Katie Wells | Healing Trauma, Wellness Mama: The Road To Self Love & Letting Go | Wellness Force

Never waste a trigger. Often we get triggered and we resist and we think, I shut this down. I don't want to feel this. But those are wonderful opportunities to face whatever that thing is and to start really delving into it, to start to unpack things.

So today is a really special podcast. Thank you for being here on Wellness Force, Katie. I feel like it's really cool moment, actually. Wellness Force meets Wellness Mama. And I got the pleasure of being on your podcast, and you asked such great questions. You guys do such a good job. You've been in this space for, gosh, 11 years, 15 years. How many years have you actually been in the wellness world?

Yeah, almost 15. Since my first child was born.

15. Background in research, background in journalism, really. Someone who has their foot in both worlds, you know, academia and intelligence, but also from your own journey, which we're going to unpack slowly with care today. Someone who has a big spiritual and emotional journey, too. And I think that's why people can trust you. There's something that I've heard from many masters, Katie, and it's both, like, ancient and contemporary, and it's, you know, if you can see the world from someone else's eyes or you can walk the world in someone else's shoes, you'll have a greater understanding of what it's like to actually be alive, not just from your own vantage point, but to be alive from consciousness itself, from the observer, from the witness. And I think about what you've gone through and the things that we're gonna explore today. And I just wanted to say thank you for doing what you do in the world, for being who you are, for having the fricking courage to be able to speak out and speak up about a lot of these issues that literally millions of people, I can't imagine how many people are struggling with mental health right now with everything we're going through lockdowns, enforce this, enforce that. But if people don't know you, maybe it's the first time they're seeing your face or they're hearing you. What is Wellness Mama In a paragraph or two. What does that mean to you now?

It is a really large online community for women, especially moms, and it started and mirrored my own motherhood journey. But realizing at that point, as I was trying to figure out my own health, that there were many people going through the same thing. And I love your point about experiencing the world through someone else's eyes and feelings and their being as well. And that became a really strong driver for me to be able to Help those other women and also to help our children. A large part of the spark that started Wellness Mama was reading that our kids generation was going to be the first in over two centuries to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And whenever we see that bell curve reverse that trend, to me, that's a big wake up call. So I didn't know how I would do it, but I wanted to help change that statistic. And I realized early on that moms were going to be the key to that because not only are we raising the next generation, but we have so much purchasing power within society. And when moms make shifts, society makes shifts.

Yeah, I feel like when it comes to wellness, it's pretty much the wife or the mom or the lady's opinion. 60%, 70% of buying decisions are from the woman in the relationship. Have you found that to be true in your research as well?

Absolutely. And on the practical level, very much so. Especially, of course, also making decisions for the kids. I do also speak quite a bit about, you know, don't think of your partner or your husband as a child, because women will email and be like, well, how do I make my husband do this or this or this? I'm like, well, step back.

How do I get him to listen to me?

Yes. And like many things in life, it's be an example, be a joyful example, make the path easy, but don't force it.

Yeah, Being a joyful example involves us doing the work because we've heard this phrase, you know, fake it till you make it. And I'm like, I don't know if it's true. I really feel like it's being it with your eyes closed until you see it. Because so many of us, we tried to emulate maybe our masters. I'm sure a lot of people try to emulate what you've created in some way, or maybe even the healing that you've done for yourself. But we can't do it without experience, Katie. Like, you know, we have to actually go through the pain of the gauntlet, the teacher. And so let's pull the E break way back. Like, when you started Wellness Mama, what were you experiencing then? We're obviously gonna share your journey, which is, like, so deeply inspiring and so many women and men are gonna get a lot out of this. But when you very first started, you know, 15, do you remember your first blog post? Do you remember your first moment where you're like, okay, wellnessmomma.com is live. And this is how I feel. This is what I'M doing in the world. If you could go back there emotionally, just teleport with us.

Yeah. And to speak to your point briefly first, I love that reframe and instead of fake it until you make it, I think it becomes be willing to share vulnerably the imperfection of the early journey because you're going to share so much more truth through the vulnerability of not being perfect, especially in a social media world where there's so much pressure to fake it till you make it and look perfect from the beginning. And when I look back on the early wellness mama content that certainly I like, I've updated quite a bit of it now, but I look back and kind of cringe at I'm like, well, thankfully my writing style evolved quite a bit over time and I learned so much more over time. Early on, I think I was, I was so worked up about all the things I was learning and how much was wrong in the information so many people were given. And so I definitely was more like guns blazing, kind of like fiercely challenging those things. And I learned over time that gentleness is almost always a better teacher. And meeting people where they are and understanding their own journey and their pain and taking them baby step by baby step was a much more effective approach than just trying to burn it all down from the beginning. And so I from the beginning realized too, women especially are largely overwhelmed in today's world and don't have a lot of free time and also feel very strongly the pressure of all the things they should be doing as moms. And so I wanted to make everything very simple, very actionable and one basically one step. So every blog post would answer one question with actionable steps to make progress in whatever that area was. Because it's easy. I think in the wellness world you probably see this too, to write an encyclopedia on any given topic because there's so much information out there. But most people don't want to read all of that they want. So I was able to take my research background and summarize a whole lot of information and then be like key takeaways. Here's the things to actually try for you and also realize we're also individualized and personalized. This is just my experience. Do your own n of one study and figure out what works for you.

What got you into research in the first place.

My brain has always been wired that way ever since I was really little. I've anything I want to learn, I immerse in it and research. My background in college was journalism as well, so I was pretty well trained in the research side and then got into medical research as well and just realized there's so much information and data out there that circulates in the medical community, in the science world, but that doesn't trickle down to the mainstream. Or if it does, it's usually put through a lens and distorted or used for an agenda. And I realized, like, if I can give the practical knowledge of this information to moms who can implement it with their kids, we can start seeing these changes.

