And the question I get asked most often?

Their father. A concept so baffling, apparently, that grown men ask me about it in professional settings.

On average, in my career, the sales teams that I have been a part of were 10-15% female. Meaning, in almost every room over the course of my career, the majority of the time I am the only female or joined by 1-2 others. My day to day has been rampant with overt sexism mixed with unconscious bias and micro-aggressions.

My patience for sexist micro-aggressions (even if they are unconscious) gets less and less as I grow older.

This one sends me into a rage each and every time because here's what that question actually says:

• The assumption that I am the ONLY person who can care for my children and it is offensively to their existence that I follow my own dreams or pursue my own career if it means leaving them with someone else.

• The complete confusion that I am able to do something other than be at home to keep them alive and how that just shocks people enough for them to inquire about it… in a professional setting no less.

• The instant and confident thought that I aligned myself willingly and then procreated with another human who was incapable of managing himself and his offspring.

• The instinctual bias that a male cannot manage children on their own for an extended period of time without a female present and assisting.

AYFKM?!?! 🤬

If this happens to you… and you are tired of the polite awkward half fake laugh response of “their father” each and every time… I have a few suggested responses that you can steal from me anytime you want!

1. “I don’t know but when I left they seemed fine.” (if you want to go FULL chaos)

2. ::blank stare:: → “Oh, Are we still asking that question nowadays?”

3. “The man who made them with Me”

4. “What do the men say when you ask them that?”

5. “A fully capable adult who happens to share their DNA. Wild concept, I know.”

6. “I hired a professional. His name is Dad.”

7. “I left a very detailed instruction manual. Page one: ‘You are their parent.’”

8. “Honestly, I haven’t thought about it since I married a grown man.”

Based on the fact that I believe all humans should have equal rights regardless of race, gender, and sexual preference — I am a Liberal.

Based on the fact that I believe women should have FULL autonomy over their body (like Men do) with no exclusions — I am a Democrat.

That comes with labels, judgements, and assumptions and a huge swath of people decide whether or not they will like me or tolerate me based on their pre-conceived judgments or experiences of a Liberal and/or Democrat.

Right now, in the USA, there are many who voted for this President and are seeing what is happening and feel discomfort or confusion over supporting him and his choices. What is scary for me? Scarier than these one-off events, scarier than the choices the President is making… what is scarier?

People that are NOT comfortable with these choices BUT follow along anyways because that is how they voted and they are too embarrassed to admit to being wrong. WHO THE HELL CARES IF YOU WERE WRONG?? People make mistakes every single day. People believe what another human says and then find out they were lied to… every single day.

It is terrifying to me how many folks are blindly following this journey completely ignoring that the rights they voted to defend (ahem, the 2nd amendment) are NON-EXISTENT now. However, they voted for him so they have to be ok with that.

No you do not!!

It is ok to change your mind. IT IS OK TO CHANGE YOUR MIND!

I am not ok… and that is ok.

You are not alone if you are not ok. You are not alone if you are mentally exhausted when you wake up, filled with anxiety, compartmentalizing hourly, and being short tempered with your loved ones as you try to cope. You are not alone.

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have the magic secret fix. What I do have is faith that if I take a step forward and keep going — that I will stay standing and if I fall — I will get back up. For now, that is enough. You WILL get back up, so keep going friends.

I was laying down in my Acupuncturist office as she began putting the needles into a few areas that I needed to loosen up. I just started going to see if it would help with my frozen shoulders because PT wasn’t getting me where I wanted to be. Little did I know that it was going to open up many other “sore” points in my life!

She asked me how my Christmas holiday was and I walked her through some issues that we are having with extended family and that I was so frustrated because it felt like they got to be jerks and we just had to wait for the next bomb to go off with little to no control over it. You see, I am a control freak. To have VERY high emotional moments happen because OTHER people decide to call, send gifts, or NOT call when I have no control or no awareness about whats coming — NOT something I handle well. (← that is an understatement)

The acupuncturist said, “do you have a therapist because it sounds like you have experienced some trauma?” Ha, NO MAM… I responded, “Well, yes I have a therapist, and I am just fine as it isn’t my family specifically.” The next words out of her mouth would live rent free in my brain for weeks (and still do)…

“Thats not true Cate, it might not have happened to you directly but it definitely sounds like you are dealing with Vicarious Trauma, which is a very real thing too”.”

Vicarious Trauma → when someone else's crisis becomes your body's emergency response, and you have no say in when it hits.

You are telling me that someone else can do something to someone else that I have no control over, no awareness of, and no ability to manage for them — I just have to sit and watch them struggle never knowing when the next missile is going to blow up our life?

Nope, that is a NO FOR ME DAWG!

But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter if I like it. It’s already here. Living in my frozen shoulders. Showing up in my body every time the phone rings.

Turns out, you can love someone and still be wrecked by what’s happening to them. You can be the strong one, the fixer, the one holding it together — and still end up carrying their chaos in your body.

That’s not weakness. That’s just what happens when you care about someone whose life keeps exploding.

I still don’t like it. I still wish I could fix it. But at least now I have a name for why my shoulders won’t move.

