Sense of Soul - Turkey and Syria Earthquake Devastation

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Today on Sense of Soul, we have on once again Kat Kim. Kat is an Executive Leadership Coach, Motivational Speaker, and Spiritual Mentor to high-performing executives, celebrities, and leaders around the world. She helps develop her clients spiritual skills they need to create a new life...and new world. Kat is an amazing speaker with a power and passionate voice.  In 2021 Kat’s journey lead her to travel overseas and to her surprise she landed in Istanbul, Turkey. Kat’s joining us today to share her experience of living there. She shares what life looked like in Turkey prior the recent catastrophic and devastating earthquakes, that have killed thousands and thousands of people in Turkey as well as in Syria. The earthquakes have flattened their cities, and they are in desperate need of aid. Please consider donating to https://ahbap.org/disasters-turkey, a reputable suggestion from Kat.  You can also visit Kat’s website to learn more about her and follow her on IG. https://katkim.com  @katkimofficial Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon, our community of seekers and lightworkers. Also recieve 50% off of Shanna’s Soul Immersion experience as a Patreon member, monthly Sacred circles, Shanna mini series, Sense of Soul merch and more. https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Thank you to our Sponsor KACHAVA, Use this link for 10% off! www.kachava.com/senseofsoul

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thanks so much for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. Did you know that as a member of Sense of Soul Patreon, you get ad-free episodes? You will also be able to join me in our monthly live circles, listen to my mini-series, and much more. And you will also be helping support this podcast so that I can continue to bring you inspiring episodes twice a week with amazing guests from around the world. You can also show me some love and rate, review, and subscribe from wherever you're listening. Now go grab your coffee. Open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken.

Today on Sense of Soul, joining me again, I have Kat Kim. Kat has been on Sense of Soul podcasts before. She's a transformational executive coach with a fierce and powerful and passionate voice. Kat is beautiful from the inside out, and I highly recommend you going back and listening to her past episode. Recently on Instagram, I saw that Kat had posted asking for any help for those who were affected by the earthquakes in Turkey. I contacted Kat and asked her to come on Sense of Soul Podcast to help support her call for action to help those in need. Since we've had Kat on our podcast, her journey has led her across the world

where she has a front seat to the devastation from the catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey. And today Kat's joining us to share with us her experience of how this has affected her and those in Turkey, the aftermath of the catastrophic, deadly disaster and sharing with us how it is that we can help. From Istanbul, Turkey, please welcome Kat Kim. Oh my gosh, you look beautiful. Oh my gosh, stop. Hello, how are you? I'm good. How's it going? Yeah, it's a shit show. It's a shit show. It's a shit show it's a shit show it's a show everywhere right now yeah it is great to see you oh my gosh yes yes it's so good to see you you know what you have to tell me because last time I talked to you you were not in Turkey I mean yeah how did you end up there um so i geez the last time we talked was what 2018 i don't even

remember um yeah it was a few years ago i had purchased a one-way ticket to go to seoul korea i was leaving america i i had ambitions to take my work global i wanted to also get away from all the madness in america um and take my work and take it to different countries, different cultures. My father passed away eight days before my departure. It stopped my trip. I had to stay back, but I gave myself one year to kind of clean all this up. And then I was going to go to Korea, but then the pandemic hit. The pandemic hit and nobody could go anywhere. We were all stuck basically for like two or three years, right? And this is going to segue into why I'm in Turkey.

I had my bags packed in 2018, ready to go to Korea. But my father passed away eight days before my departure. So my mind, my soul was already ready. Like it had already left America. It was just my body was still there. And because of the pandemic, I couldn't go anywhere. But by the time 2021 rolled around, I was just anxious, just like everyone else, just like everyone else.

