“It's not going to make you happy unless you let it make you happy.” - Karena Kilcoyne
Is there something you’ve been wanting to do but can’t seem to get there? In this episode, Shirley and Karena Kilcoyne join together to discuss how to thrive by breaking out of your repressed/suppressed emotions. Karena talks about how these type of emotions will take a toll, sooner or later. They also discuss how to really heal from emotional wounds, turn routines into rituals, lessons on gratitude, practicing happiness, how to live with no regrets, and more! You’re in charge of your own happiness. So if you’re ready to take on a life with no regrets and begin to thrive, press play and join in this heart-warming conversation!
Highlights:
02:10 Suppressed Emotions
09:23 Techniques To Healing
16:26 Speak It Out
19:42 Surviving? Or Thriving?
26:07 Rituals Over Routines
33:59 No Regrets
Tweets:
Are you surviving or thriving? Tune in as @SfbaldwinOwens and @karousing discuss how you can create your own happiness today! #getwhatyouwant#suppressedemotions#grief#survivethrive#awareness#ritualsroutines#happiness#gratitude
Quotes:
02:48 “I'm responsible for my own happiness.” - Karena Kilcoyne
08: 57 “Seeking something they want is a journey.” - Karena Kilcoyne
11:29 “People call it the past, but it's not their past until they get rid of it.” -Shirley Owens
14:41 “There's a power in speaking your story and your shame...it unlocks that box and it lets the energy flow.” - Karena Kilcoyne
24:33 “Trying to find those silver linings and those happy moments...is a practice.” - Karena Kilcoyne
25:11 “It's not going to make you happy unless you let it make you happy.” - Karena Kilcoyne
28:42 “You're creating whether you think you're creating or not. So by not creating, you're creating. When we just allow our days to just keep happening that's when you get stuck in this just mundane existence of life. .” - Shirley Owens
34:48 “Everything may not happen for the best, but somehow it shifts you; pivots you.” - Karena Kilcoyne
35:02 “Things are going to evolve and fold out in front of you at the time they're meant to when you have the wisdom to do with them what you should or meant to do.” -Karena Kilcoyne
Connect With Karena:
Karena is a Midwesterner who packed her bags, kept her values, and moved to where the sun shines. Growing up, she dreamed of being a prolific writer, instead, she graduated from the Case Western Reserve School of Law. For years, she worked as a criminal defense attorney, focusing on white-collar crimes. She also worked as an in-house counsel for a $6-billion publicly traded company. She is currently writing her memoir, Chasing Birds: A Journey of Resilience, Grief, and Love, an honest inspirational account of the turbulent and abusive childhood that had plagued her for decades even through her professional and personal success. Now, on the other side of healing, she has left the law and is guiding others through the flood of emotions holding them back from embracing a full life. Her blog, KAROUSING, is a place where she shares musings from her smart, sexy, spiritual exploration of life. There, she offers a deep dive into self-betterment techniques, innovative wellness trends, vetted travel recommendations, and more. Healed and happy, Karena has learned to have fun.
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Transcriptions
Shirley Owens: My guest today is Karena Kilcoyne. Karena is a Midwesterner who packed her bags, kept her values, and moved to where the sun shines. Growing up, she dreamed of being a prolific writer. Instead, she graduated from Case Western Reserve School of Law. For years, she worked as a criminal defense attorney, focusing on white-collar crimes. She also worked as an in house counsel for a $6 billion publicly traded company. She is currently writing her memoir, “Chasing Birds: A Journey of Resilience, Grief, and Love” and an honest inspirational account of the turbulent and abusive childhood that had plagued her for decades even through her professional and personal success. Now, on the other side of healing, she has left the law and is guiding others through the flood of emotions holding them back from embracing a full life. Her blog, KAROUSING, is a place where she shares musings from her smart, sexy, spiritual exploration of life. There, she offers a deep dive into self-betterment techniques, innovative wellness trends, vetted travel recommendations, and more. Healed and happy, Karena has learned to have fun.
Welcome Karena.
Karena Kilcoyne: Oh, thanks Shirley. I'm so happy to be here. I love your show.
