A Curated Life: Recent Episodes
Katerina
The kind of talks we might have if I was beside you getting ready in the morning, or sipping coffee in your passenger seat on the way to work. Bring my friends and I with you in the moments you crave raw conversation about real life stuff, as we hope to journey together in creating a curated life for ourselves.
Welcome to the first episode of the summer series by A Curated Life and The New Wives Tales ladies Katerina and Taylor. To kick off the summer, we are talking about our mental health, learning to recognize when we need a break, and how to get the recuperation we deserve. Thanks for being a part of our community!
Love, Katerina and Taylor
A little message to keep you company today. Listen on your way to or from work, while you get ready in the morning, or while you cook a good meal. Here are my thoughts going into this Friday.
The last couple days, I have been on a crusade in my home to organize every inch of this place. There are 1,000 things I need to be doing, but it's hard to accomplish anything knowing that things are not in order in my home space.
I've been doing a lot of planting in my yard. Warm weather has been coming in and out, teasing us, and I want to remind everyone that if you are hoping to build up your outdoor space this year, now is the time to get started!
Speaking of outdoors, does anyone else pretend they don't have allergies when they clearly do? I forget every year that I have this issue, and I'm always surprised when the runny nose sets in... but with little kids around you, who doesn't always have a runny nose anyway?
On a serious note, a message I keep seeing that I am meditating on: It is not your fault that you were hurt, but it is your responsibility to heal.
Have a fabulous day.
Love,
Katerina
Join me for a chat on feeling overwhelmed and how I handle the stress when it starts to feel like a little too much. We all have too many balls to juggle at times, and rather than just drop everything it's important to assess exactly what you're feeling and how we might be able to send our nervous system signals to calm down.
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Join Erin and I for the kick off of a new season in A Curated Life podcast! We are bringing the new year in strong with a talk about things we would say to our past selves, what it’s taken to evolve, and how we are different now. Somehow, even with mentions of psych wards, divorce, postpartum, and unhealthy coping, it still feels like we have only scratched the surface. You won’t want to miss this guest, and Erin will definitely have to come back on the podcast as she showed up fully as her authentic and genuine self.
Thank you so much Erin for being such an engaging and interesting conversation partner!
And, as always, thank you to those who watch and listen. This community is so beautiful because of each unique person who engages with us!
With love and appreciation,
Katerina
Happy new year : )
In this episode, I take on the intimidating task of solo chatting about traveling with tiny humans. I have flown many times with my babies, including my most recent trip when I travelled alone with my 4 year old, 3 year old, and infant. Here I do my best to lay out all the things that come to mind for success when hitting the road with tiny chichis. Living your best life might look like never leaving the house when you have a baby, but in case your hold any dreams/fantasies about getting to leave your backyard for an adventure one day, I hope this helps!
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Kelly visits again from Florida after her family trip to Spain, and we have a chat about anxiety around motherhood. How do we make room for ourselves to accept our own reactions through parenting and handling life while being responsible for our tiny humans? Whether it's traveling with family, going through life changes, or helping our children learn how to process their own feelings, how do we navigate parenting through our own reactive tendencies.
My Floridian bestie came in town, and joined me for a podcast! We chatted about motherhood, how the journey has been, how it has shaped us, and what it has given and taken away. Kelly is a stay at home mom who homeschools, and I have great love and respect for her chosen path of motherhood, as we support each other and give each other props from afar.
Thank you for listening and being a part of this community,
Katerina
Tori and I sit down to talk about love versus cathexis. Our thoughts on the differences between having feelings for someone and choosing to love that person. How do our perceptions of love affect our decision in relationships?
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Today I take the listeners on a walk with myself, my baby Salem, and my dane Lola, where you can hear the sounds of the neighborhood and I share my thoughts on "doing it all". How does one "do it all"? What does that look like?
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Tori and I sit down for a chat about happiness. Are you happy? What does that mean? Can you be happy when things are hard?
