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Authentically You: Navigating Stepfamily Life with Kat John

Kat John, authenticity coach, speaker, and author of Authentic: Coming Home to Your True Self, shares her journey as a stepmum and the lessons she’s learned along the way.

Kat opens up about navigating relationships with her stepdaughters, supporting her partner, and staying true to herself in the complex dynamics of a blended family. With a focus on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and connection, Kat offers practical tools to help step-parents embrace authenticity and build stronger relationships. This episode is filled with wisdom and inspiration for anyone navigating blended family life and one you’ll come back to again and again!

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Kat John
When I am activated and when I’m in my story and when I’m making everything mean something and basically when all I want to do is run, that is when I will use this tool to deconstruct the big story ego in my head and I break it down.

Laura Jenkins
In The Blend is a podcast series that helps parents and step-parents navigate life in a blended family. Join me as I speak with experts and guests to get practical advice on how to create a more harmonious blended family life. Having grown up in a blended family and now a decade into raising one of my own, I bring a personal perspective to these conversations and we dive deep into the unique dynamics, logistics, and challenges of raising a blended family. From new partners to juggling mixed finances, we will help guide you through it.

Hello and welcome back to In The Blend! I am super excited to kick off a brand new season with you. It is Boxing Day here in Australia today. So whether you might be winding down from the holiday chaos or just taking a moment for yourself, I am thrilled to bring you an episode that’s equal parts inspiring and practical.

Before we get started, I did want to let you know in 2024 we are mixing things up a little, and I’ll be releasing one full-length episode each month, taking us through to the end of the year, alongside some bite-sized favourite tips from the archives to keep you supported in between. You can think of it as your regular dose of insight and encouragement to help you navigate those ups and downs of blended family life.

So to start the season, I am joined by the incredible Kat John. Kat is an authenticity coach, speaker, stepmum, and author of her brand new book, Authentic, Coming Home to Your True Self. Kat’s passion for living unapologetically shines through in everything she does. But I think what really sets this conversation apart is how beautifully she connects her personal growth journey with the unique dynamics of stepfamily life. Kat opens up about her experience as a stepmum, the lessons that she’s learned along the way, and how leaning into authenticity has transformed her relationships, both with herself and, of course, her family.

There is just so much goodness in this one. It really is one of my favorites. You’re going to love it. So grab yourself a cup of tea or maybe your leftovers from Christmas dinner. And let’s jump into this heartfelt and inspiring conversation with Kat John.

Laura Jenkins
All right. Well, welcome, Kat. I am absolutely delighted to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for being here.

Kat John
Absolute pleasure. It’s great to be here.

Laura Jenkins
Now, Kat, fellow stepmum, I’ve got so many questions I want to ask you. Let’s dive straight in. This is a Blended Families podcast, so we’re really interested in your personal experience as a stepmom. So I would love for you to just share a little bit about your journey as a stepmom so far. I think it’s been around eight years you’ve been a stepmom, so things have no doubt evolved over that time. Would love to hear a little bit about your journey from the early days to sort of where you are now and perhaps some of the biggest challenges or surprises that you faced along the way.

Kat John
Well, let me just say I was definitely not prepared for this to be as big a journey as it was. I’ve been through some pretty gnarly things in my life, and this—my gosh—it’s activated a lot. It’s brought up a lot. It has opened me up in ways that I didn’t know I needed.

So yeah, I met the girls when they were… I came into the family when they were seven and nine. But I was also friends with Steve, my now husband, for two years beforehand. So I actually knew the girls when they were five and seven. I was in and out of the house sometimes. We’d have dinner together. We’d watch a movie together. But I was literally dad’s friend Kat. Sometimes if one of the girls was sick and Steve had to take one of the girls to school, I lived around the corner. I’m like, yep, I’ll come and look after one of them, no problem. So, you know, I’ve been around them for quite some time.

And when I first stepped in—like stepped into the family—when Steve and I were together, the eldest said, “Dad, are you dating Kat?” And Steve was like… And she’s like, “Don’t worry, I won’t be mad, but are you dating Kat?” And he said, “Yes, I am.” And they were at Mia’s tennis match, and she ran up to me and she goes, “Dad’s got a girlfriend!” And they all rang me up.

