Episode 186: Religion Says “I Am Right,” Spirituality Says “I Am” with Kate Mikado

I’m Megan Skidmore. For two and a half years, I have been talking about evolving faith journeys. I started to tire of the heaviness of this focus.

I had the clear message come through, it is time for Beyond the Shadow of Doubt podcast to evolve into living Beyond the Shadow of Doubt podcast. With the same vulnerability and unapologetic authenticity, I will be focusing on the joy in this journey, the life and the living that comes on the other side of maybe, on the other side of what’s possible. I want to talk about claiming spiritual sovereignty and becoming your own captain of your vessel.

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Welcome to today’s episode of Beyond, Living Beyond the Shadow of Doubt podcast. I have Kate Mikado with me. I almost said Kate the Great because that is how I see you, the way you participate and contribute and the insights you offer in our Mosaic community and in our JOA, Joan You’re just so good with words, Kate.

Anyway, welcome. I’m so glad to have you. Thank you.

It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s funny you said Kate the Great because that’s actually one of my handles when I’m on the interwebs. I like Kate the Great, so it’s funny that you thought of that.

Okay. There you go. Our energy is aligned.

Well, we want to get to know you. Tell us all about Kate the Great. Well, so I know you mentioned JOA and Mosaic, and I’m actually now honoring the title of author, having published, now I’ve got my third book I think is out now, but this is my first book that I did publish by myself outside of college that I professionally did and sold and all of that, and I’m promoting and things like that.

So it’s very exciting because I’ve been writing since I was 15. So now I’m finally publishing. So it’s really, really cool to be in this space, sharing with other authors and connecting with other authors who have a very, very deep alignment.

You mentioned that earlier, like that line with the name, and I try to do everything that way. So, yeah, I have a marketing company I run as well, but this is me. So excited to share, I hope this session we get to dig into some of the topics I talk about in my book, but it’s really what I’ve been about and what 2025 is.

I’ve coined it the authentic is my word for the year, and I like to pick a word, and that’s the one that’s this year, so. I love the word authentic. As I have been on my own self-development, self-growth journey since, it’s really, I have felt it since about 2019, 2020, when my kiddo came out and I was really wrestling with tough questions, being from a conservative faith background, yeah, you have to, well, you don’t have to, you can choose to lean into the hard conversations, the cognitive dissonance and see what it’s there to teach you.

If you don’t, there’s a lot of suffering, even more than if you just lean into it. So tell us a little bit about, you mentioned you have a degree in college, you did some writing there. Tell us a little bit about that background, your professional pursuits, educational, your family, your faith.

Yeah, so it’s kind of an interesting story, I kind of ended up doing a full circle here. So I started in my college degrees actually, and I have my BA, and it’s in arts and technology. And I loved learning, so I didn’t stop there, I got a minor in theater, I got a minor in film and production, and I almost got a dance minor.

So I was a couple classes shy, and I was like, I gotta get out of here. So I did end up getting a dance minor, but it was definitely a wonderful college experience for me. I feel like I got a really wide breadth, it was a very interdisciplinary program.

So I sculpted, and I danced, and I did film, and I did theater, and I did, you know, books. So I just did a lot of different creative things, I just thrived there. And then it’s a funny story, so I got out of college, got my first kind of job, and it was as a media transfer technician, and I actually very much enjoyed it.

And then I came in for a temp position, and the sales guy was leaving, and so I kind of came in, and I was like, I’m gonna do sales, and it just at the time was not a great fit. And it was not just shy of a year when I was working there, and I met my husband, and he’s like, come do this thing called entrepreneurship with me. I went, I don’t even know what that is, but let’s go.

And had I known, had I known what that journey would be, I don’t know if I would have said yes, who I was at the time, no regrets at all. I know God always has a plan, and that’s very much my belief, and I try to, I do live my life with either no regrets or healed regrets. And so for me, it’s at that time in my journey, and it’s so funny because we ended up making a magazine.

We did Funnel Magazine, and we ended up doing all these projects, so I’m like, I actually know how to do this, and I actually went to school to do this. This is so cool. So it felt very- Oh, that’s fabulous.

