Kat Frati

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Cat Fratty is the owner of grownupgirl.com, a blog dedicated to inspiring women of all ages to create sustainable happiness in their lives. She's currently working on a new initiative of building an online resource of life skills lessons for young adults. Thanks for coming in today.

Kat Frati:

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I was reading all of the things that you have done and gone through and it's pretty amazing actually. You have four kids, two stepchildren. You're a cancer and open heart surgery survivor. You're a musician, an athlete, an entrepreneur, a cribbage player, and you're also a former computer engineer who designed air traffic control simulations for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Kat Frati:

That's me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's quite the background.

Kat Frati:

Yeah. Yeah. I also worked on Eartha up in Delorme. I helped design that. So yeah, a lot of fun projects.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So wait, you designed that? Enormous.

Kat Frati:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Wow.

Kat Frati:

I know all the secrets. Like if you looked at it, it's summer all over the globe. These are photos of the earth and we picked the ones with that were the greenest. So there's only snow in the Alps. Wow.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I guess that makes sense. You'd want it to be as pretty as possible.

Kat Frati:

No clouds and no Snow, right? Yep.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Huh.

Kat Frati:

That's beautiful. It's a gift to the state of being.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's right down the street from where I live. And every time I get on the highway, I look at it with fondness.

Kat Frati:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. So how. So all right, with all the things we just said, how did that get you to a place where you design Eartha?

Kat Frati:

Oh, I moved to Maine and I was a computer engineer and I didn't really know anyone, so I actually taught at computer science at Wayne Fleet for a little bit. And then eventually I just needed a stable job and Delorme was a fantastic company and they were actually in Freeport when I was there. And so the whole building in Yarmouth, which has now been bought by Garmin, didn't exist. So there was a pit, there was an idea, and I was a project manager for the software and David wanted to build that. So I was kind of in charge of parts of it, the data part.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you grew up in Minnesota?

Kat Frati:

Minnesota and Boston.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you came to Maine, Amir, 25 years ago.

Kat Frati:

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What was the original connection to the state?

Kat Frati:

Oh, it was my. My husband. So I met. We both went to Tufts and we didn't. Weren't dating, but we both met each other later in D.C. and where I was doing the FAA work and we, you know, fell in love and got married and had our first child. And it was a tough time back then. Marion Barry was the mayor and caught on TV smoking crack and it was a little rough and there were over 500 mur. I just got anxious as a new mom and decided to. Let's get out of here. We looked at Minnesota and he was from Augusta. At some point he lived in Augusta. So we chose Maine. And being a person who was kind of a gypsy, my father was an executive and we moved a lot when I was younger. I can't believe I've been in Maine for 25 years. So it's just really the prettiest state. I mean, you have the ocean, the mountains, the. Just beautiful. And now Portland has become an incredible city. So I just love it. I like traveling and going, going to see other areas, but really Maine is it for me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did all of these different interests and background, how did this morph into what you are doing now so successfully with grownupgirl.com?

Kat Frati:

yeah. So there was a point about 10 years ago and my first husband and I, we were together for 19 years and we ended up separating and we had. I had four kids and I really need to reinvent myself. So I Actually, you know, I was a computer engineer for 16 years and then I had my third child and I was a stay at home mom for 16 years. Hardest job in the world. So when I got divorced, I said, oh no, I need to reinvent myself. And I really just prayed and what do I need to do? And listened. You know, I put it out there and I listened. And very clearly this idea of helping young adults, and my kids were still kind of young, helping them after they've left the nest. It came to me and there was a show called Gossip Girl who, that was really popular and one of my, you know, I was watching that and then Grown Up Girl came up and I said, oh my gosh, the opposite of Gossip Girl. We need to make Grown Up Girl. And so it was just so clear to me and it just, I just had to do it, you know, I needed to do it. And so I've been kind of dabbling just for probably eight years and learning the technology of getting back into programming slowly. Meanwhile, I got remarried. My husband and I started a moving company called Integrity Movers. And we built that from nothing to a million dollar company within two years. And we've since sold the company. But it really taught me a lot of good business lessons and just gave me more food for, you know, for thought to help guide this new generation who really wants to be entrepreneurs. These young adults, they all want to be entrepreneurs. So I have a lot to share, just a lot. And I have four kids who now they have left the nest. So, you know, they still need me. And I'm not the only, you know, they have friends who need advice. And you think that when you have a kid, you try your best to teach them everything you know, but life gets in the way and you don't have time to teach them. And sometimes they don't listen. Or you, maybe you say it once, but they don't really learn it. So this just is very clear to me that this generation needs help. There's no Home EC classes anymore, so I can do it. I mean, I know I have enough information and success in my life that it's time for me to pay it forward and help them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's interesting that you've been through transitions yourself and reinvented yourself continually, and now you're at a place where you are helping young women who are kind of in a fairly major transition, you know, into the next stage of their lives, into adulthood. Are there similarities between the types of transition that you went through and the types of transition that you see young Women going through.

