Reinventing Kate: How a Forensic Psychologist found Encouragement & Purpose in Podcasting

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and I'm excited to welcome you inside.

Sometimes you just need somebody who makes you laugh.

Somebody who makes you smile.

Somebody who throws political correctness out the window.

Sometimes you need to hang out with a lady who spent her career in the fields of criminal justice and mental health.

Sometimes you need to hang out with a lady named Kate Wallinga.

My name is Kevin Lowe.

I'm your host here on episode number 197 of Grit Grace and Inspiration.

Welcome to the podcast.

Today I am in the studio with that woman, Kate Wallinga, and OMG.

The lady brings the heat.

I'm telling you what.

Some people, like I said, they just make you smile, they make you laugh a little bit more than others.

And well, Kate, she does that while talking about serious subjects.

We're going to get to discover her story, her history, working in mental health, in criminal justice, but we're also going to get to discover the story of her breaking her back in 2014, and that really changing the trajectory of her life.

Now, today, Kate is a fellow podcaster of a podcast called Ignorance Was Bliss.

And you're going to get to hear all about that podcast, something that I highly recommend you pay attention to and be sure to check out the show notes for so that you can have another podcast to listen to.

So, all of that being said, I'm in the studio with Kate today.

Kate's ready and waiting for you to meet her.

Now, before I do, I do want to remind you that it is time for you to sign up for my special July event called Blossom and Arise, your five-day journey to your next best chapter of life.

So if you are ready to step into that next chapter, ready to embark on a new journey in life, but maybe with like a little kickstart to help you along the way, well, all you need to do is head on over to gritgraceinspiration.com slash challenge.

That is gritgraceinspiration.com slash challenge to get signed up today.

The event kicks off on Monday, July 17th, so do not delay.

Now it is my pleasure to introduce you to the guest of the hour, none other than my amazing friend, Tate.

SPEAKER_00: I started off as an engineering major in college.

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: And that's entirely because I found a college that allowed me to combine my senior year of high school with my freshman year of college.

And I was really excited about moving away a year early.

So that I mean, like, like that's 100% of the reason why I chose the college I did, but it was an engineering school.

And I'm good enough with technology, that kind of thing.

So I said, okay, I guess I'll be a mechanical engineer.

I don't I just I wanted not to be with my parents as well, really.

Like, yeah, I mean, it's not it's not the best reason, but it's that's truth.

So, okay, the thing about engineers, and God love them, but they're kind of a dour bunch.

SPEAKER_05: Yes.

SPEAKER_00: And as well, where I went to school is in upstate New York on the Canadian border.

Like the closest cities are Montreal and Ottawa.

And so it's dark all the time.

It snows from October to May every year.

It's miserable.

Everybody's miserable all the time.

And like, I just figured that's how life was.

SPEAKER_05: Yes.

SPEAKER_00: And no big, I guess.

You know, I can I can build a career on this, and everybody else is miserable too.

I'll be miserable with them.

It'll be fun.

And then my junior year of college, I got very sick with a kidney infection and had to be hospitalized for it.

And that was sort of the first time, kind of ever, that I had time to think.

Because when I lived at home with my parents, it was very much survival mode.

Like my parents were not especially physically abusive, but they were not, it was a toxic environment.

And then I went to college and I overloaded on on credits.

I was, I was both an engineering and a psychology major.

I had two full majors because the idea was I would do like human resources or industrial organizational psychology, which is like how to how to increase capitalism.

So whoo, I dodged a bullet by that.

But at the time I just wanted to not I wanted to be safe.

That's all I wanted.

And so here I am in the hospital.

It's the first time I've ever stopped and thought.

And I realized I don't want to be miserable.

And somebody, and I wish I could give credit, but I I don't know who it was.

But someone brought me the book Mindhunter that the like the Netflix series is based on.

SPEAKER_03: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: Is is an actual nonfiction book, and it was about FBI profiling.

And this is back in the day, kids when books were paper.

unknown: Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: You know, like when a book was like really a book.

SPEAKER_00: It was actually, yeah.