How do you walk that line between being called a conspiracy theorist versus just someone who's using that gentleness and kindness to really put out trustworthy news or trustworthy information? Because what you just said, some people could, could potentially quote, quote, air quotes, accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist. Someone could say, what do you mean? The medical system trying to usurp our health and wellness for their own pocketbook. Like, that doesn't happen. I mean, it is a bit naive, but unfortunately that kind of mindset is still out there in the world. So how do you, you know, from a journalism background, also a mother and someone who's a voice, a big voice in the wellness world, how do you walk that line between people saying, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist versus you just being truthful and honest about what you really see?

I think it's a two part thing. The first being, especially when we're talking about moms or. But any of us with our own health, speaking to the fact that at the end of the day, we each have an intuition and we each know our family, our child, ourselves, the best. And so there can be all this research in the world, but you may or may not fit into whatever that research category is. And your genes may be different, you may have a different experience. But also looking at the nature of science and medical research, I think people often look at that and think, oh, those are the answers. But if you actually look at what science is, it's a series of questions constantly questioning. So anyone who says that we shouldn't challenge these things or we shouldn't, I'm like, that is actually contrary to the nature of science, which is to ask questions. And true scientists want to continually challenge the narrative and ask better and newer questions, or look at things from first principles and break them down entirely because that's how we continue to make progress.

I love it when people say, well, I believe in Subject XYZ because it's science, Josh. And I say that close to the microphone because it's like science has become a new God. Which is really fascinating to me. It's a juxtaposition between what people want to believe versus what's the real Socratic truth. You know, the Socratic method, where you actually go through a process of figuring out what's true based on what reality is showing us. And, you know, we're in a really cool space, and I'm sure we could go deep into this subject, but it's perfect, actually, because so many of us, we want to use our intellect because it's enjoyable, it's fun. I'm sure you enjoy it with your research background. It's like, we want to know the truth because it's fun to figure out the truth. But, man, when it comes to our emotional intelligence, I learned this time and time again, both personally and on the podcast. We all have kind of a script playing in our head, and it has nothing to do with the intellect. It has nothing to do with the research that we've done or what we think science is trying to tell us. It's really the things we cannot see. And you did an incredibly powerful podcast and blog post about this, which inspired me to reach out to you and be like, hey, I want to share your story on Wellness Force, and it was how you overcame trauma and lost £50. I remember, Katie, we did a panel together at Paleo fx, and I asked you a question about moms and how moms deal with something, and I forget what the subject was. And even at that time, I could tell that you were like, the warrior on the path of the truth, trying to figure out whatever it was that was gonna be of most service to you. And I think shortly after that is when you came out with this podcast, the beginning of this podcast, you talked about a script, and we all have this script running in our head. You had a script in your head that when you looked in the mirror, it culminated for this 2020 podcast. So can you share with us what you were going through there? Obviously, there's a big time gap between when you started Wellness Mama and 2020, but take us to that moment, because I think so many people can relate to this. Looking in the mirror and being like, wow, there's a script playing that I don't know where it came from.

Absolutely. And I love your point about, like, the intuition versus cognition. One of my mentors says, intuition fast, cognition slow. And I think those of us who are. Who enjoy the data world can easily get swept into the cognition world. And it is so tempting to want to be able to, like, look at hard numbers and have all the answers. And certainly that's what I did for a long time. I thought I would find a certain regimented plan that was going to work perfectly. And in hindsight, I think the journey was exactly what it was supposed to be, even though it was really difficult for me for a lot of. So I'll try to give some kind of overview points and you can ask specifics on any of them. But it went back to sexual trauma in high school that I had never really spoken about publicly or faced really internally at all. In the moment, I remember basically locking down and feeling like this helplessness that was so overwhelming that I never wanted to feel that again. So I vowed in the moment never to feel helpless and basically shut down whole emotional parts of myself to not have to feel that pain. And because of that, there's always a silver lining. I constructed a whole lot of systems to protect myself from that helplessness that ended up being very effective systems in other areas of life. But that trauma was still there, and I thought I could just ignore it or power through it and really just kind of ignored it for a whole lot of years. But like you said, there's. There was this subtle script running in the back of my head. And so much of my mental energy was consumed with my anger, disappointment, and dislike for my body and for how it had changed after that trauma. And I also think there's very much that what we give attention to increases. And suddenly I was giving all this attention to the negative aspects of that by trying to resist it. And I didn't. I wasn't aware of that for a really long time. And the pivotal moment when I realized I knew I was like, looking at myself in the mirror and hating myself. And that that was taking up a whole lot of energy. But it didn't register for me until I saw my daughter see me look at myself in the mirror. And I saw the surprise in her eyes register of that look that I gave myself. And that look of her realizing that someone could look at themselves like that because she never had. And I realized I didn't want to pass on to her or to my other three daughters that mental prison of disliking myself so much. And so at that moment, I resolved to be willing to address the trauma and to do whatever I had to do to move past it so that I could be a better example for my daughters. And I had no idea what a wild journey that would lead on and still is very much a journey. Um, I've actually lost close to a hundred pounds now. And Put on a whole lot of muscle. And it still amazes me some days when I look in my phone, in the app and just see, like, all my markers being an athlete, level range. Because I had never been an athlete in my whole life. And now the beauty is my kids were teachers in that as well. Because my daughter at 12 and 13, I know @ that age, I was so concerned with how I looked and what my body looked like. And she's an athlete as well. And so for her, the reframe is. She's looks at what her body can do and is appreciative and grateful of this incredible machine that her body is and what it can do and how she can fly 10ft through the air to pole vault. And that helped me reframe as well. And it was a subtle and a little bit slow of a shift to start. I think the key is asking better questions internally, because what we ask internally are subconscious answers. And so when I was asking questions like, why can't I lose weight? Why is this so hard? My. My subconscious was answering with like, oh, well, here's why you can't lose weight. I want to give you the answer, since you're asking them. It's because you've had six kids and you have thyroid problems and you have all these things. And when I reframed that and asked questions like, how can I be at peace within myself? How can I love myself and my children more? How is it so easy and fun to move toward a state of better health? Then my subconscious started giving those answers. And I also did a lot of different therapies. I just like with the health side and the eating and the supplements and the exercise, I had tried so many things for so many years, and none of them really moved the needle. Even though I had followed every expert system, I had tried every plan, and when I started asking the questions and delving into the mental and emotional and spiritual side without changing those other things, the body side started really falling into place. And ironically, I had to actually start eating more food, more protein, moving less for a while to let my body heal. But it was those subtle shifts. I also worked with some somatic therapists doing work with the idea the body keeps the score, that we store physical trauma in our body. And there were areas of my body that were entirely numb because I.

