty time of my life and I'm grateful that I went through it, but also I'm like, did you really need to do that, Karina?

I don't know.

So, as we wrap up June, I did a quick trip to Perth with my son. We had some appointments with a neurologist because he's been having these episodes of.

Hallucinating and delirious when he was sick.

I also managed to book in for my first photo shoot. Well, I'd booked in for a photo shoot with Bell years ago. Never got a chance to kind of do it. And it happened to work out really well with my son's appointments. I could do this photo shoot with Bell. I treated my son to staying at the Crown Towers for the night. We went and did the appointments, we did some shopping, we went to his appointment with the neurologist and it did not go the way that we thought it was going to. It led into this big, massive spiral of different events that happened for him, including urgent MRIs, urgent blood tests, brain scans, all the things. And it was hectic. And this was all while I was doing a brand photo shoot. It was hard. It was rough. I cried so much and he just was brave as fuck. So incredibly brave. We flew home the next day. We went and delivered this big sprayer to the customer that had ordered it. And literally two days later, we jumped in a car and drove to Broome for our annual trip north. Oh, it was fun. It was the best. We just love it. You spent a couple of days in the freezing cold as you head through the middle of WA up to Broome. And then we spent some extra time. We had about a week before kind of everyone else was meeting up there. So there was 80 of us from Esperance that went up for this surf club event. We did things like Tom Price, Hammersley Gorge, eighty Mile Beach, Barnhill Station. It's just great. Like, to be able to have those adventures with our family is completely priceless. And it is A huge value for us to be able to have those moments together. Honestly, like Broome, I have no words, absolutely none. Being able to be in the sun with our friends in the middle of winter while it's freezing cold at home. Epic, Epic, Epic. We came home. I spent about a week or so at home and then I jumped on the plane and went to Bali all on my lonesome. It was epic. We went on a bit of a retreat with my friend MG and Kim Kent and they kind of do this annually where the bunch of entrepreneurs go over there and have moments of time and reflection and chill out. I ended up working so epically hard. That's where I re recorded the first few episodes of She's Honestly Mental did the intro outro. I went to this really cool podcast studio and I had the actual best time. One of the things for me though is being gluten free. Traveling is really hard and I struggled with eating over there, trying to get stuff that I could actually eat properly. And I ended up getting a couple of those like IV infusions where they come to your villa. And yeah, a lot of the girls spent a lot of time out and about doing things, partying, drinking, whatever. I worked most of the time that I was there and it was, it was so good, it filled my soul up so much. Problem was at home. Reuben was really sick. He picked up rhinovirus, he had fevers. Jared couldn't work, there was no daycare, it was crap. So I ended up flying home from Bali early. Lucky thing is is like flights to.

Bali are super, super cheap.

So I just booked the earliest flight home I could get, got home, spent the day with my fam in Perth and then went to my brother and sister in law's engagement party. When we got there, she was dressed in this beautiful white dress, my niece was in a beautiful white dress and we knew that they had gotten married. It was amazing. It was great to be able to get home, get back to the fam and get back into a bit of a routine. I was supposed to head to the Gold coast for another retreat at the beginning of September and I had some trips planned to Perth in the meantime. More checkups for my son, more go Kart events in et cetera. And I ended up just making the call that going to the Gold coast for this retreat just wasn't going to happen for us. So August kind of wrapped out Episodes of She's Honestly Mental launched on my birthday which was the 1st of September.

It was really, really, really cool.

We went to new to Gate for the field days and sold some machinery, came home and wrapped up the hockey season. I'd been really kind of working that hockey season on becoming an umpire, and I was honored to, at the awards night, receive the rising star award for umpiring. Completely unexpected, but everyone around me was like, how did you not know? Because you were putting your hand up left, right and center, asking questions and doing all the things I was like. I just was doing it because I enjoyed it. Lots of lessons for me around really being in places that value me as a human and value my worth, rather than being in places where people are just like, it doesn't matter what cool ideas, what bright things I have to say, ways that I can be like, hey guys, let's improve your system. They just didn't want to know about it. So I learned that that's not my place and where I want to be. The beginning of September was crazy. I went to Perth for the Biz Revolution gala. One of my besties, Em, has this amazing online group for women in business and she hosted this gala where she actually gave away, I want to say, two lots of $5,000 to two different women in business for amazing projects that they had coming up. And it was so fun because I was a major sponsor and my logo.

She'S honestly mental, was in lights on the big screens around Optus Stadium in Perth.

