Breaking Free from Perfectionism: Christine Clyne-Spraker's Journey to Self-Discovery

What would you do if you realized that your life's achievements didn't bring the fulfillment you'd anticipated? Join me for a captivating conversation with Christine Klein Spraker, a former health tech co-CEO who bravely abandoned her successful career to embark on a journey of profound self-discovery. Christine opens up about the societal pressures that fuel perfectionism, her personal and professional transitions through divorce, reclaiming her maiden name, and redefining what true contentment means. This episode promises a heartfelt exploration of self-reflection and growth, especially for women juggling the demands of motherhood and entrepreneurship.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hey there and welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast, the show where we're all about helping you feel confident, both as a mom and a business owner. I'm your host, kendra Swalls, mom of two, former teacher and full-time photographer and business coach. Each week, we'll discuss the challenges, success and secrets that make you say I can do this, because you absolutely can. So pop in those earbuds, grab your favorite snack and let's dive in, because this girl means business. Hello, hello and welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast. I am incredibly excited about this episode. In fact, I just got finished recording the interview and I had to go ahead and hop on and record this intro and get it all out here into the world to you, because you, I think you're really going to love this guest. She is amazing. As you will hear, she and I have a lot in common, which I was nodding along to so many things she was saying. And then I feel like there's a pretty good chance that, as you're listening to this episode, you're going to be nodding your head as well, because, as women, just as humans in the world, honestly, there's a lot of things that we are all dealing with that we don't always acknowledge out loud so that other people can acknowledge they feel the same way. And that's exactly what this conversation today felt like. It felt like two people acknowledging struggles, acknowledging an understanding about things that doesn't get talked about too often and certainly doesn't get acknowledged in a way that says I see you and I feel the same way that you do.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Before we get into this awesome conversation, I want to introduce you to our guest, christine Klein Spraker. So in 2022, she was a health tech co-CEO, a mother and a wife, and she decided to listen to this voice that had been not so gently nudging her and making a drastic change. So, despite all of her incredible personal and professional accomplishments and accolades she'd worked years to receive, they were no longer serving her in a way that her younger self had hoped they would. I think we've all had that realization of like the things we hoped and dreamed for that would like we thought would fulfill us in all these ways don't fulfill us in the way that we had thought they were going to, and this is a common thing that I see as I listened to all of these podcasts. I listened to where they're interviewing these incredibly successful people, and the sort of common thread is that it's the it's not the professional or personal success that actually fulfills us. It's these other things that are way deeper and more difficult to kind of hash out, but they're so much more powerful.

Speaker 1: 2:56

So well-intentioned childhood patterning and years of chasing success as defined by societal standards had pushed Christine to showcase perfectionism in every aspect of her life, but these realities were actually holding her back from the life that she dreamed of and deserved, and, after much deliberation and reflection, she made incredibly brave and at times misunderstood life changes that empowered her to shed that perfectionism, explore her individuality, her truth and her authentic self, and the results have been incredible. She is now a published author and has co-founded her website, and she's an incredible, incredible woman. Her story, I feel like, is the story that a lot of us have, at least in the beginning, and then those of us that have done the work or are doing the work to improve ourselves and better ourselves can see that in her story as well, and so this is an episode where the topic is not necessarily business related. It's a little bit different than our typical episodes and interviews that we do here on the Girl Means Business podcast. However, after meeting Christine and chatting with her and hearing her story and just the constant like head nodding along that I was doing. I felt like, if I feel this incredible connection with her story and if I feel like there's so many pieces of her story that are in her wisdom and her knowledge and experiences that can help me, there's has to be so many of you listening that can relate or will understand and connect to some piece of that conversation as well. So, while this is not specifically business related, I do believe that who we are as people because a lot of us are solopreneurs and what we do in our business is so closely tied to who we are that understanding who we are and bettering who we are and really working on ourselves and ultimately affects our business and improves our business as well. So I loved, loved, loved, loved chatting with Christine. You'll hear me say on here I hope to have her back in the future.

Speaker 1: 5:13

I would love to just continue this conversation. It's a little bit longer of an episode but I promise you it is so worth the listen. Even if you have to listen in tiny little chunks here and there when you can find time, I promise it is worth it. So, without further ado, here is my conversation with Christine Klein Spraker. All right guys, we have Christine with us today. Christine, welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast. I am really excited to chat with you today. I feel like we're going to have such an awesome conversation, but I want to welcome you to the podcast and have you introduce yourself to our listeners.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Awesome. Well, thank you, kendra, thank you for having me, and it's really wonderful to be here. My name is Christine Klein Spraker. I actually was not even hyphenated until just recently, so usually I think when you get married, you end up hyphenating. I went through a divorce last year and I decided to bring back my maiden name, which is Klein, but I wasn't really ready to let go of Spraker, because that's how my children you know the name that they go by. So I am Christine Klein Spraker. I am thrilled to be here today.

Speaker 2: 6:23

In 2015, I joined a friend in helping build a healthcare technology company that went on to be extremely successful. We grew the business together and ultimately became co-CEOs, and in 2023, I made the really difficult decision to retire slash resign from that position. It was really the highlight of my career building this business. I had so much fun. I learned so much about the technology world, building technology, running a business, operating a business, leading a business and just loved every minute of it. But I began making some really difficult choices and I think you and I will dig into this a little bit. Once I started choosing myself and moving away from being a people pleaser and I started creating boundaries, and in doing so, I started realizing that I had some habits that probably didn't serve my highest good and so decided to leave the business and then just really sat with myself for close to a year, um, but in doing so I started writing again, and I've always enjoyed writing. It's something that's always been very therapeutic for me.

