From Adversity to Empowerment: Catherine Bell’s Journey of Resilience & Impact (Part 1)

What if hitting rock bottom was the beginning of your greatest transformation? In this powerful episode of Rise From The Ashes, world-renowned author and philanthropist Catherine Bell shares her remarkable journey from being adopted at 16 to becoming a beacon of hope through her nonprofit Wealthwise Women and her hedge fund supporting first responders and veterans.

Catherine's story is a testament to resilience, financial empowerment, and purpose-driven leadership. She opens up about the challenges she faced, the courage it took to rewrite her story, and her mission to promote financial literacy while assisting those in need.

🔹 Key Takeaways:

• How adversity fuels personal growth and resilience
• The power of financial literacy in transforming lives
• Why dream boards and intentionality create lasting success
• The importance of seeking support from those who’ve walked similar paths

Catherine’s insights into burnout, vulnerability, and self-discovery offer a roadmap for anyone looking to turn struggles into stepping stones. Whether you’re facing challenges or striving to create a legacy of impact, this episode will leave you inspired and empowered.

🎧 Listen now and take the first step toward your transformation.

🔗 Learn more about Catherine Bell: Titan Impact Group

📢 Join the Conversation:
✔ Subscribe & Leave a Review – Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Listen Notes
✔ Join A Million Dreams – Leadership & Growth Circles

#Podcast #Resilience #FinancialFreedom #Leadership #RiseFromTheAshes

Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 From Burnout to Brilliance
• 13:32 Journey of Resilience and Growth
• 18:47 Navigating Change and Self-Discovery
• 32:34 Journey of Reflection and Resilience

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to season five of Royce V. She is burnout to brilliance. My next guest is nothing short of amazing. She has had her own journey through perils, tribulations, but also successes. Her name is Catherine Bell and she joins me today. From where do you live? Because I can't remember.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Buffalo, arizona, yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:24

Yeah, and then we're close to us. Scott's down and I'll let her introduce herself. Katherine, please tell the world who you are, what you do and what you're passionate about I love this.

Speaker 2: 0:36

I'm super happy to be here. I love our conversations and conversations who am I?

Speaker 2: 0:42

so I'm k Bell. I am a three-time international bestselling author and I have a hedge fund that we are currently in the middle of helping over 33,000 first responders and veterans get out of debt, stay out of debt, bring financial literacy. Really, it's about oxygen, bringing monies like oxygen. The more you have, the easier it is to breathe and the bigger the difference in the world you can make. And that's what they do. And then, of course, I have two nonprofits my one nonprofit, wealthwise Women. It's all about really leaning in and teaching women not only how to invest, but actually bringing them the investment so that they invest. Because, like I tell my twins, I don't care what you know, I only care what you do. And I tell the women the same thing. And because it's clear that when women make a profit like they pour it back into their families and communities.

Speaker 2: 1:30

And so's over 500,000 children in the US foster care system and 350,000 are available for adoption today. And what happens is right now there's 2.1 million families looking to adopt, but they're unaware of this particular type of adoption. It's very specialized is that if these children are not adopted and they age out of the foster care system by the time they're 18, on their 18th birthday, they experience Black Trash Bag Day, which means they're handed a black trash bag and they're told to put all their belongings in it and then they're out, which 70% of the people who are homeless came out of foster care. So they're homeless, drugs, prostitution being trafficked another massive epidemic and now incarcerated, costing taxpayers billions on the front end and the back end. So the solution really is getting these kids adopted. And why does this matter?

Speaker 2: 2:37

I was adopted when I was 16 and it saved my life. It allowed me to go on graduate high school, allowed me to go to college, travel the world and then build an extraordinary life all because I had a family that loved me and still do. And I adopted my twins out of the foster care system as well. They were four months old when they got them. They're now 20. My son's a US Marine serving over in Japan and my daughter's, 20 years old, living here in the Valley, living her best life. So that's what I'm super passionate about.

Speaker 1: 3:12

I love what you do and when I meet people like you, the whole place blows up, literally brightens, because not only do you have a story, you've come from a very similar place and that's partly what fuels you. But that fuel isn't just for now. You're actually creating impact for a legacy for much further, on training people, training women, especially, because that's where your focus point is. But you also have a huge fuel and passion for kids. Can we rewind a few couple of years to tell people what the journey was for you personally, if you don't mind sharing?

