authenticity

we need me to be me and you to be you

Life. What a wild adventure it’s been.

In this moment, where more and more continue to lose their lives to countless injustices,

I am just beginning to recognize and find my own.

What I’m discovering are things I’ve always known,

Yet I’ve purposefully and unintentionally buried these precious gems and quirks deep underground and in disguises,

Due to the responses, reactions, judgments, and unhealed wounds of others.

When I felt unaccepted, rejected, unheard, unseen, or harmed,

I found ways to numb out,

Dissociate,

Dissect,

Deplete,

And create space between myself and the ways in which the world reminded me of how much I didn’t fit in.

That used to bother me—

Actually, more like terrify me,

Causing me terrible anxiety and dread,

Self-harm, and

Singular perspectives lighting up limited directions in my mind.

I’ve lost my true self in that madness more times than I care to count,

And I can’t go backwards anymore. I refuse.

Old mindsets,

Old habits,

Old conditioning—

Not today.

Not again.

Not anymore.

The illusion that I could fit into the shapes and soulless structures of society around me is maddening. I’m grateful I’ve always known, deep down, that there is something more—

It doesn’t have to be this harmful or painful.

The conflicts we create can be resolved. Wounds can heal. We can bridge and build understanding, have enough, be heard, held, safe, and seen. What I lost in myself resulted from a long series of events reinforcing the idea that we can’t all get along—scarcity over abundance, them versus us, drama, complication, power struggles, illusions, lies, rules, and obedience. This was mirrored back to me from every direction, creating a need for conformity when all my soul and heart longed for was community and connection.

I still believe it’s possible—for all of us to have.

I shake my head from side to side.

I can’t,

I can’t,

I just can’t be pulled back anymore.

Instead,

I choose to celebrate all the ways my differences are needed—

My deep sensitivity,

My call to something higher,

My joyful energy,

My independence,

All the ways I am soft in a world that keeps trying to make me hard.

All the ways I can trust what I feel beyond what I think I know.

The chapters and experiences where I didn’t trust myself were the moments I felt the weight of pressure, worry, anxiety, and angst.

When I started trying to follow a script instead of my soul,

I think that’s when I stopped liking myself.

Funny how the world does that to us.

It erodes the essence that makes us "us," blocking and suffocating our individualism—gifts, uniqueness, yoked into our oneness. We should celebrate one another for not being xerox copies of the same model over and over again.

I can’t live like that.

And I can’t impose that on others.

I have tried.

And in my trying, I’ve inflicted harm upon myself and others—both voluntarily and involuntarily.

I’ve found my shadows and shames stem from moments when I silenced my soul and bypassed my gut instincts, which were screaming at me to go another way, make another choice, stay, go, or be.

Thank God for angels—keeping me safe as I opened myself up to harm.

To some degree, I think I thought I deserved it—

The messages mirrored back to me.

Which leads me to where I am today—

Done.

With.

That.

Well, trying my very best, at least.

Noticing.

Paying attention on purpose.

Where does my mind take me?

What do I feel in my heart, my belly, my soul?

Am I listening, or is the tape on loop?

We’re living in a moment where the gravitational pull is forceful on both sides— Reinforcing the ego’s default of separation,

Picking and pulling apart every piece, pore, person, and purpose.

This force can either take us back, repeating,

Or move us forward, evolving.

We each play our part in what leads us.

And where I’ve noticed this gravitational pull back—yet out of me—ego and fear and old ways of being Keri Ann Garcia Kenney,

Not today.

I’m noticing you, depression.

I feel you, anxiety.

Good luck.

Because I own my part,

I know my peace,

And I’m going to keep rooting into what makes me me—

Because, maybe just maybe,

My sensitivities,

My sense of feeling and connecting through my heart,

My ways of being different in my dance—

Just may be what the world needs right now.

Maybe just what I need right now—

To find a new way of living, being, showing up with no need for certainty, but holding the why behind the courage of trying—

Ceaselessly and compassionately trying—

To continue on for the collective well-being,

Without losing my connection to myself in the process.

I am evolving. And it hasn’t been neat, organized, or held to any expectations along the way. It has been authentic, uncomfortable, and confusing—a fusion of divine guidance, effort, will, and hope leading to something better, something bigger, something that can hold us all where we are, with accountability and grace—and forgiveness. So much forgiveness.

We’re going to need it as we continue to wake up from self-inflicted amnesia and the ways we’ve pushed our square pegs into round holes.

They’re not for us.

Never have been.

Never will be.

And that’s okay.

I don’t want to be confined to any edges, and I invite you to consider the same idea, vision, dream.

It can come true.

It will come true.

If we all continue honoring the complexities,

The ways we’ve been dragged and drained into the confines of our minds—trapped, tricked, treasoned—into ways of trying to fit,

Trying to lose the essence that is you,

Trying to forget the weirdness, the wonder, the amazingness that lives deep in our hearts.

I am learning to celebrate the ways I am different.

The ways I cannot march to another’s drum—

Only my own.

And it’s more of a dance,

A flow,

A joy—

That I have forgotten for so long.

Too long.

But not anymore.

Culture, conditions, and circumstances—you tried.

But you do not win.

I do.