Shirley Owens: Thank you, I'm so excited to have you. I love your background and your love for color, it's just beautiful. I'm so excited to talk today. I know that you've been through a lot and you are well educated, and now you've stepped out of that. I just want you to tell me a little bit about that journey from where you were to where you are right now.
Karena Kilcoyne: I'd love to. So as you said, right now, I do have a lifestyle blog, Karousing.com, and I've always wanted to be a writer. And so I did start that journey a few years ago, but it took me a long time to get there. I know that you talk about, and you love to talk about how to get what you want. And the truth was that for so many years, I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know how to get there, and I didn't know how to make it happen. I didn't trust myself enough. A lot of that stems from my journey, which began like for many of us with wounds that I suffered as a child. And I had a very tumultuous childhood. My parents had a very passionate and violent relationship between the two of them, and there's a lot of abandonment going on with regard to the children. I was the oldest, I had three younger siblings. By the time I was 12, my father was no longer in the picture. Now, having gone through a lot of therapy myself and done a lot of learning and reading, I would say that my mother probably had some sort of an undiagnosed mental condition, some kind of bipolar or at a minimum, probably a severe case of depression. So as the oldest, at 12 years old, I was taking care of her and my three siblings for weeks. At a time when she couldn't get out of bed, I would grocery shop, cook, things like that. And we came from, I came from a lot of scarcity. There's a lot of poverty. We didn't have much after my father left. So I think that with a lot of that scarcity and that abandonment, it set me up with a psychological, emotional complexity that I didn't always quite know how to deal with. So I lived years kind of in this scarcity mode of always feeling like I was trying to survive, just to survive.
Shirley Owens: I understand that mode, for sure.
Karena Kilcoyne: So I was coming from a lot of that, and my mother and I never had a great relationship because I was filled with so much resentment for having to do what I did for her and my siblings. When I was in my early 20's, she was diagnosed with cancer and I was the only one left to take care of her. So while I was in law school, I was commuting back and forth to law school and I was taking care of her. She died tragically when she was only 44 and I was 24. And that right there set me up for something too, I'm sure listeners out there who have had the experience of having had a parent who dies at a young age, there's always something psychologically about you thinking, am I going to get there? And I'm going to make it past that age? That was always weighing on me. But when she died, she was again, 44, I was 24. I adopted my nine year old brother and I raised him.
Shirley Owens: Oh, wow.
Karena Kilcoyne: Yes. And it added a lot to my plate, of course. Professionally, I finished law school. I decided to go practice law instead of writing, I felt like I had to do that to provide. Through that process though, of taking care of my brother for all those years and practicing law, I was still in that mode of feeling like I was coming from lack and scarcity, I couldn't quite wrap my head around or my heart around how to come from a place where I felt full, and happy, and full of gratitude because I was really full of this suppressed emotions, shame, and anger and resentment for everything I had to have done for my mother. So I think that for me, it didn't really come full circle and I really didn't truly feel my emotional transparency and start my healing journey until a handful of years ago, actually. So regardless of my professional success or the fact that I was married, there was still something missing for me. It was still missing this grasp on this real sense of who I was, and what I really wanted in the world, and how I was going to be happy. And it all came a handful of years ago when my dear dog, Finn, was only seven and he was diagnosed with cancer. And I did understand at the time that Finn had become my emotional support dog. I didn't get him for that reason, I didn't train him to do that, but in all the moments when I felt panicked, I couldn't breathe, or I didn't understand what's happening, I was having this storm of emotional, energetic shifts happening in me, he would console me, lay on top of me. It was just amazing what he did for me. I'm really looking back on it. He provided me with two powerful things, and that was the sense of happiness and playfulness, kind of like a sense of being a child again, which I never really had been, and unconditional love which I had never really experienced. So when he got so sick, I was devastated. I didn't know what I was going to do. I did everything I possibly could to save his life, but what was remarkable about it? And I just still got a chill at my arm talking about it. He was so sick and dying.
