Episode 404 Topics: as a teen, Kara Chamberlain survived being abducted by a serial killer – now, she brings her wisdom around being a survivor, about consuming “true crime,” and about coping with trauma to the Balanced Bites Podcast. Kara’s Lifetime movie and Oxygen documentary debut on Lifetime on February 11, 2023!
**Please note that we discuss incredibly serious topics here, including kidnapping, sexual assault, and trauma very directly. Please gauge your consumption of this episode accordingly.**
Transcripts are automatically generated, so may not always accurately reflect the words/phrases used or the individuals speaking.
Welcome to the new Balanced Bites Podcast! I’m your host, Liz, a nutritional therapy practitioner and best selling author bringing you candid, up-front, myth-busting and thought-provoking conversations about food, fitness, and life. Remember: The information in this podcast should not be considered personal, individual, or medical advice.
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Welcome, listeners and friends.
Today I’m bringing you an interview with survivor Kara Robinson Chamberlain, and you’ll learn what I mean by “survivor” momentarily. this is something slightly different from what you might expect from this podcast, which has always mostly centered around food and lifestyle, but it is so very important and valuable and I believed it would be perfectly suited to our overall mission of bringing important, layered perspectives to you as often as possible. And I believe a very small part of the many reasons why sharing this interview is important is because of the incredible insight it brings to the IMbalanced and problematic way the genre of true crime, which is what we’re going to talk about today, is typically produced and released to the public. (you and me.) Kara has transformed the way I view, consume, and conceptualize the true crime genre – because of Kara, I now recognize the nuance, the layers, the context involved with how true crime media should be produced AND how we SHOULD ideally view it as discerning consumers, especially as it pertains to the victims; the survivors, of crime. Of course, that’s not all we talk about in this interview, but I did want to highlight how well this conversation fits this podcast’s longstanding commitment to recognizing the nuance around critical topics and addressing and highlighting that as best we can.
Before I share with you more details on today’s interview with Kara Robinson Chamberlain, I want to give a content warning. The information in this interview is incredibly important, but it is not necessarily material that I expect children or sensitive individuals to digest as presented. The lessons Kara imparts would be extremely valuable to anyone, but I want to give the just-in-case heads-up that, for some individuals and especially kids, it would be best processed with the partnership of a trusted guide. So, before I progress into a more detailed content warning, I’d love to give you the opportunity to pause and switch to headphones OR simply put a pin in it and wait to listen until you’re clear of sensitive ears. … Now, the more detailed content warning: please note that we discuss incredibly serious topics here, including kidnapping, sexual assault and trauma very directly. Please gauge your consumption of this episode accordingly.
Now, I’ll offer a brief introduction to today’s guest, Kara Robinson Chamberlain, although I actually ask that she introduce herself in this episode, and you’ll hear why in a moment. What I’d love for you to know about Kara, briefly, before the interview, is that, at fifteen years old, she escaped, literally escaped, and survived one of the most astounding sets of circumstances I could possibly imagine. Not surprisingly, especially given the popularity of the true crime genre, her story has been produced and used – both with and without her express consent. We’re going to talk about that, as well, and as a preface to that discussion, I’d like to make the point that this episode, while important for anyone, is also particularly important for those who consume true crime media of any kind.
There are many things that are extraordinary about kara, like the fact that she went on to complete the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy; that She went on to work as a school resource officer with the agency that investigated her case, and that she worked as a sex crime and child abuse investigator and a victim’s advocate until the birth of her children.
But what stands out just as much is that Kara believes that she survived for a very specific purpose and that is to spread hope and encouragement to other survivors. To remind them that they are not alone, that they can heal, and that they are stronger than what happened to them. And she carries out that mission through her social media, her speaking engagements, and coming very soon, just a few days from now, on February 11th, she will continue that work through the release of her Lifetime movie. It is called The Girl Who Escaped: the kara robinson story; and it will air alongside her documentary Escaping Captivity, the Kara Robinson Story. That’s february 11th at 8PM ET and you’ll be able to catch it streaming the following day via your on-demand platform.
Let’s hear my chat with Kara Robinson Chamberlain now.
[00:00:00] Liz Wolfe: Okay. Internet seems good. Everything seems good. My baby poop yellow sweatshirt seems good.
[00:00:05] Kara Chamberlain: Listen, not everybody can get away with that kind of color.
[00:00:08] Liz Wolfe: Your hair seems really good.
[00:00:09] Kara Chamberlain: It’s, you know, it, it’s drying. It’ll, we’ll see. It’s always a mystery. Oh, let me turn on. Do not disturb. Hold on. Oh, yeah, good. Oh, I should do the same. Yeah.
[00:00:19] Liz Wolfe: I always forget. Good idea. I do too. And there are times when I’m recording something just for myself and there’s always like an extreme expletive.
[00:00:26] Kara Chamberlain: Like I’m just talking , what the, like, who is calling me?
Right. Yeah. Now perfect. I mean, I’m sure a child will grievously, injure themselves at some
[00:00:37] Liz Wolfe: point. . Oh, 100%. We actually have, I’m lucky that my husband is home today cause we actually have, um, one home with a stomach bug. So I’m, I, I get to work this morning and then he’s gonna work this afternoon. So we’re making it work.
But some, but you know, there’s always, it’s always something. We got that little tap on
[00:00:52] Kara Chamberlain: the door last night, like, tap, tap, tap, tap. Oh no. I threw up in my bed everywhere.
Your kids are they’re nine [00:01:00] and six, which is insane. I don’t know. I have kids
[00:01:03] Liz Wolfe: that big. I know, I hear that. That’s like those that it was other people, that had older kids, you know, like, oh yeah, that’s so and so she has older kids.
[00:01:11] Kara Chamberlain: We older people. . Yeah. Well,
[00:01:13] Liz Wolfe: I’m getting all kinds of midlife fitness and midlife makeup.
[00:01:18] Kara Chamberlain: Midlife. Yeah. And it’s not wrong.
I did a story a few days ago on, um, Instagram, and I was like, I’m 35. And I was like, no, , I’m 36. I, and I’m like doing the math .
[00:01:32] Liz Wolfe: Like born in 19. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. I’m older than I thought I was. I did that last year. I wrote something, I was 37, I think, and my friend from middle school was like,
[00:01:41] Kara Chamberlain: uh, Liz girl, you are, you’re
[00:01:43] Liz Wolfe: 39 . Just stop counting at a certain point. Yeah. Okay. So you live in a beautiful camper and we’ve connected on this in the past.
