In this powerful conversation, Wendy sits down with Allison Rose to talk about what it really looks like to break generational cycles, heal from fear-based parenting, and create a more connected home.

Allison shares how Fresh Start Family helped her move out of reactivity, pressure, and survival mode, especially while navigating chronic illness, financial stress, and parenting three young kids. Together, Wendy and Allison explore how nervous system healing, compassionate discipline, and learning to trust your inner voice can transform not just your parenting, but your whole life.

They also talk about faith deconstruction, healing from high-control religious environments, and why choosing connection over control changes everything.

If you’ve ever known the old way isn’t working, but needed hope that a new way is possible, this episode will meet you right where you are.

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Episode Highlights:

• Misbehavior is communication.
• Small, consistent changes can transform a family over time.
• Chronic stress and chronic illness deeply affect how parents show up.
• Fear and force may look powerful, but they don’t create lasting change.
• Kids thrive when there is space for their full personality.
• Strong-willed kids often need understanding more than control.
• Nervous system healing supports parenting, health, money, and relationships.
• Growth often feels uncomfortable because it’s unfamiliar.
• Trusting your inner voice is part of breaking generational cycles.
• You can choose a new way, even if you were never shown one.
• Parents do not need to be perfect to create healing in their home.
• Connection-based parenting builds trust, respect, and long-term cooperation.

Resources Mentioned:

Find Allison on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook

Be the first to get access to a little something Allison is creating to help you beat that internalized religious guilt: https://allisonrose.kit.com/podcast-gift

Save your seat for the Good with Money FREE 3-Day Financial Upgrade Experience with Kate Northrup

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Unable to listen, or prefer to read along? Here’s the transcript!

Wendy Snyder:
Hello families, and welcome back to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family Show. I’m so happy that you are here. I’m Wendy Snyder, powerful parenting educator and family life coach, and I’m excited to have this conversation with you today with my friend and student, Allison Rose. We’re so happy to have you here. Hi, Allison. Welcome to the show.

Allison Rose:
Wendy, thank you so much. I am so, so happy to be here.

Wendy Snyder:
Today we’re going to talk about both Fresh Start Family education and also the education of Kate Northrup. Right about now, as this episode airs, she is doing her annual Good With Money free workshop that is so powerful. We’re going to talk a little bit about how that work has changed your life.

You came into Fresh Start Family maybe about four or five years ago. How old are your kids now, Allison?

Allison Rose:
Yeah. My kids are five, seven, and nine now. At the time, I think my five-year-old was a baby, so probably about five years ago.

Wendy Snyder:
Yeah, I feel like it’s probably been about five years. I got to know you when you were such a dedicated student in the Fresh Start Experience, and we had the honor of coaching you for a few years and helping you expand your heart, learn new tools, and strengthen your family.

Then as you kind of graduated from our program, I was like, Allison, you’ve got to get into Kate Northrup’s work. There’s so much nervous system healing, regulation education, and financial abundance. I remember saying, trust me, it may feel like it’s all about money, but it’s really about how to call in more abundance in every area of your life. And you were like, okay, sure.

You hopped in, and we’ve been doing that program together too. I think this is my fourth year doing Kate Northrup’s programs. I always jump back in every year and go through it again because I find that the programs you do for a few years are where you really gain the most traction. It’s not a one-and-done thing.

So it was fun to have you in there with me this year. We’re going to talk a little bit about the success you’ve had in both of those programs. But first, will you tell listeners a little bit about yourself, how many kids you’ve got, where you live, and what you do now in your spare time, if you have any as a mom of three.

Allison Rose:
I know, right?

Yes, I have three children. I’m Allison Rose. I moved to Indiana two years ago, and I’m extremely passionate about helping deconstructing women regain their life and find their feet after deconstruction, especially after leaving high-control churches, and helping them figure out where their identity is.

I do work with men as well. I work with everybody. But yes, with three kids, it is wild.

Wendy Snyder:
I love it. To watch your journey as you’ve evolved in your confidence and taken everything you learned in Fresh Start Family and everything you’ve absorbed through Kate Northrup’s programming, and now turned it into this passion project of building a career and an organization that helps families heal from high-control religious upbringings, it’s just beautiful.

We see it so often here at Fresh Start Family. Parents find us because they have such a huge desire to dissent from the authoritarian or autocratic ways they inherited, especially in high-control religious upbringings. That instant obedience, “obey the first time with a happy heart,” original sin being pounded into them, all of that. They grow up not quite realizing why they have such low self-esteem, why they have trouble listening to their intuition, why they’re terrified to actually feel their emotions.

These are all things we get to help people through when they come into Fresh Start Family and learn a new way. I’ve noticed through the years that the ones who come from high-control backgrounds have the hardest time moving from reactive to responsive parenting. They have the hardest time embracing compassionate discipline and giving up punishment that involves hurting and harming their children and then trying to justify it.

