An Unconventional, Animal Loving Attorney Fighting Against The Status Quo

That's that was the short version of it.

SPEAKER_00: So many people think that my story is inspiring.

How I became blind at just 17 years of age.

Don't want to know how I've done it.

I'm joined in the studio by Catherine Burmeister.

Who, well, she's an unconventional animal-loving lawyer, author, and speaker.

Catherine is focused on advocating for women's self-care and is dedicated to making a difference in the world.

If I could sum Catherine up into one little thing, it would be she's not like what you would think an attorney or a lawyer is supposed to be.

Catherine Burmeister, she started in quite a few law firms before going to school and dabbled in a few more after graduating.

But she would ultimately forgo the route of starting her own large firm and instead start her own smaller practice.

And well, the reason may surprise you.

I'll let Catherine fill you in on what led her down the path that she traveled.

In my interview with Catherine, we discuss all of this and more, like her love for animals and her published book.

Because Catherine is the author of the book Overcoming Addiction to the Status Quo.

And that's all about focusing on the things that make you happy and not falling victim to that horrible comparison trap that we can sometimes fall into.

I hope you enjoyed my interview with Catherine today here on the podcast.

And before that, I do want to encourage you.

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I'm releasing a new episode each and every Wednesday morning.

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SPEAKER_01: Nobody in my family was a lawyer.

I didn't have any, you know, friends whose parents were lawyers.

I just was a really avid reader from a young age.

And so in middle school, some of the books I think we were required to read, which is good, were To Kill a Mockingbird and then Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail is written obviously by MLK, who is not a lawyer.

And it still resonated with me, though, because he speaks about the idea of just and unjust laws and standing up for those morals and principles.

And to me, that's what I think of when I say right and wrong, I think of justice and injustice.

So being able to focus on helping others with that really resonated with me.

So then when I read To Kill a Mockingbird, the idea of being a lawyer and standing up for justice kind of came together.

So from that point on, I was just a very special little little person.

I decided I wanted to be a lawyer in middle school and said, okay, how do I get there?

And I basically backtracked and started exposing myself to, you know, different people, different work environments.

My first legal job was in high school.

I did a joint enrollment and went to college and took college classes and then also worked in a law firm.

So that was my first exposure to a law firm.

And from there, I just worked in different environments: big law, small law, medium-sized law.

And then I ended up applying to go to law school.

And from there, that's what set me on my path towards becoming a full-fledged lawyer.

So I've done everything from being a legal assistant, a little man on the totem pole, to being the lawyer and now running my own practice.

So, but the reason I really got into personal injury law in particular is because my last year in law school, I started working with a personal injury law firm down where I was at school.

And it really resonated with me in terms of standing up for the underdog because you very much have that David and Goliath mentality in personal injury.

You have individuals who have been injured at the fault of somebody else.

And you have the insurance companies who don't give a damn.

At the end of the day, they are there to make money.

Contrary to what other people think, that's all they care about.

They don't care about the fact that you've been with them for 20-some odd years, paying their premiums.

They just are trying to make money.

So being able to stand up for those people has really been rewarding for me.

And that's what literally led me to stay in that practice area.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Well, that's awesome.

So you kind of are defining the stereotype of the lawyer.

You're actually one of the good guys.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

I mean, it's funny.

You know, all the lawyer jokes out there, and nobody wants a lawyer or cares about lawyers until they want and they need one, right?

But, you know, there are there are good ones out there.

And just like any profession, there's there's plenty of people that are even in my own practice area, personal injury, that they don't do a good job and they don't care like I do.

And I'm not saying that's, you know, everyone at all.

It's just there's enough of them to give a bad name.

And there's a reason that certain stereotypes are the way they are, is because it's partially true.

So I really focus on bringing a holistic approach to my practice in terms of helping people and giving them the solution that they need, not necessarily the solution that's best for everybody at like a high-volume law firm.

That's just not me.