Had. What areas were they? Was it like the lower half, the upper half? Like, what was it? Because this Bessel van der Kolk, I believe, wrote that book. And I've perused the book. I've Gone in there and read certain chapters and passages. But for people that don't know, that inspired a lot of others. I even think that Peter Levine Waking the Tiger probably was inspired in some way by Bessa van der Kolk's work. So for people that don't know, the Body Keeps the score. Is that a somatic experiencing book where you can actually go and find it in your body? Like, what's the color, what's the shape, what's the texture? Where is it located? How did you unpack that for.

Yourself? Your own healing, it definitely delves into that. For me, I had areas of my abdomen that were completely numb. Like I could touch my skin and not feel it at all. Part of that also went back to my third child was a C section, so I knew I had numbness from the actual scar. But there were whole areas of my body that I was detached from. And that book just really opened my eyes for the first time to. We hear of the mind body connection, but he delves into the science of the mind body connection and how the body will basically store trauma to protect us, and so will the brain. And. And I think symbolically we create walls, emotional walls within ourselves to protect against those things, but the body actually responds to that as well. And if you want to get more on the sciencey side, I was basically constantly in a sympathetic nervous system state, fight or flight, because I had never faced that trauma. And so, of course, my body wasn't going to rest and digest and lose weight when it thought I was being chased by a tiger at all times. And so one of the first somatic therapies I had, I remember, like, reliving the trauma, and then for two hours after my whole body shook, like that adrenaline shake, which animals naturally do. If an animal is almost killed, like nearly killed in the wild, as soon as they're in safety, they often have that somatic shaking experience, let all the excess adrenaline out. Because animals have those kinds of experiences often. They don't walk around with PTSD and unprocessed trauma and all these problems that humans.

Have. These animals are really good at letting things.

Go. Yes. And so I had to learn to get back in touch with my body and to work through it that.

Way. Wow, Katie. I'm like, I'm so amazed by this, because to someone who's in the spotlight, if you will, like, people know who you are and people follow you, and there's a newsletter and there's a website, and there's like 2,000 plus blog posts. 2,000 different posts. Is a lot. And all the things that you've learned, would you say that this one was the hardest to actually embody when it comes to emotional intelligence, spiritual connection and the ability to really integrate it? Is that the.

Hardest? Absolutely. And I really realized how much fear, guilt and shame I had around all those topics. And as the website grew, because my thought was always, I just want to help people. I never intended to be public facing at all. And I didn't even have my picture on the site for a long time because I just wanted it to be about the.

Information. God had other plans and people.

Kept asking and they wanted to know kind of the voice behind and they wanted to know the story. I think there's tremendous value in a story and I discounted that for a long time. But it was also such a difficult thing for me for many years because I was writing about wellness and getting these amazing emails from people who were having all these transformations because of applying information. And I wasn't losing weight, which was this very outward facing thing. And I think on the emotional level that fear, guilt and shame are the ones that really get us stuck and keep progress from happening. And I had so much wrapped up in that. And so it was all like unpacking all those layers of that over time and then realizing that there was power in the vulnerability of sharing that story. That to speak to our early point, I didn't have to put on a basis being perfect or knowing all the answers when I didn't. And if anything, there was more power in the vulnerability of sharing the hard parts. And sadly, when I shared my trauma story, I received literally thousands of emails from other people who had been through things even so much more horrific than I had been through. And my heart just broke for some of these people hearing what they had been through. But it really motivated me to keep sharing and delving into this and providing resources because sadly, it's a very large sisterhood. And not just women. Many men have gone through this as well. But the beauty of having shared it openly, as hard as it was, is it seems like it gave other people permission to start to speak openly as well. And I think anytime we bring something out of hiding and can talk about it, we start to be able to improve it. And now it's kind of become uncanny. People will just start opening up to me about trauma without knowing my story. But I think that energy has shifted and wow, it feels like a safe place to.

Share. Oh my gosh, there's so much there. And the one, a couple of things you Mentioned were powerful. Number one was when you share what's really happened for you, you unlock that permission slip inside of other people. And I think we all can intellectually get this concept. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, when I, when I share about my life, then other people feel more comfortable to share. But what the hell, why do we become so afraid to actually share the truth? Like, what is that about the human psyche where we feel like, oh my gosh, if I really share vulnerably, if I really share what's gone on, then potentially people won't see me as credible, they'll see me as broken, they'll see me as not powerful enough, they'll see me not as an authority. What do you think that is for society? And then how has that played out for yourself, that kind of.

Loop? Yeah, I think, I think that vulnerability edge is a tough one. And we're most afraid of being judged in the areas that are the most painful because those judgments are the most painful to feel and to hear. And in that sense, looking back, I'm grateful for having been public facing and actually getting some of those really harsh judgments over the years because I also think in any even harsh criticism, there's always a small element of truth. And if we can separate our ego a little bit, those are opportunities to start to unpack things. And so that pain is a great teacher, like you said. So when I worked with early on said, never waste a trigger that like often we get triggered and we resist and we think like, I shut this down, I don't want to feel this. But those are wonderful opportunities to face whatever that thing is and to start really delving into it, unpacking it. I love the book the Untethered Soul, which kind of works through the idea of letting emotions come and without judging them or fighting them, feeling them, discovering where they came from and if they're not needed anymore, like thanking them and letting them go. And I did a whole lot of that process over the years and it's been cool too because it gave me so much better language to use with my kids when they would experience just normal childhood anger or having a fight, or they get in the like five year old, like, I don't like you and just that anger to be able to pattern reframe with them and say, oh, wow, what are you feeling? What are you experiencing right now? Where do you feel that in your body? And even to give them practical, somatic tools to go back to that of like, okay, you feel this, like prickly anger that's red in your stomach, can you use your mind to move it to your hand? And now can you throw it all the way across the ocean and just like, letting them process that trauma out versus giving them language to take it out versus bottle it.

