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What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.
You can.
When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.
And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.
As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.
Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.
If you are in a toxic abusive relationship, what's gonna get you out is gonna be therapy and you're gonna need supportive resources to get you out. If you are sick, talking about when we were talking about the situation with my daughter's father, money. All of these resources really ground you into realizing money helps you. It can give so much freedom.
Kate Northrup:There's a topic that comes up constantly whenever I speak with women about money and that is worthiness. So today we have Christine Gutierrez who is a psychotherapist and a mentor and a facilitator. She's the author of I am Diosa and her brand new book is out, it is called I am Worthy. Christine is an absolute trailblazer in the field of women's spiritual transformation. Her ability to, tell the story of how we can turn any experience and any background into fodder for our greatest aliveness is absolutely gorgeous and inspiring.
Kate Northrup:And in this conversation, we talk about her journey of becoming sober and her own money healing journey, how we conflate consumerism and toxic capitalism with abundance and how we can stop doing that, how we are rewarded for over functioning, and also often rewarded for our struggle and how we can find the sweet spot in between and so much more. Christine's work has been featured by Oprah Daily, The Kelly Clarkson Show, Latina Magazine, Ebony, and more. And I think you are just going to fall in love with her. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to Plenty.
Kate Northrup:I'm your host Kate Northrup, and together we are going on a journey to help you have an incredible relationship with money, time, and energy, and to have abundance on every possible level. Every week, we're gonna dive in with experts and insights to help you unlock a life of plenty. Let's go fill our cups. Please note that the opinions and perspectives of the guests on the Plenty podcast are not necessarily reflective of the opinions and perspectives of Kate Northrup or anyone who works within the Kate Northrup brand. Hi.
Kate Northrup:Welcome. Hi. Thank you for being here, Christine. This is so much fun. You and I have been circling each other for probably fifteen years, if not more.
Kate Northrup:Wow. Like, in the same communities from, you know, baby days in New York.
Christine Gutierrez:That's right. Baby days in New York.
Kate Northrup:So I was so happy to hear from you, and I was like, yes. Let's do it. Let's do it. Your new book is out. Like, I am worthy.
Kate Northrup:So my show is called Plenty, and I literally, the topic of all money work is worthiness. Absolutely. Especially for women, which is, you know, 98% of our community. And there was something in your book that I really loved, and I wanna start there. We'll see where we go.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. But it is how we conflate capitalism with abundance and how it creates cognitive dissonance. Can you talk about how we our tendency to conflate capitalism with abundance keeps us limited and and and and kinked up in terms of our flow of abundance of all kinds, financial and otherwise.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah, so for me when you know really the inspiration behind this book and all of the work that I do is around how can we return back to that state of knowing that we are worthy inherently deeply worthy beyond anything, right? Like going back to that core of I am worthy because. And what happens is that so often we look for things on the outside to make us feel worthy. And in this case, if it's money, right, we're saying, Okay, well if I have x, y, and z, then I will feel good enough, then I will feel abundant. And the truth is is that the overflow of knowing that we are in our connection to our deep inherent worth is the first place of our overflow, is the first place of our worthiness.
Christine Gutierrez:From that place then we can have those outside things flow. So if it's you know I desire to have more money that can be a great goal but if you're not feeling that first then we are misunderstanding what true abundance is, right? True abundance is not having that only. And I think a lot of times people get stuck on that and end up feeling really empty and lonely because their target is in
Kate Northrup:the wrong place. What's the piece around problems that you see with our capitalistic culture and how they get us confused around our relationship with money?
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. I mean, I think that in our society
Kate Northrup:Just the way we do capitalism, I guess, would say.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. Because we do live in this world. Right? Right. And we, you know, we have to pay the bills.
Christine Gutierrez:We can't pay, you know, the bills with, confetti, right? Like we have to pay it with money, we have
Kate Northrup:to do what we have
Christine Gutierrez:to do. But and also, right, like there's always like this simultaneous world going on, this spiritual world and the mundane world. I think that we live in a culture that's very obsessed with life force energy, is very scared of death energy, that's very scared of cycles, that is terrified of things ending. And so we live in this culture which is give me more, more, more, let's go out and get it and we stay stuck there. And when that happens, we are not really remembering our true purpose here as spiritual beings on this earth.
Christine Gutierrez:So I mean, we see it everywhere. We see it in magazines. We see it in work. We see it in just the way we talk about money. You know I'm very aware even with my daughter of like talking to her about like this energy of abundance, how we can feel grateful for things, how we can feel expansive and yes we use this tool called money but it's make believe, right?
Christine Gutierrez:And we assign the value to it and in this world we're not taught that. We're not taught that it's this make believe thing that we you know give power to. I actually remember being a little girl and telling my mom and taking a piece of loose leaf paper and being like, mom, isn't it weird that people think that money is real? And she was like, money is real. I'm like, no, but mom, hear me out.
Christine Gutierrez:I'm like, it's a loose leaf piece of paper and someone said it's a dollar. And now we're obsessed and children are dying because of it. I was I felt like I had discovered something like I was like, woah. People are dying over a make believe concept? And I was mind blown.