But also very aligned, and so I’ve always been really good, and we got a great team together for that project. We got an amazing art director and designer, and we just really put all our heart and soul into that, and it really just, you can see it in the quality when we talked to the fans, they were like, this is a coffee table book, like I don’t just read it and toss it like other magazines. We’re like, no, that’s not what this book was meant to be, and so we did that.

So my husband technically published that one, and I was the editor on that, and so that was Funnel Magazine. That was one of my favorite projects working with our company, our agency, and so now I’ve kind of been, and as I was drawing on the journey with my husband, we kind of had different projects we’d do and different things we’d pursue. We also have an Airbnb business we run on the side, so I’ve helped run that business too, and I just, I love the creative side.

I think that’s really what lights me up, and so this year has really been, my husband and I have really been a team, and we really got on the same page right around COVID. We kind of hit that spot in our marriage, which I think a lot of people will relate to, which is where it was like the ride or die moment, and it was like, either we’re going to be in this, and we’re going to do it, or this is done, and I’m so grateful because we both said yes. We kept saying yes, and that was the key to keeping it together, and so as we went through, our business shifted several times over the course of that and us healing our relationship, and to the point where now he’s really stepped into, he’s going and diving feet first into real estate, and that’s really been his passion.

Like I said, we have Airbnb businesses, and so now he’s doing that, and I’m kind of now pursuing this writing career and this creative career that I’ve been so passionate about for most of my life, and so it’s just beautiful because all of the last 10 years have just led up to me being ready to come out of the gate so hard, so fast, like it’s just cool. It’s crazy, and it’s cool, so that’s kind of what that’s been. Thank you for sharing that with us.

I would love to hear a little bit more. You mentioned how God always has a plan, and you also talked about these past 10 years have been preparing you for right now. I’d love to hear that side of your journey, what your faith background is and what that intersection is for you, whatever that might be.

There’s no wrong answers here. It’s all a beautiful journey. It’s so interesting, and I love talking about it like a path, like a journey, because for me, I grew up in a Presbyterian church, and my uncle is a pastor, so it was just ingrained in my family.

I have a long history, so there’s a lot of, shall we say, culture that I came into, and it was very interesting for me because I read this Bible, I learned about this guy, Jesus, and I went, I’m supposed to live like this guy, and when I tried to do that in a church setting, I found that I kind of actually ended up needing some friction, and I went, maybe this isn’t the place for me to explore this, and so I went off going, I’m finding God. I’m going to try and be like this guy, Jesus, but I’m going to do it on my terms, and it wasn’t so much of a leaving or anything like that. It was just more of a, I went off to college.

I went out and I lived life. It was not this, I’m rebelling, and I’m drifting, and it just, it was a very subtle thing, and Darren Hardy tells a really cool story about that, of how we’ll be in our little, in the ocean, and you’re in your raft, and you don’t realize how much you’ve drifted from the shore until five, 10, 20 minutes later, you look up, and you go, wow, I’m miles down from where I was supposed to be, and that’s kind of what happened for me. I kind of just drifted, not, you know, out of rebellion, but just a natural drift that happens because I wasn’t intentional, and that’s right around where I met Hawk, and funny enough, he wasn’t super religious or anything like that.

I was never going to be like, I’m marrying a guy from the church. I know that some people have that kind of culture and aspect, but that was never it for me. I was always going to find the person that was the right fit for me, and my beliefs would be incorporated in that, so we wouldn’t be out of alignment with our beliefs, and he’s never been, and if anything, we’ve just come more and more into alignment with it, and so for me, I kind of, I grew up with a very interesting background that I grew up in a Hindi household as well, so I had a lot of Eastern perspective.

That’s really rare. I grew up in San Diego, so for me, I got a lot of the Western culture, but then I also got the Eastern, and my heart just loved the Eastern practices, and it was so beautiful because I was like a kid praying to God next to someone who was Hindi, you know, and just a beautiful, like, the example of that oneness and practicing that love of I don’t necessarily believe what you believe, but I love you, and I’m going to sit next to you, and we’re going to do this in pure harmony, and that was really beautiful, so that was that for me, and I kind of just went on that journey of exploring what these philosophies were teaching, and not necessarily from a religious perspective. I definitely separate the two.