Yeah, someone killed a tree for this book.

And I read it in the hospital and thought, this guy likes his job.

What a concept.

You know, it but it was really, it was honestly an epiphany to be like, and I was like, I could, I could do this.

I could do what he does.

I think that's fascinating.

And so I ended up having to take medical leave for the rest of the semester because I missed enough school.

And when I went back, I dropped all of my engineering classes and ended up graduating as the only psychology major in my class.

They had to like make up stuff for me to do.

But I got through.

And I ultimately decided to go into forensic psychology rather than profiling for a number of reasons.

But the the baseline is that profilers are at heart and at the at the core, they're cops.

They're they're trying to apprehend criminals.

And I didn't want to carry a gun or live a cop lifestyle.

SPEAKER_02: Yes.

SPEAKER_00: I was more interested in forensic psychology, just means any form of psychology, mostly assessment that has to do with the criminal justice system.

And I really was interested in sitting down and talking to these people like they were people.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Weirdly enough.

You know, not like they were, you know, just criminals.

You know, a lot of onlookers only look at these people and measure them by the worst thing they've ever done.

And like I had to ask questions about that, but I also wanted to get to know what else is in here.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Because that's how you're gonna ultimately decrease crime and make society safer, is not by punishing, but by getting to know, like, how did this happen?

So that's where I started.

I worked in the prison system and the locked psychiatric facility system for a number of years.

And then I had I had kids and kids ruin everything.

So I like I I I never sort of saw them because my husband is a prof he was a professor and is now a high school teacher.

And so his hours were very constricted.

And working as a forensic psychologist, your core hours mostly.

And so my hours were constricted.

So I never saw my kids, right?

They were in daycare all the time, and then we'd do dinner and I'd throw them in bed, and I'd be exhausted doing chores all weekend.

And I wanted to be a better mother.

And so I ended up moving into crisis work, which is in, you know, whenever somebody shows up like in the emergency room or sometimes private offices, and I would also go to their homes and they're suicidal or homicidal, having a psychotic break, or, you know, a number of things.

And I was the one they would talk to, and we would figure out, okay, what next?

Do you need to go to a hospital?

Do you need a referral for outpatient care?

A number of other things, depending on the state that you're in.

And I mean literal United States that you're in, not mental state, although both.

And that I could work nights and weekends because you know, the court is only open certain hours, but people have crisis all the time.

Yes.

Like I'm still having crisis, you know, sort of 24-7 right now.

So I mean, with both of those jobs, they were emotionally intense, but what a privilege also.

Like for these people to let me in their lives.

Outsiders make assumptions, but these people actually let me in their lives and talked to me and told me their stories.

And I would still be in doing it today if I could.

But in 2014, I broke my back.

Don't do that.

Terrible, terrible idea.

And I so I went on permanent disability.

And I spent the next four years approximately moping because if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it well.

So I sat on the couch and felt sorry for myself with vigor.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

So Kate, let me interrupt you real quick.

Now, at that point, how long had you been working in this field?

SPEAKER_00: About 15 years.

SPEAKER_02: Okay, wow.

So I mean, a very extensive, extensive career in it.

And one thing that I I wanted to ask you was when you kind of look back on it now, what do you think it was that like initially drew you in to this?

SPEAKER_00: Not being miserable.

SPEAKER_02: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, it sounds simple, but it just as growing up, I was in survival mode so much because of outside factors.

And then this idea of being challenged and being allowed to see people in vulnerable moments and they trusted me, they didn't have to.

Like, if I if I sit down with you in not you personally, but maybe you personally in jail or in the ER or whatever, you don't have to talk to me.

I can't pull words out of you.

You don't have to explain to me what led you.

You know, effectively my first question, I would go through like, you know, what's your name, what's your address, background, stuff like that.

But then ultimately the the the first big question was, what brings you here today?

And you didn't have to tell me.

You know, you you could have told me to screw off and what am I gonna do with that?

I'm gonna say, you know, individual refuses to talk to clinician, done.

We're done, move on, because there's always more people to talk to.