So I’m so thankful that you’re pouring into that community of parents who have raised their hand and said, I really don’t want to stay in a circle of faith anymore where my heart and my intuition are screaming at me that this doesn’t feel right.

I know you help people of all different types and help them discern where they want to go next with their faith, but thank you for leaning into that calling, Allison. I love seeing you take everything you’ve learned through the years and use it now to empower that group of humans. It’s such a big deal.

Allison Rose:
Absolutely. One of the main things I noticed when I was in the Bonfire community was watching the other women. The conversations would often come back around to religion when we were really struggling.

There was one conversation around values. We were asking, how do we teach our kids values if we don’t have faith? And one woman, who grew up atheist and identified as atheist, came into the thread and said, “Guys, I’m so sorry that you were raised to believe you had to have faith to moderate your behavior.”

It was so enlightening because she shared what her parents taught her and how she came to make decisions in a positive way. That story always stuck in my head from that time.

Wendy Snyder:
Yeah, I remember there being conversations in our group where people commented, wow, this is the first time I’ve ever felt safe around people speaking about religion without getting the ick.

So maybe they didn’t identify as Christian, but they still felt safe here. I always joke, I’m a Christian, but I try not to be a scary Christian. People were discussing what they learned and what their nervous system soaked up from being raised in high-control systems without bashing all of religion, but still calling out the harmful stuff. I know people really appreciated that because so often Christian circles don’t feel safe for people who are not in that world.

Okay, let’s start with Fresh Start Family. When you first found me, what were your big pain points? What was life looking like then, and how did learning a new way with us begin to change your family dynamic?

Allison Rose:
Yeah, very dramatically.

When I first found you, I was in a very alone season. I was incredibly chronically ill. By that point, I was probably in year seven of chronic illness. I had three small children. We had very little money. And because of where I was in deconstruction and my feelings toward religion, I was still Christian, but I was so triggered by Christian advice.

I had heard so much authoritarian parenting advice. I knew I didn’t want that, but I didn’t know what else was available.

I honestly don’t even know how I stumbled across you. It was probably some social media video or maybe a Google search. But I felt exactly what you’re describing, that my questions would be welcome here and that I wasn’t just going to get a Bible verse telling me to be harsher on my kids.

At home, because of the chronic illness, there were periods where I had zero energy to show up in the way I wanted to with my kids. Then when I did have energy, I was just laying down the law. There was a lot of yelling. We had tried spanking with my oldest and it didn’t even work. He didn’t care at all, and I didn’t have the heart for it. We spanked my middle daughter one time, and her entire spirit was crushed. It still makes me sad to think about, but we both looked at each other and said, okay, there’s no way we can do this.

We had this sense of, we’ve lost our foundation. We don’t know who to ask anymore.

So we started learning what we were learning at Fresh Start Family, and our family changed so dramatically. I found out my son was ADHD, and suddenly just changing the way I spoke to him changed the way he could listen. Through you guys and the support of the coaches in Fresh Start Family, I also gave myself a lot of grace. I was coming with an empty bucket trying to parent, and I was getting so much judgment everywhere else. That made it worse.

But you guys were like, hey, you are chronically ill. It is okay. Just do the best you can. One foot in front of the other.

Something I didn’t notice at the time, and didn’t fully realize until much later, was how much those small, consistent actions were going to matter. They did take time, but within a year or two, everything changed.

And we still had to deal with families judging us. Sometimes we would still go to church, and there was a lot of judgment around our kids’ behavior. But the nervous system tools, the pause button, literally taking a minute before responding, all of that helped me weather those moments in a way where I didn’t let them pull me back into the old ways of fear and force.

It matched my deconstruction journey beautifully because I began to believe that that’s not what God wanted from me, so I wouldn’t want to do that to my kids. Through this program, I really learned what I could do to positively affect change in my family.

Wendy Snyder:
That’s beautiful.

That season where you’re learning the new way, but you’re still in circles that are very committed to the old way, is such an uncomfortable season. It’s like learning a new language and then being expected to speak it fluently right away while everyone around you is still speaking the old language.

Especially in church spaces, that can be such a high degree of difficulty. You’re trying to implement a new way, and at the same time, there’s all this pressure around you to get control, punish, make them submit, do whatever it takes.

But that is where the actual growth happens. And I’m so happy you stayed the course.

Would you say now, after all these years, that the strategies and tools from Fresh Start Family, like compassionate discipline, communication, sequencing instead of threats, learning to respond instead of react, settling your nervous system, using the pause button, creating logical consequences instead of punishment, all of that, do you feel like it comes a lot more naturally now?

Allison Rose:
Yeah, absolutely.

And one of the most beautiful things is looking at how my family has changed while everyone still gets to have their own personality. We have polar opposites in our house. Everyone is very, very different.