I've never wanted to be somebody that scales so big to where I couldn't have that one-on-one relationship with my clients and really focus on what they needed as opposed to, you know, just making a one size fits all.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, definitely, definitely.

I love that.

Now, something that I had had read that I found pretty interesting, that it was only, I think, either your first or second job as as a lawyer that all of a sudden you found yourself with a whole law firm to manage.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

So it was, I guess, let's see, one, two, technically my third job at a law school.

Technically, yeah.

It it was really only two years after I got barred to practice law that I ended up running a law firm on my own.

So I'll back up.

My I ended up getting my dream job really shortly after being licensed, which was very special, unfortunate feeling to me.

I found a practice where the owner had been practicing for 30 years.

He'd done insurance defense and made a lateral move over to the plaintiff's side, which is very typical.

He had a few associates that were close to my age.

So being able to be around that camaraderie, and he really taught us how to practice law well.

He let us learn by actually doing and not just letting, you know, keeping us under his thumb and in the back office doing grunt work.

And so that's really unusual these days, unfortunately.

So he taught us the right way.

Everything is great.

It's a great experience.

I'm learning a lot.

And about a year and a half after I started working there, I get a call, well, a text early in the morning from my senior associate saying, all the attorneys need to be in before staff.

And in my mind, I'm so self-critical and that I thought it was me.

I had done something wrong.

Like literally no basis to support this, just the fact that I was the youngest, I was the least experienced, and you know, I was the only female.

Something I don't know, something I'd done wrong.

So I get there, and it is very much not that situation.

Clearly, something was wrong.

I could tell by all the body language, but not at all what I even could have possibly thought in my wildest dreams.

My senior associate told me that my partner, founding partner, had committed suicide.

He had been stealing from clients for eight years, and he left notes that detailed his actions and why he had done it, and stated that if it was between this avenue or going to prison, he was choosing this.

So, needless to say, this was a huge shock to all of us.

We had no inkling whatsoever.

I mean, I don't think anybody goes in and is like, yeah, I'm gonna work for somebody I think is stealing money, right?

People don't do that typically.

But beyond that, it's not like he was a horrible person who you that might not have surprised you.

He would have given you the shirt off of his back.

And so, and he did teach us the law well and how to practice well.

So it really blindsided all of us to come to terms with what he was saying.

And I almost couldn't believe it for a little while.

Like I thought he was maybe falling on a sword for his girlfriend of a number of years.

And I didn't know.

I just didn't know.

I couldn't reconcile those two, you know, the person I thought I knew and what was this person was telling me through letters.

So trying to process that was very difficult.

And from there, we had to make some tough decisions.

The firm wasn't gonna be able to continue the way it was.

The senior associate had just come on a month before he took his life as partner.

So the firm had merged into a new entity.

And from there, it became very obvious that we were not gonna be able to afford to keep all of us on.

So we, myself, the senior associate now partner who was alive, and one paralegal decided to continue the law firm to the extent that we could.

And we went off, and of course, there was all the fallout from the actual stealing, even though that was technically under the old entity, it still obviously had to be dealt with in some capacity.

So the fallout from that, running a practice with active cases, we had 70 some odd cases still, you know, active and moving along.

And we had two attorneys and a paralegal.

And it became very clear that my partner, now partner, was not going to be present mentally or physically for this journey.

We, I don't, you know, I'm not criticizing him in that regard.

We all had a lot that we were dealing with, a lot of emotional trauma that we were having to process.

But like I just said, we all had that, right?

We all were trying to get through this together.

And so it was very frustrating and um disappointing to have somebody who I thought was gonna be a partner leader in this really not show up.

And so as a result, I ended up basically running the practice for a year.

And I remember I was finally on vacation, halfway around the world, actually, in Portugal, and I get a call from my paralegal.

And I said, Why are you calling me?

I appreciate you, but why are you calling me?

