Letting Go Of The Life You Built (EP 107)

[0:15] Hello friends uncle Marv here with another episode of the unhealthy podcast, the show where we have real and unfiltered conversations about the habits stress and life patterns that, i don't know break us down all that stuff and we talk about what it actually

[0:34] looks like to turn things around in a way that fits real life, not Instagram. So thank you folks for tuning in. And today we're going to talk about some of that stuff. I'm joined by Catherine Cristani. She is the founder of Willow Healing and host of the Willow Healing Matters podcast. And we're going to get into how she ended up where she was because the story doesn't sound quite right. Uh Catherine first of all welcome to the show thank you I’m excited to see where we're going to go, i have a little bit of an idea but sometimes the universe has another idea yes it does yes it does so whenever you get introduced, it always ends up that you walked away from two six-figure jobs.

[1:30] So of course I’ve so by the way I’ve listened to some of your podcasts and you start to talk about it but then nobody really asks you those follow-up questions that I’m dying to hear so hopefully you'll let me ask those questions is that okay, of course okay um, so let's start by giving people a little bit of background and first talk about what was life like before that you were doing you know two six-figure jobs.

[2:00] Well, I guess there's two components to that. So the first part of my life, I want to say once I was in early adulthood, I got married quite young. And when I started working, I had lots of ambitions. I was like, I'm going to own my own business. I'm going to have my own practice. And I was a speech language pathologist and I was going to change the world, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. And I worked with a lot of children with autism spectrum disorder and I was very good at my job. And I'm not saying that to big note myself, but I just had a natural connection with children, especially children with autism. I never, you know, underestimated them. I allowed them to be whoever they needed to be in that moment. And.

[2:44] I was out of university for about two years and then I was actually driving to a school to start my own business because I was like, oh, you know, I'm going to go back to, my high school that I was at and see if I can potentially get some work there. And on the way there, I get a phone call from one of my bosses at that time because I had two bosses and she offered me part of her, offered her share of the partnership. So all of a sudden, there I am, all my dreams gifted to make me. Whilst I'm going to go start my own business and something in my gut said do it anyway have both so I was like oh okay I'm going to trust that and honor that and I'm so glad I did because as we'll get there's a good reason why um, but the my partnership built up but I was still doing my own thing in the background and my when I bought into the partnership it was like we had a couple of therapists working for us we were in this dodgy, dodgy like building and there was no f-post machine everyone had to pay cash um, like all these weird outdated things and so i come in and I’m like nope we're going to have email we're going to have electronic calendars because we were handwriting all that oh my yes.

[3:59] So yeah i actually started typing mine up and putting that in did you have rotary dial phones too um no but we did still have one that was fixed to a line So, you know, but.

[4:16] It was just really interesting building up this beautiful business with my business partner and we ended up actually being a seven-figure business. My share of the business was pulling in six figures every month easily. That was obviously gross, but, you know, it was really interesting just seeing it build up and it got to the point we had eight full-digit. Time speech therapist, plus three admin staff. So it evolved and it was massive. We were subleasing a room to an occupational therapist. It was really becoming a very known business. But my business partnership started to suffer because her and I were not on the same terms of anymore. So in the background of me doing all of that, my personal relationship was falling apart because I kept giving myself away to people. I kept, you know, giving parts. So I love that you have music when you come on because music is a big passion of mine. But I'd given that up because I read somewhere that couples last longer when they share interests. So I gave up the music that I loved to listen to my ex's music. I, you know, started to give up all these values that were important to me, but my ex didn't really budge on any of that. Not that he asked me to do any of that, but I didn't. So my personal life was falling apart. So as a result of that, I stayed longer and longer at work. My business was very successful because I was there all the time. Okay. Got that.

[5:44] Now, before you go on, I just want to ask one question because first of all, you're not here in the US. Let's tell people where you're at. Oh, I'm in Australia. Okay. I'm about an hour south of Sydney in Australia. Okay. Okay. People love Sydney. Um, because here's, here's my question. Uh, people hear, you know, therapist with, you know, uh, kids that are autistic or on the spectrum and they don't really understand how that can be a, six-figure job in terms of a business most of them are, you know some sort of uh i don't want to say social work but yeah right yeah so they're not like thriving businesses here in the U.S well.

[6:32] They haven't figured out the systems okay but the interesting part of it is when i started when i was building up um the business partnership i bought into we didn't have that much funding we had um, social work social service clients so that was the government paid for them we had some that was Medicare so in Australia we have supplemented um, medical services but that was it there was no real funding this new sort of funding like early intervention funding started to come in but the majority of it was really based on word of mouth then something came in Australia could the National Disability Insurance give the NDIS and where our business was we were a pilot, or one of the pilot areas that got it first and I can tell you from working through.