Speaker 2: 3:56

Yeah, absolutely. I was born to a teenage mother in Northern Canada and a young teenage mother, and I ended up in and out of more homes than you could possibly count. I went to 13 different schools. I didn't actually learn to read until I was in the eighth grade and I still, to this day, struggle with reading comprehension, which is why being a three-time international bestselling author is nothing short of an extraordinary.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Seriously and this is a huge example of who, not how right, I didn't know how I was going to do this, but having an extraordinary team of people come around me who knew how to do it. They are the who that knew how, and we walked through the entire process and I'm literally this Saturday getting ready to write another book and I've got several more on the way, because, again, it's when you have the people who know how, then magic truly happens. I'm clear, if it wasn't for the people around me who came alongside of me and continue to come alongside of me for all the things, there's just no way that I would be where I'm at today, like I really is extraordinary people in my life.

Speaker 1: 5:06

But what are your books about? Because you've had an immense amount of knowledge, input, expertise come around you, but you're the gem. Your message is the star of the show. It's for everybody who comes on here. It's not about me, it's about the guests. So if you're listening to this now, just pause it, because what you're about to hear is nothing short of miracles and gold, because these messages change fucking lives. This is why this podcast exists, so please share it. Katherine, what is that message in some of these books? You've got three so far. There'll be soon to be four, I'm sure five or six.

Speaker 2: 5:50

I'm not joking. There probably will be. I'm already working on four, five and six.

Speaker 1: 5:53

So yeah, Love it, fucking love it. But it's more of a message. It's about a message.

Speaker 2: 5:59

It really is about the message. That's what it's about and it's the so the first one is calm is to impact, and here's what it is. It's about my company, titan Impact Group, my fund company, and because here's what I'm really clear about. So I've been in, so I'll share that journey and it shares my whole journey in the book, in that I came to this country.

Speaker 2: 6:18

When I came to the United States, when I was 26 years old, married my husband and he had a dream and we took his dream and we turned it into a multimillion dollar company. So I was a millionaire by the time. I was 30, right, the American dream, truly. And then we sold our company in 2008, 2009,. The economy crash and my husband got sick, really sick, to the point where we literally lost everything and became homeless. So I had to go back to work to provide for my family and figure it out. So I was working 80 hours a week and burning the candle at both ends, taking care of my sick husband, my twins, all the things that I knew that there's no way I could sustain this, and so I learned that the average millionaire has seven streams of passive income, and so I needed to figure it out. So I just went to work at figuring it out and that's when I started investing and we did buy and hold and discovered I don't like tenants in toilets. Then did wholesaling and it wasn't true passive income. Then I ran a program called the Flipping Females and I partnered with women teaching them how to invest and how to flip properties. We flipped about 500 properties. Then did started my first hedge fund and it was vacation rentals, turns out, I don't like guests in toilets. And then we did residential ground up development, commercial ground up development, was doing all the things.

Speaker 2: 7:32

And then in 2018, that's when my husband died very tragically. So like literally in a moment, my life, the way it was done and I became a widow and a single mom like literally in a moment. But at that point I created 13 streams of passive income for our family and it allowed for me to take a year off and grieve with my twins and figure out what I was going to do. And it was in that time that my company, titan Impact Group, was born. Because what I realized in that time chasing money wasn't the answer. There was no feel goods about that, and so for me, I knew, moving forward, that anything that I did moving forward must leave every person, property and community better than I found them, and that's how my company was born. So my company, titan Impact Group so Titan is like being the sentinels of the American dream. Impact is that we leave every person, property and community better than we found them, every project, every investment we do. And then group is that I set up all investments so that everybody can plug into my investments and create those passive streams of income while making that impact and living out their version of the American dream. So that's how my company was born streams of income while making that impact and living out their version of the American dream. So that's how my company was born. And so that is my book, commas to Impact, and it talks more about that because I believe we can do well and do good at the same time.

Speaker 2: 8:54

My second book is called Complete Wealth, because here's the deal Going through all those decades of investing and all the things. There was a lot of pain in all of it, right, like when I talk about I don't like tenants in toilets or guests in toilets. There are some stories behind that and I share those stories, but the point being is that there's a completion process that I walked through and you, boz, you and I talked about this. We've been doing personal development more for decades. Right, and knowing the personal development is one thing, but actually implementing the steps into our life such that we can take the pain and literally now use it as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, that's where it's at.

Speaker 2: 9:37

And so that book literally walks people through taking the pain from bad investments, bad businesses, bad partnerships, whatever it is.