And I'm literally on a horse in, you know, in these fields and pastures in Portugal.

I'm like, surely she would not be calling me unless this was emergency.

And so she said, It is.

I need, you know, permission to spend you know emergency money basically on making sure we didn't malpractice.

That's that was the short version of it.

Yes, of course, go do it.

And I said, Why didn't you call our partner?

She said, I couldn't get a hold of him.

Now he knew I wasn't gonna be, you know, in the country.

He knew we had a deadline coming up.

Like it this should not have been something I was dealing with.

And so I get back in the country, and I'll be damned if he wasn't at a silent retreat in middle Georgia.

Just again, completely not there.

SPEAKER_02: Yep.

SPEAKER_01: And I remember in the middle of the day just not even being able to think another thought.

You know, normally, at least when I'm in stress, my my mind will be, you know, cycling over and over the things that ruminating over the things I can't change.

I just couldn't even process a single thing.

All I knew was that I I needed to get home.

I was not in a good place, and I need to call my husband.

And so I did.

I called him at work and had him meet me at home.

So I should also mention that I've dealt with anxiety and depression since probably high school to varying degrees.

And depression, well, both of them run in my family.

So I have actively been in therapy for a number of years, off and on.

And luckily, I was in therapy before my partner took his life, because obviously that was very traumatic and hard to process.

But it's the best thing that I think anybody can do for themselves, whether you have a formal diagnosis or not, it's a great way of using a third party as a sounding board and really focusing on self-improvement.

So even though I was in therapy, even though I um had been on a small, a low dosage of medication, because that's what I found for myself that worked really well, was that combination.

It didn't, it doesn't make everything go away, right?

It doesn't make everything perfect, it turns out.

So everything just finally had come crashing down for me.

And I hit what I call my rock bottom of being addicted to the status quo.

And I want to be clear when I say addiction, I don't use it flippantly.

I genuinely believe that this is something, the status quo, is something that dictates so many of our lives, and we do things for our own detriment and the detriment of others to live up to the status quo, whatever that is for each individual, because it is different.

So I got my husband to come home and I was basically having suicidal ideations.

And he was able to come home and be with me, and thankfully I was able to move past that.

But the next day, it was almost as if a switch had been flipped.

I it's one thing to know something that you need to do for yourself that's for your, you know, for your for the good of you as a whole, right?

But actually setting his boundaries and taking action on it is so much more difficult, even if it's gonna be a better thing in the long run.

So when the next day after that point, it became very easy for me to say, I'm not doing this anymore.

I am absolutely not gonna put myself through it.

I don't care what other people think.

I've done more than enough.

And I had spent literally my entire life up until that point not believing that I was enough.

And it didn't happen till later when I wrote my book that I realized that's what had actually shifted so drastically was for me was that I had proven to myself that I was enough.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

That's just yeah, no, but that's a lot.

Yeah.

That's so insane.

Wow.

I kind of wonder, skipping ahead in life, have you have you switched to the mindset no longer have partners in work?

unknown: Yes, I can't.

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: Turns out I had some trust issues after that when it came to professional relationships.

Yeah, no, it's it's incredibly true.

I I've you know thought along the way, like, okay, maybe I'd go back to working for somebody, you know, just thinking about different options.

And I was like, I just don't think I can do that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was gonna say, just me, me and me and my my way of thinking, I'm thinking, wow, I really hope she did not go into another business venture with another partner because it's it's the odds are not looking good.

Nope, nope.

Oh my gosh, but wow, so so that's just so that's incredible.

So at that moment when when that shift happened within you, kind of where did life go from there?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it really became a process of me finalizing for myself that I had I had done enough, right?

I wanted to draw a hard line in the sand and say, look to my partner, say, here I am, this is what I'm willing to do.

I've obviously been doing this for a year.

If you're not willing to do it, then we need to do our own thing.

And getting that straight answer out of him was incredibly difficult.