My son is ADHD and hyposensitive, which means he wants more sensory input than your average kid. My daughter is hypersensitive. She needs less input than the average kid. So it can feel like an atomic bomb at all times between them.

But under this model, there’s space for them both to be themselves. Nobody gets shut out or shut down. We still use the calm-down bins, and they still like to recreate them with things they enjoy. My son puts more stimulating items in his. My daughter takes more breaks and likes things that are more calming. My youngest likes art. It’s just beautiful how much those things have become fluent and second nature now.

And now, instead of people commenting about how our kids were misbehaving, people stop me in the grocery store and tell me my kids are incredible. They’re helping me. They still yell sometimes. They still fight. But I actually emailed you this a few months ago. I went to take a bath because I wasn’t feeling well, and I came out and my kids had cleaned my entire house. I didn’t ask them. They weren’t even in the best moods that day.

I came out and they said, “Mommy, we did the dishes. We cleaned the basement. We cleaned downstairs because we love you and we wanted you to feel good.”

I started crying.

These are the same kids who, in the chronic illness era, intentionally knocked over an entire bookshelf of books and broke plates because they were mad that I hadn’t been connecting with them. The same kids. It’s just amazing to see what’s happening now.

Wendy Snyder:
That is so cool.

When you start to retrain your nervous system to see the goodness and to soak in those moments, it really changes what you notice. In autocratic and authoritarian upbringings, we often end up with such a strong inner critic. We’re hard on ourselves, and when you’re hard on yourself, you’re often hard on others too. So you end up seeing a lot of the negative.

I love that story.

Okay, let’s talk about the nervous system work. When you said yes to Kate Northrup’s work, I know you started with her free Good With Money workshop and then joined Relax Money. How has that supported you, your family, your finances, your health, anything you want to share?

Allison Rose:
It was a huge deal.

When I got your email, I was no longer in your program, but I was still following you and still following the work and keeping it up in our family. We had been going on about a decade of barely paying bills. I was at that same crisis point I was in when I first found your parenting stuff. I knew what I didn’t want, but I had no idea what I did want, because I didn’t even know what existed yet. The only thing I’d really seen before was like Dave Ramsey, very restrictive financial advice.

Then I saw your email and felt this little nudge. Like, I’m going to go to this workshop and see what happens.

As I listened to Kate, my soul was just lighting up. I didn’t realize how much nervous system work I had already been engaging in without calling it nervous system work. I was already on my chronic health healing journey, and I had been using body awareness in parenting and in trying to heal physically. So when she started talking about the body and money, I was like, wait, could this really apply to money too?

I was intrigued, and I got this feeling of, what the heck, why not? We’ve been struggling forever. Let’s just do it.

So I literally threw, I think, all of our savings into joining the program with a wing and a prayer. I was like, we’ll just see where it leads.

Financially, within six months, we definitely quadrupled or quintupled our income through my spouse’s work. I wasn’t making money yet, but I was becoming so much more positive about what was possible. I started hearing women talk about numbers I had never heard people casually talk about before. My mind was opening, and while it was opening, I was terrified, but I was doing the nervous system tools.

My spouse was watching me, and he started getting excited too.

That was amazing. Then the increased income stayed at least three times what it had been as a baseline, which was incredible. Then we ended up going into real estate investing, which we had always wanted to do. We did it even when every bank was telling us no. We just kept saying, how can we do it? We refused to take no for an answer, and eventually we found the bank that would work with us and we expanded our properties.

So we went from not knowing how we were going to pay the next electric bill to having tenants and income no longer being a constant concern.

That was year one.

Then in the second year, I realized I had learned to manifest money as it pertained to my family and for them. This year was really about manifesting money for me and creating sustainability and independence, and honestly fighting some of the internalized patriarchy in my own life that says, you’re just a mom, you don’t need income, or you’re just a mom, you don’t need to do anything else.

But I had this passion because I kept having these conversations online about deconstruction, and I thought, I want to do this. So I launched my business and started coaching people.

Through that, I’ve experienced quantum leaps. And every time someone tells me, no, you can’t do that, and this came up in parenting, finances, and health, all of your work and Kate’s work and this nervous system work told me, yes, I can and I will. Even if I don’t know if it exists yet, there is something in me that tells me it’s possible, and I’m going to keep going until I find it.

The nervous system work supports that gap. It supports the space between knowing it’s out there and not being there yet. It’s very uncomfortable in between, but with those tools and with that understanding of what’s happening, I don’t have to shy away the first time my body gives me that no, no, no, this is not safe feeling. I can say, no, we actually can do this.

Wendy Snyder:
It’s so good.

What you’re describing is a deepening of trust from within. And I love what you said about intuition. It’s like there is something from above and something from within. There’s this knowing, this wisdom, this inner guidance.