Kat Frati:

Yeah, and I think my 20s and this is kind of where we're at right now. 20, 20 year olds, 18 to 29, 35 were rough. They were rough. And it wasn't because I had a rough life or a rough childhood, but it was because my father worked constantly. We were up, you know, we were definitely well off. You know, I had a nice childhood, so it wasn't a bad thing. You know, we had nice houses and stuff, but my mom was more into social so I really didn't get any guidance from them. So when I left on my own, it was really a struggle to figure out money to figure out and I got in trouble in a couple areas, so. But my father told me, he told me this, he got me into Tony Robbins just by a fluke, you know, he just told me about that. So this was back in 1980s, early 1980s. And so I listened to the first cassette of Tony Robbins and I was really hooked on self growth and that is really what taught me. And over, you know, over my next 30 years, self growth and reading books and listening to tapes, I just do it constantly and it helps me to grow and it makes my life a lot better. So I didn't know that. I mean, I learned that the hard way. But now my kids, I'm a resource for my kids. And I see with the Internet there is a lot more information out there, which is great, but it's not always good information. And I would like them to kind of figure things out earlier than I did because it just took me way too long. My whole 20s was just, it was fun and it was successful in many ways. But then I floundered in a lot of ways. But that's okay. It's okay. But I didn't really have a good support system, but I am a support system for my kids and I think they're doing better. But sometimes it's a matter of pointing them to the right place to find the answers. And there's so much noise out there. So that's kind of what I'm thinking. My, my websites and my, my initiatives are a good place where you can go and get real wisdom, really good life lessons, examples, inspiration, encouragement and yeah, hopefully they'll have a little better time than I did.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of the biggest questions that you find that young women have?

Kat Frati:

Yeah, so money, certainly money issues. How do you, you know, I just met with my daughter the other day. I went down to Boston and sat in a little cafe at seven in the morning and she said, mom, can you help me with my money? I said, what's the problem? I don't have any left at the end of the month. And she likes to save money. So we did a whole, we wrote everything out and kind of created area where she can start, you know, recording her expenses to come up with a budget or at least understand how much she has for disposal. Disposable income. Money is certainly another one. Cooking, just eating healthy, you know, it's just a lot of people don't know how to cook. So I am a type of person. I taught my kids, open up a refrigerator and what do you have in there? And. And now they know how to kind of throw something together. That's pretty good. My 16 year old, she has a curry sauce that she figured out. And you can do anything with curry. You can put rice, a little whatever, broccoli or vegetables. We have a little chicken and she makes the best dishes. And the other one is relationships. And I feel like, you know, I've learned, I've been divorced and my husband and I now we really take time to learn about relationships and about communicating. We go to counseling just to. Not because we have a problem, but because we want to see how we can become better. And we're really learning some great techniques that I'm able to share with my kids now who are in relationships. And a little skill goes a long way so that I can see that as something that the younger generation can benefit from those things. And then just general life skills. How to maintain your car, how to put air in your tire, how much pressure does your air need? Where do you find that information? You know, how to maybe sew a button, just like life skills like that, how to, you know, fill out your taxes and stuff. So I see those areas are really where I'm starting to concentrate on first.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It is interesting that there's the things that you just described. Many people just assume, oh well, I should already know how to do that or I don't necessarily need to learn that. But I mean, really what you're talking about are skills. And how would you know them if you didn't at least have them modeled for you in whatever family situation you come from or school situation you come from, but hopefully had some sort of background. And so how would you otherwise learn them?