And for anybody on the outside looking in, they'd be like, of course, you need to walk away.

But I had felt like I'd put so much effort into it and into my paralegal and really making it work that it was hard.

It's hard to walk away from something like that generally, let alone when you've gone through, you know, a very traumatic event that surrounded the entire experience and environment that you were working in.

So I ended up deciding that I was gonna start my own practice.

Mind you, I have never wanted my own business.

I've never wanted my own law practice.

And all of a sudden, I had both.

So yeah, because I basically looked at my options.

And my options were I go get another job working for somebody.

And basically, like we just touched on, I could not see me trusting anyone enough to do as good of a job as I would want and be happy at the end of the day.

And being happy is such a crucial part of who I am.

And it comes with, you know, passion and being passionate about what you're doing.

If I can't trust somebody, how am I gonna be passionate about working for them?

So I decided to take half of the cases and my partner and I ended things amicably, and I took half the cases and started my own law firm.

And from there, I just I've been remote since before.

It was cool to be remote.

So that was very fortuitous when it came to COVID popping up last year.

But it's been great.

It really has.

I've loved every minute of it.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's awesome.

I started saying, look at you, you little trendsetter.

You're you're but no, so that's awesome.

Now, now I I would love to know though, talking about law and stuff, what what has really because I mean it it's it's not as as as we've just heard from you know one aspect of of your career, it's not easy.

And and I wonder what though draws you to it?

Does it go back to that passion of of standing up for the little guy, the helping is it, or is it the is it just the thrill of being in the courtroom and standing up?

You know, what what is it that draws you to it and has kept you there?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I it still is the passion for helping the underdog.

It really is.

And I'll be honest, that's become more challenging, I would say, within probably the past five months, because more and more often I either it's been an adversarial type of situation right since I started.

That's law.

You know, somebody's on one side, somebody's on the other, somebody's gonna win, somebody's gonna lose for all intents and purposes.

So it's not like I didn't know what I was getting into.

That being said, over the past five months, it's really kind of come to a head in terms of clients being dissatisfied no matter what the outcome is, opposing counsel being basically just flat out obstructive, not just adversarial like we would normally be, you know, because that's the way it is, just obscenely difficult in trying to get things resolved, which means I can't do my job.

I can't control half the things that are happening in a case.

Like all I can control is what I'm doing to my client for the most part.

So to have those situations arise more and more often, I've just become increasingly dissatisfied with the actual practice.

I love being a lawyer.

I love doing the research and the motion practice, but the just the nature of the beast is what it is.

And I don't see myself doing this 100% going forward in the future, frankly.

I'm I've looked at pulling back some of my practice, being very, very specific about the cases I take and still being able to represent those handful of people that, you know, genuinely, you know, need it and are the underdog.

And I will say all my cases have people that have been hurt at the fault of somebody else.

It's not like I tell them wink, wink, nod, nod, you know, put a brace on your neck.

That's not it at all.

But But there are certain cases where it just becomes cost prohibitive at the end of the day, quite frankly.

And it's I still have a business I have to run as much as I want to help people.

And especially if I put myself out there and I'm taking risks and because I do, I front all the money in cases.

And there's no guarantee that I get paid back.

And I don't get paid back for 18, 24 months at a time.

So it's really difficult from a business standpoint, that business model.

And then to have clients at the very end when you've cut your fees and your costs to make sure that they have money in their pockets, that's what I believe should happen at the end of a case, be asking why didn't they get more money?

That gets a little frustrating after a while.

And it's not everybody, but it definitely has shifted my perspective on how I'm going to move forward in terms of running this business and this business model as a whole to the point where I'm starting to pull back on it.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

Now I'm curious, what do you feel the shift has been in the country and in where you live where in the past five months that you referenced?

Why do you feel that is?

SPEAKER_01: I don't know.

No, no, I think it's an overarching sense of entitlement.

