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In our formative years, if everything we do is constantly shamed, ridiculed and discouraged, a pathway can get created in our minds. Even if no one’s watching what we do, we may still wind up on this same pathway, paved with all these same messages—that what we do and who we are is deeply flawed and not worthy of being adored and loved and nurtured.

Over time, because this path gets so worn, it can be easy to imagine it’s the only reliable path. Because no matter how hard we try, we always wind up taking it. But this is only because we don’t have any other reliable pathway.

Creating a new pathway can be difficult, especially if we’re still in environments devoid of loving encouragement. So what we need to do is excavate a new pathway from scratch. A pathway designed to encourage the person we still know ourselves to be deep inside. A pathway that will take us where we want to go.

And once we have the beginnings of a path, we need to keep traveling on it. No matter how rocky the path is, and no matter what difficulties may arise, we must get back on our self-created path as soon as possible.

And in time, this new path will get worn, and walking on it will get easier. And we may even forget about that old pathway, because it'll get
harder to find, and we’ll remember that where it takes us is no longer where we need to go.

-JLK

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When I was little, I spent so much time looking through my mother’s magazines. I was completely fascinated by the images, maybe even fair to say obsessed.

Sure, I longed for the beautiful clothes, and I wanted to emulate the beautiful women, but it was something more… something about the feeling of those images—something so secure in their stillness.

To me, everyone in those pages looked like they were worthy enough to be known and connected with by people who genuinely appreciated them.

And I wanted that same feeling for myself.
Not the feeling I had—where nothing was seen and everything felt neglected, especially me.

So I became very much indoctrinated into this idea that life should be a still-life—beautiful enough to be seen by everyone as mattering in the shiny pages of life.

But every time I tried saving up for things that looked similar and every time I organized myself and my belongings to look like I mattered in this way—time would pass, and I’d find myself sitting there with the same boredom and restlessness I felt before, along with the same painful longing to be seen and connected with.

I was still, like in those still-life images—but remained neglected, with nothing to do.

No matter how hard I tried to manufacture an appearance of worthiness, my thoughts always melted back into hopelessness.

It took me years to realize that the challenge of life isn’t to make things look like they matter—beautiful enough or together enough or credentialed enough—it’s about figuring out who we are—by noticing what’s beautiful to us and what’s meaningful to us—and by connecting with these things—and being involved and fulfilled by these things in the movement of life. Not the still-life of life.

Sure, we’ll get stuck, frazzled and afraid to move, not sure who we need to look like or who we need to be or what we need to do, but we can always shift from being stuck in the appearance of life by remembering to notice how we feel in the movement of life. Because everywhere, there is movement. Even in stillness.

And at any given moment, we can join in this movement of life, by simply paying attention to what’s going on and noticing what we’re moved by.

When we allow ourselves to feel moved by the movement of life, we can let it lead us towards more of what’s meaningful and beautiful to us.

And on the way, we’ll meet like-minded people who are available to connect with us as we are, instead who we thought we needed to be.

-JLK

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You can feel what brings you down and what

lifts you higher.

But if you're someone who grew up stuck in a

toxic environment, you might have learned to

cope by investing all your energy into lifting

up everyone around you with the hope that

maybe they won't let you down anymore.

But that's a full time job that's often carried

into adulthood. Not to mention it's often a

fruitless endeavor.

One way to heal is to realize that you are no

longer required to stay stuck in toxic

environments the way you once were.

You can now invest your energy into practicing lifting yourself up and taking yourself out into the

world where healthier environments await.

-JLK

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She danced to her heart but was told to stay still. She sang from her depths but was told to be quiet. She explored her own interests, but they gave her more chores. She shared something funny but was told she was rude. She spoke from her mind but was told she was wrong.

And finally, when she had no space to dance or sing or share herself or even breathe, she asked quietly for an invitation out, but no one heard, bc she was stuffed so deep inside her body.

She lived like this awhile, until one day she wondered if all the things constraining her were as real as they seemed. What if they were only beliefs? And not even hers?

So she tried moving her body past her constraints and she sang a song and the sound made her smile, and she wrote down her thoughts and they read like a poem, and abandoned the dishes and went for a walk.

And she felt the air in her lungs and it felt like life. And she realized she didn’t need an invitation to be herself—the invitation to live was being alive.

-JLK

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Sometimes, keeping the peace doesn’t actually create peace. It just keeps you silently in survival mode.

Keeping your perspective to yourself in order to protect yourself from other people’s toxic, unskilled, reactive behavior does not serve you in the long run.

