Podcasts about karen you

Karen Rudolf is a transformative Life Strategist, known as a Catalyst for Change, and 6X International Best-Selling Collaborative Author. She is the founder of Tranquil SOULutions, and dedicated to empowering personal and professional growth through a “W”holistic approach.  With a rich background in nursing, comprehensive certifications, and licenses,  Karen specializes in enhancing communication, boosting self-esteem, and fostering “W”holistic well-being decreasing stress.  Her work shifts perceptions and nurtures resilience and peace, making her a trusted guide in life's journey. She can be reached at www.tranquilSOULutions.com Click the link and receive a complimentary gift from Karen  You can order your book, The Essence of a Woman: Unleash the Feminine Soul on Amazon or through any of the authors in the book In this session we will discuss: ·      What inspired you to be part of The Essence of a Woman project, and how does your contribution reflect your personal journey? ·      Can you share a bit about the message you hope readers take away from your chapter? ·      How did collaborating with other women in this book impact your own understanding of the ‘essence of a woman'? ·      What was the most challenging part of sharing your story in this book, and how did you work through it? ·      How do you envision The Essence of a Woman making an impact on readers, particularly women who may be going through their own transformative journeys? ·      Life often gets in the way of our plans and personal growth. How do you keep yourself focused on getting back on point when faced with obstacles?

Join Karen Stanley as she shares her journey from confronting health crises to finding renewed purpose. This episode reveals the transformative power of therapy in reshaping our self-belief and joy. We discuss real shifts therapy can spark, breaking down skepticism and fostering genuine personal and professional growth. Dive into introspection, healing, and liberation from limiting childhood narratives with us.Through our conversation, find hope and empowerment. Overcoming trauma, unlocking joy, and achieving calm confidence are all within reach with personal growth strategies. Explore resources to start your transformative journey. Let Karen Stanley's insights inspire you to turn your past into a stepping stone for future success.NOTABLE QUOTES"There's one common denominator in all of my relationships: That'd be me." – Karen"The truth is a belief." – Karen"Install the thoughts and beliefs that you want, and create the habits that you want to have. That will allow you to create that dream that you envision for yourself." – Karen"Every coach should have a coach. Every therapist should have a therapist." – Philip"Everybody needs a little bit of help. I don't care who you are, how old you are, and how much training you have. We all need help." – Karen“[For] a lot of people,... all they need is just somebody to talk to [who's] not invested,  [who] doesn't know you personally, [who] you can just be honest." – Karen"Learn how to regulate your nervous system and establish the truth about who you are." – Karen"Every story matters… because you could be [that] one person, that one story, that one moment that somebody else needed to hear." – Karen“We're best suited to help the person that we used to be.” – Karen“The lack of confidence comes from your thoughts.” – Karen“It's not about perfection, it's about excellence… Create your excellence by preparation.” – Karen“Preparation allows you to let go of the feelings that you may fail or mess up.” – Karen“We need to focus on the audience, we need to not focus on ourselves, and that's that mental shift we make.” – Philip“Rather than with our message, we focus on who we were, and how we overcame that. If we want to go to the next level, we need to look at what we need to change to become that next person.” – Philip“Create new beliefs and habits that allow you to believe that it's possible, and then allow God to put that into your path..” – Karen “If something's really important, then you cannot keep it hidden.” – Karen “The more you speak that and be clear about your vision, your beliefs, and what's important to you, every single person with those same values is going to be attracted to you. You won't even be able to keep them away.” – Karen “You literally can transform, no matter what has happened to you.” – Karen “No matter what has happened in the past, it doesn't determine your future.”  – Karen RESOURCESKarenWebsite: https://createtodaytherapy.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5zRhqvPhjl/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.knudsen.333/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@createtoday4642LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-stanley-832653148/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ph/karenstanley4/PhilipDigital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-courseInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=enTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessionsLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions Support the Show.