Speaker 2: 7:36

And as I was writing, the story just started to pour out of me, and as I talked to some people and with the urging of some people, they said you know, I think you need to write a book. And in writing this book, which actually published April 22nd, I really began to heal a lot of the childhood conditioning and generational patterning that I was raised with. So every single person on this planet has some type of conditioning that occurs from childhood and it makes us who we are. We learn how to survive with this conditioning, we learn how to be loved with this conditioning and, you know, most the time it's really well-intentioned, but despite that it can lead to some negative thought patterns, some subconscious behaviors, some patterning that doesn't always serve us well. And so, as I was writing this book, I really began to heal a lot of that conditioning.

Speaker 2: 8:34

And the book is called Unwinding Perfect. So I guess, technically, today I am a published author and I have launched a small advisory firm called Co-found her Um. That's really focused on the individual, both men and women, who are interested in stepping forward into um, a successful business, you know, both a profitable business, but also merging the spiritual side and more of the enlightened side of wanting to grow into themselves personally as well wow, oh my gosh, that is amazing your story.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Well, first of all, like I, I love what you said about like the book process was so healing for you, because I think I know a lot of people actually and I'm not someone who claims to be a writer like, I don't journal, I don't, that's not my outlet, I'm more of a conversationalist, hence why I started a podcast. But there's so many people I know that find that writing things out is such a healing process, even if nobody ever sees what they've written. There's so much that comes out on when you're writing those things. So I, I love that. That is something that you and it you were saying like the process of the book kind of helped heal these things, that you were, or helped you start the process of healing these things. I love that. Um and I I was listening to a podcast the other day and I listened to a ton and I love I kind of they're like my therapy basically, and they were talking about childhood trauma and just how I can't remember if it was like the ages, I want to say it was like eight to 20 something was kind of like the age where you soak in all of this stuff and then you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what it was you soaked in during those informative years and either leaning into them or leaning away from them, and I was like that's so incredibly true for all of us of like those like 10 to 15 years that that informed the rest of our lives and who we are.

Speaker 1: 10:36

It makes you look at people a little differently too, when you're like, oh, this person's just living out this idea or this thing that was put, like planted into them at such an early age, whether they recognize it or not. So I love the work that you're doing and I'm excited to talk more about it.

Speaker 2: 12:05

Yeah Well, thank you, I think it's. It's fascinating what you, what you just said. I've always heard that a child's you know person, who they're really going to be, is formed by the age of seven, and so I think, without having read what you read or listened to what you listened to, that makes a lot of sense, because this child then is taking this person that they've become in those first seven years of their life, that really formative time, and then over the next that really formative time, and then over the next eight to you know, 20 or whatever, the next 12, 14, 15 years, really figuring out how to be that person in the world, whether it's with their peers, whether it's, you know, college, if it's the early stage of their career. So that really makes a lot of sense. And then you hit this moment where you're like who the heck am I?

Speaker 2: 12:54

I was going to curse, sorry, I'll try. No, it's fine, who the heck am I? You wake up and you're like what just happened? Like I'm 44 years old now, but really my journey started probably uh, you know, close to 10 years ago, when I started thinking like wait, what's going on here? So, mid-30s, who am I? Am I really where I want to be? Am I on the trajectory I want to be on? And what do I need to do now to uncondition all of those things that I learned for those first seven years, those formative years, and then the next, however many, that I'm trying them out in the world?

Speaker 1: 13:24

So, yeah, well, you and I are similar in the fact that I'm 42. So we're pretty, we're barely close in age. I feel like we were both raised in the same kind of generation and the same, um, you know, the generation where our parents probably didn't talk a whole lot about the things that we talk about now. There was not this conversation of self-care, or people weren't going to therapy unless you were, you know, considered like crazy. Um, there wasn't this. I guess this environment that we have now and I feel fortunate that our, our children are growing up in where people are free to figure themselves out and not have to feel like they're doing it behind closed doors, they can do it openly and freely. So I feel like our generation I was actually just having this conversation with somebody the other day more about technology, but this kind of thing too, where we're kind of doing this balancing act of okay, we still have a little bit of this older generation mentality, because that's what our parents and our family ingrained in us of like things are supposed to be a certain way, or you're supposed to just kind of do things a certain way, but then yet we also are raising children in a world where we want them to be a little bit more open, a little bit more, um, you know, empathetic to other people and all these things.

Speaker 1: 14:40

And we're kind of in the middle of doing this like seesaw thing of like okay, where do we find that balancing point? And it's, it is hard sometimes because while we're going through all the things of like okay, this is what I have ingrained in me as a child I think about it all the time. With like money, like I have so many issues around money because it came from who my parents were and where, how we were raised and the money we had or didn't have. And now I'm looking at my kids going okay, I don't want to put those same things on them, but how do I balance my own navigating it with me, trying to then like teach them? It's just, it's this crazy high wire act that I feel like we're trying to do and I'm sure every generation has their own version of that. It just feels like we're in such a big, you know, parallel between the two right now.