It is very important to me that topics that are scary or have a societal stigma become part of an every day conversation. It is imperative that people feel comfortable and safe to express what they need or want and to know that another human can empathize or even understand. It is a paramount “non-negotiable” in my interactions and a lesson I focus a lot with my children. How do you create a safe space if you don’t also lead with transparency into your own life and experiences?

As a part of being transparent in this blog, I promised myself I would also talk about hard topics like… mental health, parenting neurodivergent kiddos, and career or vicarious trauma. It requires vulnerability and being aware that anyone could read this — my boss, my parents, my ex-colleagues or someone interviewing me in 10 years. It makes me uncomfortable, but I am here to SHOW YOU that being uncomfortable is ok and how to push through that.

This holiday season has been VERY hard for a variety of reasons and I think being transparent and open about those can help readers start to see that even those that “look like they have it all together” can absolutely struggle quietly behind the scenes. It helped me a to see that struggle and understand the “keep pushing even when its hard” lesson when I was a young seller and I want to do the same for the generation behind me.

Would you consider yourself transparent?

Even with all that brain-fuckery; self awareness is the largest and most important step to the “sparkle”.

For me, there were some clear markers that started very early on in life. My parents love to tell two stories to anyone who will listen and I think they both perfectly explain the foundation that made me. Settle in for a little story time!

Every quarter on my report card my teachers would take that extra moment to so kindly tell my parents that “Cate loves to talk. She needs to learn when the appropriate time is to speak and when to listen.” Well, when I hit 4th grade, I apparently was tired of taking the high road and decided that I knew better and my teacher, whom I did not like at all, was the idiot in the room. My parents found this out when they got a call at home asking if they would come in for a teacher’s meeting that afternoon. My mom was able to make it and remembers vividly when my teacher said,

— yeah, that is on brand, I know. 🤪

The second story is much shorter but it happened all the time. My parents discovered that people would TELL ME THINGS; deep, personal, non-kiddo things and do it often. I would go to a Christmas party with them at 7 years old and come home knowing who was getting divorced, who hated their gifts, and who wasn’t doing well at work. Grown adults would confide in me, near constantly, and I always had “the tea” as they say… even when it was wildly inappropriate to do so. (No 9yo girl needs to know why you left your husband or why you hate that woman over there!)

So, yeah, these make me laugh now; but I spent plenty-a-time cringing whenever I heard them played back for me like we all do. But, I learned, these are not stories that you hide from, these are the stories that you embrace and mine for gold. These are the stories that help you develop an understanding of your sparkle.

What do these two stories tell me about Me?

I am confident in my knowledge base and in my ability to lead. It also shows I create an immediate feeling of trust and/or transparency in my interactions. On the other hand, they tell me that I lack self control, am incredibly stubborn, and don’t “read the room” very well in social situations.

This isn’t the full story of Cate. This isn’t all the nuances of my strengths and weaknesses, but this is a LARGE foundation that I can build from when I want to identify what makes me… ME and then how to articulate and advocate for that.

Remember, if YOU cannot tell someone these nuances then how can you communicate or defend your wants and needs in the workplace? You have to know YOU best so you know where to direct your energy, who is the right village to have around you, and when to step up or step away in an interaction.

I spent years trying to sand down the edges those stories revealed. Now? I acknowledge and celebrate what they communicate about Me when someone hears them. Your foundation isn’t there to be judged or graded; it’s there to be the wireframe of what you build and how you build it.

What story comes to mind when you think about the foundation of your sparkle?

Authentic is to act in genuine alignment with your true self, values, beliefs, and personality, rather than pretending or conforming to others’ expectations.

How many times have you been told, “just be yourself”?

The most common time the tension between “yourself” and “expectations” shows up is in job interviews or a first date. I’ve been with my husband now for 19 years so I am not your resident expert on first dates so I am going to stay in my lane and talk… interviews!

Yes, the interviewer/company says over and over, “just be yourself”… however, a huge part of interviews is the company trying to decide if they want to bet their future on you. If they want you to be in their meetings every week, or be responsible for representing their brand day to day, or if they want to share space with you for an extended period of time. You walk into a meeting of unknown biases and expectations, but are told to ignore those and “just be you”. (Yeah, right!)

In my career history, I have had MANY interviews and very few have gone poorly. In fact, every single final interview that I was invited to — I was offered that job. It is possible that I am the best seller on earth, but in fact, I think the more likely reason is that I am AUTHENTIC. I am CATE in every call, in every interaction, and with absolutely no shame or hesitation. I know my faults, I know my strengths, and I embrace and celebrate both equally.

If you are like me, you are thinking, “ok Cate, great, thanks for that genius moment but How do I do that in MY interviews?” Great question, I am glad you asked!

As a part of these career interviews, there is a common thread of questions that we always get. It is a variation of, “What makes you different? What makes you special in this huge abyss of interviews I have been doing for days with a bunch of strangers heads on my computer screen? Why should I hire you over everyone else?”

It’s the question we all WANT; finally, our chance to shine! But for many, their sparkle is incredibly hard to articulate… if they even know what it is.

The answer is: WAIT… you aren’t ready for the answer yet.

First, we need to ask the question…

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR SPARKLE IS?