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This is the wall in my house where you can see all the messy old wiring. I think you probably know where I’m going with this lol.

Before the wall was opened, it looked like a nice wall. With matching paint. The power turned on and off like it was supposed to. But inside the wall, was this disorganization, with power going into old breakers and not enough new breakers to send power to new places.

And it made me realize—sometimes we need to take down our walls and investigate where our energy is going. See if maybe we need to add some new breakers to the old breaker box in order for our energy to flow to new places lol.

Maybe there’s some old breakers inside that box that we don’t need to waste our energy with anymore.

Bc our energy matters.

And by taking a look at our wiring, we get to decide for ourselves where we’d like our energy to flow. And where we’d like to stop giving our power away.

-JLK

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Not sure anyone will relate to this one, but I thought of it while carrying on several conversations with my deceased mother today.

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A little holiday humor. perhaps based in reality :)

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Once there was a girl who was feeling really sad. She’d been sitting on a bench and couldn’t find any reason to get up. In fact, she knew if she got up, she would only find more sadness, so she just stayed put.

Then, one afternoon, during a big yawn, she noticed something floating in the sky. A ribbon? Something purple, or maybe even gold… and shiny... What in the world?

She couldn’t take her eyes off of it. Oh, the way it danced—so magnificent—as if it were performing on the greatest stage in all the land.

As she watched this ribbon, she noticed it was twirling in the air closer and closer. Then, the ribbon did something miraculous—it floated down and landed right in her lap. And when she touched it, she couldn’t believe how soft it was—as if made of the finest silk.

Oh, was she excited! As if witnessing a miracle! Like a pet that had chosen her! Her, of all undeserving people! She felt so grateful, and she closed her eyes and thanked it for choosing her.

After that moment, the girl felt happy enough to leave her bench. She took the ribbon on walks. Held it during tea. Even slept with it around her wrist in bed. So long as she had her magic ribbon, all was ok in the world. She felt safe, special, and happy.

Then one day she, she was strolling through the park when she noticed something else in the sky. It was only for the most brief instant, but the moment she tried to see what it was, she loosened her grip from her ribbon just as a wind began to blow, and after the ribbon fell to the ground, it began to twirl and blow away.

The girl panicked, running after the ribbon and apologizing. “Please don't go! I shouldn’t have stopped to look at anything other than you! You, are all I need!”

The girl continued to chase her beloved ribbon, but it was already twirling too high to reach.

The girl then tried climbing a nearby tree to see if she could catch it, but she lost her grip on a branch and fell to the ground, skinning her knee.

On the ground, she cried. Not because of her bloodied knee, but because she knew it had been too good to be true. Of course the only good thing to happen to her would disappear from her grasp, just like everything else always did. “Who am I, after all, but no one. Deserving of nothing.”

The girl decided it was more sensible to return to her bench. And there, she stayed.

A few days later, an older man wearing a brown fedora walking two little furry white dogs sat down on the bench next to hers. The man noticed the sad girl crying on and off. And so he decided to say something.

“You seem awfully sad,” he said softly. “Did you lose someone or something special?”

The girl nodded, too upset to share any of the details.

“I’m sorry. I understand. I lost something special recently, too.”

The girl looked up at him, curious.

“My dog passed. He was my best friend for 19 years. He got me through my wife’s passing. Never left my side. And then one morning, he didn’t wake up.”

“I’m so sorry,” the girl said.

“Thank you. You know, after he passed, I used to come to this bench and all I could think about, and all I could see, was what was missing. My wife. My sweet dog, Charlie. I was hurting a lot. And then one day, I saw a dog. Across the park. Without an owner.

“At first, I didn’t get up. I figured his owner was probably nearby. But no owner ever showed up. My hips were hurting that day, so I decided to whistle. And sure enough, that dog came running.

“He was dirty but full of life and love. He kept nuzzling against my leg and I wondered if I still had some treats in my jacket pocket, and lo and behold, I did. So I gave him a few treats and he wouldn’t leave my side. He didn’t have a collar. And when I got up to walk home, the dog followed.