In? And that's why you and I talked about breath work recently. Because if we can breathe, we can actually choose to throw the anger over the ocean. But if we're like. If we're. If we're holding our breath and we're not breathing, what are we supposed to do? We cannot literally unlock the energy in our biology. Like, it's. It's fascinating to me, Katie, because there's so many people that are feeling so much pain, so much pressure, I guess you could say in their nervous system. But it's like there's a. There's a cap just like on a bottle. And it's like we cap ourselves because I think really, we're afraid of what might come out. We're afraid of how much is in there. We're afraid we might get lost in it. Did you ever have experiences like that where you're like, I can't do it because it's a bottomless ocean. It's gonna swallow me whole. Like, did that ever come.

Up? Absolutely. And I resisted that side of it for a long time. I actually did rage therapy a couple of times. Because another thing that exhibited for me is after the trauma, I, in a sense, like, symbolically sort of lost my voice in that. Like, everyone after that said, like, oh, you're so soft spoken. You're so quiet. And I did not raise my voice even through six kids. I did not ever yell at my kids. I never raised my voice. I never got angry. And I still don't yell at my kids now. But I have the ability to yell and speak and get angry. And that was. I was so afraid of facing that. And when that anger. And also that was just anger, like, something happened to me that was a horrible thing, and I had bottled it up. And when that broke open, like, it felt like turning into the Hulk for a minute. I mean, like, I just roared from the depths of my soul and was like, whoa. I didn't know I was capable of making these sounds. But that also helped with that processing of emotion. And I felt like the flush of all those hormones changing. And interestingly, on the science side, I had a podcast guest who explained that the vibration of the vocal cords is actually stimulating to the thyroid, and that when we don't do that enough, this thyroid can downregulate And I was like, how interesting that for me that lined up with thyroid problems and when I started doing rage therapy and also taking voice lessons where I was belting all that vibration, it lined up with my recovery from thyroid disease. So it could have been somewhat coincidental as well. But I thought that was an interesting.

Corollary. So fascinating. I talked about that with Michael Ruscio and he said that some people that play the didgeridoo, their thyroid gets better because that vibration of the didgeridoo, like literally the water, the cells need movement. And so if we're not like, ah, if we're not emoting, you know, if we're not singing, it's really challenging for any stuck energy in there to move. Now that what I just said, stuck energy. Some people that are science minded, they might be like turned off by that phrase stuck energy. What the hell are you talking about, Josh? Stuck energy? What I'm talking about is something that I'd love your vantage point on. And it is, here's the setup. In the east they call it chi. In Vedic they might call it prana. And in the west, here we call it energy. What exactly is it and how have you come to terms with that both scientifically and also emotionally within yourself? This term of energy or stuck.

Energy or moving energy, yeah, that was an evolution for me and I think five years ago my super sciencey side would have been like, I don't believe in all that woo stuff and I don't think that's necessary to understand. I now say often, I think that a lot of these traditions use different words for the same things and that if we focused on the similarities between them all, we would find much better patterns than if we how we continually focus on the differences and try to argue about the little things. And that applies to every area of life. Same with motherhood. We have like 93% of things in common and we all love our kids and we tend to get wrapped up in social media battles about the like small percentage of things we might disagree on where we would have so much more power if we focused on the positive aspects of all that we do agree on. But I have been delving into that world as well. It was helpful for me to read the Body Electric and understand how there's all these electrical and magnetic components of the body and how these impulses work in ways that we are still learning and understanding certainly, but that we can now identify. If you care about the science side, the energy patterns of the body. And we know that they exist and there's a whole world to delve into beyond that if you want to get into the more esoteric metaphysical side and how that lines up, up. But now I look at it and think if every of these traditions throughout history have used language around some of these things and they've all separately identified them, then at least there's something to learn there. I also think kind of something that's tie into all of this is that curiosity is often an antidote for some of these more negative emotions and for that stuckness. And while nobody else is going to have the exact answers you need, for you, there's something to learn from every experience, from every person, from every interaction, from every modality. And so if we can approach everything with a curiosity and an openness and a willingness to learn, we're going to have better conversations. We're going to have better conversations within ourselves, we're going to get unstuck more easily and we're going to be able to learn so much more from all of these different interactions in our.

World. Like this one, when you said better conversations, like, I feel a unique kinship with you actually. And you know, both of our brands have the word wellness in them. How funny is it that I used to be 280 pounds, that I have my own layer surfacing now with the birth of my child, that you yourself over a decade plus have gone through public healing because people wanted to know what you were doing. It's very unique. I feel like this has been a long time coming. I'm just kind of receiving that right now. This wellness Mama, wellness force conversation is really at the nexus of all these things. This mental, this physical, this emotional, this spiritual. And I've talked about it a bunch on the show. But like man, managing all of these things and having the courage to identify when one category is low. Can I pull qi? Can I pull energy and put it in another category? I find it fascinating and I'm curious how you feel about this, that we, because I know you're a faith based woman, we understand that when we take a battery and we put it against another battery, it'll flip until the poles align. We can't see that. We just know it's happening because we get a direct result when the batteries flip. So we know that magnetic frequency exists, yet we can't see it with our eyes. It's like there's certain things in this world that we can feel and that we notice on a subtle or on a large level, but we really can't use our intellect to understand them. And for you, if you look back, was there one piece that you regret, maybe where you possibly dishonored the energy of. Or the connection to God or the connection to spirit itself? Did that ever surface for you where you might have regretted something that you've gone through, or would you have done something.

Differently? That's a great question. I don't think in hindsight, I can say that there's anything that I would regret. I think I might have wished I could have figured some things out sooner or been more open to them. I think there was a lot of fear walls that kept me from hearing things for a very long time that I needed to hear and working through things that I needed to work through. But I can say, like, it took a lot. It was a long journey to get here, but I now am able to be always in complete gratitude for those things. And it sounds strange to say out loud, and people often actually get offended when I say this, but I am immensely grateful for my rape because I would not be who I was, who I am today, had that not happened. And I would not be the mom I am today had that not happened. I wouldn't choose it. I would prefer not to ever go through that again. But it. It built parts of me that I would never have had or never have had to face had I not been through it. And you mentioned kind of the idea of that struggle in the beginning. And I think we each get those in our own way. And if we can move through the levels of acceptance and then gratitude and eventually joy for those things, then we're able to learn the lessons of them. Whereas when we're resisting the feelings of the negative parts, we tend to get stuck in that.