[7:22] The stresses of a new government rollout it wasn't pretty. At one point we were very grateful that wasn't all we were relying on in terms of our clients coming in because we were, We didn't get paid, I think, for three or four months because it got to the end of financial year and they decided to upgrade the payment system and then it collapsed completely. So it was just a really interesting time. So in terms of how to build up that business, a lot of that was coming from how many therapists we've had working under us as well. And yes, we have a set figure of what we can charge. But when I was really busy, I was seeing like 18 clients a day. You know so you know you got to factor that in as well so at like you know nearly a hundred dollars each client, they get up there pretty quickly i gotcha okay yeah all right so sorry to side rail you there but i just wanted to get a little bit of background there so all right so you're working a ton of hours you're at work you're not at home, and what else is happening, well, I didn't want to go home. That was the point.

[8:34] And it did get to a point where I decided to be courageous and actually leave my marriage because I was so numb and just invisible and wasn't being seen. And then when that shifted and I left my first husband, I was so happy, Uncle Marv. Like I was truly glowing and everyone's like, wow, you look like you've lost weight. And I was joking to say, like, I lost 80 kilos, which is what my ex-husband used to weigh. I don't know what that is in pounds. But, you know, and then...

[9:10] And then I started to see what was going on in my work because I didn't want to be there all the time. I was actually happy to go do things outside of work with myself and dating again. And it was very weird dating in my late 20s than it was in my teens when I was still under my parents' roof and everything like that. So it was like this whole different world. And then I started to see these reflections in what was going on in my business, which was I kept giving myself up. So I was always painted as the bad guy because I would have to come in and force things. Or I would wake up every morning and have a hundred emails, not spam, a hundred emails I had to deal with.

[9:54] And it was just becoming exhausting and so taxing. And then when I started to see more and more of that and kept asking my business partner, hey, this doesn't feel very fair. I feel like everything's been put on my shoulders. You know what is your role and we got clear on what our roles were but then she wasn't holding up that end of what was happening okay so you can only do that for so long before that falls apart right but in the meantime remember i would started my own business in the background so that was gaining momentum and she was becoming jealous of that um and i could feel that because she kept wanting me to usurp it into our business and i almost did and then something at the last minute made me stop. So it was really interesting just how trusting my intuition and my gut in those moments saved me so much heartache later on. But when I say my business partnership fell apart, that was my nasty divorce. My personal divorce was quite amicable, but my business divorce, that's where I, that was fun. Okay. So, all right. So you walked away from that and did you take your business that you would start on the side and really ramp that up and is that the second job that became Six Figures? Exactly. So in the meantime, I'd found a new husband. It sounds funny, but I'd found my husband now.

[11:23] You found the right husband. I found the right husband. Yes. Thank you.

[11:29] And I was pregnant when all this was happening. So when my business partnership was falling apart, my own business was ramping up. And then I'm pregnant. I was like, oh, my goodness, if I'm not working, where's the money going to come from? So then I'm training up all these new staff and bringing them on and dealing with all that as well. And I still remember I didn't really have that early moments. I was in hospital after I'd given birth reading reports and checking my staff's reports because that's how I'd set up my businesses so that they had to come through me. And it's only now I can reflect on that and see where that is. But I can tell you that those very early steps that I did, rather than trusting my staff and trusting what I'd set up was really good.

[12:20] It made me go into a point where I always had to micromanage everything and that I always had to control everything, which then led to me having burnout, adrenal fatigue and all the fun things that come with that. Right so i assume that's where you were heading with, departing the second job so was it just because it wasn't what you thought it was going to be or, did you have some other things that got in there kind of like when you got that first divorce and you know your eyes were opened you started seeing what else was out there um, because that was your that was your well i shouldn't have said that said it that way was that your dream to start that business and, it was and i started it from the ground up like i literally did home visits to start so i would drive from house to house and then i would drive back out to where my other business was and work there and then come back and you know i put so much love and labor into it and it was my baby you know and we don't like to let our babies grow.

[13:23] Not grow but we don't like to let them go and um that wasn't actually the turning point i can see that now that it was already setting myself up to be this pivotal thing so come in uh lockdowns, in in Australia and our business was allowed to stay open because we're allied health so that was fine um but at the same time i started to question myself because i wasn't accepting narratives and i wasn't accepting what people were telling me and it was through that i had a um, I found my spiritual side of things. So then I started to dabble more into, oh my goodness, I have all these psychic gifts and I have all these things that actually I am quite intuitive. And that's why my guts always led me to the right places because I've been following my gut instincts.