Kat Frati:

I mean, absolutely, yeah. And some people don't even know that. They. They're too afraid of asking. So one of the programs that I want to have is called Ask the Expert in these areas where you can submit a question and me or you know, people who I'm who are working with me on some as experts will answer the question and publish it because if you have that problem, probably some other people have the problem. So that is going to be an important part of this initiative is to really address real problems that people have. Kind of customize the information to their situation, but then share it because there are other people who have that problem. Good for you for asking and trying to figure it out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So my youngest is a 17 year old young woman. She's a junior in high school and she and I sat down the other day to help her re register the car that she drives online. I sat and helped her through TurboTax and all these other things that are so practical and such a nice building block for being an adult. And I was realizing like this is not the kind of thing that you learn in school. I mean you really have to have somebody who sits there with you because there's so many little things that I had forgotten were potentially confusing. You know, where do you find the numbers that you need to put in online to get this car re registered, for example? Or her question was, I'm not getting any money back from the state of Maine or I'm getting $10. Why should I even file my taxes for the state of Maine? I'm like, because that's what you do. And it seems really basic as an adult but Talking to a 17 year old, it just makes sense that she would ask, right? And do you find this with your daughter?

Kat Frati:

Yeah, I definitely do. And I even need help because sometimes I don't have the answer. So part of my initiative is to help parents as well. So there will be, this will be good for parents to kind of guide them in teaching if they want to their, their child or their young adult to get that information. Because I think it is hard for all of us. It is hard to keep everything together. I often say it's a full time job being me, right? And especially with kids and businesses and stuff like that. I wake up and my health, I wake up, I'm like, oh my gosh, I need to, I need to, you know, so much to do and sometimes I don't know the answer. So thank God for Google. But wouldn't it be nice if there was a place where your path to growing up is, you know, there's a, you, you can see where you are on the path and see what's ahead, celebrate what's behind, celebrate your successes. And there's a place that parents and adults, young adults can go to just act as a resource and hopefully have a smoother journey, really.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you have been a cancer survivor and an open heart surgery survivor. These are very big events. Either one of those is a very big event. Has this caused you to feel as if you have more of a mission that you are supposed to be trying to accomplish in your life?

Kat Frati:

Well, yeah, it's definitely a mission. And like I said, it just. It's come from some other source, you know, that I. That this is. I listen to my thoughts and I listen to my guidance system and that's what it's telling me and why it's telling me that I don't know, but coupled with my confidence in my achievements and, you know, I just had open heart surgery about three years ago and I'm so proud of myself because I did. I googled how do you stay calm during open heart surgery? And so for three weeks I. A book came into my life and I read it and I did these meditations. And so I was really shocked that that morning when I was in the waiting room, you know, of the operating room, you know, operating area, that I was calm, genuinely calm, because I trusted. I had anticipated a reward for me at the end for going through this trauma. And it worked. It really worked. So there are techniques. I'm living proof that you can get through, you know, major surgery, which was hard. And there's a whole lesson after that of being in the hospital, being gluten free, which I am, and not having anything to eat and being six feet tall and not having the bed long enough to be my own advocate. There's a whole journey because I was in the hospital for 21 days to stick up for myself. That's a whole nother story. But I'm really proud of what I have. I personally have accomplished. But I'm not special. If I can do it, really, anyone can do it. It's really a matter of trusting. And so that's what I'm more of an encouragement for people. You go for it. Definitely, you go for it. No judgment where you are. You start and, you know, just try to do better. That's kind of what my mission is. That's what I'm here for, I think, at this point.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So there's the. There's a scale of stressors in people's lives. And the major stressors are some of the things you've just described. And most people will have maybe one or two of these stressors, but you've had lots of them. You know, the stressors that can kind of cause us to be ill or can really impact us negatively are things like divorce, moving, having major surgery, having cancer, stuff, going through an illness. You've had a lot of these, and somehow you're kind of sitting here in front of me almost better than before. Somehow you have been able to be resilient through this. Is this part of what has led to this message of confidence that you are trying to share with young women?