Though Karen did research and took birthing classes before her first baby, she didn't realize how much advocating for herself could change the course of her birth. She wanted to be the “good” patient and told herself she could do without the things her body told her she needed during labor. Karen ended up pushing for over four hours and consenting to what she was told was an emergency C-section, even though the actual surgery didn't happen until hours later.Karen had some serious postpartum symptoms of swelling and difficulty breathing that were dismissed and even laughed at until things came to a point where she knew something was very wrong. She was diagnosed with postpartum cardiomyopathy, admitted to the ICU, and transferred to cardiac care. Doctors told Karen very different things about her condition. She went from being told not to have any more children to hearing that VBAC was absolutely safe. Karen discusses how her gestational hypertension came into play with the different advice as well. Karen found her voice. She advocated for herself. She knew what her body was saying and what it was capable of. Her labor was so smooth and she WAS able to birth vaginally!Informed Pregnancy PlusNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details 3:46 Review of the Week06:27 Karen's stories08:50 First labor10:47 Pushing for four hours15:11 Karen's C-section17:43 Postpartum swelling and difficulty breathing21:03 Fluid in her lungs23:52 Moving to Florida and getting answers25:13 Getting pregnant again29:53 Advocating for a VBAC32:14 A spiritual dream34:34 Gestational hypertension39:36 Signing an AMA41:31 Going to the hospital45:20 Pushing for 20 minutes47:30 White coat syndrome51:59 Symptoms of hypertension and preeclampsia54:52 Tips for hypertension and preeclampsia 56:55 Karen's final tipsMeagan: Hello, hello. We are getting into almost our 300th episode, you guys. Every single time I'm recording and I'm looking at these numbers, I am blown away. I cannot believe that we have almost put out 300 episodes. Oh my goodness. I am so glad that you are here. I have this energy this year. I don't know what it is. You'll have to let me know if you notice it, but I have this energy every time I'm recording this podcast. 2024 is vibing. I'm vibing with it. I'm really liking it. We have our friend Karen and are you from Florida, Karen? Karen: Yep. I'm in Orlando, Florida. Meagan: Florida. That's what I was thinking. So if we have Florida mamas looking for providers, this is definitely an episode. I feel like probably weekly we would get 10 messages asking about providers and Florida is huge so Florida is actually one that is really common where we are getting messages for supportive providers. So Karen, along the way, if you feel to name-drop some providers that are supportive, feel free to do so but we are going to get into sharing her story in just one moment because we do have a Review of the Week. 3:46 Review of the Week Meagan: This is from louuuhuuuu. So louuuhuuuu, thank you for your review. They say that this is “very inspirational.” It says, “I knew I wanted a VBAC with my third pregnancy, but I wasn't sure if it was possible. However, I knew I didn't feel like being flat-out told, ‘No' at the first appointment. Listening to the podcast was definitely the start of me really researching birth and looking into my options. I ended up with a successful HBA2C and I definitely don't think I would have had the courage or believed it was possible without this podcast. Thank you, Meagan, for all of the work that you do to provide this information.” I love that review so much. I think that through time in my own research, I was told no. I wasn't told, “No, no.” I was told, “Sure, probably yeah. You could VBAC,” but I never really got that positive vibe. I feel like this community that we have created with all of the people on the podcast and all of the people in the community on Facebook truly is something that I lacked when I was preparing for my VBAC. I'm so grateful that we have this community for you today. Thank you, louuuuhuuuu, and huge congrats on your HBAC, your home birth after two Cesareans. If you didn't what HBA2C meant, that's home birth after two Cesareans. Just like louuuhuuuu, you can too. Make sure to follow us in our Facebook community. You can find it at The VBAC Link Community on Facebook. Answer all of the questions and we will let you in. You can find out as well that it is possible. VBAC is possible. 06:27 Karen's storiesMeagan: Okay, Karen. Welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time to share your story today, well your stories today. Karen: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's a little wild actually being on your show. I've been thinking about what I was going to say even before you invited me like, “What would I say if I finally get my VBAC? It's crazy to actually be sharing my story now so I'm really excited to be talking to you today.” Meagan: Well I'm so excited that you are here and sharing your inspirational message. You know, going through your submission, it sounds so similar to so many of us. You went in for a totally planned unmedicated birth that switched to the complete opposite where you had a C-section. There are so many of us. When I was reading that, I was like, “I bet I could probably find hundreds of stories not even just in our own community that start out like that.” Karen: Yes. That's why I love listening to your podcast so much because for the first time, I didn't feel alone. But yeah. I can get into my story now if you'd like. Meagan: Yes. I would love it. Karen: Okay. So back in August– or, I'm sorry. My son was due in August 2023. This was our first baby and he was a little bit of a surprise baby, but he was very much welcome and we were excited for him. At the time, we were living in Virginia. My husband had just gotten out of the Navy and he was about to start law school. I did prepare for the birth but I don't think I prepared enough. I took a Hypnobirthing class and the doula who was leading the class was super supportive. She was just like, “You're just going to birth beautifully. I can just tell.” The midwives, the nurses at the practice were like, “Oh, you're going to birth beautifully. I can just tell.” I just kept hearing that over and over again. My ego was a little over-inflated and I was like, “I don't need to do much. I've got this.” I don't think I was prepared enough. I didn't know what I was really getting into. 08:50 First laborKaren: So when I actually started going into labor, I got there way too early. I got to the hospital too early. Like you mentioned, I wanted an unmedicated birth. I got there, I think my contractions were about every seven minutes. Now I know that I definitely should have waited at home longer. But everything seemed to be going well. I arrived. They admitted me. They seemed a little bit hesitant, but they were like, “Oh, well she's in labor. Let's just bring her in.” My water broke on its own that afternoon. Things seemed to be going well until the pain really started kicking in. I had a really hard time working through the pain even with everything I learned in HypnoBirthing. I still hadn't quite found my voice yet, my mama voice. I couldn't tell people, “Hey, you're distracting me. I'm trying to do HypnoBirthing.” I felt embarrassed about putting up the sign outside my door saying, “Hey, HypnoBirthing in progress. Please keep quiet.” I just didn't speak up. I was just trying to be a good girl and just listen to what everyone says. I heard so many times in different episodes being a good girl and just doing what I've been told. Meagan: Right. We are people pleasers. I think a lot of us are people pleasers. We don't want to ruffle feathers. We want to stay in line. We want to follow this path that we are being told we have to stay on. Karen: Yes. I mean, I just didn't realize it was something I needed to form as a mama to be able to stand up for myself because pretty soon there was going to be a baby that needed me to stand up for them. Like I said, during the birth, there were just so many distractions, people coming in and out, nurses, and visitors. It was too much. I did end up getting an epidural because I just couldn't hold out any longer. 10:47 Pushing for four hoursKaren: Around 2:00 AM, the labor and delivery nurse told me, “Oh, you need to start pushing.” I was on my back. I pushed for about two hours. I had some breaks but the baby was just stuck. For part of it, we could see that he was crowning but he just would not come out. During this entire time, no one really looked at me. I just had this one labor and delivery nurse. She was so sweet, but the midwife didn't come by. The OB didn't come by. No one really came by and I wanted to move into different positions. I felt my body telling me, “Hey, try this. Try this,” and they would tell me, “You can't move. You have to stay like that.” I pushed for four hours. Baby was in distress. I felt fine but the midwife came in and told me, “You're going to need a C-section.” This was the first time I had seen her. She told me. Meagan: Wow. Karen: Yeah. So she says, “You need a C-section. He's not going to come out vaginally.” I didn't know. I didn't know what to do. I mean, I felt that was my only option. I got really upset. I started crying. I felt like a failure. I know now that I'm not a failure. That wasn't it. But that's how I felt at the moment and my husband was devastated. He was such an amazing birth partner and he felt like he failed me. I was like, “No. You didn't fail either,” but at that moment, we just felt so let down that one, I had to ask for an epidural, and two that I was going to need a C-section. Karen: They told me. I don't remember if the word “emergency” was used or not, but they made me feel like it was an emergency and it needed to happen immediately. When I look at the paperwork and all of that stuff, I'm like, “Where was the urgency?” Because the C-section didn't happen until 10:00 AM. Meagan: Yeah. That's not an emergency. This is another thing that I'm going to be honest– it irks me because there are so many of us who are told it is an emergency. When we hear “emergency”, what do we think? Panic. Scary. Right? We divert into asking– divert. I don't know if that's the right word. We stop asking questions and we say, “Okay. Okay. Okay,” because it's an emergency and we are told that. Karen: Exactly. Meagan: I think a lot of times, truly that we are told it is an emergency and that offers some sort of– it's weird, but some sort of validation where it's like, “But it's an emergency, so okay.” We just agree and then we are grateful. We look at them in a way because it's an emergency so they are saving. Does this make sense? I don't know. Karen: No, it does. To me, when I think about it now, it feels like manipulation. Meagan: Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It can be. Truly, there are real emergent Cesareans. Karen: Agreed. Meagan: We are so grateful for Cesareans that can help us and those are real, true emergent situations, but so many of us are told it's an emergency and then like you said, it's 10:00 AM or they come in and they're like, “We need to shave you,” and it's like, “Okay, that's not an emergency.” If they have time to shave you, talk with you, and leave you for four hours, no. It's not an emergency. Karen: Exactly. So if I had known what I know now, I would have asked for my options, asked to push and change positions. There are so many things I would have done but like you said, I thought it was an emergency. I was treating my baby in danger. I need to do this now even though there was nothing wrong with the baby. There wasn't. Meagan: Or you. Karen: Mhmm, exactly. His heart was fine. Everything was fine as far as I could see as far as I remember, as far as the paperwork says, so it doesn't make sense anymore to me. But yeah. 15:11 Karen's C-sectionKaren: My husband was told to dress in scrubs while they prepped me and then I asked the nurse to make sure that no one was in the room when I got back. When we came back to surgery, they wheeled me over to the OR and they were just checking to see that the epidural was still good. I could feel them touching my belly. I told them and that's the last thing I remember. The next thing I know, I just hear a baby crying in the distance. I was waking up in a different room and there were just these two nurses chatting about their day. To me, it was traumatizing. I couldn't even process what was going on and what happened. That was just so, so scary. Meagan: I'm so sorry. Karen: Yeah. Sorry. So then they wheeled me out and that's where my husband and our whole family were waiting. I was so frustrated because I told the nurse I didn't want anyone here. I knew I would be upset after the C-section and there was everyone in the room waiting. I also found out that my baby got passed around so I didn't even get to be the first to hold him. That was so extremely upsetting. I told my husband, “I want everyone out.” Everyone left and it was just me and my husband and our baby, Luke. We were there for about 15 minutes before they started to prep me to move the recovery room and I was like, “Wait a minute. I thought I got a golden hour where I would get to be alone with the baby for an hour.” They were like, “Oh yeah, you can do that in the recovery room,” and they just wheeled me over. I get so sad when I look at pictures of that time because my baby is so beautiful. I love him so much, but I felt so drugged up that I couldn't connect with him. You can see it in the pictures. I just look like I don't know where I am. I'm in pain. It's just not what I imagined that experience to be. Meagan: Right. Karen: I definitely felt robbed of an experience. I felt extremely traumatized. That was hard in and of itself, but I was trying to come to terms with what happened. It was just a very rough time in the hospital. We had some family drama as well so that didn't help. Meagan: No. Karen: I was discharged less than 48 hours later which now I know is way too early considering the symptoms I was feeling. 17:43 Postpartum swelling and difficulty breathingKaren: My legs were extremely swollen. My whole body was extremely swollen. It didn't even look like I had given birth because I was just swollen all over. One nurse even made fun of my legs and she was like, “They look like baseball bats.” She was just tapping them.Meagan: That's a warning sign. That's something to think about. Karen: Well, I didn't know that. Meagan: Well, of course, you didn't, but as a professional, she shouldn't be tapping on your legs. She should be like, “Hmm, was this like this?” Karen: I've told other medical professionals that story and they are horrified. They are like, “That was a big warning sign something was wrong,” but they discharged me regardless. I felt so completely unprepared. It was just a very bad experience all around. They didn't have a lactation consultant working over the weekend so my baby was crying and crying and crying. He wasn't getting enough to eat when he was breastfeeding. They were just laughing and saying, “Oh, all moms feel like that. He's getting enough to eat.” Sure enough, my son was jaundiced and his pediatrician was like, “No, he needs formula. He's not getting enough to eat.” He had a significant tongue tie so he was not getting enough to eat. When I got home, like I said, baby was starving. I'm not getting any sleep. When he does fall asleep, I can't sleep. I remember explaining to different people like, “I'm having trouble breathing every time I lay down.” Everyone was just like, “Oh yeah. New mom, new baby. Totally normal.” Meagan: What? It is not normal to not feel like you can't breathe. Karen: You're going to love this then. At one point, I called the nurse hotline at the hospital because they gave it to me when I was discharged. I told the nurse, “When I lay down, I can't breathe. It feels like I can't breathe.” Her response was, “Oh, sometimes new moms don't know how pain feels like.” I was just like, “Okay, I guess this is just me.” She was like, “Technically, we're supposed to tell you to come to the hospital if you are having trouble breathing.” Meagan: Technically. Karen: Technically. So I was trying to be the good girl and trying not to ruffle any feathers and I was just like, “Okay. I'll keep pushing through,” but the moment I realized things were not good, I was extremely depressed. I thought that I was going to die and leave my child alone. I was having horrible thoughts like that. Then I realized, “I'm starting to hallucinate.” So after three days of not sleeping, there was one incident where I heard my baby crying and screaming. I went over to the bassinet to look at him and he's sleeping peacefully, but I can still hear him crying and screaming clearly. I'm like, “That's not normal.” 21:03 Fluid in her lungsKaren: Once he woke up because I was trying to be a good new mom, so once he woke up, I packed myself up and my mom and I went to the ER. I explained to them, “I'm not getting sleep. I can't sleep. Every time I lay down, I can't breathe.” They were like, “Okay. Maybe you have a blood clot.” They took me back. They did an MRI scan and when I was lying down for the scan, I started taking these small quick breaths and the nurse was like, “Are you having a panic attack? What's going on?” I go, “I can't breathe.” She finally was the one that was just like, “There is something deeply wrong here. This is not normal at all.” I loved her. She really pushed to make sure that I got seen quickly. They determined that I was experiencing congestive heart failure. The way they explained it is my heart was not pumping strong enough I guess. It wasn't pumping right so that's why I was having trouble breathing because my lungs were filling up with fluid. They were able to give me medication. It was Lasix to help push out all of the fluid. I was kept at the ICU for two nights then they transferred me to the cardiac wing of the hospital. I was there four nights total because they just wanted to keep an eye on my blood pressure and this obviously wasn't normal what was happening. My blood pressure was through the roof. That was a really, really difficult time because one, I was away from my new baby and then I had three different doctors tell me, “There is something wrong with your heart. You won't be able to have more children. Your heart can't handle it.” That was distressing because my husband and I dreamed of having a big family and we were thinking, “This might be our last child.” But weirdly enough, my OB– the one who performed the C-section– disagreed. I don't like how he said this, but he was like, “Oh, don't be dramatic. It was just a little extra fluid. You're fine.” I was like, “Okay.” He said, “You can have a VBAC. You can have as many children as you want. You're going to be fine.” I wasn't a fan of him but that was interesting that he had told me, “You're going to be a great VBAC candidate.” He kind of put that idea in my head. He said that the only reason my son got stuck was because he was 9 pounds, 15 ounces so basically a 10-pounder. I was like, “Okay.” I didn't know what I know now, but that's the reason they gave me. 23:52 Moving to Florida and getting answersKaren: Eventually, we moved to Florida because I'm from Florida so I felt more comfortable with the medical care there. I just kept finding out different ways that I was failed by the medical system back in Virginia. My primary doctor determined that I had postpartum depression. My son was already two years old when she discovered that. It was just like, “Oh, okay.” Here's some medication. Now I feel like myself again. It made me realize, “Okay, what else do I need to look into?” I got a cardiologist. She was saying, “There is nothing wrong with your heart.” She can't definitively say because she wasn't there, but she was like, “They put too many fluids in your body. You are fine. There is nothing wrong with your heart.” She was just like, “You're good to go. You can have a VBAC. You can have another C-section. You can do whatever you want. You're fine. We can keep an eye on you, but you're okay.” I started seeing an OB and I told her everything that happened and I was just like, “I want a VBAC.” I told her everything the cardiologist said, gave her all of the paperwork and she was like, “Yeah. You can totally have a VBAC.” So with both of their blessings, I was like, “Okay. Let's try for baby number two. I'm okay. I'm healthy. I'm fine.” 25:13 Getting pregnant againKaren: So I got pregnant with baby number two and that was very exciting. I thought everything was going well then at 20 weeks, my OB said, “Unfortunately, I can't be your doctor anymore. This practice cannot deliver you. You are too high of a risk for this office.” Meagan: For the office. Karen: Yes. Yes. They only delivered at these smaller boutique hospitals so they said that I needed to deliver at a high-risk hospital or a hospital that accepts high-risk patients. Meagan: Okay, got you. I got you. Karen: I got a little tongue-tied. They told me I needed to deliver at a different hospital that I didn't want to deliver at. I was like, “If I'm going to deliver at a big hospital, it's going to be Winnie Palmer in Orlando.” I'm a huge fan of theirs. So I was just like, “Okay. I can't deliver with this office even though they've been aware of all my situations for a while. I'll find a different office.” But I was already 20 weeks so it's really hard to find a provider at 20 weeks. Meagan: It can be, yeah. Karen: The other disappointing thing they told me is, “Oh, by the way, you can't have any more children. You really shouldn't because, with everything that is going on with you, your body can't handle it.” It was just like, I don't understand where this is coming from. You've been telling me I've been okay. My cardiologist says I've been okay. I didn't really get what was going on. Karen: I called around and only one clinic would take me when I was that far along with this high-risk label on me. Meagan: I was going to say the label. That's exactly the word I was going to say. Karen: Yeah. I didn't feel like it really fit, but that's what they said I was. I found a big practice that had lots of doctors. It is a very prominent practice here in Orlando and I felt like I just had to settle. The first doctor I met with I was already frustrated because I asked for a female doctor and they gave me a male doctor. I don't have anything against male doctors, I just feel more comfortable with a female doctor but he was just like, “Oh. You can't VBAC at all. You had a vertical incision so you have to have a repeat C-section.” I was like, “I don't– I've never heard anyone say that. Where does it say that in my medical records?” He was just like, “I don't see it in your records, but this other doctor said that you had a vertical incision.” I'm like, “Well, how does she know that?” So I had to go and start pulling all of these records and got the surgical notes for my C-section and everything and finally, I found something that said I did not have a vertical incision so once I showed it to him, he was just like, “Oh, okay. Well, you still can't VBAC. Your hips are too tiny. You can't deliver a baby.” Meagan: Oh my goodness, just pulling them all out. Let me just shift this jar around and pull out the next reason. Karen: Yes. I was just like, “Are you serious? Okay.” Meagan: Goodness. 29:53 Advocating for a VBACKaren: So me and my husband were like, “No. I want to try. We want to try.” I'm so glad my husband was there because he is always so good at being an advocate for me. He was just like, “No. She wants a VBAC. What can we do to make it happen?” So he said, “Well, your weight is one thing because your baby was so big the first time because you gained a lot of weight. We can help you try but if after two hours of pushing you can't get that baby out, we're going to give you a C-section.” It was very frustrating, but I felt like I really had no choice. Meagan: Yeah. Karen: I hadn't discovered you yet so I was just like, “Okay. I guess it is what it is. I will try my best to have a VBAC, but this guy's going to stop me.” So I was very blessed that due to a scheduling issue, I had an appointment with a totally different doctor. She was this young female doctor. She was around my age and I felt like I could relate to her. I just really enjoyed talking to her. I don't know if this has something to do with it, but my background is I am Japanese and Colombian and she was Asian, so it was just like, “Okay. I have someone else who is a person of color who understands at least the cultural differences.” So I don't know if that really had anything to do with anything, but it did make me feel more comfortable with her.Meagan: Which is important. Karen: Yes. After years of different doctors telling me there was something wrong with me, it was so nice to have her say to me, “Oh. You want a VBAC? Yeah. You are super healthy. You are going to be fine.” It was just like, “Oh my gosh. You think I'm healthy? Every doctor had been telling me that I'm overweight. There's something wrong with my heart. There's something wrong,” and she was telling me that I was healthy. That just made me so inspired and I just became a lot more proactive with my health. I didn't feel like things had to happen to me. I felt like I had a lot more control over my situation. 