We were all anxious to get out, but I literally had my bags packed already. Like I had moved my mind. And interestingly, at that time, there was one country that was accepting American tourists at that time with very minimal travel restrictions. There were still travel restrictions all over the world. Definitely Korea had been shut off even for a long time. So I couldn't go there. But Turkey, Turkey was accepting American tourists, but not even European tourists, they had to go through more loopholes, more hoops, because COVID had hit really bad in Italy, and all these different countries in Europe. But for America,

for some reason, it was easy for us to go there. And even though Turkey was on lockdown, like at 7pm, they locked down on weekends they locked down as a tourist as an American I could roam around freely that's so odd it's so odd but I went there for I just went there to get some air to move to to get out of my little hole uh went there for two weeks fell in love with the country. And I thought, oh, my God, I could just come here at least. At least I can come here. So the plan was that I would go back to America, pack my things and come back and stay for six months, figure out where to go afterwards while everything else started to open up. I was just kind of waiting for everything to open up.

And slowly things did open up, but I ended up falling in love with this country um I ended up staying it was only supposed to be six months but now I've been here a year and a half you know that I've actually been studying Turkey over the past year I just got chills oh my god yeah because the Hagia Sophia Cathedral and Nicaea yes exactly there's so much history here I mean I'm getting chills again Turkey is one of the most underrated one of the biggest hidden gems in the world oh I think it absolutely is. I mean, did you know, I didn't know that Christianity literally started in Turkey. Oh, that's so wild. Yeah. And then of course, Instable was once Constantinople. Yeah. And you know, Constantine, you know, in Ephesus, I tell you what, the first thing I freaked out about when I heard there was an earthquake there was like, Oh my God, which she has been

burned down, destroyed million times and back again. Yeah. And I thought about that. And then I thought about being from Louisiana and all of the hurricanes that had come in, destroyed, killed many, and they just build it up again. And they keep going. They're relentless people. And people would always say to me, why would they live there? You know, why wouldn't they move?

Yeah. There's something about the land. It's holy land. It is holy land. And I keep getting chills. I was not expecting you to go here. I didn't know this, that you had an interest. My heart has really been affected because of the land itself and the people that are so relentless to that land.

Your heart. What you said is absolutely true. OK, so I want to preface everything that I'm about to say when I'm about to share about Turkey with I am a foreigner here. I didn't know anything about the history or the language or the culture. I didn't know a lot about it until I got here. So my experience and what I'm sharing with you is really fresh. It's coming and it might be I mean, there's pros and cons to it, but I'm coming in with fresh eyes, green eyes. I'm experiencing this country and this culture, its spirituality, its religion in a way that is really, really green and new. And I'm seeing things and I'm learning things about this culture that I would never have learned had I continued to live in the West. And it's so beautiful. And like any other, any religion, any spirituality, there's pros and cons, and there's a light

and the darkness to it, depending on who's in power and who's using the religion to exert their power, which every single religion has been used to do so. But if you go back to the real text, the real teachings of each religion and each ancient spirituality, it all really teaches the same thing. It's love and it's a oneness. And, uh, over here, there's, there's something about Turks and the way they live that is so different from, um, the Western world. And it is, they have a real sense ingrained in them a sense of

collectivism everything is together people are together they they do things for each other with no and there's no it's not transactional in the west everything is transactional and i didn't realize how much it was until i got here um for example, if you, in my experience in the West, it's like, if you want someone to help you move, you say, I'll pay you 20 bucks, you know, to, if I could use your car or something like that, it's very normal to make a transaction like, oh, I'll pay you 40 bucks. Can I borrow your truck or something over here? I have a good friend. He asked his good friend who hardly knew me and said hey um can we can we use your truck and he's like oh yeah sure I'll help you and there's there's no it's not transactional

at all and that's just one small example but people are people are just they just give give give here and there's no questions asked um I don't even know where to begin darling i mean this earthquake i and i don't know what you guys are seeing in uh the west as far as the news i stopped watching western news even while i was in america right yes so i'm guessing you guys aren't getting a lot well i was gonna say they show very much the same scenes over and over, I've noticed. Yeah. You know, that's, yeah, that seems to be something. And it's very dramatic.

Yeah. They only show the rescues of children that are alive. Yeah. Okay. So another thing I want to say before I get into some of the details is the news. Okay. News, obviously in the West, we're skeptical of the news. But over here too, the news is not trustworthy. It's not, they're not fully reporting what's happening.