Kat Frati:

Definitely. Definitely. And how did I. How am I here? It's not because I'm special. It's because when I was down and got divorced, every night I would study Buddhism, I would learn how to meditate. I'd have my girlfriends over for a nice talk, chat. I did exercise. I got out in nature. So I did. I researched kind of my own for my own success. What, what would. What would help me in this situation? I prayed and I had some dark times. Really, I had some dark times. And I observed, you know, what happened when I prayed. I was. I just kind of developed this awareness around me. And what would happen when I said, oh, gosh, I don't know what to do? I prayed to the universe and I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do. And then I learned how to listen. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, a phone would ring and it would be my insurance company saying, hey, do you need some free counseling for being depressed? What happens all the time happens all the time. So once I started becoming aware of that, then all of a sudden my life starts getting easier because now I can ask for things and be and open my eyes and show up. There are. I have a message of that too. So. But I'm not going to preach that right away. That's going to be, you know, by pointing out to these young adults, look what just happened to you? Do you see how this is more than you think it is? Eventually, I'd like to get to that point where they're realizing that they have everything they need inside them. And then you just need to do some, you know, tricks, tips, action, you know, recover from failures and you'll be okay. So, yeah, there's a lot to this. There's a lot. I make it, you know, I'm kind of saying it's easy, but there is great depth in this is wisdom that I've gathered just through learning. And over time, it would be nice if these young adults would start going, oh, wow, that works for me, and finding their own path, really, because what works for me might be something different, but there are Universal truths that I have learned.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, as you're saying this, I think it's reminding me that many times if you just decide, I'm going to start here, I'm going to go out in nature one day a week, whatever that is, and if you stick with that then, and you have some success with that, then success builds on success. So rather than I'm going to rearrange my whole life, I'm going to detox from everything that's negative, and then I'm going to start fresh, which is good for maybe the first day or two after you do that. And then after that you kind of slide backwards. If you can just pick up a good, I don't know, a good attitude, a good behavior, a good relationship. It doesn't take as much sometimes to start as people think.

Kat Frati:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I say slow and steady wins the race. So if you can adopt, you know, one new thing a day, and even I'm so busy, you know, I have a couple, I'm a consultant and I have a couple things. Realistically, I, if I get one thing done a day, that adds up. So you do consistently one thing for this business or one thing for my own self or my relationship or my kids, one thing adds up to 365 things in a year. That is totally a secret, definitely to my success is to keep chipping away at it. The other thing, you know, where I am is I'm 55 years old. My grandmother was 102 and she was very active. So I asked myself, what if I live to 105, which is totally reasonable these days, even given my health issues, what do I need to do today to get to 105 feeling good? Wow. When you start looking at it like that, you make different choices today. You pace yourself. I'm now working with some degenerate. Not degenerate. I'm tight in my shoulder. So now I'm going to Cape Cod Integrative over in Cape Elizabeth. And he looks at me and he says, oh my gosh, your muscles in your chest are so tight. It's probably from the surgery. And I said, let's get this fixed. Because I still want have years, decades left and I want to be vibrant. Right. So you make different choices when you, when you look at that, when you're 20 years old, sometimes you don't think that way. You just not. You think you're invincible. But maybe I can get them to think, well, hey, do you want to live till 70 or what do you want to do? What do you have to do to, to pace yourself so you, you're not burning out. And I had to learn that the wrong, you know, the hard way because I burned out at 28 big time burning the candles at both ends. So I've had my share of learning that. But yeah, that's definitely a great point.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's interesting to me that you've. Not only are you raising because I still think once our kids get to be older, we're still sort of raising them. We're not raising them to be adults, but you know, we're kind of coexisting co raising one another I guess. But you have four children and you also have two stepchildren. So you've introduced a whole new set of relationship, a whole set of dynamics into your life. And that is, can be very different than having the four kids with their dad.