Instead of keeping the peace, you can practice developing skills to communicate your truth. You don’t have to communicate your truth to toxic people. Try first with someone you trust, or even someone you hire to trust, or start a blog.

You will grow stronger and stronger by practicing communicating your truth. Not as a battle strategy or as a revenge strategy, but for the sole purpose of representing who you are in the world—your values, your perspective, what’s meaningful to you. If someone is uncomfortable with your truth, let them be uncomfortable.

If it eventually costs you the relationship, then it wasn’t really a relationship—it was that younger version of yourself, still looking for validation and safety in spaces that will never be available for such things.

Not communicating your truth can cost you your relationship with yourself, with your lifelong agreement to honor your spirit.

It’s never too late to represent yourself in the world. Your self is always right here, wanting to share itself and be seen and heard. Kindly ask your fears to step out of the way and let yourself be the spokesperson for what matters to you.

-JLK

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I think the whole world needs to agree to a gigantic truce—every single person—from our minds, our homes, our communities, cities, countries and continents.

I don’t think we need to love each other, or even love ourselves. So long as we make a promise to take time to heal. To unravel the rage, the pain, the grief, the fear, and the stuff we use to cover it up—the sarcasm, apathy and distraction.

And once the truce is agreed upon, all the money that pays for war can pay for everyone to have a house that’s safe, a comfortable bed. Groceries and a kitchen. A plot of land and a tree. A community center down the road where people can connect and share ideas and make them happen. While the children go to school and take only two classes: how to communicate-to-be-understood and how to listen-to-understand.

And we’ll spend mornings and evenings in meditation all together, until everyone begins to heal the pain of so many yesterdays, so it stops showing up every tomorrow.

-JLK

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I think this is why healing is best done when we feel safe. Because when we feel safe, we can reflect on those moments when we didn’t, and maybe even notice that the way we protected ourselves made other people feel not so safe—people that we love, even ourselves.

When we take the time to think deeper about this stuff while we’re feeling safe, we have more clarity to determine whether the people who triggered us were actually a threat to us, or if they just reminded us of a time when we were helpless and didn’t feel safe and had no choice but to shift into survival mode. And we can then offer these parts of ourselves our love and understanding.

When we work to recognize the stuff that activates unsafe feelings within us, it’s as if we’re shining a light on those moments. So, when we encounter these moments throughout our days—whether it’s with our kids or our partners—instead of reacting and shifting straight into survival mode, we have a choice to see what we’ve already illuminated when we felt safe—and maybe even discover that we actually feel safe right now. And that we actually have the skills to problem solve instead of react—skills like self-soothing, and skills like communicating-to-be-understood and listening-to-understand.

When we develop awareness of the parts of ourselves that are still struggling to survive as well as the parts of ourselves that feel safe, we create compassionate connections between all our parts that help us to feel more whole. And when we begin to feel whole, we may realize that we are capable of creating deeper, more fulfilling connections—with ourselves first, and also with others.

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I was thinking about this story so I thought I’d share it again…

When school didn’t work for my son…

Back when my son was in preschool, I was still such a people-pleaser.

And there was one morning when my son just didn’t want to be there. I mean, he never really wanted to be there, but this time, he was crying so hard.

And I was so torn bc his teacher kept telling me how normal it was, that he was fine. But my son was clearly not fine.

Then the teacher (she was actually the assistant teacher) picked up my hysterically crying son and said, “This would be a good time for you to leave.”

And that’s when my inner self stepped in front of my people-pleaser self, and I grabbed my child back and said, “Actually, this is a good time for both of us to leave.” And we left and my son said, “Thank you, Mama.”

I grew up constantly being torn away from what felt natural and into what I was supposed-to-do. And I was told I was ‘fine’ so many times, I couldn’t even begin to count.

And after so many years of this, I began to bury my inner sense of myself, along with the relationship I had with my natural interests and natural feelings of safety and comfort.

My energy went instead to learning how to pretend that I was fine, bc that seemed to be the way to earn acceptance and adoration.

But I wasn’t fine either.

And it took years before I was in a position to bypass all those ”I’m fine’s” and heal what really had never been ok, and heal it on my own terms.

And it took years to recognize that it wasn’t really a reflection of me that I wasn’t fine, but a reflection of all the environments I had been forced into that really weren’t a match for who I was.

But then I had a son. And I didn’t know what the hell to do with him except to put him in the same systems I’d been put in.

But that one day, when he clearly wasn’t fine, it was as if all the younger selves inside me that were finally healing after so many years of pretending to be fine, refused to be ok with what was happening. As if they all spoke up and screamed together: “He’s not fine!!!”

I could practically hear them cheering as I walked my son back to the car that day.