Loop. Yeah, we get stuck because we fear the pain of what's coming next because it might be so paralyzing. And I want to, like, tread lightly on this. Anyone that's experienced sexual trauma, Right, That's a very large capital T trauma. And as you and I have talked about on your podcast, there's lowercase T trauma as well. So I'm not. I'm not delegitimizing. I'm not minimizing anyone that's been through capital T or lowercase T trauma. But what you said when you were like, I'm actually grateful for the rape. That's bold. That's bold. Because the staircase you had to walk, whether you look at the Hawkins scale or whether you look at any kind of frequency scale, you have to actually walk through those phases of. At the bottom, apathy, then jealousy. Then rage, then anger, then acceptance, then courage. Then you can start moving up the ladder. I want everyone to know that I don't believe Katie. You're saying that you just flicked a light switch in your head one day and you're like, I'm grateful for the rape. Like you had to take your time and go through this evolution of emotional intelligence so that you knew that it was truly embodied. I'm curious how you.

Feel. It was a very slow process and one that I fell down along that journey many, many times. So there were lessons in all of those things as well. And I'm so glad you said that, because is certainly anyone who has been through a similar trauma or like I said, I've heard from women who have been through worse things than I can even fathom. So not to minimize that and not to make this process sound easy at all. And my heart goes out to anyone who's been through it. And thankfully there are so many resources available. I know that you've talked about this some too, and we can put links in the show notes to some of these resources. And everyone's journey is going to be very unique on climbing that scale. Absolutely. And I don't think it's a quick process. I just also always encourage women or anyone who's been through trauma to, if possible, in. In a safe way, in a safe place, whatever that means to you, to be able to speak about it and to be able to start to process it, because it. When we keep it internal, we let it build and we let it have more power than it should. And it's so hard the first few times that you talk about it and it seems so scary even to say it out loud. And I. I know from hearing from so many women who had never admitted to anyone before that they had been through these things and people who had been through horrific, even in childhood situations or had been sexually trafficked like horrendous things. But there' power in being able to start to speak about it and to shine light on it. And in the darkness the negativity grows. And if we can start to bring light in a safe way, then at least that gives a safe place for us to begin that process of going up through those levels of understanding and feeling and in. And I will say it's also very important to have a support network when you do that, whether it be therapists, whether it be family, a safe place, because it is an overwhelming and scary and exhausting process with light, many, many layers of emotion, and not to expect it to go.

Fast. Yeah. We become, I feel like, and I've experienced this in my own life, addicts to our pain, where we actually get clenched and we addict to being connected, almost fused to our habitual loop and thought patterns. I just did a podcast with Mark Devine, and he was like, you know, and I know I've mentioned this three times, so people watching and listening, they're gonna be like, we already heard this. Or maybe not, but it's good. Like, are you doing it? He said, if you're not training, you're being trained. And I was like, okay, light bulb moment. And it's exactly what you're talking about, too. Because, Katie, there was something about your soul contract. There was something about you as a being, you as a soul, that when you came into this world, it's almost like in a way, your soul maybe knew what was gonna happen because you could have decided that this happened to you. You could have become a victim. You could have not launched Wellness Mama. You could have gone in a totally different direction and been, like, stuck behind a desk doing research for cnn. Who knows? So what was it? If you. If you take your time and really search within, what was it about you and your soul that made you take this.

Path? That's a beautiful question. And you're. You're spot on with. I was set up for a triple major and then law school and doing political science or analysis of some.

Kind. And we're glad you took this.

Path. Me too. I look back now and think I would have probably been a much more unhappy human in that path right.

Now. It would have been a good place to hide, though, huh? No emotional exploration.

There. But I realized when we have these patterns, you can create a safe place to hide anywhere. And I did that in this life for a very long time, too, in this version of life. And how I mentioned, like, I put up all these walls and these systems so that I never had to feel helpless. And so, like, every variable of my life was tightly controlled. And that reared its head a lot when I started processing because I had this fear of, like. Well, this compulsion has actually served me really well in business and in motherhood because I get everything done. Am I going to lose this. Am I going to lose the ability to do all this stuff when I.

Process? Like, yeah, I think you said in your show, am I going to lose my.

Edge? Am I going to lose my edge?

Yeah. Which? Man, that could be a.

Future. Absolutely. And I think emotionally, I compare that for anyone who's ever been through birthing a child, that Phase to me is like the transition during labor when you're like, I can't do it. It's too scary. And, like, everything feels very intense and overwhelming, which also means you're close to that.

Breakthroug.

True. Like, you're close to it getting a little easier on the other side. And the beauty I learned in that lesson after actually finally letting go, which is another, I think, key phrase, letting go. Like, we tend to hold onto everything, and there's such a beauty and acceptance and letting go. But you don't lose your edge. You just get to take your edge off of autopilot. So it's not running your life, you're running it. And it's now something, a tool that you can use when you want to, but you can also put it down when you don't want it and downshift your nervous system and sleep a lot better and delve into the parts of you that that was protecting. And it is scary. I feel like you meet parts of yourself you didn't know were there because you protected them for so long. And you meet even, like, the child inside of you that you may be hid from for so long or that hid from you for so long, and you get to build that relationship back. And I think that flows over into every other area of life. But I think. I think maybe these. These lessons in my life would have expressed they were going to express anyway at some point, and this was the way that they ended up doing. So I think maybe, hopefully in another path, whether I had gone down that CNN path or whatever, they would have eventually processed as well. But I'm so grateful that they process this way and that I got the kids that I have and that I have the platform to be able to share things and hopefully help other people be able to walk their.