I think is part of the problem with people is they go into a case, and no matter how much I try to explain and you know add caveats to things, they still feel personally entitled to more than they're getting.

And sometimes they are, other times they're not.

You know, it's just it's this the way things happen.

Life's not fair.

I hate to, I don't sell my clients that directly, but you know, it is.

It is.

That's the way it is.

Life is not fair.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I literally am cracking up because I literally just had this exact same conversation with someone literally like two days ago.

And talking about, and I'm like, why is it that people feel in like all different aspects of life?

But is this as if like they never have to have any consequences.

Oh my god.

You know, uh like, you know, why why is it because in in in my other life I own a travel agency and people who who decide to cancel a vacation it's their decision or they decide not to do something, you know, that the supplier is offering.

And yet they feel like everything like the supply they should just bow down to them, give them all their money back.

There should be no problem, you know, and I'm just like, where do you get this mentality?

Like you're not the only person in the world.

SPEAKER_01: I don't know.

I don't know if it's always been this bad or I mean, I mean, I have a theory.

I think I'm right at the end of the generation before everybody became a winner, right?

If you eat everybody got participation trophy, I was just at the beginning of that stage.

And so I didn't have it as much, but I think that's been a huge part of cultural shifts and telling everybody, you know, all these kids that they're winners, because then they don't know how to cope and experience adversity in a healthy way, right?

So if they're told they're a winner, anything less than that is going to be a failure in their mind.

And that's what I suffered from from a long time.

But I think that was more accommodation to my personality than just being told I was a winner the entire time.

But I think that set things in motion.

I think politics, quite frankly, have influenced things over the past year and a half or so.

I think COVID and being told to stay in and away from people, it's like anything else.

If you're told not to do something, what's the first thing you want to do?

What you've been told not to do.

So I just think there's this idea that I'm not gonna be told what I don't want to be told, or that I can't have something or can't do something.

And I think that's permeing over into a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

I totally get it.

Totally get it.

So so shifting gears, we we started talking about it a little bit earlier, and I would love to know how how this woman, this lawyer, she's got all this stuff going in her life, decides, you know what, I it's not enough.

I need to write a book.

How does that happen?

SPEAKER_01: So I again, like a lot of things, never intended it for it to happen.

I've been introduced to a ghostwriter, and I was introduced to her when I was still working for my associate that I ended up breaking away from.

And, you know, somebody had said, like this this whole situation.

I mean, it could have been a Jerry Springer meets John Grisham book if I'd really wanted it to.

If it was that dramatic from day to day, it could have easily been that.

So we talked to her, and it just wasn't the right time.

One, financially speaking, to invest in that.

Two, it was still too fresh.

It was just very, very raw because we were living through it.

And I didn't recognize that at the time, but thankfully it worked out that way.

So after I was on my own, I had a friend ask me, she said, Oh, have you ever talked to that ghostwriter again?

I was like, no, I just who's gonna want to read a story about what I went through.

And that's just kind of how I am.

And she said, I really think you should talk to her.

I was like, I'll think about it.

And sure enough, not a week later, the ghostwriter reached out to me and said, I saw you have your own practice now.

I'm so excited to catch up with you and just see what's been going on.

And so I ended up talking to her and explaining the situation and how I had my own firm and just revisited the idea.

And I really wanted it to be a situation where people learned from what I experienced.

I didn't want it to just be about my partner taking his life and the drama that came out of that.

Because to me, it it could have been entertaining, but I didn't want to just be entertaining.

I want something good to come out of it.

So we worked really hard.

And that's how I got it done, honestly, was working with a ghostwriter.

So otherwise I would have never been able to have the time to put it all together.

And even though she talked to me, interviewed me, interviewed other people for my book, and put it all into one document, I still went back and heavily edited it.

Not because of her, you know, inability to write.

That wasn't it at all.

It's just, it wasn't entirely my voice, which I don't think you could possibly do 100%, right?

If you're working with a ghostwriter, because they're not you.