Christine Gutierrez:And I was I remember being in like second grade and ripping the piece of paper and being like, it's make believe. And so that has always stayed with me, this concept of, like, being in both worlds knowing that something is make believe, but yet it's not because we've assigned value to it. And so how do we navigate those two worlds and and come back to our true state. I do believe that we have far more people believing in the world of the mundane and less in the world of spirit which is why I do encourage people to go back to we've assigned the value to it. How can we rescript what it means to us in this world?
Kate Northrup:Yeah. And for you, what was one of the most pivotal moments where you realized you were operating in the paradigm of unworthiness? And how did you begin to repair that or remember?
Christine Gutierrez:I'm like girl, my whole life
Kate Northrup:story, but which one do you want to tell today?
Christine Gutierrez:Let's see. You know, I grew up in Bushwick in Brooklyn to a family with a lot of love and also a lot of abuse. And for me that was the first moment where I realized this is not right. Like I knew, I was very aware, I knew something was not right. I knew that the way that they were acting was from a place of woundedness.
Christine Gutierrez:I knew that that's not how you are supposed to treat a child. I knew that they were placing their fears onto me, their burdens onto me, their addictions onto me and so that was the first core wound of that I realized and then playing out that wound, right. So for me that looked like drinking and respecting myself when I drank, you know, going to places where I shouldn't have been going, staying out far too late, hanging out with the worst people. Like I could have closed my eyes and at the time like, my per I could walk into a club. I would close my eyes and be like, who is the biggest, baddest drug dealer here?
Christine Gutierrez:Where are you? You are for me. I could, like, smell him. I was like, perfect. Like, I knew the worst one was gonna be the one that I wanted, you know, and that was from my wound.
Christine Gutierrez:It was like the bloody wound going out there and choosing for me. And when I started to realize over and over again because I had this other part of me, this spiritual part of me, this very very connected psychic intuitive part of me, this loving part of me, this part of me that wanted to help people, but I was battling those two worlds for a long time And I was in this war, and I remember seeing myself, like, drinking and acting out sexually and feeling like I don't love myself. And if I see this version of myself, which I did see that I want to walk into, what will I choose? Will I choose to keep replaying this pattern or will I choose something different? Ultimately I chose something different, right?
Christine Gutierrez:Like I went on the path of healing, got sober, but that role play of that wound with not loving myself as it relates to acting out and addiction was so it was one of my biggest teachers by far.
Kate Northrup:How did you get sober? So many different paths.
Christine Gutierrez:Me, my and past I and I like to tell people there's so many different paths to get sober. If you're listening to this and you wanna change your relationship to alcohol, let it be your own path. I am not a black and white person. I don't think that there is one way to do things. This is just my story.
Christine Gutierrez:I remember writing down in the notes section of my phone, God bless the notes section of my phone. I have so much shit there. Like everything. And I'm like It's
Kate Northrup:the archive. Right? It's the archive of
Christine Gutierrez:like the deepest parts of my spirit. And I'm like I wrote down, you know, I think that I have a problem. Every time I drink, I do things that I regret, and I don't love myself when I do those things. Mhmm. And I remember starting by, you know, maybe I won't drink when I'm sad.
Christine Gutierrez:Maybe I will just drink with friends, and maybe I'll just drink wine. And I started to do all those, like, little rules and it didn't work. Ultimately, when I had one, I would have more. And so I wasn't like this typical drinker that was drinking every day, and I would have a moment and I wouldn't be able to stop. And so this idea of this alcoholic didn't fit what I was doing.
Christine Gutierrez:And so I was like, well, maybe it's not that bad. Right? We have a culture that also is enables bad behavior and says it's totally fine. This is normal. It's fine.
Christine Gutierrez:You're just living in the world.
Kate Northrup:Well, also because so much of the world is funded by big alcohol. Mean, we're back to capitalism.
Christine Gutierrez:Absolutely. Or the
Kate Northrup:toxic capitalism.
Christine Gutierrez:Absolutely. Right. And so I then walked into a room of AA. I raised my hand. It was this Upper East Side, you know, late meeting.
Christine Gutierrez:And I raised my hand and I said, hi. My name is Christina. I'm an alcoholic. I didn't really resonate with the language, but I knew it was a willingness to to say that something's wrong. And in any moment in our lives there is a choice and there is a humbleness that needs to be found which says this is the way that I am living.
Christine Gutierrez:I don't like it. Something's wrong. And can I surrender? Can I let this go and can I be guided by something bigger than me? And when I said that, day by day things started shifting and I started doing the work and I started, you know, realizing that there was another way to live.
Christine Gutierrez:And so for me personally, it's not like I feel like I have to go to meetings to stay sober, Like, my sobriety is deeply rooted in myself. However, I will say that those meetings and all of that program helped me. It was a moment of saying I want another life. Mhmm. Like, will I choose a life based on my woundedness or will I choose a life based on my worthiness?
Christine Gutierrez:Worthiness is always going to lead you to better, brighter, shinier doors. Totally.
Kate Northrup:Always. My husband was a problematic drinker before I met him, and he also had, you know, his own path where he just one day, he decided to stop and eat it. Yep. And so I love that you're just really inviting. There can be you know, our culture loves dogma.
Kate Northrup:Right? In a in traumatized culture and a traumatizing culture, we really go to black and white thinking. And we were talking before we reported about the beauty of nuance and really being able to see all the shades of gray.
Christine Gutierrez:That's right.
