A Solo Mom's Journey Through Struggle and Self-Transformation w/ Ulrika Karlsson

J. Rosemarie Host 00:00 Tired, weary, frustrated. What would you be doing if you weren't raising children alone? What's stopping you from living your best life? Now, on Solar Mom's Talk, I discuss with Solar Mothers the challenges you face raising children alone. So if you're a working Solar Mom dealing with independent children, insensitive bosses, weight and health issues or even debt collectors, join us as we discover your path to get and stay healthy, increase your income and live with joy and purpose. J. Rosemarie Host

01:00 My guest today is Ulrika Karlsson. Thanks for coming and talking to us today, Ulrika. Nice to have you. Ulrika Karlsson Guest 01:06 Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this talk and for being here with you. J. Rosemarie Host 01:12 Yes, for sure? So, before we get into what you do, could you tell us who Ulrika? Ulrika Karlsson Guest 01:19 is. I think that's a good question because for me that's like the whole existential question who am I? It's like the quest of life and hopefully always improving to becoming the better version of myself every day. But I'm a single mom, I'm an international author, I am a yogi, I'm an intuitive empath, I am like a spiritual healer, spiritual teacher, and I know that I'm here in this ascension process to aid the individual and collective ascension. J. Rosemarie Host 01:58 Okay, all right, cool, there's a lot there and that we can talk about, so that's good. But first, before we talk about your career and what you do to help others, could you tell us how you became a single mom? Ulrika Karlsson Guest 02:15

Yes for sure. So it was the year 2008 and I was in deep, deep depression. I was being suicidal and I was really really out of shape. And one day my husband at the time he just comes home and, you know, sort of out of the blue, just tells me that I don't want to be married to you anymore. I just, he was so tired, he was like he felt he was a codependent to my situation, where I was and everything was consuming me and us, and he didn't see me for the person I was. He only saw my symptoms, my disease at the time. So I was a mom of two beautiful kids the youngest were only three years when we separated and I was in the midst of this, sick, with leave as, being depressed, and I couldn't work. So there I am, single, without any money, without any job, and, you know, having to support my kids basically, and just these ordinary tasks were really really, you know, like challenges to me because I was so drained of energy. So that's how I become a single mom.

J. Rosemarie Host 03:46 Yes, thank you. Thank you for sharing. I like to ask that question, especially to individuals who appear successful. You know, when you say you are a single mom or you were a single mom. We want to know, I want to know what the journey is, so someone who is where you started can realize that they're not alone and there's life at the end of the tunnel, right. Ulrika Karlsson Guest 04:12 Exactly and it, just as I said, also came out of the blue because, just like two days prior to he told me that he wanted to not live with me anymore. We were looking at houses so it was really like a lightning to me and I was so horrified of not, because here in Sweden it's very common that the children live like one week with the mother and then one week with the father, if there's not some kind of abuse or, you know, restrictions of any kind. So, and I remember when I separated my little girl she was only three at the time and she had a high fever and a bad cold and then she was to stay with her dad for one week and I was like I was just lying up, curled up in fetus position, my floor here who had home just crying and missing my babies, and I wanted to go there and I just couldn't. So it was like it was like a big, it sensed, it felt like a big loss and like a big heart for me. J. Rosemarie Host 05:22 Right. So one last question, because I remember going through a similar situation how? What was your biggest challenge? Because you were, you weren't your best self at the time and you had to nurture two children who were grieving, most likely for their dad and maybe grieving for you too, because you were, you were, so you know you had, you were going through some stuff that didn't allow you to be a mother full time, like fully how you'd like to. So what was your biggest challenge in all of that?