32:14 A spiritual dreamKaren: There was also one other event that happened and this was around Christmas. I'm a Christian, so we've been going to God a lot with prayers and I have been asking for a successful VBAC. So Christmas morning, I woke up to a dream but it didn't feel like a dream. It felt more like a vision and I was giving birth vaginally to a little girl. In the dream, I had the knowledge that this was going to be my third child. I was like, “Wait a second. But I'm pregnant right now with my second child. How did that birth go?” I just was told by God, “Oh, that birth went well too. You're going to be fine. You're going to be happy. You're going to have many children.” So I woke up so happy that Christmas morning. I told my husband with everything I've been battling and all of these negative thoughts, there is no way that this could have been something I produced myself or just dreamed of myself because it was such a positive, happy dream when before that, I had just been having constant nightmares about C-sections.It was just this moment of, “Okay. God really is with us and he's going to make sure everything is okay.” So yeah, between having this great doctor and then having that dream, I just was more motivated to really take control of the situation like, “Okay. I don't have to let things happen to me. What can I do?” Which actually led me to The VBAC Link. I was already 33 weeks pregnant when I found you guys so it was kind of late in the game, but I'm so glad I did. I listened to The VBAC Link obsessively in the car, when I was walking my dog, all the time and I would just hear these different stories and notate, “Okay. This is what she did. This is how she got results. This is what happened to her.” I started taking all of these notes about how I should respond in different situations and I'm so glad I did because I did use some of that later on. 34:34 Gestational hypertensionKaren: Unfortunately, I did develop gestational hypertension but I'm still not completely convinced that I actually had it. They diagnosed me the week I had to put down my dog and I had her since I was 15 so it was just devastating. I was under a lot of stress and I tried to explain that to them. They were like, “No. This is gestational hypertension.” I'm like, “Okay. Here is another label.” But I kept on top of my blood pressure readings. I never had high readings. I ate well. I tried to do exercise as much as you can when you are in your third trimester. Unfortunately, this practice had a policy that patients with gestational hypertension must deliver by 37 weeks. Meagan: Whoa. Karen: Yes. They said that if you are a VBAC patient, they won't induce you. So there's another timeline. I had to deliver by 37 weeks. But yeah, things seemed to be going really well. Once I reached around 36 weeks, I actually started having prodromal labor. I'm like, “Okay, yes. Things are going really well.” Because I had gestational hypertension, I was going 3-4 times a week to the doctor at that point. Meagan: For non-stress tests and stuff? Karen: Yes, exactly. They could see that I was already 3 centimeters dilated so I was like, “Great. Everything is going great.” At the 37-week appointment, there was a scheduling issue and instead of being able to see my regular doctor, they assigned me to a different doctor and that just made me really, really nervous. I was just like, “I don't want to go. I don't feel right. Something is going to go wrong. It's not my doctor. I don't want to go.” My husband was like, “No. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. Let's go.” He canceled work so he could go with me. He was like, “Everything is going to be okay.” The other thing that happened that morning was my sister who was going to be in the room with us woke up with strep throat. I was like, “This is not a good week. This is not a good day. I don't want to go in.” So when I went in, my blood pressure was 160/113 which was extremely high. This doctor told me, “You need to get a C-section today.” So I was just like, “Okay. I don't want to hurt my baby. That's fine.” I was really, really upset. I was crying and I told her I was scared and she was like, “Why are you scared?” My husband was pretty blunt and was like, “Because the doctors almost killed her last time.”She was like, “How did they almost kill her?” He was like, “They put too much fluid in her body and they caused heart failure.” She laughed and she said, “That's not a thing.” I was like, “Well, my cardiologist said it was a thing. How could you say it's not a thing?” I went to the hospital. I was really upset but the nurse there was amazing. She was like, “What happened?” I basically told her everything like my life story basically up until that point. She was like, “I checked your blood pressure when you came in. You are fine.” She was like, “This is ridiculous. It just sounds like you are stressed out.” At that point, my blood pressure was–Meagan: Reasonably so.Karen: She checked my blood pressure and it was 117/83 so it was great. It was so funny because she kept the blood pressure cuff on me and the doctor who was working that day was the same doctor who told me I'd never be able to VBAC and kept coming up with excuses. My nurse was just like, “Look, her blood pressure is fine.” Then she took my blood pressure again in front of him and it went back up. She was like, “Can you step out?” She took it again and then it was fine. She started advocating on my behalf. She was like, “You guys are causing her heart pressure to go up. You guys are stressing her out. She does not have high blood pressure because of herself. It's you guys.” The doctor was just like, “Oh, well I guess it's fine, but wouldn't you rather just have a birthday today?” I'm like, “No. I would not like to just have a C-section for no reason.” He's like, “I really don't want to send you home though,” but you really should consider this C-section just in case your blood pressure goes back up. I was like, “Look. I can check it repeatedly and if it goes up, I will come back. I'm not going to be stupid and put my son's life in danger. I will come back.” He just kept trying to convince me and finally, we were like, “No. We're leaving.” I told them, “If I'm going to have a C-section, it's going to be with my regular doctor. I trust her. I'm going to have control over this situation somehow. Even if I have to have a C-section, it's going to be by someone I trust. It's not going to be by you.” 39:36 Signing an AMAKaren: He was not thrilled about hearing that but he said, “Okay fine. You have to fill out this paperwork saying you're leaving against medical advice, but it will be fine.” I was like, “Okay, fine.” I filled out this paperwork. I was scared like, “They're probably going to kick me out afterward, but whatever.” I filled it out and I went home. They did make me schedule a C-section for two days later when my regular doctor was on call. I was like, “You know what? If it has to happen that day, it's fine. I did everything I could. I took control of whatever I could. It's my doctor.” She made me feel seen and heard and she had my best interest at heart, so we are going to pray and just do what we can. The next two days, I walked 10 miles. I drank raspberry leaf tea. We had sex. We did basically everything you can do to get labor going. I was still having prodromal labor so we would get our hopes up and then it would stop and then get our hopes up and then it would stop. Around midnight the night before I was supposed to get my C-section, I was so upset. I was just like, “It's not going to happen. I'm just going to have to get a C-section.” I just gave up completely. My husband was just like, “No. God told you this was going to be fine. You're going to be fine. Let's just get some rest because it's already midnight and we have to leave at 3:00 AM so let's just get a little bit of rest and it will be fine. We will talk to the doctor in the morning.” I was like, “Okay.” So we went to sleep at 1:00. The alarm rang at 3:00 and I was in labor. Meagan: Yay! Karen: I was so excited. 41:31 Going to the hospitalKaren: We went to the hospital. They still prepped me for a C-section. They were like, “Just in case,” but I was having regular contractions. It wasn't going away. My doctor came in. She checked me and she was like, “Okay. If you want to TOLAC, I'll send you over.” I was just like, “Oh my gosh, yes. This is my dream!” We were so happy. They wheeled us over and it just felt so surreal. We just kept waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under us and someone came in and was like, “No, you need a C-section now. You're not allowed to be over here,” or something. We were just waiting. I wanted this to be another unmedicated birth, but our midwife came in and she told me her plan. She said she wanted to try a small bit of Pitocin to see if I could make the contractions a little bit stronger and then she saw my hesitation and told me, “It's only a small amount to help move things along, but you are not on a time limit. You can take however long you need to labor. It's just to help move things along. The max is 10. We won't ever get to that point.” I was just like, “Okay. I'm going to put my trust in you because my doctor trusts you.” She also asked if she could break my water to help move things along and I felt at ease so I was just like, “Okay. That's fine.” My husband was really surprised I was consenting to the Pitocin and to the water breaking. I told him, “I don't know. All this time, I'm always fighting against my gut and my gut is telling me I can trust them fine and this is going to be okay.” I listened to her plan and I said, “Yeah, let's do it.” They also kept a really close eye on my fluid levels– the thing that the other doctor said was not a thing. It felt good to know that they were actually paying attention to me and listening to me. Karen: The other thing that happened was at 10:00 AM, my sister completed 48 hours of antibiotics so she was able to join us and I was like, “Okay. Everything is going to be okay.” My husband and I were finally able to relax. Meagan: Good. Karen: Yeah. Again, I wanted to go unmedicated but I noticed something about my body which was that I could not relax my pelvic floor. I was so tired. I was so exhausted from the last 48 hours, from the walking, from not sleeping, and from everything. I was just like, “I'm trying, but I cannot relax it.” I was just like, “I think I want an epidural. I think that will relax my pelvic floor and just relax in general.” They gave me the epidural so I was finally able to get some rest. Without even having to ask them, the midwife would come in, put me in different positions, and just do different things to help me get the baby down on its own instead of last time where they just left me lying in there with no instructions. Then around 4:00 PM, they told me I was fully dilated and they were like, “Let's do some practice pushes. Let's just make sure you know what you're doing with your body. We can troubleshoot and then when you're ready, you know what to do already.” I was like, “Yeah. That's fine.” They get everything ready, start doing some practice pushes, and the midwife goes, “Oh, these aren't practice pushes.” 45:20 Pushing for 20 minutesKaren: She starts getting suited up and the room starts filling up with people and 20 minutes later, my baby was out. Meagan: 20 minutes! Karen: Yeah, 20 minutes of pushing. He was 9 pounds so he was still a big baby and perfectly healthy and beautiful. It was wonderful. One thing that my husband noticed was that the whole room was all women. It was such a cool girl power moment. They were all cheering and so happy for me getting my VBAC and it was just a total girl power that we were all like, “Yes. We did it. Girl power! The doctor is a woman. The pediatrician is a woman. We did this.” It was such a cool, surreal moment and then they had other nurses coming in and they were like, “We heard your story. That is so cool you got your VBAC.” It was so, so amazing. It was just such a huge difference having this supportive environment. I don't know. In that moment, it was like an instant feeling of relief because I felt like all of this trauma that I had been carrying with me for so long was just lifted. I felt like I was finally healed and I was able to forgive myself for the C-section and realize, “Okay. You didn't fail at anything. Things happen. You didn't know. It's okay.” Finally, I didn't have this label that I was defining myself with for so long which was traumatic birth. I finally just got to have the birth I wanted for it to be pretty smooth after the drama of the earlier morning. Everything just went perfectly and it was so, so beautiful. I was crying. We were all crying. The doctor was just like, “Okay, is this pain crying or is this happiness?” I'm like, “This is happiness!” Meagan: Pure joy.Karen: That's my story. 47:30 White coat syndromeMeagan: That is awesome. I love that you truly got to end that way surrounded with women and somebody that you really like and just having everyone rejoicing and happy and crying together and having that space be such a drastic change in your first birth. That is amazing. Thank you so much. Did you have any blood pressure issues during your labor at all? Karen: No. My blood pressure was fine. They were keeping an eye on it the entire time and I was getting nervous because I thought, maybe if it should up they would wheel me over to a C-section, but no. It was fine the entire time. Meagan: I love that. It's kind of interesting because there have been times where I've had clients where they don't have any signs of hypertension or preeclampsia or anything like that, but then they go to their visit and then they are like, “Oh my gosh. My blood pressure was just through the roof.” They go home and they are checking it at home and they are like, “It's fine.” But then they go and it's through the roof every time they go. We just had a client just the other day. She's 34 weeks and she went and her blood pressure was pretty high. It really was. It was high. The reading was high and they did a couple of readings. They said things like, “Well, we might have to go to an emergency C-section.” This and that. Anyway, she was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on.” She was like, “I want to go home.” She went home and relaxed and had food. Her blood pressure was fine. White coat syndrome is a real thing and it's something to take into consideration like, “I never have blood pressure issues. I don't have any signs. I don't have protein. I don't have these things. What may be going on?” I love how your nurse was like, “Hey, can you step out? Go out.” She was very able to relate to that. Then sometimes, we have it and we don't know why. With your first pregnancy, did you have any high blood pressure at all? Karen: No. It was just a very uneventful pregnancy. Everything was perfect. It was very strange for these blood pressure problems to happen afterward.Meagan: Yeah. I think it's called peripartum so it could happen before or postpartum cardiomyopathy. Karen: Yes. Yes. Meagan: That's what I was thinking it was going where the heart muscles weaken and can lead to heart failure progressively. The symptoms include fatigue, hard to breathe, and feeling your heart rush. Those are common. Karen: Yeah, so that's actually what is on my medical records is that I had peripartum cardiomyopathy but my cardiologist was just like, “I don't believe that for a second. Your heart is fine.” She kept an eye on my heart the entire pregnancy and after the pregnancy. Nothing else happened. Meagan: I almost wonder if your heart was under stress. You talked about fluids. We get an astronomical amount of fluids during a C-section too. I'm just wondering if your body just went under a lot with a Cesarean. There was a lot of shifting and a lot of things happening and then of course a Cesarean. It just made me curious because sometimes if you have hypertension before, it can be a risk factor in that. Interesting. Karen: Yeah. That's something that the cardiologist said is that sometimes it gets confused with fluid overload. She thinks that's what happened. Part of the labeling that was happening is throughout my second pregnancy, I kept having to tell people that I did not have blood pressure issues with the first because they kept going, “Oh yeah, well you had blood pressure issues with your first pregnancy,” and I'd be like, “No, I didn't. Stop assuming that.” Meagan: I mean, I am no medical professional by any means, but it makes me wonder if it could have been related to the birth itself. 51:59 Symptoms of hypertension and preeclampsiaMeagan: I'd love to talk about hypertension and preeclampsia and things like that because hypertension is something that happens during pregnancy and it can be associated with lots of different reasons, but sometimes hypertension during pregnancy can lead to preeclampsia or HELLP or things like that. I want to give a little educational tidbit here. Talking about just hypertension. High blood pressure or hypertension does not necessarily make us feel unwell all the time. You can have that and not know. So you walking into your visit and them being like, “You have hypertension.” You're like, “Oh.” It's not completely abnormal to just walk in, but sometimes we might have headaches or not feel super great. If you are feeling crummy or especially if you are feeling like you can't breathe when you lay down or have shortness of breath, do not think that those are all just normal pregnancy symptoms that people who told you, “Oh, yeah. It's a new mom.” You're like, “No.” So follow your body. Trust your body. Preeclampsia is a condition that does affect pregnant women and can sometimes come on after that 20-week mark where we are having some of that swelling. We are having the high blood pressure. We have protein in our urine. That's when it turns into that preeclampsia stage. It's really hard. It's still unknown exactly why preeclampsia or hypertension come, but it's believe to be placenta-related so sometimes our placenta doesn't attach in the full-on correct manner and our blood vessels are pumping differently so we can get high blood pressure. I want to note that if you are told that you have high blood pressure or if you have preeclampsia, that doesn't always mean you have to schedule a C-section. It just doesn't. It doesn't mean it's always the best decision to not schedule a C-section if that makes sense, but that doesn't mean you have to have a C-section because you have hypertension or blood pressure. I feel like time and time again, I do. I see these comments in our community where it's like, “I really wanted my VBAC, but I just got preeclampsia. The doctor says I have to have a C-section.” That just isn't necessarily true. They can be induced. I know you mentioned your one hospital was like, “No, we can't induce because you are a VBAC,” which also isn't necessarily true. 54:52 Tips for hypertension and preeclampsia Meagan: Sometimes we also want to be aware of hypertension or preeclampsia getting worse because labor can be stressful on our body and all of the things. I wanted to just give a couple of little tips. If you have high blood pressure, increase your hydration. Go for walks. Cut out a lot of salts so really eating healthy and then you can get good supplements to help. If you are in labor and you are getting induced or something like that, sometimes you may want to shift gears. Maybe an epidural can be a good thing to reduce stress or a provider may suggest that it's not abnormal. But know that if you were told you have hypertension or you have preeclampsia, it doesn't always mean it's a for sure absolutely have to have a C-section. Even your provider was like, “Oh yeah. We've got this high blood pressure stuff. I really wanted to keep you.” You were like, “No.” Then your other doctor was like, “We'll kick you over here to 38 weeks,” because everything really was looking okay. Yay for that doctor for not making you stay and have a C-section that day. Know that you do have options. Time and time we talk about this. Don't hesitate to ask questions. Ask questions. Can I get a second opinion? Can I go home and relax and take a reading there? Is there something I can take to help with my blood pressure? Those types of things and then following your heart. What does your heart say? That's just my little tidbit. Do you have anything to add? I know you didn't have high blood pressure in the first pregnancy and then you kind of did sort of maybe have white coat syndrome or blood pressure with the second but do you have any tips on this situation? You were exactly in that space of they are telling you you have blood pressure. He is telling you he doesn't want you to go home and that type of thing.Do you have any messages to the audience?56:55 Karen's final tipsKaren: One thing I started doing during this pregnancy was meditation and that helped a lot. Whenever I felt like, “Okay. I'm going to go into a stressful situation,” which was most doctor visits, I would meditate before the doctor came in and that would really help a lot. Meagan: Yes. Exercising, eating, hydrating, meditation, and doing something to bring yourself back down can help. It doesn't always help. Sometimes we have high blood pressure and we do not understand it. We cannot control it as much as we are trying to. It just doesn't want to listen to what we are trying to do or receive the things we are trying to do, but all of these things can help. I am just so happy for you that you found good support, that you found the true bubble of love in your hospital room at the very end, and that you were able to have your VBAC. Karen: Thank you. Yeah. I do want to make sure. I'm not trying to send a message of, “Ignore high blood pressure! Do what you want!” It absolutely can be a very scary thing. If you need to have a C-section because of it, totally understandable. It's just that my big message that I tell new moms is to listen to your body and you are allowed to say no. You are allowed to say no to people and ask for options. But the big one is to listen to your body. Listen to your gut. You know what is really, truly going on with your body. Meagan: Of course, right. And typically, birth is actually the full cure for things like preeclampsia. Getting baby earthside is typically the end of that preeclampsia and the stop. That doesn't mean you shouldn't say, “No, I'm not going to do anything,” but just know that you have options. Induction is still okay typically. Ask those providers about your individual needs. Talk about your individual case but yeah, I would agree. I'm not trying to say, “Don't listen to your provider.” I'm just saying that you have options and you often will have options if they say one thing or another. Don't hesitate to ask questions. Karen: Exactly. Exactly. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Is this the most iconic Walking Dead episode of all? Pretty much! Lucy and I had a blast talking it through with guest Jonathan Bookallil. As always, we want your feedback (and zombie sounds) as we go back through The Walking Dead. Next episode: The Return of the Living Dead (and the return of Karen)You can email your thoughts or send a voice message to talk@podcastica.com.Or check out our Facebook group, where we put up comment posts for each episode, at facebook.com/groups/podcastica.Show support and get ad-free episodes and a bunch of other cool stuff: patreon.com/jasoncabassiOr go to buymeacoffee.com/cabassi for a one-time donation.