I also want to say, and I don't know how much I can say. Let's just put, let me just say this. It is punishable by law for me to say something negative about a man in power right now. Yeah. So I'm very, very careful right now. And this is not a joke. They can take me and they can put me to jail. So let's just say, pretend like someone like Donald Trump was in power for 20 years. And this is what's happening here. And there's an election coming up, but he's playing around with the election date. Not supposed to do that. Not supposed to do that. And Turkey in the last, even just in the last year when i i got here in september 2021 in november okay when

i got here it was one dollar to eight lira if this is the currency eight lira okay oh wow in november there was an economic crash here as a result of many things but it's you know it's also the pandemic had happened in 30 days the lira went from one dollar to eight lira to one dollar to 18 lira it dropped that much within one month it went up again to like 14 lira but now because of the russian ukrainian war it's back to 18, almost 19 lira. This is within a span of a few months. So it the value of the lira has dropped almost 50% in a span of a few months. So let me just put it this way. Let's say you're an American, and you make an income of $3,000 a month.

That's probably the average. I mean, of course, it varies. But imagine you are working 40 hours a week. You're making $3,000 a month. And then overnight, suddenly, you're just making $1,500 a month. You're working the same, but you're only making 1,500. Imagine the shock and the anger that you would experience if half of your, if the value of your money just dropped that, that's, that's what's happening. Okay. So then on top of that, because of this inflation,

okay. So now everything costs, they're bringing up the prices they're bringing yes like just the rest of the world but they're bringing up the prices now so now you're making half the money but things are costing more uh okay this is massive this is already causing so much distress depression um anxiety as a culture this is how this was already happening before this was already happening and it was a big it's a big big deal there's a looming election that's coming up many people are are pointing fingers at the person and that he made the mistake for the lira to drop this much the country is split half and half it's very much like so it's very similar to america the vibe's very much like it's very similar to America.

The vibe is very, very similar. It's uncanny. Of course, it's different. The history is different. Right. Right. Right. It's so similar. Completely between old traditional conventional views and a person in power that's trying to like build on that versus a more liberal progressive side that wants to move forward that wants to be that wants to like grow and evolve clashing total clashing god but even more so than what we experience in America. I mean, like, right. So now we have people who are absolutely just hopeless because of the lira and what's happening. There's no job security.

People are hungry. There's been red lines. Where I am in Istanbul, I don't see much of it. I'm very lucky to be where I am in Istanbul. But all around Turkey, it's not a good situation. So tension was high already, sister, tension was high already. And then the election coming up. So this, this year already before the earthquake, people were on edge and thinking, Oh, my God, what is going to happen after this election? Blah, blah, blah. So also, let me backtrack and say, Turkey is the country

that has accepted the most refugees. So we're surrounded by so many countries here. We've accepted three to four million Syrianrian refugees and just in the last several years it's changed the demographic of turkey turkey just references about the size of texas about 16 bigger than texas but very similar to texas okay so imagine three to four million people you know coming in turkey doesn't have the infrastructure to accept these people in, create a process, a system of organization. So now there's tension between Turks and Syrians. OK, understandably so. I'm not taking sides. I'm just seeing this totally objectively. Then we have the Russian-Ukrainian war suddenly, and we have an influx of Ukrainians and Russians coming in. Understandably, they don't want to be where they are. And I have

witnessed just within the last year or so being here, I have witnessed the demographics change with my very own eyes. It's just been a year. I see I see more Russians now I see more Europeans coming in. And interestingly, because so many foreigners are coming in, they cut they put a cap on the number of foreigners. First, they called it the 25% foreigner rule only 25 percent foreigners allowed in any neighborhood and they brought it down to 20 percent and now this is directly affecting me because now they're except they want more they want to open space for the Russians because they want to keep good relations with Russia so now they're not accepting a lot of other Europeans and Americans into the country so it's's really interesting. Like, I'm directly affected by everything. America is so insulated when something happens. You don't feel it. But country, this country is a transcontinental.