Ideally, in this world, we’d have school systems that would nurture the gifted parts of us, instead of systems that want to mold us into being parts to help the systems work better.

Schools would be gardens for our essences so that our natural perspectives and interests and ideas would be what grows and flourishes out of the school buildings and into our communities.

But such is not the case for many of us. And sure, many kids love school. But many don’t. Mine certainly didn’t.

It still took me a few more years to realize that no matter how much I wished my son would love school, it wasn’t going to happen.

And I finally believed him when he said for the millionth time that school was an unhealthy place for him and that he wasn’t going to be fine, that he couldn’t go back. And finally, I pulled him out.

Maybe one day we’ll find an in-person school that’s a good fit for my son. Maybe one day we’ll find a place where the teachers ask, “Are you fine? No? Let’s talk about what we can do differently so that you can feel fine.”

But for now, my son is exploring his interests, making friends, and learning how to communicate his thoughts and his feelings his way—on his own terms and in his own time.

-JLK

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Reminder to myself…

Instead of feeling perpetually disappointed when your needs aren’t being met, consider that maybe you’ve just been trying to get your needs met at all the wrong places.

This doesn’t mean friendships or relationships need to end. It simply means that we haven’t yet explored the many different kinds of outlets that are available to share ourselves through.

And an outlet isn’t always a person. Once we get clear about what we’re looking to give and receive, we can seek out the right kinds of places that will be naturally receptive to these parts of ourselves.

-JLK

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(An affirmation—something I’m working on.)

I think of myself as a gardener.

I imagine the future and see my garden in full bloom.

I take seeds from that future garden and I plant them metaphorically right now.

How I water these seeds is with my nurturing-in-action.

There will be droughts. That’s expected.

Sometimes my energy has to go to watering myself in order to just survive. And that’s ok.

And other times I know my brain will get overwhelmed—I’ll start getting new ideas and before I know it, I’ll be planting new gardens—watering new seeds and neglecting the old.

And that’s also ok. Sometimes flexibility can lead to blossoms I would have otherwise never expected.

But no matter how it goes, knowing that whatever I water is what will grow helps me remember to focus on watering the seeds I *want* to see grow, instead of the ones I would never want to see in my garden.

This means that I refrain from watering the seeds of shame, because I know those seeds will blossom into a shame garden.

And this means I refrain from watering the seeds of ‘I’m not worthy,’ bc I know those seeds will grow into a garden that would never reflect the wonder of who I am.

And this also means refraining from watering toxic people, expecting that they will one day blossom in my garden, bc I know that other people are responsible for their own growth and I’m responsible for mine.

With practice, I can learn to trust myself and be a reliable gardener.

-JLK

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(Potential trigger warning: mental health issues, hearing voices…)

Years ago, during one of the many times my mother was near death, I went down to Florida.

During the day, I stayed at the hospital, and at night, I slept in her bed at her apartment.

She’d had a seizure and there was blood on her chair and comforter. And the energy in the room was all fucked up. You could literally feel the monsters my mother had been battling.

Lying in her bed, I was so scared. Terrified, in fact.

Even with all the lights on. But there was no other place I could go.

And then when I got more scared than I could handle, I realized there was only one thing left to do: talk with those monsters, my mother’s monsters, that had scared me on and off my whole life.

So I took a deep breath, and I said, “I bet you guys have been misunderstood too, just like my mother. I bet in some ways, you’ve just been trying to protect her. To tell her important things, urgent things. But she hasn’t been listening, or she’s been twisting the meaning of your words. That must be frustrating.”

I felt a softening. So I continued.

“Well, I hear you. And I’m here. And so what I’m going to do, is give you guys all a hug.”

And that’s what I did. I hugged each scary thing I was feeling, and the strangest thing happened…

Every time something scary was touched by love, it turned into love. One after another. Everything scary melted into the understanding it was given.

The most powerful weapon turned out not to be attacking the fear or fleeing the fear, but giving love to the fear, by accepting it first, and then reflecting its best intention.

Then I got another idea. I got up and wrote my mother a note:

Whenever you hear voices in your head, telling you terrible things, I want you to listen deeper. Because there’s another voice that’s there too. It’s this one. Mine. Telling you I love you and that I understand you. And that I’m here with you. If you hear my voice, I bet those other voices will hear my voice too. And they’ll like the sound of it. And they’ll feel better too, and they’ll let you get some rest.

I love you, Your Daughter.

Then, I got back into my mother’s bed and fell asleep.

And ever since, when something inside me scares me, I try to remind myself not to run away, but to instead go right toward it, and give it my love.

-JLK