Kate Northrup:So I I I love that invitation to just see, like, most people only know about recovery through AA, and I love that it was part of your journey, not the whole journey. That's right. There's so many different ways to go.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. As long as you are honoring what your spirit is telling you to look at. Uh-huh. You know, if your spirit is telling you to look at something, heed the warning Yeah.
Kate Northrup:In any area of our life. So you work at you know, I know with all sorts of people, but often they're really high functioning. Right? You wouldn't look at them and be like, wow. She really has a problem from the outside.
Kate Northrup:Yep. And so what are some of the signs that you know, because a woman who is listening to this show and probably coming into your spaces is probably not on a daily basis thinking to herself, I don't feel worthy. Like, that's probably not actually the language. What are some of the more sneaky ways that show up in high functioning or as our dear friend Terry Cole says, over functioning women that actually at the root are a lack of worth, but they might not know that. And maybe they've normalized and it's just like, well, no.
Kate Northrup:This is just how life is.
Christine Gutierrez:Absolutely. Yeah. In the book, I talk about certain masks that we put on, and I think that, you know, one of them is people pleasing. Right? Like, this mask of being a people pleaser and feeling like, you know, if I do more, then I'll be worthy.
Christine Gutierrez:If I say yes more, then I'll be worthy. Especially in as a mother, as we take on these roles where we are giving so much of ourselves and realizing, like, how is this actually serving me? Am I over giving at the cost of myself and my spirit? One of my favorite authors and one of my dear mentors, doctor Clarissa Pinkola Estes, I had the honor of studying with her in person.
Kate Northrup:Wow.
Christine Gutierrez:And, you know, we talk about there's this beautiful story in women who run with the wolves about this seal woman, and she has to return underneath the water to the underworld in order to get her pelt back. And her pelt represents her soul skin and it was taken from her. She was in this partnership for seven years and she must return to the underworld to go get her pelt back that was stolen so she can put back on her soul skin. And this is what we call soul theft and there are many moments in our life where we have soul theft where we will over give and it's like you're giving away pieces of your soul, your pelt is gone, or you are overworking, over functioning and not giving yourself permission to really feel your feelings, a piece of your soul leaves your body. Being the the kind of person that is only in the role of like this like virgin mother but not honoring your whore, you know, wild sexual primal self.
Christine Gutierrez:Another way where you are denying your worthiness, right, to be this com complete multidimensional woman. There's so many ways that we put on this mask whether it's people pleasing, over giving, know, playing this role of good girl. These are just some of the masks that we play but in all those ways when we put on masks we give up a piece of our soul self and you feel more brittle, you feel more dry, you feel less plump, you feel less alive, and you feel spiritually dead. And a lot of times women are not naming it as such because they're like, am working hard and I am doing this and I am such a great mom and I'm such a great and it's like, but are you alive?
Kate Northrup:Mhmm.
Christine Gutierrez:So aliveness to me is a good prompt. Oftentimes I will ask like how alive do you feel? You know, what are the masks and what are the roles that you're playing? And when those good girl qualities come up, when the overgiving, when the people pleaser comes up, how can we notice? Because those are the ways that it comes up more easily.
Christine Gutierrez:Maybe they're not, like, actively saying, I don't feel worthy. Right. But they don't feel worthy of the spaciousness to really not overgive and see how will I be met. Yeah. You know, and I felt that way so many times.
Christine Gutierrez:I I felt like this hyper independence where it was like, you know, I grew up in Bushwick, you know, kind of like, you know, a little bit like thug where it was like, I got this. I can do this by myself. I'm gonna rise. I'm gonna do this. And then you realize you're like, well, no.
Christine Gutierrez:I'm not self made. I need to be community made. No. I do need help. So a lot of times I see it more in those ways, this hyper strong woman Yes.
Christine Gutierrez:That has lost the ability to be nurtured.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. And what about the split? Because I know part of your story is, you know, you were getting a master's to be a therapist. You were, like, a really incredible student student, incredibly smart, sort of type a. And then also, there was this other part that which we all have
Christine Gutierrez:Mhmm.
Kate Northrup:At all times, but it was, like, kind of like this split. Do you see that I mean, how did that show up for yourself, and then how do you see that show up for women who are really good at looking like they have it together and really good at playing the game?
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. I mean, well, the split is so important. I think that as we mature and as we are stepping more into the mature feminine, we really wanna be the most authentically ourselves as we can be, and that takes a lot of being like a spiritual archaeologist and looking up like the bones of our past and really looking at what is me today in this season because who I was last month might be dead. Am I giving permission to die and be reborn? Right?
Christine Gutierrez:And so for me that looked like similarly what I shared earlier of having this double life where I was doing the masters and doing the thing and that I do believe is part of that spirit led life where you know your soul is like this is who you are meant to be, this is your worthy woman self. And then you have the shadow side that's like the wounded one, the one that's like am I deserving of those things? And that's choosing choices, thoughts, and behaviors that are more aligned to pain than to the higher self. Right? For me, that looked like many things drinking, acting out sexually, not loving myself, not choosing myself, codependency, and still simultaneously doing an amazing job in the world.
Christine Gutierrez:Because it wasn't like everything was a shit show. It was not. And that is the problem is that women get caught up on, well, things are not that bad. They're this is not that bad. What?
Christine Gutierrez:Like, I have a relationship. It's not that bad. And that line for me is like the killer. It's not that bad. I don't want to just have this not that bad.