So Istanbul is one of the very few cities that resides on two continents. It resides on Asia continent and European. Do you know this? Yeah. Istanbul, you just ferry ride, 20 minute ferry ride. You're on the European side or you're on the, exactly, you're on the Asian side. And it's situated in such a way that it's a very coveted piece of land. And that's why for centuries, people have been fighting for this land. And that's why, and according to my Turkish friends, that is why the Turkish people and the country and the economy has not been able to move forward proactively. Because they're always defending. They're forward proactively because they're always defending they're always at war they're always defending their land and so so turks are ready to fight

they're ready to fight and they will fight they will fight for their country um but for so many hundreds of years they've been in defense trying to fight trying to keep their land and then they haven't been able to progress forward um that's the beauty of this land it's it's very highly coveted okay so so it's all of this is happening and i didn't know this until last week but um turkey resides on two very big major fault lines. You didn't know. No, I didn't know shit, girl. I didn't know shit about Turkey. I didn't know the language.

I didn't know anything. I came here very ignorant. But I'm here to learn. By yourself, by the way. By myself. By myself. So this earthquake happens and um the magnitude of this earthquake let me just backtrack two months ago i was woken up by shaking at 4 a.m there was an earthquake in istanbul

and it was about like a 5.9 magnitude i I just felt the shaking and I went back to sleep. But it was pretty scary because in 1999, there was a huge earthquake here that killed about 17,000 people in Istanbul. So that happened. And then about a month ago, there was another earthquake in Izmir, which is about a four-hour, five-hour drive south. And this was a magnitude of about 6.5, about 100 people died. There's earthquakes here, they happen a lot. Right. So when this one happened, when I first originally heard about it, I didn't think much of it, I just thought it was a smaller one. But when I started to see the numbers and the death toll, it happened on Monday morning, 4am. By

evening, the death toll had gotten to 2000. And my friend was telling me, this is going to be at least 20,000. And I thought, I thought this was a language barrier thing. I said, do you mean 20? And we were speaking Turkish and English. I was like, you got the number wrong. There's no way it could be 20,000. And he said, no, that's the minimum. That's the minimum. And that's when it really hit me. Oh my God, this is really big. So that was just the first one.

Yeah. And then there was a second one. I think there was a third one. We're talking about the size of, imagine United Kingdom, a second one i think there was a third one we're talking about the size of imagine united kingdom just the entire i'm talking about the whole country imagine the united uk having an earthquake and the entire thing just collapsing all of it this is the size of the land of this earthquake. And right now the death toll is 42,000, 42,000. That's just what's reported. There's no way it's going to be more than that in this area. And also, let me also

remind myself to say, this is not just Turkey, but it's Syria. And unfortunately, this is the like the northeastern part of Syria where it's already been war torn. So there is no aid going over there. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking. There's you don't even know where to put money for Syria. And even if they had money, how are they going to there's no aid aid I just read an article about a news reporter who was who was able to get there and see what's going on and as he was going from Syria to Turkey he said like crickets in Syria there was nobody there's no there's no one there and then as he's entering into Turkey he's he couldn't even get anywhere because of the gridlock, because there's so much activity. But can you, I mean, I'm already heartbroken for Turkey, obviously, but it's just unspeakable.

It's a fucking just a big grave site, you know. Girl, I don't even know I mean I didn't know if I could even do this interview because I realized that I have PTSD from this even though I didn't see it firsthand um yesterday or the two days ago I went out to a cafe I thought okay I just need to get some air everything was fine I was working I looked up there was a man there was a boy and his mom walked in and I didn't think anything. I started working and I looked up and I saw them eating and he was big brown eyes, curly hair, and he was eating his Bordick with his left hand. And he looked really peaceful. His mom was sitting next to him. And then suddenly a big slab of concrete fell on him and he disappeared and his mom starts screaming and I'm like oh my god

and I blink my eyes and nothing had happened he he's he's there they're safe and I'm like oh shit I like I had I just imagined this and then I was like I shook it off and I went back to work and I just like took a deep breath everything's fine and then I got up to leave and I and as I'm leaving on my right side there's this really cute precious little Turkish girl four years old maybe curly hair and the sun was like shining that day and it was like making her hair glow and then suddenly on the left hand side another slab of concrete just comes and just like demolishes her and the entire family and they just disappeared and now I'm like and I shook my head again and then opened my eyes blinked really hard and of course you know they were fine they were fine and and I and I was like oh, what the hell. So I kept my eyes on the ground. And I walked home very quickly. And I just didn't want to look at any more children. I didn't want to see any more