20 years almost to that last months of my mom's life, and going through what I was going through with him and reliving, he got a couple rounds of chemo and reliving some things with him, all these memories and emotions flooded back, stuff I hadn't dealt with or processed fully grief that I hadn't even let myself feel. And I almost feel like that was the wisdom and his beautiful soul was that he knew if he left me, which he did two months after he was diagnosed, that I couldn't control my grief, but I couldn't hold it in. And I did. I grieved for him, I grieved for my mom, from my childhood, and it just opened up this path for me that I knew that I had to go down it. I had to finally go down this path and be honest and heal myself with whatever that took. And it did take multiple, several modalities as we all go through to figure out what works for us. But that's really what led me to this sense of power and love for myself that I felt secure enough that I could go and do what I really wanted, which was writing. And finally putting down my story in a memoir, but it took a long time. And I think that that's an important lesson for everybody out there seeking something they want is it really is a journey.
“Seeking something they want is a journey.”- Karena Kilcoyne
Shirley Owens: Oh, for sure. I mean, I feel and I'm sure you feel like this too, I've come so far, but there's still so much more to learn and so much to go through. It's just like learning how to deal with it better as you go along, or learning how to process things because it sounds, for like 20 years, you just stuffed it all down because you didn't really want to feel it.
Karena Kilcoyne: Yes. There is a lot of that. And I actually, years ago before this ultimate healing journey began for me, I did go see a therapist. I was having some panic, and some anxiety, and I couldn't sleep at night. It was affecting my work, and I was going to work. And I went to her and I said: "I just need you to help me sleep." And she says: "Well, what's happening?" And I told her, and she said: "What it really sounds like to me is you're an emotional stuffer." I said: "What does that mean?" And she says: "It's nothing to be ashamed of. A lot of people, what they do is instead of dealing with the feeling, because they feel like, Oh, they can't right then, or they're in a survival mode, they push the feeling down and they think, Oh, it'll go away. I don't want to deal with it. I'll put it locked away in a little box. And then you continue on with your life thinking, Oh, I'm going to be great at this, and it'd be a success. And a lot of people turn to perfectionists, or they drink, or they do drugs. I mean, there's all these outlets for the pain that you have. Stuffing the emotion is an energy and it never goes away until you deal with it, until you process it."
Shirley Owens: I write about this in my book, if you can imagine a clock and the hands are 12, 6, 3, and 9. And six is where we stuff everything, right? If 12 is like enlightenment, 6 is where we just shove everything down. And like you said, on one side, you have perfectionism. That would be like at 3:00 o'clock and then. At 9:00 o'clock you have drugs, alcohol, and vices. And both of those people in those situations don't like each other. The perfectionists don't like the drug addicts, and the drug addicts don't like the perfectionists, but all of that really is managing. They're both managers, they're just doing it differently. So they're just managing so that stuff never comes back, but it's always there. And if we take whatever issue that we're in right now and put it in the past, it always shows up in the future. We shove it down, it's always going to show up in the future. And I think that people call it the past, but it's not their past until they get rid of it. It goes once you can get rid of it. So tell me about some of the techniques that you use, and you probably write about this in your book, how do you bring that up and deal with it? What would be something, if someone was to come to you and just be like Karena, I'm feeling you, I listened to this podcast, I heard what you were saying. I'm there, but I don't know how to get out of that. What would you suggest they start with?
“People call it the past, but it's not their past until they get rid of it.” -Shirley Owens
Karena Kilcoyne: I would say two really powerful things for me that got me all the gate to begin the process. The first one I'd say is coming from this place of gratitude. So I felt like for so long that for me, at least, when I was stuffing all those emotions down, it would bring up in me a lot of anger, resentment, everything seemed like a big deal. Like a lot of huffing and puffing over doing this, you're doing that. There wasn't this real sense of joy because there was so much repressed energy, because every emotion has energy to it. So I would say that, for me, a huge one was really having a good gratitude practice. So even when things really felt really bad for me and on the days that I would try to bring it out, I would really sit with that and try to find things I was thankful for in my present situation. So trying to find a silver lining in the day that I was in, being present and finding that gratitude in something. I also think that it's crucial that you're honest about the emotion and not so hard. And I think a lot of it is too, for me, at least I shielded the real emotion with anger. So sitting with it and really being honest about what the emotion below the surface is. And for me, being a writer, I think it works for a lot of people, it's journaling it.
Shirley Owens: Yeah.