Christine Gutierrez:I want incredible. I want radiant. I want solo line. I didn't go through so much shit in my life to live a mediocre life. I did not.
Christine Gutierrez:Right? Like, it's like if you've gone through shit in your life, you better work your buns off in order to be able to be like, you know what? Like, I deserve the best. Now if you have a split life, whether that means you are living you're you're working a nine to five and you know that you're meant to do some weird spiritual job. It doesn't have to just be you know maybe you're hiding behind a corporate job and you're not letting your like witchy weird side out, right?
Christine Gutierrez:Maybe you are you know tired of asking for less money and you want to own your worth and your wealth more. Whatever it is where you are playing small, that is an invitation for us to look at who do I really want to be and this is where that worthy woman self comes in or that worthy self where it's like how can I envision this part of me and what does she move like, what does she smell like, what does she act like, what is the swag that she carries, what is the values that she carries, how does she believe, what does she think, how does she move in the world, how does she respect herself and love herself, and what does she want? And then the biggest part of it is how do I walk? I I call it like walking. In Puerto Rico, we have a machete, but it can be a sword where you're like chopping through the shit and being like, is bullshit here?
Kate Northrup:Yeah. What are the fears?
Christine Gutierrez:What are the lies? What are the identities and the parts of me that no longer need to exist for this next version of me in this season to rise? Because if you do not let things die, you will stay stagnant. And the new life cannot be born with the old life still holding on, and that's what people try to do. They're like, no.
Christine Gutierrez:No. No. Let me go with my dead skin from the old life into the new life, please. You know? Yeah.
Christine Gutierrez:But you can't. You have to let it all go. And in that process,
Kate Northrup:there are times when we won't have it together. And you said something so profound in your book, and I'm not gonna quote it perfectly, but it was basically like society only celebrates us for thriving. Yep. I was like,
Christine Gutierrez:oh, man. Like, it
Kate Northrup:was so profound. Mhmm. You know? And so in and and so that can keep up the facade of like Absolutely. I'm gonna stay in the split because for a time when we are letting things die, shit falls apart.
Christine Gutierrez:That's right. And you
Kate Northrup:can't keep it all together. And like, then we're not actually fine.
Christine Gutierrez:Yep.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. For a while. Yeah. And it's hard to show up at like the preschool drop off or That's right. Not that you have to like lay out your baggage at preschool drop off, but I'm just saying.
Kate Northrup:Right? It's Joseph, wherever, at the potluck or the family dinner or your college, you know, reunion or graduation. Nope. I mean, maybe, but, like right? Yeah.
Kate Northrup:Like or reunion, whatever, like, all the places. Because to just say, like, things are actually really hard right now, you know, I was talking to a woman the other day who has a six week old and a, you know, toddler with an ear infection and and and her husband just had a surgery, and I just was so well having a brand new baby, having a toddler who was having a really hard time, and then having a husband who was really sick. And I was talking to this woman, and I was like, I am talking to me seven years ago. And she is rocking it, and I do not know her well enough to know what how she's actually doing. I was actually drowning, but I had no idea.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. We have that in common because we you didn't know fully, but a part of your body did. Yeah. The part of you that probably didn't fully accept it was the over functioning part. Totally.
Christine Gutierrez:The part that was like, you know what? This is just life. I have to just carry on. I have to be strong. I have to be superwoman because in some ways you had to.
Christine Gutierrez:Right? Like you had to for your child, right? And I similarly had a sick husband at the time who was unwell and postpartum and I know that pain, and I remember actually speaking to another one of our good friends Nisha and we talked about like giving yourself permission to ask for help, giving yourself permission to break down, and going back to what I said in the book about we live in a culture that celebrates only. Only thriving. Only thriving.
Christine Gutierrez:So what does it look like to thrive from a soul led way? So for me thriving is being in alignment with your soul. For me thriving is listening to your soul when it says let something die. When it says let yourself be in the breakdown. That is true thriving.
Christine Gutierrez:We've been lied to. Our society has lied to us, spiritual concepts have lied to us. You are not thriving when you are just listening to the celebration moments or when you're just that's not it. True thriving on a spiritual level is being in that threshold between the old life and the new life and letting it be, letting it break down, letting the old skins die, letting yourself be uncomfortable, letting it be messy. And what would happen, right, if you were given a medal?
Christine Gutierrez:Every single time that you were going through a threshold from the old life to the new life, we got like the angels came down from the heavens, they were like, congratulations, you figured it out. Here's a medal. You get a medal for being in the messy in between. We would feel proud. We would feel like holy shit, I'm doing this shit right.
Christine Gutierrez:But we've been taught that that's not doing things right as a good human. We are not doing things right, and so we put on the facade and we wear the old skin longer and you go to the preschool drop off and you pretend everything's okay and your husband's sick and you're holding it down and you're paying for bills and you're like, no, no, no, everything's fine, when you're literally dying. But if we live in a culture, which is what my goal is, with this book, with I Am Worthy, with all of the work that I do, is to say, how can I be more honest with that part of us? How can I say like actually you know what, I'm not okay, I'm in the messy in between, I'm letting things break down and I know that I need support so that my new life can be born? Yeah.
Christine Gutierrez:Then the worthy self can rise. We cannot be in our soul led place on a bed of lies, we just can't. So I think that it's a really big thing for us as women, especially for women that are used to holding it down so much and holding so much because women we hold so much, we hold so much. We need to let spirit hold us more. We need to let go and there's going be different seasons.