children die in front of me. And I realized, Oh, my God, this is my this is my own, like, I'm dealing with trauma here. And then I came home and I started bawling. I've been bawling for days. And I'm not sharing this as like boohoo me, I'm sharing this as like, if this is what I'm experiencing, can you fucking imagine what they're going through over there? Just imagine. So they didn't even get aid for three or four days. Finally, there's news reporters out there. And for me, it hits different now, not just because I'm close, but I understand a bit of the language. So when they're, when they're talking, and they're like, hysterical, and they're saying, nobody came for three or four days, the buildings are down, we can hear people screaming from the buildings, people were screaming, they would they needed help on the first day the second day they're

screaming the third day the the screaming stopped the fourth day stopped fifth day there's no screams anymore i can understand what they're saying and it's like it's fucking unimaginable there's no organization here there There's no infrastructure created. Even though there was an earthquake in 1999, people are saying no one learned from it. Yeah, they said they arrested even like a builder. Yeah, not one, there's several. Oh, several, okay.

Yeah, there's some images you can see, like a whole group, a whole kind of complex of buildings just going down and surrounding buildings are are safe they're they're not they they should but they're they didn't crash these buildings some of them are only three years old oh that's so crazy and i also heard the people have been paying extra money so they could go in and make sure that these were safe and sturdy for earthquakes but but they come out like something there was even a hospital yeah they inspected and the inspecting came out like it's not safe it's not safe but you know you just have to keep going moving forward the government is not doing anything this is what the turks are

complaining about you know and you know same as in louisiana when the levees weren't built up the way they should have i mean yeah fuck with mother nature we can try we can try to make everything you know like the little pigs yeah but when mother nature is pissed and I also think when the energy of an area is stressed, and you have the people all in negative energy, the earth is affected just like we are. We're in paths. You're affected. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, on top of that, what I would say is that when the energy of the people is really unbalanced and there's a toxic energy and there people is really unbalanced and there's a toxic energy and there's a lot of crime and there's a lot of taking an advantage of, you know, people's resources, what's happening right now and why people are so pissed is that, yes, there's a natural disaster. These happen. There's going to be more earthquakes here. Okay. But the people that are dying as a result of the lack of organization the lack of government and and because for example these buildings instead of putting real cement it was mixed in with basically sand to save money that's why it went down that's why it went down

and a lot of people are here talking so much about like in japan there was an earthquake but those buildings didn't go down why because they were built properly um but over here there's so much corruption and god i feel like i feel like someone's gonna come in and just take me and put me in jail to be honest like because you're talking about it yeah okay well anything that you want me to take out you know I edit no no you know I'm only repeating what I'm I'm seeing in the news and what people are like saying already corruption in every country I mean absolutely yeah yeah and you can get a sense of how frustrating it is. Like we see what's broken, but it's like people here are powerless to even speak out and say something

because out of fear of retaliation and what will happen. So point is a lot of people are dead, a lot more than are being reported. And the way that so many of my it's really interesting how my friends are describing these buildings about 15 000 buildings went down and 15 000 can't i mean try to even wrap your mind around that 15 000 only see two oh you're fucking kidding me. No.

I mean, I keep seeing the same two, it seems. Oh, my God. No. 15,000 buildings. Not two. Not 100. Not 1,000. It's sick.

And these buildings, they're not skyscrapers. Let's just say minimum, like usually buildings here about six floors. But this area, people live like you know for each floor that's like six people times it's like i mean very minimum that's like 35 to 50 people per building and you multiply that by 15 000 i mean it's just astronomical the number of people um people, it's already been estimated that it's probably going to be about 100,000 that are accounted for. And that's just the people that are dead. A friend of mine just told me about his friend, he has a friend who lost 5050 of his friends and family. That that's like that's more like you can wrap your mind around that a little bit more but it doesn't make it any easier i mean you just you just lost 50 of your you just lost your whole network like that is close to you um there are stories of