To me, religion says I am right, and spirituality says I am, and so that’s at least what I was taught, and the Holy Spirit kind of gave that to me, and so I’ve always respected religious beliefs from that perspective, but I’ve also gone, I’m not holding to that rigidity. I’m also willing to go, what does I am look like, and how can I be more into this idea and practice of oneness, and what does that look like across a lot of philosophies? So I’ve studied Lao Tzu, and I’ve studied Buddhism, and I’ve studied these things, and from my idea of where is God, is it there, is it there, is it there, and so in that exploration, it was so beautiful, because it added to my understanding and my perspective that I have a greater appreciation for the world at large through doing that, and then incorporated those things that made sense for me into my beliefs that were always in alignment, and so that’s kind of how I explored where you can see threads, and seams, and consistency, if we talk about the golden rule, being a thread through every religion, and what are those nuances, and kind of incorporating it. So I know a little bit of a long-winded kind of way around how I got there, but I started on the path and ended up back on the path, and now I’m sharing these ideas, because I think we’re in a really hard time unity-wise, where people are missing those gaps, and they’re just seeing this division instead of focusing on what do we have in common, what does keep us together, because we do live in this paradox of we’re different and the same, and how do we hold that.

That is really well said, Kate. What you said is one of the most profound things, or distinctions I’ve heard, how to explain the difference, religion says I am right, spirituality says I am. That is so poetically beautiful, and yes, the golden rule does run through every religion, faith practice, creed, you could say, and I agree with you, folks are missing the gaps, they’re focusing on what’s different about us versus how we are the same, how our humanity connects us, because it does.

Can you share with us, Kate, how have you integrated these into your work, these concepts that you just shared with us? I love that you said you got Western and Eastern practices and backgrounds introduced to you from a young age. That is amazing, and that is rare. Yeah.

For me, I’ve understood things from the context of I will never violate either understanding of integration. My husband has done NLP, and if you’re not familiar, that’s Neuro Linguistic Programming, and some work can be done with identity, and it is strongly recommended not to do that, because it is so problematic for people that they can lose themselves. From knowing that, I always said, you know what, this is my identity, and I won’t stray from something that will violate either belief, and that’s really something that’s come into great focus in the last week.

This is stuff I’m still doing in real time on my own experiment, but for me, it’s this idea of, and in my work, I talk about those both perspectives, like what are the things that are taught? Because if you understand things from, so if we look at Christianity as an example, it’s often seen through a Greek perspective, but forgetting that it was really originating from a Hebraic perspective, and the Aramaic perspective of Jesus, and you have the Sunnis, and you have these very Middle Eastern ideas that have been Westernized as it’s moved across Europe. And so I take into context history, historical context. I take into account different perspectives, and so I’m not just looking through a spiritual thing or a topic through one lens.

I’m going to look through it in about five to seven to really get and go, okay, am I understanding this? Am I really, is this landing? Am I getting this right? Because for me, getting it right means I’m not hurting someone in the process of practicing. Getting it right means that I am honoring myself and the other person. So when I talk about this idea, we talk a lot about perfect.

Nothing is perfect because it’s a standard to which you think you have something. The only perfection is divine perfection. So if something is divinely perfect, there are going to potentially be flaws, but that’s okay.

So like a flower, if it’s got some edges on it that are rough, it’s still divinely perfect because it’s a flower, right? So that’s what I’ve done. So in my book, I actually talk about these two. It’s almost like this story of the interweaving between these Eastern ideas and the Western perspective and kind of this beautiful mashup, my at least journey interpreting what that looks like to integrate that.

And so I have things that I do that are from my Western practice and things that I do from my Eastern practice. And I give each its merit and lean into whatever my body is calling to, whatever my soul is calling to in the moment. Wow, I am blown away.

Here’s what’s coming up for me, Kate, from what you’ve shared. Nothing is perfect except divine perfection. And even that is going to potentially have flaws.