Journeys, the path of the, quote, wounded healer. I feel like I have walked, and I feel like you've definitely walked it, too, because it's only through healing our wounds that we can have the wisdom to share how we've done it. And so many of us, we get clouded almost, Katie, by our wisdom. Our wisdom gets clouded because we're still wounded. Our wounding clouds our wisdom because we're still in the process of figuring out what the f is going on. And I say that because so many of these things in life, there's just like, with the abuse you've talked about with these other women and trafficking, I mean, even what we're experiencing right now as a collective, my heart has almost felt at times like there is a wire cage around it. And when I see a certain thing on the media or when someone writes me a really horrific message, and I'm sure you get these too, where someone will just attack you, I can feel the pain within them and I can feel the collective pain. And when I close my eyes, if I'm conscious enough, I can actually see all these energetic cords to whatever pain is being expressed sideways to a real deeper pain that is, my dad didn't love me. I got abused in this way. I've never dealt with it. It's never actually been something that I've had. A, the knowledge to deal with and integrate, or B, the courage. Do you feel this at times with our current society's paradigm of I need to be in fear, I need to force other people to wear a mask. I need to force other people to inject things into their body. I need to force other people to make me feel safe, when really that's just a mirror on how that person doesn't feel safe, and it has nothing to do with the people outside of them. What are your thoughts on.

That? That's spot on. And when we start to realize that and pay attention to it, so beautiful things happen. There are a lot of therapists talk in a lot of different terms about kind of these core childhood wounds and questions that everybody has in some form. And it might be things like questions like am I lovable or am I worthy or. Or the core belief of I'm not good enough or I am not worthy or I'm not lovable or. And I feel like it goes down to those very core elements for a lot of people. But when we can shift to see other people and ourselves, when we start having those emotional reactions as an expression of that, and we can view someone as a hurt child who wasn't taken care of and wasn't loved in the way they should have been loved, it becomes much easier to show them love and compassion versus anger and resentment because we're then not reacting to their negative emotion. And I think if you can give a wall of love and compassion and kindness, it's harder for an angry wall to push up against that. And over time, it loses its strength. And I love that you use the word cage around your heart too, because I use that metaphor a lot. When I felt like I was, like, trying to break out of this cage of fear and the walls that I had built myself and the beauty on the other side of it is I realized there. There was a cage, but it had no lock. In fact, it didn't even have a door. All I had to do was walk out, and I was the one choosing to stay there. And that's hard to hear in the moment because when I was still in that phase, I was like, well, no, these things happen to me. I'm not choosing to stay here. But when I shifted my languaging, I realized I was and that I had. But that was empowering because then I had the power to move out beyond it. And I also think it goes back in this space to asking better questions as well, especially when we encounter those people who are stuck in anger or fear to not react with the same emotions and to be able to ask them better questions from a place of love versus arguing with what they're saying. Like, even with kids, I think that's one of my best parenting pieces of advice is to. With your kids, teach by asking questions. Go back to first principles. Teach them to go backwards and ask why enough times so they get to the actual core answer. And I think many adults were never given that space as children, so they don't know how to ask those questions in a safe way. And if we just keep reacting to the negativity and the anger, with more negativity and anger, we're just going to keep ramping those emotions up on a societal level, which we're seeing play out right now. Whereas I think it's so uncommon now for someone to react from a place of calm, peaceful love, even in those situations, that I think it's a beautiful example if we're able to. And it's so surprising to people that often they might actually pay attention or be willing to at least hear a question if it truly. And I think the intent matters, I think it has to truly come from a place of love. And if it comes from that space, even if they're angry, they will feel that there's not judgment, anger, fear, whatever, coming from you. And they might at least ask themselves.

Why. I love the pace of this conversation because what I was feeling when you were speaking was, love is like this boundless, completely bottomless wellspring. It's a wellspring. Like love is all there is. All there is is love. And so God is love. Now, now, I don't think that God's some bearded dude in the sky, which I've talked about ad nausea. But I do believe that God is an omnipresent force that always guides things. And even when it's challenging, even when stuff comes up that really hurts people, that causes people to have pain. Have you Ever seen it from a vantage point that every single thing that occurs in this world is always bringing us back home to a deeper connection to self or a deeper connection to God? And if so, how do you embody that without spiritually bypassing.

That? Yeah, that's a beautiful question. And I think for me, a couple things that I've learned. I've been delving very much into the world of meditation, which, again, if you told me a few years ago that that was going to be a big part of my life, I would have thought you were crazy. But I had to learn to not resist my own questions and to pay attention to the fact that many people I respect highly talk about meditation as the most important thing in their life that's been life changing. And why is that? And one thing that was helpful for me in the question you just asked was to start stepping back and asking, who is experiencing this emotion? Who is experiencing this pain? And also to start differentiating. Because I think we in childhood developed this idea that any kind of pain or struggle or hardship is bad, and we start labeling it as bad. And then that relationship continues on into adulthood, and that happiness and pleasure are good, and we kind of put things in boxes. But there inevitably will be struggle as part of the human condition. We're not likely not to get through this life without some version of that. But the better question is, should we? Even if we could, like, is that not part of the teaching of living this life? And if we can step back and reframe and instead of going, oh, pain equal bad, ask the better questions about where and what is this pain and who is experiencing it? Like, who is the deeper version of me within me that is experiencing that? Is that experiencing the pain? Or is some other layer of ego or human experience experiencing this pain? And then we have a different perspective to start to work through.

That. That's a very intelligent answer. And then I think below that is just this common example of if your child's crying, you don't scream at your child for crying. You comfort them. And I think the observer in us sometimes beats us up, up. It resembles this experience where maybe our parents treated us a certain way, or maybe society treated us a certain way. And so we literally just copy the behavior. We have mirror neurons. We also have mirror behavioring. So, for example, my dad was a certain way. I've seen it play out. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm totally being my father right now. And I see it with my mom, too. I'm like, okay, I'm not doing what my soul wants me to do. I'm actually acting like my mom. Have you felt this yourself? And how can you explain this to people so that they can understand it from your perspective? How we take on the behavior patterns of our mother and father, and really through the awareness, can we actually truly be ourselves? We can step out of the cage in our heart and just be you. Just be Katie. Just be.