“I wound up bringing him in and that dog wouldn’t leave my side. Oh, my mind came up with all sorts of conclusions: This was my dog, reincarnated, coming back. This dog was sent by my wife. This dog was meant for me.

“But of course, after I posted that I’d found him in all the community threads, his owner contacted me, so grateful. Explaining that the landscaper had forgotten to close the gate.

“At first, I was really sad. But then I told myself I’d better get used to it. That loss was inevitable from here on out. And that there probably wouldn’t be much to gain in the little future I had left.”

The girl didn’t know what to say. Except that she somehow related a bit to what he was talking about.

“The following day,” the man continued. “I decided to go to the park. It was a beautiful day. Even in my misery, I figured I’d take a brief walk. Why not. And I stopped to rest on a bench, when a few moments later, a man sat down on the bench next to mine with a couple small dogs.

“I still had some treats in my pocket, so I asked the man if I could give a few to his dogs. The man nodded, too busy on his phone to care, and the dogs took a liking to me. I mean, a real liking to me. They both had their noses resting on my knees just staring up at me. I had to laugh. ‘You have two wonderful dogs,’ I said to the man.

‘They were my mother’s. She just passed.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I told him.

‘We have a 10yo daughter with a dog allergy, so I’m trying to find them a home where they can stay together,’ he said.

And without hesitation, I said, ‘I would be glad to adopt them both.’

“You should have seen that man. He stood up and stared up at the blue sky, clasping his hands together. He couldn’t get over the timing. He really thought it was a miracle.”

“Wow,” said the girl. “Well, it kind of was, if you think about it. And are these those dogs?”

“They are indeed,” the man said, petting their heads. “That was six months ago. And I learned something very important. After my dog passed, I was sure nothing good would ever cross my path again. But good things are always blowing in. They just might look different from what you think you should be looking for. So that’s why you’ve always got to stay alert. You have to take a break from your sadness sometimes to look around to notice what might have entered your space. That way, you can connect with it and see where it leads.

“You’ve got to be a different kind of treasure hunter. Not just to keep finding what’s missing and what’s wrong, but to discover what’s new and what’s full of possibility.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” the girl said, wiping off a tear.

“You’re more than welcome. I had a feeling it was something you needed to hear.”

The girl nodded. He was right. Something about what he’d said made a lot of sense.

And so she decided to take a break from her sadness to pay attention to what else was happening. And right then, a red leaf fell beside her on the bench. She looked at it and smiled.

“Red leaves. Aren’t they beautiful?” the man asked calmly.

“Yeah,” the girl smiled.

“The process of things changing, turning from one thing to another. All the cycles, phases and stages life goes through. Not just ours. But all of life... It really is an unfathomable mystery.”

“That’s very true,” the girl said.

The girl then carefully placed the red leaf between the pages of her journal. This time, not because she believed the leaf was going to keep her happy. But as a reminder of what the man had shared—that all of life is constantly entering a different cycle, phase and stage. And yes, there is sadness. Lots of sadness. But also beauty. And so many other things, too.

We can play favorites and have loyalties to just one experience. But, if we can pay attention and begin to let in more of what’s also happening right now, we open the space of our awareness to embrace more of life. And all of life has something to offer.

All these ingredients together are exactly the things we need as we travel to our next chapters.

-JLK

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A friend of mine posted this photo this morning and it inspired me to write this story…

Mrs. Greene’s Garden

Mrs. Greene lived on the 52nd floor of a high-rise apartment building. Mrs. Greene barely said a word to anyone and when she did, people privately wished she hadn’t, if you catch my drift.

Mrs. Greene wasn’t known for her lovely demeanor, but she sure was known for her lovely balcony garden that could be seen clearly all the way down on the ground floor.

Mrs. Greene loved to go out onto her balcony and tend to this beautiful garden of hers. And oh my, was it lush, with plants grown from cuttings she’d collected from nearly every garden she’d spent time in over the entirety of her existence.

Directly above Mrs. Greene’s apartment on the 53rd floor, lived Ms. Celia Tolliver and her six year old daughter, Sheila.

Celia Tolliver always wished for a garden like Mrs. Greene’s, but she sighed and settled for the barren slab of concrete that supported the couple chairs and table she’d managed to find the year before discarded on the curb.