Christine Gutierrez:Some are going to be harder than others. Some are going to have messier in betweens. Some are going to have more blissful in betweens. Like I'm in a blissful in between, like I can feel that there's more honey in this season, but there's some where you just have the machete and the sword and there's just blood. Those are the ones that people are like damn I don't want to be here.
Kate Northrup:So something else came up. I just did a really big enrollment period, was to, you know, thousands and thousands of people that I'd never met before. And a theme came up, and I want to know what you think about it as, like, as a therapist, you know, with all the people that you work with. And that was, to some degree, on the one hand, our culture only celebrates thriving. However, many of us this is actually not my example.
Kate Northrup:This has not been true for me in my life. In my life, I've gotten love through achievement
Christine Gutierrez:Yes.
Kate Northrup:And thriving and having it together. Yes. So that's been my pattern that is sometimes toxic. I see for some folks, they actually have only received love and connection by always being on the struggle bus, And so their patterning is like, I'm always getting sick, I can never quite lift myself up, and because all my community connection, love, and tending patterning was around struggle, so I'm stuck there. What do you
Christine Gutierrez:think about that? So important. For me, I work predominantly with Latina women, women of color, but all women. And I've seen this pattern happen and what I often say is it's important to go to the depths and to the shadows but you don't want to live there. And what happens is when you overstay your place anywhere, it's bad.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. And so what happens is is that we are not in cyclical rhythm with life death life death rebirth patterns that we overstay in many places. So whether you overstay in the obsession with success or you overstay in the obsession with the wound work and the pattern. So this is very important is to notice where are you on this spectrum? Are you the kind of person that feels like you are only getting your worthiness through success or validation or are you the kind of person that's only getting it through pain?
Christine Gutierrez:You deserve pleasure, you deserve rest, we talk about this in this book too, you deserve rest, you deserve pleasure and a lot of times sometimes it's even easier especially for people like where I've grown up where or people that have gone through profound traumas which is very similar is to say Oh, let's keep going here. It's like life is meant to be fun. You're meant to have pleasure, you're meant to have fun, you're meant to laugh, you're meant to enjoy. What's the point of doing this work if you're just staying in the muck? So absolutely very important and noticing I call it like awakening that primal in you whether it's your wolf sense or whatever you want to call it, smelling in your life where have I overstayed?
Christine Gutierrez:Where have I overstayed? Have I been doing this work for too much in the shadows? Can I let myself have more fun? Can I let myself have more pleasure? Or if it's about earning more and believing that it's like, no, you get to have that experience too.
Christine Gutierrez:So I remind my clients often and I've seen this so much with my community of being like it's your time to thrive. This is not the way. There's not just one way. You don't have to just keep doing the hard work. You get to thrive.
Christine Gutierrez:And recently I had a conversation with one of my good friends about this point between the old life and the new life when you're walking toward this like highest version of your self worthy woman where it's like there's a new brand of fear which is like yes you get to have fear but it's the kind of fear that dances in more close union with pleasure. And so it's like yeah I'm scared but I've already gone through this initiation so many times before that I can dance with pleasure more. You don't have to grieve for as long. Sometimes you can go through changes and it can be easier. You get to make changes be easier.
Christine Gutierrez:So I think people are also obsessed with hardship in some ways, giving the invitation to people to not be obsessed with hardship. Like if you've gone through enough initiations in your life, use them girl, like that's the whole point. If you've walked through the valley of the shadow of death and you've risen with gems, use those gems as fuel so when you go through the next time of a challenging situation, you're like, oh this can be easy breezy because I got me, spirit got me, I'm okay. This is where I invite people to have the honey. So I mentioned that image of the machete or the sword and my perfect visual for how I work is like honey, like you get to have honey too and you get to move through these seasons with more grace and grit.
Christine Gutierrez:So absolutely to more pleasure.
Kate Northrup:It's so funny that you use the the word honey because I don't know if you have studied at all shamanic astrology, but in shamanic astrology because you are a Scorpio Yes. The Scorpio seeks the honey. Mhmm. Did you know, like, you know that framework? Yes.
Kate Northrup:So I just love that. I'm like, this is so spot on for you, so keep going
Christine Gutierrez:with this.
Kate Northrup:Yes. Okay. So you were raised Catholic.
Christine Gutierrez:Yes.
Kate Northrup:And I'm curious if you can talk about any connection you see between religious programming around suffering and our feeling that we are not worthy of pleasure.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah, the removal of pleasure and the obsession with sin has really done a number on us and it has made us really talk about black and white, right? You're either the version of the whore. I have vivid memories of just this deep process of thought that my family carried as like you know these Puerto Rican Catholic people of oh this is you are bad. If you do this and you're actually chokers and all these kinds of things where like you know this is you're a slut or you're a good girl. And in the Bible you have this obsession with renouncing the body, renouncing pleasure and pain and suffering and suffering is the way to enlightenment.
Christine Gutierrez:I also study Tantra surprise surprise Scorpio, right? And there is a pleasure as a pathway to enlightenment too. There are many different paths to awakening. So with religion we are dealing with a lot of deep, deep programming that is taking us away from the body and especially as women like we need to be connected to the love of our body, we need to be connected to that the goddess lives within our body, that we deserve to have pleasure. But if we're told that we're bad for that we will take that theme out of religion and put it everywhere so I will suffer more.