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Can I Have Another Snack? Podcast where we talk about food, bodies, and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas, I'm an anti-diet registered nutritionist and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack newsletter.Today I'm sharing part 2 of my conversation with Professor Karen Throsby, author of Sugar Rush.  If you're just joining us then make sure you go back and listen to part 1 of this episode before you jump into this one. We talk about mortified mothers, how removing sugar from the diet is gendered work that falls on women, and how the certainty around the ‘badness' of sugar belies a lot more doubt and ambiguity coming from the scientific community. So go back and check out part 1 if you haven't listened already. Today we're getting into why the so-called ‘war on ob*sity' has to constantly reinvent itself to stay relevant, and how it fails to meet its own objectives. We also talk about how ultra-processed foods are quickly becoming the new sugar and how that conversation fails to acknowledge the role that convenience foods play in offering immediate care or the privilege in being able to eat for some nebulous future health. And we couldn't talk about sugar and not talk about Jamie Oliver and the sugar tax.INTROBefore we get to Karen, a super quick reminder that all the work we do here is entirely reader and listener supported and the podcast is my biggest operating cost. I will do everything I can to keep it free and accessible to everyone, and you can help by becoming a paid subscriber - it's £5/month or £50 for the year (and you can pay that in your local currency wherever you are in the world). Paid subscribers get access to the extended CIHAS universe including our weekly discussion threads, my monthly column Dear Laura and the whole back archive. You also support the people who work on the podcast, and help ensure we can keep the lights on around here. You can sign up at laurathomasphd.co.uk and the link is in your show notes. As always, if you're experiencing financial hardship, comp subscriptions are available, please email hello@laurathomasphd.co.uk and put the work ‘snacks' in the subject line and we'll hook you up. Thank you as always for your support and for making this work possible.Alright team, I know you're going to love the second installment of this episode so let's get straight to it - here's part two of my conversations with professor Karen Throsby.  Here's the transcript in full:MAIN EPISODELaura: Karen, I want to come back to this idea that you articulate so well in the book. You say that “the so-called war on ob*sity has been unable to warrant its core empirical claims” – I'm quoting you now, “and has been a notable failure when measured against its own goals of sustained population level weight loss.”Can you explain how in order to sustain itself, the war on ob*sity had to reinvent itself like Madonna? By casting a new villain…and kind of talk about that arc a little bit? Karen: Yeah. So if we think about, I mean, obviously the sort of attack on fat bodies has, has a very long history, but if we think about its most recent history in, in the form of the war on ob*sity, which dates to around the turn of the millennium as a new kind of intensified attack where dietary fat was seen as the core problem.Sugar has always been seen as a problem. We can even go back to the 1960s and the rise of artificial sweeteners. and their take up in the diet industry. So it's always been there as a problem, but it was really fat, fat, fat, fat, fat. And that's why, when I looked at the newspaper articles, sugar was hardly talked about because the focus was different.And I think what we get is then with that repeated failure, where there has been a base, I mean, there's…in the UK, there's been a leveling off of ob*sity rates, but it doesn't meet the aspirations of the attack on ob*sity. It has been a failure. And I think it runs out of steam because it's not achieving the change.And, and yet you get this kind of constant hectoring and sort of constant renewal. I can't…there's been…I can't remember. It's like 17 policies or something, you know, in the last 20 years. And it's, you know, none of them are successful, have been successful. And then, so we get to about 2012, and one of the things that happened in the UK, of course, was the Olympics, where there was a lot of anti-ob*sity talk.It was seen as a way of refreshing the war on ob*sity, and I think that partly opened the door. Laura: Yeah. I'm sort of smirking, because I was in the States at that point doing my PhD, so I kind of, like, missed a lot of what was going on here, around 2012 in the Olympics. So yeah, it's really interesting that you're, you're not, you noted that, that that kind of anti…Karen: Like a core, a core justification for the, for funding, you know, a mega event like the Olympics was that it would boost sport, which would boost attempts to reduce ob*sity. And so you've got that in the background, you've got the fact that it is losing steam, you know, and so it needs to find another, another enemy, something to pick it back up again. And sugar, I think…because at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, we've got austerity measures being consolidated through the Welfare Reform Act in 2012, all of those welfare cuts in place. So then the idea of sugar, and the kind of an austerity worked really well together, the idea that individuals should make small economies to get by to manage their own consumption, that you shouldn't over consume because it costs the state, it costs other people money. And so those narratives came together perfectly and sugar just became this, this model enemy for the moment.And then what we see then is the rise of interest in the sugar tax. which was announced in 2016, which is the peak in the newspaper coverage, and then was launched in 2018. So in a, in a sense, the history of the social life of sugar during this moment is an arc that sort of covers the rise to the sugar tax and then its implementation.But all of the expectation that had been laid on fat is then laid onto sugar as the problem. If only we can solve this problem. And so again, as I said before, it creates this erasure of the absolute complexity of food and eating. The idea that food is only ever swallowing and metabolising, it's, you know, it's so social, it forms so many social functions around love, care, comfort, you know, all of those things that it's just completely inadequate.And then what we've got now is a tailing off. And actually it tailed off during the pandemic, there was a little peak at the beginning, if you can remember when Boris Johnson launched an anti-obesity policy, when he came out of hospital, he was blaming his own body size on the fact that he'd been very unwell. And so we saw a little peak then, but it's basically dropped off now.So in sort of 10 years, we've had a sort of complete focus on sugar and then this tailing off of interest in it. And I think now what's coming in instead is ultra processed food is now filling that gap, but it's folded sugar into it because obviously ultra processed food is, as almost all, I mean, has always got sugar in it. And so it's picked up the sugar as it's gone. So it's, all of that is still there, but it's now being talked about in terms of ultra processed food.[SMALL PREVIEW OF FIRST UPF ARTICLE]Laura: I imagine that what you, you might say about kind of almost this like third phase of the, the ‘war on ob*sity' in terms of who or what is responsible, because there almost has to be this singular entity that we can point at.And at the same time, I think it's so interesting that ultra processed food has just kind of subsumed every kind of nutritional villain that we could have. Fat, sugar, sweeteners, and just the complexity within the concept of ultra processed food in terms of just from a lay perspective, right? To try and wrap your head around what is and isn't.I mean, I have a PhD in nutrition and I struggled to get through the NOVA documentation on ultra processed food. And to bring it back to the sort of gendered aspect of this for a second, something that I noted that…so Carlos Monteiro is the guy, right, that developed the NOVA classification. I'm not sure if you've read much around this.I don't know if this is a book that's in the works for the future, but one of the things he said is that ultra processed food is the undoing, basically of the family meal. I mean, there's…there's a lot that we could unpack there in terms of, like, the sort of putting a family meal on a pedestal and how that even has sort of classed and, you know, all kinds of connotations.But, I mean, as a mother of a small child, to my thinking, actually, ultra processed food saves our family meals, right? Like, it makes it feasible to get something on the table while you have, you know, a child kind of hanging around your legs begging you to play with them. All of the, kind of, the rhetoric from Carlos Monteiro and the men of science, it kind of, it misses the piece of labour, around labour, which we've talked about, but it also misses this piece of just how we're all just struggling to survive in late stage capitalism, and how none of us in our lives have the conditions available to us where, you know, we have affordable childcare or family close by because we're living in these like hyper isolated, splintered, you know, individual houses, and we have no community and I think there's this a piece that gets missed out of this conversation about the bigger, broader social structures that we're living within, which I suppose, you know, speaks to the thesis of your book.So yeah, I was just tying it back to some of my observations around ultra processed food, so it's really interesting that you've gone there and I'm curious to hear what additional thoughts you have about that?Karen: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, the, the alarm that goes off for me when I hear this talk about ultraprocessed food is very similar to my alarm around the way the sugar, that sugar is talked about. It's carrying a lot of weight that it's, it's being now framed as again, the problem. But now it's a very different kind of problem to sugar. So we know that sugar is in a lot of foods. If you go to a supermarket, it's, you know, there's a considerable proportion of the foods will have added sugar.But there's a real difference there between, say, observing that, where you could, for example, purchase lower sugar items and so on. But to say that, I mean, what is it, 60 to 80 percent of, of food that we eat – this is the figure that we get, I mean again, who is we? – is ultra processed food and we shouldn't eat it. What, what do they expect people to eat?Are they seriously suggesting that people take out 60 to 80 percent of their habitual diet?Laura: Well, I have an answer to that actually, Karen. So Gyorgy Scrinis, who I know you reference a lot in your book, he thinks that we should all… well, he had two recommendations from one podcast I listened to. One was that we should all, there should be lots of markets everywhere that people can just pick up food, fresh food, right?And secondly, he also thinks we should all be able to go into our garden and pick a salad. Karen: Right. I mean, it's a lovely fantasy. It's a lovely fantasy. Promised on the labour of women, again.Laura: I would love to have a garden, first of all, that I could be able to do that. Karen: Lots of people don't have those gardens. They don't have farmer's markets.It's a lovely fantasy. It's probably not a bad idea, but realistically, people can't do that for all kinds of complicated reasons. And I think what gets lost there is, I think, the idea of health in the present. So, for example, we know that, when I talk about the, we, you know, the, we are eating this, what's often meant there is they are eating this, right?We know that a lot of the people, the, the big figures in the anti UPF field are not and yeah, they're not eating it. So they are eating it and there is this complete lack of understanding around, for example, if you have no money, if you really have no money, if you're very poor, if you're poor in every way, which many, many people are in this country, to feed your child a processed meal that is highly palatable, calorific, that you know they'll finish and not be hungry, is an act of care in the present, that your kid's not going to be hungry. They'll be able to concentrate at school, get a good night's sleep, those things. Whereas those…that act is not credited. So if you were to cook food from scratch or buy an unfamiliar food, for example, and give it to a child. Now I've never raised a child, but from what I kind of understand, children are incredibly conservative and it takes many, many goes at a new food before they will eat it. So if you have no money and you give your child an apple that they won't eat, you can't give them anything else. And so the cost of experimentation is very, very high for people with nothing to fall back on. And so there's lots of reasons. And then we talk about time poverty. It's better to, you know, sit down and grab something that is processed rather than not having the time to cook anything. And so lots of those reasons why people might eat this food. And until you address, I think, the inequalities that are absolutely central to food choice, it makes no sense to actually dictate food choice unless you are prepared to entrench those very same inequalities.Laura: Yeah, thank you for that. I think you articulated it so beautifully with that example around the opportunity cost of feeding a child or, you know, exposing them..we would use the language of ‘exposure' in nutritional science in terms of, you need 15 to 20 exposures before a child will accept a food and even that's horseshit, right?We know that it can take a lot more than that and, and, and even then, you know, the…say they do eat the green beans or the broccoli or whatever it is, that's unlikely to fill them up and stave off hunger for, for that child. So, yeah, I think framing it as an act of care is such a beautiful way to, to put it because, you know, the, the alternative that's being peddled by these, UPF sort of evangelists is that that you're doing something harmful for your child and setting up that binary is so problematic because again, you're just flattening down so much nuance there.Karen: Yeah, exactly that. This idea that food is either good or bad and sugar is…is bad. And if you say it's good, then you must work for the sugar industry. And if you make, if you make a set of claims, as I have, a kind of critical claim where I, I refuse the idea that it's either good or bad, I've never said that it's good or bad, I just get accused of working for Coca Cola.You know, which I'm not, by the way.Laura: Yeah, no, you're, you're an academic and what you're doing is complicating a lot of these things that, that seem….are, I suppose, where the, the rhetoric around them is so, um, binarised and flattened and yeah, just, just, uh, you're, you're asking questions, which I think we need to do a lot more of.Speaking of questions, there is one, one more thing, little topic that I'd like to – I say, little topic, it's not a little topic at all, but one of the things that you, or one of the threads that felt really important in your book that I feel often gets obscured from any conversations about sugar is the really troubling history stemming from colonialism and enslavement of sugar.Can you speak to how nutrition and public health sort of washed their hands of this history and maybe tell us a little bit about that history and, and what happens when we erase it?Karen: Yeah, I mean a lot of people are aware, even though it doesn't come to the fore as much as it should, that there is a terrible history, and in many ways present, attached to sugar.Obviously it was, you know, a central product in, in the slavery, in the slavery trade. It was, um…you know, millions of people were enslaved in the interests of sugar production, um, the murder of, of uncountable people, the dislocation of uncountable people to get sugar. And this kind of partly relates to its, its, its kind of history as a, firstly as a luxury item, and then as a kind of everyday in, in sort of, you know, the, the 20th century, it becomes a, um, it becomes a more everyday item that you know that workers would put in their tea to get to get energy. But also we can even see more recently in, in, say, Australia, for example, there's a really terrible history of indentured labour…so post slavery. At the end of slavery, there was a use of indentured labor so Pacific Island people, for example in Australia, under absolutely horrific conditions, working conditions, of profound racism as well. And these things leave a long legacy. And we know, the legacy of slavery, you know, has led to the marginalisation of people of colour, you know, into the present. And so I think it's an important point. One of the things that bothers me a little bit about the ways it does get talked about is that it gets, there's a couple of books that talk about it as a kind of essentially evil product. Look, it was connected with slavery and now it's killing everybody. Um, as if it's sort of in itself, it was contaminated, whereas in fact, of course, it was colonialism, it was capitalism, that was the problem, not sugar, because we saw things with cotton and tobacco and so on as well. So it's an interesting thing, because in some ways it gets talked about as, well, it's clearly a kind of terrible product, look at its history, and yet at the same time, we don't talk about its history and what the legacy is of that in terms of racism, the legacies of colonialism and also we should also think as well about the present environmental damage of the sugar industry, which, you know, is incredibly greedy of water, for example, and causes a great deal of environmental damage.Which is also always through the lens of colonialism in the sense of who bears the weight of that damage, which areas, which places?Laura: Absolutely. I thought there was a really…I mean, there were lots of really illuminating examples in the book, but one thing – maybe you could speak more to this – is the kind of voyeuristic aspect of Jamie Oliver's Sugar documentary where he acts…he is almost behaving like the coloniser in, or embodying the coloniser by going to Mexico and sort of, you know, as he claims, seeing the damage that has been caused by companies like Coca Cola, but that that is missing a lot of the, the historical context. Can you just describe that probably a bit better than I can?Karen: Yeah, sure. I mean, Mexico has got this, this kind of, sort of unique status in the anti-sugar world as a place where sugar consumption is very high, but was also one of the first places to introduce a sugar tax.And so it's, it's seen as, as a sort of model site – and sort of everybody references Mexico and all the policy papers and things. And what Jamie Oliver did is in this, his documentary about sugar, he went to Mexico and went to the area of Chiapas, which has a very troubled history of conflict and profound poverty, and he actually goes to a family, a family dinner, a family event. It's actually a memorial event for a family member who died and they have, and they cook up a big dinner. And he looks on very approvingly at the food that they're cooking. They're sort of, you know, frying up all these great vegetables and spices. And he, he keeps saying how authentic it is and how, what a great job they're doing.And then we, he starts seeing what they're drinking and they're drinking pop. They're drinking fizzy drinks from the bottles. And also we see, we see several shots of women feeding babies, or toddlers, giving them pop, uh, to drink. And he sort of..his disapproval is so palpable and he sort of looks at the camera like, ‘why would they do this? Don't they know?'.You know, and he seems to have forgotten that earlier he's spoken to an activist in the area who tells him that there is, there is very little drinkable water in the region. And so actually, again, we can see the pop as an act of care, that the kids are being given, you know, something safe to drink.He never asks the next question. And he's got this very colonial gaze, which is…if only these people knew they would make different choices.Laura: Yeah, that's, it's so interesting. And there was another moment, again, that there, I think there were children drinking Coca Cola and with a similar sort of like, Oh my God, don't they know any better sort of stance? It was a dentist! Who said that they saw a lot of children who had been drinking high amounts of, of, like fizzy drinks, sweetened drinks, and that that they…the dentist started asking questions and the one of the, I think it was the mother maybe, or someone in the family had said that they were giving the child a fizzy drink to help keep them quiet. And then the dentist said, well, why do you need to keep them quiet? And they had said, well, because otherwise they will be beaten by their extended family. Karen: Yeah, I think it's the case from, from Alaska actually, that particular case. But what I think what's in…but yes, the point is that the mother giving the baby fizzy drinks was again performing an act of care to protect the child, in terms of present health, the child wouldn't be beaten for crying and so on. But this, this kind of trope of babies being given pop to drink runs right the way through the anti-sugar field as like the worst, the most egregious example. And of course, it's another version of mother blaming. And of kind of…and then it goes through this colonial lens of ignorance. If only they knew…Laura: And then they need these white male chef saviours to come in and…Karen: Exactly. So again, it's about…it's not, I'm not saying that, you know, giving the babies pop is, is a good thing or a bad thing.It's performing a particular function for the people caring for that child. And then it's, it's framed through this colonial lens of: if only these people knew better, and we are the ones who can teach them. Rather than asking, what is it in your life that influences your food choices? How could we make your lives better?Laura: Yeah, that makes giving our children a sweetened drink, you know, a necessity in the first place, what necessitates that. So then, we've talked a lot about this Jamie Oliver character, and I was telling you before we started recording that I now inextricably have the image of Jamie Oliver dancing outside of Parliament playing in my mind whenever I think about the sugar tax.I don't know if you intended your book to be funny, but I found it hilarious, the way that you were just name dropping all these people who I ,like, know through nutrition, but that's that's an aside! But I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the sugar tax and specifically the ways that the sugar tax is constructed so that it cannot fail.Karen: So the sugar tax is… if sugar is a problem about which something must be done, then sugar tax was the something, in the UK context. And the promise of the sugar tax was that it would reduce consumption of sugar, which in turn would a) produce more money to use for health projects and b) create health benefits. It would lead to a reduction in ob*sity, diabetes, all kinds of chronic diseases. Okay.But it's set up in such a way that…so its ultimate goal is to reduce illness, right? So to reduce ob*sity – which I don't consider as being illness – but to reduce ob*sity and to improve measures…make measurable health improvements at population level. That's the target. But actually, it doesn't have to do that to succeed. So the first thing it needs to do, the first way it can succeed is by reducing consumption, which is taken as a proxy for expected benefits. So, the sugar tax did reduce consumption of sugar. A lot of drinks were reformulated in advance of the tax to have less sugar. It did reduce purchasing of the high sugar drinks to some extent. Uh, it's a fairly modest reduction, but it is a reduction and that's been mapped fairly, you know, across the board globally in these taxes, right? But there is no evidence of the measurable health impacts that were assumed to follow. And instead what happens is they get pushed into the future. Ah, ‘we haven't seen them yet, but we will see them, especially if we have more taxes'. So the problem is not that the tax hasn't worked, but that there aren't enough of them, so we need to tax sweets and, and other, you know, cereals and things. So there's that way that as long as it reduces consumption, it can't fail. Even if it doesn't produce measurable health effects. The second is financial. So it will produce money, revenue, which can then be invested into, I mean, in our case, it was, they said it would go towards breakfast clubs and sporting facilities. Although when you look across the documents, the number of times over that the money is spent is amazing. And the idea is that you get, then you get health gains by other means. So you'll have breakfast clubs, so kids will have a healthy breakfast. So it doesn't matter if the sugar reduction doesn't lead to health gains because there's a revenue gain that will lead to health benefits.What's interesting is that also can't lose because if, if the tax doesn't raise very much money, it means that the tax has worked to reduce consumption. And if the tax raises a lot of money, you can say, well, it's worked because we can now compensate for the high consumption by investing in health benefits. So…and actually, I mean, there's, there's a whole other set of questions about what actually happened to the money.Laura: Well, that was what I was wondering, because I'm still seeing that there are 4 million children in England who are food insecure. Where are the free school meals for the 800,000 children that…whose parents are on Universal Credit that aren't eligible for free school meals, like…?Karen: And Sustain, the organisation Sustain actually raised some very specific questions about money that they knew had been raised in revenue that hadn't been…that had just been drawn into the sort of, into the wealth of the country. And so there's that. And then the final way that the sugar tax can succeed is its best way…it's the most nebulous way, is that it's seen as raising awareness. That simply by the fact of its existence, it's alerting people to the dangers of sugar. And so in a sense, it doesn't have to produce any of the other benefits because it's raised awareness. And what's interesting about this to me is that that then flings it straight back onto the individual. “Well, we told you, we've signaled it through the sugar tax. You're still not eating appropriately. You're still not feeding your children appropriately.” So it's a kind of abnegation of political responsibility, even while claiming to be taking responsibility by having the tax. So this is my concern about the tax is that it can't fail. And actually it ends up throwing responsibility back onto individuals and. As always, particularly women, where food is concerned. Laura: Yeah, well, that's exactly what Matt Hancock wanted, so he's got his way. But I do, I think it's really interesting that, especially that first part that you talked about, the sort of constantly moving goalposts and, you know, oh yes, we'll see these these benefits in the future. And it just all feels so nebulous. And, and then that being used as justification for us needing more and additional, you know, taxation, again, sort of obfuscating from all of the social and structural things over here going that, that nobody is addressing. Karen: I mean, you can think about the attack on sugar and, really on the, on the war on ob*sity more generally, as it's a very future oriented project. The benefits all lie in the future. If I give up sugar now, I will experience these, these benefits in the future, which is in itself a profound active privilege. And that's why I kind of mentioned the, the healthcare in the present of giving your child a bag of chips or something that will fill them up is being an active healthcare in the present because they don't have the luxury to invest in the future in the way that is being determined, um, in these prescriptions to give up sugar.Laura: And simultaneously you see this sense of urgency on the political side of things, even though these alleged benefits to people aren't going to be seen for years and years in the future, but the sense of urgency in terms of policymaking and you get these very off the cuff, ill thought-out, you know, not thinking about the potential collateral damage of these policies just for political gain.Yeah, we're all just collateral damage in this.Karen: I mean, interestingly we're not all collateral damage, it's particular groups of people are collateral damage. Laura: Well, that's true.Karen:…is the really salient point – I agree with you – but that's the really salient point that the weight of this damage does not fall evenly. And that's where my concern, that's kind of where the book really tries to focus, is where the weight of those exclusions falls. Laura: Yeah. No, absolutely. That's so on the point. So thank you for that. Karen, before I let you go, I would love to hear what your snack is. So at the end of every episode, my guest and I share what they've been snacking on. So it could be anything, a show, a podcast, a literal snack, whatever you have been snacking on lately. So what have you got to share with the listeners? Karen: Okay. So, so mine is a…it's an activity, really. So I love to swim and I swim in an outdoor pool, which is unusual in the UK, at a health club. And just, just recently…I swim in the evening and it's got very dark, but it's been very autumnal and the leaves have been kind of falling while, and the, the, the pool is surrounded by trees and it is the most peaceful and delicious space at the end of a very busy day to just go into the pool and be surrounded by this. It's very cold. The pool is warm, but the air is very cold. And it's a very particular moment that happens in the autumn where you get this beautiful colour and the sort of mist is rising off the pool. And it's the most peaceful, relaxing space at the end of a difficult day or a long day and I just look forward to it all day and then I just love…the first 10 minutes of that swim is just, is the best moment ever. So that would, that's my, that's my snack.Laura: So I'm sitting here so envious of you right now because I know exactly what you're talking about. I live, like, a five minute walk from a Lido. here in London. It's very close, but I'm navigating some pelvic pain. I haven't been able to go for a swim for such a long time, but I know exactly that moment that you're referring to, which, um, yeah, it's so lovely when… apart from when you get to the stage in autumn where they, like, leave out baskets and with the idea that you gather up leaves as you're going. Karen: But I love the leaves being in the water. I love having the leaves in the water and it's just, it's such a comforting space for me.Laura: I agree. There's something really holding, containing about being in the water. So my snack is…it's an actual, literal snack. But it's an anticipatory snack because every year…so my brother lives in the States, and every year we do like an exchange of like, I send him a bunch of, like, Dairy Milk and all these like chocolates, and he sends me stuff from from the US, so I've sent him with a list of stuff from Trader Joe's. So I'm vegan, which I believe you are as well. I just ask him to, like, clear the shelves of any, like, vegan shelf stable snacks and just box them all up and send them to me. So I know I have, like, peanut butter pretzels and the almond butter pretzel. They're like these little nuggets filled with peanut butter and almond butter, but like a pretzel casing. So I know that they're coming and they're so salty on the outside. Public Health England…I can see Susan Jebb is just, like, screaming at me right now. But it's okay. So yeah, I'm looking forward to getting that. By the time that this episode comes out in January, I will have had my snacks.Karen: You will have had your snacks. That is fantastic. Laura: Karen, before I let you go, can you please tell everyone where they can find your book? Actually say the title of it! And where they can get it and where they can find more of your work.Karen: Yep. So the book is called Sugar Rush: Science, Politics, and the Demonisation of Fatness. And it's published by Manchester University Press and you can buy it through their website. And if you want to learn more about the work that I'm doing, you can find me at the University of Leeds. If you put my name, Karen Throsby, into the search engine, or into Google, I'll pop up. And there's a list of sort of publications that I've done there and how you can get hold of me as well.Laura: Well, I will definitely link to the book and to your part on Leeds website in the show notes that everyone can find you and learn more about your work. Karen, this has been such a treat. Thank you so much for coming and speaking with us and thank you so much for your really brilliant and important work.Karen: Thank you so much for having me on. OUTRO​Thanks so much for listening to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast. You can support the show by subscribing in your podcast player and leaving a rating and review. And if you want to support the show further and get full access to the Can I Have Another Snack? universe, you can become a paid subscriber.It's just £5 a month or £50 for the year. As well as getting tons of cool perks you help make this work sustainable and we couldn't do it without the support of paying subscribers. Head to laurathomas.substack.com to learn more and sign up today.  Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas. Our sound engineer is Lucy Dearlove. Fiona Bray formats and schedules all of our posts and makes sure that they're out on time every week. Our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser, and the music is by Jason Barkhouse. Thanks so much for listening. ICYMI this week: “Why Do You Wear Makeup??”* Dear Laura... how do I stop fat shaming my partner's kid?* Rapid Response: Actually, Maybe Don't Say That to Your Kid* Why Are We So Obsessed With Hiding Vegetables in Our Kids' Food? This is a public episode. 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What do you do when you are angry at, disillusioned with and disappointed in God? How do you handle that crisis of faith? My guest today, Karen Harmon, went through a major plot twist in her life, and it sent her to a really dark place. Listen to today's episode to find out how Karen found her way through the suffering she experienced that left her questioning God.   QUOTES: "You can feel all those feelings. He's strong enough to handle them. But once you release them to Him, you'll discover He really is good. He really is still for you and not against you." (Karen) "You can't always find your way into His presence, especially when you are dealing with so many negative emotions. You need to surround yourself with people who will take you there when you can't find your way." (Karen) "Praise Him for the process of going through the hardship, not necessarily for the victory that's coming." (Karen)   SCRIPTURE: "I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living" (Psalm 27:13 NIV).   Let's Connect! Karen: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenharmon360 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenharmon360 Website: https://www.karenharmon360.com Julie: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julie.holmquist1 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julie_e_holmquist Website: https://www.StuffofHeaven.com ********************************* RESOURCE: Do you wonder if the dream you feel like God's put in your heart is actually from Him? Do you question your ability to know if it's the right dream for you to steward? I've created a resource for you – "7 Ways to Know if Your Dream is From God or Not" By answering these seven questions, you'll have the needed confidence to pursue the RIGHT DREAM at the RIGHT TIME!        