Truth was, Celia Tolliver could barely find the time to do much else other than cook, clean, get her child to day care, go to work, pick her child back up, go home, play with her child, have a glass of wine, think about things and try to be grateful for what she did have more than what she didn’t.

One afternoon, Celia Tolliver and her daughter Sheila were out on their balcony enjoying a snack, sharing stories about their day, when her daughter noticed a flower peeking through the slats of the balcony fence. “Look, Mama!”

Her mama leaned down, and sure enough, a most beautiful flower was peeking through, a flower that had grown wild all the way from Mrs. Greene’s garden.

“Now don’t you pick that, Sheila,” her mama said. “That flower still belongs to Mrs. Greene.”

“Oh, Wow! Isn’t Mrs. Greene so kind to share her flowers!?”

Celia Tolliver smiled and kissed her daughter’s head, knowing full well that Mrs. Greene had definitely not shared her flowers on purpose.

This knowledge was culled from the only interaction she’d ever had with Mrs. Greene—the time she’d been so tired and distracted and accidentally got off on the 52nd floor and tried getting into Mrs. Greene’s apartment instead of her own. And though she’d apologized and tried explaining what happened, Mrs. Greene still called the police, insisting she’d been trying to break in.

No, Mrs. Greene was not sharing her flowers.

But she didn’t breathe a word about any of that to her daughter.

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Time marched on, as it tends to do, and Mrs. Greene’s garden continued to grow. And grow. And grow.

“Why don’t you give some of these flowers away,” asked Mrs. Greene’s nurse who visited a couple times a week. “Before long, there won’t be room for you out here.”

“Why should I? They’re my flowers. The fruits of my labor. If other people want flowers, they should grow their own. I don’t do charity work.”

“Whatever you say, Mrs. Greene.”

“Besides, I enjoy them all.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re finding some enjoyment, Mrs. Greene.”

What Mrs. Greene didn’t know was that her garden had not only grown thick, but it had continued to climb up the building, filling not only Celia Tolliver‘s balcony, but the balcony of the apartment above theirs. In fact, Mrs. Greene’s garden had grown from the 52nd floor all the way up to the 64th.

Not only were Celia Tolliver and Sheila enjoying sitting out on their balcony tending to all those beautiful flowers, but so were the neighbors above them. And above them.

But one afternoon, Sheila looked upset.

“What is it, sweetheart?” her mama asked.

“Well, Mrs. Greene has been so kind to share her flowers…”

“I guess so,” said her mama, smiling.

“And we’ve all been enjoying them, but we haven’t even said thank you to Mrs. Greene. Don’t you think we ought to say thank you, Mommy?

“You have a golden heart, Sheila.”

Celia Tolliver didn’t want to discourage her daughter’s kindness so she asked her daughter what she had in mind.

“I’ve decided I’m going to make her a bouquet!”

“A bouquet?! Don’t you think Mrs. Greene has enough flowers?”

“Yes, Mama, but has she ever received a flower from me? I don’t think so.”

So Sheila got busy making her flower arrangement and then insisted her mama call the neighbors upstairs and get them involved.

And by late afternoon, Celia Tolliver, Sheila, and several other children and their parents gathered on the 52nd floor carrying their armfuls of bouquets.

Sheila knocked on Mrs. Greene’s apartment door and waited as the parents looked at each other, skeptical and worried, hoping for the best.

When Mrs. Greene answered the door and saw all the children holding all those flowers, she looked confused. “You’ve got the wrong apartment,” she barked. But just as she was closing the door, Sheila interrupted.

“No, Mrs. Greene. We wanted to thank you for sharing your garden. We used to not have a single flower to enjoy, but you grew your garden big enough so we could all enjoy your flowers! And we decided to make you these bouquets as a gift. We arranged them especially for you!”

It took Mrs. Greene a very long moment to understand what was going on.

“My garden’s grown that big?” she asked.

“Yes, Mrs. Greene, Sheila said. “It’s grown straight up to the 64th floor!”

“You don’t say?”