And so I just I sort of I felt like such what a privilege, what an honor that these people would trust me with what they had.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I I think I think that's so powerful.

I mean, do you feel like, and I mean, I don't know, I might be stretching it here, but like, do you feel like even like when you look back at your childhood and and the type of environment you lived in and and with your parents, do you feel like that plays any role in this?

SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it does.

It's it's all I do not believe that everything happens for a reason.

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

SPEAKER_00: Because that to me implies like I've had a couple of near-death experiences.

I've had traumatic brain injury, I've broken my back.

Do you want I like I'm I'm going for full coverage on the medical bingo board right now.

Like I just I have all of the things wrong with me.

And I don't think I did something terrible to deserve that.

So that feeling of everything happens for a reason kind of implies like I did something awful and therefore I have awful things happen to me.

And I think sometimes random bad things happen for no reason at all.

I believe that.

But I believe that everybody has a story, everybody has a path.

And so it's not that everything happens for a reason, but I can find a reason why things happened retrospectively.

If that makes sense, like I can look back and be like, well, I had to go through that, I guess, because if I had so for instance, I had a one of my near-death experiences was in childbirth.

And after that, I was on home health care for a full year because I was extremely sick and had extensive surgeries and blah, blah, blah, blah, this whole deal.

And we had to hire a nanny because I had this is with the birth of my third child, and I couldn't care for three kids on my own reliably, like when the energy would just drain out of me like a sieve.

So we hired a nanny, good nanny, by the way, terrible mother.

She opted to get pregnant as a single mom, knowing that there was no way the father was ever going to be a part of her life.

And she didn't do well as a single mother.

I'm trying to be as diplomatic as I can, you know, without just throwing expletives at the wall and seeing what sticks.

But she ultimately she had a crisis point when her kid was two and a half about, and they moved in with us.

They moved back in with us.

Like she had moved out, going on when when when I found out she was pregnant, I was like, oh, oh, I can I am sitting on the train tracks, and this is the train coming.

I'm gonna move.

For the next two and a half years, I got this Disney version of how things were, and then the kid is two and a half years old, and I get this call in the middle of the night, like, I'm uh in crisis, I need help.

Can you watch the baby for me while I go to the hospital?

Which of course, you know, like who would say now?

But so ultimately we had to ask this former nanny to leave because of she was she was engaging in illegal behavior in my home.

And we gave her the choice.

You can take the baby with you or you can leave her with us and we'll care for her while you get on your feet.

Like either one is fine.

You just kinda you can't stay here.

And two weeks later, she met with me at a Panera of all places, like how touching, and said, I'm I'm never gonna get better, you keep her.

So I have a fourth child.

It's a surprise, it's a girl.

And I tell that story to say, like, I didn't deserve to almost die in childbirth.

I didn't do anything wrong.

There wasn't a reason for that.

It was just random, bad medical care, basically.

But if I hadn't gotten sick, I never would have hired a nanny.

And if I hadn't hired a nanny, I wouldn't have had that fourth kid.

And sh we didn't know at the time that we needed her in our lives.

That she has uh she's completed our family.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: So it's a long way of saying, like, I'm sure that my childhood experiences led me to where I was, but they could have led me somewhere else too.

I just needed to keep moving.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I I I absolutely absolutely love that perspective.

So I mean, thank you for for going deep and in and sharing that.

Cause I yeah, I just I yeah, I I don't even know what to say.

That was just a really just kind of powerful example of exactly you know what you're saying.

Now, kind of catching back up where I interrupted, you mentioned just this kind of brief little traumatic thing of breaking your back.

What in the world happened?

SPEAKER_00: So I have an autoimmune disorder called ankylosing spondylitis, which the casual term for that is bamboo spine, because that's what it looks like when it's done.

So uh effectively my body has decided one spine is not enough.

And so it it's I'm growing a sheath of bone starting from the tailbone up that fuses the vertebrae, right?

And so that sheath of bone, first of all, limits range of motion and that kind of thing, but it's also super brittle and thin.