Tell
[00:01:54] Kara Chamberlain: me all about camper. Yeah, so my husband has wanted to live in a camper [00:02:00] forever. He has done contract type work for the government, and so he’s essentially lived out of a bag, a bag, or a backpack, or a suitcase for 15 to 20 years. So for him, the idea of living in a camper was no big deal. I’ve never done anything like that.
So he’s been trying to get me on board for a very long time. Um, the housing market was kind of at its peak in the spring of 2022, and we had just consolidated all of our debt into our mortgage, like refinanced and consolidated all of our debt into our mortgage. And we still had like $80,000 in equity in our house.
And my husband’s like, should we just sell the house and live in the camper? And I was like, I mean Sure. Like let, why not? Yeah, why not? Yeah. And so we ended up with a beautiful lake lot that a friend of the family was like, yeah, you can just park here and stay as long as you want for free. Just pay the electricity bill.[00:03:00]
And it was kind of a no-brainer. So we ended up getting rid of, I would say 80% of the things that we own. We just gave them away because at a certain point it becomes more cumbersome and time consuming to try to sell things on Facebook marketplace or what have you. Yeah. And so we got rid of everything and everything fits either in our camper.
We have a storage unit. Um, so the plan was to be, uh, kind of traveling around, but we’re primarily stationary at this point, either in the mountains of Tennessee where we have family land, which is where we are right now. Or, um, on a lake in South Carolina. And it’s a fairly large camper. We have a fifth wheel, so it’s 43 feet long.
Oh my goodness. Yeah. So it’s. Rather large . Um, so we have two boys. They’re, um, nine and six, and they actually both have their own sleeping sp like spaces, like rooms essentially, because we have a mid bunk. So my oldest has the mid bunk [00:04:00] room and that has like a bed and he, his Legos and all the things. And then we have like a loft area that’s separate that you access from the hallway.
And so that’s where my, my six-year-old sleeps. And so we have all of the conveniences of home, honestly. Like we have an oven and we have a microwave. You know, we don’t have a dishwasher, but we have me, so it’s close enough . Um, but yeah, it’s cramped sometimes, but um, and we have washer dryer. Like we, I think the biggest benefit is you get to be more intentional about what you own and you get to be more intentional about spending time with your family.
Like as I’m working more. I kind of am not forced, but more or less sometimes it feels that way when you’re running your own business. I’m forced to kind of take time out and be right in my family’s face because we’re sharing this small space. So, [00:05:00] um, we just, we get to live simpler and everything is a little more stressful, but also a lot more amazing because we just get to love each other and, um, go experience cool things.
It’s opened up opportunities like traveling across the country that I never had as a child, and we’re able to give that to our children. So it’s pretty fun. We
[00:05:25] Liz Wolfe: have a smaller camper van. We have a converted sprinter van, which we have not used much because of a long story around the acquisition of the camper van and the season that we got it in.
But we’ve had several people rent it from us, and it’s a totally different situation. I mean, you have a home on wheels. Ours is kind of a place like a, a car you can sleep in. Yeah. With a little refrigerator and a little sink. But it’s been interesting because people have rented that from us who are, who have older, older kids, kids that have graduated college, they don’t see much anymore.
And all of them have said like, you’re doing it right. Like to, to be able to have this [00:06:00] experience where you can travel with your family, but still have a home base. Like, they’re like, man, I wish I did this when my kids were younger. So whenever, whenever somebody has said that to me, I’ve always thought of you like she’s, she’s doing it right.
Even though I tried to get you to come to my Lake , but you’re like, I already have a lake. I’m like, dang it. I have, I have nothing.
I
[00:06:17] Kara Chamberlain: have nothing . I, and I will, I will come through there and I will be there. I think in the fall, in the autumn, we will be coming through.
So for real this time, because I have, it’s beautiful here. Yeah. Because I have actual events that are planned that I have to be at. So I know that we’ll be there. Well, are
[00:06:36] Liz Wolfe: you good talking about work for a while? Sure. Okay. I wanted you on the podcast for so many reasons, and as I was prepping for the podcast and trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to introduce this topic, I sort of threw up my hands and was like, actually, you know what?
I would kind of like for you to tell the story because I think that from what I have gleaned from paying attention to what you’re [00:07:00] doing it is very important that victims. Of crime are able to tell their own stories and don’t have, other people deciding what parts are important and what parts need to be told.
So I would love it if you could share whatever it is you’re comfortable with and perhaps I can ask follow up questions from there. Does that
[00:07:20] Kara Chamberlain: work? Yeah, absolutely. Great. And thank you so much for just kind of listening and absorbing and being willing to learn.
I think that’s one of the most important things and something that I feel not enough people are willing to do in the world today. So thank you. Um, so the, just of how I came to be where I am today is when I was 15 years old, I was kidnapped by a stranger from my best friend’s front yard. I was held for 18 hours and assaulted multiple times before I escaped.
When I escaped from him, um, I. Went to law enforcement, I gave them all of the [00:08:00] information that I had memorized about him. I kind of had an intuition from the time he pressed a gun to the side of my neck until the time I ran out his front door that I would escape. And I would gather information to help identify him.
So I had memorized various things that I’d seen in his apartment, the serial number from the container that he transported me in. Um, his doctor, his dentist. And I took all of that information to law enforcement and ultimately it helped to identify him. My captor was on the run for about two days before, essentially his sister set him up more or less for a meeting where law enforcement was going to intercept him.
And it ended in, uh, Police chase and him shooting himself. So my captor was Richard Markovic, and he has been identified as the person responsible for at least three murders in Virginia in [00:09:00] 1996 and 1997. I was kidnapped in 2002. Um, and it is my belief that he is responsible for much, much more that we just have not been able to identify yet.
So that led to kind of me forming relationships with law enforcement and ultimately a career in law enforcement up until the birth of my first child, when I s my husband was traveling outta the country. So I was staying home with my, my boys and raising them and all of that kind of together led to a public speaking career because I’ve always been very open about sharing my experience.
It’s. I think partially due to the way I have dealt with trauma, which is a whole conversation in and of itself, trauma coping mechanisms. But for me it was a lot of dissociation. And so when I tell my story, it’s a little bit like telling about a book you read [00:10:00] or, um, you know, a movie that you saw because I don’t have very much emotional connection because I was just disconnected from what was happening.
So I’ve always been able to share and I always felt like there had to be some reason that I, and I’ll use air quotes, dealt with my trauma well. And so I always felt like it was to help people. And if I could help one person at any point, then that would be my goal. So I did some keynote speaking, uh, again up until the birth of my children, and then I kind of, Why am I doing this?