Speaker 2: 9:42

And there's a process that by the time you bad investments, bad businesses, bad partnerships, whatever it is and there's a process that by the time you get through the other side, you literally now have your conditions of satisfaction and are now stepping forward and springboarding from all those experiences. And then my third book is called Wealthwise Women and that's connected to my nonprofit. So I brought 12 other women along, extraordinary women and who literally came from nothing and literally built up their empires from nothing into something really extraordinary and all these different asset classes and completely different walks of life. But the point being is that anybody can do this, like really it's not rocket science, it literally is putting one step in front of the other and having women like us come along and mentor and bring the deals, bring the resources, like whatever it is coming together as a community to help make this happen. So those are my first three books and then the next ones are about the adoption and all that. So those are coming, which I'm really excited about.

Speaker 1: 10:48

I'm stood here for people who can't see me on video. I'm stood here with a little grin in my face for the last five minutes while Catherine's been talking. Two reasons One business isn't learned, it's developed over time. Two the lessons that you've learned you've applied very quickly. That you've learned you've applied very quickly. But also you applied them at your lowest point and you took self-care. Prioritize that for one year while you grieved and you spoke. Focus on yourself and family. Many people don't do that. Many people in that seamless situation or a a situation they have felt that is weighing on them emotionally, mentally and also physically, they dive into work. You didn't. Can you answer? Why didn't you? Because you did the opposite of what most people normally do to bury all the shit that's going on and they don't want to feel it. Why did you actually spend time for yourself?

Speaker 2: 11:47

I knew that the only way around the shit show I just experienced was through it. Yeah, and that's I knew. I just knew, and I knew it was going to be hard and painful and horrible, but I knew to the core of my being, in a proverbial sense. My twins were 14 at the time. I grabbed their hand, so to speak, and we dove hard and deep and fast and we just went all in. We were in six forms of therapy. We just went all in. We were in six forms of therapy. I went all in because here's the thing I learned from other women who had been through this.

Speaker 2: 12:32

So, within days of my husband passing away, I had my best friend actually reach out to several women in my life that unfortunately had lost their husbands, who were widows and single moms, and I had her ask one question If you had to do it all over again, what would you have done differently? Because there's no better people to learn from than people who have been through it, and that's like a big thing for me, who has been through this, that I can. They already know how, and every single one of them answered the exact same way we wish we had gotten our kids into therapy sooner. Within six days we were in six forms of therapy. I didn't question it, I didn't hesitate, I absolutely trusted.

Speaker 2: 13:19

From their experience that was what I needed to do and my kids hated me, they hated it, they hated losing their dad. Like it got ugly and it got dark and it was painful and it was. You go back and look at my social media pictures and at that time I'm like I can't even believe I allowed anybody to take a picture. I was a freaking train wreck. I'm not even kidding, we were all train wrecks. Even kidding, we were all train wrecks. But we had to completely have permission to fall apart so that we could come back. And when we came back I felt my heart at that time was shattered into a billion pieces.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Yeah, no, I can relate to that. I think that's the point.

Speaker 2: 14:03

When it came back together. We're just not the same people. You never come back the same people after that. Pardon, when it came back together. We're just not the same people. You never come back the same people after that. But we had to do the work Right. We really had to.

Speaker 1: 14:16

What you're sharing now, catherine, your real story. This is what this is all about and it's not about a judgment People try and put on this persona privado for others. Fuck that. Be who you are. You did the honorable thing that most other people couldn't even fathom, but you did the one thing to change it and you had the courage and sense, inner guidance, sense to ask others, the people who have been there that I love and this is one of the qualities I love about you is that you're able to ask for help. You're not shy and people who are just still in their business or going through a bereavement or lost a family friend, whatever the situation is fucking. Ask somebody for help, don't go through it alone.

Speaker 2: 15:18

People who have been through it. I feel like people are the wrong people, correct Like they want, their like my family as much as they wanted to be there for me, they hadn't gone through this. Nobody could guide me through this. The only people that could guide me through this are people who have already walked down that horrible path. So I got really raw and vulnerable and just was scared out of my mind. But knowing that there was just so much more on the other side and that's what kept pulling me forward.

Speaker 1: 15:50

But that takes self-awareness and all this Catherine mentioned earlier about personal development. It's not hype if you apply it. It is hype if you don't apply it and you have the knowledge. Self-awareness takes resilience, and resilience is built from courage. That is the only way to build resilience. You just don't get resilience or you don't become resilient. You have to have courage to face what things like Catherine just has your fears, your deep, darkest secrets. But if you do it alone, you're going to fall, and you're going to fall fast.