Karena Kilcoyne: Journaling it out, that really helped me get to a certain point of comfort before I could get to a point where I could speak it. I feel like there was a lot of my story that, I swear to you, until I started writing my book and finally had the courage to be that emotionally transparent with my own husband, and come down after a day of writing and say: "I have to share this with you." And the words coming out of my mouth magically made that shame in what felt dirty, no longer feel dirty.
Shirley Owens: Yes. That definitely happens.
Karena Kilcoyne: Yeah. There's a power in speaking your story and your shame, it does a couple things, it unlocks that box and it lets the energy flow. And for me, it almost made me an observer of my own life. And you realize when that happens, when you can step back and become the observer, how much compassion you can find for yourself for that little you who did that for the 16 year old who lived through that, for the 30 year old who, whatever. There's just this compassion that flows out. And I started to realize, it may not have all been the way I wanted it, but I did the best I possibly could with what I had.
“There's a power in speaking your story and your shame...it unlocks that box and it lets the energy flow.”- Karena Kilcoyne
Shirley Owens: So we talk about stories, and our perspectives and that type of thing. And I think when a story is stuck inside you, it grows. We attach feelings, and emotions, and trauma. And not to say, because I lived a very tumultuous life also, but not to say that it's not real, it didn't happen, but 97% of our thoughts and our feelings aren't even 100% true. We attach all of this stuff, and once we can be aware, which is my favorite word. But once we can be aware that that's in there, and like you said, you start to speak it. And when it comes out, it's like, Oh, wait, why was I hiding that for so long? Oh, it's just like, take that out because we're literally stuffing our words. We're literally pushing it down as much as we can. And at some point, something has to come out. So once it starts to come out, you feel this freedom and you feel lighter. And to visualize that, each thing, as you're pulling each brick off of that pile and taking each thing out, it really makes a huge difference. And so I love the way you said that because I do believe that once you speak it, and writing is a good tool too if you have no one to speak it to. So writing it, once you'd see it and it comes out, you're like, Oh, I can live with that. That's okay. And you're not alone. I also think that we think that we're alone in this. Social media and our world today helps us to not feel as alone in things, but even as short as 20 years ago, we didn't have all of that, and we still weren't able to express that. So I really love how you talk about speaking it, because I think that's important for people to realize that they can just speak it even just out loud with yourself.
Karena Kilcoyne: Yes. That's absolutely true. And it's so powerful, it seems on one hand, as we're talking about it, it seems so simple, Oh, you speak it, but it's not when you actually have it in you. And I feel like the longer you've, it becomes compressed and it just there's so much on top of it. Then you're so right about, it almost becomes hardwired in your circuitry, your story, your story, your story. And then you're thinking, who would I be without that? That was a shift for me too. Sometimes I think that we anchor down in the pain, even if it's subconsciously, and it becomes part of our identity. And that was a huge shift for me, and figuring out how to get what I really wanted is how to break out of that, that mode of feeling, and I don't mean to discount the word being a survivor because there's so many, so much power in being a survivor in many things. But in this instance of just coming from, Oh, did I survive it? Am I surviving, or am I thriving?
Shirley Owens: Right. It's like a victim hood, right?
Karena Kilcoyne: Yes.
Shirley Owens: It does serve us for so many reasons. It can justify who we are. I can justify whatever mistakes we're making. We can use victim hood to just be like, I can be whatever because I went through this. And I think that that really just holds people down. And it's hard for me because I feel like I've also come through that. And when you look back, we really create whatever we want to create, and we are a part of that. And I think that it's really hard on people. Sometimes I have people think that I'm really being harsh when I say: "I know that really bad thing happened to you, but you are a part of that creation." And you may not have any control over what happens, but you always have control over how you react to it. And it's a skill to learn how to sit in the pain, go through it, be realistic about it, and then work your way through it to the other side. Recently, I've been wanting to tell this story, and my former brother-in-law passed away from COVID, and we had a funeral online. And his son had told this story, and I think it's so relevant right now. When they were growing up, their dad always talked about bison and how they never waited out a storm. Like all these animals would go around a storm. So they were in Wyoming at one point on a vacation, and there was a really big storm that came, and they pulled over and he said: "I want you to watch the bison," to his kids. And all the other animals stop, they hunker down, they stay where they're at, or birds will fly around the storm, but the bison just walked straight through the storm and they get there. They get to their destiny quicker and less fearful by doing that, walking through the storm. And I thought that was such a wise thing that he taught his kids, because in their mind it's like, do I hunker down and wait out the storm because our life is just a series of a bunch of storms, or do I learn how to just walk through it?