Ulrika Karlsson Guest 06:08 Actually, you know, I tried my of course we all do. We try our best with what we have at the time, what we've got. So I put so much love and effort into my children and I took even less care of myself and in this depleted fate where I was and being depressed and also suicidal, so it was like a bad sort of downward going spiral. So the biggest challenge for me was actually my own recovery and coming back to health and vitality and coming back to life, who I'm, who I'm, you know, supposed to be. 06:50

So that journey was really like tiresome and with a lot of challenges and bumps in the road and also very expensive and, as I just told you, like I was. I was there with two kids and I I was so depressed and being suicidal so I couldn't even work. And then, from this space, I had to, you know, pay the rents and have a food on the table, and I had some savings so I managed with that. But then the journey back home to myself. That was the most challenging one and yeah, okay, all right. J. Rosemarie Host 07:26 Yeah, I understand, I do. Okay. So what led you to do what you're doing now? I'm assuming it had something to do with your own experience, but tell us how that transition took place. How did you get to where you are today? Ulrika Karlsson Guest 07:46 So, as I've already mentioned, I was being suicidal and I came to the point. I was in such bad shape, I was like a junkie, you know. My cognitive abilities were gone. I was so sensitive of lights and sounds. So when my kids who were three and five at the time, when they wanted my attention and when they were arguing, it was, like you know, I was sort of exploding and I lost control, you know, over myself which is not something that I'm proud of a さ다 and a sense of myself was thought of For me.

08:21 I came to a realization that either, you know, I'm gonna keep on doing what I'm doing and then I will be dead, then I will be dead, and if I'm dead, then I'm of no use to my children, right, then they will have no mom. So I realized you know this old cliche to use the oxygen mask on myself first, before I could help or aid anybody else. So I came to a big like insight when I was walking in a forest one late afternoon or one day that I fell into the ground and I felt like I was having a heart attack, like a dagger, a knife straight into my heart, and I thought I was gonna die there in the snow. And then I came to the realization that I have the choice either to continue to live like this and then for sure I will die out of stress and, you know, being depressed and also suicidal I will just end it or I will have to do things differently. So I started to sort of faced all my inner fears, my unresolved traumas, unsuppressed emotions, everything that has been stuck layer and layer and layer, which we have here in the Western society, because most of us, we are not used to show too much emotions or we are, you know, taught to suppress ourselves and strong or intense emotions. 10:01 And I, as an intuitive empath, I had always been very, very sensitive and suppressed how I felt, not to scare anybody off or not to be too much, or to be judged or not to be included. So here in Sweden we have this like it is like in our DNA. It's called Jantelagen and it's basically who do you think you are? You're nothing special. You're not supposed to have strong emotions about anything. You're not supposed to be too joyful, too happy, too horny, too sad or whatever.

10:38 So all these emotions that I have suppressed for decades and as a yogi, I'm a yogi. We also believe that you know we have been reincarnated, so we also not only have the stressful choices and negative choices we have done in this life, then we also have the karma, and on top of that we also have our ancestral lineages, with unresolved traumas and unexpressed emotions. So I actually had to. Just sort of all my energy was always directed into the outer realms, out here, looking for approval, looking for love, for acknowledgments, looking to be included. So I used that energy and turned it inwards, where I faced all these things that I just described like many traumas, unresolved emotions, and so I faced them, I felt them, embraced them and, from this space, also transformed them, so you can transform your inner darkness, your inner wounds and traumas to more access of light and consciousness. And that's what I did. J. Rosemarie Host 11:51 Okay, great, and this leads me to the next question. So tell us what you do and how you help others. Ulrika Karlsson Guest 12:00 I help others to do the journey from their headspace and coming back into the heart space, because the heart is the center in our chakra system. That's where we have the love, the unconditional love that most of us have never received from our parents, because we are all having fucked up unconscious programs stored in our bodies. So I help people I help mostly women to come back into their bodies, into their hearts, and to increase their consciousness. J. Rosemarie Host 12:34 Okay, all right, and okay so, and how can we get in touch with you, like where are you? Ulrika Karlsson Guest 12:43 So I work through the screen globally. I have women from all ages, of all different kind of fields throughout the world and I'm working through the screen and my website is up there and running. It's not updated, though, but it's there. It's called Ulliskalssoncom, so it's U-W-L-L-I-S-K-A-R-L-S-O-Mcom. J. Rosemarie Host

13:09 Okay, okay, we'll put that in the show notes, and are you on Instagram?