Speaker 1: 16:29

But what she did differently was ask people who have been there done it. But she invested that time back into her legacy. At the time that was her children, and now her children are becoming even more successful because they did the work when they were put in a position with a group of people they felt safe with. They may not liked it, but it was the best thing for them at the time. If you hadn hadn't have done that, possibly burnout would have happened. Oh, absolutely. But let me clarify burnout for a moment, because it's not just fatigue or I'm going to have a bad day and go into addiction. Burnout is chronic fatigue.

Speaker 2: 17:17

Oh, with what happened yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:22

Sonia, no, no Flashbacks. Chronic fatigue as in, no sleeping. What happened? Yeah, it's so new. No flashbacks, yeah, borderline cps at cpc, ptsd all of the buzzwords you hear are actually fucking real. Yep, and they don't just happen in a battlefield. They can happen at home, in real life, through different events, because people absorb situations differently. Burnout is a lot of things and it is a buzzword, but let me be very clear it's real and it takes many different forms. All that I've mentioned is literally just the slither of the iceberg, but by seeking help from people that you know, that's what creates the bond longer term.

Speaker 1: 18:05

But I want to touch on something you said earlier as well. Katherine, your business skills are exquisite, but you didn't know what they were to begin with, did you? No, not at all. So how did you learn and envelop that knowledge from other people? That's where you learned it and doing yourself and falling and the rest of that jazz where you go through. But you've applied it. There's so much good in the world. There were so many driving forces here. What brought them all together?

Speaker 1: 18:39

so I knew you're gonna laugh, because I went from tears to laughter. That's what I wanted, thank you so here's what's funny about this.

Speaker 2: 18:47

So when I was younger again, I was born to a teenage mother, right, and as a child, those people that are bigger than me occurred as adults, right, I didn't, I couldn't distinguish between a teenager and adult, right, like I was a child and I remember I want to say I was like six, seven years old maybe and I remember watching and I just I've always observed and just really watched people and I think when you go in and out of more homes then you can count like it literally was a survival skill, right, because I had to read people to keep myself, my brother, safe. There was, just there was a lot of protective skills that you start honing, and one of them I distinctly remember was I always thought, oh my God, I never want to grow up. Was I always thought, oh my God, I never want to grow up? Because as I get older and grow up, how did I so as a child? Here's how it came out as a child is, the older you get, the more stupid you get. Like that was my observation and my experience of these people that I had been surrounded by was, as a child, I could literally see the choices that they were making and the probable, predictable future of those choices. Now, I didn't have those words as a kid, right? I just knew, wow, you're like really stupid, right, that was a thing. And as I got older obviously doing the work, understanding you know the dynamics of all the things that's when I really I don't know.

Speaker 2: 20:22

There's just something inside of me that was like wait a second, if I can actually learn from other people's stupidity and not have to go down that road and realize that there's another road I could go down, there must be another group of people that I could learn from to learn about the smart road. So I learn about the stupid road from to learn about the smart road. So I learn about the stupid road and I learn about the smart road. And that's, that is a huge part of all of my knowledge and wisdom.

Speaker 2: 20:47

Again, it's because of all the extraordinary people around me. It's not me because I'm brilliant. It literally is because I'm insatiably curious and I ask a lot of questions and I lean in and ask people if you had to do it over again, what would you differently? What did you do? What do you regret? What made you succeed? So I ask all the questions and then from there, my thought is that if success leaves clues, if I do the same if not similar things that the successful people did and avoid doing the things that the unsuccessful people did, I should, in theory, have a little bit more success in my life than this other group in theory, and so that's really what done well that takes again.

Speaker 1: 21:38

It takes courage to learn that. Yes, a lot of people, including me, I did this. I thought at one point I knew fucking everything and I knew how to do it and I wouldn't listen. But it was the one of the worst things I ever did, because you get into ego, you get into the mind state of I know that I don't need any help and you stop asking questions.