people losing their entire family or half of their family there's stories of survival but okay the mother and the second daughter survived but the son and the two you know the father and the two sons are gone heartbreaking yeah cat how can we help there's an organization called abap that i've been sharing and i will share the link with you, A-H-B-A-P. And I'll send it to you. Be very careful with who you're sending donations to. But this is one way. This is going to be years and years. This is not going to be just do it for one month type of thing. The number of displaced are going into the millions right now, one to 2 million right now have lost their homes. So what's happening now is they've shut down the

colleges across the whole country, even in Istanbul, because they have nowhere to go. Their land is gone. You can't rebuild on this right now. So they have nowhere to go. So they're shutting down the universities for another semester. And so they're going to shut them down the dorms and open them up to the displaced through the summer. This is also causing a lot of angst for the college students because they just got back to school after COVID. People here are just absolutely distressed and they don't know how to deal with it. They need to be together. They need the social interaction. I mean, I know in Louisiana, FEMA was there for years. And that's with organization. Yeah, that's with organization yeah that's with organization

there's no organization that's the that's the general consensus i'm getting from every turk every friend um they're so frustrated because there's no organization because i keep asking well what's going to happen next what's going to be right like what's the plan nothing there's no plan there's no plan that's the thing there's no plan i did's no plan. That's the thing. There's no plan. I did see that the UN gave $1 billion. Yeah. The beautiful thing that, and I really, I'm just repeating what my friends are saying. The beautiful thing that they are seeing and we are seeing is the, the,

the, all the different countries that are coming together sending aid even countries that were traditionally at odds with i heard even ukraine who's in war right yes ukraine israel um greece they sent over uh people and they're just the people here are so touched by it so touched um south korea my country where i'm you know originally from um we have a very close tie we're considered blood countries blood brothers okay turks sent their um their soldiers to korean war so there's a real special bond between us yeah yeah there's there's so for me there's a real special bond between us. Yeah, yeah. So for me, there's a real, like, this is not like I'm just here just for fun. I'm really connecting with this culture, the people.

They're amazing. And I'm crying with them. I'm crying with them. I'm hurting with them. Yesterday, I was trying to prepare for this interview, and I couldn't because it forced me to look at some of the news and I didn't think I would be able to do this. I almost messaged you and I was going to tell you I can't do it. I thank you so much. I think you did a beautiful job.

Thank you. What you've shared is so raw and real. And I wouldn't expect anything less from cat cam and i knew you would bring this authentic passion for yeah for this country that is in such need and i will definitely post this organization that we know is safe and is legit to safely and they need help and you know i saw your post on instagram i mean you're like even five dollars whatever five dollars five dollars consider 25 consider donating 25 but even five dollars it goes a long way here um this is going to be a a long-term thing um but it goes it's not like five dollars in america we can do something with five dollars here. But consider 25, you know, consider 25, that would be amazing. You know, your dollars in America, like talk about leveraging the dollar, you can leverage the dollar, you can make a difference, you can send something. And every time I tell my Turkish friends that

America wants to help, they're so touched. They're so extremely touched and grateful by the showing of support from all over the world. By the way, this is going to be about 80, my friend just told me, $80 billion to recover, $80 billion to recover from this. The donations and everything so far probably will be minimum six, maximum seven or eight billion. So this is the magnitude of this earthquake and how much we're going to have to continue into the future and recover from this and there are reports are saying that they will and this time it's going to be istanbul istanbul was hit in 1999 so they're saying in i don't know 10 20 years but these are reports and and who knows oh my god be safe thank you be safe and god bless your heart you're so amazing i love to see your face

and i appreciate you coming on sharing this and those poor people i'll be praying for them and and i hope that you know that are listening will also say a prayer and whatever you can. Yeah, absolutely. And we can, we can touch base again. Anytime you want. I'm also here for you. You are so amazing. Thank you so much.

God bless you. Have a good night. Okay. I just want to thank Kat for coming on again to raise this awareness for those in need. She has such a great soul. These people have a long road. They're cold. They're hungry.

They're displaced. So if you feel it in your heart to donate, here's the website again. It is ahbap.org. Say a prayer for these people. Thank you. I would like to thank you and our special guests for being with me today. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. And visit my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com. That's mysenseofsoul.com.

I hope that you will join me next time. Thanks for listening.