Christine Gutierrez:If I stay and suffer more in this marriage then I'm good. I will receive God that way. I will be worthy then. If I suffer in my job and not ask for more money then I'm a good girl. I've sacrificed for my sins.
Christine Gutierrez:And we need to rewrite that to being like how can I be in devotion to my soul? And I'm all about bringing us back into the body. For me one of the deepest ways that I've remembered my worthiness has been the reintegration of the feminine back into the religion or spirituality right because I love spirituality, I loved all the ways of connecting with God but I knew that there was the feminine that was missing. And this is a very wounded version of the masculine in our Catholicism. It's the wounded masculine that is speaking and we've removed so many texts that would have provided us with peace like the Gospel of Mary and so many different types of spiritually relevant, real research texts that remind women that there is no sin.
Christine Gutierrez:You know in the Gospel of Mary it literally says there is no sin. There's no sin. What would happen if little girls read that? But they were scared and so they tried to control. And so I think that a lot of this is undoing the brainwashing, I call it like undoing the lies of unworthiness and that comes from our deep programming and religion is one of the deepest ways that we program.
Christine Gutierrez:So asking ourselves these questions, what were the beliefs that I was raised with? How did that impact me? How did that impact my belief, my worthiness in my body to receive pleasure? How does this impact my belief of my deservingness to have to suffer more in order to have something? Is there another way?
Christine Gutierrez:My invitation is to invite you to say yes there is another way, there has to be another way, a much more healthier way, much more grounded way, and an integrated version of the feminine and the masculine together.
Kate Northrup:I'm so curious, what do people come after you for the most? Like what do you do or say that people take issue with? I don't know why that question occurred
Christine Gutierrez:to me, but I'm Just in general, I'm so curious. I think that
Kate Northrup:And it may be that you don't actually attract much of that. Like, don't get a lot of
Christine Gutierrez:I don't. I will say. I don't
Kate Northrup:Quote unquote haters or people taking issues. It's just not like part of my experience.
Christine Gutierrez:But They don't really
Kate Northrup:I know totally. They're like, I'm gonna fuck with her. Yeah. I'm not
Christine Gutierrez:gonna the Bushwick, they're like, this bitch doesn't seem like someone to say something much to.
Kate Northrup:I'm not gonna get up in her DMs.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. So But I'm curious. Honestly, genuinely, I'm gonna say in the fifteen years
Kate Northrup:Yeah.
Christine Gutierrez:Probably, like, three comments on a post. Like literally. Like none. Like very low. And the the thing that would happen would be not talking about issues enough, you know, in the world.
Kate Northrup:Yes. I'm familiar with that one.
Christine Gutierrez:And that is People
Kate Northrup:something love to tell us what to do I with our
Christine Gutierrez:do talk about issues.
Kate Northrup:What you do? I My god, if you've read your books, like Yeah. I Hello.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. I'm like, hello. Welcome to my life. And I live it. But the thing is is that I'm very big on living it and I am the kind of person that I am a little bit more private about donations and about things that I do in the world and there are moments and there are moments and what I also have realized is that and this has grounded me a lot, I have a family.
Christine Gutierrez:You know, when my daughter's father got sick and when I was breastfeeding, I breastfed till three and a half years old, so I was that mom. You know? Breastfeeding, writing
Kate Northrup:a So many calories.
Christine Gutierrez:You know what mean? Like, all the things. Right? And I was like, you can't tell me shit.
Kate Northrup:Totally.
Christine Gutierrez:Like, literally, like, I was just like, I am overcapacity. You don't get to tell me shit because you don't know how hard my life is right now, and everyone has a hard life in their own way, and we must have deep compassion for people. We are not equipped, literally energetically equipped. Like imagine someone, like not in my case, but imagine someone that is being pressured and like you're telling someone to do something and they're struggling with mental health illness at home, To do that to someone is so cruel And so my view on it is that I do believe we have a responsibility to be the voice of the mother as I call it la madre, right? I am a mother for all children.
Christine Gutierrez:I believe in equality for all people. I want peace on earth. I am that person. That is why I do this work. I want peace on earth.
Christine Gutierrez:I want love. I want compassion. I believe that doing this work can save the planet. I am that person. That is not something I can take away.
Christine Gutierrez:That idealistic part of me whether it happens now or twenty years from now, that is the goal of why I do what I do. I want more love and I want more peace period. And that means that you have to speak up for things. Also I deeply believe that everyone has a unique song to sing in the world and everyone has a unique medicine to give. If I stay focused on my dharma and my purpose I'm bringing the light to the world that God would have me bring to the world.
Christine Gutierrez:I'm being used as a vessel. I believe that the people that are fighting the good fight and fighting in a way that's more aggressive, they are doing the good work. And I've been that person too, but there are seasons and there are seasons. So that would be the only moment, and I always usually respond, but if they're disrespectful, I block. I'm like, it's my page, my house.
Christine Gutierrez:Joe Manduaki. I tell you who's in charge here.
Kate Northrup:So
Christine Gutierrez:that's about it, and try to lead with love, and I try to remind people like, hey listen, I do. You don't know what I do behind closed doors. Thank you.
Kate Northrup:Thank you.