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On the newest episode of We Chat Divorce we're speaking with Donna M. Cheswick. Donna has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. She is a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA®) and a Certified QDRO Specialist (CQS). She is the owner of Cheswick Divorce Solutions LLC, located in Southwestern Pennsylvania, where she helps individuals, couples, and family law attorneys with all the financial complexities that arise during divorce to ensure the most financial advantageous settlement possible. Education is the backbone of her business. She frequently teaches workshops on a wide variety of topics relating to finance and divorce, as well as authors numerous articles for local/national print and online publications. Donna also is a trained divorce mediator and a collaborative financial neutral. She has also been drafting QDROs and other like orders for the last ten years. Learn More >>  http://cheswickdivorcesolutions.com/ Connect with Donna Cheswick on LinkedIn >>  https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnacheswick/   The We Chat Divorce podcast (hereinafter referred to as the “WCD”) represents the opinions of Shanahan, Chellew, and their guests to the show. WCD should not be considered professional or legal advice. The content here is for informational purposes only. Views and opinions expressed on WCD are our own and do not represent that of our places of work.  WCD should not be used in any legal capacity whatsoever.  Listeners should contact their attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter. No listener should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information on WCD without first seeking legal advice from counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. No guarantee is given regarding the accuracy of any statements or opinions made on WCD.  Unless specifically stated otherwise, Shanahan and Chellew do not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned on WCD, and information from this podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third-party materials or content of any third-party site referenced on WCD do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of Catherine Shanahan or Karen Chellew.    Karen: Welcome to We Chat Divorce, Catherine and I are so happy today to welcome Donna Cheswick, owner of Cheswick Divorce Solutions LLC. In this episode, we're going to discuss the nitty-gritty on issues with retirement plan division in divorce. But first, let me take a couple minutes to introduce Donna. Donna has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. She's a certified divorce financial analyst. You will also hear the term CDFA. She's also a certified QDRO specialist. That term is a CQS. You may have never heard that one. She is the owner of Cheswick Divorce Solutions located in southwestern Pennsylvania, where she helps individuals, couples, and family law attorneys with all the financial complexities that arise during divorce to ensure the most financial advantageous settlement possible. Education is a backbone of her business and she frequently teaches workshops on a wide variety of topics relating to finance and divorce, as well as authors numerous articles for local national print and online publications. Donna also is a trained divorce mediator and a collaborative financial neutral. She's also been drafting QDROs and other like orders for the last 10 years. Welcome, Donna. Donna: Thank you so much. I'm glad to be with you both. Catherine: Oh, always love having a fellow CDFA here, which is how we met. So happy to have you here. And I'm really looking forward to getting to the nitty-gritty of retirement accounts with you. I know I'm burning with some questions and I'm sure Karen is as well. Karen: Absolutely. And you are a wealth of information to us and our clients. And we're so grateful that we have you on our team live. So Donna, let's just start out with how are retirement accounts split in divorce? Let's talk about that. Donna: Well, there are two main classifications as I'd call it of division. You have dividing employer retirement plans and then you have dividing IRAs and other types of qualified plans. And the employer plans require a special document. It's called a qualified domestic relations order. You'll hear the term QDRO or Q-DRO, depending on what part of the country you live in and they both mean the same thing. And that is needed to allow the employer to actually divide an employer plan to an alternate payee. The other process is basically transfer incident to divorce. When you have say an IRA account, you just need special language in your marital settlement agreement detailing how that transfer is going to occur. Both of these methods are done as a tax-free transfer. Nobody's taking out money from their account, writing a check to their soon to be ex-spouse. Everything can be transferred in a tax-free transfer from one party to the other. Catherine: So let's give a couple of examples about that. So, an employer plan would be? Donna: PPG, Google, pensions, a municipality - anywhere where you are working for someone else. Catherine: But that would be a pension…I'm sorry, that would be a pension, a 401k. Donna: Yes. Catherine: A 403(b). Donna: Yes. 403(b). Catherine: Okay. And then the other plans that you're mentioning are just IRAs, Roth IRAs. Donna: Correct. Correct. Karen: I was just going to say how many times do we see IRAs and Roth IRAs designated in the marital settlement agreement that they need a QDRO? I see it more than I don't see it. Donna: They do not. Only employer plans require a QDRO. However, if you put language in your marital settlement agreement that says you're going to divide an IRA by a QDRO, many times the plan administrator will want one because you've put it in your marital settlement agreement because you have to send a copy of the marital settlement agreement along with some paperwork to that IRA custodian. So you need to be careful not to put language in that you don't need because then ultimately- Karen: Spending another $500…(laughter) Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point because actually I never knew that. So I have an IRA. If you're listening, you have an IRA, your attorney just throws the language in there because they think they should throw the language in there, that plan administrator may require you to execute a QDRO, which is costly. Donna: Correct. Correct. Now you can put kind of roundabout language in there that says if the custodian or financial institution requires it, one will be you know what I mean. But if you say this plan will be divided by qualified domestic relations order, likely that plan is going to or that IRA custodian, they're going to be looking then for qualified domestic relations workers. You said you were going to provide one. Karen: Right. And they have to follow the order. They have to follow the marital settlement agreements. They don't have a lot of options. Catherine: I know you can say this, but Karen, you may recall this, but Donna it's the truth. And really, I wish I made this stuff up, but I don't. We had an attorney that charged a client a couple of hours because he did all this research to find out that her IRA did not need a QDRO. Karen: We're not sure what the research was either. Catherine: We asked for the research just out of curiosity, but we never received it. But she did receive the bill for it, which is upsetting. You also bring up something else when you mention the pensions meaning defined benefits or defined contributions like your 401k's, you must hear this just as we hear this. A lot of people feel like, well, my employer won't let you have that money. So that money is mine. Donna: That is not true. Even if the employer, because there are some plans, some employer plans that cannot be divided with the qualified domestic relations order. They're few and far between but that does not mean they are not marital property. And should be attributed, maybe one party is going to keep that asset, but the other party is not. But yeah, I hear that a lot of times too, my spouse says that's my pension not yours. That's not true. That's marital property. It doesn't matter that it's only in one party's name. If it occurred during the course of the marriage, all or some of it, because maybe there's a premarital component or post-separation component, it's marital. Catherine: Mmm-hmm. Karen: Yeah. And that means you have a marital interest in it. So while the one spouse or the other may technically own it, the other spouse has an interest when dividing the asset and when dividing the marital property. I think a lot of people are challenged with that concept. Yeah. Catherine: Yeah. When we talked about the details you mentioned the marital component and the non-marital component, but it's also really important, isn't it? To have details on what happens if one of the spouse dies before the QDRO is actually approved? Donna: Well, that's one reason why you don't want to delay getting these orders done because that's just one possibility that can happen. Now you can do post-death QDROs. Catherine: Oh. Donna: They can be divided post, not every plan, but any ERISA plan can be, but again, not 20 years from now when they've already distributed the assets, that's the problem that you run into. Say you have a 401k, the party dies, the qualified domestic relations order hasn't been processed. And the plan makes a distribution to whomever those beneficiaries are that the employee has on file and they send the money out. Then what? Catherine: Right. Donna: Then you may have to go to the estate of the deceased and a whole bunch of other legal issues that can arise. Catherine: What happens if you get divorced and there is supposed to be a QDRO and neither party initiate or follows up on the QDRO being processed because they're in their 50s, let's say or 40s and now they want to retire. QDRO was never initiated. Will the company know that one is required? Donna: Well, the company doesn't know anything until they're told, right. If the company does not know unless they have that legal document, they may not know. But one can still be prepared. Because I get a lot of attorneys come to me, more recently one from 10 years ago. Nothing was ever prepared and it was a pension and wife or ex-wife knew ex-husband was going to be retiring soon. She calls the company and asks, when am I going to start getting my pension? Well, what did the company tell her? We have no paperwork on file, which they didn't. Nobody did a qualified domestic relations order. I mean you can lose benefits if you… Karen: And the surviving spouse could have been changed by then as well. Donna: Yes. That's another problem. The party could go into pay status and pick single life expectancy. Meaning it's only going to pay out on that employee's lifetime. God forbid if that employee dies an early death, there's no, even if you get a QDRO submitted, the former spouse payment will die when the employee spouse dies. And that could be problematic. Catherine: What if the ex-spouse remarried in that scenario? Donna: Pardon? Catherine: What if the ex-spouse remarried in that ten-year period but the attorney didn't call you. Donna: Well, depends on the plan. But what happens is they may have chosen a joint and survivor benefit with a new spouse. Now that's different while they're living than when they die. Right. So as long as the employee spouse is living, there can still be a division. The court order is submitted for a former spouse, but potentially if that employee spouse dies and they were able to name a second spouse that could be problematic. Every plan is different, there's different rules. You definitely want check that information out. But I would encourage people do not wait to get these legal documents prepared. They should be done. Actually, they should be done at the point when you're signing your marital settlement agreement in a perfect world or very shortly after the divorce decree. Karen: Right. And even asking your council or your attorney to take the steps, to notify the plan administrator that a divorce is pending because usually that'll put a hold on the account until they have further instruction. I know it's only temporary but sometimes that will create a lockdown of sorts until the divorce is completed, especially in these really long divorce scenarios. Yeah, that can be helpful too. Donna: Not all plans that will. So be aware. And sometimes it's only for 18 months. So five years goes by, there's no hold put on after. Karen: Right. Right. Catherine: You've brought up something really great. Of course, I run with this kind of information. I love the client who just called the company where she knew her husband worked and said, "Hey, when is my pension kicking in?" Because that can also bring up an undisclosed asset. So if they say we don't have any information, I think it's really easy for people to overlook because they don't ask about it. And because there aren't as many anymore it's just something that's overlooked, but why not? If you're out there and you know that your ex spouse is retiring and you don't have a pension, but you think they do call the company. I love that, Donna. And say, "Hey, can I receive my benefits?" Donna: Well, but the problem is if it's not been addressed in the marital settlement agreement, there may be no award to the former spouse because depending on the language in the marital settlement agreement, it may have only addressed certain retirement accounts that were disclosed and said the other party keeps all other retirement accounts in their name. So if you know your spouse has worked for a company for at least five years, even if it was years ago, you should be checking if there's any type of pension or 401k type benefits that are kind of out there. The pensions are more problematic. You're right. Because you don't get a statement in the mail every quarter like you do with your 401k. You might get one annually if you're lucky and… Catherine: And now they're digital a lot. So you don't even see them if you don't have access to that information. And that brings me to a really good thing. Why is it so important to get actual account statements? Donna: Oh, that's a huge issue. So you want to get a complete copy of any type of retirement statements, not just a screen print, where a lot of people will go in they'll just print out, "Hey, today, my 401k is worth X." Well, that's good to know and you don't just want the first page of the statement because there's a lot of data that is forthcoming in page two, three, four, five and six that may not be showing on page one. Donna: You need to know if the participant's spouse, that's the employee's spouse is vested. If it's a 401k plan, so all of those dollars that are showing belong to the employee? Obviously the employee's contributions are always theirs, no matter what, but if there's some type of match from the employer, some employers have what's called a vesting schedule. Maybe they only give them 20% a year of that dollar that they're matching. They have to work there for a period of time to get that whole amount. Loans are another big issue. Most account statements do not show if there's a loan on page one, that would be important to know. The other thing that's important to know is the different buckets of money. Most people are familiar with pre-tax, you put a dollar into your 401k. You're not paying any tax on it. But some folks worked for a prior employer, maybe they rolled in their old 401k into their current employer's plan. That's a different bucket of money. The employer has to segment that separately. Maybe their after tax contributions like a Roth 401k. A dollar and a Roth is not equal to a dollar in the kind of traditional bucket. So all of those things show up later on in the statement and I hate to even bring this up but it happens. With the technology age, it's real easy to sort of forge a screen print and manipulate it to be something that it is not. And so it's harder to forge a 12-page account statement. But you want that full account statement. There's data on there that you're going to need to see. Catherine: Oh, amen to all that. We have clients saying, why is it so important to get the whole statement? Here's the value. And for everything that you just mentioned, page three and four are missing, it's one of 12, okay, we want every page in one of 12, and then if it's not there we say why it's not there. But yes, gosh, if you're listening so important to have the statements. Karen: Mmm-hmm. It is. And you touched on the fact that a lot of people have prior employers with 401k accounts still remaining there. We run into that a lot and then they get to their divorce and now there's one, undisclosed 401k accounts and two, they're missing or they're faced with what their attorneys put in the marital settlement agreement. Now you've got five QDROs, the need for five QDROs. Can you talk about that a little bit? How to identify other 401k accounts that you wouldn't otherwise know about? Donna: So again, if you know your spouse has worked for an employer in the past, you want to be asking what your attorney should be asking on your behalf for discovery if there are any plans with those prior employers. Sometimes you can do some digging on the internet. Any ERISA governed plan has to file what's called a 5500, it's a tax document and those are public. And you can see, does the plan even have a defined contribution plan or a defined benefit plan? Sometimes you can call the company and ask. Does your PPG, do they have a 401k plan? Yes, we do. Do they have a defined benefit pension plan? Yes, they do. And at least you will know there is a plan that exists. Does not mean that the employee is eligible for it but you at least want to know first the existence. Catherine: Exactly. Karen: I want you to highlight that because that happens a lot and I just wanted to reiterate that. Thank you for doing that. Donna: Mmm-hmm. Catherine: And it's really the big general question about these defined benefit plans that individuals don't necessarily have the privy to the information so they don't understand it. So when they do get a partial statement or they do get a screenshot or what have you, it'll say what your monthly benefit is at retirement. Now you're still working in most cases and then I'll give you a lump sum option. Can you explain to our listeners what the differences and what are the things to consider when you see that on a statement? Donna: Sure. So not all pension plans will offer a lump sum option but if they do it oftentimes is disclosed on that statement and that gives the employee or alternate pay if there's going to be a division, the potential option to either take a chunk of money and no further payments stream out into the future. You're almost kind of buying out your pension. You're taking that lump sum amount, you're transferring it into another retirement account, an IRA and then there's no more pension. There are some pension plans that'll do kind of a hybrid. You can take a partial lump sum and it reduces that monthly benefit payment. Say without the lump sum, you're going to get $2,000 a month but if you take out the lump sum, now you only get $1,000 a month. You have to weigh those options. A lot of times it is in the plans benefit to offer a lump sum. They want to get the employee off their books. They want to get the liability off of their plate and push it over onto the employee's plate. But if you do the math on what your monthly income stream would be over a theoretical life expectancy and then what the growth rate on that lump sum would be over that same life expectancy, you have to kind of weigh whether it's better to take the monthly payment or whether it's better to take the lump sum. And everybody's needs are different and everyone's concerns are different, but you definitely want to know all those options and what they mean for you and if it's beneficial or not. Catherine: So just as a follow-up to that, let's just say I get divorced and my spouse and I split his pension and now it's gone through a QDRO, will I now have the benefit of choosing a lump sum or an annual payment or do I have to get what my ex-spouse chooses? Donna: Well, it depends when the qualified domestic relations order is prepared. If it's prepared before they go into pay status, there are more choices available potentially. Once an employee goes into pay status, they have to choose what they're going to do right there and then. And usually those choices are irrevocable, right. You can't go back and say, "Oops, I didn't want to do that." Or "I [inaudible 00:20:53] do that." So that is important to know. If it is before the employee goes into pay status, potentially you have the option of what's called on a pension plan at least, a separate interest QDRO, where in theory the pension is sort of dividing the pension into two parts, one for the employee and their marital portion and also any premarital or post-separation amounts. And then kind of one part for the alternate payee who's the former spouse and each spouse once that plan is divided can kind of take their piece and do with it what they want. Catherine: Hmm. So that's called a special interest QDRO. Donna: It's called a separate interest. So think of it riding on a train. Prior to the employee retiring and taking their benefit, usually most plans will allow, it's not a municipal plan or a government plan, they will allow for what's called a separate interest. That kind of division into two parts. And each person's on their own train kind of going forward into retirement. If it's what's called a shared interest, everything is dictated by the employee spouse. The alternate payee doesn't really get to make any choices. They are stuck, not stuck, but with whatever the employee chooses. That's why you need to be sure proper language is in your agreement because you want to protect as many of those rights as you can. You don't want the employee electing something that might not be in your favor because it's permanent. Karen: Right. And if they have that shared interest, what happens when the participant passes? Donna: If they have put in language for survivor benefits, which is very important then the alternate payee or former spouse interchangeable kind of terms can continue on either all or a portion of that pension for their life expectancy. But those benefits have to be elected when the participant retires. Can't go back and say, "Oh, I didn't do that. We need to fix it." So it's very important to make sure those documents get in and that they're worded properly to protect those benefits for the former spouse. Catherine: Donna being a QDRO administrator do you often see, and I already know what the answer is, but if you're listening, this might be one of you, is that it's such lazy language and everyone's marital settlement agreement that you're just going to divide this or hire this person to do your QDRO, but all of these little points that you're bringing up, and I know Karen has experienced this a lot as well are things that could be negotiated. They're expecting this divorced couple to agree to this after the divorce, they're barely talking going through the divorce and these are major life choices that should be discussed before you sign your agreement. Isn't it true? Donna: Absolutely. And you are so right. Usually what happens is there's negotiation going on, the settlement agreement gets signed and then and only then do people start to get information about the plans that are going to be divided. And what happens is if you don't have proper language in your agreement, you may either lose benefits that you probably should have been entitled to. And Catherine, like you said, if they're not even discussed during the settlement process, how do you know what your option is and what you're potentially giving up or not giving up. When you have a vague agreement it's subject to interpretation. Well, I might interpret things one way. Someone else might interpret things another way. Karen: Mmm-hmm. Catherine: Definitely. Karen: And I know I have prepared some QDROs as well. I'm not as experienced as a QDRO administrator as you are Donna, but I know that when the elections come through it's do you want to include gains or losses? And all of these, is it shared or separate and all of these questions that hosts the divorce agreement that the QDRO administrator is either picking for the clients or asking the clients to pick. And probably they have no idea what anything means at that point and a lot of times even their attorneys don't know how to interpret that specific type of language. Donna: Well, and sometimes it's done purposely, right. Sometimes if you have a real savvy attorney and maybe an attorney that maybe not as familiar with retirement account divisions, sometimes what you don't put in your marital settlement agreement favors one person or the other. And so one or two words can make a big difference. Are we going to include gains and losses or are we going to exclude them? That can be a huge thing especially if there's a block of time that goes by before that order gets prepared and sent into the plan administrator for them to divide that plan. If the market's going crazy on the upside, and you're just dividing a plan 50-50 as of a specific date in the past that other party, there's going to be a windfall for one and perhaps a loss for the other and kind of vice versa. The market can go the other way too. Karen: Are you going to include loans, exclude loans? Donna: Yup. Karen: Are you're going to divide by shares or dollars? There's a lot of components there that people really are not aware of when they're dividing retirement plans and that the paragraphs and the settlement agreement is parties agree to split. Catherine: There's also another caution. You hear a lot about the gray divorces and the people in their 50s and 60s, and now even a lot of in their 70s coming to get divorced, but the ones in their 50s and 60s, some are eligible for retirement in earlier ages, right? So no one is anticipating a divorce they can go ahead and go into payee status before their spouse would know this and then file for divorce and you can't do something about it. So if you're kind of in the cusp of that time, this is something that you need to consider or put out there if there's a pension. Donna: A lot of plans but not all of them, if there is a spouse, a married spouse, not a divorced spouse and the participant, the employee spouse tries to go into payee status and chooses an option that's not a joint survivor benefit, many times the plan will require the spouse to be notified or to have a notarized signature or something. Not all plans, not all plans. But again, yeah, you want to know all those things. At least while you're married, death benefits usually are in place, right. Because it's only the divorce that kind of severs that marital relationship. So if you're the beneficiary or even if you're just the spouse and it might be assumed, God forbid, if your husband or wife dies, you may still be covered up until the time the divorce decree is issued. Every state's different. Again, we're making some general kind of assessments today but you need to know all these things because you don't want to lose valuable benefits to which you're entitled. Karen: That's so true. Donna, how important is it to get a summary plan description? And can you describe what that is? Donna: Sure. So a summary plan description is basically the rule book that the company puts out in regards to their retirement account, right. If they have a 401k plan, whatever type of retirement plan that they have, there's a rule book behind the scenes it's called that summary plan description. That summary plan description though be aware, it's usually written for a single individual or a happily married individual. There's usually one little blurb in it that talks about, oh, by the way, if you get divorced see our written divorce procedures. So the summary plan description is important because it does tell you when normal retirement is for a pension plan, it really becomes important more so in my mind, for pensions than for 401k type plans. They are pretty easy to divide. The rules are generally the same. Pensions are where things get tricky. You want to know how they calculate the benefit formula. When is retirement or cost of living increases something that the plan pays. Are there any supplemental type benefits that might need to be divided provided that they exist? And things like that. Catherine: So much information about these plans and people often times they just don't want to get involved with it. There's so many stress factors, as we all know, going through a divorce, dividing your home, dividing every asset and then you get down to this pension and you're just like, "Okay, you keep yours. I'll keep mine." Thinking it's easier thing to do. Where five years later you say, "Holy crap, why did I do that?" Donna: Well, even if you have two pensions that look the same, meaning they're valued roughly at the same, the rule book at each company may be different. Maybe one plan has survivor benefits, one plan does not. A lot of municipality kind of and union type plans have some odd kind of rules about police and firefighter, things like that. So even two plans that look on the surface to be similar, may have vast differences that if you knew what some of those differences were, you may want the right to either share them or give that right up to the other spouse and let them keep that plan. Catherine: Mmm-hmm. Great points. Such a great point. You're not always comparing apples to apples just because it looks that way. Karen: Mmm-hmm. That's so true marital assets, right? Donna: The devil's in the details ladies, you know that. Catherine: Absolutely. But if you're afraid to ask these questions, what are the best questions to ask? Donna: You mean for a divorce and client? Catherine: Mmm-hmm. If you're listening right now and you say, "Oh my gosh, we think my spouse has that. Or he has it somewhere else." What are the best questions to ask? A lot of people are afraid to even ask for that summary plan description. We've heard attorneys say, "Okay, we know what they made every year. We have it." Or "We have the screenshot." Or "We have this." How do you stand in your own confidence to ask these questions? Donna: Well, first of all, as we talked about earlier, definitely complete account statement. Don't do anything without that. A lot of times people can call the employer themselves, even if they're not the employee, right. I call all the time. And I ask for copies of the summary plan description. Some companies have them write on their online website, go onto their website, Google summary plan description or put QDRO or put divorced and see what pops up there. But you can try to call the employer, especially if you are a spouse, because often times you can get that information. And you want to ask for three things. If there's a pension, two things if there's a 401k type plan. So if there's a pension, yes, the summary plan description. Even maybe more important than that is the client's written divorce procedures. Every ERISA govern plan should have them where they're not in compliance, but there's a document that kind of specifically talks about if an employee is getting, what is the kind of rule book there? And then most plans have what's called a model or a sample qualified domestic relations order. You should ask for a copy of that too. Now I caution you there, don't just use it as a fill in the blank. You've got to know exactly what that means because you eliminate a word or you eliminate a paragraph it could have a huge financial effect, a windfall for one, not so much for the other. With 401k type plans which are called defined contribution plans, I usually only get written divorce procedures and a model DRO, obviously again, a statement, but I don't really get the summary plan description because nine times out of 10, there's nothing in there that I'm not going to already know. Catherine: Or you need the full statement. Donna: Yes. Full statement, no matter what. Catherine: Mmm-hmm. Donna: And keep asking if you're not getting it. Catherine: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And don't sign until you have it. Don't sign, take pause. You deserve it. Karen: And these plans most of the time, if not all of the time cannot be divided until the divorce decree is in place. Am I correct on that? Donna: That depends. Most defined contribution plans will allow for division because the ERISA rule states, you can divide to a spouse, a former spouse, a child or a dependent of the employee. So a spouse is someone who is still married, a former spouse to someone who's not. Different from some pension plans they will require a copy of the divorce decree. When I say they meaning the employer before they will finalize the qualified domestic relations order. And again, that's just something to find out in advance so that you know. Catherine: This is really great information. Before we sign off, I want to touch on a little bit, incident to divorce. Can you explain the one-time withdrawal you're allowed to have from a plan? Donna: Yes. And that applies only really to defined contribution plans. So kind of throw pensions off to the side. It does not apply to pension plans. But if you are going to be receiving an award from your spouse who is the employee, you have the ability, once that money is divided at the plan level into your name, that you can take a one-time distribution. It's only once, you can't call every month and say you need $1,000, and it waives the 10% penalty you are under 59 and a half. So if you roll that money over into an IRA and then take the money out, you've lost that one time ability and you're going to be stuck paying that early withdrawal penalty of 10%. If you're under 59 and a half. Catherine: So you still have to pay taxes on the amount that you receive, you don't have to pay the penalty if you're younger than 59 and a half. Donna: Correct. The employer is mandatorily going to withhold 20%. They don't really care what your tax bracket is. The rule is they withhold 20%. If they withhold too much, you'll get it back when you prepare your tax returns for the following year. And if they don't withhold enough. So if you're in a higher tax bracket than 20%, you may owe a little bit more if you physically take the money out and spend it. We're not talking about rolling it over to another plan, we're talking about if a lot of times you'll see it in divorce, maybe there's debt that needs paid off. And maybe there's not a lot of liquid assets. So one party will maybe take more from the 401k to agree to pay that debt off. And that's one way of getting some money out, still taxable money, but you can avoid that 10% penalty if it's done properly. Catherine: And I really want to bring that up because if you're listening, a lot of times you're being told, okay, you get this asset and you have this one-time withdrawal. Or some people don't even know about the one-time withdrawal, but you're thinking you're getting this and okay, you're trading away something else that might not have the same tax consequence. And you really need to consider what your needs are. Like you mentioned, you might be paying off a debt or you might be using that money to purchase a new home. But before you make that decision thinking that you're going to use those monies, yes you might be exempt from the 10%, but it's still taxable. And is that really equitable compared to what your spouse received? Donna: Well, that's why you'll hear the word thrown around where we're going to tax effect assets so that we're going to look at the tax consequence and theoretically pretend that that asset was liquidated. And if so, what would that tax consequence be? So, if I have a dollar, let's just use a dollar because it's easy. If I'm awarded a dollar, how much of that dollar am I going to keep? It's in a savings account I'm going to keep 100% of it. If it's in a retirement account and I have to spend it, I'm going to be subject to some tax. So that dollar that I get, maybe I'm only receiving 80 cents. If my spouse is keeping a dollar but I'm only keeping 80 cents, how fair of a division do we have? Multiply that out to any type of asset size you're talking about. Catherine: Yes. So important and if you didn't get that rewind then listen again because once you sign that agreement, there's devils in those details that we discussed. If those details aren't there about getting the tax back, you're shit out of luck as my dad would say. So it's very important. Again, rewind and listen to that because I hate hearing these stories years later that you just didn't know, you were so emotionally drained at that point that you wanted to be done with it. And now you're stuck with that scenario. Donna: It's surprising too that some people out there that they physically have to take money out of their retirement account and give their spouse a check. That is not true either. Catherine: In fact, that's good point. Absolutely. Karen: That could be disastrous. Donna: Mmm-hmm. Catherine: Yes. Karen: So Donna do you prepare QDROs across the United States? Are you limited to a specific area? Donna: I am not limited to a specific area. My practice is located in southwestern Pennsylvania. Probably 90% of the QDROs that I draft are for attorneys in that locale. But I do draft for a few other states. I have some connections elsewhere. For ERISA plans, it doesn't matter where the plan is. The rule book is the same. For pensions you need to sometimes know a specific state rules and regulations. For instance, if you have a government employee that works for the state or you have a teacher, each state has different rules and regulations. And so whomever someone is using to draft that document they do need to understand those rules and regulations so that they can properly draft that document to the party's satisfaction and know all the things and bells and whistles that need to be in all the oops factors that could happen if not done properly. Karen: Mmm-hmm. That's great. So how can our listeners find you Donna? Donna: They can find me by Googling my website, cheswickdivorce solutions.com. They can probably Google my name as well. They can call me. My phone number is on my website as well and send an email. Catherine: Or call us. We had to find you for sure because we're always looking for you. Karen: You're on speed dial with us, Donna. Donna: Oh, that's nice. Thanks. Karen: So this concludes our discussion with Donna Cheswick on the nitty-gritty issues based in retirement plan division. So thank you so much, Donna for being here with us and we look forward to more conversations with you. Donna: Thank you. Thank you for having me.    