And there are times where we have ebb and flow, like thriving and surviving. I do not live a life of survival. Nothing in me right now has to survive. But do I still have that mentality that comes up that default of, yeah, I have it, it comes up for me. Like making a purchase or doing something that I don't really need to worry about, but I worry about it because it's just kind of been a default thing for me. But I think that remembering little things like that, we can have our moments where we're surviving. It might be a storm that we're surviving through. The door blows up and a bunch of dirt comes in, and you got to clean it up, or a glass breaks. We have like moments where we've got to, okay, we've got to go through something we really don't like to go through it. And then there is the thriving where we realize that, Oh, this is just life. It's just happening all around us, it's beautiful. And we can thrive through it, through anything. We can continue to thrive. Right now, we're dealing with this coronavirus in our world, and I think that this is something you could really speak on. How do we live that thriving through this time? We're going through a really hard time right now. I have really enjoyed it. I have 10 people in my house, my daughter and her husband, and two babies are here, we have our kids, and I've really enjoyed it to an extent. But lately, I've been noticing that there are parts that get to me, but I have to keep reminding myself I don't need to survive this, I can just thrive through this and be happy, and we create fun things every single day. So how are you getting through it? What is your advice to other people who may be really struggling right now? Because I believe that transition out of it is going to be just as stressful and some adjustment periods as it was going into it, so we're not through it yet. So what would your advice be because I know that you teach and talk about how to thrive during turbulent times, and right now is for sure turbulent.
“Trying to find those silver linings and those happy moments...is a practice.” - Karena Kilcoyne
Karena Kilcoyne: It definitely is. And I think you have a great point too about the after. The transition out and the after, I think we are going to find that people are suffering a certain amount of post traumatic stress. So I think it's important now while we're still in it to choose how we're handling it as best as we can to make those have the awareness and the presence and to make choices. So I would say a few things about that. The big thing for me in my journey that I've learned is that I'm responsible for my own happiness, number one thing. And so trying to find those silver linings and those happy moments during this is a practice. And for me, happiness has been a practice. Because there are some of us who are born with just sunshine and rainbows out of their pockets. But for others, it's a little bit to your point of how we were raised, and what's in there already, and then trying to back it up and redo it. So I would say that, for me, understanding that I'm responsible for my own happiness, that I can't wait for someone or something to make it happen. I was thinking the other day, even if Dr. [inaudible] is standing on the corner, handing out COVID-19 vaccines, it's like it's not gonna make you happy unless you let it make you happy.
“I'm responsible for my own happiness.” - Karena Kilcoyne
Shirley Owens: Exactly.
Karena Kilcoyne: So once you understand that that's huge and powerful. And then I go back to my gratitude, my silver linings, that has been so helpful for me. And if you really look at and try to focus on, and I don't like to listen to the news of time, but if I do, I always kind of keep an ear out for the happy news, the silver lining, so it's been good for the environment. And talking to my girlfriends, like Zoom happy hour. And it's funny how many of us have realized what we can live without.
“It's not going to make you happy unless you let it make you happy.” - Karena Kilcoyne
Shirley Owens: Right.
Karena Kilcoyne: We used to think all of this was so important and we need to spend money on all of this. And we realized, no, actually, I don't really miss that. Or I like this better without that.
Shirley Owens: Now we're like, just get me some toilet paper, right?
Karena Kilcoyne: Yes, exactly. It's toilet paper and maybe some wine here and there.
Shirley Owens: Yeah.