In the beginning, it was really like kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty. I was like their new toy. They wanted to have sleepovers, they wanted me to sleep in their bunk beds. It was, yeah, it was like a big novelty to them.

As I started to sink into the family a little bit more, and when I moved in with them, like I said in the beginning, they were super warm and super welcoming. The youngest one always typically was. But as time went on, especially with the eldest, Ali, because she was moving through a difficult age—that 10-year-old, 11, 12—not quite a little girl anymore, not quite a teen yet, she was pretty tricky. She was pretty tricky, and so there were rifts between Steve and her, and I copped the blame for that. I was the thing that had changed. I was the new thing. It was like, “Okay, well, maybe dad doesn’t love me because Kat’s in here now.”

For about six months, I was pretty standoffish. I was like, “Well, I don’t want to correct things. I don’t want to discipline. I don’t want to change any of the way that they were doing things.” But I could see that there was a lot that could be changed that could have helped the family. For example, Steve had a nanny, and I felt uncomfortable having a nanny cook for the girls, bathe the girls when I was living there. And I’m like, “I could be doing this.” And I think because that’s the way that I grew up. I grew up with my mum home. She’s Filipino. It’s a very family-orientated culture. And the nanny, she was a beautiful woman. She was doing homework with the girls. And I was just sitting there doing my work, cooking my own dinner. I’m like, “This just feels weird.”

And I said to Steve, “What would happen if we didn’t have a nanny anymore? And maybe I can pick the girls up and I can cook dinner.” And he’s like, “I just didn’t want to put that on you. I didn’t expect that of you.” And I remember when we said it to the girls, they said, “Oh, so are you our nanny?” because they were just so used to having a nanny.

So it then got into this place of like, who am I to these kids? I’m not their mom. I’m not the nanny. I’m not their big sister. I’m not their auntie. To be honest, in the beginning, I just felt really displaced. I didn’t know what I could do, what I couldn’t do. Do I step in? Do I step out? Do I step aside? Do I step up? And then there was the thing of the food that they were eating and the food that was in the house, and it was just sugar. And I said to Steve, “I’d really love to feed the girls really good food and make them lunch boxes and all those kinds of things.” So again, I had the intention of wanting to help the family be, all in all, a healthier family at the level of the heart, the level of physicality, etc. And again, because I was the change, then I started to meet the resistance.

Laura Jenkins
Interesting. Yeah, I totally get that. And just reflecting on a couple of the things that you’ve just mentioned there, I think it’s so normal to feel like you want to have a role as a new stepmom coming in, and you need clarity on what that role is. And I so identify with the not really sure—what am I, who am I to the girls? But gosh, it sounds like, isn’t it wonderful that you came into their lives, Kat, and you really had a heart where you wanted to take on those things. Yeah, I think that’s so lovely.

Kat John
And I think when Steve and I talked about it, he just said, “Look, I’m a single dad. I’m so exhausted. I’m just trying to get them to school, get them home, have some kind of food that they can eat.” He wasn’t really, I guess, thinking of the intricacies. And I said, “Well, maybe this is where my strong suit is, where I can cook really delicious foods. I’ll learn to cook. My mom’s an amazing cook, and maybe this is my time. Maybe this is my time to cook good food.”

Eventually, there started to become some acceptance around that, and then the girls were like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe we used to eat what Dad gave us,” or “I can’t believe we were so used to eating what the nanny gave us. Your food is really delicious and yum.”

But I think the hardest place was when the eldest started to go through the 13, 14, 15 age group. Her and Steve were not in a good place, and I was the target. Her and I had an energetic war with one another. She just… she didn’t want to be here. She was predominantly living with her mum. Whenever she had to be here, it was just terrible.

At that time, Steve had proposed to me in 2018, and we were destined—well, we had intended to get married in 2020, but then COVID came. And I’m actually… you know what? I’m actually so glad it did, Laura, because I was very stressed about that wedding because our unit was not a unit.

Actually, the eldest, Allegra, she said to me, “I’m going to find it really hard to see Dad get married again.” She said, “It’s not about you. I’m just going to really struggle.” And I said to Steve, “I’m just not sure if this is the right time.”