Karen Semone is a senior director of innovation at Salesforce. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Warning, today's episode might put you to sleep. But if it does, that's a good thing. Here is Karen Semone's advice for falling asleep easier and dreaming better. KAREN: You basically think of a place that you loved as a child. For me it's my grandma's house. And you take a visualized tour of that house. It's not about the people in the house. It's about the place. But it's very much a sensory experience. So you really feel what the handle of the door feels like. You smell. You visualize the smell. You try to remember details of where the photos are on the photo wall, where her art was. And you walk through the rooms. And more often than not, by the time I've gone through the whole house, I'm asleep which is awesome. You enter through the garage and she has this very old-school screen door and I think it is a form of meditation because you have to be really methodical and sort of, slow. Sometimes I like to pretend like I can smell her famous pecan sticky buns that she would always make in the morning. ZAK: Is it always your grandma's house that you do? KAREN: It's funny. I change it up but it usually tends to be places I visited in summertimes as children. So I have a couple of cottages that I did or my aunt's house where she had a pool. And I think that might just be because it's light-hearted memories. Like, positive associations. And I tend to have nicer dreams since I started doing it. My name is Karen Semone. I am a senior director of innovation at Salesforce.

Welcome to Friday, my friends! I’m happy to bring you another Q+A nutshell

MAGA this and MAGA that Psycho MAGA insanity Red Chinese MAGA Hat MAGA Cult Fantasy They hate other people and love their guns They think the virus is a hoax The Cult of Trump, the crazy ones MAGA Chosen Folks Don't tell em about the facts They will not respond to reason They want democracy to collapse They are not opposed to treason The truth is what he says it is He dictates their reality They believe the Big Lie of his MAGA Cult of Personality Some MAGAs are your friends Some MAGAs are your family You work with Chad and Karen You see them screaming on TV "Go back to where you came from!" That's what they like to say They shout their hate at everyone They are the chosen race Nevermind the pain they invoke Nevermind the democracy they broke Nevermind the chaos they stoke Behold! The MAGA Chosen Folks Never forget the pain they invoke Never forget the democracy they broke Never forget the chaos they stoke Never forget the MAGA Chosen Folks

This is 47 minutes and 46 seconds you need to hear! In this episode, I sit down with my dear friend Karen. The trials, trauma, hardship, loss and pain she has had to endure this year have been unfathomably devastating, however, as you will hear when you listen, Karen is a fighter. Karen is a warrior throughout a year where not only the world has been turned upside down -because of this worldwide pandemic we are in- but because after nearly approaching death in the hospital with Covid-19 herself, Karen woke up to the news that she had lost three of the most important men in her life to the virus. Her resilience and decision to "put one foot in front of the other every day" is both heartbreaking and inspiring, all at once. She shares about her and her husbands incredible life of love and adventure spent together. We discuss the virus and our governments mishandling of it, 45's lack of care and empathy for others and how we can even begin to move on and forward, but stronger. How do we go on from here? What is it going to take? How do we get better? "People need to be kind. This is real, it doesn't get anymore real than this!" -Karen You don't want to miss her opening up and sharing her story and her truth. Check out this episode and please please please share it with your friends and family that might need a wake up call during this time. We must take care of each other because, "Tomorrow is promised to no one!" Thank you for listening! FOLLOW:Karen - @karennascembeniAndrew - @Anorlen SUBSCRIBE:And check out Andrew's road to publishing his memoir, Defining Brave on his website, and sign up for his email list: https://www.andrewnorlen.com/defining-brave FEEDBACK: Check out another episode to hear from the rest of my amazing heroes, and don't forget to write a review and give us a 5 star rating in the Apple Podcast App/Store. Please share this episode with friends and family!

In this discussion Shannon talks with Astrologer Karen Kiely aka Karen Oliva. They take a look at what's happening in the sky as well as dive a bit into Shannon's personal Astro chart to see how things have played out with her in connection to her Sun, Moon, Rising, and Node placements. Karen Olivia is an intuitive astrological guide, a healer, and an artist. She lives and works on occupied Ohlone (Ramaytush) land, aka San Francisco. She is passionate about helping people heal themselves and awaken to their innate power.If you would like to reach out to Karen You can contact her at : www.karenoliva.coLearn more about the host Shannon Shine and her services at www.ShantasticShine.comAnd you can always find tons of free high vibe content at www.bringme2life.com

Jump into the world of Vampires, leather and gore on this special episode dedicated entirely to the first two Blade Films. Intro music credit: Massive attack feat. Mos Def - I against I (Blade II OST) Blade : [to Karen] You better wake up. The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping! There is another world beneath it: the real world. And if you wanna survive it, you better learn to PULL THE TRIGGER!

KAREN: Hi, this is Karen Malanga, Principal Broker at RE/MAX Key Properties and NestBend.com. I’m so excited today because we have Sally Russell, our mayor. Sally, welcome to the program. SALLY: Hi, good morning. Oh my God, what a beautiful day, Karen. My pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me. KAREN: You’re welcome. Sally […] The post Mayor, Sally Russell on Bend, Oregon Now and What to Expect Moving Forward appeared first on NestBend Real Estate.

Karen recently was a presenter at a large industry conference, and it inspired her and Cadie to want to discuss how to get the most out of conferences, trade-shows, expos, and meet-ups. Karen is the "life of a conference" and Cadie tends to be the listener and "wallflower," learn how both of these different types of conference attendees prepares, manages time, retains information, implements new ideas, and networks at these functions. These events can be expensive and usually involves travel costs and time away from work. Are they really worth all the capital and time investment? What makes a good conference? What makes a bad one? What is the value of being a presenter? And, what are the best techniques to make meaningful connections during and after the big event? So relax, sit back, pour yourself a glass of your favorite wine (or coffee, tea, or soda) and enjoy the show. Learn more about Karen Simmons & Cadie Gaut Sponsors: Karen C. Simmons, P.C. Payroll Vault - Mobile & Baldwin Counties About Cheers To Business Cheers To Business is a seriously casual business and entrepreneur podcast that discusses starting, running, refining and growing your company, or excelling at your current job with two or your soon-to-be friends - over a glass of wine. Please subscribe, review and rate Cheers To Business on iTunes, SoundCloud & Overcast. You can contact and stay connected with us by LIKING our Cheers To Business Facebook page. Thanks for listening and as always, CHEERS to you! FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT: Karen: Hey everybody. Welcome to our third episode. Today, we're gonna be talking about conferences. Are they worth going? Are they worth the investment? What do you take away and what can you use? I'm Karen and I'm a CPA, entrepreneur, with big ideas, and I'm the mom. Cadie: I'm Cadie. I'm a payroll specialist, business owner, and detail-oriented person that makes things happen, and I'm the daughter. Welcome to Cheers to Business. There's a ton of knowledge out there that you can find online, so what's the point of really even going to conferences? Karen: The investment that I've seen in the past, and they're not all good, so you have to find the right one, but a lot of what I take away from it is actually talking to my peers. People that are going through the same things that I'm going through, have experienced the same things, or have already worked through things that I'm trying to get through now. By actually talking with someone and building a connection with people from around the country, I think it's easier to me than reading a book where that person may not have even ever experienced what you're going through. Cadie: I think the real-life scenarios, a lot of times books, it can be kinda "Here's how to do something." Whereas when you meet those people at conferences, it's more of a, "Hey, here's how I handled that situation."  Karen: Yeah. A lot of times in books I think it's so, to me, Mary Poppins, that this is the way it always works and you do one, two, three. That's not life. Whereas if you get in front of a person making eye contact and sharing experiences, that's when some of the truth comes out of, "Well, yeah, we've kinda really screwed that up, but this is how we learned to do it a different way." Cadie: If you had your pick of a conference, would it be industry-specific or how do you pick a conference? There's so many. Karen: If I'm going to learn, then I want to go to an educational, you know, about my software, about the industry, whether it's tax or employee benefits, mainly tax, especially when you have new tax laws come out, you want to be able to find out what's going on. Not only that, it's other people's interpretations. Cadie: Do you go to conferences to not learn? Because you said if I go to a conference to learn, so that's why I asked that question. Karen: Well, that was a Freudian moment because sometimes conferences can be fun and there's nothing wrong, I think, with taking a business trip to a city you've always wanted to go to but haven't been to yet. But in your question, it was a two-fold question. You said which kinda conference is best and I think it is what's your end goal? What are you trying to take away and you need to have that figured out before you go so you don't waste your money. Because if you're going to learn, that's a different conference than going to sell or be sold, for example, trade shows. Cadie: Expos. Karen: Expos, everyone there is trying to sell, you know it when you walk in the door. Expectations, what do you expect to get out of a conference? What do you expect to give? You can't just take. You know, you gotta be willing to go up and shake people's hands and say, "Hey, my name's so and so. I do what you do." If not, you're not gonna get a lot of feedback. Wallflowers. People can be wallflowers anywhere, but if you're a wallflower at somewhere that you wanna learn, you're not gonna take as much away. Cadie: Well, I think, you know, the stereotypical conference, you imagine this big room, everybody's just sitting there, and there's one presenter or you'll have several presenters throughout the day. That's kinda what I initially thought conferences were. And then you start going and you realize, no, it's more than just gaining the knowledge and listening to someone stand up there and talk for an hour. Karen: I think to me, the presenters, there's a couple different kinds. There's one that's trying to educate you and there's a kind that's trying to sell you. All right. So you have to make a choice when you walk in the door. If you know which kind you're going to, and lot of times you do because you can tell by the company they work for, so you've got to choose to take the high points and know when you go in that I'm not here to buy, but I wanna hear how this person got to this place knowing what they know and what can I take away from it. At that point, it's about you. It's about me. You know, what can I learn to take back. The other kind as far as the educational ones, if it's somebody...say, take a doctor's conference. If you have a surgery conference, you gotta master surgeon up there, somebody is telling them how they did the procedure. That's totally different than what I did at a conference a week ago was presenting to inform the people that I want to buy my product. I was educating them, but it's because I want them to buy my product. Cadie: So you were selling but it wasn't blatantly selling, I guess. Karen: No, it's probably pretty blatant. Cadie: Use my business. Karen: Use my business. Why? Because I know about my business and I can help you do better at something that you don't do. Cadie: And it will benefit you. That's the key. Karen: Value. It's no different than any other show we've done it, and probably any other will do in the future. It's about the value that's given. Now, there's conferences I haven't gone back to. There's one in particular. Now, I take a staff member and we go every year and we've been...this will be the sixth year in a row. Its attacks in software, because they throw it all in there. I know they're trying to sell me. I know how to say no. Cadie: I know which conference you're talking about, it's quite expensive. So what makes it so valuable? Karen: I think sometimes not just the presenters, but the round tables. When you do round tables, and what that is in case anybody's not sure or hasn't been to conferences, is that at night, your peers, you have different tables with different topics on them. Sometimes you fight like a Black Friday sale to sit at the table you want to because that particular item may be so popular. For example, one year, it was converting from one software to another. They were making us convert to a higher software. Everybody wanted in on that because we all wanted to know how to do it. But that's when you have one expert at the table, but you and your peers are sitting around asking questions. There's no way that's feasible that you will ever ask the right questions. Cadie: So I think that's important is when you do go to a conference, specifically one that's over multiple days, it's so easy once the conference is over, the introvert in me, I just wanna go back to my hotel room and decompress because of the mental energy that's taken place that whole entire day. But that's not where business happens. Business happens, you know, if you're there to network and connect, especially if it's industry specific, you need to form connections with those people who are in your industry, you know, especially if they're in a different area because it's someone to brainstorm with. Karen: Why don't you tell them the game we play at conferences when we go together? Do you remember? Cadie: Yes. Karen: Tell it. Cadie: I don't like that game. Karen: I love that game. Cadie: So basically, what we do is she picks out someone, "Hey, go talk to this person." And so then... Karen: And, of course, she does it to me, but we pick out the most unlikely talkable person ever, ever at the conference, the least likely person to be able to have a conversation with. Usually, that person ends up being the most interesting person you've ever met in your whole entire life. But why do it? One, because get out and talk to somebody. Don't follow behind me with your clipboard. Get out there and talk and learn and do it without me necessarily. Cadie: It can be overwhelming. Conferences are huge and there are so many people and it can be overwhelming. I have been a wallflower so many times where I just, "Let me stand back, just wait for the conference to begin. I don't wanna talk to anyone. I'm just here to learn." But to kinda help bypass that, I just usually pick out one person. Let me just get to know this one person really well and then that's my priority for the day and that kinda helps me, makes me feel better. Karen: That's a great practice. That is a fantastic practice. You know, and then it depends on personalities. I'll probably go up to 10 people and say, "Hey, my name's Karen and I'm from Alabama." Cadie: You're drawing enough attention that people are coming up to you, which is not a bad thing. We have two different approaches. Karen: Yeah, and at that last conference when you were sitting in the audience, when you were doing the signal for "wrap it up" while I was presenting, why did that lady come up to me afterwards and say, "Your daughter said you're crazy?" Cadie: I have no comment. Karen: Yeah, I heard it, but that's okay. I'm okay being the way I am and that's why you and the listeners should be okay the way that you are. It doesn't matter. It's just different personality. But what do you wanna get out of it? Sometimes you just gotta suck it up to do it a little different way to get what you want. Cadie, do you think you could ever be a presenter at a conference? Cadie: If you weren't there. Karen: That's an honest answer. Cadie: Just because you make me nervous. You're intimidating. It's like taking your driver's test. Karen: But I'm just trying to help you. Cadie: I would love to present, if it's a topic that I feel comfortable with. Karen: But say you have presented, you've been a speaker at the University of South Alabama, you're with the Junior League program with... Cadie: I'm not with Junior League. Karen: Junior Junior league. What is it? Cadie: No. Karen: Didn't you do something at Davidson High School. Cadie: Yeah. Karen: What was it? Cadie: Junior Achievement. Karen: See, Junior...all right. But you got up in front of people. You do it all the time. You do it at Southwest Mobile Chamber of Commerce. Cadie: Two people came to that one. Karen: You've done it at others with the supporting star student. You've done it with different things. Cadie: No, in the moment, I'm fine. The anxiety leading up to it, I feel like I'm having a heart attack. But once I'm up there, I'm fine. Karen: Right. See, I fall apart afterwards. Cadie: Okay. Well, to each their own. Cheers. Karen: Cheers. Cadie: So I would want to be a presenter, and you've been a presenter many times before. What do you get out of it, being a presenter? Karen: It depends on the message I'm trying to get across. If I'm trying to inform, like talking at a Chamber of Commerce, then it cannot be articulate enough to be able to get my point across more slowly, informative, where they understand what I'm saying. Versus if I'm trying to sell something and talk somebody into something, it takes on a little different facet. I think I do, because I am the big dreamer, big ideas type that I sometimes squirrel and I go off a little bit because I cannot go by a script. It drives me insane. I get so nervous. I can't even talk. Cadie: With new businesses trying to grow that brand, be involved in the community, it is a lot of who knows who. So how do you go about doing that? Karen: You know, it depends on if you're in your community or if you're at a conference. You know, at a conference, if it's a Payroll Vault conference, for example, then everybody knows what you do. Then you're talking about processes. How do you make this happen? Cadie: The nitty-gritty. Karen: The nitty-gritty. If you're at a general, you know, the tax and accounting software conference that I go to, there are 1,600 CPAs and their staff at one of the Gaylord Hotels. That's a lot of people. Then it's different. You have to search out the right fit for you and your peers. If you're doing something at your community, then they know who you are. They know what you're supposed to know. And a lot of times, they expect you to know more than you do know. So it's finding the right target locally of what they need to hear and wanna hear because sometimes they're not the same thing. Cadie: So when I travel to these fancy Gaylord Hotels, is that a business expense that I can write off, CPA? Karen: I'm getting a CPE. I've gotta have continuing education. Yes, it is a business expense. I'm learning for my business. Now, let's say you go to the Gaylord in Orlando and you go to Disney World or Walt Disney, the tickets to that are not deductible. Cadie: Okay. Karen: Balance. Cadie: You know, a lot of networking happens at the bar afterwards. And what about those drinks? Can I write those off, meals and entertainment? Karen: Well, meals and entertainment, only half deductible. But, you know, if you're talking about your kids and grandkids, just be reasonable with it. But just remember that if you take a friend or spouse or a non-spouse that their airplane ride is not deductible, but if you're staying in the same hotel room, you can write off your hotel room. Cadie, you've been going with me to conferences and then it seemed kinda weird when you started going out to conferences without me. I think you even texted me from an airport. It feels weird to be without you in an airport. It wasn't that? Cadie: You texted me, "I miss you." Karen: Oh, well, whatever which way it started. But anyway, what do you take away from them now? Why do you keep going? Cadie: I think it's easy to get caught up in the online world. You know, I've got people that I follow on Instagram that I look up to and I feel like I'm friends with them but I've never actually met them and it's easy to just keep doing that. I can find webinars online all day long. However, going to a conference, you're able to really sit and connect with people. You cannot be a genuine connection and I'm a big believer in energy and vibes and sitting with someone after the conference talking about what we just learned over drinks, and then later connecting with them online to stay connected. I think that's just so much more valuable. Karen: Well, everybody looks perfect on social media except the ones who want to make money from not being perfect. So, you know, I take a lot away, what you said, from that, but also what do you learn about how to put these things in place once you get back? Cadie: Oh, that's a good point because it's so easy to just go to a conference and you're taking all these notes page after page and you're so motivated. And let's say you get home on a Saturday, well, by the time Monday rolls around and the team asks you, "How was your trip?" You're just, "Oh, it was good." You know, and it's almost like you lose that momentum. Or you've taken so much back that you don't even know where to start. It's like when you go to the grocery store and you buy $200 worth of groceries and then you stop at Taco Bell on the way home you. So when you go to a conference, it's so important to have that idea of what am I going to take out of this? And even if it's just three tactical items to implement when you get home. Karen: Can I tell you a trick I do? Cadie: Of course. Karen: Thank you. I like 10 things. Cadie: Ten? Karen: Ten, yes. Cadie: No, too many. I disagree. Karen: No, minor. Not all of them are major. But, for example, you know, alphabetize something like this or change the routing sheet up like that or whatever. But if you take 10, but you have one piece of paper, if you have that notebook that you have, leave that one sheet clean and every time you run across something that...and go ahead and put 1, 2, 3, 4 through 10, and every time you're in one of those classes or talking with somebody and you go, "Oh, that's a take home." Go to that front page and write about...and don't worry about what's the number one. Number one is just your starting point. Number 10 is not the worst, it's just where you ended up. So take those ideas. When you have those aha moments, write that moment down. You've got the rest of the notes to follow back up later. You have the information to follow up. Cadie: I will agree with you to take notes, like, actually physically, old school write. When you have your laptop taking notes, one, you're almost limited to writing vertically. Whereas when you are having those aha moments, there's nothing better than a piece of notepaper to really just kinda go crazy with your notes. Karen: You know, when I take my pencil and I underline it three times because I mean it's really important to me, that's a lot different than going and finding the underline thing in Word. You know, I can't make that happen, but I'm older. Cadie: I mean the computer is the distraction. That's a big thing. It's just when you're at a conference, stay focused on why you were there. You're investing your money. Karen: You know, and sometimes when you're taking notes, I have my own system of how big an explanation point is. Something's really important to me, it's a big explanation. So thing's just eh, okay, just a little one. It's the little things. Cadie: Tidbit for the day. Karen: One of them. So today, we've talked about conferences, good, bad, educational, trade shows, why do it, where do you go? We've also talked about some tax deductions and, you know, how this can work in your favor, but whatever you do, and whatever you decide, please save your receipts. Y'all, thank you so much for listening and being here with us today. I'm Karen. Cadie: I'm Cadie. Please be sure to subscribe to "Cheers to Business" podcast on iTunes or anywhere else that you get your podcast. Visit our Facebook and be sure to give us a like. And if you have any questions or topics you'd like us to discuss, shoot us an email from the website cheerstobusiness.com.    