[14:13] You know, and all these sorts of things were leading me along the way. And I realized that my health wasn't okay. So through all of that, I was seeing my naturopath quite regularly, like every week. And he was giving me a box of supplements basically to keep me alive because my cortisol and my stress was so high and um, I went I can't keep doing this either my health can't keep doing this you know I can't you know I was trying to step back from the business and bring in a manager and all these things, but the universe had other plans so the universe decided that I wasn't getting the message quick enough and part of me letting go of the old me, in the spiritual community we have something called the dark night of the soul, basically it's a massive ego identity death, and it always revolves around something really powerful so in my world it was letting go earning a company so in the space of a week had three staff resign so i was like.

[15:16] And by this point I'd realized my health wasn't okay I wanted to be at home more I was missing my son growing up like all these things and it was really like the three resigning it sent me I was in a ball on the floor crying it sent me into a spiral because, first of all it's really hard to find good quality allied health staff in Australia and second of all, I was stepping back from my duties. And then all of a sudden, all these clients were going to not have therapists. And I didn't know what to do because I always felt I had to solve everything. So I'd started to bounce back from that. And then a month later, another three staff resigned in a week. And I was like, what? And I hadn't replaced the first three yet. And I was so angry, Uncle Marv. So angry. Did they all, did they plan it together? I mean, did they leave at the same time or just different reasons? Completely different reasons. Okay. None of them were consistent reasons, all completely different. All right. None of them knew the other ones were resigning to the point where when I said, oh, so-and-so just resigned as well, they were all like, what? Oh, okay.

[16:30] So it wasn't planned. It just, how it happened. So they weren't conspiring against you. It was the universe. It was the universe exactly how dare it so then a month later in the space of a week another three-star resigned.

[16:47] And by this point, I went, you know what? I'm not meant to have these people in my life anymore. And I'm not meant to run this business anymore. Either I'm going to sell this business or when the lease ends, I'm done. I'm a shutting shop. Like that's the point I'd gotten to. And fortunately, the universe did send me a little beautiful person to buy my business.

[17:11] And then I continued to work for him, which was good until it wasn't. So as I was still working for him, I just felt like I didn't belong there. But at the same time, I was the breadwinner. So I had to keep working because we had a mortgage and everything else. And I kept going to work, kept going to work and saying to my husband, every time I go, I felt like a little part of my soul dies. Because I couldn't truly show up how I wanted to be because I was bound by a code of ethics. I was bound by, you know, all these things. So I couldn't just say to a client, Hey, I really think you should take this herb because intuitively that's what I feel for you because it wasn't in the scope of which they were seeing me. So it was becoming like very, I don't know, um, constricting. Oh yeah. Yeah. And the more I stayed, yeah, sorry, go. I was going to say like, like a lot of health systems where you're only allowed to prescribe these things on this list to these people. Exactly. And so it was really eating me up. And I kept saying to my husband, a little bit of my soul is dying every time I go to work. And he wasn't taking me seriously, but he was just kind of like, oh, you're exaggerating.

[18:22] Anyway, and then when I, it got to a point where I actually started to lose feeling in my body because I was numbing myself to go to work. It didn't matter how many beautiful intentions, positive affirmations or anything I did. The point was that I was numbing myself to go. And so I lost feeling in my left pinky.

[18:42] It started to go numb up to the point of my arm and to the point I couldn't feel half my face. Now I have a beautiful team that I go to, to support me. So like chiros, homeopaths, all these people, I would go to them and they would correct it. And it would come back a couple of days later because I wasn't addressing the source of it, which was my feeling of I'm numbing myself to go to work. And so I knew what it was, but, you know, I felt like if I quit my job, where's the money going to come from? Like, what are we going to do?

[19:14] I don't know what to do. And I had a coach at the time and we were meditating and he said, okay, if your heart has something to tell you in this moment, what is it? And I just heard quit. And it was a non-negotiable, you need to do this or it's going to get worse. And I knew in my heart I had to quit. So, of course, you know, big blow up at my house, you know, and I did, I quit. I quit my job. I gave my boss a month's notice. I said, I'm quitting the job. And he's like, we were selling our house at the time. He goes, did your house sell? I said, no, I just, I can't keep doing this work. You know, I can't keep doing it. And then my boss is like, is it because of me? I was like, no, you were the easiest man to work for. I said, it's definitely not because of you. He goes, oh, that's fine then. I understand why you find this job so hard. I fully get it. Oh, wow.

