Latest / The Karen Kenney Show / THE MISSING PIECES

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THE MISSING PIECES · The Karen Kenney Show

0:01
Unknown: Hey, you guys. Welcome to the Karen Kenney Show. I'm
0:05
really happy to be here with you today, and just please forgive
0:09
me, my brain's a little discombobulated, and I'm going
0:12
to do my best to try to make this helpful to you and also
0:18
helpful to myself, because one of the things I know for sure is
0:22
that everything that I say on this show is also for my ears,
0:26
my mind, my heart, my well-being, as well. You know,
0:30
at the end of the show, I always say, you know, may we leave the
0:36
people, the animals, ourselves, whatever, better than how you
0:39
found it. That's me too. I'm always hoping baby Jesus in a
0:46
walnut shall help me. I'm always trying to leave myself better
0:50
than how I first found me as well. So I'm going to try to
0:55
connect a couple of different thoughts that occurred to me
0:57
over the last last, I don't know, 24 hours. I'm going to
1:02
start, of course, with a little bit of a story, and then
1:04
hopefully some of the stuff that I share will be, will be helpful
1:08
to you as well in some way. So, there was, so we had a death, we
1:14
had a death in the family, and it wasn't a person that I had
1:21
the opportunity to know or to meet, and yet I find myself just
1:28
really deeply sad. So I've been thinking about this, and a
1:33
couple of the things that have occurred to me, and I want to
1:37
share these thoughts with you, because I think that they're
1:40
relatable. I think that other people are going to be like,
1:44
yeah, me too. But this is something, the thing that I'm
1:49
going to talk about today. I, me personally, maybe it happens in
1:52
other communities, or whatever, in other groups of people, but
1:56
for me, this isn't something that gets talked about a lot. I
2:01
think, in a big way, or publicly. So, I'm going to start
2:05
with this, this idea, and like a little story, and then I'll get
2:09
into what, what the hell I'm talking about. So, I think I'm
2:11
going to call this episode The Missing Pieces, and as soon as I
2:16
thought that word, The Missing Pieces, right, it made me think
2:20
of Shel Silverstein's book, so Shel Silverstein is a children's
2:24
writer, but also his books have, I feel like, adults as well, you
2:29
know what I mean. And he had this book that I've thought
2:32
about for a really long time, you might know him for, like,
2:34
Where the Sidewalk Ends or The Giving Tree, or whatever, but
2:38
this, this, there's two books, I think, I think it's two books in
2:41
this series, and the first one is called The Missing Piece, and
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The Missing Piece is kind of like this philosophical fable
2:48
about this little - I call him this little guy, but he looks
2:52
like a little Pac Man. I think of him as like a little rock or
2:55
a stone, and he's like, think of him as a circle who's missing a
2:59
wedge, he's missing a piece of himself, like a piece of pie has
3:02
been cut out, right, like that kind of a shape, and it feels
3:07
this lack, it feels this missing piece, and so it sets off on
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this journey to kind of find its perfect fitting missing piece,
3:15
and of course, as it rolls around, it tries to, like, you
3:17
know, pick up missing pieces, and some of the pieces are too
3:20
big, some of the pieces you know are too small, some of the
3:25
pieces go in backwards. There'll be a piece that gets picked up,
3:30
and then whatever, right? And so it thinks it's finding, you
3:34
know, this perfect missing piece, but once it gets that
3:37
perfect missing piece, it starts to roll too fast, and then it
3:40
can't sing and do all the things it like to do anymore. It's a
3:42
really interesting book about the journey, the like being on
3:48
the journey rather than trying to have this perfect outcome.
3:52
And then there's, I think, there's a second piece it calls
3:55
like the missing piece meets the big O, or something like that.
3:58
But really, why I'm telling you this is this: there's this
4:00
premise of like we're rolling around in the world, right?