Kat Frati:

Yeah. What that taught me is allowing, is allowing different personalities which they are, you know, his kids are very different personalities than my kids and grew up totally different. Allowing how it is and not forcing it to be different and finding a way to love it as it. As it is. So for instance, his son, who's older than my children, had their has first child. So we're a grandparent now. We're grandparents.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Wow.

Kat Frati:

You know, so we just allow it. You know, this is what we're allowing. And my motto is love is the answer. I just love it. Everything, every decision I make, if I make it with love, it's always the right decision. If I make it out of fear, not the right decision. If I make out jealousy, out of control, anger, anything like that, not the right, not the right answer. So I always say, okay, how can I, where can I find love in this situation? And building a blended family has been very challenging. But if we focus on the love and find that little bit of slice of love where we can really start honing in and connecting to that kind of takes us further along tickets, you know, create continuity and build that connection and that everything you need to build a, you know, keep us together. We've been doing that. But love is the answer really for me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it's an interesting thing that you talk about having to kind of continually ask yourself, you know, what's the most loving way where, how do I get to this place? Because some people would say, well, if love is the answer, then it's always going to be so easy. But it's not necessarily easy. I mean, I believe the loving and there's the emotion, but then there's the choice to, to be Loving. And that's not always straightforward.

Kat Frati:

No, it's not. Especially with my husband's oldest. He's just. He's his worst enemy. And he's been through. He's, you know, if you ever have a black sheep in the family, it's him. And he's gone through his own challenges, really tough. I mean, tough. You know, cancer, jail, overdose, done it all. And it was hard to love him. But I feel like there's that parable in the Bible, the prodigal son, he goes away, he wreaks havoc, and he comes back and the dad has open arms for him because that's the right thing to do. And we had to kind of do that with him. We couldn't give up on him. But sometimes you had to just say, oh, my gosh, I have no idea. We have no idea what's going to happen to him. But we want him to have a great life. So whatever we pray for him or we put our love into, we love him like another person, any person on this planet. And we really want him to figure out and have a good life. Well, finally it's starting, you know, it's coming around. Coming around. It's taken, you know, a really long time, but that love just showed us that it's important. Because had we done anything else, I don't know, it just wouldn't. It would have hurt us more than anything. It would have just wrecked us, I think, had we gotten caught into anger or resentment or anything like that. And we had to just keep pulling ourselves up and say, you know what, let's just love ourselves. What do we need to do? Maybe we just gotta let him go for a little while and, you know, unfortunately, he's gonna have it, control his own destiny. But we still love him and we wish the best for him and we want him to figure this out. That went a long way. And now finally he's, you know, figure he has a good job and he's got a baby and it's, you know, things are starting to come together despite all these odds. But love really worked in that way, that's for sure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, if I wasn't convinced before, I'm definitely convinced now. And I encourage people to go to grownupgirl.com to learn some of your wisdom. I've been speaking with Kat Friday, who is the owner of grownupgirl.com, a blog dedicated to inspiring women of all ages to create sustainable happiness in their lives. She's currently working on a new initiative of building an online resource of life skills lessons for young adults. Thank you so much for coming in today. I really appreciate it.

Kat Frati:

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Dr. Zach Mazzone D.O. created DaySpring Integrative Wellness in Bath, Maine with the belief that true health comes from building healthy relationships with your community, with your doctor and with yourself. As a board certified family, family and integrative medicine physician, Dr. Mazzone and the whole staff at DaySpring are committed to supporting your wellness journey by providing integrative family medical care, osteopathic manipulation, herbal and lifestyle consultations, counseling and wave therapy. DaySpring offers an innovative membership based model of healthcare that gives you time together with Dr. Pizzoni to build a personalized wellness plan based on your health goals. Daily access for acute appointments is available and you can even schedule a secure video conference call in the privacy of your own home. I know Dr. Zak and his family and I believe strongly in the personalized whole person approach to help that he provides. This is why I am encouraging you to find out more for yourself by visiting dayspringintegrativewellness.com or by calling them directly at 207-751-4775. Dayspring Wellness the Way It Should Be