[20:03] Yeah. Um, and I still talk to him every now and then, but that was over a year ago now. But the first day I was at home with my son and my husband went back to work, um, all my symptoms disappeared, every single one. And I hadn't done anything else different. So, all right, let me, so I have questions, but I should probably ask you, is that, is that the end of the story?

[20:29] Is that the end well our house is still for sale and we've still figured we're figuring out the money problem and it just comes when it's meant to okay you know all right so you're surviving and things are things are good, um so let me ask this question because it sounds like you have the same thing that a lot of people have where, they can they can tell something's wrong, And you, I think more than others had a team around you that at least were. I, I, the word isn't fixing because they didn't fix it. They just kind of patched you up and sent you back out. But it sounds like it's a perfect team. You talked about having a natural path, a chiropractor, um, were you doing.

[21:22] Everything outside of the healthcare system, like you talked about doing herbs, you talked about, I mean, it sounds like you were doing all of that stuff already. I kind of stepped out of the healthcare system a good, how old am I now? Probably like 18 years ago. Okay. And I started to look at alternative ways of maintaining my health. And I would only go to the doctor if I really had to. So I got shingles and I rang up my naturopath. I said, I've got this weird rash on me and it's really painful. And he goes, oh, can you like just FaceTime me? I was like, yeah, okay. And he's like, you know, I never say this. You need to go to the doctor right now and get an antiviral and get on top of it. So I believe the medical system has a place. But for me, I thrive more with alternative approaches. And I very rarely get sick at all. You know, I'm always well to the point that my clients sit there and they go, you've never ever cancelled a session for us and I was like yeah I know and they're like you're always here I said yeah I know I practice what I preach you know I actually believe in you know looking after these things so when the numbness set in.

[22:34] Straight away intuitively I was hearing you're heading for an autoimmune and I knew that my system was already fried from the years of extreme burnout and stress and high cortisol, and it was only coming back from that you know and I had another friend and she's a nurse she goes I want to send you to the doctor straight away I'm like what would they have done sent me for a battery of tests to tell me it's my mind craving this thing in my body you know so it's really interesting um having that contrast because I believe a lot of the disease in our body comes from, from our emotions and from our mindset and from everything else around that. And I don't believe in accidents. I don't believe in coincidences. I believe everything happens to us for a reason.

[23:19] Okay. So let me ask you this, because, So this was only a year ago, you're saying. And my question is, looking back now, what would you have said to yourself to try to pull yourself out of that earlier?

[23:41] Quit my job when I felt to. Okay. I actually gave my resignation to my boss just before the symptoms started. And instead of putting the date that I felt to put on there, I actually just put a condition on there of like, oh, when my house sells, then I'll leave the job. I'm just giving you as much notice as I can. And when I did that, I could feel almost like I took a chicken way, like I took the coward way out. But also I wasn't honoring myself. And it wasn't very long after that, that the symptoms started. And at first, you know, I thought, oh, maybe I slept on my finger wrong or, you know, and then there was so many theories thrown around like tennis elbow and, um, numbness from my liver and all these other weird stuff. But in the end, it really came from me not wanting to be there anymore. Did that, did that hurt you that, you know, you were at the point where this is what you wanted and you no longer wanted it? I mean, how did that feel?

[24:46] I had to mourn it. I actually had to grieve it. So selling my business didn't feel like a big loss because I was still working in it. But watching the business continue to fall apart that I had to mourn because I built it up and we had, you know, I think 300 clients or something like that, you know, and to see all of them, you know, disappearing because the staff were disappearing, everything like that. It truly broke my heart and I had to mourn it and had to let that dream go and, even now with a lot of my clients we talk about that you know that sometimes you have this dream an idea of what your life should look like or what a relationship should look like and then that doesn't happen, but the dream's still living and you actually have to grieve that dream so I did I have to grieve it and let it go and um.

[25:36] Truly be in the sadness of that because yeah I had my dream but it wasn't what I wanted. It was what I thought I wanted. But when it came down to it, it wasn't what I wanted at all.

[25:47] Interesting. So you mentioned something earlier that I want to get back to, and I want to do this, and then I want to ask you to come back for a second show, because I don't think we're going to get through it all, but I want to start the conversation. You talked about being and intuitive some people hear that and they think woo woo woo sort of a thing like that um, but you say that you've had it you knew what to do you just didn't do it um how long did you.

