A new Cumbrian podcast focused on celebrating real stories of women overcoming adversity is set to launch live.
Karen Thom, a life transformation coach from Kendal, is hosting and filming the first episode of her new podcast Finding Foundations live at Rheged near Penrith on March 26 from 7pm until 9pm.
The 46-year-old spent 25 years building a successful global fashion career while battling her own emotional turmoil and is now launching the podcast to create a platform for women to share their stories of resilience.
She said: “Think honest conversations, not perfect transformation stories. Rather than a panel or a talk, the evening centres on a simple conversation between two women about the moments in life when things stop working and what happens next.”
The first live episode will feature an unscripted conversation with guest Louisa Rodriguez.
Louisa spent over a decade advocating for marginalised communities, setting up services supporting women leaving sex work, running peace programmes internationally and founding a social enterprise focused on PTSD awareness.
Living with PTSD herself, Louisa eventually made a major life change and now works as an independent coach and mountain leader based in Penrith.
Karen and Louisa will explore questions around her career, wider life and how she lives now.
The conversation will then be followed by an audience Q&A with drinks and nibbles afterwards.
Karen added: “Most conversations about change make it sound neat and tidy but I’m not interested in the Instagram version.
“Because when you actually talk to people, life rarely works like that. There’s usually a messy middle where you’re figuring things out – this is what I want to share.”
Karen worked internationally in the fashion industry before launching her life and career coaching service The Foundation Studio, will also be sharing parts of her own story.
Her international career saw her manage teams and budgets of up to £130m, visit 58 different countries, and live in four, but Karen said while it looked like she was living a highly successful glamorous life, she was broken.
After surviving an abusive relationship that left her drinking heavily, emotionally explosive, and completely disconnected from herself, Karen rebuilt her life from the ground up.
She now hopes her new podcast will be a platform for other women to share how they found their own solid ground.
She said: “I was thriving in boardrooms and falling apart in my personal life. I was in toxic relationships, drinking heavily, completely disconnected from who I actually was. I had no idea how to regulate my emotions or listen to what my body was telling me.”
Karen said she hit a turning point in Brussels, after a difficult relationship ending. She started reading spiritual books, practicing yoga as philosophy, and discovered meditation.
She added that she started sitting with difficult emotions rather than pushing them away.
Karen said: “I started making huge leaps in how I thought. I realised I was carrying limiting beliefs from childhood. We’re conditioned as girls to be good, not make noise, not be angry. This conditioning fractures us.”
After working with her first therapist in 2015 and first coach in 2017, Karen transitioned from corporate life to coaching. She launched The Foundation Studio in 2023 and is Certified Professional Co-Active Coach certified.
Originally from Hull and now living in Kendal with her husband and their cockapoo, she hoped the Finding Foundations podcast will be helpful for other women to hear others talk honestly about navigating life.
Karen said: “We assume everyone else has life sorted. But when people start talking, you realise most of us are just figuring it out as we go.
“This isn’t about experts telling people what to do. It’s about hearing how someone else worked something out.”
The live filming event for the first Finding Foundations podcast episode will go ahead on March 26 at Rheged.
Tickets are available on trybooking.
