She thought something was wrong with her. She was wrong.

For a long time,

I believed something was wrong with me.

Not just “something to work on,”

but fundamentally broken.

On the outside,

people saw someone sweet,

smart,

capable.

Always smiling.

Always saying, “I’m fine.”

But on the inside?

It was chaos.

Constant self-doubt.

Toxic relationships.

An ache I couldn’t name.

I wasn’t overachieving—I was surviving.

And underneath it all,

there was a belief I didn’t even know I was carrying,

that I was unlovable.

And unworthy.

Not in a loud, dramatic way.

But in the quiet, aching way that shaped

How I let people treat me.

How I treated myself.

How I stayed.

How I disappeared into being unseen.

I didn’t think I was too much,

I thought if I could just be perfect, I might finally be enough.

But I never was.

When I was twelve,

I wanted to go to what the world called “Fat Camp.”

I asked to go.

Because even then, I had already internalized the shame.

I thought if I could just lose the weight—

just be smaller, better, more lovable—

maybe I’d finally feel okay.

Maybe I’d be seen.

Maybe love would find me.

That camp wasn’t punishment.

It was hope.

And that’s the part that breaks my heart now,

how early I believed I needed to be fixed.

How young I was when I started trying to disappear.

Trying to be perfect.

Trying to earn belonging by being less of myself.

And how none of it worked.

My shame leaked everywhere—

into my choices,

into my silence,

into the way I smiled while quietly unraveling.

I smiled through life,

but my behaviors told the truth I couldn’t speak.

So I became a seeker.

A personal development junkie.

A healing addict.

I went to therapy.

Invited ‘little Katherine’ along for the ride.

I read the books.

Did the work.

Attachment theory.

Emotional intelligence.

Boundaries.

Nervous system healing.

Inner child work.

I dove headfirst into

leadership development,

team building,

communication training,

not just to be a better leader, but to be a better human.

A whole human.

Because I didn’t start that way.

And I refused to stay fractured.

Somewhere in that journey, 2019, I think,

I came across Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

Tony Robbins introduced it in a seminar, and the line hit me like lightning:

We get to decide what something means.

Especially the painful things.

And that meaning… can be the difference between despair and purpose.

Between staying stuck and truly living.

That line lodged itself in my bones.

I hadn’t even finished the book, still haven’t.

But I didn’t need to.

Because in 2020, life gave me the test.

A landslide destroyed my family’s business,

Tatsuda’s, a 104-year-old legacy.

It wasn’t just a store.

It was our identity.

My blood, sweat, tears,

literal and metaphorical,

had been poured into it.

I was raised in those aisles.

I led in those aisles.

I bled and broke and became in our store.

And in one horrifying moment, it was gone.

I remember standing in the wreckage,

my chest full of fire and silence,

and the truth from Frankl rose up like a flare:

This could bury you.

Or it could build you.

You get to choose what it means.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t hell.

I suffered.

I lost myself.

I made questionable choices.

I didn’t rebuild the business—I resumed my own.

I stepped back into me.

And I helped build others.

Not just financially, but from the inside out.

It wasn’t just the business that was gone,

it was the identity I thought I needed to hold

in order to be loved, to belong, to matter.

That, too, had to fall away.

And just when I thought my rebuild was done,

yet still tender from all I had lost,

what I thought was love and safety came knocking.

It felt like I was ready.

I opened the door.

I offered my truest, fullest self.

I let him in.

And it unraveled—into deception, manipulation, and devastation.

But this time, I didn’t lose myself.

Because I had the foundation.

The capacity to grieve without collapsing.

The strength to choose meaning over despair.

The wisdom to recognize:

I was being forged by another fire I never asked for.

And it, too, was part of my creation.

And that choice?

It changed everything.

All those years of self-work weren’t just hobbies.

They were training.

Training for how to survive grief without shutting down.

How to lead through heartbreak.

How to reclaim the parts of me that were never broken to begin with,

just buried.

And now, I live from that place.

The place where meaning isn’t handed to me.

It’s chosen.

To the one who’s hurting,

who’s questioning,

who’s wondering if they’ll ever feel whole again—

You don’t have to pretend it didn’t wreck you.

You don’t have to rush to be “fine.”

But you do have power.

You get to decide what this will mean.

Maybe not today.

Maybe not tomorrow.

But when the time comes—

when you’re ready—

you can choose a meaning that strengthens you instead of shatters you.

You can choose to use the wreckageas raw material for your becoming.

Or rather, your creation.

You can decide who you will be inside of this.

You can write a story where you are not what happened to you—

You are what you build from it.

And if no one’s ever told you before, let me say it now:

You are not too broken.

You are not too late.

You are not alone.

The fire is real.

But so is your power.

And the life on the other side?

It will be filled with

happiness,

joy,

love,

pain,

loss,

hurt,

and the mundane.

It will be messy and magnificent,

ordinary and extraordinary.

And it holds the possibility of being more beautiful and fulfilling than you can imagine.