Mrs. Greene looked startled. But then, as she began to look carefully at the children’s sweet faces, Mrs. Greene suddenly smiled, and felt something she hadn’t felt in many, many years—joy.

“Would you like to come in?” she asked softly. “I don’t have much to offer, but you’re more than welcome to come join me in my garden. I could tell you the stories of where each of these flowers first came from.”

Sheila was delighted, and so she and her mother, along with the other kids and their parents, joined Mrs. Greene in her garden.

“These right here are peonies from my grandmother’s house. Oh, I can still remember planting them with her. I remember the day she gave me a cutting. She told me if I took good care of it, it would never die... Oh, and these flowers were from the house I grew up in, before I had to go to the orphanage after both my parents grew ill. I remembered what my grandmother said, though, so I took cuttings from each flowering plant I loved best... And these flowers, these right here were from my first job at the candy shop. Oh, was that owner kind… I’ll never forget the way he used to let me take home whatever candy I wanted and never made me pay. Not once. And these flowers, these were from the garden of the house I lived in with my husband, before he was sent off to fight in the war and never came back…”

On and on Mrs. Greene shared as if she never shared before, and the children and their parents sat listening, mesmerized.

“I’m so sorry you’ve had so much sadness,” Celia Tolliver said, her eyes tearing.

“Thank you, dear. Funny, I don’t think I realized this until just now, but I suppose I was trying to take something beautiful with me from every place I’d ever been, so I could look back and remember the beauty and not just the heartache.”

“Thank you for sharing your memories with us,” Sheila said.

“You’re welcome, said Mrs. Greene. Thank you for helping me realize how much more meaningful it is to share what’s precious, instead of trying so hard to keep it safe just for myself.”

“We’ll take good care of your flowers, Mrs. Greene. And we’ll make sure to keep sharing your memories.”

“I know you will. And you’ll be making your own memories too!”

After that day, Mrs. Greene began to grow as many friends in her high-rise apartment building as she grew flowers. And they visited often and took the time to share with each other the things that mattered most.

The End.

-JLK

(Photo of two balconies in a building, one of top of the other. The bottom one, lush with flowers, and the top, pretty plain and barren. I’m still looking for the photo credit. My friend doesn’t know, and I’ve had no luck finding out.)

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I was up in the middle of the night thinking how hard it is to keep my lens on—that way of seeing what’s currently going on through my most adult values-based self, instead of the hurt, reactive younger parts of myself—and my mind flashed to those screenslaver goggles from that “Incredibles 2” movie and it made me laugh.

When I’m finding it difficult to cope with a particular challenging moment, it really does feel like some screenslaver is forcing those lenses on me—those lenses that convince me that I’ve got to protect myself from threat, those lenses that block my access to see clearly and respond with

compassion and understanding and flexibility.

In the movie, those screenslaver lenses literally forced people to only see what was happening through that very hurt person who was trying to control everyone and force every outcome because they didn’t have the skills to be vulnerable and communicate what was up.

And in the movie, it took that determined little baby who refused to see his mom as anything but his mom, and so he immediately grabbed those lenses off and his mom returned.

In reality we can’t expect our kids to grab those protective lenses off our faces, that’s not their job.

But when we see our kids—we can let their faces remind us who’s standing before us, those younger people who are still loving who we are underneath our protective lenses, waiting for us to show up and support them with the best parts of who we are.

And once we can really see our kids’ faces, it suddenly gets very clear that they’re not giving us a hard time, they’re having a hard time, or maybe they’re simply trying to manage a ton of energy in an environment that lacks the outlets to do so.

And then we can adjust our agenda from trying to protect ourselves, to being there for them, ready to support who they are with the best parts of who we are, so they can feel safe enough to express themselves along with their concerns and feelings and never need to see life through their own screenslaver goggles.

-JLK

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I’m waiting for my mother’s nurse to pick up. The hospital recording has been on a loop for 20 minutes. “Our hospital is committed to integrity, to the destitute, the sick. Our physicians and nurses have trained at some of the most prestigious colleges in the country. Our patients’ health and comfort is our #1 priority.”

The woman on the recording sounds so clear and passionate. I can picture her in the recording studio. Maybe she had to audition for the part. Maybe she got paid a lot of money to say these things. Finally a nurse picks up. She sounds exhausted. Would never have gotten the part.