Speaker 2: 15:28

I feel like you just looked into my soul and knew my entire story. So yeah, to my soul and knew my entire story. So yeah, so I wrote in my preface of my book. Actually it says basically what you just said you know what's lost on an older generation and so natural to a younger generation. Because I truly believe our children as they're coming. You know whatever you believe in, whether you believe in reincarnation or not, but as they're coming into this world, they are just so much wiser, inherently. I look at my 13 year old daughter and her wisdom is, I mean, beyond anything that I could have imagined or even had the intellect to comprehend at the age of 13. And so you know what. What's lost on this older generation and comes so natural to this younger generation leaves our entire generation searching for something, because we feel like there's something more, like we have this inner knowing. We're listening to ourselves, we're not numbing ourselves the way our parents' generation did, not necessarily with alcohol or drugs that's not what I mean by it but by compartmentalizing feelings and pushing aside hard conversations and having avoidant reactions, which is what my parents did. My parents avoided hard conversations. My parents didn't know how to create boundaries. Because of that. My mom was a people pleaser. She put everybody else's needs before me. These were all modeled to me.

Speaker 2: 16:53

And so I started hearing this little voice that was just like Christine, there's something more. There's something more. What is it? And it started my journey to really start to figure out what was there, what is more? Why am I so successful professionally, but personally, I feel like I can't connect with anybody. My marriage was failing. I was losing not losing but I wasn't able to nurture friendships the way that I should have. But I couldn't because of the business, all of these things. It was this tension, this duality that was going on internally within me and I, just, I wasn't happy. And I got to the point where I said there's gotta be something more. And so, just, I wasn't happy and I got to the point where I said there's gotta be something more. And so I started speaking more. I started finding out what that was, what that little voice was trying to nudge me to get to.

Speaker 1: 17:44

So that's a good point to pick up on, because what you're saying I think a lot of people feel I say a lot.

Speaker 1: 17:51

I know I have felt that way. I know people that I'm close to friendships and even just in the conversations my friends and I have, I've seen it evolve, like we were talking before we hit record and I was telling you about you know, my friend that I've known since I was five, the conversations that we had, even in our twenties into our early thirties, is so different from the conversations we have now, and not just because we've gotten older, but because I feel like the stigma around having certain conversations has been lifted enough that we feel more comfortable being more open, being more vulnerable, saying like I don't know what I'm doing, or saying like I feel this way and not being embarrassed by it or shamed by it. So I guess my question to you is when you started having those feelings, when you were like, okay, there's something more, I need to figure out what this is. What was your first step in being like, okay, I'm going to do this. Like, how did you start the ball rolling?

Speaker 2: 18:51

Yeah, that's so. That's a great question for me and I feel really blessed to have these opportunities. I found a spiritual mentor, mentor and I didn't go out and seek one, it was more that they found me. You know the old adage when the student's ready, the teacher will appear. Or you know know, the universe will put in front of you the right people at the right time. I listened, so instead of saying no, I don't have time, or no, I'm busy, or no, I'm not interested, I said okay, I'm, I'm going to listen. And so I had a good friend, a dear friend who's one of my closest um most you know spiritual minded friends that I have. Her name's emily. She said I've got this woman. She's a, she's a healer. Maybe you should go see her. I had no idea what that meant. I, you know, I had done some meditation, I had worked with some maybe clairvoyant people in the past, but not somebody who's who was a medium, who could connect and who could tell you things that you just weren't really sure even existed. Right, and I said, okay, I'll go talk to her. And this woman ended up changing my life.

Speaker 2: 19:56

I have a chapter in my book called Tammy. Her name was Tammy and she really and truly helped me understand the biggest part was the conditioning of religion that I was raised in. I was raised as this good Christian girl who pleased everybody and smiled and said yes, even though that inner, that feeling inside me was saying no, like run or don't do this or whatever. I would say yes and I would say okay, and I had a lot of shame and I had a lot of guilt in the night. I always felt really connected to God but I didn't like the dogma of religion and I didn't understand. I didn't have the words to communicate that at the time. But she taught me, tammy taught me how to merge spirituality and I could still believe in God, I could still believe in Jesus, I could still believe in these things, but I also could breathe. I could also learn some traditional, like eastern traditions like that you will find in Tibet or in some some in Buddhism, and I began to merge those. Instead of having to follow this one religion.

Speaker 2: 21:02

I started realizing in my and this is my own opinion and I, you know, don't want to, you know, push anybody away with it, because this is my own opinion but that really it's all just one religion. There's one God. One God loves us all. My God, this Christian God I was raised with, isn't going to forsake everybody else who doesn't know about Jesus. We all can live under this one God, and it's just called different religions in different areas. Anyways, I'm going on a tangent, so I apologize for that. She really helped me realize that.

Speaker 2: 21:33

So I was able to come back to my faith in a way that I had pushed away because my faith previously had made me feel guilty, like I was a bad person. I was this bad kid, all of the shame that I grew up with, all while also presenting perfect to the world. Right, my mom was perfect, we lived in this bubble, everything was fine all the time, everything was good. We didn't talk about hard things, we didn't have hard feelings. We, you know, certainly didn't ask for boundaries. We certainly didn't say, hey, when you do this, it makes me feel this.

Speaker 2: 22:07

And so I was able to start on this path of okay, I have faith again, and that was probably the biggest step for me. You know, whether you call it the universe or divine, or nature, it doesn't have to be just God, but I do think having that belief that maybe there's something a little bit more is freeing in a lot of ways. So that was my first step, and then the next thing was really being willing to look at my shadows and my dark side and the things that I was ashamed of and the things that did scare me and the things that I tried to hide from the world and that was so revealing in so many ways, but also so freeing too. So by being able to embrace your shadow side and being like okay, christine, you're a little pushy, you're a little loud. Sometimes You've got this fire energy, it's okay. By accepting those things instead of trying to tame them, I was really able to just naturally dissolve some of the things that I was so ashamed of or so worried about for so long, and you just start to come to a place of more of a centered and grounded feeling and being. But this has been, you know, nine or ten years of. So it's not like I was like, oh hey, here are my shadows, I'm going to embrace you and I'm fixed.