Like what is the, what’s the destination here? Right? Like you, it’s like getting in your car and you just drive. If you don’t have a destination in mind, you’re just kind of like wandering aimlessly. And so I kind of stopped for a while until Elizabeth Smart reached out and she said that she would like to interview me for a show she was working on and, and then that kind of changed the course of my life again because I formed a [00:11:00] relationship with her and other survivors at that point.
Other, like public facing survivors that were sharing their stories. And I realized that we, it’s getting better, but in general, we don’t talk enough about trauma and sexual assault and these really difficult topics, mostly because people don’t know how to respond. Mm-hmm. people hear these stories, you know, like, There’s this TikTok trend that’s going on right now, and it’s uses that song from Taylor Swifter.
It says, horrified looks from everyone in the room. And, and I just, I heard it and I thought immediately, this is exactly what it feels like when people are like, what do you do for a living? And I’m like, ah. Mm-hmm. , I’m an. A keynote speaker and an influencer and they’re like, oh, well what do you do? I’m like, well, I was kidnapped when I was 15 by a serial killer and I escaped and there, oh my, my God.
Right? And there’s always just, cuz you know, you have to have an elevator pitch, right? Like , if you’re an entrepreneur, you have to have your [00:12:00] elevator pitch. It’s like, that’s my elevator pitch. And I’m like, and people just look horrified. And I’m like, sorry about it. Like I, so I think that the more we can share these stories, the more people can learn how to respond in a way that’s supportive, that moves people from a victim mentality to a survivor mentality.
And I think the more these stories are shared, the more people who have been through difficult things will feel seen and heard, because that was something that I experienced. I started doing projects with other survivors is they would say things and I would think, wow, that’s exactly how I feel. But I’ve never heard anyone else put it into words or, and, or maybe I didn’t even realize that was how I felt until someone else put it into words.
And so I realized that a lot of people won’t get that experience in the absence of hearing someone like me share my experience. They would not feel seen or heard, um, in the [00:13:00] day-to-day life. And so that kind of became my why. Why am I out here sharing? Because I want people to know. That an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is absolutely normal.
Like, that’s perfect. There’s no right or wrong way to respond to trauma. There’s no right or wrong way to heal. There are a million ways to be hurt and a million ways to heal. So that’s kind of, that’s not my elevator pitch, , that’s my, that’s my long spiel. But that’s kind of how I came to be where I am today.
Well, I’m all
[00:13:36] Liz Wolfe: here for the spiel. That’s the whole point of a podcast, right? Mm-hmm. is the long form. And one thing that I wanted to ask you about and, and I might as well just ask it now, is I’m curious how with the true crime genre and with all of these ways that stories like this are being told in a sort of almost pornographic way, almost, you know, [00:14:00] like true crime
[00:14:00] Kara Chamberlain: porn.
Yeah. It’s trauma porn is what a Of porn trauma. Porn. Yeah.
[00:14:05] Liz Wolfe: How, how are you working against it?
How are you working to create an environment and a mode of, for lack of a better word, storytelling around what you went through and what others have gone , through that does not plug into that trauma porn that everybody’s so, so
[00:14:22] Kara Chamberlain: into right now. Yeah, I, you know, I actually attribute two things to how I’m able to do this and the way I approach it.
Um, one is this idea that I think. Consumers are moving towards trying to be conscious consumers. I think society in general, people are beginning to be aware of where their money goes or where their time goes. And then the other thing is actually one of your podcasts where you were talking about how people don’t think, how people don’t just sit and think.
And so if you know anything about the Engram, I am an [00:15:00] Engram nine and I have moved kind of into my eight wing a little more recently. So I want to like lovingly challenge people to think differently. And so I kind of approach with a kindness first mentality. Um, even when people are heinous to me, which I often have, I still am like, try to lead with kindness and just encourage people to think about.
If the worst day of your life, just think of, the absolute worst, most painful day of your entire life. You sitting on your phone scrolling through social media or, or maybe you’re looking at podcasts or on YouTube and you see a stranger talking about your story, a stranger that you’ve never talked to, and how would that feel?
Mm-hmm. . It is extremely invasive, first of all, and I would [00:16:00] argue, and I often do argue, that if you are a for-profit media person or avenue, so whether that’s podcasting or making television, And you are telling these stories without the involvement, without the consent, without the compensation of the person you’re telling or giving back to in some way, the person that you are telling the story about and you are monetizing that, that is exploitation kind of at its core.
And so that’s kind of, so far what I’ve been doing is just educating people of what it looks like to be a conscious consumer. Like if you are consuming true crime, because it is the number one genre right now, right? Like it is so popular. And if you are consuming it, why are you consuming it? Are you consuming it because it fuels your anxiety or it alleviates your anxiety?
Are you consuming it [00:17:00] because you’re curious about how people get this way kind of thinking, right? Like sitting and thinking, why do I find this compelling? Why do I just want to. Continuously consume this. And then looking at the content creator of which the, the content you’re consuming and seeing what they’re doing to give back to the communities of the stories they tell.
So anytime without fail that I talk about this on TikTok or Instagram, people say, well, who are some people that that do it? Right? And I, and I say, well, here are your guidelines. You go and figure it out, right? So I kind of put the power back in their hands, like, I’m not just gonna give you something to parrot back.
I want you to go and look and make that decision on your own. Um, so that’s been up to this point, what I’ve been doing and working with other survivors and choosing. To engage in content creation or production with which I’m involved. [00:18:00] So most notably, whenever I started again, getting into keynote speaking, I realized that I would kind of need something to point back to, uh, like a documentary telling my story, something that I was proud of because I had been victimized by the media telling my story time and time and time again, I’d, I stopped doing it because without fail, I would tell my story and at the end they would cut cameras and they would say, okay, can you just inject a little more emotion?
Oh my gosh. Gosh. Right? Like, these are real housewives, like . Absolutely. They’re like, we need, we need something that’s gonna sell more. You know, like, can you work a tier in or, wow. So I, I mean, just terrible. And you, you wouldn’t believe it. And that’s like at the tip of the iceberg of what people have experienced, who have dealt in media and true crime.
Um, so I stopped kind of doing all of these things and everything that I had done up to that point, I was like, uh, not really crazy about it, but I realized I [00:19:00] needed a documentary. And so I reached out to Elizabeth Smart and I said, you know, I, I wanna do a documentary. Do you have someone that you would recommend?