But I really went through and added my voice back in.

And I felt like it really captured not only what I think the trends are in life in terms of being addicted to the status quo, what I experienced, what ultimately pushed me to hit my rock bottom, but also what can come from that.

And the fact that you don't have to hit your rock bottom to start living a better life, a better life for yourself, for the long term, for your family, and really just taking control.

I think we live in this fallacy that we are beholden to somebody else or something else.

And ultimately it leads to just long-term unhappiness, whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.

Now, before before I ask you some questions about your book, for those who may not be familiar with the term ghostwriter, what exactly is that?

SPEAKER_01: Sure.

So a ghostwriter works with you.

They it can be in different capacities, but for me, it was working with an author who she would interview me, consolidate my ideas, reach out to other people that I talk about and were willing to obviously talk and interview them and then compile all my thoughts into a book that obviously had a theme and you know, beginning, middle, and end.

So that's what she did for me.

And it can be as simple as literally you take what they wrote and publish it, or like I said, in my case, I went through and edited it a lot because I write for a living.

So that's the majority of what I do as a lawyer, quite frankly.

And so that's what I did for my my uh my situation.

And then I go and publish it on my own or get picked up by a publishing house, which is extremely, extremely difficult.

So I self-published.

SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.

Well, that's that's cool.

And and you know, and I I think that's such an awesome idea because you got it done.

Because, like you said, to to to go at it alone is is so much more difficult than to to to be working with a team, you know, working with a person.

Absolutely.

So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01: And it's an investment.

It you know, it costs money, quite frankly, like anything.

Yep.

But it never would have gotten done, I don't think.

And also, I think it it came out differently just by the nature of the general structure.

But I think that's still good because it brings in things that my I might not have otherwise thought of from my lens.

And I will say the timing was crucial.

Like I said before, when I first talked her, I was still in the thick of it.

So it was way, way too soon because it was still happening.

But it was far enough after when I started writing that, you know, I could process things a little bit better, but it wasn't so far after everything had happened that I'd forgotten.

And so what ultimately happened, aside from COVID, you know, being COVID and stopping things, I had a really big hang up.

I was having a mental block.

And it wasn't that I couldn't figure out what to put down paper.

It was just going back to that place.

I didn't realize how much going back and editing it was going to take me back to that place and that time in my life where I was just so distraught.

And so that's what was happening.

That's why I had a mental block getting anything done on it, was because it was, you know, trauma being relived for a little bit.

But I really wanted to go there and give an authentic version of what happened.

So once I recognized it for what it was, I was able to kind of process it a little bit better and then uh get the rest of it banged out.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Well, that's awesome.

Well, I'm I'm so glad you you you did it and you got it done, and it can be out there to to help, you know, other people.

And that's that's the point.

So I love it.

Absolutely.

Thanks.

So now I'm curious to you know, to the to the subject matter of the book.

You know, somebody if if they're they're hearing about this and they're kind of curious I mean, how does somebody know if they themselves are addicted to the status quo?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I so I obviously don't have any hard numbers.

This is uh my theory in this regard, but I would say the vast majority of people are living addicted to the status quo.

And it's I define it as living your life based on internal and external expectations.

So if you feel like you should be a certain mother, you should be a certain life partner.

If other people think you're not successful enough as uh fill in the blank, and you're living your life and making decisions based on those expectations, you're living addicted to the status quo.

So it's quite startling, I think, to think that how many people do that, right?

I mean, most people have changed what they do in their life to live up to, you know, whether it's family expectations, employers, you know, spouses, children, even random people.

We don't like to go against the grain.

And I'm not saying to not be addicted to the status quo, you have to go the complete opposite way.

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm just saying making life decisions, regardless of what they are, based on your fulfillment, not the fulfillment of others or what you think uh, you know, you should be doing at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, definitely.

So, so basically trying to encourage people to to dive in deep into themselves and determine what is it that makes them happy, makes them joy and who, who they are, you know, not not just you know what our outside forces are, you know.