Karena Kilcoyne: So I don't know. I feel like there's been a lot of silver linings in this whole thing if you really look for them. And then the more you do it, I think the easier it gets. And so for me, my practice is just everyday I try to come up with three things and they're not always big, huge, monumental things. They can be silly and funny, just everyday, make them different. Another thing that I've done, I am by nature, somebody who can default to routine, just a little typing kind of stuff. So I felt like when there's a hit and we were all in lockdown, I think a lot of people set up routine because it made them feel like, Oh, now, I've structured and my day makes sense, and all these things are happening. But then that can start to feel so monotonous. And then you become apathetic about your day. So I have really made an effort during this time to turn some routines and rituals. And you probably already do this because you said your favorite word is aware and it's like one of mine too. Presence, awareness, where am I in this moment? Am I in it? How many times do we take our vitamins, or brush our teeth, and then walk away and go, did I take my supplements? I can't remember.
Shirley Owens: Not even in that moment.
Karena Kilcoyne: And so I've tried to make up a ritual around something that feels very routine. So an example, I have a fun one for all the dog lovers listening, I have two golden retrievers and I've turned feeding them into a ritual where I have them do a sit, and a down, and a stay. And I make up their food, and I take a little while doing this, I have to be very patient, and I'm working on their good manners while I'm making their food, which most dogs are like this, golden retrievers are really all about food. Then I do a little blessing over it, a little funny blessing, little prayer over their food, and I put the food down, I make them wait until I give them permission. And it's turned into this beautiful experience twice a day, where my dogs and I feel closer, they get to use this enrichment time for them. And then I feel like when you turn the routine into a ritual, it's like you are bringing that divine in you, your spirituality out into something. You're making it fun and playful, and you're aware of what you're doing, and where you are, and it grounds you in the present moment.
Shirley Owens: I love that.
Karena Kilcoyne: Yeah. I feel like that brings up a lot of these happy moments that add it all together, bring more happiness to your day.
Shirley Owens: My sunlight, [inaudible] and I were talking last night about this life is going to happen, it's happening, everything. You're creating what you think you're creating or not. So by not creating, you're creating. And so when we just allow our days to just keep happening, and keep happening, that's when you get stuck in this just mundane existence of life. And when you can wake up each day with an intention, and it sounds like creating a ritual, that's an intention because you have to actually set some time aside, and call the dogs in, and laugh a little bit, and bring it up to have that. Like you said, it's like a spiritual experience because you're actually just like living in that moment every morning. So my daughter, her husband and grand babies have been here for three months. And their house is almost done, so they're moving out, and I'm kind of sad because every morning, 8:00 AM, my door creaks open and there's two little fuzzy head babies in their pajamas that just come and jump into bed with me, and I have kind of made that a ritual. So yesterday I was on the phone, it was in the morning, and I heard them outside the door, and they're four and two. And the four year old was telling the two year old: "Oh, I think Mimi's working. Let's go." So I hear them at my door and then running off. So I immediately got off the call, I run into their room, I'm like: "Hey, how come you didn't come in?" And I realized that that has become a really special part of my day during this time that we're all here. And yeah, I could be frustrated because they're interrupting work, or they're interrupting a phone call, but I really have just like, I just stopped everything and I listened to them. The four year old has to talk to my ear off and tell me these stories, and it's just so fun to be in that moment. So I think that's super important.
“You're creating whether you think you're creating or not. So by not creating, you're creating. When we just allow our days to just keep happening that's when you get stuck in this just mundane existence of life. .” - Shirley Owens
And the other thing is when you talk about gratitude, that every day you come up with three things. I think just doing that, you are going about your day, your previous day, looking for things to be grateful for. And even on hard days, it's like, Oh, I have to come up tomorrow with three things, I've really got to look for the silver lining in this. And I think that that is so powerful. I usually tell my clients to come up with 10 things, so I think three things are so doable and it really starts to get you in this positive mindset of starting to look for the positive. Because when people are in that victim hood, I always say: "You can find evidence in whatever you want to find evidence in." So if you're living in that state of always looking for somebody that's doing your honor, something that, the four year old said this morning: "Today's a bad day," because her little splash pad didn't come on right away or something. I was like, how funny that we do that sometimes, we take a moment and we want to turn it into a really bad day. And I think that just having that ritual of looking for things to be grateful for every day, it puts you in that mindset because you're looking for evidence, and it's amazing how much you can find out there even in a day that we would normally call bad what positive things that you can find out there when you're actually searching for it. So I love that. I think that's such a great thing, and I love the word ritual over routine, because routine really does sound kind of boring. So I think it's a great ritual to start your day with. Even three things, I think that's such a great thing that you do every single day.
