>Welcome to a journey of self-discovery, workplace realities, and the unwavering embrace of staying true to who you are—even when the world tries to shape you otherwise. Inspired by a candid conversation on the Threads of Enlightenment podcast, this post dives deep into overcoming the weight of expectations, navigating dark times, and unlocking joy in places you least expect.

The Pull of Darkness—and the Lesson Inside It

In life, especially at work, it’s easy to end up somewhere you don’t recognize, wondering how you got pulled so far from the laughter and sunny parts of yourself. The darkness sneaks up—sometimes out of ambition, sometimes out of pressure to conform. You might forget you’re human, not just a cog turning for some investor or a faceless bottom line.

“I learned how easy it is to be sucked into a dark place when there’s darkness around you and to lose sight of joy and love and laughter. There were also some really dark points where I watched myself get sucked into this world at work where we forget that we’re human beings sometimes and we treat each other in ways that are unkind and unempathetic, all for the sake of pleasing our investors.”

These lessons aren’t just about pain. They’re about moving forward, about getting a taste of what it feels like at the “top,” then realizing—it doesn’t taste the way you thought it would. Knowing that, you get to choose what you want for yourself next.

Introducing a Guest—And Honoring Time and Journey

This episode of Threads of Enlightenment is more than just another interview. Every guest brings something precious—their time, and their journey. These are the things that make us who we are.

Why Are Our Journeys Important?

• Time: We’re all given the same 24 hours; how we spend it shapes our story.

• Journey: More than achievement, it makes us into individuals.

Honoring the Guest: Kathy

Kathy’s story uncovers the twists and turns not just of career, but of self-discovery. She’s learned, shared, fallen, gotten back up, and now spends her days helping others—including startups and female founders—choose environments where authenticity is not just allowed, but celebrated.

Two Types of Journeys: The Interdependent Life

Life isn’t just about self-growth—it’s also about how you serve those around you.

How Do You Serve Mankind?

Kathy’s approach is multi-layered:

1. Day-to-Day Mindfulness: Staying aware of her impact on the earth, focusing on leaving a positive mark and reducing harm.

2. Family First: Believing that being her best self at home trickles outwards, affecting the wider community over time.

3. Workplace Awakening: Challenging the norms of how we interact in work versus at home, asking leaders to rethink what it means to be human at work.

Why Does Work Often Feel Different than Home?

For many of us, work is a place where kindness takes a back seat to deadlines, numbers, and shareholder value. Kathy points out that we need to bring the same kindness we show at home into our jobs—and vice versa.

The Beginning: Family, Sunshine, and Foundations of Self

We all start somewhere, usually in the family. That’s where communication, how we handle our emotions, and our sense of love get rooted.

Kathy’s Family Unit

• Born into a family with two older sisters, then gained a stepmom and another sister after her mother’s passing.

• Despite loss, family was full of “joy and love.”

• Nicknamed the “sunshine.” Even in difficult times, young Kathy brought relief and light just by her sunny disposition.

The Role of Children in Healing

Kids often act as balms in tough family moments. Kathy’s ability to brighten a dark room was noticed, cherished, and has colored everything that’s come since.

Relationships Beyond Family: Trusting and Connecting

What about friendships?

Kathy is a natural connector. Open arms, less skepticism, more trust. Her approach: “The more, the merrier.” In her experience, skepticism doesn’t serve as well as meeting people openly.

Lessons in Trust and Skepticism

• Trust first, even if sometimes it backfires—because the alternative often leads to missed connections.

• Skepticism can protect, but also isolate.

The College Years: Reading the Fine Print—and Sometimes Not

The march from childhood to adulthood often runs straight through school. What did Kathy choose? She admits: “I was a very lazy teenager.” She ended up in economics—initially thrilled to dodge more math classes, until she learned that “mathematical economics” meant even more math.

A Story of “Not Reading the Fine Print”

• At Wake Forest University, Kathy picked a program thinking there’d be little math—only to find math was everywhere.

• Later, in grad school at Georgetown, the same thing happened: thinking she’d finally escape statistical classes, only to land in econometric boot camp.

Lesson learned: Read the fine print!

“If you do go back, just make sure you read those fine prints. That’s the lesson. Read the fine print.”

The Linear Life—And Why Reality Isn’t So Linear

Society pushes a certain program:

1. Birth

2. Family

3. School

4. Job

5. Marriage

6. House, car, vacations

7. Kids

8. Death

But that’s not how most real lives unfold. Kathy’s path wasn’t so straight—it was more like winding forest trails with uncertain signposts. After college, after missing the fine print, she ended up working as an economist for Global Insight.