And then there’s also that conditioned nervous system response that says no, no, no, don’t do that, that’s not safe, because it’s reacting from old wiring.

So much of this work is learning how to trust the inner wisdom while also understanding the body’s resistance with compassion. Like, okay, my body is reacting because this was not the set point in my childhood. This wasn’t the tone or the temperature of my home growing up. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or unsafe now.

I’m so glad you brought up the religious layer too, because I think for many people from high-control faith spaces, when their body pushes back, they’ve been taught that the discomfort means they’re doing something sinful or stepping outside God’s will or being deceived. And actually, what’s happening is their nervous system is responding to change.

That distinction is huge.

Allison Rose:
Yes. That was massive for me.

Depending on where someone came from in their denomination or spiritual tradition, when you get to that point where you want something different and better and then your nervous system pushes back, so many churches teach that that’s Satan, or demons, or God punishing you because you stepped outside the plan.

I had to fight that while I was learning your work. By the time I started learning Kate’s work, I had already started thinking, yeah, I don’t believe that anymore. But with the parenting especially, I was literally being told by certain family members and church people that I was being deceived and that’s why it felt so uncomfortable in my body.

So hearing the actual science behind what was going on was so healing and freeing for me. This is not a superstitious thing. This is a matter of my primal safety system being triggered by something new.

I love the quote Kate uses that your nervous system will always prefer a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. That was such a powerful truth for me. My body would rather choose even a really terrible situation if it feels familiar, because I already know how to function there. It’s going to be scared of heaven because it’s new.

That’s where the nervous system work comes in. That’s what you were teaching in different ways, and that’s what Kate was teaching too, and that’s what I teach with deconstruction now. It’s not demons. It’s not God punishing you. It’s not the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It’s literally your survival system and your nervous system.

Wendy Snyder:
That is so good, and I’m really glad you brought that up.

Okay, before we wrap, I want to ask one more thing. Right now, as this episode airs, Kate’s free workshop is happening. What would you say to someone who is on the fence about attending or going deeper into her work?

Allison Rose:
I would say regardless of whether you think you’re going to sign up or not, please go to the free workshop because just that information alone was life-changing for me.

And I do want to wrap up a little of my chronic illness story by saying the tools I learned in Kate’s program contributed heavily to my healing journey. Within one year of saying, I’m not going to listen to everybody else anymore, I’m just going to listen to what’s happening in my body and trust my heart, and at the time I still felt like, this might even be sinful, but I don’t think I’m going to live much longer if I don’t get better, within one year, nine years of chronic illness was basically resolved.

I still have rough days here and there, but it is nothing like the debilitating illness and pain I was in for nine years. It transformed my entire life.

So yes, the financial stuff is great, and that was amazing, but it also transformed my mental health. It helped so much with the anxiety and occasional depression because now when I go into those nervous system tools, I don’t think emotions are bad anymore. I have such respect for my physical life now.

So I’m just so thankful. I’m so glad I went. I’m so glad I listened. I’m so glad my family’s life has been altered by this work. I can’t even imagine where we would be if I hadn’t taken your work and if I hadn’t taken Kate’s. I don’t say that lightly. I’m not much of a flatterer. I’m pretty honest. So I mean that with my whole heart.

So I would just say go to the free workshop. And even if all you ever do is actually apply what you learn in the free workshop, you’re going to experience incredible breakthroughs.

Wendy Snyder:
Yes. And beyond the content itself, being in that community is so fun. There are so many amazing people. And then you and I got to be together at Kate’s live event in March in Tennessee, which was life-changing. That just made me so happy.

I love how Kate’s community is expanding and kind of locking arms with my community. It’s just beautiful to watch.

Allison, thank you for taking time out of your busy day to come spend time with us and share all this goodness and your experience with the families listening.

Tell everyone where they can come find you if they’re interested in learning more about what you teach and the coaching services that you have.

Allison Rose:
Yes, for sure.

I’m redoing my tech stack right now, so my website is kind of trash at the moment, but you can find me on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook, usually under real_allison_rose. That’s most of my handles.

I’m also creating something special for podcast listeners. There should be a link somewhere you can use to sign up for my email list, and you’ll be among the first to access it. Most likely it will be a little bit of audio and nervous system work specifically for that internalized religious guilt where you don’t even agree with it anymore, but it’s still altering your everyday life.

So make sure you get on that list and you’ll get first access.

Wendy Snyder:
Brilliant.

And that thing you spoke to a few minutes ago, when you said there was still a part of you that was worried you were being sinful when you decided to prioritize yourself, that’s probably exactly what you’re speaking to in that offering. That is so important. Those little voices deserve reverence and care, and people need to know how to work with them.

Allison, thank you again for being here. Community, go find Allison in all the places and check out her work. And thanks for being here.

Allison Rose:
Thank you.