And she pointed me towards the production company that did her documentary, and they were fantastic. They made me an executive producer on my documentary. I was involved from day one until Air Day and even beyond. And now I worked with them again. So there’s a lifetime movie. Uh, will. Will this be out?
When will you air this? Will you tell me? You,
[00:19:30] Liz Wolfe: we, we can chat offline and you can tell me when you want it to come out. Okay.
[00:19:33] Kara Chamberlain: Okay. So maybe we can do it before, will, can you do it before February 11th? Absolutely. Yeah, of course. All right, so there’s a lifetime movie that will air on February 11th, and that was with the same production company and.
It was, again, I was involved from beginning to end. And so kind of setting this industry standard, there’s myself and a handful of other survivors who are trying to set this industry standard [00:20:00] that if you’re going to tell these stories, the people who you’re telling the stories about need to be involved in order for it to be ethical, true crime.
Um, and so trying to set that standard in those ways. And then the newest thing that again, coincides with the documentary a little bit is I’m starting a podcast with a fellow survivor . And it will be called Survivor’s Guide to True Crime.
And it’s two survivors talking to other people. They share their story to their comfort level. And then we talk about what you often don’t get in true crime. Very often in true crime, uh, the telling of these stories follows a script, right? It’s like, mm-hmm. , this happened. This is the background of the offender.
This is the details of the crime. This is whether it was solved or not. The end. Mm-hmm. . And you don’t hear about what happens after. Because I think, and I think that’s really important because none of us get through life unscathed. We all, you know, you may not have been kidnapped at 15 by a [00:21:00] serial killer, but you’ve probably had some crappy things happen.
right? . I laugh at that. You can listen. I am a, oh man, big fan. I have a big fan of dark humor, like it is my favorite. Um, but you know, you’ve probably been through something difficult. And just because it’s not as extreme doesn’t mean that it didn’t impact you as strongly as it, it may have impacted you more.
You know, you may not have disassociated as much as I did, so, Um, I think it’s important to tell these stories and tell them through the lens of the person who identifies as a survivor, because there, there it is nuance and, but there’s a difference between a victim and a survivor. It’s, you know, you don’t get to choose if you’re a victim, but you get to choose if you’re a survivor.
Mm-hmm. And it’s just kind of, you know, picking yourself up, saying, yeah, this really crappy thing happened, but here’s what I’m going to do because of it. And so telling these stories in a way that the survivors can say, yeah, this is how that crime really impacted me. These are the things I felt. These are the [00:22:00] things I went through after, and then this is where I am today and here’s how I got there and here’s how I took my story back.
And so telling those stories in a way that’s very empowering as opposed to that trauma porn. Um, really just, you know, do it, do it as much as I can. Uh,
[00:22:18] Liz Wolfe: you’re doing quite a bit
[00:22:20] Kara Chamberlain: I kinda am so
[00:22:23] Liz Wolfe: one of the things that I wanted to ask you coming into this interview was, what is the difference or what is going to be the difference between the documentary and the Lifetime movie?
And why was it important to you to, to move forward with the, the Lifetime movie, having told your story in a documentary format?
[00:22:39] Kara Chamberlain: Yeah, I love that question. So I honestly, a movie was never something that I was like, yeah, absolutely would love to do it. I didn’t really care about doing a movie. People were always like, oh, you could definitely make a movie. And I was like, eh, I’d rather just do a documentary because I can’t stand [00:23:00] reenactments.
Like when you watch something and they have like the reenactments, I’m like, that is dumb . I mean, to be honest, I just, I hate them so much. , but the documentary actually changed my mind about it because they were done so well. And then I had someone who wrote for Lifetime wrote me a message and they were like, we would love to, you know, adapt a script for Lifetime.
And I was like, Ew. No, but I sent it to . I mean, because again, I had this perception of what that would look like. Yeah. And so, so I sent the, the message along to the production company that I work with anyway, and I was like, what are your thoughts on this? And they’re like, well, if that’s something you wanna do, like we are Team Cara, so we’ll do it and we’ll do it.
Right. And so, I had done the documentary and um, I was, I was pretty, I was, I was obviously just blown away. So happy with the final version of it, [00:24:00] but up to that point, again, I didn’t like reenactments. I did not like anybody like messing with the facts of my story. Mm-hmm. right. It would literally just make me cringe.
So hard to hear somebody tell the story and any little fact is wrong or misconstrued. Um, so to me, the idea of doing a movie was like, well, it’s odd. Like they have to tell it, it, they have to dramatize it and I can’t stand that. So the documentary was done in a way that it was myself, it was my family, my boyfriend at the time, law enforcement.
It was everyone telling the story, um, in a way that gave you this, this really great kind of overhead, kind of like, um, airplane view. Mm-hmm. bird’s eye view. Yeah. Bird’s eye view of the, of the crime and the aftermath and, and telling it kind of minute by minute. And I loved how you got to see all of the.
[00:25:00] People that were impacted by what you think of as, you know, a crime that affects one person. Well, there’s primary victims and there’s secondary victims and there’s tertiary victims, right? So it’s those ripple effects of this one crime. And so I was really just happy with the way the documentary showed that, because I thought that was very unique.
And I was obviously just ecstatic about the way the production company allowed me to have a lot of choice. I was an executive producer, but I just, I had so much choice and they fought for my decisions. And so whenever they said, yeah, if this is something you wanna do like a lifetime movie, then we will do it.
And I was like, I. Sure, I’ll, you know, I’ll do it. I, well, let’s see, let’s see what, if they’re interested, um, let’s see what it would look like. And I knew that I trusted them implicitly, like mm-hmm. , they would not do me wrong, the production company. And [00:26:00] so they went forward, they kind of got a deal with Lifetime, and I was like, it’s not too bad.
And then the script revision started coming back. And I, like, I kid you not, one of my best friends who’s been with me through this whole pro process, and she’s actually my, my podcast co-host Kim. I would message her every time I got a script. And I was like, I don’t hate this. Like, this is, this is good
Like, you know, it’s like a question. I’m like, I like it. I don’t, and, and I would, you know, let her read it and she would be like, no, it is, this is really good. And then, you know, anytime I didn’t like anything, I would tell the production company or, you know, I’d actually have the, the script writer, uh, her phone number.
I would message her and I’d be like, I hate this. And she’d be like, okay, I’ll change it. No offense, I hate it. Right. . Exactly. I, there’s like this one thing that the, that they were doing with the script, like this one [00:27:00] direction they were going, and I literally sat on it and like, stewed for 24 hours. I was like, I hate it.
