We recently connected with Kat Daou and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kat, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Discovering my purpose has been a lifelong journey for me filled with twists, turns, and a whole lot of soul-searching. Growing up in a family of Lebanese immigrant entrepreneurs, success wasn’t just a goal—it was practically in our DNA. A lot of that pressure to succeed came from outside but a lot also came from within. I watched my dad retire 33 and that lit a fire in me to have a purpose of some kind. I wanted to be like that, to be like him.
I dabbled in fashion for a few years and then dove head first into the family business in the wine industry, spearheading their social media for a few years. Even in that role, I still felt something was missing. My life looked really cool on the outside, but deep down, I felt this ache for more. I couldn’t ignore my aching yearning to make a deeper kind of difference in people’s lives.
Then, at 27, fresh out of a tough divorce and feeling like I was stuck in a low place again, I stumbled upon Family Constellation Therapy (FCT). It was like finding a lighthouse in the middle of a storm. In my very first session with my amazing mentor, Karie Gonia, everything clicked. Through FCT, I peeled back the layers of generational trauma I’d been carrying “on my back” and calling my own. Suddenly, all that weight started to lift, and I experienced a profound sense of clarity. I knew I had found purpose, something I’d been searching for my whole life.
Since I found Family Constellation Therapy, my life has changed in ways I cannot even begin to describe. I have found a deep connection to a reason my soul is here on this Earth and how I can be of service to others in the ways that my mentor was for me. I didn’t get into this work because I read about it in a book and thought it sounded interesting, I facilitate and honor this work because it saved my life and I want to bring that liberation and love to others.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Much of my life didn’t start to make any sense until I turned 28 years old. The experience of my very first Family Constellation Therapy session completely transformed my life in ways I couldn’t begin to scratch the surface in 1 page. This experience led me on a three-year journey to understand what happened to my family in the past and how it was affecting me. The wild part was, most of this was unconscious. It took me finding Family Constellation Therapy to clearly see how I was enmeshed in my family’s trauma.
I faced everything from generational birth trauma patterns to immigration trauma, war trauma, & financial trauma. I also delved into the mother and father wound, abandonment, physical and emotional abuse, cancer, early deaths, mental illness, addiction, and eating disorders. I had to confront the anger, depression, sadness, guilt, shame, and chaos of my family system and learn to how it was showing up in my life. And yes, all of this was showing up in my life somehow!
Growing up, I always heard the phrase, “we don’t air our dirty laundry outside the family.”
However, as I began to uncover the past, I realized that each uncovered piece of dirty laundry was actually the gateway to healing. Not only for me, but for my family. I stopped viewing myself as the “black sheep” and started owning the role of CYCLE BREAKER. Through this work, I began to trust myself more and to speak my truth, even though it was uncomfortable and went against the patterns of my family lineage, especially with women.
It is my deepest hope & intention for clients that in working together, we can explore the stories, pains, traumas, beliefs, & patterns of the family system and how they are showing up in the client. We can dream up what a life free of these cycles would look like and help you go them black sheep to cycle breaker one layer at a time.
Other than my professional life, I recently relocated from my hometown of San Diego, California to Denver, Colorado. Trading the beach for the mountains has been a really interesting evolution for my life and I’m learning to embrace the new environment I’m in. My boyfriend and I wanted a change of scenery and we were spiritually guided to be here for a larger life shift in our relationship together and our careers (hello astrocartography!). I love to hike and be in nature, listen to podcasts, read a book by Dr. Brian Weiss or a fiction novel for book club, and spend time with my boyfriend and our dogs. I also love to cook and am currently creating a cookbook of all my favorite recipes to make. Simplicity is the key to peace and happiness for me!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Aside from knowing how to facilitate a Family Constellation Therapy session, reawakening my intuition after shutting it down in childhood was by far the most profound skill/quality/area of knowledge for me. I know that as I child, I remember feeling and sensing spirits around me when I would walk down a hallway alone or be praying in my bed at night. I didn’t know what I was experiencing and had no one around me to help me navigate it. Being raised in a religious Catholic home, this kind of stuff was outside the acceptable norm.