And I just remember, like I said, there was such a big tug of war between her and I. There was a split between her and her dad. And I just said to Steve one day, “I think it’s just easier if I go. I think it’s easier if I let you guys be, and maybe when everyone gets a bit older, maybe we can reconnect.”

I said, “But it’s very clear that this is… I just don’t think I can stay in this.” It was just… every day I had anxiety, every day I questioned why I was here, every day I didn’t think it was worth me being here. And I just blamed… I blamed myself. I was blaming myself for it.

And then there was one particular day—which I actually wrote about, I think I wrote about it in my book, I did write about it in my book—where I went for a walk because I was just at the end of my tether with it all. And just this very clear, wise message came from within that just said, “This actually has nothing to do with me. This has to do with Steve and his daughter needing to reconnect.”

Because Steve wanted us to be a happy family, wanted us to do things together all the time, and me being involved all the time. And I remember saying to him, “Darling, you’ve got to have it just the three of you.”

Because I said, “You’ve got to nurture the relationship with your girls outside of me.” And Steve was like, “Yeah, but I want you there. I want you to hang out with us. I want you to experience stuff.”

I guess I could feel from a little girl’s perspective, like, “Please, Daddy, do you love me?” You know, just feeling the heart of them. And so I came back home after that walk, and I said to Steve, “You have to repair this. You have to go back into that relationship that you’re finding so difficult to deal with because that is why her and I aren’t good. That’s why her and I aren’t good. She needs to know that you love her. She needs to know that you’re there for her. And she needs to know that you can love her and me. We need to show her that.”

And to his credit, he did. He called her up, and he met up with her, and they went for a two-hour walk together. And he just said, “Kiddo, just tell me how you feel, and I’m going to listen. I’m not going to rebut anything, I’m not going to challenge anything, just get everything off your chest.”

And she did, and he just kept saying to her, “What else? What else is there? Keep it, get it out, keep it coming.”

And once he had exhausted what she needed to say, he said, “All right, cool. We’re going to leave that aside. And now the only two people that have made this relationship the way that it is, is you and me.”

And so they went on their journey of repairing their relationship, where then she eventually moved back into our home. They had designated or assigned dates together once a week. And slowly but surely—it was awkward in the beginning, it was definitely awkward in the beginning—slowly and surely, they reconnected. And then her and I… we are like thick as thieves.

Laura Jenkins
Oh wow. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Yeah, thick as thieves. Yeah. Wow. So, yeah, a couple of things I’ve been thinking about. First thing, Kat, you’re amazing. Having that, just the maturity to recognize that and the empathy to put yourself in the girl’s shoes and really think about what was going on in their heads and their hearts. Yeah. Recognizing the importance of that relationship between Steve and the girls and not being there 100% of the time, which when you’re in a new relationship too, you can want to be there all the time and it’s hard to pull yourself away. But yeah, it just sounds like you handled that so beautifully and what a great outcome that they’ve been able to rebuild that and then your relationship with the girls.

Kat John
Yeah. The one with the youngest one, it’s always been good. I think because I came in when she was still pretty young. And yeah, to me… I mean, she’d call me Mum if she could. She calls me Smum as soon as we got married. So they morphed Stepmum into Smum.

Laura Jenkins
Oh, I love it. I haven’t heard that one before.

Kat John
Me neither. I get called many things, like crazy nicknames, but Smum is probably the one that hits me in my heart. But yeah, it’s been, I think, I’d say three or four years now since Steve and his eldest daughter have been good, and now she lives with us full time, which we never, ever, ever thought would happen.

And in answer to your earlier question, one of the things I think that I have struggled with is, as a step-parent, you’re always having to go with the flow of them—you know, of like Steve and then what’s going on with his ex-wife and then what’s going on with the kids. And then the kids wanting to live with us, and then it’s like, “Oh my gosh, when am I going to have my space? When am I going to have my time? How am I going to keep my house so beautifully clean the way that I love it?”

Laura Jenkins
Totally.

Kat John
Yeah, it’s really, it’s such an interesting place to care for and love someone else’s kids. It’s just… I don’t think there’s a word for it.