And I’m like, kicking rocks. I’m just totally emo right? Like, walking around, I’m like, I can’t do anything about this and I hate it so much. And then I was like, oh, wait a minute. I can, because my, my past had been, oh, you just gotta kind of suck it up. They’re gonna do what they want with your story. And I, I remember calling, um, the, one of the, um, people at the production company and I was like, so listen, this has to change.
I don’t like it. And he was like, . Okay. I had like geared myself up for this big fight and he was like, yeah, okay. And so then they cast it and I was involved in the, um, like in some of the filming I went up to Canada’s where they filmed it and was there for the filming. And I was blown away by how much I enjoyed all of the process.
[00:28:00] But one of the things that I think is most interesting and why I think it’s going to be important to have the movie in addition to the documentary, is we all process information a little differently. So some people will love a documentary and they will plow through that. And um, you know, they want that like fact driven way to consume it.
And some people don’t want that. They want something that’s more like telling a story and that is where the movie is going to. To be more of their speed. So, one of the things that I also found interesting is my memory kind of works in snapshots. So I find this infinitely interesting too. Like every, not everyone has an internal dialogue, first of all, which is like
Yeah. That Grava response is the same thing. He’s like, so you don’t, I don’t have an internal dialogue. He was like, so what are you thinking about? I’m like, sometimes it’s literally just elevator [00:29:00] music. I don’t know. I’m just like, Hmm, oh my goodness. Nothing. And then everyone’s memory works a little differently.
So some people will think of memories and they’re like, first person, like they’re looking through a video camera. Some people will see it from above. Um, some people see movies. I just see snapshots, so I don’t see movies at all. I just have like, like just a snapshot of different things. Mm-hmm. . And so 20 years have passed since this one crime and.
Obviously some of those snapshots have kind of like blurred around the edges a little bit, and some of them have been lost. And so during the filming of the movie, I, I had already read the script, so I knew like what was coming. But during the filming I would see them act out these certain parts and I, and it was like filling in the gaps for me.
Mm-hmm. . So it was very interesting to, to see how that worked for me. Um, but it’s definitely a lot more emotional. [00:30:00] Um, it is dramatized, but it’s not done in a way that feels exploitative to my story or that feels untrue to what I experienced. I think, um, the way they, they, they obviously have to, for time sake, they have to.
Tell the story and kind of like condense things into a shorter version or things that happened years later, they have to kind of weave them into the story. Um, and I think they just did it in a way that worked really well with my story and, and felt authentic to what I actually experienced. So to answer your question, I think it’s just two different ways to hear the same story.
And what I actually love is that lifetime. Got the rights to syndicate the documentary, which basically means they will play the movie on February 11th, and the documentary will immediately follow it so people can view the [00:31:00] movie and then they can, if they wanna know more, they can watch the documentary and then they can have the real facts.
That’s phenomenal. I love
[00:31:07] Liz Wolfe: it.
Now, when you were going through this process, you mentioned earlier on the, the dissociation, and if there’s anything that I ask you that you’re not comfortable with, I can chop it out,
[00:31:17] Kara Chamberlain: whatever.
[00:31:18] Liz Wolfe: I, I feel just from watching your social media that, that I think these are all gonna be okay. But curious about, you talked about how the dissociation, actually served you in a positive way, which was fascinating to me because as an uneducated lay person, if somebody says dissociate, you think of that as a negative thing.
Right. And I would love to hear number one, a little bit more about how that served you. And I would also like to ask whether any of this process sort of gave you flashbacks or forced you to relive things that you really didn’t want to
[00:31:53] Kara Chamberlain: relive. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So I will preface all of this by [00:32:00] saying, I think very often we can view coping mechanisms or trauma responses, or even emotions with a positive or a negative.
Kind of tag on them, right? Like, I don’t wanna feel angry because that’s a negative emotion, but I think the first step, um, in recognizing kind of everything that I’m going to say as true is realizing that as human beings, we are made with a wide range of emotions, of responses to trauma. And none of them are positive or negative.
So like, throw out positive and negative, they just are, right? Like they just exist. And so there’s also, there’s a, there are some, some issues societally with the authors of the book. However, I think the, the crux of what they try to, to talk about is, is essentially true. Um, the Gift of Fear by Gavin, Deb Becker, mm-hmm.
It is so [00:33:00] interesting. And it’s essentially about how we mostly as women, how we have this. Physiological response to fear and how that can be a gift. How that can be something that you can use to save your own life or to kind of motivate you to make a change. And so for me, dissociation, I think, yeah, I think all coping mechanisms are, or not even not coping mechanisms, let me back up.
I think that all trauma responses are absolutely perfect and wonderful. Like they are part of our physiological system. You can’t overcome them. It’s your autonomic nervous system, right? So you have fight, flight, freeze, and some people say a um, a fawn, but I think appease is more appropriate. So you have fight, flight, freeze, and appease.
Um, and for me, dissociation was part of that trauma response. So kind of think. You know, you’re going through something [00:34:00] terribly traumatic and your brain can’t quite process. Like you don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with that, and you don’t have the ability to escape from that situation physically.
And so your brain kind of does you this favor of separating your brain from what’s happening to your body. So for me, dissociation was the means for me to be able to kind of keep a calm head and gather information and ultimately escape. Um, I think that it definitely served me well at that time.
Long-term it did not necessarily serve me well because very often if you experience a traumatic event, especially in childhood, younger life, um, it solidifies the coping mechanisms. That you’ll have for the rest of your life. So whatever was your early life coping mechanism, trauma response [00:35:00] becomes your stress coping mechanism as you get older.
And so for me it was emotional detachment and dissociation. So you can imagine that that was great. That served me well in that situation and it honestly served me well in several other situations throughout my life. But as I got older, and I’m talking like 15 years after the crime, I now have children.
My husband’s working out of the country two thirds of the year. I have two little boys, you know, they’re like one in three. And all I feel is just really, really mad all the time. I don’t feel any other emotions with any sort of intensity. Um, I had extreme like adrenal, like beyond adrenal fatigue, like burnout.
I had, I had my cortisol tested. It was like zero , like I had no cortisol at all. And I was like, okay, so something has to change, right? Like, I don’t know what has to change, but something has to change. And obviously if you are looking [00:36:00] at, you know, like I, I know adrenal fatigue is kind of a misnomer at this point, but if I’m gonna use that term, for lack of a better term, but when you’re looking at this adrenal dysfunction, adrenal fatigue, you’re like, oh, you have to reduce stress
It’s like, oh, okay, so cool. All right, so I have, I’m good now, right? My husband’s out of the country. How do I do that? You know, I can’t, I can’t give my kids away. So , they’re the primary source of stress, right? Like, good, bad in between, but they’re stressful. And so, , I began kind of seeking alternate ways to heal and to kind of remove stress, so introducing better coping mechanisms.