Ulrika Karlsson Guest 13:15 I'm on Instagram as Ulrike Ulliskalsson. It's U-L-R-I-K-A-U-W-L-I-S-K-A-R-L-S-O-M. Okay, and so I also came to the conclusion in my own journey that I had so much karma. Do you know what karma is? Yeah, I had so much karma from this lifetime and past lifetimes, so I need to clear my karma. So this is also what I did for myself and also what I'm guiding others to do, like to do karma hearings in the Akashic record. So basically, my perception is that you can become aligned and balanced from many ways, but the two ways that I use that either you align yourself with who you are on the soul level, through the soul, through reading for your soul in the Akashic record, or you also work with the body, because the soul we know that we are souls having human experience the soul lives within the body. So the soul knows all of these things stored deep within the memory of yourself. 14:28 I'm actually writing books about it. Also, I'm just going to show you, like holy fucking sacred water, the sacred connections to everything, how polluted we are in our inner waters, where we are storing all these stress and unresolved emotions. So we need to clear out the inner polluted water for us to be in flow and, where we also can, from this space to changes outwardly, because I cannot change things and circumstances out there if I don't change myself. It all starts within. 15:05 And then also in my latest book, the Sacred Soul, divine Evolution Through Time and Space is also how many of us are so disconnected from our souls, from spirit, so we don't even know who we are. We are running around in the hamster wheel, being busy doing all this work and being in the matrix, but most of us are always looking for something else or having this deep inner longing or desire of something else. There surely must be something else in life. So many of us are spiritually disconnected. And once you plug in into your spirit and coming back into alignment with who you are on your own level, that takes you up to a high set of consciousness. It opens your heart so you can live a more heart-centered life, and it just makes life better on so many levels. 16:04 Yeah, like your house, your, your, you know everyday life, your relationships with your kids. Because how can I have a good relationship with my kids if I don't have a good relationships with myself, right, Mm? Hmm? J. Rosemarie Host 16:20

So it all starts with me. Right, it's self awareness, do you think? Do you think that that work in its completeness not everything that we could be completing the work we have on ourselves? Do you think it? It breeds selfishness, like? Does it breed self absorption, like? You know? Ulrika Karlsson

Guest 16:48 I don't know if you understand my question. Yeah, I totally understand. No one with a very low consciousness could consider it to be egoistic. But it again, if I'm dead, if I am dysfunctional, if I am not, you know, in flow, if I don't have the ability to earn money to provide for my kids, if I, if my health is bad if I make bad choices if I'm in bad relationships, it will have ripple effects on my kids, right, mm? Hmm? J. Rosemarie Host 17:18 Yes.

Ulrika Karlsson Guest 17:19 So I do. Everything that I do as a mom will have ripple effects on my kids. So not taking care of myself is selfish, not taking care of myself is egoistic, because that's only an illusion. 17:35 A program on how we also think that we are here in matrix that I should just give and give and give. But if the metaphor is that we are all individual, like bank accounts, and if I'm just doing withdrawal of energy, I'm just taking out money, I'm just taking out money, what will happen? I will be in bankrupt. Bankruptcy, right. So energy flows, that we are both receivers and givers, and I cannot give anything to anybody if I don't give it to myself first. I cannot receive anything from anybody. I cannot receive love from anybody out there my kids, a new lover, friends, colleagues. I cannot receive love if I don't give it to myself first.

18:19

But here we are in Western societies, looking for the wrong things in the wrong places in the audience, like I want you to save me, I want you, I need your money, etc. Etc. But the time is here for us to increase our consciousness and to become aware of that. We, each and one of us we have the powers within. We have the powers both to be exceptional, good mothers and also to be business women or whatever we want to do. But I cannot do it if my energy is just flowing out to others all the time and nothing is coming in. So energy is always. Because I'm an energy worker, energy is always moving both ways. It's like we have to give ourselves the childhood we never had, right. I can never retrieve it from my parents, I can never retrieve it from a lover, but I have to give it to myself first. And from this empowered state, from this state where I'm open in my heart and my mind, then I can give even more love to my beloved ones. J. Rosemarie Host 19:24