4:04
We're just going about our business, we're like trying to,
4:06
trying to do this whole being human thing, this big ass
4:10
experiment in life school that we're in, and a lot of us are
4:14
walking around with like these big missing pieces, and it got
4:18
me to thinking about this idea of trauma, and how, like, you
4:23
know, these days, like, trauma is everywhere. People are
4:26
talking about it, people are using the word wrong. Oh, it's
4:28
traumatized because my, my, they made my coffee wrong. No, no,
4:32
you weren't traumatized by that. Sorry, but it's just a word that
4:36
kind of gets used a lot, and it's thrown along, or thrown
4:38
around a lot. But one of the things that we often talk about
4:42
in trauma is what happened, these things that happened, but
4:48
what gets like the conversation that I think that is often
4:53
missing more often than not is talking about those missing
4:57
pieces, so let me explain, so. I remember when I had Linda Ty.
5:01
Linda Ty is a brilliant teacher and speaker and storyteller, and
5:07
she's a trauma therapist. She's about to start writing a book.
5:12
She flies all over the world, educating people, people, and
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doing psychodrama experiences. Like, she does so much. She's
5:19
incredible. And I've been lucky enough to have her on my show
5:21
twice, and I'll never forget the first time I had her on my show.
5:26
And you can just, if you want to listen to, I highly recommend
5:29
going back and listening to those episodes. I think the
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first one was Our Bodies Hold Our Stories, or something like
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that, but you can just find a Karen Kenney Show, Google Linda
5:39
Ty, T H A I, and I'll never forget talking to her, and all
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of a sudden she said something that I had never ever heard
5:46
before, and she said, you know, trauma isn't just what happened,
5:52
it's not just all like the bad things that happened. So her
5:55
quote was, trauma isn't just what happened, it's also what
5:59
didn't happen that should have happened. I remember when I
6:05
heard that, I was like, whoa, whoa, like, stop. Can you please
6:10
repeat what you just said, not only for my listeners, but like
6:13
I needed to hear it again too. She said, trauma isn't just what
6:17
happened, like it's what didn't happen that should have
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happened, and I was like, oh my god, and it would just like hit
6:26
me like a ton of bricks. It was like, trauma isn't just the bad
6:29
things that happen to us, it's also like the emotional support,
6:34
the protection, the validation, the unshaming witnessing, the
6:41
unconditional love, the, you know, all of it that should have
6:46
happened but didn't happen. So, I think of it like this. So,
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trauma doesn't only result from these bad, tragic, awful,
6:55
abusive, whatever things that happen. Sometimes it's also a
6:59
result of the good things that didn't happen, and so often we
7:06
talk about, we fixate on the events, right? Whether it was, I
7:10
mean, there's a million ways we can get traumatized, right? It's
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like, whether it's a war, or you had to flee your country, or
7:19
somebody got killed, or a parent died or there was a murder or a
7:24
rape or a physical, emotional, mental, sexual abuse. I mean,
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this, there's so many bad things that can happen, and we talk a
7:35
lot about those things, and we talk about the interventions to
7:38
those things, we talk about the therapy for those things, the
7:41
healing for those things. How you can go about like finding
7:45
support groups or seeing a counselor or finding whatever
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you know, but so much less attention is paid to the very
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real and the deeply. what's the word I'm looking for?
8:04
Significant, I guess, effects of what was missing, like, yeah,
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this event happened, this thing happened, we can talk about
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those things, but it's like the things that were missing.
8:16
Sometimes it's called, like, some.. sometimes we'll say,
8:19
like, well, there was childhood neglect. I remember somebody
8:22
talking to me about that, saying that I was.. they described me
8:26
as, as being, being neglected, and I kept, like, looking at
8:30
them, like I always use this example, you know, when a dog,
8:33
he has like a funny sound and they tilt their head, right? I
8:36
was like, wait, what, like neglected, because my ideas of
8:41
neglect, right?