Um, I, therapy wasn’t accessible at that time, uh, for me, and like our insurance didn’t cover it. And so I was like, well, I can’t, I can’t afford this, and like, who can’t and Right. Um, it’s so expensive. And so, um, [00:37:00] so I began kind of taking a holistic approach to kind of healing my body because I was like, well, I can control internal stressors, right?
Like, I’ve lived fairly clean for a long time, you know, as far as like toxins and what I eat. But let me try to remove, you know, like, I guess what, um, co-infections and parasites mm-hmm. and candida and all these things out of my body so that I can. Not be in this constant state of fight or flight. Because ultimately that’s where I was.
I was just so burdened. Um, and my body was stuck in that fight or flight that I had been logged into at 15 mm-hmm. . And so in order for me to get out of that, I kind of had to get my body out of stress. Um, cuz that was the one thing that I could control. And so I worked through a lot of those internal factors.
And then I introduced a lot of kind of [00:38:00] external coping mechanisms. Uh, like fitness became a gigantic means for me to just kind of cope. And it, and it helped me to overcome dissociation too. Mm-hmm. , because I don’t feel like you can dissociate when you’re, you know, like doing high intensity workouts, like at the time doing a barbell overhead.
It’s like you gotta stay present. Yeah. Right. And especially if, you know, once you’re in your thirties and things start to hurt and you’re like, ow, if you’re not paying attention to your body, then your shoulder is broken for inevitably . Absolutely true. Yes. So, so I, um, I started working out in a, in an intentional way, and, and that helped me to overcome the dissociation.
I started using things like e f t, tapping, um, vagus nerve stimulation, parasympathetic breathing, just things that I could learn to do and use on my own. And. I still through all of that, felt like, well, I’m not, I’m not really affected by my trauma. [00:39:00] Like I had told myself this lie that strong people aren’t impacted by their trauma and I’m strong, so I must not be impacted.
And I don’t have P T S D. It’s like, I don’t have P ts d, I don’t have flashbacks, I don’t have, nightmares and I don’t really, I don’t have anxiety. And I was like, so I must be fine. , but what I realized is that all of my flashbacks and my P T S D, it was somatic. So it was like all in my body. So it was, ah, my shoulders, you know, were up to my ears.
I, I still to this day have restricted breathing. I can’t breathe. Like, I can’t take in a deep breath. Um, and that’s, that is a symptom of my trauma. Um, and then whenever 2020 rolled around and we had to wear masks all the time, that was when I really realized how much I was somatically impacted by my trauma.
So at one point my [00:40:00] captor put me back in the container to call his wife who was out of town and I had a panic attack and I. Was just sitting there going, I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. So put it, I had a ball gag in my mouth at that time. And so putting a mask over my face, it was just like instant anxiety.
My body remembered what it felt like to feel like I was suffocating. And so then that kind of unlocked another layer of me trying to kind of peel back this, this onion, right? It’s always an onion when you’re talking about healing of any type, just peeling back something different. So that’s kind of been up to this point, my healing journey and my experiences with dissociation.
And I would say for the most part, I didn’t experience any like mental or emotional flashbacks. It was just, Very bodily somatic [00:41:00] flashbacks. And so I think those are things that we don’t often hear talked about in this world of trauma recovery. Um, and so I wasn’t necessarily aware of them. I think we’re hearing more about it for sure, but because I had never heard of those things, that’s how I perpetuated this lie, that I’m not impacted by this very traumatic thing that happened.
And so, , again, another reason why I like to share these things and, and tell people like there are so many ways you can respond, and just because you don’t have nightmares or you don’t have, you know, flashbacks doesn’t mean that you don’t have P T S D because those are the, the symptoms that. Associate the most commonly.
Those are the symptoms that we hear of most frequently. But actually the number one symptom of P T S D is memory loss. And I’m like, and I just learned that recently, like in the last couple of weeks. And I was like, oh, I definitely have that. I can’t remember anything like, and I [00:42:00] never, like, my first person memory is terrible.
And it has been as long as I can remember and I’m like, oh, maybe I do have P T S D then, so. So that’s just general,
[00:42:09] Liz Wolfe: it’s not memory necessarily of the events. Exactly. In general across your lifetime
[00:42:16] Kara Chamberlain: memory loss. Wow. And if you think of fight or flight, right? Like you mm-hmm. , you think. Back to, you know, the Paleolithic Lithic area.
Era. Lemme start area. It’s one of my favorite areas. ? Yeah. The, where is that? On the globe? Not even. Sure. Maybe you can run through it on your way to my house. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll hit it. So if you think back to the Paleolithic era and you know, running from a Tiger, you don’t necessarily have to think about, you know, like, what did my significant others say to me this morning?
Or, you know, like, what did I wear last Tuesday? ? None of that. None of that matters, right?
[00:42:55] Liz Wolfe: Not, not like vital to my survival. So,
[00:42:57] Kara Chamberlain: yeah, right. Exactly. And now I’m just like, , [00:43:00] it’s trauma.
Sorry. Sorrys.
[00:43:03] Liz Wolfe: Can I ask you a little bit about. Going back to some of the details of what, of what happened , I’m curious if we can impart some wisdom to the people listening around how you did survive.
How, and you can just say, this is in the documentary, this is in the movie. Watch that. Absolutely. But maybe just a tidbit or two around what you were looking out for, what you were paying attention to, and how you gathered the bravery to actually make your
[00:43:30] Kara Chamberlain: escape.
Yeah. You know, this is one of the most common questions I get asked. I have to say, like, how did you do it? Yeah. And what would you tell people? And, you know, did your parents tell you something that maybe I need to be telling my kids? And the answer is, um, I don’t know. Hmm. That’s not the answer anyone ever wants to hear.
Um, but you know, my parents, I, I was born in 86, so, you know, like parents, they, it was like, don’t talk to strangers. Stop, drop and roll. Like, that’s all you got, you know? And [00:44:00] also leave the house and don’t
[00:44:01] Liz Wolfe: come back until it’s dark .
[00:44:02] Kara Chamberlain: Right. And also, you know, you’re like in fifth grade or younger and you’re riding the bus home from school and like staying there for hours and like cooking yourself food.