With love,
Katerina
Join us for a chat about ways that we minimize our pain and the pain of others and how this holds us back from processing what we've been through. Why do we feel the need to compare our struggles to the challenges others face and why do we tell ourselves we should be "fine"?
Thanks and love,
Katerina
In this episode, we have a little fun answering random questions that give some insight into who we are. We talk about a wide range of topics from the books we read (or listen to) on repeat to the worst lies we have told our parents. This was a fun podcast to record and also a sweet way to get to know each other better.
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Join us for some good old fashioned girl talk about... Dating. Betsy touches on re-entering the world of going on dates. Tori shares about dating someone for almost decade. Both Betsy and Tori put Katerina on the spot with some hard hitting questions. Maybe it was the wine, or the feeling empowered from the fresh manicures, but we had a great time filming this chat. Let us know what you think!
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Our first ever podcast with three of us together! We talk about boundaries, setting boundaries and holding to them. Thank you so much for joining us for this chat, we really enjoyed this one. Sharing our thoughts and experiences around evolving in this way was a great start to our day!
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Join Tori and I for a little chat about romanticizing your life. How does it help our mental health and what ways do we do this for ourselves?
Let us know how you romanticize your life, and what areas you think we missed!
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Let's have a talk about sex! Betsy and I sit down with you to talk about a topic that can be shrouded in shame. Maybe if we talked about this more, we would have better sex lives!
Let's remove the stigma behind healthy sex choices and options.
Love,
Katerina
Join Rachel Porter and I for a chat about her life and some of the lessons she's learned along the way and is learning now. We talk about finding yourself, fighting for yourself, and using your past learned skills in your present day. From the mental health field to real estate and doing it all while becoming a single mother to her two sons, Rachel is an incredible example of strength and resiliency.
As always, thank you so much for listening!
Thanks and love,
Katerina
In honor of St. Patricks Day, Tori and I have a chat about LUCK. Is there such a thing as "good luck" or "bad luck"? What are things that influence our feelings around luck or other peoples' success?
As always, thank you for listening : )
Love, Katerina
Join us for this very special episode where my sister Amanda joins me to talk about building community. Everything from finding friends, fostering friendships, to curating your social circle is all the table for this episode. Amanda is married to an officer in the military, and is an introvert who has had to learn how to start anew with finding her people over and over again.
Thanks for listening, and I hope this helps you find your tribe.
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Join Tori and I for a fun chat about interior design and how to get started in your own home. Here we share some of our favorite places to find well priced gems and how we get started with furnishing and decorating a new space.
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Join us for a chat about VAGINAS. Information about anatomy and the care and keeping of vaginas is so important to know! Join us for a good talk about healthy vagina practices, sex, grooming, and many other great vagina tips. There is no shame in being a vagina owner or trying to figure out the complicated body part.
Please let me know if you think I left out important information or was incorrect in anything that I shared. We are all here to learn from each other!
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Join me in my first ever solo podcast, JUST ME, sharing about my career and the journey it has been over the last decade. As intimidating as it felt to just record myself and share for this podcast, it was time to tackle one on my own. Here I just share and reflect on my career and how I've figured out doing life alongside a demanding work regimen. Let me know your thoughts and how this compares to your own journey!
Thanks,
Katerina
Join us for this chat on finding mentors and relationships that help you grow and become the best version of yourself. Tori and I share a little bit about people who have shaped us and how we've learned from the people we look up to as well as how we have benefitted from our mentors.
Thanks for listening, I can't believe we are ten episodes in already!
Love, Katerina
This podcast episode is a casual conversation between Betsy Kline and I about starting new careers, new business adventures, and truly throwing yourself down the path you've chosen. Betsy took a year to leave Richmond and adventure in other places before returning recently to start again in the real estate field. She has thrown herself back into her field of choice, and chosen not to hold back because of the fear and judgment of other people.
Thanks and love,
Katerina
Are we lying to ourselves when we talk about our goals or resolutions for this new year? What could it look like if we resolve to be kinder to our bodies and honor our needs? Perhaps our intentions for the year should be made after examining what in our environment or choices is not serving us well.