Somebody asks you, you know, you know, oh, who are you?

I think most of us immediately we go to, oh, like we are such and such profession.

SPEAKER_01: Yep.

SPEAKER_00: And, you know, and all that, and it's trying to get people to go a little bit deeper than that.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

So what I do when I am coaching or advising people, I sit down and do a mission, vision, and values with them.

So people do that for companies all the time.

And it's hugely beneficial to do that.

First of all, you can't just do it and not follow it, whether you're a business or an individual, it's just as pointless.

But I do it for individuals too, because if you've been living a life a certain way for so long, how can you possibly expect yourself to just do a 180 and start knowing where the boundaries are, how you should be making decisions, what your values are.

You just don't know.

So by really being methodical about it and saying, okay, here are my three to five core values, and here's my mission, and you know, here's my vision for what I want to be as an individual.

You have parameters and you kind of understand where your boundaries are.

So from that point on, you're gonna be making decisions, same decisions probably that you've made before or different ones, and you know what they need to fall in line with.

And so it makes it very easy to start following a certain path if you have the guidelines, right, which are those mission, vision, and values, and then you realize that you want to be on a new path ultimately altogether.

So it helps people methodically implement a new life and a life, hopefully, towards living a happy life, which I is different for everybody, but it's living the best version of yourself.

That's how I define happiness is living the best version of yourself at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's awesome.

That's awesome.

And that's actually something that I was going to ask you about, talking about happiness, is that I had read somewhere that you said something that you're the most proud of is finding happiness at such a young age.

SPEAKER_01: Yep.

I really am.

I I feel like I've seen so I've seen so many people be unhappy for so long, or I've even read stories about, I think it's a couple articles about hospice nurses and what they've learned from people when they finally pass.

So it's not necessarily an old age, but people wish they would have lived a happier life or wish they'd spent more time with family or more time doing what they enjoyed.

And this is not to say that everything's gonna be rainbows and kittens, right?

That's that's not what it is.

I wish it was, but it's not.

But it does mean that you can live a life that is full of happiness and allows you to encounter adversity in a healthy way.

And when I say encountering adversity in a healthy way, I mean being able to have a challenge arise and you process it.

If it doesn't work out, fine.

If it does work out, great, but you learn from it.

And it's not something that debilitates you at the end of the day.

And to think back, realizing how unhappy I was for so long, that's why I'm so proud of being where I am.

Because I first of all thought as a recovering box checker, very A-type personality individual, if I just checked off all these boxes, I'd be happy.

And so when I got to my dream job and had checked off all my boxes about, you know, getting to law school, becoming a lawyer, having my dream job, and I wasn't happy, it really threw me for a loop and kind of sent me into this existential crisis about what now.

And this was even before you know my partner took his life.

So I was working on that, and then that happened.

So, you know, a bunch of really crucial things all at once in my life, but it made me realize that I wasn't truly happy.

And I really had to look at what was my definition of happy and what did it mean for me at the end of the day.

And it just so happened that everything happened back to back to back and forced me to come to terms with what was not working in my life.

And that ultimately led me to realize that happiness for me is being the most authentic version of myself.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Well, all I can say is this for the girl growing up who developed this depression and anxiety, to the woman who still deals with it today, to a woman who who's been through a lot, thrown into a lot with in such a you know, career in such a insane capacity with the different uh experiences you had.

I can say that you your outlook on life, your personality is uh just absolutely just mesmerizing just such a beautiful, just like breath of fresh air.

And I definitely feel like it's something that that I'm sitting here thinking, like anybody could benefit from listening to you talk about all of this because I do.

I just I I absolutely love your your whole mindset.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.

Yeah, and that's what I really became open to.

I'm I have a business coach who's been with me since I started my my law practice, and she was very encouraging about writing the book.