Yes. We were climbing into
[00:44:13] Liz Wolfe: sewers in fifth grade. We were riding our bikes to some park three miles away and climbing down into the sewer, like,
[00:44:19] Kara Chamberlain: it’s so different. So, um, my parents did not teach me, you know, situational awareness or. Anything that I feel like contributed to my survival. I think what contributed to my survival is just a hundred percent the way my body responded to trauma.
It was my trauma response, my autonomic nervous system, my survival mechanism. That’s it. So, you know, you hear of fight, flight, freeze, like I said earlier and appease. And for me, I think, um, the, the strongest thing that contributed to my survival, um, and I tell people [00:45:00] this not as a means of like downplaying what happened or, um, I mean, I tell them because I feel like it’s actually empowering to hear this because we all have a survival mechanism.
Like it’s not something you have to learn, like your body wants to survive and it will do everything it can to survive. Um, so for me, appease was kind of the strongest and appease is this idea of co-regulating a nervous system. Um, so appease is kind of like, if you know anything about dog psychology, I feel like this is kind of the, the most relatable analogy.
And you see, you know, like two dogs that are interacting and one is obviously kind of more dominant, more aggressive, and the other dog kind of throws itself down and shows its belly and shows. Submissive. Mm-hmm. . And it shows that it’s not a [00:46:00] threat. And that’s more or less what appease is. So it’s when you have this aggressor that is perpetrating violence, intending on perpetrating violence against you, it’s showing that you’re not a threat.
And for me, people have always asked, how did you know what to do? How did you know to keep him calm or to gather information? And it was that appease response. It’s this inner response to trauma where you say, okay, I’m gonna make this person feel safe to decrease the likelihood of me being hurt. So for me, this is me talking to my captain and saying, what can I do for you right now?
So like, he’s making himself dinner. I’m like, I’m not hungry, but can I do something? And I sweep the floor. This is me not fighting back. This is, you know, me going along trying to have conversation. So, That appease response, I think attributes heavily to my [00:47:00] survival. But then there’s also this inner desire to fight, and that’s, that will to live where it’s like, okay, if I’m able to appease him enough that he doesn’t think I’m going to fight back, then he will let his guard down so that I can escape.
And ultimately, that that was the case. You know, he, he fell asleep next to me. I woke up early in the morning and that’s when I escaped. I was handcuffed, I was restrained with a leg restraint to the bed, and he was asleep next to me, but he didn’t think that I would escape. You know, I had taught him that I was complacent at that point.
And so, um, that’s kind of what led to me escaping because, and I think it’s important to kind of tell people, we like to think that, oh, if someone. Put a gun to my neck, I would scream or I would fight. And ultimately I would say, you know, when I was in [00:48:00] law enforcement, that was something that we would tell people is if you know someone, try.
And I think that’s something that we often tell our kids, right? If someone tries to take you, you make a lot of noise, you fight. And that is fantastic advice. And if you are able to do that more times than not, it will save your life. It will save you not being taken. But I think it’s also very tricky advice for two reasons.
One, if you have someone who is intent on perpetrating violence of some type against you, you already know that this person has some divergent thinking. And most of the time they wanna take someone that’s not going to fight. Most of the time they would run if you make noise. But there’s also. That percentage of the time that they would rather just shoot you.
Right? So, so it’s tricky in that way, but it’s also tricky because again, I keep coming back to the autonomic nervous [00:49:00] system. It’s automatic. It takes massive amounts of training to overcome whatever your body decides is the proper response to feeling the cold metal of a gun pressing up against your neck.
It takes military law enforcement level training. It takes constant repetition. If you think of, you know, if, let’s say, you know, if you work out, if working out as something that is familiar to you, maybe this is a familiar analogy. I remember I was coaching CrossFit in my first pregnancy, and if you know what a clean is, you know, you gotta keep that barbell really close to your body.
And I was coaching CrossFit through my pregnancy. And you can’t keep the barbell close to your body. And I would coach the clean and I would have to go out over my belly. And so my muscle memory learned a different way to do a clean. So then when I was no longer pregnant and I tried to do a barbell clean, [00:50:00] it was a hot mess cuz I was wonky all over the place.
Right? It had elbows flying everywhere. They didn’t have a business being. And so if you think of what it takes to retrain muscle memory, that is just a fraction of what it is to r train over your autonomic nervous system. So it takes a hell of a lot of repetition and a hell of a lot of training to the term that we would use in law enforcement run towards the sound of gunfire.
Mm-hmm. , that’s not, that’s not what we’re trained to do. So I think, you know, the best advice is. Ultimately, you know, stranger, stranger violence, kidnappings, sexual assault are not that common. Like, that’s what we’re taught to fear. Um, but I think that situational awareness , can get you a long way into protecting yourself against that type [00:51:00] of situation.
Whether that’s, you know, not one of my, one of my pet peeves is when you see like women outrunning and they have two headphones in mm-hmm. or, or they’re not wearing those, what are they called? The aftershocks, the ones that are like, they go around your ear. Have you seen those? Uh, yes, I think so. They don’t go in your ear.
Yeah. Um, but seeing women out doing that, I’m like, you have no idea what is going on around you. Yeah. Um, you know, or like, they’re walking and they’re like looking down at their phone and, and I’m like, no, you need to have, you know it when it comes to protecting yourself against stranger violence. It’s not a foolproof plan again.
And I don’t mean for, I never want anyone to misconstrue me saying this as like victim blaming. If you did these things and you were a victim, I’m just saying it’s not foolproof. But I’m saying that more often than not, if you are aware of your surroundings, if you are looking people in the eye when you pass them and, um, you carry yourself with confidence [00:52:00] mm-hmm.
even if it’s faked, you are not as likely to be chosen as a victim of stranger related violence. Again, there are gonna be people who are gonna see certain scenarios as a victim of opportunity. But ultimately, if we are victims of sexual violence or physical violence, it’s more likely to be perpetrated by someone that you know mm-hmm.
And so that’s, that’s tricky advice. I, you know, I think, unfortunately, I wish that. The burden of protecting ourselves weren’t on the, the, the victims or the potential victims. Um, but ultimately what, you know, nobody else is gonna protect you. Like you’re gonna protect you, right? Right. You have to rely on yourself.
So I think that doing whatever. Whatever you need to give yourself the confidence to be out in public or to protect yourself. I think, you know, they’re, they’re amazing self-defense [00:53:00] classes, but you can’t just take those once mm-hmm. and just be done. You have to practice those things. I’m actually going in the end of February to a women’s retreat, like it’s called the I Will Survivor Retreat.