Thank you for listening <3
Katerina
Reading a quote from Bri Wenke, one of my favorite artists, we talk about society's expectations of women. There are so many contradictions in the messaging to us about how we are supposed to look and who we are supposed to be. Can we take the shame out of being natural, take the shame out of beauty treatments, take the shame out of being insecure, and find value in whatever version of ourselves brings us joy?
As always, thank you for listening, and happy new year!
Katerina W
Reflecting on this year and everything that has been accomplished, some of the lessons learned and things to be grateful for while going into Christmas weekend. Join Tori and I for a talk that's a little on the lighter side for us, but a good opportunity for me to share a little bit about my life this year and what has happened in 2022. Thank you, as always, for listening and connecting with us. Wishing you a very merry Christmas!
Reflecting on the beginning of the book "When Things Fall Apart" by Pema Chodron. She speaks on fear and standing in fear and discomfort rather than trying to escape the present moment in an effort to avoid an ugly reality.
In this episode, I read excerpts from this book, based on the author's spiritual journey and process of embracing Buddhist principles. Tori and I reflect on the messages in the book and how they pertain to our tendencies to avoid the truth or run away from disappointment.
Thank you to everyone who listens, send messages, and connects with us around this podcast. I appreciate all of you so much!
Thanks and love,
Katerina
My mom, Heather Wiley, joins me on this episode to talk about perspective and how our experiences over time contribute to changing perspectives.
We reflect on how her perspectives on marriage, parenthood, and boundaries have changed over time along with the value of evolving and growing from your hardships and experiences.
This episode is going live a day later than I would like because I gave birth on Friday, which is when this episode would have been recorded. I thought about recording this yesterday when I returned home from the hospital in order to stay on time, but chose instead to practice grace for myself. I'll keep everyone posted on how I do continuing to try and honor the practice of allowing rest for myself and making room for my own humanity and needs.
As always, thank you so much for listening and offering up your responses and thoughts. It means the world to me to connect with so many fantastic people.
With love,
Katerina
A new podcast visitor today, Betsy Kline, was visiting Richmond and came to my house for episode 3!
We are talking about feeling our feelings.
We tend to tuck away negative feelings, cope in negative ways, try to numb ourselves. But, how do we recognize when this is what we are doing, and how do we move past this tendency?
Am I willing to suffer more today for an easier/better tomorrow?
Living today for my future self.
As always, thank you so much for listening! Please send me your thoughts, feelings, feedback, or things you think we should be sharing : ) I appreciate you.
When you're engaging in an activity are you doing this activity for the joy of it or because you're ignoring a need to process, or avoiding processing a negative feeling?
"I'm too proud to be sad"
You can go through positive change and still have hard emotions to process through that change.
Ignoring feelings and tucking them down causes them to fester and come out uglier later. What did I use as a tool to numb or cover up feelings?
Finding a great therapist has been key to our own personal healing. Identifying the motivation behind our actions empowers us to be able to make positive change.
Getting pregnant forced me to slow down, completely change my lifestyle, and further process all of my trauma. If we learn the tools to actively process our feelings, then we have them on hand to use them in the moments when we struggle.
Find people who are a safe space. You need people who you can genuinely be vulnerable with them. It's hard for me to be fully open.
Try writing, journaling, to process. Find a safe space you can go to in your mind during a hard moment. Recognize that it takes time to come down chemically off of a strong reaction, and do not respond to a situation until you've had more time to process.
Make choices for the future you who is going to wake up in ten years and have to live with the last decade that you created. Make decisions and process in a way that will not be a burden to you later. Actively work on yourself, engage with a great therapist.
Shame is not the point of our life lessons, overcoming our challenges is something to be proud of.
As always, I appreciate every listener so much. Please always feel free to reach out with feedback, thoughts, feelings, or requests on what you want to hear more of in the future. Connecting with people who listen and feel a gut response to these words gives me life. : )
- Katerina
◦ This podcast is for all people, truth applies to everyone. Looking back at the last episode, I want to be clear that we are all inundated with messaging growing up, whether you are man or woman, the messages are different depending on who you are and what kind of culture you are raised in but we all have to evaluate what kind of expectations were set for us and whether we are holding onto those because we like the path that was laid before us or because we were told to like it.