Karena Kilcoyne: I think too. What I found from it is that when you come from that space of so much gratitude, if you're resonating in abundance, Oh, look at what I have. Look at how much I have, even being thankful for the thing that you feel like you don't have but that you want. Having a sense of gratitude for that, the fact that you're on a path towards it, that you're aware enough to want it, filling yourself up with gratitude for that has in my experience, then allowing it to resonate at this different frequency -- to your point about what you see, you get more of. So the universe is matching you. So if you're coming from this space of I'm so grateful and I have this abundance of things I'm thankful for, the law of attraction is like you're going to get more of that, then you're going to start seeing more of that. It's like, is it the chicken or the egg? I don't know. But it's true, it happened and it works.
Shirley Owens: Every time. And I think that, yeah, like you say, just being aware of it. And having the knowledge that you get to create your life, that you're in charge of your own happiness is such a blessing and it's such a powerful tool to use for people that maybe have set their life thinking that life just wasn't fair and it was hard on them. Like, to be able to say, wait a minute, I had part in creating that. And now, what do I want to create going forward? That's exciting to think that you can create whatever you want. No matter where you are in life, I know that, I've been in really bad situations and been able to crawl myself out with that attitude of, I'm going to create what it is, whatever I want, and put it out there. So I love that. I want to ask you, is there anything in your life or looking back that you regret or would choose to do?
Karena Kilcoyne: So besides the obvious couple of bad hairstyle choices of my life. So I was thinking about that, I thought I guess there's a part of me that, for years, wished I had started writing sooner. But then I realized as I was thinking through that, that's not actually the truth or accurate because I couldn't be where I am now in the space that I am and be off the authentic soul that I feel like I am right now and have that transparency of what I've been through. I wouldn't have been there 10 years ago, or four years ago. It's like this constant evolution of, I truly believe that everything may not happen for the best, but somehow it shifts you,pivot to. And as long as your perspective on it is a good one, and a positive one, and you're full of awareness about it. Then I think things are gonna evolve and fold out in front of you at the time they're meant to when you have the wisdom to do with them what you show it, or you're meant to do.
“Everything may not happen for the best, but somehow it shifts you; pivots you.” - Karena Kilcoyne
Shirley Owens: So tell us about your book, and is it out yet?
Karena Kilcoyne: It is not, I'm still searching for a home for it, but I spent over two years on it when I worked with a couple of great editors who helped me developmentally figure out the flow. I just felt like it was, you know, it's kind of a lot. And when it's your own story, as you noticed, sit down and kind of put it down. But I worked really hard on it, and I didn't hold anything back, and I'm really proud of it. And thank you, right now, I'm just still searching for a home. I had just started, just starting that journey now. So hopefully something will happen the next, you know, 6 to 12 months on it.
Shirley Owens: So are you helping individuals? Do you have a program? Are you open to people contacting you to be able to maybe tap into your story because it's like their is, and be able to connect with you?
“Things are going to evolve and fold out in front of you at the time they're meant to when you have the wisdom to do with them what you should or meant to do.” -Karena Kilcoyne
Karena Kilcoyne: Yes. I'm always happy for people to contact me. So I have my website, which you can and find me through karousing.com. It's a play on my name, so it's spelled a little different, it's K-A-R-O-U-S-I-N-G. I'm also on Instagram under Karena Kilcoyne, and I'm on Facebook. I'm all over the place, and it's very easy. Also on my website, there's two or three different places, very easily seen where they can sign up to get my newsletters, which I send out every two weeks. And also they can use that email address to email me directly, any questions, or things that they're going through their own journey And they like to chat with me about it. I'm always willing to lend a hand.
Shirley Owens: Thank you so much. You are beautiful, And I know that you've been through so much and you've come through, and you are an inspiration to people. So I'm super grateful that you took your time to be here today. And I want to have you back when your book's out so that we can promote that because I think that's going to be amazing, and just want to thank you for being here.
Karena Kilcoyne: Oh, thank you so much. You're beautiful inside and out too. Thank you so much.
Shirley Owens: Oh, you're sweet. Okay, I will talk to you soon.
Karena Kilcoyne: All right. Thank you, Shirley.