I believe intuition is like a muscle that every human being has. The more you use the muscle, the stronger it gets and the more confident we feel using it. I invested in Nikki Novo’s Soul Leader course in 2021 to help get some educational guidance on how to “wake up” to this skill again. Since then, it’s been one of my most impactful skills that I use in all areas of my life, especially in my work. My intuition works best with detecting patterns and seeing where trauma exists in a family system and connecting those two pieces of information together for a client. However, mediumship has become another intuitive skill I’ve leaned on when someone’s ancestor wants to come through for love and support. I love being able to flex this muscle and support people with it!
The second area of knowledge that I believe has been truly life changing is understanding trauma. I have studied the work of Dr. Gabor Mate, Internal Family Systems, Zack Alexander, Bessel Van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Mat & Ash, Louise Hay, Mark Wolynn, & Anodea Judtih. Through their texts & knowledge, I learned about the impact of the human experience in relation to trauma. In Family Constellation Therapy, while having one foot in the spiritual world is important, having a grounded foot in the physical is just as needed and provides balance in my work. I don’t want to spiritually bypass someone’s trauma, which feels invalidating! I need to be able to see & understand both sides.
The third quality I believe has been important for me as a constant student of FCT and as a facilitator is to work with the value of understanding. I’ve had to develop a relationship with this word and how it relates to healing with our families. In Family Constellation Therapy and the way I was taught to facilitate a session, I have people stand on pieces of paper that represent our family members in an energy field. We are quite literally stepping into their shoes to understand their experience in the realm of the family system.
While some may have resistance towards this, I find that this is the best way to cultivate a deep level of understanding for our families. Sometimes, we may think that if we step into their shoes to understand them, that we are bypassing or excusing the harmful things that have been done or said. I don’t look at it this way, although I acknowledge that very much. I view it as an opportunity to see that the pain our families passed down to us was a pain they felt they couldn’t carry or heal on their own. There is a level of healthy detachment from that pain when we see that it wasn’t about us and more about what someone else went through that went unhealed or unacknowledged. In that, we realize that we are real, whole and good. We are not defined by the trauma we carry from our ancestors. And that we are always free, sovereign, and in tune with our ability to give back that pain with love to reconnect to who we are truly here to be on this Earth.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
This is so good, I love this question! For someone who spent most of my life blaming my parents for the way I turned out, I realized that that path is short lived. There is a very distinct emotionally sobering moment when you enter the healing journey, especially ancestrally, where you have to live and breath by the old saying, “You’re not responsible for what happened to you, but you are responsible for healing it.” This is where the rubber meets the road with the value of understanding. At some point, we have to grow up and see that we may have put our parents (& family members) on pedestals of perfection when they are really just like us, trying to figure it out.
The whole goal of Family Constellation Therapy is to untangle ourselves from the ways we are over-identified with our families trauma so that we can be free to be who our soul came here to be. Part of that journey is understanding that even in the midst of our families trauma, there are also generational gifts. Sometimes those gifts come directly from a parent that they are passing down to us and sometimes those gifts come from what we learn from our families. Most of the time, it’s both! And there is a really interesting moment we arrive to on the ancestral healing journey where we have the opportunity to welcome the gifts more than we ever have before.
In saying all of that, I truly believe that for better or for worse, my parents have *always* been in service to me. My parents gave me the opportunity to have life and with that gift, I am able to be here in my purpose, to go deeper into myself, to serve others with this work, and to shine my light through the love I share with others every day. 3 years ago, if I read that, I would’ve thought I was crazy. However now, even though I still have moments where I struggle, I can truly say that the most impactful gift my parents have given me is the ability to be here in this life and be me. I will forever be grateful for the role they play as my parents in my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.katdaou.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/kat_daou
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/healwithkatpod
- Other: TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@healwitkatpod
Podcast: HEAL WITH KAT Podcast Available on Spotify, Apple, + Youtube. New episodes come out every Tuesday!
Image Credits
Photographer: Rachel Mills