[26:27] Think or know that you were or had these intuitive powers, I’ve been trusting my gut instincts pretty much my whole life yeah so um, and but it's weird because if you say trust your gut people respect that but if you say trust your intuition then all of a sudden that goes woo and it's like yeah but it's the same thing um, you know so very much especially with the decisions i made to build my businesses they were all gut instincts like hey this is a gap in the market this is where we can put it on hey this would be a really good service to have hey why don't we run social skills camps hey when all of these came from a place of just this hey you know i just have this feeling let's do that and my ex-business partner she was intuitive too so she was one that It was like, oh, I got the signs, I've seen this three times, we need to do this, you know, like that kind of extreme. But it was nice because we respected each other's feelings in that regard of allowing ourselves to get to that point that we got to expand the business as much as we did together.

[27:37] You know, really, I've always been intuitive. Like I would just know things without knowing how I knew them. And the best example I have for that is, um, one day my mom picked us up from school and my sister and I got in the car first and my, we're waiting for my brother. And my sister said, Oh, you'll never guess what happened to my friend today. And I said, Oh, she fell off a horse and broke her arm. And she goes, did you see her? I said, no, she goes, that's exactly what happened I went what, and people could put it down to you know oh maybe I knew she rode horses or you know that's just the typical thing but it just came out like as a matter of fact to the point that my mom and my sister and even me we were all staring at me and I'm just like where did that even come from I don't even know I remember as well I was in, my final year of high school and I was driving to go do an exam and I drove past this corner near our house and this truck had flipped over and I went oh my gosh someone's died there and it's really tragic someone really young has died and it turned out the truck driver had his three-year-old in the seat and when the truck tipped the three-year-old actually died.

[28:46] And I just couldn't shake that feeling all through my exam I just had this deep sadness and then when I got home the road was closed I had to go a weird way to get home but the point was I just had this knowing of things and a lot of the we all have intuition we all have these instincts but we've been so conditioned to put them in a drawer and leave them away instead of actually honoring it so for me to not listen and put that date on my resignation letter when I already knew my soul was screaming for me to get out of that job, that was me denying my intuition and then it came back and ended up being a big health kind of thing but at the same time.

[29:26] Yeah, it does sound woo. And I like to call it inner authority because people can sit with that more. What does your heart tell you to do? Yeah, not so much. What is your authority inside you telling you to do? And they can get behind that and rally that. So it's interesting just depending what word you slot in there,

[29:43] how people will accept it and all they won't. Okay. So before we end this episode and get ready for part two, let's talk about willow healing. And it looks like you have built this based on the business of intuition, right? Helping people with their spiritual life and their inner alignment and all of that. Does that sound correct? Yeah, and somehow the relationship, so I have to share a little bit of this story, but I wanted some extra cash and I refused to go back to my old way of living, my old life, my old job. Because I'm like, nope, I have all these gifts, I want to use them somehow. So I joined a psychic hotline. You know what people call psychics on their phone? And I kept getting...

[30:36] Did you tell anybody when you did it? That i that i joined this psychic hotline yeah i told my mom and my dad and they were like really i was like yeah and they're like okay all right okay i was telling my grandmother and she's like so people call you and like do like psychic things i said yes and she thought it was hilarious anyway but um, when i started the calls that were coming through were all love readings right and i was like, oh i don't want to do love readings no thank you i was like no not doing love readings so then I got more love readings and more and then I went oh my goodness all right really these people need to learn how to have a relationship with themselves and then start to have a relationship with these other people, and once I accepted that, I got really good at doing love readings and I don't do them in terms of like I pull my cards out or anything like that I intuitively tune into them like to their kind of I say their spirit team or their guides or ancestors, and then i get the information from them and so um.

[31:40] My business ended up pivoting so now i help people have relationships with themselves so that they can feel seen heard and, felt in relationships and connected again and then all my clients that i started attracting were those who were either in the point of choosing whether they should leave a relationship or stay in a relationship which is basically my whole Mo choosing to stay in my marriage I will leave my first marriage, choosing to stay in my business partnership or leave, to stay in my company or sell it, you know, to stay in my job and go numb or to leave it. And really, these are the different aspects of relationships that I support people with. But it really comes back to what do you want and what are you choosing in your life? Okay, that did not go where I thought it was going to go.

[32:30] But just like you said at the beginning, sometimes it happens. So let's do this. Let's take a break there so I can gather myself and figure out how to ask these questions in a different light. But ladies and gentlemen, willowhealing.org. The information is in the show notes. Catherine Crestani is my guest. And we are going to come back with a part two and if Catherine said something that made you pause and think just like it did me, stick around for part two and we'll see you soon but until then be sure to live healthy and be happy.