And you gave the example of a flower. Maybe it’s, I don’t know, missing a petal or, you know, a three leaf clover becomes a four leaf clover or whatever, but it’s still divinely perfect because it’s a flower. I see so many ways to broaden the application of this way of thinking in our world, our natural, divinely created, purposely created, purposely cultivated, and yet it will get critiqued because it’s not seen as perfect, held to some ambiguous standard of what is okay, what is not okay, what is the right way versus the wrong way.

Back to that, kind of that definition you used of religion says, I am right versus spiritually. Spirituality says I am. I shared with you at our recent conference, our JLA collective, and then the success codes lives, how I am a parent of a transgender kiddo.

And what you just said about that flower, that could be said about every single human being, every animal. Some animals are born, you know, without limbs or without certain qualities that are seen as typical or needed or required for that species or whatever. It’s just so beautiful.

And I can tell that this is how you live your life, Kate, from this very perspective. This is the pair of glasses, the lens through which you view how you live. Has it always been that way? Did you grow into that? Tell us your secrets, Obi-Wan.

Well, to be fair, I have to give a ton of credit to my mom and my dad. And it’s going to be very interesting to hear this. So my mom has been a perfect example, and I use perfect meaning to finally perfect, a perfect example of what it looks like to live the life I was taught to live, meaning based on our values of what being a Christian is.

And if you’ve never met my mom, I hope everyone gets a chance to just because she’s that amazing person. Like I can tell her anything and she would support me. I’ve told her some of my crazy beliefs, which I know in like a tradition Christian circle, they would be like their antenna would be going up and they’d be freaking out.

And she could just hold it and go, you know what, you’re doing great. You know, you’re not running off and ruining your life. You’ve got a beautiful family.

You’re working hard to grow your business like I see you. I love you. And to be held like that with some of the beliefs I have within what I’ve grown up with and her to be the one to give a lot of that space and a lot of that was just incredible.

And to have her give her life perspective where like the idea of not judging someone or the idea of giving space to people who have different values or gossiping or things like that, because it happened to our family. And she told me the stories where my aunt actually ended up having a partner that was gay and that ended up all in the news at the time. And so for us, that was that was the family stuff getting, you know, run through the mud, if you will.

And she said, you know, I will never don’t ever do that because we’ve had it happen to us and it does not feel good when it happens. So I said, you know what, mom, I won’t because that’s that’s right. We don’t want to treat others that way.

And so like just my family teaching me a lot of beautiful things like that. And so I have to give a credit to her. And then I have to give credit to my father who taught me radical, unconditional love because he was someone that I had to struggle with to do that.

And he had a lot of problems. He has narcissism. He’s had hoarding.

He has hoarding issues. He’s got and if you guys don’t know, hoarding is a very, very problematic mental disorder. As part of my commitment to giving back every first Friday of the month, I offer a free coaching hour.

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And to grow up in an environment like that, it, I can see where some of my tendencies where I can kind of be OCD about stuff. And genuinely, I don’t say it jokingly. Things need to be neat for me.

And I’m honored that I acknowledge that myself because of how I was raised. I can see, oh, that’s that trauma showing up. Let me give it some love and some space and know that, hey, it’s okay.

And it allows me to let mess be a little more where I didn’t when I was a kid. And so to have this parent who is essentially building this very, it’s a very pull push relationship where they’re going to pull you for stuff and push you away and pull you for stuff and push you away. And for me to go, you know what, I just want to be like my friends whose parents are divorced where they can go to mom’s house and they can go to dad’s house.

And I couldn’t do that. And so for me, it was a long journey of loving that person, loving him and coming to terms of forgiveness and not for his sake, but for mine. And just working through that and knowing that it was never about him.

It’s about me in the best way possible. And to just continue to send him love light, send him love light, send him love light. And to be keeping that channel open.

So right now we’re no contact, but it’s not in any way bitter. It’s not in any way sad. It’s one of those I’ve had many relationships kind of fade.