Laura Jenkins
Yeah. Yeah, you’re spot on. It is. And it’s only when you’ve lived that experience as a stepmom that you understand what that’s like. And I think one of the things I really struggled with, especially in the early days, was getting my head around the fact that there was this other woman who was making decisions that were influencing the way my home ran in some way or things that were happening just to some level. And I think that took a little bit of getting used to—there were decisions being made that weren’t mine to make, but they impacted me. And yeah, that was tough.

Kat John
Definitely. I think that with the work that I do, I think the tricky part is that there are so many different personalities. And often, I mean, depending upon whether, you know, like Steve, for example, and his ex-wife, depending upon how their relationship is, it kind of sets the tone of, “Okay, well, what’s my relationship with her and how can that be if those two aren’t good?”

And then when Steve and her aren’t good, it then infiltrates to the kids, and then that infiltrates into our home. And yeah, it’s… you’re constantly trying to grasp onto whatever you can control in a very non-controllable environment as blended stepfamilies.

Laura Jenkins
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Fun and games, Kat, but you figure it out in time.

Kat John
You do, you do.

Laura Jenkins
Yeah, and I’ve found it gets easier the longer that time passes. Things feel more normal and more settled. I’d love to talk a little bit about your work as an authenticity coach and how the work you’ve done in that space has shaped the way that you navigate stepfamily dynamics. So are there any specific tools or practices that you use to stay true to yourself in those really challenging times when they arise?

Kat John
Definitely. I have used my tools like you would not believe, and I’ve had to add more tools over the years. Because, like I said, I’ve done a lot of healing over my years, and what I thought was tied up in a nice little neat bow was just ripped open, and all the things that were there were just pushed again. My wounds were pushed again, my buttons were pushed again, and I was like, “Jeepers creepers, I need some tools, and I need them now.”

I think the thing, like I said, I sort of moved through stages in this where in the beginning, I found it very difficult to know who I was to them. And so, as a result, I lost myself a little bit there, that authentic piece. Like I said, am I their auntie? Am I their mom? I’m not their mom. Am I their big sister? Am I like an older friend to them?

In the beginning, I wasn’t relaxed. I wasn’t relaxed in how to be with them. I was wondering how to be around them, which meant being my relaxed self was kind of a rare thing. And like anything, that reached a tipping point where I just was like, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t try and be and try and fit into something that I don’t even know fits me.”

That’s where I really sat with myself. So a tool that I absolutely always use is self-inquiry type questions that I take into meditation. I sit on a bench, I go into the sun, or I sit in nature, and I will ask a question and be present to hear the answer.

Kat John
And my question was, “In absolute truth, who am I to these girls?”

I remember sitting there—the sun, the nature—and I just had my journal out. And you know what I noticed? The answer that came through was, funnily enough, “The answer is already here. You just can’t see it.”

I’m like, “Well, that’s not very definitive, is it? What is it?” And then it started to… this sort of… it started to, meaning my intuition, wisdom, the universe—whatever you want to call it—started to share all these moments where the girls would say, “Hey Kitty, can we go for a walk and talk?” Or, “Hey Kitty,” they would say, “Can I book you in for a session?” because they’d want to talk to me about something.

Or, “Hey Kitty,” they’d have a bad day, and I was their person they could talk to. And when those moments started to flood my mind and my heart, I was like, “Oh my God, I’m their safe space. I’m their safe space.”

And what does that mean? That means that I’m someone that has a heart that is open to them, that is non-judgmental, that can acknowledge what they’re saying without making them feel bad or shameful or whatever.

And the moment I recognized that, I thought, “Oh God, that fits like a glove. That fits like a glove.” And they were telling me without telling me all along, “Kitty, you’re our safe space.”

The things that they have shared with me are things that I think only a parent could dream to be at the receiving end of. But of course, you know, parents can have more reaction to those types of questions and those types of topics. And yeah, so that gave me some real clarity.

So I’ve often used self-inquiry type questions that I then take into meditation to help me see the truth of things, help me get clarity.

Then there’s another tool that I write about in my book called the ego clearing exercise. The amount of books that I have on this is just next level.

I give my ego a moment when it’s having an absolute field day of, “Fuck this family. I hate this. I want to be out of here. They don’t love me. They’re not my people. They’re not my blood. I don’t want to marry Steve. This is too hard. Steve’s inconvenient to love. I want to run away. I just want to live with all the animals in the world in a castle on my own, and I’ll be happy,” right?