Yes, yes, yeah, you can't give what you don't have. Ulrika Karlsson Guest 19:29 Exactly. J. Rosemarie Host 19:31 Yeah, okay. So what is Ulrika grateful for today? Ulrika Karlsson Guest 19:42 Today. I'm grateful that I'm here with you. Thank you. J. Rosemarie Host 19:46 Because, when. Ulrika Karlsson Guest

19:47 I was depressed and suicidal. One day I was looking at Opera Winfrey show and at the time there was somebody there that said one sentence that resonated so much with me so I didn't commit suicide. So perhaps I'm here now talking with you and somebody out there is listening who needs to hear this now, and if there's only like one sentence or one word that I'm saying, then I've paid back my karma and it's like just the circle is closed. So I'm grateful for being here with you, I'm grateful for you who's tuning in to listen to this live or replay? And I'm grateful for all the work, the inner work, that I've done with myself so I could be here and be telling you this and sharing vulnerable stories from an empowered state. J. Rosemarie Host

20:37 Thank you for sharing that and I am grateful for having you here to have you share your story with other women so they could hear it. Thank you, sure, all right. So do you have any offers? Anything that you're giving away? I see on your website that you have retreats. Do you have any upcoming that you could tell us about? Ulrika Karlsson Guest 21:00

I don't have any upcoming retreats at the moment, since what's been going on for the last couple of years, but I'm open for suggestions and I do retreats over the screen also, so if there's anybody who wants to do a retreat with me, I would be happy to. But what I do have now are my karma clearings that, like one individual at the time, we can increase consciousness and also transmit this new high state of consciousness with an open heart into the collective consciousness. And I really, really, really, as a yogi, believe that this is so much needed in the world today with everything that is going on, and that we are all contributing to this energy by all these unresolved shits in our karma, because we only have access to 5% of consciousness and from these 5%, of consciousness. 21:53 we think we are in the illusion that we are making conscious choices, so the more I increase my consciousness, the more I also transmit a higher state of consciousness into the collective, and so this is how we make the world a more beautiful and better place for everybody. J. Rosemarie Host 22:10 But it starts with yes, yes, yes, for sure. Alright, so give me one piece of advice for a solo mom, or two. Ulrika Karlsson Guest 22:22 Yes, thank you. So it all starts basically with the breath. The word breath in Swedish literally means undertake, which means to connect with the spirits, and most of us single moms, when we are stressed, we don't have money, we don't have the love in our life that we are looking for, we might always have bad conscious about our kids, that we never have time enough with them. So this means that it restricts, it limits your breathing, and a limited or restricted breathing always restricts and limits your life, and I'm also doing a lot of breath work and within the yogic practices that I offer. So it starts with the breath. Take a good look at how you're breathing and how. Because the breath, literally, we are born into this life with a breath. Right on the time when we are dying, we are doing it with a breath. So the breath involves everything in life the conscious, the subconscious, the consciousness, and the less I'm breathing, the less conscious I am. So to be aware of your breath and the importance of your breath, because if you are not breathing, then you're dead, right. J. Rosemarie Host 23:44 Alright, alright, alright. Thank you very much, elrika Carlson, for coming and talking to us today on Salaamam's talk. Any final thoughts? Ulrika Karlsson Guest 23:54 Yes, if you find yourself also in a dark space or if you are depressed. One could also think of the word depressed as a deep rest, a deep rest for body, mind and soul. That means that from chaos comes divine order. So if you find yourself in a dark space, maybe you are a seed that are about to thrive and blossom as a total new, more conscious being that you have been there for a reason and the results have taken you into a depleted state, but you can still thrive if you are willing to choose and to do things that is more aligned with who you are on a soul level. So that was my second, my second tape. J. Rosemarie Host 24:46

That's a big one, thank you, I appreciate you. Thank you. Ulrika Karlsson

Guest 24:50 Thank you so much for having me.