First Jobs—and the Freedom to Explore

Kathy’s first real job wasn’t planned—it just came to her. Fourteen years at one company, filled with amazing people and a true family feel. That job took her across the ocean to London and started a period of exploration.

How Do You Find Yourself?

Those years were about learning who she was outside of family expectations, outside of her roots. Living in D.C., then London, traveling, making mistakes, and trying things just because. Not worrying too much about what came next.

“It was a wonderful time. It was a time of really true freedom and exploration.”

What Prompts Self-Discovery When Everyone Else Is Partying?

Why dig deeper when the program just says to “party hard, work hard, settle down”? Kathy’s family and hometown began asking why she hadn’t taken the more normal route—husband, kids, white picket fence.

But she just didn’t feel ready. She didn’t want to settle before she’d seen the world, or truly understood herself. If you don’t know yourself, how can you choose your life wisely?

What Did Kathy Discover On Her Voyage?

• She loves new experiences.

• People everywhere are more alike than different.

• Independence brings joy—she didn’t need to follow someone else’s script.

• When pressed to conform, she found she often thrived by doing the very opposite.

For young women especially: You don’t have to conform to someone else’s image of success or happiness. Run against the grain. Travel, discover, become an outlier.

Breaking the “Normal” Mold: The Joy of Running Against the Grain

Not following “normal” is often called “not being obedient.” But what’s the point of obeying a system that doesn’t serve you? Run against the pack, see the world, and grow stronger from what you find.

How Did Kathy End Up Where She Is Today?

After over a decade at her first company, she met her husband, settled in the London area, and had kids. Then, a crossroads: stay safe and comfortable in a job that wouldn’t stretch her, or jump into a scary new opportunity?

She chose the harder path—taking a job with more stretch, more uncertainty, and a chance to test her skills. It was tough, with both wonderful and difficult people. It exposed her to darkness in the workplace—lack of empathy, unkind treatment, all in pursuit of pleasing investors.

The Dark Side of Climbing the Ladder—And the Light in Choosing Yourself

Kathy learned how easy it is to get sucked into a cold corporate world, where kindness falls away for the sake of profit. But she wouldn’t change it; otherwise, she’d always wonder if she could have made it to the boardroom.

She made it. And she realized—it wasn’t for her.

You Don’t Need to Die Inside to Win

There’s a kind of pressure at the top: conform, lose your heart, become someone else. Is it worth it? Kathy decided no.

“Where I am now is in recognizing, okay, I’ve seen that side and I don’t want it for myself.”

Her advice: don’t lose your sunny, light, trusting, authentic self. Instead, seek environments where you can be that—where authenticity isn’t penalized, but valued.

Finding the Right Environment—Choosing Joy Over Pressure

Today, Kathy works with startups and female founders. She gets to shape her own working environment—choosing where her authentic self is welcome. She’s learned she’s sensitive and easily influenced by those around her. Getting stuck in a toxic place can change you, so choose your environments carefully.

Building Tools for Self-Protection

Years of experience let Kathy spot positive situations and environments, where respect and empathy rule. And if the drive for money or deadlines comes at the expense of kindness, she simply chooses not to spend her time there.

Pain as a Crucible—And Wisdom Born from the Darkness

There’s purpose in pain. The workplace pain, the darkness, isn’t wasted—it creates wisdom and insight. Kathy now uses her experience to guide entrepreneurs and business leaders in building cultures where you don’t have to lose your heart just to win.

“There is a purpose to your pain. The pain gives birth to you as you, because of that time, at dark time, you are able to be who you are today. You carry a certain degree of wisdom, knowledge, insight that you had gained from that time.”

The Sacrifice the System Demands—And the Freedom of Refusing

Some places literally ask you to kill your “heart” to advance. Stories from other guests reflect this—being told by corporate leaders that to succeed, you have to “be dead inside.” Is it worth it?

No. Life is about more.

When you find yourself in such a place, Kathy suggests going inward, excavating your true self, asking deep questions, and making changes.

Advice for Those Still In the Darkness

What do you do if you’re stuck in a toxic environment?

The Two Big Pieces of Advice

1. Don’t Numb Yourself With “Crazy Busy”

   It’s easy to stay so busy you don’t have time to process the hurt. Working hard, juggling kids and deadlines leaves no room to review how you’re really feeling.