Speaker 1: 22:01

A very good friend of mine and I name him because he's an awesome human being his name is dov baron and he was the inventor of a concept called the emotional source code. Looking at, he's a human being gladly introduced to anybody. He's been on the podcast before, but what he's his phrase is stay curious. That's all he does and, just like you, katherine, he's always asking questions, deeper level questions, deeper insights to that whatever he's trying to extract. For him to learn yep doesn't mean about business. He wants to learn about people, human behavior, his expertise. What he went through and he shares this on the podcast was he fell off a cliff. He fell off a cliff, broke his back. He thought his life was done. From that moment, he rebuilt it Through the same concept of you're speaking about now asking questions, gaining the knowledge, understanding, having an inner standing of yourself to then do better in the future.

Speaker 1: 23:13

When you talk about emotions and leadership, they combine. They combine but also it creates isolation, or it can create isolation. At any stage in this process did you feel as if you were like, oh shit, I'm on my own here and before the people came around you, so you could sort of be like that sponge? Was there any point of going? Oh, I just feel like I'm completely isolated Because a lot of people do. I'm not saying you have, but I'm asking the question.

Speaker 2: 26:31

So it's interesting because I'm like literally in this phase right now. So I'm literally like present to that. I just spent 25 years pouring everything into my family and my vision for my family was that I'd be married once for the rest of my life to the same man and that I love deeply. He loves me and we raise our kids and our kids go off and they have their families and they come back and all the beautiful things. And I'm about to turn 50 and I'm completely alone. My kid, my husband's gone. Obviously. He's passed away way before I ever imagined, way before he ever imagined.

Speaker 2: 27:11

My twins are in their twenties and they need to be off, flying on their own, they don't need to be stuck here. So I'm left like, wait a sec, this did not turn out the way I thought it would. What the what? And so this is where all of the work, right, I understanding that as human beings, separating out my vision for my life versus my picture of my life, right, the picture was that I'd be married the rest of my life to one man and we right off in the sunset and all the things.

Speaker 2: 27:45

The vision is that there's all these other things that I'm out to accomplish in the world and there's a reason I'm here on this planet and I really believe it's to get these 350,000 adoptable children adopted. It's to have families have a minimum of seven streams of passive income, it's to be helping these 33,000 first responders and veterans, and there's just so much more. So that's the vision, but the picture definitely got shattered. So it's really important that for me, I have accurate thinking around what the picture was and what the vision was, because if I focus on the picture, I could feel completely alone in so many aspects of my life and fall into a deep depression, which is why I have to be mindful and hold on to my vision and keep like my vision front and center and keep moving towards that and keep building community intentionally, keep building all the things intentionally so that I can fulfill on that. So it's a very fine line and slippery slope that I deal with every day. This isn't like I've got it handled. No, I'm living it right now.

Speaker 1: 29:01

But I love that because you're aware of it and I'm not going to turn this into a coaching section, because I could, and there's so many layers to this. But what I want people to take away from is the awareness and she's aware of two versions what's going on. But because she and katherine's aware of it, she can now amalgamate them and differentiate between reality and past tense reality, things that have happened, they're fact, then it's an experience. But what she's doing now is going through the process of that was now. What's now, how do we move forward in the frame of the model I have today, what I'm creating with the veterans, what I'm creating with women and the wealth, what I'm having with my best sellers and the best sellers to come, but what you could be aware of as well, for these people are listening now and if you're not taking notes, please go and fucking take notes, because you don't need to.

Speaker 1: 30:03

She's reframing burnout. She's reframing the failures and perceived hiccups or obstacles in her life and gone. I'm not. I won't be defined by that event. I'm being defined by what I make of it now. Moving forward, how are you reconnecting with a version of leadership within you, because that's essentially what you're doing how am I reconnecting?

Speaker 1: 30:33

how are you reconnecting with your own self, the new version of yourself? And leading from that point, what are my practices?

Speaker 2: 30:41

yes, okay, so my daily practices that I'm very present to is I call it the good drugs, right? If I can get the endorphins going in my body, then I always feel better. So even when, so first thing in the morning, when my brain starts spinning, I get up and I go to the gym and then I do my cold plunge, I do all the things to take care of my body physically, even though I don't really want to. And while I'm doing that, what I've done and I've done this for years is I've been doing this for decades. So everybody knows about dream boards and all of that, and so I, decades ago, started writing out my goals in the five areas of life mental, emotional, physical, financial and spiritual. So I write out those goals and, funny enough, I do it January 1st every year and write out the goals and then from there I go and get a really beautiful, like usually three foot by four foot frame and then I'd create a whole collage and turn that into a dream board, like with I create, get images and words and everything that represent all those goals and I create this beautiful collage and then I hang it. So I see it literally every single day, dozens and dozens of time a day. So now I have it in writing, all wrote out. I have it visually as a beautiful collage. But then what I do is I turn it into an incantation that I literally listen to every single morning as I'm doing my cold plunge, as I'm doing my exercises, as I'm like all the things, like literally immersing myself. And because so I have it, I just put it there's my incantation and I'm literally listening to it. It takes 32 minutes, by the way. Incantation and I'm literally listening to it. It takes 32 minutes, by the way, it's that in-depth and that detailed and all about the feelings.