Josh. Yeah. I think in some ways that probably in itself is a lifelong process. Something helped me to understand it and pay attention to it, or at least be aware of it when I did it. There's a great book called It Didn't Start with youh. Have you heard of this.

One? Oh, yeah. He's been on the show twice. He's absolutely amazing.

Yeah, he's incredible. And not realize, not just, of course, do we mimic patterns that we see from our parents, because that's how children learn and start being aware of that, but also realizing we even now can see in the science of MRNA transfer, that these generational patterns can come from previous generations. We don't actually even know how many yet. We just know that this memory can be passed on in DNA, so we might be repeating patterns from people we literally never met. And so I think in any of these things, awareness is the first key. And just knowing that and starting to pay attention. Like. Like you. I hear things come out of my mouth that I'm like, oh, that was my mom. Like, where did that come from? And. And learning just that. The pause between the stimulus and our response to it, I feel like even. Especially in a parenting role, giving yourself three to five seconds before you respond often lets you go through that very rapid mental process of. Of, okay, where did that come from? Reframing. What would be a better way to say this? How do I love my child best? And then you can respond in a much better sense that way. I also think there's a tremendous value to something that we ignore a lot in society today, which is the time and the stillness. Like, we very rarely get time in quiet and stillness, especially as parents, but at all. In today's world, we always have music or TV or people around or some kind of stimulus. And I think I discounted for a long time the value of that, that, that time, and that being such a great teacher, because there is an infinite amount of information available right now. We have access to so much information, but often what we need to learn is in those quiet moments and in the stillness. And you can gauge maybe how many lessons you have there by how uncomfortable you are when you try to be quiet and still. Like, if you can't sit for 30 minutes with no one talking to you without you talking to anyone else, without music or something to do, and just be alone with your thoughts, that's maybe a great indicator that that's a thing you could delve into more. I know I was very uncomfortable in stillness for a long time and that some of my best lessons came from.

There. It's really cool talking to you today because the last time that we actually spoke in person, I mean, I know I was on your amazing podcast, but we spoke in person at paleo. That was 2019. And so I'm flashing back. I'm like, that was right before you committed. You're like, I'm not going to go these next 10 years passing on these beliefs of not loving myself to my daughter. I'm like, that's potent. That's so powerful because it makes me breathe, right? So I do so much around breathwork, and the more that I do it, the more that I find that everyone is starving for wisdom. But we're fricking drowning in information. We're drowning in blog posts. We're drowning in this. And one of the cool things I love about your work is, like, you really give people the practical ways to embody some of these lessons or information. That's true wisdom. How do you see that? How have you seen that evolved for yourself over time? Your ability to take a lot of concepts and wellness. And it could be all the four categories, right? Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, even financial. Fifth category. How have you seen your ability as a leader, as a teacher, as somebody who's done the work on themselves and will do, your ability to articulate that, to really teach practical, embodied wisdom versus just shouting out.

Information. I love this question so much. I think it's mirrored my parenting journey a little bit as well in shifting from wanting to pass on information and give answers to now being very much in a space of wanting to teach how to ask questions. Because realizing, like, each of us is on that journey, and just like few people can be comfortable in the stillness of silence, very few people actually know the answer to the question, who are you? If you take away the resume, you take away the roles that we assign ourselves in life of mother, wife, whatever it may be, if you take all that away, who are you at your essence? And. And so helping people, realizing all of those categories you just mentioned are all part of that, and feeling embodied in all of those is an important part of understanding our core Identity. But many people never get to ask those good questions. And those, I think, like I said earlier on, I think we are the sum of the questions we ask ourselves and the questions we ask others. And so if I had to sum up what I feel like is my purpose right now, it's to help model and teach people how to ask better questions, because that's what's going to lead to their answers rather than me giving them the answers, which was my mindset early on of like, oh, well, let me just tell you what to do that I found works for me. It's, let me help you ask better questions to discover what works for you. And I think that shift has changed my approach a whole.

Lot. Has your barometer for bullshit actually increased as well? Because I would assume that with you being in the world of wellness for so long, you can kind of suss out pretty quickly if someone's just trying to sell a product or someone's really trying to serve people's deepest.

Needs. Absolutely. And also realizing, like gauging someone's willingness to be wrong. Like if someone is absolutely certain they're right and they're unwilling to entertain the thought that they should reconsider any position that they have, that often to me is a very big red flag because certainly I can provide so many examples from my own last 15 years of times I was certain about something and then new data came out and I had to learn more and change that. And so I think that, like, that openness to learning from every experience, the willingness to ask better questions and the willingness to not be right all the time, those are all key parts of, for each of us, that.

Process. Wow. And so on a tactical level, just to kind of turn to our logical brain right now, what are maybe the 3 to 5, and I hate to even put a number on it, so just as many as you want to share. What are like the real handful or couple handfuls of practical tools that you use on a daily basis? And they can be beginner or advanced for people to begin this process of like integrating and living a life of true wellness, you know, real well being requires great questions and hard work. But what are some of the handfuls of things that you use? Maybe tools or even ways of being, you know, what are those practical ways that you embody all.

This? Yeah, I think there's been a trend lately of people getting interested in some really fun biohacking tools and getting into some of these deep science biohacking things. And that's super fun. I think there's A time and a place for all of that. But for me, I've realized over time, the most impactful things are the consistent habits we do daily. And many of them are inexpensive or free. And so I always love to say those first because it's easy to get to, like, lured into all the things that we can. The supplements we can take or the cool devices we can use. And certainly those can be amazingly helpful. But I think you have to focus on the core things that makes all of those more impactful if you're going to use them. And so for me, in my own life, those are things like drinking enough water immediately after waking up up, getting in the sunshine early in the morning, spending time in gratitude or meditation with my family or alone. Moving of some kind. Not exercise, but just movement at some point during the day. Whether it's walking, could be exercise, could be any form of movement. Often it's playing with my kids these days. And really like dialing in sleep, that's a free one that most people don't put enough attention to and it doesn't.

Cost. Yeah, I'm on the struggle bus with sleep right.