Speaker 2: 23:37

No, still continues to pop up. It's an ongoing journey. It's this healing growth journey that I'll be on the rest of my life, because the minute you peel something back and you see it and you fix it or you heal it. Not fix it, that's the wrong word. You heal it, there's going to be something else that bubbles up. And then you had mentioned the financial thing. That's something that I struggle with too, because, while my family was abundant in so many ways, the mindset was scarcity, and so it was this constant restrict, constrict, okay, flow, again, restrict, constrict. And even to this day where I'm aware of it, I find myself falling back into those old patterns, just like you said, where it's really easy to think like you did 30, 40 years ago because of the way we were raised.

Speaker 1: 24:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:32

So the awareness, the awareness is a huge component of it.

Speaker 1: 24:35

Yeah, oh, my gosh, okay. So listening to you talk, I'm like vigorously nodding my head because so many things that you said are exactly how I feel. I have felt or things I have thought or dealt with, and I'll just kind of touch on some of the main ones that we can kind of go from there. But the the idea, like you said, being raised in a very religious upbringing, like that was for the most part, that was me, like. I mean, I we weren't. I wasn't raised going to church every weekend.

Speaker 1: 25:05

My parents aren't super religious, but I surrounded myself with people who were, and so, by choice, I went into the church with the idea of like this is where I found connection and friendship, this is where I found a place and a home. And then, over the course of time, I have what has now become to recognize as kind of religious trauma of these incidents and things that happened on top of each other that caused me to completely turn away. And I was always. I always struggled with this idea of like. I still believe in a higher power, I still believe that there is this, you know, a God or a spirituality to what we have. There's something that connects us all together. But how do I, how do I put it into a box that makes sense to you, know, to me?

Speaker 2: 25:53

versus everybody else.

Speaker 1: 25:55

And it has taken me so many years to, and I didn't have somebody like you had, tammy, who I think is such a blessing for you. I didn't have that person that came along. I found it in other ways. I found it through listening to other people's stories and listening to podcasts and reading books and all those things. But the idea that one thing can be different to each of us, you know, I think about my my cousin. When I was little, my aunt used to always tell the story that she, my aunt, was an artist. She's an art teacher, and so my my cousins grew up in a very artistic household and I remember her telling this story about how one day my little cousin came in and asked her um, you know well, how do you know that blue is blue? And she was like well, what do you mean? She goes. Well, how do you know that what I see as blue is actually what you see as blue? I mean, she was like five. You know it was like this, very deep for a five-year-old.

Speaker 1: 26:49

And but I, to this day, I still always kind of kept it in my head of like, yeah, like what I see as this you know, spirituality, this religion, this, whatever it is that connects us all. It doesn't always have to look the same for you or for anyone else, but it can still be the same thing If that makes sense. Like it's like saying, like the sky is blue and that we may not actually all see it as the same shade of blue. Um, and that was really freeing for me, and so all that you're talking about, like all of that stuff, it felt so close to how I have gone through those same things.

Speaker 1: 29:20

I think that being open to what comes your way is such a huge piece of it, and you mentioned that beginning of like, once you got to a point where you were like, I'm just open to you. Know, whether it's a person or an idea, or a place, or a thing, or a book or whatever it was that came your way. For you, it was a person. For me, it was, you know, all a combination of things that I heard and saw. Just when you like, open yourself up to. Okay, I'm ready to learn, I'm ready to change, I'm ready to grow. I'm ready for these things. Things start coming your way or maybe you are more aware of them than you were before, but I think that that's such a big thing for anyone listening that might be thinking, well, yeah, I, I have areas I need to work on and grow in. Just be open, like open yourself up and say I'm ready. I'm ready for whatever you you know needs to come my way, and you wouldn't be surprised at, like, what actually comes your way.

Speaker 2: 30:15

So now I'm nodding vigorously with everything you're saying. There's so many components in what you just said. So you know there's subconscious patterning and conscious. You know pattern or not even patterning, but conscious living. So subconsciously we go through the motions. Like 90 to 95% of everything we do is the subconscious. The way you're driving your car. You're not thinking consciously like, okay, I need to put my foot on the brake. Now I'm going to go, I'm going to accelerate, I'm going to turn on the radio. You just do these things because it's so programmed inside of you and that's the way our subconscious works.

Speaker 2: 30:51

So from a young age we learn how to react and respond to those around us our parents, our siblings, our teachers and we know how to get a desired result. If we're the good girl, we're going to get the accolades. If we're the bad girl, we're going to get the negative attention. We're going to do what feeds us at a young age to get what we need, and it's always love. It's always love. We're always seeking love. So then subconsciously we take all of those patterns into our adulthood and we choose spouses that we know how to do that dance with. We know how to get love from them.

Speaker 2: 31:24

Hopefully this was not my case. I didn't know how to communicate what my needs were. I didn't know how to ask for my needs, and so I always expected people to meet my needs, but I couldn't tell them what my needs were. So then I was just always disappointed, because how could anybody ever meet my needs if I couldn't even know what they were, communicate what they were? So, subconsciously, I was doing all of these things and I was going through the motions and I was giving and giving and pleasing, and pleasing, and I was waiting to receive and return, and I just never felt like I did. And so I had to unlearn a lot of my subconscious patterning.