Speaker 2: 32:32

So I did this. I've been doing this for decades. So I started out doing it alone and then, when Christopher and I got married, we did it together and then, when the kids came along, we did it with them and then they did their dream boards. We did dream boards as a family, but then they became teenagers and they wanted to do it alone. Their entire bathroom wall became their dream board, which was really freaking cool.

Speaker 2: 32:54

And then now they're off doing it on their own and I'm back to doing dream boards on my own. It's that being really intentional, because I'm really clear that if I listened to and function from my feelings versus what I'm committed to, I mean I could slip into a deep dark hole pretty damn quick. So I'm very clear that again, it all starts with me moving. And when I can get those endorphins going, then along with listening to it, like all of that together, and I keep focusing on what's on the other side of the exercise, of the cold plunge, of listening to it, I know when I can get to that finish line I'm like, okay, I'm good, I can do this.

Speaker 1: 33:41

Well, I love that analogy. Someone once told me, actually it was 10 minutes before I got married. Someone once told me, actually it was 10 minutes before I got married, and I sat with an actor in Orcas Island, with a very well-known actor. His name is Gerard Butler, and I was privileged to have a conversation with him, and this is the guy whose net worth per year is about $30 million-ish. No, sorry, it's not just he's got there and that's it. He continuously does what you've just said, but this is the advice he actually gave me don't ever think you're at the top of a mountain. Never think you're at the top. Always think you're at the end of a brow and enjoy the journey, because the moment you think you're at the top of the mountain, there's always somebody willing to knock you off. So I'd always enjoy the journey, and that always resonated with me and stuck with me still to this day. What you're sharing, then, catherine, is the cycle of awareness, a ritual, and consistency and discipline In leadership. That's imperative.

Speaker 1: 34:56

Before we depart for part one, I hope you've been listening to this and I hope you've been taking notes. Please share and save and change someone's life by sharing this. I really encourage you to click on the links below and have a conversation with katherine and go and get her books, because they'll change your life. But one last question before we put the close of part one was there a part in your life where you thought that was it, there was nothing left for you to do anymore in this situation, and then something happened to change it and change the trajectory, other than, obviously, the tragic passing of Christopher? But in a business sense, was there anything that changed that trajectory for you?

Speaker 2: 35:49

Multiple times, multiple things.

Speaker 1: 35:52

What stands out for you, what comes to mind?

Speaker 2: 35:55

The trajectory changed. So we had vacation rentals, a bunch of vacation rentals, and this is after Christopher had passed. And there was this one moment where a guest hadn't left and another guest was checking in. So I get the call that the new guest was at the door and somebody answered the door that shouldn't be there. So I had to go.

Speaker 2: 36:15

I had to go, and why hadn't the previous guest move out? Why hadn't the cleaners told me all this? And the people that had been there? Their phone was shut off so I couldn't even get a hold of them. So I physically had to go, and at that point I had nobody to take care of my kids and so I just had to bring them along with me. And I had to carry a gun with me and I myself, as a widow and a single mom with my kids in tow, had to evict somebody holding Akin and I was like this isn't it, this is not it, only to discover they had literally set up a whole brothel and were filming lights, cameras, action. There is an old porn show going on as I walked in. That was a moment of yeah, I don't do guests in toilets, no.

Speaker 1: 37:07

That makes perfect sense to me now. So if you've just listened to this, you've tuned in and go. What the hell is this all about? Rewind it and listen to the whole version of what we've been said. Catherine, I want to thank you very much for being here for part one. My guests, please like, share, subscribe, share the story, change someone's life. I will see you in part two. I'm Catherine. Remember, burn isn't a thing that we stay with, it's a choice. The lessons we learn are here to be learned fast, but also learn about others and pay that information and knowledge forward. Catherine is another guest that has just done that and she continues to do, inspiring thousands of others with adoptions and veterans and first responders. We're going to get more into this in the second part of it. For myself, thank you very much for tuning in. I love you all and I'll see you in part two.