Welcome the first Cheers To Business podcast! In this episode, you'll meet the show's hosts, Karen Simmons (Serial Entrepreneur, CPA, Big Thinker, and The Mom) and Cadie Gaut (Business Owner, Payroll Rock Star, wife and mom, and The Daughter). Karen and Cadie share their personal career and business journies, work & life balance experiences, their ups and downs of collaboration & butting heads, and insights on starting a business from scratch or growing the one you already have. So join them with your favorite glass of wine (unless your driving), or beverage of choice, and enjoy the show. Learn more about Karen Simmons & Cadie Gaut Sponsors: Karen C. Simmons, P.C. Payroll Vault - Mobile & Baldwin Counties About Cheers To Business Cheers To Business is a seriously casual business and entrepreneur podcast that discusses starting, running, refining and growing your company, or excelling at your current job with two or your soon-to-be friends - over a glass of wine. Please subscribe, review and rate Cheers To Business on iTunes, SoundCloud & Overcast. You can contact and stay connected with us by LIKING our Cheers To Business Facebook page. Thanks for listening and as always, CHEERS to you!   Full Show Transcription: Karen: Hey everybody, welcome to "Cheers to Business." I'm Karen Simmons and I'm a certified public accountant. I'm coming up on my 23rd tax season. My firm is KCS CPA group and I have a wonderful team of 13 people. I'm also involved in some other businesses. Cadie and I started Payroll Vault together, which now she owns. And then my brother and I have a manufacturing company, Marine Exhaust Systems of Alabama, and I'm having the best time of my 52 years right now. Cadie: I'm Cadie. I'm the daughter of the duo. And like she said, I own Payroll Vault now and I have a team of five. And then I also have two children, 10 and almost 3, and a husband. And just balancing it all. Trying to. Karen: We're here to talk to you about business, life, and having fun in the process. Cadie, tell a little bit about why we're here and what got us here. Cadie: Well, this is our first episode, so we're really just trying to lay out how we got here, who we are. I'm the daughter. Karen: I'm the mom. Cadie: Karen's my mother, and while we're very successful together in business, I think our personal has kinda of struggled, but that's because of the balance that we give to each other. You know, Karen's kinda just go-getter, the dreamer, head in the clouds, taking action, whereas I'm the, "Okay, let's slow down. Think about this. What can go wrong? How can we get where we need to be?" Karen: Yeah. I'm a very type A personality and if I see something, I go for it. Now, you know, Mama had me tested so you gotta have a little bit to you to be able to get going and I think Cadie's got that. She's got the gumption, she's got the smarts, and it's a good balance. While we made butt heads, you know, being so different, we're really a lot alike and we work well in business. Cadie: I think that growing up, kinda, I don't want to say underneath your shadow, but walking behind you with my notepad taking notes, I've kinda had the observer to see, "All right, there she is marching through the room. Let me take a look at what else is all going around." So that kinda gives me....That's what I grew up saying is, "Let's look at the whole picture," whereas you were just, "There's my end goal, what do I have to do to get there?" Karen: I think that comes from a lot in history, you know, growing up not having very much of anything, I knew that education and going and getting it myself was the only way it was gonna happen. Now I think what God's put in my life is you to be able to be there with me on this journey and coming up and being able to see those things. Cadie: So I know....Okay, so let's back up. I know a lot of people, you know, they have a backstory and you say you grew up without a lot, so I mean, go into that just to tell people because I don't think a lot of people do know. Karen: Well, growing up, you know, we had no air condition or heat, and while we lived in a great place, you know, it was a struggle. It was a constant struggle and the only way to make money was whatever you could find. Now, for being personally, I started a general ledger at 12 when Dad had a fiberglass business and would leave me with grown men picking fiberglass. Well, I told them I required 10% and the only way to make sure I would get my money was I kept the books. And that's how I got started and knew that education was my only way out. Cadie: Karen, a lot of times people have ideas for businesses or they wanna start a business, but often, you know, they are in their day job 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday. You know, when you left the larger CPA firm, I guess what was going through your head was there, "Can I do this? Will I fail?" All those variables, kinda what was at the point where you decided, I can do this and I will do this? Karen: All of that went through my head. It was scary. There's a lot of faith put into this, you know, in my head and in my heart. Leaving the security is a very scary thing. For me, when I wasn't happy and I started to take it home and it was affecting my family, it became a very personal matter. I think the signs started coming up that, you know, this was the right thing to do and that's what led me to just give it all and take the chance. And then so, I went home to your dad and I said, "Hey, I wanna open up my own CPA firm." And he went, "Okay." So, I gotta put up our house to do it. And he said, "Okay." Now, that's a lot of faith in that. And I was right. But, you know, right after I decided to go out on my own after some debts of getting out of the whole practice and house repairs coming out of pocket, you know, we were 46 and 52 years old and had to start financially over again. Cadie: So, was that the low point? I mean, as far as, you know, owning a business and even life, in general, is a rollercoaster, it's nothing but ups and downs. So was that kinda the low point where you....did you ever doubt yourself? Did I do the right thing by leaving? Karen: Yes, every day. I think it's human nature to do that, and it's very emotional to talk about because it was hard wondering when I'm gonna get a paycheck. I was used to get a paycheck, 8:00 to 5:00, you get a paycheck. There was no paycheck. You know, I started with 4 people and now we're to a team of 13, and they have to get paid before you do. So, how are you gonna eat? And so, you know, it is a struggle, you know. Then I came home to him one day and I said, "Hey honey, I want to open up a payroll company." Cadie: Payroll Vault is the payroll company that we started together and then I took over. We were at a tax conference. Where were we? Maryland, Maine, somewhere? Karen: I don't know. Cadie: We were at a bar. We always find an Irish pub whenever we travel. And she wrote on a napkin, she just started writing, and then next thing I know I see the word "payroll." Well, I was doing payroll through the CPA firm and she said... Karen: You've been doing payroll since you were 14. Cadie: ..."Let's start a payroll company." And I'm like, "Oh boy, here she goes, another business, just adding, adding to the list." And I grew up watching my mom, you know, work in a business, then work on a business, and it was her life. And so I never wanted to do that. I wanted the 8:00 to 5:00 job, you know, go to work, then go home, and work is over. Then it's kids time. I wanted that separation. The thing is, that separation is on someone else's terms. And that's the beautiful thing about owning a business is you're in control. You know, if it's 12:00 and I need to go pick up my kids, that flexibility is there. And that's kinda my goal in business is to pass that on to my team. So, offering a flexible schedule, you know, flexible PTO, personal time off, all of that. Karen: But it's hard when you first started and you're growing it because you sometimes you can't leave. Cadie: Oh, I mean in the beginning, no, there's no flexibility. I mean, how many times have we slept at the office? We don't go home. Karen: I think you even slept there more than I have. I would text her at...all of a sudden, I get it 11:00 at night and she's still at the office. Cadie: And I think that's the biggest variable if you're even thinking about going into business is do you have the grit to just get the job done no matter what it takes? I think that's the biggest thing that sets people apart from, you know, just wanting the standard job, 8:00 to 5:00, versus owning a business because it is 24/7. But it's like a baby, you don't resent it, you know, it may keep you up all night... Karen: Sometimes you do. I do, sometimes. Cadie: ...Well, I mean it was like a newborn. It may keep you up at night sometimes, but you still love it and you're still gonna do what... Karen: You love it but you don't necessarily like it when it won't stop screaming at 2:00 in the morning. Cadie: So, this is where I...I think I'm more maternal than you are. I mean you weren't a bad mom but... Karen: I sucked, and you know it. I was not there. Cadie: So, in middle school, all these other kids had like hand-cut apples and homemade bread and... Karen: Oh, my God. If I have to hear about the peanut butter and the apples one more time... Cadie: This one mom cut the center out of a apple and stuff... Karen: I heard about it all the time. Cadie: Anyways, but she asked me, she was like, "So we're gonna New York this summer." I was like, "Yeah, we are." She said, "Do you want hand-cut apples or do you want a New York trip?" And so that's when it clicked, you know... Karen: It went further. It went further. I said, "How do you like that four-wheeler you got for Christmas?" You said, "Huh?" I said, "Well, it's not paid for, so it's got to go back if you leave this private school." Cadie: So that's the bit...I'm glad you bring that up though, because now I'm able to pass that on to my kids. You know, my daughter knows if she's going on a field trip and she wants to visit the gift shop, it's up to her to take her money. So the week before, she's asking me what chores can she do to make some money? You know, sticking postage on the envelope that way... Karen: I am so proud of you right at this moment right now. Cadie: Well, it's just, no parent is perfect. But you learn from your parents of what... Karen: And their mistakes. Cadie: Can I finish my sentence? Karen: Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Cadie: Good grief. So you, you know, not every parent is perfect, but you learn from one generation to the next. And it's the same with employees. I mean, the first person that we had working for Payroll Vault, like things got rough, but I learned from that, and you learn with every experience. Karen: I am still learning, every day. Cadie: Oh gosh, you never stop learning about your industry, about how to handle situations, how to... Karen: People and personalities, drama. What else comes into business? I think drama's the... Cadie: What? You're extra feisty today. Karen: I am. I'm excited about this, and I'm excited...you know, I get very passionate and... Cadie: Obviously. Karen: I do because it's so much fun and it can be so much fun, but it's so hard. But if it were easy, the cliché, you know, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it, but you nailed it. You have to give it your all. Cadie: And you have to find people. You have to find people to talk with about what you're going through because it will....you can go crazy. You literally can lose your mind in business. Karen: Cry on the way home sometimes. Just saying. A friend of mine did that. But it does. Sometimes you cry on the way home because it gets so much and there's so many people depending on you. But, you know, if we can pass on just a little bit...You said, you know, going from generation to generation, going from experienced employer to employee, you know, one thing I'm taking away from this conversation right now that's sticking in my craw is that if you don't have the grit, it's okay. You have a great idea, you're gonna go in business. If you don't have what it takes, find those people who have the grit. Don't try to do everything yourself. You know, we were able to be a team. You know, sometimes outside of work, we butt heads. In work, we feed off each other, and in business, and is a great balance. But find that person or those people...you know, my biggest client, the smartest thing about him is he surrounds himself with smart people. Cadie: I think that goes for any successful person, really. Karen: Totally agree. Cadie: And, again, find your people. So, just very quickly, I'm just curious, what is your, like, highest point in your career so far? The moment that you think like, this is awesome. I made it. Karen: You buying me out of Payroll Vault. Cadie: Oh. Karen: That's a deep down honest. I felt like mission accomplished and you're gonna be okay and your babies are gonna be okay. Watching a business grow...now, it's got extra emotional with you, but it's no different than seeing new clients come and they build these things, and you help them build these things. That is the most rewarding thing in the world, it's not about a dollar. It's about helping build something and building these businesses and then all of a sudden people are eating and able to feed their families because you created something. That's just fun.

On this episode, Karen and Cadie talk about different ways to start a business, specifically looking at, buying into, and opening into a franchise. Karen and Cadie have opened Payroll Vault, a payroll and outsourced HR service franchise, and have a lot to say about the world of the franchise business. What exactly is a franchise are the pros and cons? Where does one find franchise opportunities? What is the best way to start the search and purchasing process? Learn more about Karen Simmons & Cadie Gaut Sponsors: Karen C. Simmons, P.C. Payroll Vault - Mobile & Baldwin Counties About Cheers To Business Cheers To Business is a seriously casual business and entrepreneur podcast that discusses starting, running, refining and growing your company, or excelling at your current job with two or your soon-to-be friends - over a glass of wine. Please subscribe, review and rate Cheers To Business on iTunes, SoundCloud & Overcast. You can contact and stay connected with us by LIKING our Cheers To Business Facebook page. Thanks for listening and as always, CHEERS to you!    Full Show Transcript: Karen: Hey, welcome to today's show. This is our second episode, we're really excited. And today, we're gonna be talking about the different ways to start a business. And one is start your own. Two, you can buy an existing. Three, open a franchise. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. I'm Karen. I'm a CPA, entrepreneur with big ideas, and I'm The Mom. Cadie: I'm Cadie. I'm a payroll specialist, business owner, and detail-oriented person that makes things happen, and I'm the daughter. Welcome to "Cheers to Business Karen: Cadie, you currently own a franchise. What do you see as the pros and cons in your experience? Cadie: Well, I think the first thing I want to touch on is what a franchise is. I think there's a big misconception. Franchises are independently owned and operated businesses. Karen: So you own your own company, basically. Cadie: Yes. You own your own company, you have an agreement with a brand that may be national, but as far as in your local district, you're making the decisions, you're doing the staffing. It's really your own entity. Karen: A lot of people are under the misconception that they tell you everything to do. Cadie: Well, I mean some brands have more flexibility, others are more strict, and I think that's an important thing to look into when you are going into the franchise, you know, talk to other owners who currently are doing business with that brand. People who've owned one maybe in the past, and also the agreement that you're signing up with that franchise. Karen: You know, for example, in the CPA firm, it was me and my team, and so we knew our own rules. I think I found in the CPA firm in that structure, CPAs don't make money doing payrolls. Well, when you have over 120 of them...I knew I could open up a payroll company, but I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. Cadie: I was doing those payrolls. Thank you very much. Karen: Yes, you were. You did the majority of those payrolls. And did them very well, by the way. Cadie: But not efficiently. And that's... Karen: Correct. Cadie: That's the key, is I have this much work to do, how can I do it as fast as possible and as accurate as possible? And that's where a franchise really steps in, because they know how to do it. Karen: They've already tested everything. And I think, you know, we researched, both of us went and, you know, we're researching trying to see where the perfect platform was and that's where Payroll Vault came in and you've taken it and just run like a rockstar. Now, tell about the beginning there when we were thinking about doing this. What do you remember? What comes to mind the foremost of what our concerns were or why, yes, go. Besides being the efficiencies? Cadie: I think one of the most important things kinda when you're getting started is the brand. You know, when people create their own brand, their own logo, the name, the colors, you get very emotionally attached to that. And that's one thing almost when you step into a franchise is you have to learn to connect with that brand because it's not something that you necessarily invented or created. Karen: But it's been tested. So that's a plus. Cadie: Well, I mean from getting everything started by getting a franchise, they give you the playbook. You're not writing the playbook, and you have to look inside yourself and know whether or not you're the type of person who can follow a playbook or do you need to be the one inventing it and, and you know, maybe running into brick wall? Karen: And I think that is the personality type. However, you know, depending on what you want to do, I think you've gotta be able to step back, talk to the right people, do the research to see which model. I've done both. That's because for this situation, that worked, for this situation, the other worked. Cadie: And it's not a guarantee. I mean, just because the franchise company is telling you what to do, are you listening to them? Are you listening to other franchise owners? It's important...I think that there's a middle ground, you know, especially if the franchise gives you the flexibility. You've gotta really play with what works in your market. Karen: I think you gotta have the personality too to the to accept that your way is not always best. Cadie: Amen. Karen: We always go in and...I'm so smart. I mean, I have the t-shirt. It says... Cadie: I'll be smarter if you're less stupid, or something. Karen: No, I'd be nice if you were smart, but that wasn't the one I was talking about. Cadie: Okay. Sorry. There were so many. Karen: I was talking...the one I wore at conference last week. Cadie: While you were doing your presentation. Karen: Yeah, I wore it on purpose. It's not that I'm bossy, it's that I have better ideas. And I was making a statement. I actually had a suit to wear to that, but that one was more appropriate at a franchise conference where I was actually speaking at and she was there as the owner. So... Cadie: Back on track. Karen: Okay, back on track. We need the bill. So franchises. You'd be amazed at what places are franchises and what aren't. Cadie, what's some of the ones you've learned over the past three years? Cadie: McDonald's a franchise. Karen: Newk's. Karen: Whataburger. Karen: AT&T stores. Cadie: Jani-King [SP]. Karen: Moe's [SP]. Cadie: Huntington Learning Centers Karen: It goes on and on. Cadie: I mean, the list goes on. Karen: Yeah. You'd be amazed at what are franchise is that you don't think they are, but what that means is that there's someone here possibly local, more times than not, that your neighbor could own his own company, but because the shingle says a corporate name, they think it's not theirs, and that's not true. And I think that's what you were referencing earlier. Cadie: Yes. They do own their businesses. I think a lot of times people...you know, for example, Starbucks, they are corporate owned. Yes, they may have a local manager, however, they're not independently owned. They all fall under their own umbrella. Karen: Right, and when it's not corporate, you don't necessarily have the national advertising and, you know, they make their people go out and be in the community. It's your choices whether how successful you want your business to be. Cadie: And I think an important thing kinda off to the side, but so long the franchise, is let's say you are starting a business completely from scratch. Some people go into the idea of, "Hey, I'm gonna start this business with the intention of franchising it in the future and becoming a franchisor," meaning you created the brand that other people can buy into. Karen: I can think of two here locally that are in the middle of that right now. You know, they are building their brand. They built it where there are about...one has already started and another one is about to start. And they had built that brand, but how much investment does it take and is somebody willing to do that? Cadie: I think that's one of the biggest compliments if someone comes up to your business and ask if there's a franchise opportunity. Karen: Well, I don't know if I shared with you, but you know, I was actually at the Payroll Vault conference last week as a vendor for our company, Flexible Benefits, Inc., which is benefit packages for employees. And I did the presentation on that company and when I went back to my booth at the conference, one of the Payroll Vault owners came up to me and said, "Are you planning on franchising that?" I didn't know what to say. For once in my life, I was speechless. And it was because my mind had not gone there, that was my first presentation, and I had the wrong PowerPoint up. So I have no idea what I said while I was up there. In fact, all I remember is you telling me to wrap it up. So, you know, to have that possibility, I think that's in people's minds now. Of course, I think it's more on people's minds that already own or work for a franchise. Cadie: If you were interested in franchising your brand, kinda, what's the first step to do that? Karen: I think I would actually contact the other franchise owners that I know and our franchisors, who we know corporate. I think that, first of all, I would get my ducks in a row with talking with a franchise attorney. I mean, the documents, everything. Look at the document that we have for Payroll Vault. And I've seen other documents. They're an inch, inch-and-a-half thick with legalese. So, you know, presented with something like that, what did we do when we got the thing, Cadie? Cadie: Oh man, we hired an attorney. Karen: Exactly. Cadie: I read it, but we also got an attorney. Karen: And I trust you. So, that worked by itself, but I think, you know, what are the rules and stipulations? There's gotta be federal guidance, things that, you know, we might not necessarily know, but that again throws in a third aspect of it. One, starting from scratch. Two, buying a franchise. Or three, building a brand to be a franchiser, because they're all totally different things. Cadie: Absolutely. So, if someone walked up to you just real quick, two pros and two cons of owning a franchise. Karen: I think one of the pros is definitely not reinventing the wheel. Two, I think one of the pros is having just the acceptance of perception. Cadie: Ooh. Karen: I know. Cadie: I like that term. Karen: Thank you. To being known now for Payroll Vault, nobody here knew it. It's all out in Colorado and out West. You know, there's quite a few in California, a lot in Colorado. So we had to push that brand from scratch. So that was a little different. But it's definitely part of the package. As far as con, yes, you are answerable to someone else. I think that you have to choose whether you consider royalties, and what happens is is that the price you paid for not reinventing the will is you pay them a percentage of sales. And so every month, on your sales, you have to pay them. I consider that an investment. However, I could see where that would turn into a con at some point if you feel like you're doing all the work. Cadie, your feelings on that? It's tough. Cadie: I definitely agree with all of those, you know, pros. I like the community aspect. If, you know, we run into a situation that we've never dealt with before, I'm able to reach out to X amount of people and, "Hey, have you gone through this? Have you dealt with this?" And kinda we're able to bounce off those ideas of people who are not only in the same industry, but they understand our model and our values and how we operate. Another pro is definitely to go further into not reinventing the wheel. You know, the brand is developed, meaning not just the logo, but what that brand... Karen: Efficiencies or process? Cadie: Yes. Well, even just the website, everything like that, you know, best practices. Here's what we look for when hiring. Here's how to operate the software. I mean, everything you could imagine. Karen: Even forms, can you imagine all the forms I had to come up with when I started from scratch? I had to create an award program versus they handed everything to you. Cadie: Yeah, it's fantastic. I mean, normally, franchises offer a training period. So you go to where the headquarters is or they come to you and they make sure that everything is good to go. I mean, that piece of mind, it's invaluable. Karen: Now, you pay for that. Most of them or all of that I've seen have an upfront franchise fee. Cadie: Yes. Karen: And that is dependent on, I think, the popularity, you know, economics, supply and demand. Cadie: And the equipment as well. You know, it's gonna be a lot...Planet Fitness is another franchise. And I mean the cost to get a Planet Fitness, simply because of the gym equipment, it's astronomical. Karen: And that brings, you know, what we hope you take away with today, listening to us, is, you know, what capital do I have to have? Cadie: And most brands, if you go to their website, and you'll see franchise opportunities, it will tell you what that initial estimate buy-in cost is. Karen: You know, they give you the level of liquidity before they'll even talk to you. That means you're... Cadie: What's liquidity? Karen: Liquidity? Cadie: Go. Karen: All right. Assets that you can make available very fast. Okay? Cadie: Knowledge for the day. Karen: It is. But that's not the book version. I'm sure there's very professional... Cadie: We don't want the book version. Karen: Good, because I'm not about the book version. I got flip flops on right now. So if you were to rely on someone to be able to be financially stable, how much could they come up with today? All right. They wanna know how liquid you are or can you even afford to do this? Next, can you afford to live until this gets up and running, whether it's a McDonald's or a brand you've never heard of? Either way, it takes time, build out, ordering, setting up employees. What other things did you see? Cadie: Well, so my question is, let's say that I really liked this brand, I think I would be really good at running this business, but you know, I got debt out the wazoo, how does one go about...is it better to wait until you've established, you know, to have those assets in place, find an investor, go to a bank? How can you start a franchise money-wise? Karen: I think the most aggravating answer is it depends. And it depends on is your neighbor or your uncle an investor and you can have an investor? Well, they're not gonna let you on the ticket, so you're gonna run it. It's your work, blood, sweat, and tears and you don't own it. Well, this, when you work a deal so that over so many years and to make sure he or she gets their money back because it has to be a win-win situation. Another one is hold out, work your butt off, and save up. You know, get your life in order, get out of debt. And that said so easily and it's not that easy. And that's another show. Cadie: When getting a franchise started, what kinda price range could someone expect to pay? I know it depends, however, just a general answer what to expect. Karen: It really goes back to supply and demand again. You know, usually, in general, they'd like you to be a couple of hundred thousand dollars liquid. When you get up to where they know you're gonna have to be able to afford the outlay, you know, you were talking about Jim's earlier. If you are gonna have a big outlay or build out of a restaurant or, you know, you have to go buy their brand, buy their stuff, their equipment, then is gonna be the liquidity. They're gonna want you to have more and be more financially stable because they know what you're gonna have to come out of pocket and they want you to be able to be able to do that. Cadie: And some brands require you to be operationally involved in the business. So let's just say you wanna take the investor route and you just want to invest in a brand. Some like Chick-fil-A, the owners have to be involved in the operations of the business. So that's another thing too is how involved you have to be. Karen: Well, and that goes back to what we've been saying the whole time in that you take a piece of paper and you put pros on one side and cons on the other side and you do it for each franchise that you're looking at until you find where there's more on the pros than on the cons and you can stomach and live with the cons. Cadie: It should not be a quick decision. Karen: Do not make it a quick decision, no. Everything is back to long-term. First, pay the franchise fee, eat while you build it, eat while you grow it, and then slowly it starts to pay off because never in my life have I have seen a good payoff come in the short term. It's always a long term. Cadie: I think people don't see the long term though. That's a common thing to discuss is overnight success. Well, you didn't see the beginning. The beginning isn't really touched on. No one brags about not having money for three years. Karen: Yeah, I think, you know, 2016 was actually a good year for me that I don't really wanna go into right now, but it was a good year. And people would come up, "Oh, my gosh, you're having the year. It's just amazing." And I said, "It took me 20 years to get here. It took 20 years of family, especially family, helping out clients." I mean, I couldn't have built what I have without you. One common thread I can see in all that we've talked about today is people. We talked about it in the first show of how we got here and why we're doing this and I think that the people around you, the people who have done it, the people who are gonna help you are one of the most important things in your life. Cadie: So to sum it up, really, Franchise 101, do your research, talk to people. Karen: That's right. And it cannot be a quick decision. It's not about dollar or a quick buck, but it's about having an emotional connection with what you're trying to do with your life, what you're trying to sell, because no one else is gonna buy into it unless you're emotionally connected. If you don't believe in it, nobody else is. Cadie: Perfect. Karen: Everybody that's listening to us today or thinking about, "Oh, that sounds intriguing. I'd like to look at what kinda franchise..." You know, so where do you go for the source? Cadie: There's a couple different websites to research franchises. There's the Franchise Business Review. There is the International Franchise Association. Karen: Which she won the award last year. Cadie: IFA. Karen: Proud mommy moment. Cadie: Okay. I don't know. Those two resources are really probably the best to start off with. And then once you kinda get some ideas of brands that you wanna work with, go check out those companies directly. Karen: Read between the lines and read the little print. That's where they get you.