Speaker 2: 32:00

And, to your point, that's just awareness. Like once you become aware of the things that you're doing, you can really start to unwind them. And then, as you're unwinding them again, to your point, you become open. You're like, oh wait, when I behaved this way, I actually had this positive reaction or interaction. And you start to see then how these small changes really do make this huge ripple effect in all aspects of your life and so being open to different ways of thinking, different ideas, and we're so especially well. It's probably always been this way, but we're living this now.

Speaker 2: 32:39

As these more conscious adults, we see it, where people are so close-minded, you know, with politics, with religion, with how to raise your children, I mean, the keeping up with the Jones is just so many things that we're supposed to be doing and instead we just need to be sitting back and saying, okay, why does that person, why why do you feel that way, like, why do you think this is the right way and we can all? It doesn't mean you think this is the right way and we can all. It doesn't mean we have to agree with them, but we could all learn from hearing what those others have to say. So, yeah, I commend you for even having a podcast where we talk about this stuff, because it's important to your point. Somebody needs to hear it yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 33:18

I mean I I think there's still a lot of people out there who are hesitant to even like, say that they're open to learning or changing or growing, because they're like I don't know what that means or I don't know what that looks like, or there is a little bit and I will admit I had a little bit of this too and it was one of those. Like you know, as I'm going through becoming a mom, leaving my teaching creative run to run a business and then stepping into this role of educator and podcast host and getting out into the public eye, I had these blocks I kind of had to work through, of like, okay, why am I sort of self-sabotaging myself? Why am I holding myself back? Why am I doing these things? And one of the things I recognized and I still have to kind of remind myself and work on is that personal growth is a little bit scary, because I think some people think that, or not even they think that this can be true. It's the idea that if I change, will I still have everything around me that I've grown so accustomed to the people, the relationships, the places like. If I grow and change, will I outgrow the things that currently make me feel safe and comfortable, and that is terrifying for a lot of people, like I know. For me, that was terrifying. It was like, okay, but if I become this thing, if I step outside of my comfort zone let's just take my the idea of like leaving this perfectly good teaching job that I had Like I was in a position where I had you know, I wasn't in the classroom, I was more of a, like, curriculum coordinator, consultant. I had a campus I worked on. That I loved. I had a principal I worked for that I loved.

Speaker 1: 35:01

I was in a, by all accounts, a great job and I walked away because it was not fulfilling me and I wanted to have time with my family and I wanted to have time to, to grow this thing that I was really passionate about. There was a part of me that was like does that mean there are going to be people who I no longer spend time with because I'm I no longer fit into, like their mold of what they wanted me to be, or there's people who don't agree with my decision to do this? Is that going to affect that relationship? And what I learned was, yeah, it's going to affect those relationships, but not always in a negative way and sometimes it's okay that you outgrow those places, but that is definitely something that a lot of people fear.

Speaker 1: 35:46

So I'm curious to know, in your experience, when you've put in all this work and you've done all these things to kind of focus on like, okay, the I'm going to grow myself spiritually but that may look different for a lot of people, or people may not agree with how I see the world now, or I'm going to, you know, heal all these shadows that I have and these things about myself that I don't love, and I'm going to work on those Did that impact you or the places and spaces you were in that you no longer felt like maybe fit you? What was your experience with that?

Speaker 1: 36:20

I know I saw a couple of your facial expressions I was like, oh, this one's hitting home.

Speaker 2: 36:26

All of the above, gosh, there's so many things I want to say. So, first of all, one of my teachers always tells me you know a growing child Think about a growing child there's pain. When your bones are growing, there's pain. So when you're growing as an adult and you're having this growth, there's going to be pain. It's just, it's inevitable and it's. And to your point, we're such creatures of comfort and habit that we do everything we can to avoid that pain. Because what if? What if our husband doesn't love us anymore? What if I outgrow that friendship that I kind of know I've outgrown, but it's comfortable and I know I can call them and I know I can have somebody to hang out with? Um, what if? What if? What if, if, so, yes, so I started down this journey.

Speaker 2: 37:28

I remember very clearly having a conversation with my, my then husband. He was my husband at the time it might have been 2015 or 2016 and I was asking him to grow with me. You know I was telling him I was growing and you said this earlier like what does that even look like? How do you even do it or start, or how do you conceptualize it? And you can't really. It's just this thing that you know inside and it's when you move past something that's old, that's no longer serving you, into something new. And he's like, really, christine, like you're growing, like how are you growing? Tell me how you're doing it. And I just remember thinking he's not ready for it. He's he's he doesn't want to and and that's fine, that's his journey. You know I may have been mad or sad or disappointed or whatever at the time, but you know I understand now that you can't force somebody to grow and you can't force somebody along that journey. It has to be their own decision and a lot of people avoid it because it is painful, because it requires you digging into the past and to look at some of those hard things that got you to where you are. And so, as I started doing that, you know we you and I have a lot of similarities.

Speaker 2: 38:46

I was co-CEO of this business that I loved and helped build and hired, you know, put like the stamp on almost every employee that we had, and I realized that it wasn't serving my highest good anymore and I knew that by walking away from the business there was so much of my identity, it was who I was. I was a co-CEO With that title, there just comes inherent recognition and people want to talk to you and your days are busy because of this and this and this. And so I had to recognize OK, what's ego, what's my ego telling me to keep going? Okay, like what's ego, you know what's my ego telling me to keep going? And then what's my soul trying to tell me to do. It meant losing friends. It meant losing. You know not losing, but you know not having to be these people in my life anymore. My, my business partner was my best friend. We had worked together every day for eight years. It meant not being the person that clients call. It just meant so many things.

