What are we really looking for when we chase achievement, approval, success, or even rebellion?
For my guest Katie Padilla, so much of it came back to one very human longing:
To be seen. To be loved. To feel deeply connected.
Katie is a certified family law specialist, founder of Bloom Family Law, collaboratively trained attorney, certified coach and meditation teacher. But the path that brought her there is anything but conventional.
As a highly sensitive child growing up in a family experiencing conflict and divorce, Katie remembers feeling alone and longing for a kind of connection she wasn't receiving. She developed a deep relationship with God at a very young age, and an inner sense that there was something more for her.
Then she stopped trying to be the “good girl.”
Katie became what she calls the black sheep and the rebel. She dropped out of college, moved to San Francisco, partied hard and intentionally explored the opposite of the perfectionism and anxiety that had defined her earlier life.
And for a while, it worked.
Until it didn't.
What she thought she might find through freedom, rebellion and experience was the same thing she'd been looking for all along: deep love, connection and acceptance.
So Katie changed direction again.
She went back to school, worked incredibly hard, got into law school, became an attorney, and finally achieved the kind of success that made everyone around her proud.
And something still wasn't right.
Because people admired her accomplishments. They respected the title.
But Katie realized:
Admiration isn't the same thing as love.
That realization eventually followed her into family law.
Katie had created her own firm because she wanted to practice differently, only to discover that she'd recreated many of the same patterns she'd been trying to leave behind.
Once again, she had to ask herself:
Is this actually who I am?
And that question changed the way she practices law.
In this conversation, Katie and I explore the tension between connection and authenticity, the roles we take on in order to feel safe and valued, and what happens when we begin trusting our own internal compass rather than the expectations around us.
And eventually, we bring all of that into Katie's work with divorce.
Because perhaps saying “I don't want this anymore” isn't the whole awakening.
Maybe it's the beginning of asking:
What do I want?
What is actually true for me?
What have I been doing because I thought I was supposed to?
And who am I when some of those roles begin to fall away?
We talk about Katie's work with foster youth, her own childhood and spirituality, rebellion and perfectionism, achievement and identity, the nervous system, family court, women's changing relationship with marriage and divorce, and why she believes difficult transitions can become opportunities to meet ourselves more deeply.
Katie's story left me thinking about how many different ways we can spend our lives trying to find the thing we've been looking for all along.
And what might change when instead of looking outside ourselves, we begin listening to what's been there all along.
Connect with Katie:
Website: bloomlegalcoach.com
IG: @bloomfamilylaw
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/katie-padilla-bloom
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