Now. Yeah, you're in the trenches. There's some of that that just comes with a territory right there. The good news is you get it will. Mom's a little bit more so. But you both get some good hormones that help you get through that, and it will. Every storm runs out of, um. And I think dialing in those core things, just solid nutrition, hydration, sunshine, sleep, movement, time outside, those make anything else we're going to do more effective. And they're easy to discount because they are inexpensive or free and they're easy. But I think long term, those make the biggest impact. Even if you look in the science of getting morning sunshine, that has a drastic impact on sleep patterns and cortisol levels and hormones, and it doesn't cost anything. And even on a cloudy day, you're going to get an impact from that. Whereas you could try to take all these cortisol manager supplements and do all these biohacking things, or you could just go.

Outside. Yeah. And there's a plethora of tools and bands and like, we've had so many people on Wellness Force, and I know you have on the Wellness Mama podcast about this, external frameworks for accountability, like wellness technology tools and things like that, and they're powerful, too. But I'm honest when I say it's only in combination with what you've shared, the fundamentals. That's why, you know, without the Building blocks. You can't put a building on anything. You have to actually have those things satisfied. And then I'm curious how you feel about this. When someone wants to put more sunlight in their life or they want to sleep better, or they have the desire to do these fundamentals, do you find that the real transformation happens in whatever story someone stacks up, up to, why they can't do the fundamentals, and the deeper exploration starts.

There? Absolutely. And I think you run into that mental wall if you're not willing to address that side as well. A practical tool that maybe is helpful to people if, to move through that, like the mental side. Because I noticed I. My. My personality is rebel at heart. Like all the tests that I do, I'm a rebel. And so the tagline being, you can't tell me what to do. And I can't either. So for a long time, if I tried to regiment myself, I would resist my own.

Systems. That's awesome. You can't tell me what to do, and I.

Can'T. And it.

Felt. That's the shadow side of the.

Rebel. And. And anyone struggling with, like, body image issues or past trauma might feel resistance in a lot of those areas. Because if, even for me, if that weight was a protective mechanism, that was like a very physical shield that I was wearing, my body didn't feel safe in letting it go. So I had to deal with the other side of that as well before those habits even got easier. And one phrase a therapist taught me that I found really helpful was even though I. And whatever it is, the thing you're struggling with right now, I love and accept myself, and I love and accept myself when I now choose. And then whatever the goal is that you're working toward, and just that, like, the verbal reframe of that over time helps to break down those patterns and bring awareness to them. And for me, I'll admit, like, this was not an easy process. The first time she tried to get me to say that, and I was doing tapping on my hands at the same time, I was like, even though I. And I literally could not say, like, I could not say the words love and accept myself. And then the first time I was able to say it, I bawled my eyes out. I felt not true. And it took a while for it to actually, like, sink in and be effective for me. But that really shined a light on just how deep those inner feelings were that I was working.

Through. There's so much wisdom here in episode 309 in your podcast is linked in our show Notes. Because when I listened to the episode, actually I was tuning into it last night and a little bit this morning when I was in the sauna, and I was like, just, just feeling the wisdom that you have to share because you've actually walked the path. And I just want to really honor and acknowledge the work that you've done. It's rare. I think it's getting less rare by the day because we're being squeezed by societal events for us to actually look inside and see where our shit's coming up. So I just want to thank you for that because, you know, six kids running a business doing what you do, like, you really do deserve some love and some adulation from the example that you're providing into the world for.

People. So thank you, thank you, and thank you for getting to share here today and hopefully being a place where people can learn to feel safe and be able to speak their own truth, whatever that is. And hopefully from both of us, feel that love and compassion and kindness and just ask those.

Questions. Yes. Yeah, I definitely know that people are listening to this for the second, maybe third.

Time.

Time. So, you guys, if. If this resonates with you. Share this podcast Share this podcast with someone that has had capital T, lowercase T, or is dealing with not loving thyself, or maybe an incessant monkey mind when they look in the mirror, that it's anything but love. Like, share this podcast with them. It's a really big deal. Life doesn't have to be so serious, but we actually have to be intentional. Intentional about how we deal with our seriousness if we want to lead a happy life, if we want to do this thing the way that nature and God and spirit intended. So, Katie, with all you've been through, and this is a really cool moment for me because I'm like asking you my most favorite question. And it's completely your life's work. This mental, this physical, this emotional, this spiritual, and even this financial or whatever else you want to throw in. There in the middle of that is the. The nexus of your work with wellness Mama. From a feminine perspective and a masculine perspective, just being a woman being. Inhabiting a female body. And with all that you've learned, how do you define wellness? You know, what does wellness mean to.

You? This definition has shifted for me a little bit over the years, and I would say often it's now a feeling of alignment versus a definition. I can give in words quite so much. But I think it goes back to the inner alignment of all of those things and the removal of friction in all of those different areas. So that with the goal of being able to be the best example and love those in our lives the best that we possibly can, I think even whether it's physical health, mental health, financial health, all of those things are wonderful tools and goals to focus on, but with the intention of being able to then use the benefits of a physical body that's in good shape and a mind that's in good shape and the resources we have financially to love those in our lives the best that we can. And that that truly is also what the world needs right now is a lot of beacons of love who are operating from that.

Place. It's the intention. The intention is the biggest piece. So thank you for your gifts. Thank you for sharing. Wellnessmama.com is the website Wellness Mama Podcast. We covered a lot of ground. Katie, is there anything that that your soul, your heart, your mind, you wants to share about really healing, you know, healing trauma, being well, is there anything that you think we.

Missed? I think this was an amazing conversation and I think my final encouragement would just be to anyone listening that there's so many cliches and often used terms about this, about the obstacle being the way. But I think anywhere that you have pain in your life is a wonderful starting point. If you are aware of pain somewhere, instead of resisting that, if you can use it as a teacher or at least be willing to start to hear the questions it's trying to ask you, then you can start to move on toward a path of healing. And so rather than fighting that or being afraid of the pain anywhere that you have that pain and experience it, let learn from it and ask it, what lessons are.

There. Katie Wells, thank you for being here. Until Katie and Josh see you again, maybe on another podcast episode so we can go even deeper into things that the world needs. We're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you guys soon.