“Has anyone been in to see my mother? She’s hysterical and can’t breathe.”

“Your mother is getting a new nurse.”

“But the nurse I spoke with earlier said she was on her way with meds!”

“Someone will be there within the hour.”

“She’s got to suffer for an hour?”

“Someone will be there as soon as they can.”

“That’s not what your hospital recording says!”

The nurse takes a deep breath. “Oh god,” she mutters. Then I hear the phone land on a hard surface.

I know from experience what happens when the recording ends. When the recording ends, individuals take over.

Recordings are usually neat and tidy. Real individuals are not. There may still be a commitment to life, to kindness, but unscripted commitments are harder to decipher. I think because behind the slogans and edited promises, everyone has to deal with their own relationship between the way we are told things are going to be and the way things are.

My mother for example has a slogan that goes something like: I am a strong as shit individual with impeccable judgment. And she often is. But behind the scenes, in the moments of reality when whatever pain sets in and there’s no one around to slogan to, she cannot handle her anxiety and has a tendency to drink herself nearly to death and wind up in the hospital on life support.

Me, for example, when I’m writing this, I’m pretty grounded in my ideas for about 10 minutes at a time. But in between those moments, when the vastness of everything collides with the tininess of who I think I am, when my insane restlessness causes unbearable pain, I clench, and then go to places like Amazon to look for things to better organize my pantry.

I think of the nurse, obviously in no mood to hear about slogans. Perhaps she hasn’t slept in days and has been taking care of so many sick and destitute people that she has not been able to take care of herself. Maybe I caught her at one of those moments when she didn't have enough energy to pretend to be a spokesperson for anything. Who knows what people have to deal with behind their job descriptions.

There’s the slogan, and then the fractaling inward to a more intimate reality, to those minutes in secrecy behind all closed doors, where there are individuals dealing with themselves and other individuals.

My mother's neighbor has visited my mother every day in the hospital. He cares about my mother. And yet, he’s the one who gives her the vodka. He says he figures if she doesn’t get it from him, she’ll get it from someone else. He doesn’t think of himself as being a bad person, he’s just doing what he does based on the equipment and experiences he has.

Just like the woman who called from the Special Olympics on the other line who got upset with me because I didn't have time to listen to her slogan. “Thanks a lot,” she told me. “Now I won’t meet my quota.”

I laughed to myself thinking I must be attracting every fed up person in the country. And I couldn't wait to dismiss her as horrible, to throw her in that bin in my mind where ridiculously horrible people go. But if I dismissed everyone for being horrible, who would be left? Not even me. And I wouldn’t be able to call anyone to commiserate with, because they’d all be in my trash can.

I think my expectations for people were learned from television. I grew up on television. Life on television always had a beginning, middle and end, applause and credits. People on television were always who they said they were and if they weren’t everyone would band together and help get them back.

I remember when the television shows would end, resenting the real people around me for not being recognizable from one day to the next. What I didn’t realize was that the people on television were dependent on a budget, on someone to write their lines, on rehearsals. I didn’t understand that in real life people were dealing with their own thoughts and doing their best to express them in some manner that didn’t get them made fun of, divorced, in jail, or all alone.

In reality, things are messy. In reality, the judgments we make of each other are judgments based on each other’s slogans and worldly circumstances.

I think of this wealthy relative of mine who says things like, “I feel so badly for your mother. It’s so sad.” And then I think of my mother who says about this same person, “That poor sap. I am so grateful not to be her. She’s never had to survive any sort of malignancy. She’s just so blasé. So benign.”

Sometimes I don’t think we really know each other. At best, I think we know our experience of each other. Or maybe, just our experience of ourselves experiencing each other. Perhaps the only way to really and truly be neat and tidy is to admit that we're not. When we are honest about our shortcomings, maybe then we become real. And when we’re real, maybe then we can be there for each other in ways that don’t disappoint as much.

-JLK

(This piece is part of my podcast, A Woman Called Mother, where I share stories and essays about my mother who tragically passed in 2016, and where I share stories and essays about what it’s like being a mother myself.)