And so all I did was step wrong on a playground on some mulch.

I didn't fall down, I didn't get in an accident or whatever.

I just stepped wrong and I and I broke not a vertebrae, but the sheath of bone that connected them.

But you know what?

It still hurts a whole lot to have shards of bone pressing on nerves.

I don't know.

And listen, I'm kind of slowed on the uptake.

So I went back to work after that.

Like two days later, I went back to work because I was like, I'm used to chronic pain, no big deal.

And it it it took me like two weeks to realize I can't do this.

I I I cannot function.

And so for a while it was short-term medical leave, and I thought maybe I'll go back to work.

And then eventually I realized I can't, I can't.

I I I'm never gonna be able to do a physically intensive job.

And literally the letter that I have from the Social Security says that it would cost too much to retrain me, so we might as well keep me on disability instead.

Which is special, but okay.

And so yeah, that's this just sort of became my life.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: What was was sitting at home playing a supportive role in raising the kids and trying to be a a halfway decent partner to my husband, but I didn't feel like I had a starring role in my own life anymore.

And so I was in a dark place mentally for for a long time.

And then in late 2017, my father had a rough divorce and moved in with us.

And about six weeks later, I went up to my husband, and you can decide which version of the story is accurate because one of us will say that I gently and politely tapped him on the shoulder, and the other will say that I grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him in real close and said, I'm starting a podcast.

Either way, being a smart man, he said, Okay.

And I didn't even like I didn't know a taunt, like I listened to podcasts, but literally, again, it this wasn't a I'm driven to do a specific thing.

This was a I need a hobby where no one can talk to me.

Right?

Because all kids, it's mom, mom, mom all day long.

And then my husband my husband would come home and talk about work, and my father would literally follow me through the house and just talk at me all day.

And I was like, oh my God.

You know, like I don't want to end up in prison because prison smells bad.

So I gotta start a hobby where nobody can talk to me.

And so I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna start this show that explains what forensic psychology is and what it is not, because everybody who hears that that's a thing I did, they respond like, oh, cool.

And I'm like, actually, a lot of waiting.

Court is a lot of waiting.

And like I said, prison smells bad, and it's it's just it's you're around hurting people all the time.

And it's hard and sad and it's heavy.

And and I just think it's important like to understand the difference between profiling and forensic psychology, blah, blah.

So that's I was like 10, 20 episodes, I'll explain what it is, I'll explain what it is, and I'll be done.

I am rounding up on 500 episodes now.

So as you can guess, I caught the bug.

Yes, caught the podcasting bug.

And maybe a year in, I decided to pull the lens back a little bit because I realized I didn't want to just talk about crime.

Like I could.

The human race has and this capacity to hurt itself, but I wanted to hear other people's stories as well.

And so I decided, okay, I'm not gonna be true crime anymore.

I'm gonna be just sort of general.

You want to tell me your story?

Cool.

Let's set up a time.

And so I have hosted people from all over the world, for you know, uh sex offenders and priests and parents and podcasters and actors, and you can decide which of those is the scariest.

Like there's there's different approaches.

And I'm not over exaggerating, I think, when I say that podcasting has saved my life because I feel connected again to the world and I feel smart and useful.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.

So I want to know though, where did you even get the idea to start a podcast?

SPEAKER_00: Well, I listened to a lot of them.

Part of it is I listened to a lot of them at night.

I I've had chronic insomnia have for years, and often I would listen to true crime because that's the genre that.

Knew about.

And once in a while they would cover one of the cases that I was involved in.

I was like, oh boy, let me hear how you screw it up.

You know.

And often in true crime, they ask these questions, which I think they think are rhetorical, like, what does not guilty by reason of insanity really mean?

Or how does somebody end up in a psych hospital versus prison?

Or, you know, what is schizophrenia anyway?

And I would be sitting alone on my couch, or, you know, trying to sleep or whatever.

And I would answer out loud to no one several months after they've recorded, because I'm like, ooh, ooh, ask me.

I know, I know.

And oddly, they didn't have a time machine.

And so they didn't hear me.