Speaker 2: 39:49

And then I also had decided to my husband and I to separate, and so I moved out of our family home. So I moved out of the comfort of this home that we had lived in and we had built and all of our things and all of our stuff. We were married almost 16 years and that's a lifetime in and of itself and with that came shifts in friendships. We had created all of these family and couple friends and couple friendships. And then, when you're not a couple anymore, like your girlfriends if just the girlfriends are getting together. Sure, they want to hang out, but with couples they, the guys want to hang out with the guys, the girls want to hang out with the girls, and so you just you stop getting invited to certain things.

Speaker 2: 40:27

And so what I've really anchored to in making some of these really hard choices is is one they didn't feel brave at the time, they didn't feel courageous at the time, but in hindsight they're very brave. So you stepping away from your teaching career this career that felt perfect, right, like what you're supposed to do, it made sense on paper, it was really brave and you should be commended for that. And you chose yourself and you choo, you chose what your soul was telling you to do. It wasn't what was conditioned and what your brain was trying to tell you to do. And when you start to let go of the old, it allows for the new to come in. So my guess is, if you hadn't stepped away, you probably wouldn't have a podcast. You know you and I would not be talking today if I hadn't stepped away from my company. I wouldn't have found the clarity to write this book and to share my story and my journey, because I really do want to empower and inspire people to step into the life they desire and deserve, because it's so easy to fall into that trap of this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm good at it, I was a good co-ceo, you were a great teacher, you all of these things that we're good at doesn't mean we're meant to do it or we're supposed to do it, and so I think it's so easy to fall into that trap. And then also the comfort trap. It's scary to think about your life changing.

Speaker 2: 41:51

I talked to my mom a lot and she's been so brave during me writing this book because I talk about my parents in this book and you know I'm so proud of her. But I remember saying to her I said, mom, you should. I was telling her about my first therapy session, like real therapy, and she's like, oh my gosh, I would love to do that. I was like, oh my gosh, you should do it. She's like, no, I can't do that. So within one breath of each other she said I would love to do that. And oh, no, I can't do that. Because she knows that if she were to work on herself and maybe change some of her patterns of people pleasing or whatever, it's going to change the dynamic with my dad yeah inherently.

Speaker 2: 42:34

And then you know, there's choices that are made. Does he do the work? Does he not do the work? You know, like all of these things, there's this ripple effect that happens, but ultimately, as human beings things, there's this ripple effect that happens, but ultimately, as human beings, we are on this planet to drive our soul mission and our soul purpose, and our soul mission, our soul purpose, isn't to please everybody else. First and foremost we have to please ourselves. We have to make ourselves happy, even my children. My job is not to make my children happy. My job is to love my children, to show them and teach them what I can, and then to not control them, but to let them be free to make their own choices and go down their own journey and path yeah, so I can't even control their life.

Speaker 2: 43:17

I'm only here for my life, and when we're the happiest, this is I'm going to stop talking after this. But what, finally, I felt like gave me permission to step away from my marriage because I was so worried about my kids, was when somebody said think about what you're showing your kids today. Is this the marriage you want for them, or do you want them to have a different marriage and do you want them to learn to choose themselves? And I was like, oh my gosh, what am I modeling to my kids? I'm doing exactly what, you know, my parents had modeled to me not to choose themselves.

Speaker 2: 43:50

Not not saying they're not happy I'm not saying that at all, but I'm just, you know, I want my kids to know that it's okay for them to choose themselves, and I want them to see by my example that if something's not working for you, you can make a choice. Yeah, and so by me being happy my kids are and my ex is happy by us being happy, our kids are thriving and they're in the space where they can make different choices than maybe they would have done before. And so comfort, yes, but through the growth and the just, this beauty and this glorious new opportunity just tends to arise.

Speaker 1: 44:59

So, yeah, the phrase I was thinking of as you were talking was trust the process that it's. It's so hard and I think you know, again, this comes back to the idea that, like, if you believe that there is some higher power, whether it's God or the universe or this invisible thread that ties us all together, whatever it is that you believe in, if you believe that there is some greater reason that you have this passion, this idea, this vision, this plan, this whatever burning inside of you, trust that that is there for a purpose and a reason. Like I think about the idea of like, when I'm still going back to the idea of leaving teaching, like when I had that, like once it was, I feel like it was a fire lit. Like once that fire was lit, there was no going back. It was like there is no, there's no way I can sign this contract and come back here another year and do this job again when I feel the way I feel inside of my body, like I just can't and I feel like, once that happens, it's like you just have to trust that that's there for a reason. You know that gut instinct that we have. You know I have, like her mother's instinct when it comes to your kids.

Speaker 1: 46:08

Like anytime that I hear someone talking about going with that feeling of like I just knew this is what I was supposed to do, or I had this gut feeling that this is what I shouldn't be doing or that I needed to get out of this situation or out of this thing.

Speaker 1: 46:23

I feel, like anytime that you lean into that and you trust the process, that it's not going to be pretty right away, like I'm sure, all of that work that you've done to get to where you are now and it's still a process, like you said, you're still learning and growing and and healing all the things but it probably felt really messy and hard at times.

Speaker 1: 46:44

But if you trust the process and know that when you come out of the other side there's beauty and there is happiness and there is peace, then it's easier to endure all the other things that get hard and painful and difficult. But it's that trusting the process that is so hard. And I say that as someone who's like I'm not a proud of high horse going like, oh, it's so easy, like I, it's hard. I mean I still there are little aspects of my life every day that I have to remind myself like it's okay if if it's not easy, it's okay if it's not smooth sailing all the time, because that means that it's probably sometimes for the best so I totally agree with you on all of that.