◦Boundary setting~ especially with the holidays, since you became an adult how many years out of your adulthood have you truly enjoyed the holidays? Are we letting this time of the year feel like chores/ to-do list?
◦ Sometimes we might get stuck in traditions for the wrong reasons, because we are protecting others' feelings, or because we are just doing what we’ve always done. But have we asked if those traditions are the best version of the holidays we could have?
◦ Have we evaluated how we set our priorities? For each of us, what’s most important might look different, some of us might find it more important to do holidays with relatives we never see or speak with but for some of us the holiday season should be focused on the people who show us love year round.
◦ Do you want to start your own tradition?
◦ Are there elements of the holiday season that become a financial burden? It’s okay to draw boundaries around these things and problem solve what is more doable or makes sense for you/your household.
◦ Giving yourself permission to suffer less.
◦ There might be ways to “give” in certain ways that hurt less for you personally to make it easier for loved ones to “give” in the areas where you would like expectations to look differently.
◦ It is always harder to be the one left than to be the one leaving.
◦ It can be difficult for loved ones to understand how your work might affect your needs or availability during the holidays.
◦ Let us know how you have personally navigated the holidays!
I am at the tail end of an unplanned pregnancy, giving birth soon. Tori obtained her real estate license this year. We all find ourselves facing difficult situations and new adventures... but how do we approach these things?
Anthony de Mello said a student asked his master, "What is the secret of your serenity?" Said the master: "Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable."
We are dealt the hand that we are dealt, and we have to play those cards that we are holding.
Amanda, my sister, has said to me before that perhaps instead of praying for things to be easier we should be praying for the strength and grace we need.
There is no growth in the comfortable.
Give yourself room to mourn upsetting things that happen and then move forward into making peace with your situation.
Are we blaming our environment for every hard thing that happens and wallowing in misery, or are we taking responsibility for what we can change or the action we can take? What should we be starting new today?
How are you viewing your cup, half empty or half full?
Are you in a toxic or negative environment that sucks the life out of you? Are you telling yourself you're stuck in bad situation or the wrong environment and believing that you have no 'out'? Are you being honest with yourself about what you could do to change an environment that is no good for you?
It's really difficult to be content when your environment is sucking the life out of you.
Put your oxygen mask on before reaching for someone else's.
If you're trying to be "strong" for children or family, are you creating a pattern for them to follow one day that you would want them to be part of?
We often feel the need to fit in a certain box or fit in a role we've been told is the part we should be playing. Are we being open to real connections with new people or people who might already be in our lives? Is there something meaningful we could learn from people who are different from ourselves?
It's never too late to change a life you've created or start something new.
Ten years from now, what choice will I want to have made today?
Are we on cruise control or letting life take us wherever the tide goes, or are we living with intention?
Is the life you're creating one you actually want or the one you've been told you should want? Are you following an agenda you set or one that someone else wrote for you? If you're committed to an idea for the wrong reasons, that makes it much harder to change course. It's okay for a certain path to work for a season and then to let that season end and start a new one. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not right, the easy path and the best path are not the same.
Look for the collateral beauty in the hardship.
Are the people in our inner circle bringing us love in hard times or have we let people be that close to us that perhaps are not making our environment more beautiful?
Relationships are give and take, but where are you only giving?
Thank you for joining us for this first podcast. I've enjoyed being on podcasts before, but the topics were usually very business focused. Creating a podcast where my friends can join me for talks where we are just sitting having real conversation about meaningful topics is something that I've felt a pull to do. My intention is to create a space you can visit when you want to feel less alone in moments you might wish you had girlfriends in the room. We don't have our proper mic yet but we hit record and let this be a raw and a one take genuine share. Give us feedback, give us thoughts! Thank you Tori for joining me with no preparation/heads up ahead of time on your part : )
with love, Katerina