If you listened to part one, you know where we left Kate — standing in a doctor’s office at 31, being told for the first time in her adult life that she was healthy. Not a problem to fix or a body that needed to shrink. Just a healthy woman. And something, finally, beginning to loosen.
Part two is about what that loosening actually required.
First, we get into how a mental health diagnosis finally explained what her brain had been doing since she was a teenager, and a slow, tentative beginning of something she didn't yet have a name for.
Then we get into the relational work — the kind nobody prepares you for:
Going no contact with her parents, and the grief and relief that came with it
The twisted dynamic of a mother who over-apologized and then needed Kate to absorb it
The slow, specific work of looking at her own body without seeing a warning
Kate also shared about deconstruction — of her faith, her internalized fat phobia, and the stories she’d been handed about what her body meant. All of it unraveling at the same time, which turned out to be the only way through.
And then she talks about the rage that comes with healing. Being in Manhattan, needing one pair of pants, finding nothing in her size anywhere in the city. That moment became a turning point — and eventually, a company. Kate is building Viva Voce, an incredible marketplace vetting brands for genuine ethics, sustainability, and size inclusivity.
We get into why she prioritizes:
Pop-up spaces designed to feel like belonging, coming deliberately to smaller cities
A data project collecting real body measurements to change how clothes are made
Not separating plus and straight sizes — because separation, she says, is always a message
At the center of this conversation is the theme of belonging. And by the end of this episode, I think you’ll have a new way of measuring whether a space — a store, a family, a body — is actually safe.
I’m so glad you’re here, and I would love to hear what has helped you stop fighting your body.
I know there is rarely one thing, but often there are little seeds along the way. Was one of those seeds a person? A book? A moment? Something that you heard that brought you clarity?