And I realized, hey, if I want to get this on the air, let's just do it.

Like maybe I'll suck.

Maybe I'll be a terrible podcaster.

Maybe it'll be boring or too much work or too hard.

Because by the way, I'm also deaf.

And so I have to approach podcasting from a very different angle than a lot of people.

And so let's let's give it a shot.

And it turns out I got lucky the first time because my thought was just I'm gonna try hobbies until I find something that works and that clicks.

And I got very lucky in f the first time I I hit.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love it so much.

So you you mentioned the the little piece about being deaf.

Always like that?

Or was that something that happened later in life?

SPEAKER_00: Not always, but not exactly clear when.

So we know that as an infant, at one point I had a very high fever, which can damage hearing.

So until age five, I was regularly tested and my hearing was slightly impacted, but not significantly.

And then they stopped testing because why test if everything's fine?

And then when I was 16, my mother came down.

I I my bedroom was on a different floor than everybody else's.

And I was watching TV.

Family room was adjacent to my bedroom.

And I was actively reaching for the remote to turn up the volume as my mother came down to be like, why are you listening to this so loud?

And it was like, oh.

And that's when that was the first time I'd gotten my hearing tested in, you know, in a decade or more.

And at that time my hearing was about 50% of normal.

The last time I had it tested was maybe 10 years ago because insurance doesn't think adults need to hear.

So it literally like won't support, like maybe it'll pay for one hearing aid, but not both, or things like that.

And I am not a candidate for like cochlear implants or or that kind of thing because of the type of it's called sensory neural hearing loss, which means it's something wrong with my brain, not something wrong with my physical ear.

And so the last time I was tested was maybe a decade ago, just checking, you know.

And I was down to fifty I hear about 20 to 25% of what normal people hear.

So I rely on lip reading.

I sign somewhat, but not not very well because my mother wouldn't allow me to learn sign.

There's a whole community that believes that sign just enables deaf people not to try hard enough.

I have a lot of bad words about that.

SPEAKER_03: But you know, what do you like?

SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna do?

I'm 45 now, like it's it's too late to to hit that, you know, to find that time machine.

But so what it means is that my earbuds are always at 100%.

And even then I'm struggling to hear exactly what the person is saying.

It means that when I edit, I edit visually by looking at the waveforms, and minimally because it's a lot of work and I'm lazy.

And it just means that I'd give myself the grace of saying, like, look, I'm never going to be an audiophile.

I'm never going to create crystal clear, you know, beautifully soundscaped kinds of shows.

Like my show is a conversation because it has to be.

I can't do like a scripted fictional show.

I could not, like, physically could not do that kind of editing.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so back on the par with the podcast, which I mean, let us just say, I mean, you're not only just absolutely freaking awesome, you not only kind of do things unconventional, but the fact that what I love is you having an issue with hearing would choose a medium that is audio.

I think that is absolutely awesome.

And but what I'm wondering is, is you start the podcast and did it evolve over time?

Has it always been called what it is today, or has it been an evolution?

And and just even just the podcasting itself, how has that gone as far as from when you started to where you are today, interviewing people?

And again, I'm thinking of the interviewing, even doing our interview today, of how that must be with having a hearing problem.

SPEAKER_00: It has always been called ignorance was bliss.

Initially, the concept and and and kind of remains, it's just shifted a little bit, was the idea.

I used to have a sign-off line of didn't you feel better before you knew that?

Right.

Because I felt like if I could explain to you, I can explain to you why someone might be a serial killer or why someone might be other kinds of offenders or what schizophrenia is like, but are you sure you really want to know?

Because once you know, you can't unknow it.

I tend to be kind of a pain in the ass.

And so choosing an auditory medium was like, I'm just why not?

You know, and people are gonna tell me I can't do it.

Cool.

Tell me more.

I've had people tell me there's no such thing as a deaf podcaster, and I'm like, aren't you cute?

Yeah, it's hard.

And and like I have to make sure that my house is quiet and empty when I record.

There are things I have to do differently.

But I, like I said, I have evolved the focus of it.