Speaker 2: 47:28

The the biggest thing I I that I just heard you say is giving yourself grace. So if I used to never do oh, why am I down today? Why can't I do this? It was like I was so hard. I'm so critical on myself all the time and now it's just allowing myself that space to not be perfect and to be messy and to and to hold it and just say, okay, christine, like you're in a shitty mood today, like, okay, it's okay for you to not be this happy, go lucky person all the time.

Speaker 2: 47:58

And then the other thing that I've really anchored to, and I'm just starting to learn and understand and integrate into my being, is this duality of you know the tension of the opposite. So, to your point, like, without the darkness, you can't have the light. So to expect us to be light and cheery and bright all of the time is impossible, so we have to have that dark. And then I lived in my masculine energy for so long and I suppressed my feminine because I thought I had to be a certain way in business to get things accomplished. No, it's my feminine energy that actually gives me so much power. So it's like how do I, how do I manage and harmonize both of those? And so for me, just really recognizing and holding grace for the harder things, and then it makes the easier things just seemingly more, more easy, if that even makes sense. The harder, the harder things seem less hard and the easier things are just easier.

Speaker 1: 48:57

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 48:58

So, you used a word that I love and I've talked about on the podcast here a lot and I am. It's a big part of like and I don't know that I've even mentioned this on here, but, like the book that I'm working on is the word harmonize. I hear so many people and I I this was probably two or three years ago I did a podcast interview and we were talking about the idea of like balancing mom life and work life and I was like I really hate that word balance, like I just feel like balance is such a it's just a word that doesn't even really make sense because nothing is ever equal. Like you mentioned the, the idea of like your masculine and your feminine energy. Like if you're expecting it to be 50, 50, you're always going to come up disappointed.

Speaker 1: 49:40

It's when you look at like how can I intertwine these two together so that they support each other? They like one might be louder at times while the other one's quieter, but then it's going to shift back the other way a little bit. Like it's just this beautiful kind of like ebb and flow and so I love that. You know, I just picked up on that. When you were like harmonized, I was like yes, we need to make that something that's a more universal term, as opposed to like how do you balance it all? Well, I don't. It's just not possible.

Speaker 2: 50:08

You can't, you can't know. No, no, you're, you're, you're spot on. I mean, there, nothing is 50 50. And if you, if this balanced life that you know was the buzzword for the last 20 years, I mean it just doesn't exist. Yeah, there is no such thing.

Speaker 2: 50:27

And you and you the saying you can have it all, you just can't have it all at once has never been more true.

Speaker 2: 50:30

And one of the things that I really have a hard time with is when I hear women say you can have it all, because I think that that's just a flat out lie, and I think it's it's not giving women permission to say, wow, I'm overworked, I'm overtaxed, I need a break. Oh, no, well, that woman has it all she's, she has her own company, she's a mom, she's on the P all she's, she has her own company, she's a mom, she's on the PTA, she's doing this and this and this and this and this and this, and I feel like I'm gonna break because I'm doing Only these two things. You can't have it all at the same time. Maybe throughout the course of your life you can have it all, but I really would love for women to embrace the idea that you really can't have it all, because something's always going to suffer, and usually, as women, it's us who suffers. Yeah, it's us. We don't take care of ourselves the way we need to, because we're trying to be all things to all people.

Speaker 1: 51:22

Yeah, and I think conversations like this, hopefully, are allowing more women to recognize that, yeah, like we, it's not that, it's not that you can't have it, you just made you don't have it right now. Like you have to. You know, like pick and choose, like what's the most important to you right now and the other thing can come down the line. Or or recognizing that some people, they have a team of people helping them with this. It's not a one woman show, and that's where that's the one. That gets me is.

Speaker 1: 51:50

When I see people talking about like, oh yeah, I just I get up and I make this great breakfast for my kids and then I go off to work and they go to school and we do this. I'm like, well, that's great, but then you know, maybe you have a spouse that doesn't go. That doesn't work. That they take the kids to and from school for you or they do the school field trips and the lunches and all the things. But like, if you are playing it off as, like you are super woman, that's doing a disservice to so many women out there who are struggling looking at you going. I can't be super woman. Like I can barely get my shoes on the right feet every day.

Speaker 2: 52:27

My um, the woman I worked with with some of my PR, you know, for my book launch. She knows, she knows very well a woman who's a news anchor, a national news anchor who seemingly has it all it's perfect and her Instagram is perfect and her family's perfect and their trips are perfect and her breakfasts are perfect. And my PR person said, mallory, she goes. I know how many people are behind her that we never see the. You know the number of nannies, the house managers, the PR team, the media specialists, the social media, like just everything is so coordinated. So, of course, it looks perfect and, to your point, us like mere humans. We're just doing our best to try to keep it together and to love our children the best we can, and now we're trying to show up for ourselves, which is new for us.

Speaker 2: 53:20

And so, yeah, I really and truly it would have been a lot easier for me to not put this book out, because it's vulnerable and it talks about my insecurities and it talks about a lot of things, but I had this inner impulse that just kept saying people need to hear this message, people need permission, people need to know it's okay to not be perfect. And I I had women who wrote me and said I thought you were perfect. I literally thought you were perfect. Thank you for showing me this side of you, because we present to the world what we want the world to see and, to your point, what you said earlier world, what we want the world to see and, to your point, what you said earlier is like we're finally starting to talk about it and people need to know, like the world is messy.

Speaker 2: 54:03

Life is messy. Take the mask off, take the facade off and let's just be real.