It was so, so cool. Came home from that and it was busy. As for us, we were right in the swings of pre harvest work for all of our clients. Everything was wild. Jared was hardly home. Like, we were busy, busy, busy. And of course, as you kind of head into September school holidays, as we come out of these September school holidays, for us here in esports, we have our local bag show and it was the wildest show for us. We sold every piece of machinery that we had on site and that's never happened to us before. Things changed dramatically for us within our business and it was because I was entirely present. Jared and I spent time getting on the same page. It was the best thing that we have ever done and it was because I actually had capacity to let go of the things that no longer that were not for me, that were not my things to carry. I am proud of the person that I have been this whole time. I'm always proud of me, but I feel like everything that I have worked towards has actually truly manifested and come to fruition. Towards the last six months of this year, I was honored to attend a birth as a doula. It was amazing. This mum was amazing. I am so proud. It was great. I got to be able to witness a full water birth and it was. It was so good. And this was on the night that we had finished the AG show. So I text her and I said, hey, just so you know, I'm gonna have a nap. Anything happens, I need you to call me because I'm probably going to be well into her sleep. And she called me and it was great and it was fun and it was the best and my cup was full. Then towards like, October for us with harvest is just an actual blur. Some of our customers started harvesting. Jared was never home. The kids, of course, have all of the end of year things. And as we continued to go through November, Surf club started. The kids were still doing swimming. I've been coaching both of the boys basketball teams. Absolutely wild. Would not recommend, but again, this is just me learning what my capacity actually is. I know that I can do the things, but I need to be like, not. We went to Bremer Bay for the weekend at the end of November. It was amazing. After Bremer, I shot through to Perth and went to the Success School 2026 planning day. I had another branding shoot with Bell and it was incredible. And then spent some of my day with Vicky working through our finances. It was really good, but it was also really good to get home. I got home and my eldest boy, Graydon, graduated year six. We got to go to their little graduation assembly and I was sitting there and I'm like, oh, the boys are not getting awards. Not that it really matters, right? But both of my boys are pretty talented in some areas, so it's not uncommon for them to get awards at the end of year.

Awards.

Anyway, I'm sitting there and I'd said to a friend, oh, like, I never got a text. So clearly the boy's not getting anything. Like, that's fine. It's all good. Turns out I did get a text message because one of my boys got an award and then the second one got an award also. And so proud of them for their hard work and achievements. Some of the biggest things with Graydon in particular around his anxiety and things that have been happening for school has been the inability to be able to regulate his emotions, to be able to get in and do his schoolwork. So proud of him because he smashed year six. He worked so hard, he nailed it. So it was really great to be able to kind of wrap up the end of their school year with the boys doing really well. Incredibly proud of them. We had our wind up for the go karts and last kind of games for basketball. One of the coolest things was at the beginning of December I resigned as a Rotarian. But one of the projects that our Rotary Club has been doing is this bright project where they come into the school and build bikes with some of our kind of more like at risk kids that just need a little bit more love and attention and some one on one so they get this reward where the Rotary guys come in, rebuild these bikes with these kids. And then these kids are presented with the bikes a few weeks later that they've completely rebuilt themselves with the help of the Rotarians. One of the Rotary guys, Rod, he's epic. He said to me, hey Karina, I've been asked to do this really cool thing which is jump in a helicopter, dress up for Santa, land at the school and give out the kids some icy poles, et cetera. Can you come and take some photos for me? I was like, absolutely love to do that. Definitely my zone of genius. Let me help you. So I go to the helipad and grab some photos of Rod before we leave. And then the pilot's like, hey, why don't you jump in with us? So I had this random trip in a helicopter to our primary school. It was literally an eight minute flight. I had tears landing because the kids at our school don't get this kind of treat. You know, other schools in town were doing a fun color run and all of those kind of things. We had Santa rock up in a helicopter and I got to be there and see it. And the look on their faces was something that I will remember forever. So I feel like our family has rounded out 2020 for five, so. Well. I had such an amazing Christmas with our family. Not so great obviously with granny having her car accident. But all in all, it has been an amazing time for us. So 2025, you have done me good. 2026, I cannot wait to see what you have in store for me. And I'm just really grateful. Grateful for all of you for being in a space with me and for tuning in. Make sure whilst we're on our season break that you jump over to socials, say hi. You can follow me on Instagram or Facebook at. She's honestly mental. You can always go back and listen to past episodes. You can jump in and subscribe to the Chaos Letters. A few things are getting upgrades over this little break and I cannot wait to share with them all. So. So again, massive thanks. Chat soon.

Thanks for hanging out with me on she's honestly mental. If today's episode cracked open something inside of you or gave you space to exhale, come say hi over at Instagram She's honestly mental. Or send this to someone who needs.

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Until next time, take care of your brain. You're not broken, you're just honestly mental.

And all the best people are.