And since I started shifting and talking about it more, she really has pushed me to be open to what this brings me.

And so it happened that coaching and speaking and writing became an option.

And I've had to challenge my own preconceived ideas, obviously.

Just because I can speak about this and I live a life where I'm happy doesn't mean that it's not an ongoing process.

I think that's the biggest misconception.

People think once you're happy, you're happy.

SPEAKER_02: That's not the case.

SPEAKER_01: You do have to work at it, and it is a process, but it's so incredibly rewarding and it gets easier over time.

So when I encounter new things, I am not knocked over by them.

I'm not uh disappointing myself for changing my perspective.

It's it only benefits me to be open to new ideas.

And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but it allows me to investigate something that I might not otherwise ever have done.

So I think you're right, so many people can benefit from that.

And it's so incredibly sad to me to think that somebody would go on a path that is miserable all because they feel like they have to or they should.

And I know what that feels like.

I know what living your life, feeling like you should be a certain way or you're not enough because you're not doing enough does to you.

And so if I can help other people, that's what I want to do.

And I think, you know, even when I said I didn't think people would want to read my book, I think where that came from, and this really came to me during my first interview ever about my book, was I feel like I I know I have.

I've come from a very privileged background.

I I grew up in an upper middle class family, only child.

My parents, you know, were only married, been married for two years longer than I've been alive, still together.

So I thought my mind, because I hadn't encountered serious adversity, at least in my definition of my mind, right?

You know, impoverishment, hunger, abuse, things like that, that it wouldn't be, I won't say it wouldn't be a valid story, but it would almost minimize or trivialize other people's suffering in some capacity.

And I realized, one, it's not a competition for who has the worst life.

That's not the case, right?

But two, it it doesn't matter where your trauma comes from or how bad it seemingly is to people on the outside.

My feelings are valid just as much as you know, other people's feelings are valid.

And there's plenty of people that live perfectly, you know, normal, whatever that means anymore, right?

Normal lives and still have these feelings.

And then especially with the stress in our world, anxiety and depression, we all have stress, uh, regardless of you know who you are, what you do.

You you always will have stress.

So at a minimum, you have to formulate, you know, processing your life around that.

And that's the reality, no matter how much worse it may be beyond that.

So that's why I really decided that people could still resonate with what I'm saying.

And it still could help people, whether or not I have the same traumas they do.

SPEAKER_00: Well, I totally love it.

I oh my goodness, I love just your your giving spirit.

Your story is all about just giving back and helping people.

And and and it sounds like your story is going to continue with that.

And I love it.

Now, where can somebody find your book?

Find out more about you, where can they go?

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

So the best place to go is my Linktree account.

Uh, that'll take you to my law firm website, my personal brand website.

It's Link Tree, and it's K as in Koala, F as in Frank Burmeister, and I'm sure you'll have that spelled out because it's an unusual spelling.

That's the best place to go.

You can link to Amazon to buy my book there, connect with me on Instagram, Facebook.

Those are the places I'm most active.

And I'd love to hear from from people, even just a message just saying if you appreciate it or not.

I love to hear that people get good good vibes from it.

And I'll even put out an offer to your listeners that the first person who contacts me after this goes live, I'm happy to send a copy of my book to them free of charge just to just get them started.

SPEAKER_00: Woo! A little competition on the podcast.

I love it.

Well, awesome.

Well, well, Catherine, I want to thank you so much for coming on my podcast today.

I'm so excited for for people to get to hear your story, for people to even get to dive deeper with your book.

I think I think just the premise behind your book is so powerful, so needed in today's life.

And uh, you know, you just you have a gift to give, and I'm glad that I can be here to help spread the word.

SPEAKER_01: So thank you, Kevin.

I appreciate your time, and thank you to all your listeners for listening to my story.

SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed another episode for the podcast even more.

Out of today's conversation, out of today, in fact, your life making tomorrow a little bit better than today.

I hope today's episode inspired me.