So initially it was very tightly focused on forensic assessment and what that is and what that means.

And my earliest, earliest episodes, which dear God, don't go listen to them, don't do it, because they're so bad.

I was sitting so close to the furnace and I didn't know it.

Ugh, I apologize to the whole world for that.

But they were scripted and narrative style, like more typical true crime style, uh telling a story, but with the spin of what this means psychologically or forensically.

And then maybe six weeks in, something like that, I was talking on Twitter with an ER nurse, and I did a lot of my evaluations in the ER, and she was, I, you know, one of the things about that people shouldn't, I guess it's not like a secret or whatever, it's just something to know is if you go to the ER in a psychological crisis, expect to be there for a while.

And the reasons for it is that we have to rule out all medical and physical causes for your crisis before I'm allowed to speak with you.

And as well, if you have substances on board, you have to be fully sober before I can speak with you.

And so I'm talking to the CER nurse, and I was like, why don't we do, who by the way, has a podcast, why don't we do a collaboration to sort of explain what happens in those three to four hours before you actually sit with the mental health clinician, the psychologist.

And then after that, we did like a mock psychoval so that people could hear, like, this is what it's actually like.

And that was a magical thing for me to realize this was the thing.

This is this is what I bring to the world, is that I am good at talking to people.

And the scripted narrated style, that's all well and good.

But first of all, there's a ton of people who do that really well.

And secondly, it felt like work that I wasn't getting paid for.

And so why would I do that?

But but doing the conversation felt like fun and kept me engaged, and I was in a better mood after recording than I was before recording.

And so I was like, I'm gonna do that.

And so that started the process.

And there was a moment about a year in where I was at a convention for true crime podcasters, and I had a sort of confrontation, I guess, with another podcaster whom I will not name, but she can go straight to hell.

And uh because she stopped me in the middle.

I'm I'm like setting up my table.

We're all like, I don't know if you've ever done a convention, but I can tell you strongly don't.

They're a nightmare.

They're just so overwhelming and so many people, and there's so much to do.

And it's it's like I could barely like drag my my poor brainless body out of the room at the end of the day.

But toward the end of the day, she stops me in the middle of the this ballroom at the at a hotel in front of other people to be like, why are you here?

You don't have a real podcast, a true crime podcast.

You know, what you do isn't really true crime.

And I was like, oh, wow, that's you're kind of an asshole, aren't you?

But but I I gave it some thought and I was like, you know, I don't need to fight this.

I don't need to deal with gatekeeping.

This is not the hill I'm going to die on.

Like, there are hills I'm willing to die on.

This is not it.

And so instead, I was like, all right, well, I'm gonna pull the lens back and I'm gonna talk to other people instead.

I'm still gonna talk to true crime people whenever they want.

My guest, who has been on twice so far and is scheduled to come on again, calls me from his contraband cell phone in a maximum security prison in Mississippi.

Like I and I'm and none of that.

It's one of those sentences where I hear myself say it and I'm like, those are those are words, but it's sure like so.

I still do crimy stuff if that's what my guest wants to do, but I also just get to talk to people from all angles and genres, and and I'm so grateful that that podcaster was an asshole because it meant I had to pivot, I had to change, or I would spend my time angry, and I I I don't much like that.

So ultimately her attitude allowed me to rethink what I do.

So I've kept the name because I still feel like what I do is help people tell their stories and bring it a couple of levels deeper and get rid of a little ignorance.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Yeah.

I love it so much.

Now, you you talked earlier, and I think I've you said that you know the podcast kind of saved your life.

Expand on that for me.

SPEAKER_00: I don't think I would have engaged in self-harm.

I I never, you know, it wasn't a I never reached the point of being suicidal, and I have earlier in my life, and so I know what that's like.

But from 2014 to 2018, it wasn't the kind of darkness of suicide.

It was just this loss of self.

Like I kept feeling like these aspects of me that were important and that I had worked hard for, like my career, like my ability to easily navigate the world.

Because I can still walk, but it hurts now.