Christine Gutierrez:I appreciate you. I deeply care about all issues, and I care about all people's perspectives, and I try my best to be rooted in the heart in what I do. And I've had moments where I've messed up, and I've had moments where I've lived into the hype of separation culture, and I've had moments where you know and I speak on big things, you know that I speak I on things all the talk about like I'm like oh my god this white spiritual culture we need more diversity. But I'm nuanced, I love my girls as long as you all people if you're respectful to me I like you. And so I think it's hard for people to hold the nuance that I carry because they're like oh but you're saying like you need more diversity, how can you be cool with these white girls in spirituality?
Christine Gutierrez:I'm like because they're people and they're nice to me. It's not or, it's and. Inviting in deeper conversation and and. So this has been my area and I love to remind people to listen to their spirit. The person that's in charge of them is God, ain't nobody else can tell me what to do.
Kate Northrup:It's so true.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. And I live to learn, so I like to learn and do things and always grow, but not from a place of pressure, from a place of true sovereignty or my own spirit of what is right and wrong. And it's worked out. People get it. If you're listening to this podcast, you know.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Like, that's a pretty pretty powerful protective force field. Yeah. And because it it is an energy that emanates and would would not make you a match for a lot of bullshit.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. And I'm I'm a I'm a true mama bear. Yeah. I am. And I love to protect people in my spaces, and so I'm very protective of the energy that I bring into my space, especially because I do such deep trauma work and holding people with deep histories.
Christine Gutierrez:Really like to keep the energy clean.
Kate Northrup:A 100%. Yeah. A 100%. I'm super curious, and feel free, we can edit this out. But what was going on with your husband?
Christine Gutierrez:He had a weird neurological response to I'm
Kate Northrup:so sorry,
Christine Gutierrez:that's really Stop walking, stop talking, breastfeeding, hospitals. And he still gets waves of weird whatever. And that was actually a moment that I realized, like, don't talk shit because you don't know nothing. You don't know nothing. Vaccines and no vaccine.
Christine Gutierrez:Don't talk shit about nothing.
Kate Northrup:A 100%.
Christine Gutierrez:Know nothing about nothing. No. Blacks and mad nothing. Literally, don't know anything about anything because the world is so much more cruel than you think. And I think it invited in because I am grounded.
Christine Gutierrez:I'm like spiritual, but I'm very grounded. I was like, oh my god. You don't know anything. People are so manipulative and cruel that you just don't know. So that's what happened to him.
Christine Gutierrez:He's still yeah. And he's much better now. He can walk and talk.
Kate Northrup:So glad to hear that.
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. We'll cut that out. We'll cut it out.
Kate Northrup:But yeah. I just was curious. Yeah. Because we walked through a I really hard know,
Christine Gutierrez:and the health thing is like I'm glad we mentioned that here We'll bend over there because it'll bring you to your knees.
Kate Northrup:I'd love to hear a little bit more about your relationship with money and the ways in which if you had any particular moments where you came up against that edge of expansion financially for yourself and how your own work with your worthiness helped you and in what ways.
Christine Gutierrez:This is such a big part of my work too because in addition to the deep like spiritual healing and trauma work and rites of passage work that I do, a lot of it is also Latina spiritual women, women of color that are therapists, nurses, or people that are wanting to start their businesses. And for me, I do hold the code of this like I am a Latina that believes that my good work is deserving of being compensated. And that was really hard to carry at first because I felt guilty. I was like you know I'm a sellout or like you know I can't be this girl from Bushwick. This identity had me trapped and I had to do a lot of work, a lot of tapping, a lot of somatic movement, a lot of affirmation work to really be like if my work is doing good in the world I deserve to be nourished.
Christine Gutierrez:I cannot be nourished in the world that we work in and not be paid. I need to be highly paid for the good work that I do in the world. And so there were many times I remember when I was first starting out and I was like, my god, I'm going to charge for this. And meanwhile, I had my masters and I also on a very practical level had a lot of training. I wasn't just doing this spiritual work out of nowhere.
Kate Northrup:Had a
Christine Gutierrez:lot of years of training and education in this, and I was still scared. And I was still scared to be like, oh my god, I'm going to charge. I'm going to charge. And I remember when I first started charging, was like, my god, this feels good. It feels like an equal exchange.
Christine Gutierrez:I like getting paid. I was like, oh, I like getting paid. And even saying that was very taboo. I like money. I like being paid.
Christine Gutierrez:And especially with my family that they were like, oh, these are quieter things. Don't talk about this out loud. And I love taboo. Sex and money, give it to me all. Scorpio.
Christine Gutierrez:Scorpio underworld, give it to me baby. And I'm like I can't not talk about it. I'm like God is making me. I need to talk about this. If you are in a toxic abusive relationship, what's going to get you out is going to be therapy and you're going to need supportive resources to get you out.
Christine Gutierrez:If you are sick, talking about when we were talking about the situation with my daughter's father, money. All of these resources really ground you into realizing money helps you. It can give so much freedom. And my belief, more importantly that I was worthy of it, I wanted that for my lineage. I wanted that for me.
Christine Gutierrez:And so I started playing with that concept. I started doing all the hippie things, lighting candles, doing ceremony, imagining the people walking. I could feel her. Knew her name. I knew what she did for work, and I was just connecting to my soul mate clients and I was like, they love paying me.