Speaker 1: 54:07

Yeah, and let's just I mean perfectionism, just like balance, in my opinion, doesn't actually exist, it's not, it's not a real thing, it's definitely not a sustainable reality, Like it's just not.

Speaker 1: 54:19

That's not life.

Speaker 1: 54:20

I mean, I and I do think that we are, especially on social media, seeing a little bit of a like, a swing the other direction, where people are a little bit more open to sharing their you know the messiness, or they're not showing up completely perfected and but there's still that those out there that, like they feel the need and the pressure and and maybe it goes back to the idea of like the people pleasing, like they feel, like they're not going to be liked or loved or valued if they don't show up a certain way, and and it kind of all goes full circle, back to what we were talking about at the beginning, of like these healing, these childhood moments of I once I recognized my own shadows, my own things, where I was like, oh, that's why I react in this way, or that's why I behave in this way, or why I do this thing, because it all comes back to this idea of you know, like I'll, for example, friendships.

Speaker 1: 55:14

I have this thing where, like, if I start to feel like I'm losing a friendship or that I'm not feeling valued in that friendship.

Speaker 1: 55:30

Then I have a way of sort of like latching on even harder, or doing, clinging to or trying to just kind of like grasp the straws a little bit and it's not my best quality, it's not pretty, but it's what I do. And once I recognize, oh, that's why I do that, because as a child I feel like there were so many friendships that were just like I was like the extra one they could just brush off. Or even in dating relationships, I was always the one that was like, oh, there's always someone better kind of thing, and so I still held on to that and I recognize that. Well, once I recognize that it was like this like glass shattering moment where I'm like oh, I can now see the rest of the world clearly, because now I can recognize when this person's behaving in this way, when this person on the internet is, is portraying themselves in this perfectionist manner, like almost overly. So there's a part of me that wants to go.

Speaker 1: 56:23

Who are you trying to get love from Like? Who did not give you love in your past? Yes, yeah, and when you can see the world through those that lens, it really gives you a little bit more empathy for people and it makes you realize like we're all just out here trying to do the best that we can. Being a human today in this world is tough, and we're all doing the best that we can with the resources and the life that we have, and so give yourself grace, but I think give everybody else a little bit of grace as well.

Speaker 2: 56:55

Totally agree. I, you, you touched on something, um, they're called core wounds. So in those childhoods, those early childhood traumas, you're wounded and my, my, I, you and I are very similar. My core wounds fear of abandonment, right Like, very similar to what you were saying Lack of self.

Speaker 2: 57:13

I didn't know what my worth was and so I thought my worth was derived by you know, helping others, pleasing others, the value they saw in me, and then control by controlling. I didn't have to have fear about what the outcome would be and so, like, clinging is a form of control. As I was moving into my new house and building it and I left the job, I was like, well, maybe I'm not going to have my house, and I had this fear of it. So I was clinging to this house. And when you have this attachment to an outcome, you almost always lose it by clinging. You almost always lose it by stepping back and allowing that space, like through friendships and relationships and wealth, whatever it is, whatever you're trying to attract into your life by actually giving it the space, you actually usually end up with it in a way that's better than what you were even trying to control for to begin with.

Speaker 2: 58:04

So it's just having that awareness and, to your point, like knowing the patterns, and me like, oh wait, I'm starting to act that way. I'm starting to feel that way. What's'm starting to feel that way? What's causing me? Oh, I'm dating now. Oh, that guy is saying this or doing this. I'm like I, you know, part of me wants to run, because I'm like, oh, I've seen that before in this past. Or I'm like, or maybe this guy isn't like that at all and it's just me reacting to them. So it's crazy how those first seven years and then all the years after, when we practice what we've learned like you said at the beginning of the show makes us who we are today.

Speaker 1: 58:39

Yeah, oh my gosh. Well, christine, this has been such an incredible conversation. I was looking at it I was like, oh my gosh, it's already been almost an hour. I feel like we could talk for hours and hours. There's so much we didn't even like touch on that I would love to circle back to. So I would love to maybe have you on again and in the future and have you kind of just continue this conversation, because I think there's going to be a lot of people listening who are nodding their heads along as they're listening. So thank you again so much for being here um let everybody know where they can find you.

Speaker 1: 59:11

I know you have your book it's on amazon, but where they can find you? I know you have your book, it's on Amazon, but where else can they get in touch with you or learn more about you?

Speaker 2: 59:17

Absolutely Well and first of all you know, thank you. I'm humbled and honored to be here and I would love to come back so anytime. My book is called Unwinding Perfect. It is on Amazon, christine Klein, spraker, and then I have a website, wwwunwindingperfectcom. I share a lot of blogs. A lot about my process last year, as I was healing from my divorce, are on there. And then co found her is my new advisory firm and it's co co. Dash found f o n f o U N D H? E? R, her co found hercom.

Speaker 1: 59:57

Perfect. Well, I will have all of that linked down in the show notes. So make sure that you go grab her book and check out her, all of her different sites and um and I'm assuming you have social media on there as well they can go find you and reach out to you that way as well.

Speaker 2: 1:00:11

Yeah, yes, linkedin and Instagram is Christine underscore Klein underscore Spraker.

Speaker 1: 1:00:18

Perfect. Well, if you reach out, let her know you heard her here on the girl means business podcast and thank you again so much for being here, christine. This has been amazing. Thank you, kendra. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to take a screenshot, share it to social media and don't forget to tag girl means business and, as always, we greatly appreciate any reviews you leave for this podcast. Thank you,