2. Separate Your Work From Your Worth

   The closer she got to the boardroom, the more harshly criticism came—not about the work, but her as a person. That’s a dangerous shift. If somebody attacks you personally at work, recognize that it’s not about you—it’s about them, their own pressure, their own modeling.

“Being able to recognize and say, hang on, you’re, you’re attacking me as a person, not my work. And to be able to separate those two things and recognize that is coming from a place where the person attacking you very likely is injured in some way or is reflecting and acting in the way they have been modeled…they are under so much pressure and they don’t know how else to get a result.”

Scarcity Thinking—And the Trap of Zero-Sum Games

Corporate fighting is often fueled by a belief in scarcity—if you win, I have to lose. Women, especially, often feel there’s only room for one at the table, driving unhealthy competition. But pushing others down to get ahead ultimately fails.

The Alternative: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Boundaries are vital. Read the room, don’t let personal attacks take root, and honor what’s at your core.

Embracing the Transition: Choosing Freedom And Peace

The biggest realization? Kathy didn’t actually want what everyone assumed she wanted—bigger titles, more prestige, “getting to the top.” Recruiters still call, unable to believe she doesn’t want to be the next corporate bigwig. But she knows what she loves: freedom.

What Does Freedom Look Like?

• Choosing how she spends her days.

• No one else putting meetings on her calendar.

• Enjoying her community, volunteering, working with startups and connections.

• She doesn’t need anyone else’s stamp of approval.

“I don’t need to prove anything to anyone else anymore. I don’t need anybody else’s stamp, you know, of well done to feel valid. I can get that just by the fact that the sun is streaming through the window today. I had a good walk with the dog. I had a great volunteering session yesterday.”

Being an Outlier—The Genesis of Authentic Success

The path to this freedom began years ago, when Kathy chose to be an outlier—not to conform, not to obey the “program.” If you’re reading this: you don’t have to be part of the system to be successful.

Becoming an Author—Channeling Pain into Creation

After many tough software projects and toxic work environments, Kathy started writing as catharsis. The essays that spilled out became a book—a way to puzzle out why so many projects went wrong, and how to heal broken workplace culture.

Key Lessons From Building Software (And Teams)

1. The “how” and the “what” must match—misalignment breeds problems.

2. Projects go off track when process becomes more important than people.

3. Building software (and any project) is a fundamentally human task.

The Human Element Matters—Always

“Building software is a human enterprise. Humans decide what the software will do, how to code it, and quite often these days they’ll write the code.”

Kathy’s Advice—If She Could Speak To The Whole World

If you had one shot, one mic, one moment to speak to everyone on the planet, what would you say?

“Remember that the connection between us as people is the most important thing. Paying the bills, you know, the financial stress that so many families have is real and I totally understand that. And I, you know, I sympathize with everyone who’s on a treadmill just trying to, you know, keep that ticking over. But so often I find the people that forget are the people with the greatest will. And so particularly to those people for whom it’s not the day to day struggle just to pay the bills. It’s important…the most important thing we do every day is connect with each other as people. And the least important thing that we do when we already have enough wealth is generate more.”

For Entrepreneurs, Dreamers, and the Business-Minded

If you’re dreaming of starting a business, growing one, or just want to change how you work and live, here’s some solid advice:

• Form small clubs around valuable books.

• Read together, talk together, learn together.

• Put wisdom into practice—personally and professionally.

And don’t forget: you have resources. Kathy is available with insights and wisdom about culture, business, and surviving the corporate grind without becoming a robot.

Final Thoughts: Outliers Change the World

Women—especially young women—don’t let society stamp and package you into someone you’re not. Release yourself from the “program” and show your true self to the world. Outliers aren’t just dreamers; they’re the gamechangers.

Get Connected

If Kathy’s story resonates, reach out:

• Start a book club—discuss, grow, challenge each other, and put new understanding into play.

• Contact Kathy for deeper wisdom on building business culture, entrepreneurship, and navigating workplace realities.

Whatever your challenge, remember:

• Connect with others.

• Embrace what makes your journey unique.

• Seek environments where you can shine as your authentic self.

Love, Light, and the Power of Choosing Yourself

Life doesn’t have to be what everyone else says it should be. You don’t have to “die” inside to succeed, nor sacrifice your spirit for a title. Find your light, share your sunshine, and write your own story.

“Release yourself from demands of the programmers and show them that you’re much more than they are telling you that you are. And prove it to you and prove it to the world.”

Listen, Subscribe, and Stay Enlightened

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Until next time, stay enlightened, stay authentic, and stay true to the path only YOU can walk.