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Sometimes at night, the part of myself that knows more than the rest talks to me through my keyboard. This is one of those conversations.

Of course you avoid your feelings. You were raised by people who avoided their own feelings and then avoided yours bc that’s all they knew how to do.

But now all your accumulated feelings are sitting inside your body and you don’t know what to do with them.

You’ve got anger at all these others for creating unsafe spaces that somehow didn’t take your value into account.

You’ve got sadness bc how awful that there couldn’t have just been peace and joy instead of constant diversions of reactivity and collateral damage.

And you’ve got anxiety bc you’re afraid to make changes bc you fear all you’ll find is the same bs.

And you’re so exhausted by all these feelings that you avoid them, bc that’s what you were taught to do with feelings—avoid those inconveniences by working harder to get someplace better, or going on a screen or eating or buying something to at least have something beautiful or sweet or accomplished to make you feel worthy, fulfilled and comfortable in the meantime.

And be clear—there’s nothing wrong with this kind of coping. These are brilliant acts of self-preservation.

But while you’re avoiding your feelings, those younger versions of yourself are still inside of you feeling betrayed. They’re still waiting for someone to sit with them and validate them. And no one’s showing up.

Instead of your body being a community, it’s a container of unresolved upsets and the price is: the stuff deep inside has no way out and the people in your life who want to get close to you, have no access in.

To me, I think it’s important to do the work that your parents were unable to do, and that’s to go toward your upset feelings — not to fix them, but to activate the principal of compassion and connection, in yourself, for yourself.

So many of us think it’s a waste of time to feel our feelings bc what’s the damn point? It wastes time, it’s indulgent. It doesn’t pay the bills or get us anywhere better.

But connection and compassion are values-based commitments—it’s saying that connecting with what’s really going on inside of you, and finding compassion and understanding, expands your awareness of yourself, creates connection with yourself, helps you discover what’s most meaningful to you, and inspires you to share these things with others.

It’s creating connection and compassion for the sake of valuing connection and compassion.

So when you have difficult feelings taking up a lot of space inside, and you start figuring out how to fix things outside of yourself to make yourself feel better by putting your foot down, or investing in changing other people, or avoiding the discomfort altogether by buying something, eating something, or planning for a different future on the other side of the planet, tell yourself:

“I give myself permission to feel this. To feel all of this—the feelings as well as my ways of coping with all these feelings.”

And repeat this like a mantra: “I give myself permission to feel this.”

This will help you shift from resisting the feeling, which never works to eliminate feelings anyhow, to actually being there for yourself, the way you wished your parents would have been there for you when you were scared and crying in the middle of the night but instead of investing in connection and compassion they said, “Toughen up and calm down. You’re being selfish. Not everything is about you.”

It’s not other people’s trash that you’re carrying.

It’s your disappointment, the betrayal, the unsafe feelings, and the sadness that their behavior caused, compounded over time with each additional hurt.

Give yourself permission to feel it all. And just be there to witness it all without trying to fix it.

Give yourself the time and effort to process your feelings, bc those feelings will teach you a lot about what you need to feel safe, what you need to feel happy, and what you need to feel connected and supported.

You can begin to develop that connected relationship you’ve been longing for by giving yourself these things in the face of your own upset, instead of taking that list of grievances and handing them out to all the people in your life who you wish would be there for you.

Connecting with yourself with compassion for yourself will soothe your discomfort and you will begin to develop a trusted relationship with yourself. Bc you’ll begin to trust that there’s always someone you can count on. That someone called you.

And then, when your kid is upset, instead of avoiding his feelings, you’ll remember that part of yourself that has learned to witness your own feelings, and that part of yourself will now be available to witness your kid’s feelings.

So instead of letting that cycle of avoidance continue, you’ll be merging into a new lane, where the commitment to compassion and connection are valued above everything else.

-JLK

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If a parent’s feelings get hurt by their own kid’s behavior, and the parent withholds their love from their kid or tries to match the behavior to show the kid what it feels like, it creates a very unsafe, confusing, and dysfunctional dynamic for the kid.