Hey Y'all, welcome to another Flipped Lifestyle Podcast Q&A w/ S&J! In the Flip Your Life Community, we hold a members-only Q&A twice a month where we answer online business questions of our members live on air! This podcast episode features some of the highlights of these recent live member Q&As to give you a glimpse of how we help the members of our community, and help you as well in online business by listening in. Today's Q&A highlights answer the following questions:  I would love your thoughts on the optimal content plan for starting out. - Jennifer Do you have a course or can guide me to learn how to make a cover template/thumbnail for my YouTube videos (like you have)? And if there is something else I should be doing that can be automated each time I upload my daily videos? I have already been using the free version of Tube Buddy. - Cynthia I need to make videos -- both lectures & labs -- where? Thinking about putting up a whiteboard in my very cluttered office and just showing me and the whiteboard. Thoughts? - Monte I am actually encouraging my 13 year old to start a YouTube channel, any tips on how to name a channel and how to title the video? This will help me too. - Maribel I am reactivating a site that has not been updated in a few years, and am ready to get it up and going... I stopped right before really doing any promotion. What would you recommend using to deliver my content (video courses)? I was using Zippy Courses Plugin, but that no longer is being updated, so I need to change those video's over. And I have a free video course for my lead magnet as well... would you do that as an email course? Or use some kind of course platform? - Stephanie My plan is to do 2 month-long series over the summer on 2 things specific to my niche. I'm wondering, how do you feel about series of episodes dedicated to one subject? In this case July will be about “how to handle weeknight chaos with little kids“ and August I'm doing a month long Back-to-School Boot Camp. July is typically a pretty slow month in my niche, I thought the weeknight chaos thing would be interesting for them, but I am wondering if 4-5 shows on one subject is too many shows? - Karen You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: FL 213 - Content + YouTube + Holidays! (Q&A w/ S+J) CLICK HERE to get your FREE 30-DAY Membership in the Flip Your Life Community NOW! You can connect with S&J on social media too!   Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show! If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post.

This is the audio from our March 2018 episode of We Chat Divorce, which aired in March 2018. You can watch the episode here. In today’s episode, we’re joined by Cecilia Halseth, author of Walking is for Wimps. We had a great time discussing how to start, and keep, a healthy routine throughout a stressful time. Karen: Welcome to We Chat Divorce. This is where we talk about real people, real situations, and real divorce. I'm Karen Chellew, and I'm here with Catherine Shanahan, we cofounded a Divorce Solutions company that really is committed to changing the way people get divorced. And we do that by having this show and having guests that help us help you navigate your divorce process. So today we're going to be talking about managing stress and how it affects your well-being physically and mentally. Catherine: We see a lot of people and they are concerned, and we're concerned for them, and we assess them about their financial, emotional, and physical well-being. Have you ever heard of the divorce diet? Karen: No. Catherine: Okay so when I went through my divorce, there's this "divorce diet", and it was great. I lost 20 pounds, and it felt so good, but it just wasn’t good for me. It was all stress related. It wasn’t anything I was doing healthy for myself. I was just stressed out all the time. So, I'm really excited for our guest today to get us on track on what to do properly. Even though I lost that 20 pounds and I felt great, it has come back. As you know I can't fit in some of my clothes right now because it has come back. So, I need some help today and I'm really excited about today. Karen: Me too. My divorce diet was not eating at all. When I manage stress, I just don't eat. I feel like crawling in a hole. So, I'm excited for Cecilia to be here. And we notice when people talk about divorce, one of the first things they want to talk about is "I'm a mess", "I don't feel good", "I don’t look good", "I'm not eating well", "I'm eating differently", just because the whole family dynamic is all shaken up. And, so, that needs to be address right at the beginning. Catherine: Yeah. And we're all so focused on that. I remember my first spinning class. I'm by myself and I'm sitting in the gym, and I'm to the right and it’s a really dark room. And I'm spinning away, and the class is over and I'm trying to get off the bike. I hear a group of women, the instructor also, talking. And I hear the instructor say, "I lost 185 pounds." Now I don't know any of the women, or the instructor at that time either, and I'm thinking "Oh my gosh. 185 pounds! How did she do that?" So, I'm thinking "I'm pretty social. I'm going to go meet these women." So, I go over and say "Excuse me, this is such a great class. I'm so curious, how did you lose 185 pounds?" And they all start cracking up and she says "Well I just divorced the guy I was married to! He weighed 185 pounds and I'm rid of him now". She's a good friend of mine now and I found that to be so funny. But fast forward, me going through my own divorce, I realized maybe it's not so funny, that we focus on that. Or often you'll hear "Oh, he lost a lot of weight, He must be doing something he shouldn’t be doing." Or "He's preparing to divorce me." So, it will be really nice to hear a healthy approach to look at ourselves. Karen: Absolutely. So, our guest is Cecilia Halseth. Cecilia is a ball of energy, and the author of a book entitled Walking is for Wimps. Cecilia holds a degree in exercise and physiology and she's been a part of the fitness industry for over 25 years, teaching exercise classes and giving lectures. Catherine: She'll help us help you get on a healthier path to a nice future. Karen: Cecilia, thank you for joining us! Cecilia: My pleasure. Thank you thank you I'm so excited. So, I was listening to you guys and exercise is an important part for anybody to not only feel better, but as a mood booster, which is one of the big problems when you are separating from someone you loved sometimes for many years, and you're going through the stress of divorce. Exercise could help as a stress releaser, and as a fantastic mood booster. Catherine: I'm so excited to hear how you'll help us stay on track. First, get on track, and then stay there, which is what I'm having a problem with. Karen: But wait, walking is for wimps. Please tell us. Cecilia: Wimpy wimpy. Well this is very interesting. I have for many years created and filled in my own personalized "keep in shape plan". One of the things I discovered is that so many women get frustrated because they exercise but cannot lose the weight. It's because they're not doing it efficiently and effectively. And that's one of the things I see. I see many women walking, having a good time. Chit chatting, and they take a nice long stroll through the park, through the street, but they're not trying. So, don’t take me wrong. Walking is a wonderful way to exercise. But, if you're doing it very easily, it's either because you're very old, because you've been injured, or because you're recuperating from illness. But most of us who are active and young, you must add what I call "moments of intensity". And those moments of intensity could translate to sprints or walk faster. So, that's what I mean by walking is for wimps. You must add moments of intensity. Even 30 seconds of where you feel your heartbeat go up, you start feeling moist, you start feeling sweaty. That's what will create changes. That's what will allow you to lose the weight faster. And nobody gets more motivated then when you start seeing it reflected on the scale. So, walking is for wimps means to add moments of intensity. Then you can lose the weight faster and stay motivated. Karen: Okay so we have young mom going through a divorce. She has two small kids, with no time. And as a matter of fact, she's overwhelmed because there's not enough hours in the day. She's not eating well, she's not exercising, she's totally stressed, what does she do? Cecilia: This is very interesting because I've seen people being in that same situation. And I think to myself "Okay you're stressed to the max, you're probably also part-time working or full-time working, you go back home and must deal with the kids, there's not another parent to help, and you want to go work out? Oh please." What we want is a glass of wine, a little cheese and crackers, and to put the kids to bed. So, how do you incorporate? The first thing, I believe, to incorporate exercise into your life consistently is that you must start by being motivated. Motivation is a process in which you will start to feel motivated once you start losing the weight. But how do you start the motivation process? The first thing we must understand is that we must be absolutely at our whit's end. Out of frustration, of weight gain, and say "I have to incorporate a stress releaser." Even for ten minutes. So, the first thing these people must think is "Okay, I have all this stress, I have all these kids, and now you want me to work out for an hour?" No. That's also a part of the title of the book. Because if you walk wimpy, then you must walk for an hour, 45, 50 minutes! We don't have time. What I suggest for these people is that if you're an early riser, then think "I'm going to take 15 minutes in the morning before the kids get up, and if you can afford it, then get a little treadmill. [And it doesn't matter if you're in your pajamas], get a pony tail, and go before the kids get up for 15 minutes. And add those moments of intensity. Walk for four-five minutes and then push it a little bit. The moment you push, and your body wakes up, then you say "Ham! I think I can do another minute". So that's one of the things you must think. If you've an early riser, then do it then. If you go to work, go at lunch time. You just change your shorts and do it for 15 minutes, and you still have an hour of lunch time. So, go there, change, go outside, feel, inhale, push it and push it, come back, put a little deodorant on, and then it's over! Karen: Speak for yourself! Cecilia: Yeah, you can do wonders with perfume. And in the afternoon, if you finish early with your walk and you don't have to pick up your kids until 4 or 5, then incorporate that exercise. Again, do it efficiently and effectively, add your moments of intensity, and do it for 15 to 20 minutes, and then it's over! Catherine: So, I'm hearing you say just start with day one. Take 15 or 20 minutes. Say "This is what I'm doing today for myself" because we deserve it. Everyone deserves 15 or 20 minutes to themselves. And you don't have to start with "I need to do a 45-minute class," or " I need to go work out for an hour" or "I have to run for 30 minutes". You can start with just a walk, add some intensity, and make it a regular habit. Cecilia: A regular habit... That's very interesting that you bring that up because you cannot change physically, emotionally, and mentally if you don't achieve consistency. That's a big one – consistency. So, the first thing you must think is, most people think consistency means they must do it 3-4 times a week. No! Start twice a week. But really commit to it. Like I myself obviously have really committed to exercise because I already know the wonderful benefits of exercise and now its part pf my life. But it took years. Because the first thing I wanted was to lose the weight. I wasn't thinking "Oh I need to work out so that I can increase my lung capacity. No! The first thing I wanted to do was to lose the weight. Karen: So, about being consistent with exercise – especially when you're dealing with a stressful situation. I wanted to tell you guys this story because exercise became a very important component of my lifestyle when I went through divorce. My kids were 7 and 5, and I didn't eat. So, it wasn't a weight loss thing for me, but it really was an anxiety reliever for me. So, I would have play dates for them. After school they would be on the playground and I would just run around. I started with ten minutes and I couldn't breathe. But over time it became a lifeline. It remains a core part of my day. But I always need to exercise with someone. So, I have an issue. When that someone isn't available, I sleep in. Cecilia: It's very interesting. First, I want to say I also did that. If I didn't have the time, then I'd play ticklish monster. I'd chase all the kids in the preschool. And believe me after 20-30 minutes you end up with your tongue out. Something about the companionship, I highly suggest that if we love a song, and we're listening to the radio and we're driving, you start moving. Go write down those songs and say, " I cannot wait to listen to those songs!" And go out there whether you have a friend or not. In fact, no friends so you can go and pump it. It's a fantastic way to do it by yourself. Catherine: Do you use music when you work out? Karen: I do, just sometimes... Catherine: You want the person? Karen: Not necessarily that I want the person, it's just the pattern that I've set for myself. So, for instance my friend stubbed her toe and I didn't get up and my husband said, "Oh you didn't work out today" and I would say "Well no, she stubbed her toe, so I can't work out." So, I just noticed that about myself. Cecilia: So that's the thing. If you have the plan A and plan B music and if you are listening to music when you're with her as well, your music is not like "YES I am SO energized" because you want it loud and clear to push you. In fact, some of the parts of good music that excites you, I use as moments of intensity.  When it gets to a certain part of the music, I know that's when I push it, and then come back. Catherine: Yeah. I say we challenge Karen, and anyone else watching, that they should have their workout buddy be themselves. And you can log it in. I'd like to see how much you work out before our next show. Karen: You're on! Catherine: I love challenges. Cecilia: You were talking about refueling. What does that mean? Catherine: I lot of times in divorce, the reason couples grow apart is because someone is giving, like we give to our children, we give to our friends, we give to our spouses, and I remember being asked the question, by a therapist, is that "who's refueling you"? Being a stepmom of three children and then having two children ourselves, and with my ex-husband working all the time, I was always giving, giving, giving. Then because we didn't have a connection that was more emotional, I was feeling lonely a lot. So, the question was "How do we refuel ourselves?". I didn't grow up exercising. So, in your book I know you talk about that day to refuel which I'm excited to hear about because it could be something I could connect to. Cecilia: Well refueling is interesting because it must do with how you manage your caloric intake? One of the first things I want to make very clear is that I love to eat, and I don't mean rabbit food. There's nothing I enjoy more than rich, high-caloric foods. If all the rich, high-caloric foods had the same number of calories as a carrot, we would not be overweight. One of the things that we must do is to plan – and it's okay to plan. It's not an obsessive thing. Every single person who has maintained their decent body weight think, every single day, how they are going to eat. How are they going to make themselves feel better through food or through exercise. I have fuel days, I have maintenance days, and I have cheat days. You must have cheat days. So, the fuel days, usually for me, are Mondays. Why? Because the weekends are mostly my cheating days. So, by Monday you feel so guilty, it is for sure a healthy day. You are going to put fuel in your body, but healthy fuel. Potato chips, fried chicken nuggets, are not fuel. I'm talking healthy fuel. And when you feel so guilty, your body and your brain tell you "Yes. You need to eat healthy." And then maybe Tuesday's another fuel day. Wednesday, I feel good, so I do a maintenance day. Maintenance day means you can still cheat a little bit, like, I'll have a nice salad, with a creamy dressing. Instead of liking on Monday I would have a salad with lemon juice. And maybe on a maintenance day you'll have a bag of Doritos or half the bag. And then cheating day doesn't mean that the whole day you're going to be cheating. What I'm trying to say is that you cannot cheat the whole day. So, what I do on a cheating day, I'm very aware of my exercise, a little quick workout, and then I know that that evening is the party evening. So, I can eat and enjoy myself, eat when I want, slowly. And there's specific tips on how to eat in moderation, a little lower portion, and how to enjoy right, high-caloric food within certain trade-offs – so that you will not gain everything back. Catherine: You're pointing at me Cecilia: No! Well you said that you will gain it back. So, one of the things is that you must fight back with all you might [against] that weight gain. And in my book, I have tips about it. Because nothing makes us more frustrated – us women – is [gaining] body weight. Practice managing the low-caloric fuel days, feel good about yourself with intensity and [sweat], and it will release the tension and you'll start feeling better with yourself. It will be a snowball effect. You start feeling better, you start losing the weight, you start being a little more aware or your food intake. Then people start saying "Oh my gosh you look great!" And that's the beginning of your new lifestyle. Karen: That’s great. And you cover all of that in your book. Walking is for Wimps. Thank you for joining us as We Chat Divorce. Catherine: And our viewers can get her book right from her website. Cecelia: Walkingisforwimps.com Karen: We look forward to seeing you next time. If you have any questions for us or if you want to suggest a topic for one of our next episodes, email us at info@DivorceUSolutions.com. Thank you for joining us. Catherine: And remember – We chat because you matter.   We Welcome Your Feedback Thanks for joining our community. 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