So I have to be careful and planful about where I go in the world and what I do.

I lost so many things.

And every time I do, I feel like I lose a part of myself.

I have also, you know, like I said, when I I nearly died in childbirth, and I spent 10 days in a coma.

And so that's created a traumatic brain injury.

Ultimately, I developed epilepsy later, and so more brain injury, more loss of self, more trauma in different ways.

And every time that happened, I was like, I I felt like I was just fading away.

And I had no relevance or competence or importance in the world, other than like I was important to my family.

And so that was that's fundamentally what kept me safe.

But I felt like I'm gonna die and nobody's gonna ever know I existed.

And that's fine, I guess.

Like, what else are you gonna do?

And starting the podcast and starting to touch lives, what a gift.

And my example for that is because my show touches on a lot of adult themes and topics, and I liberally use the F bomb because I'm not very well behaved.

And things like that, I wanted a dis a disclaimer.

And I just wanted the same disclaimer for every episode.

And I asked other podcasters and friends and relatives and whatever, I different voices at the start of everyone.

So I have a very loose script, which effectively is this podcast is not safe for work, small children, or houseplants.

If I talk about a case, I am not talking about you.

Privacy and confidentiality are maintained at all times.

I include this suicide prevention lifeline contact information, because that's a that's a huge priority in my life.

And then I end it with the words, I just I was like, it didn't feel complete, the script as it wasn't.

So I ended it with the words, you matter.

And I don't know why fully in the moment.

It was just that's what felt right.

And when I started sending the script out to other podcasters, I used to say, like, look, you can change up the wording or the style of all of the rest of the disclaimer if you want to, just please end it with you matter.

That's the important part.

And I've since heard from listeners who have said, you know, sometimes I just listen to your podcast until the disclaimer is done some days.

That some days that's the only time I feel like I matter.

I some days that's the only way I get the reminder.

I need to hear it.

And I'm a little slow on the uptake.

So it took me a while to realize, oh, that's really important.

Say that more.

And so I ultimately stopped closing every episode with didn't you feel better before you knew that?

Because maybe you didn't, maybe you do feel better knowing that.

Cool, I don't care.

Like, can't control that, right?

But I started closing every episode with me saying you matter, because if it's important to hear it once, it's important to hear it more than once.

And I've had the feedback of like that, that that's important to them.

And I've built a community.

You know, I have a Discord server and a Facebook group and and and just personal friends and you, you know, that I never would have experienced.

And it's it's it's such a gift, yeah, you know, and and I feel like I have relevance and importance in the world again.

SPEAKER_02: Kate, you are absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_00: I tell people that all the time.

SPEAKER_02: And that's what we love about you because you're amazing and you know it and you share it with the world.

But no, I mean, honestly and truly, you have such a beautiful outlook on life.

You have such this beautiful way of just looking at circumstances, at looking at things.

And oh my goodness, you're amazing.

Where can people find your podcast?

SPEAKER_00: My website is IWB like ignorance was bliss, iWbpodcast.com.

And I am at IWB Podcast on all of the social medias.

I spend way too much time online, so I'm around all the time.

SPEAKER_02: Perfect, perfect.

Well, well, Kate, I just want to thank you for taking the time to be here today to share just this piece of of your life, this pieces of of the puzzle that make up who you are.

As I said, you're an incredible woman, and it's an honor to have you here on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: I I mean, it's a it's a privilege and an honor to be asked.

So I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02: Oh well, thank you so much.

And for you listening today, my hope is that you're left smiling as big as I am right now at this woman who's been through a lot, but she's gained a lot.

And she's now sharing it with the world.

And to me, I look at her story, I look at what she's done and what she's doing and what she will do, and I think to myself, that's what it's all about.

It's about taking what we've gained in this life, taking what we've experienced and sharing it with the world in the hope that it will help someone, maybe you today.

Maybe you were the one who needed to hear her story, to hear her point of view, to make today a little bit better than yesterday.

With that said, I am your host, Kevin Lowe, and this is Grit Grace and Inspiration.

It's time for you to get out there and take on the day.