Bc the kid is just trying out what to do with their words and feelings and is looking for a safe space where an adult is present and regulated enough to guide them with wisdom, love, stability and values.

When a parent reacts to their kid’s behavior as if the kid is somehow supposed to know how to manage their parent’s feelings when they don’t even know how to manage their own, it can create a lot of stress and anxiety for the kid.

It’s not our kids’ responsibility to soothe our adult feelings. It’s our job to soothe theirs.

It’s problematic when parents behave as their younger selves with their children.

Adults who are led by their hurt younger selves may not respect their kids’ boundaries. They may take everything personally, they may make jokes when the child is looking for a solid emotional safe presence, or hug or roughhouse when the child has said they don’t want to be touched.

What this does is make the kid nervous around that parent. The kid worries who they’re supposed to be to get the parent’s love, and they may avoid that parent bc they don’t feel like laughing at the jokes or getting hugged just to keep the parent’s feelings from getting hurt, or, being met with defensiveness if they ask the parent not to behave that way. (“What? I was only trying to love you.”)

To me, it’s so important for parents to walk through the door as their most healed self, not as their most hurt younger self.

Because otherwise, the parent’s hurt younger self might experience their kid’s developmentally appropriate immature behavior as an attack, and punish their kid bc it hurt their feelings.

When a parent can access being a solid, available, thoughtful presence in the face of their kid’s ‘difficult’ behavior, what they’re doing is role-modeling to their kid how to be a solid, available, thoughtful presence in the face of stress.

When we can see our kid’s difficult behavior as communication, we can choose to respond: “I wanted to remind you, that no matter what, I’m here. No matter what, I’m on your side. No matter what, I’ve got your back.”

They’re already having a hard time, we don’t need to make it harder. We can go into more detail about what happened once the kid feels safe.

-JLK

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If you grew up around a lot of people who dominated your world with their perspectives, you probably learned to see through many lenses in order to function in their worlds—to either avoid their punishment or earn their love and approval.

But the consequence of growing up like this, is that your own perspective likely got lost. And when you’ve lost your own perspective, it gets very difficult to know which lens is the ‘right’ lens to see through.

People in this predicament may slideshow through every lens that’s been forced upon them, and feel confused about which one is the accurate picture of reality.

And this confused and exhausting feeling, is what I call Lens Sickness.

People in this predicament become so attuned to other people’s perspectives in order to survive being around them, that they may even come to the conclusion that these people actually have a point.

But even if they do have a point, their point is not necessarily for you.

That’s the thing to learn. Everyone has a valid point for who they currently are in their ongoing journey through life, but not everyone has a perspective that includes more points than just their own.

And to me, this is what separates quality people from those other people who are out there battling with their blindspots and causing collateral damage by trying to dominate everyone around them bc they’re still trying to survive a childhood where they felt constantly dismissed and invalidated.

To heal from Lens Sickness, a person needs to find a lens that allows them to see a clear picture of what’s happening, with themselves included in that picture. And in my opinion, finding the right lens can only be found through developing one’s own perspective.

It took me awhile to realize that I actually have a self that’s mine that I developed, that experiences and understands life like no one else.

I had thought this self of mine was a sign of arrogance, that it was meant to be kept secret. And I assumed it wasn’t welcome in the world bc no one ever invited me to share it, and if I did, I was immediately mocked or proven wrong.

I had to figure out on my own that being alive is the invitation to share myself. That my perspective through my own lens matters.

To me, it’s so important to find and create spaces for our perspectives to be shared and received. Maybe it’s through writing or teaching or art or community service, or through genuine conversations with our kids or even with people we’ve just met.

Whatever medium a person chooses, what’s most important is that we get used to representing our perspectives out loud.

Instead of enduring the discomfort that comes from allowing another person’s point to dominate our own, or turning into one of those blindspotted individuals that tear up spaces, demanding to be heard and listened to, we can practice representing ourselves peacefully, as an invitation for others to understand us better.

And one way we can share our perspectives peacefully is by first welcoming other perspectives. By validating what’s currently so for the other person without feeling squashed by what they’ve got to say, thanking them for sharing, and then by

sharing where we’re coming from—not as a rebuttal, but as an opportunity to represent who we are and where we’ve come from.