And that was one of them that I just let naturally fade. And I was just like, no, I’m good. I don’t want, you know, his phone number, but it wasn’t a bitter or anything like that.

And so he taught me how to love in that unconditional way. And he’s that first person that I said, you know, it doesn’t matter all this stuff that happened. I’m just going to love you and know that you can’t love me the way I need to be loved.

And that’s okay. And to be blessed with my mom met my dad. So my dad is man, my mother ended up remarrying.

And he is the one that’s got me back on the path to God. He’s the one that has a book for me every time I need it. I feel like I take after him so much, even though he’s technically my stepdad.

He definitely feels like my real dad, if that makes sense. So that’s really where it came from is that raising of those parents and having almost an example of the most selfish person and the most unconditionally selfish, selfless person, their dichotomy, and then growing up with that. So I’ve had the benefit of having essentially both.

God’s giving me like, here’s East, West, here’s pure love. And here’s a conditional love. Here’s this and here’s that.

And now you get to choose. And so that’s been really my life from that perspective. What you just shared really demonstrates to me or illustrates that we get to define our relationships because we only control our portion, our 50% of that relationship.

And I love how you are choosing to have that continued relationship with your father, according your birth father, I should say, according to your values, according to your intuition, according to how you want to show up. You’re not choosing to do or not do or say or not say because of fill in the blank of what someone else might do or say or not do or not say. And that is a beautiful place to be.

Is it pain free? Not necessarily. But it is. It’s it.

It requires an emotional maturity. And I’d say even emotional intelligence that I think we’re all working towards. That’s for sure.

I think previous generations didn’t necessarily have a concept of or maybe even an awareness of. Not sure. That’s just me speaking of me.

I think you hit on the word that I want to highlight and to my journey is that awareness. The moment I had awareness of all this because there was a time I didn’t. And so I give myself love for the person that didn’t have that awareness because it didn’t have awareness.

What are you going to do? But as soon as you have it, OK, now it’s my responsibility because I know I have that responsibility. And it’s so funny because I remember a conversation where he’s like, you’re choosing X, Y, Z. I was like at a place where I was like, I can’t be choosing X, Y, Z because of how much this hurt. How on earth could I be choosing this? And so it’s so beautiful because he even had some awareness.

And it wasn’t like he was just like, I’m not going to do anything or I’m going to try. He he was putting in an effort. And so I think that helped, too, is seeing that he’s like, oh, I’m seeing codependency.

I’m going to go to this group. I’m seeing this. So I’m going to do that.

And so it’s not like this. The world isn’t black and white. It’s very gray.

And that was a hard lesson for me to learn. I liked my world being black and white. It made things a lot easier.

But it’s so much more beautiful in this nuance, that awareness piece, as you said. And I think that’s really like a big part of it is getting to awareness. And then from there, the floodgates open.

Yeah. Tell us some of the the joyful, the blissful aspects of your spiritual journey, your spiritual awakening. I really love to focus on those because there’s we all know the hard parts.

There seem to know those a little bit more automatically, maybe. And also kind of a two part question. How much of your writing includes this side of you? Yeah.

So I’ll start with let’s start with the writing. So I think that’s that’s such a beautiful way to start. It’s so ingrained.

Some of me, part of me goes, I hope they don’t see too much of me in my writing. But I think it’s going to be inevitable. But in a beautiful way, because it’s not mine to speak to it.

At the conference you’re at, I had a really blissful one where we did some breath work. And I think it’s so cool if you look into who God is and what it says about it. Like in Genesis, we’re talking like we’re at the very, very beginning.

And it talks about the idea of God is breath. And that shows up as I think it’s in Hebrew and in Aramaic. And so when we do breathwork, we’re literally connecting with with God in a very experiential sense.

And so I had this vision, it was just like, God was, he has to remind me, he, she. It’s mine, not yours. And I get that a lot.

And that’s a lot of our conversations. My time, not yours. My stuff, not yours.

In the most beautiful way possible. And reminding myself I’m a steward. And so everything kind of has gone into this work and the book I’m coming out with really is almost like all of my practices sort of ingrained, different visions I’ve had.

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