Like my ego literally takes me straight to that place.

So when I am activated, and when I’m in my story, and when I’m making everything mean something, and basically when all I want to do is run, that is when I will use this tool to deconstruct the big story ego in my head. I break it down.

I break it down into:

  • Situation
  • What are my thoughts about it?
  • What are my feelings about it?
  • What am I making it mean?
  • If I stay in this place, what’s the outcome?

It gives me a moment to diffuse the intensity of the story that I’m making up in my head.

And then I will always ask myself, once I’ve done that—because it’s important to clear your ego, you can’t love and light shit all the time—you can’t positive-affirm like, “I’m an amazing stepmother. This family loves me. Everything is well. All is working out for me.” Because in that moment, all is not working out for you.

So it’s annoying when you spray love-and-light spritz onto stuff where you’re like, “Nah man, I’m pissed off, and I need to just air out my pissed-off-ness.”

So I would do that, and then I would end it with, “Okay, what is my next best step here? What’s my true next best step here?”

Maybe it’s:

  • I need to have my boundaries.
  • I need to communicate my boundaries better to Steve.
  • Maybe I need to communicate my boundaries better to the girls.
  • Maybe I need to have an honest conversation.
  • Maybe I don’t need to do actually anything, and I just need to take a walk and chill the fuck out, you know?

So, I mean, they’re just two tools, but it’s basically fundamentally what I… the tools that I like to use are either giving my ego a moment to spit the dummy or asking, “How can I seek ultimate truth and clarity here so that I can move forward with clarity?”

Laura Jenkins
Yeah, I love both of those tools. How good. The love-and-light spritz made me smile, Kat. That’s such a good one. Isn’t it true?

Kat John
In those moments, it just pisses off the ego. I mean, look, maybe there is a love-and-light spritz. I’m not sure. In those moments, it pisses your ego off even more. Maybe you try and falsely make yourself feel good, but that anxiety and tension and whatever else is building there will just continue to build and it will spill out the next day, a week later, however long later. It’s just not healthy.

Laura Jenkins
No, no, not at all. Yeah, I love that. I also love how you talked about the safe space and arriving at that through that self-inquiry moment. And I think that’s just beautiful. And yeah, what a wonderful place to be and a wonderful figure you are in their lives. I love using the term bonus mum, and I think it has themes of that too—where you’re this extra person, you’re not trying to replace anybody, you’re not trying to step on toes, but you are this wonderful safe space for these extra humans in your life. So yeah, how good.

Kat John
Yeah, it is.

Laura Jenkins
Now, I’d love to just touch a little bit on your partner, Steve, and what your experience over the last eight years has taught you about supporting Steve whilst also navigating your own journey with being a stepmum.

Kat John
Yeah, it’s a great question because, look, I think as a step-parent or bonus parent, you can come in and you can annihilate a family. You can add fuel to the fire about the ex-partner and get your current partner riled up about it and create more feud and friction and really do harm.

Or you can really do your darnedest to, one, do work within yourself—because you constantly have to—and support your partner to do the work within themselves.

And that’s what I did with Steve. The girls were very used to friction between Steve and his ex-wife. They’re used to feuds, they’re used to, “Mom and Dad are at it again,” and those kinds of things.

And when I came into the family, I just thought, “This is not okay.”

My role to support Steve was really to help him be the man I knew he wanted to be and who I knew he could be. A man who was grounded in his power, a man who was very present with his girls, a man who was beautifully family-orientated.

Previously, Steve had been very used to being performance-based. It was, “You get shit done, you get love. You get shit done, you get love.” That’s how it was in his previous marriage. And so he just kept doing more and more and more.

It’s made him very successful, but it’s the heart that his girls and I want. I don’t want his extra doing-ness and constant performative stuff.

And really, I guess where he has sometimes wanted to seek vengeance, or where he’s had the potential to create more feud, I always bring him back to his heart.

I’ll ask him the same questions I ask myself in self-inquiry. Before he sends off a rocket of a message—and he’s sent some rockets before—I say, “Type it into your notes and let me read it. Just type it into your notes, get it out, and then we can write a different kind of message.”