We don’t need to go back to those old spaces from our youth to practice being heard in order to get those people’s agreement either.

The only validation we need is our own.

The weight of yourself in your own body, walking on your own path, and sharing what’s so for you on that path is, to me, how to heal from Lens Sickness. And it’s how to create a place in this world where you can be known for who you truly are.

-JLK

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My mother used to say she never let me be angry. And I understood why. She grew up with such mean, harsh people, she needed me to be happy. And I obliged as best as I could. I wanted her love and learned to be a perfect accessory—I glittered and sparkled and shined. 

But underneath all the right things I learned to say were my feelings. Even angry feelings. But because I knew my anger wasn’t wanted, it came out secretly, through hurting myself.

It took decades to understand that anger isn’t a bad word. That my angry feelings just needed to be felt and understood. That anger has good things to share, like what feels ok and what doesn’t.

It took decades to realize I don’t need to keep my anger a secret bc I fear it’s an inconvenience to others.

This doesn’t mean I need to fire off my anger like a bomb, it means I can communicate-to-be-understood in a way that lets myself be heard and known.

And now that I have a child of my own, I try so hard to remember to pause when he’s angry before reacting impulsively, because I know I’m wired to try to fix his anger.

And when I do remember to pause and access my adult self, I tell my son that his feelings are important to feel, even the difficult ones. That they have important messages to share. And that if he would like to share what his anger feels like, I’m here to listen.

And when I forget to pause and I react as if yet another person is taking over the emotional landscape and I will not allow it anymore, I try not to wallow in guilt too long. And as soon as I can access my adult self, I go to my son and re-pair the way I always hoped the adults from my childhood would have repaired with me.

-JLK

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If you’ve ever felt a gaze of disapproval for how you’re living your life or raising your kids, chances are, the gaze is coming from one of the foot soldiers of the Supposed-To-Be Army.

It’s easy to find these foot soldiers marching on the front lines wherever you happen to be—the grocery store, school corridors, fb threads, etc.

They’re armed with shame and good intentions.

And if you listen hard, you will probably even hear their echos on the front lines of your own mind.

But what I’m here to tell you, is that there’s no need to defend yourself for how you’re raising your kids and living your life.

Bc these foot soldiers are not trying to upset you. They’re only protecting what they’ve been indoctrinated to protect: the way things have been, aka, the way things are supposed-to-be.

It’s all the stuff they’ve complied with that gives them a feeling of safety and belonging. It’s predictable. Contained. T’s crossed. I’s dotted. And it works for them. And that’s fine for them.

But the truth is, that for many of us, the way things *have* been are not the ways that work for us.

We’ve tried.

Some of us have tried at the expense of our mental and physical health and our kids’ mental and physical health.

But at some point, it occurred to us that maybe we weren’t meant to uphold the way things have always been.

Maybe we’re meant to try something new—to honor our own real experience and the real experiences of our kids and create a life based on that. Which is a very brave thing to do.

So many of us are at the drawing board—we’re creating new ways of relating to each other and new ways of relating to ourselves and new ways of contributing to the world.

We’re healing the trauma we’ve endured from being forced and coerced into the ways things were supposed-to-be and giving ourselves and our kids a chance to thrive based on what’s meaningful to us, based on our own particular values, intelligence, sensibilities, interests and talents.

Things change. Contexts evolve.

Sometimes people just aren’t supposed to do what other people insist they’re supposed to do.

Sometimes people actually have better ideas, ideas that maybe even some of these foot soldiers would benefit from.

But either way, if you do cross paths with one of these foot soldiers of the Supposed-To-Be Army, and you feel that gaze, instead of defending yourself, or worse, looking at yourself or your kid through that gaze, look back at who’s doing the gazing.

See if who they are, is, or is not, your role model. See if their life, the way they handle themselves, what they stand for, is something you’d like to emulate or something you’d like your child to emulate?

Then, look at your kid in front of you, just as they are, and as they’re becoming. And be proud that you’re strong enough to create a new paradigm. Not based on the way things are supposed-to-be, but based on working with the way things actually are. And grow from there.

-JLK

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