Christine Gutierrez:They're obsessed with paying me. They feel so much joy in it. And my clients now they'll be like, Girl, I'm on a forever payment plan for you. Anything you want, I'm signed up for. And it was that mental spiritual work.
Christine Gutierrez:And a lot of times people think like, Oh, this is like so out there. And it's like, Actually that is the work that helped me make money. It was all the spiritual energetic work. It was not the practical for me. The practical is now helping to support this next phase for me, that's where I'm at now, but a lot of it was I'm deserving of getting paid.
Christine Gutierrez:I like money.
Kate Northrup:And to feel that. Feel it Not just to say it.
Christine Gutierrez:To feel it matter to tap on it, to welcome it in and being able to constantly increase it. And then when the numbers started getting bigger and bigger and bigger I was like oh I felt a hitting. I was like oh no wait, woah that's too much and especially my identity as a Latina woman I was like oh no that's too much and like who am I to? And then I had to be like who are you not to? And also what can you do in your nervous system to help you feel that you have so much good work to do, you're helping other women, especially women of color, Latino women that are like if she could do it, I can do it.
Christine Gutierrez:If she can write a book, I can write a book. And that gave me a lot of inspiration to be like I get to be a template in ways and share those codes with people to be like you can do it, and I've seen it. And I've seen it even in Puerto Rico where I've helped women that were doulas that were making $2,000 a month to going to making $10,000 a month. And just seeing the power of the empowerment of that reminded me that like, oh, this is important and everyone's number is going to look different. More and more and more is not better but it's like what is your true version of what helps you be nourished because the world is expensive and if you are doing retreats at the level that I do retreats those venues cost a lot of money.
Christine Gutierrez:Seriously.
Kate Northrup:So That's a tricky business model, my Yeah.
Christine Gutierrez:Who Doing knows to retreats, doing books, doing online courses, like the online courses are the bread and butter, right, because you don't have the overhead.
Kate Northrup:The margins are great. Amazing. But events?
Christine Gutierrez:Events are much trickier.
Kate Northrup:I know, and but they really move the needle
Christine Gutierrez:for They move the needle for people, and so you keep both because of that and because I love it. Love Of course. Yeah. And so you have to be practical, and that was another thing I reminded myself of. If you are making more, you will be investing more.
Christine Gutierrez:Be rooted in that. Be knowing of that. And so that means you need more. And my dharma is to have that, right? So not everyone's code want that abundance.
Christine Gutierrez:For me, I knew that it was an important part of my worthiness. And so me playing with my worthiness wounds and converting them to worthy affirmations and really working with them allowed me to tap into that and getting the big book deals and doing all those things. And it's a gift. It's so fun. It's a game now.
Christine Gutierrez:Like, I get play this game. Get to play this game, and I get to keep working on my worthiness. And every time you work on your worthiness in every area, everything gets better.
Kate Northrup:I know. It's amazing. And I love how tapped in you were as a little girl to, like, money is pretend, this is make believe. With a
Christine Gutierrez:loose stitch.
Kate Northrup:And that now, you know, and that it's it's a game because it is. It's game. And I say these things all the time, but I really love having guests on who say them also unprompted because I'm like, that means it's true. Yeah. You and I come from really different backgrounds with really different educational histories, like we've had really different experiences, and if we have both come to the same conclusion, it is true.
Christine Gutierrez:It is.
Kate Northrup:Yeah.
Christine Gutierrez:And you know what, like I'm not saying that it's not harder, and I talk about that in the book for some people to achieve and have, but I don't think that that means that you can't have different access points of worthiness. Like maybe that means that it won't look a certain way, but does not no one can take away your inherent worth. And so it will look very different if you are in a war torn country, if you are living it with an abusive partner it's going look different. But ultimately what I know to be certain for sure is the moment you work on your worthiness period there is a sense of peace and a sense of calm that you can have in the storm. And that to me is the most important.
Christine Gutierrez:The outside things are the bonus but the inside feeling of that connection is going to save your life.
Kate Northrup:It's everything. Yeah. It is absolutely everything. Thank you so much for being here today. This was such a good conversation.
Kate Northrup:Everybody listening, get yourself a copy of I Am Worthy. Is there a special place you want them to go to get the book?
Christine Gutierrez:Yeah. But I don't know that
Kate Northrup:We don't know it today, and so we'll add that in the show notes later. Perfect. Yes. That's fine. Called I am worthy, break the spell of unworthiness, reclaim your divinity, and unearth your true power by Christine Gutierrez.
Kate Northrup:Her other book is I am Diosa. Yes. And where should people come find you to connect and learn more?
Christine Gutierrez:You can connect with me on Instagram at Cosmic Christine and my website, christineg.tv. Amazing. Thanks for coming. So happy to be here.
Kate Northrup:Thanks for listening to this episode of Plenty. If you enjoyed it, make sure you subscribe, leave a rating, leave a review. That's one of the best ways that you can ensure to spread the abundance of Plenty with others. You can even text it to a friend and tell them to listen in. And if you want even more support to expand your abundance, head over to katenorthrup.com/breakthroughs where you can grab my free money breakthrough guide that details the biggest money breakthroughs from some of the top earning women I know, plus a mini lesson accompanying it with my own biggest money breakthroughs and a nervous system healing tool for you to expand your abundance.
Kate Northrup:Again, that's over at katenorthward.com/breakthroughs. See you next time.