Because I got tired of seeing him give his power away so easily, which then made him feel shitty, which then made him talk poorly about his ex-wife, which then the girls overheard. And I thought, “This is not the energy of our home. This is not okay.”

So, my intention, particularly when it comes to Steve, is to bring him back to what truly matters at the level of the heart.

I can absolutely say that over the last two years, he’s now got that within himself. It’s alive in him now. Of course, we always talk, communicate, and riff things off each other, asking how we can do things better. But that practice of staying grounded and focused on the heart—it’s alive in him now.

It just means that the fighting and feuds that used to be so easily activated are now like, “Nah, that’s not where I want to put my energy.”

So that’s where I believe I’ve helped him the most.

Laura Jenkins
I think putting those heated text messages into notes is such good advice too, Kat. I had a lawyer once on the podcast who said to me, “Never put in writing what you don’t want read in court.” And you just never know who’s going to see those messages.

Kat John
Totally.

Laura Jenkins
Yeah, but most importantly, how you’re going to feel after you’ve sent it. Probably angrier.

Kat John
Totally. Angry at yourself. Shittier. Cranky at yourself.

Laura Jenkins
Yes.

Kat John
Yeah, because you gave away your power. It’s false power to send those types of messages. But I understand why he would want to, because the two of them know how to absolutely go bang, bang, bang. They know where the nerves are and can flick it just like that.

So yeah, it was just teaching him a new way of being able to navigate conversing with a difficult person so that he could remain in integrity.

Laura Jenkins
Yeah, yeah, 100%. How good.

Now, Kat, we are coming up on time here. Still so many different things that I could ask you, but I would love to wrap up our conversation by talking about any other advice you might have for stepmoms who are struggling to feel their authentic selves within their blended family world. Anything else that you could suggest that they do to help unlock that true self before they run for the hills, throw in the towel, and give up?

Kat John
Yeah, I mean, there are so many options there. I guess the thing that I would invite anyone to do—the thing that I do with myself—is notice when you are behaving from a non-relaxed state.

What I mean by that is, when we are authentic, when we are in our authentic selves, we are in our relaxed selves.

For example, if you want to ask one of the kids, “Hey, I’m going to cook pasta tonight, you in for it?” or “Hey, I’m going to the shops, do you want to come with me?”—from that relaxed state, there is that genuine desire to ask such a question.

But you don’t ask it. That’s because something has gotten in the way—an ego-type thought, a limiting thought, like, “Oh no, but if I ask that, then this might happen,” or “If I ask that and they give me a look or roll their eyes, I’ll feel rejected.”

Notice how easily you shift out of your authentic self. That’s the starting point. Notice how often you do that and get curious about why you’re doing it.

What’s uncomfortable about staying present in your relaxed, natural state? That’s where the work begins. Because those answers give us clues. Then you can ask, “What’s my next best step here to stay rooted in myself? How can I live in neutrality rather than control?”

Laura Jenkins
Totally. That is so interesting, just hearing you say that. And I think wonderful advice for everyone listening—if there’s one thing you take away from this chat: get curious. Really notice those behaviors and unpack them.

Kat John
Yeah, absolutely.

Laura Jenkins
Yeah. How good. Well, Kat, it has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much for your vulnerability and all of the wisdom and wonderful advice that you have shared. I would love to have you back sometime for part two. I feel like there’s a lot more that we can explore, so we’ll have to do this again.

Kat John
Thank you, Laura. Thanks for having me.

Laura Jenkins
Thank you so much for joining me for this inspiring conversation with Kat John. Isn’t she fabulous? I hope her insights on authenticity, connection, and navigating family life have given you some valuable tools to walk away with.

Before you go, I’m thrilled to share that we have just launched a social media competition, giving you the chance to win one of three signed copies of Kat’s book, Authentic, Coming Home to Your True Self, plus access to the Bonus Mum Blueprint self-paced online course.

To enter, head over to our Instagram page, which is @intheblend_, and follow the instructions.

Thanks for listening to the In The Blend podcast. The show notes for this episode are available at intheblend.com.au. And if you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe and please rate and review in your podcasting app. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.