And they teach you, , like weapons. Uh, you get a C W P, they teach you self-defense. They teach you about the gift of fear. And so there, there’s things like that and I would encourage you to look in your area and a lot of the time, um, law enforcement agencies will do self-defense classes. And if that’s something that will give you confidence, then the confidence ultimately is the biggest tool.
Mm-hmm. and then relying on, on your body and the wisdom of your body. Like our bodies are insanely wise. Like the more you learn about. How our bodies work. You’re like, it is a, it is an amazing creation. Yeah. And we just screw it up sometimes, you know, with, with our own foolishness or carelessness. And so just relying on the innate wisdom of your body and [00:54:00] learning confidence and situational awareness, I think you’re the biggest tools that I try to impart upon people.
Well, I appreciate
[00:54:08] Liz Wolfe: your willingness to address that in a nuanced way, because I think the temptation could very easily be to say either there’s really nothing you can do, or you do this set of things and you’re good, and that’s just, it’s, the truth is not there. So to, to look at that, the way, the way you’ve just explained it, I think is of great value because there are a million different situations that people are unlikely to encounter.
But if they did, there are so many things that factor into that reaction. And in the end feeling like you are preparing for something. If only to give yourself more confidence in a scary situation and then trust in your gut. I love that. And multiple times throughout this interview, you have talked about how your response to trauma is.
It’s right. It’s not. There’s no right or wrong. And what came to my mind as you’ve said those things, is everything is an adaptation. [00:55:00] Whether it’s what our bodies do under stress or in any other situation, our body is this elegant, beautiful, amazing creation that is constantly adapting to the situations and scenarios that it’s given.
There’s no wrong adaptation. There are just sets of circumstances that the body is confronted with that it does the best it possibly can to adapt to. And that’s a pretty amazing thing. And perhaps that can kind of bring us into more connection with our bodies rather than feeling like they’re constantly
[00:55:27] Kara Chamberlain: betraying us.
Absolutely. And I mean, can you imagine a more healing thing than to view your body? As an amazing, beautiful, adaptive system that exists for your protection and your ultimate, highest self, especially if you’re a victim of sexual, domestic physical violence. Right? Like, I think very, very often your body can feel foreign after things like that, and you can [00:56:00] dissociate.
And I think learning to love your coping mechanisms, your trauma responses, your body for how it chose to adapt, I think that that can just be so healing on so many levels. And I just, I hurt for people who view their responses or their body as like the enemy. Mm-hmm. like, oh, that’s so, that’s so heavy and just so impactful, um, on your healing journey.
I think learning to, to love. Where we are and how we got there. I think it’s tricky, but I think it can be one of the most healing things. And I think that’s something that often sets people , kind of back when I’m talking where I’m like, I don’t regret what happened to me. Like it was a terrible thing that happened, but I would absolutely never change it.
And people just kind of look at [00:57:00] me like, what and, and it’s like for me to look at this, this, these 18 hours, less than 24 hours of my life that were horrible. But for me to look at those 24 hours that have set me on this trajectory to where I am today, to like this beautiful, wonderful, full of blessings and rich relationships and.
In a negative like that would be so ungrateful for every wonderful thing I have today is how I view it. Because without a doubt, those less than 24 hours in 2002 have put me where I am. I never would’ve gone to work in law enforcement, which is where I met my husband. It’s how I have my children. It has given me this career in so many relationships that I just value so much in my life today.
And I’m like, I literally would have none of those things. So this small portion of my life, which if you look at [00:58:00] like 18 hours is how long I was held captive. Now, there was obviously more before and after that, but those 18 hours in the grand scheme of a life of how, I mean how many hours, how many hours do we live in our lives?
You know, like if you, I don’t know. That’s math. I know that’s too much math for me. . . Um, but if you look at that in the grand scheme of things, like it’s such a small fraction. Of your life, like to let that control it and, um, you know, direct, direct the path of it. I’m like, I just, I can’t view it like that.
[00:58:34] Liz Wolfe: You are amazing and I think that’s a really good place to wrap it up. I’ve kept you for an hour now. I have no doubt, and this is something that I’ve thought so many times, watching your Instagram, because I’m an old foggy and I’m not on TikTok, but really thinking, wow, she, I think she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be and that is not my business to, to say anything like that.
But I have been so educated and so changed [00:59:00] just by soaking up everything that you’re putting out there. And I’m. Incredibly grateful so can you tell everybody where to find the Lifetime movie, the documentary, and you?
[00:59:12] Kara Chamberlain: Yes. So the best place to find all of the information is following me on social media. I’m actually the most active on Instagram. It’s the most reliable. My handle is at Kara Robinson Chamberlain. , I also have my website where I have everything linked so you can find links to the documentary information about that.
There will be information about the forthcoming podcast and the movie on my website, which is just my name, kara robinson chamberlain.com. The documentary is called Escaping Captivity, the Kara Robinson story. It originally aired on oxygen. You can view it there, and it will air after the documentary, which is called The Girl Who Escaped.
The Kara Robinson story and that is on Lifetime, February 11th at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. Um, it will be available at 8:00 PM [01:00:00] Eastern on February 11th, and it will be available the next day on stream, on demand platforms. The podcast is Yes Survivors Guide to True Crime, and the first episodes drop February 8th. And that will be myself and my co-host Kim. You’ll have two episodes that will be live on our feed on February 8th, and those will be our stories.
And then our first guest will be Elizabeth Smart and she will be the next week. Um, I, I think, I’m not sure what the date is, but it’s on the Wednesday after February 8th. I have to look, but every Wednesday will be when we drop our podcast. And that’s wherever you find your podcast.
And I do have to say, it is like a full circle moment to hear that you’re consuming the things that I’m putting out and learning because I’m like that. I feel like that’s what I did with all of your content and yours because I listened to like all of the original balanced. Podcasts
[01:00:54] Liz Wolfe: Well, we’ve had a string of Instagram messages over I think probably the years and finally [01:01:00] started like really connecting on a personal level. And it’s just, it’s just been so cool. Not, not just because you are such an interesting person making such a huge impact in the world, but also because you’re just really freaking funny.
[01:01:13] Kara Chamberlain: thanks. It’s the trauma trauma. It’s like if you can’t be funny because of your trauma, then like, what is the point? , what are we even doing? I dunno, ,
[01:01:27] Liz Wolfe: I feel like the impact that you’re making on the world, it was, it was meant for you. This is, this is what you’re meant to be doing and it’s a pretty amazing thing to watch. So thank you so much my friend.
[01:01:35] Kara Chamberlain: Thank you. Such an honor.
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