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I was like, well, I had like a roof over my head, like I was
8:46
fed, there were like clothes on my back, you know, like holy
8:50
shit. So a lot of times neglect can be like difficult to see,
8:56
and if you were a kid who like kind of grew up like feeling
8:59
invisible or your needs weren't met, or you weren't allowed to
9:04
have needs, or your distress, or your fear, or your whatever was
9:10
not met with compassion, or kindness, or a listening ear, or
9:13
somebody to console you, or comfort you, or see you, or
9:17
support you, or love you, right, like, like that was a really big
9:20
deal, and again, when we think about trauma, we're looking for,
9:26
we're looking for the presence of these like really harmful
9:29
experiences, but it's also somebody once said it like this,
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I wrote this down, it says neglect requires us to notice
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the absence of the necessary ones, it's like we have to
9:46
notice the absence of the necessary experiences that we
9:51
also needed, you know, so they sometimes call this the trauma
9:57
of a mission, the trauma of omit. And it's they call it
10:01
there's a deficit, there's a deficit that can happen in our
10:04
childhood that really, really shapes us, and it shapes not
10:08
only us, it shapes our behaviors, the way we think
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about ourselves in the world, it shapes our nervous system, you
10:14
know, so well, you know, they say active abuse, or like, you
10:19
know, those big traumatic abuses, and all the different
10:22
ways, of course, it can cause direct harm, but the absence of
10:28
those necessary experiences, like examples, could be like
10:33
being soothed when you were scared, or worried, or upset, or
10:38
like again, you were taught that your feelings didn't matter.
10:43
There was no unconditional love, like all those things, right?
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These things also create these invisible wounds. So, the things
10:52
that didn't happen that should have happened also leave a mock.
10:56
They also have an impact. It's these missing pieces where maybe
11:01
we again we didn't get the emotional support, the physical
11:04
support, the nourishment that we needed, the nurturing that we
11:09
needed, you know, and this can really, this can have an impact,
11:14
and the reason why I'm talking about this, as we go back to the
11:17
beginning of what I said, is that, you know, there are just,
11:21
we, I did, we just had this loss, and I was like thinking
11:25
about, like, well, I didn't know this person, I didn't have a
11:28
chance to meet them, like, and I was so sad, and I was like
11:32
crying, and.. and it occurred to me, it occurred to me that what
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I'm about to say next is tied to this idea of the missing pieces,
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you know, the things that didn't happen that should have
11:47
happened, and now I realize the grief that I'm feeling is for
11:54
the things that now won't happen, because that person is
11:58
no longer in the world, and it's like, you know, there have been
12:03
so many times, maybe you can relate to this, but there have
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been so many times, you know, where I've been out driving, or
12:10
in the car with my sweetie, or whatever it is, and let's say
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it's the holidays, it's around the holidays, like Thanksgiving,
12:17
Christmas, right, so it gets dark a little bit earlier, so,
12:20
of course, you know, I prefer, I prefer a high sun, high light,
12:24
high summer, right? Like, that's my time of year, but when those
12:28
warmer, I mean, when the colder months, the darker months start
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to show up, you know, some of the nice things that help me to
12:35
get through it, you know, and I don't, I actually don't have
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seasonal depressive disorder, those seasonal affective
12:41
disorder SADS, I don't have it, but I crave, I crave the light,
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right?
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I know this, but the reason why I'm saying this is a lot of
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times you drive around in neighborhoods at night and
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you'll see the lights on right around the holiday, you see that
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warm glow coming from the inside and you see all the holiday
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lights up and you see, like, 1000 cars, like, packed in the
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driveway or along the road, because everybody's getting
13:06
together, and everybody's, you know, enjoying the holidays
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together, and there is a part of me that sees that, and what I
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feel like, I, for so long, I was like, why do I get teary-eyed
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whenever I see that, and yes, there's a part of me that is
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like, I love that. I love knowing that families are
13:26
getting together. I love that it looks so warm and cozy, it's
13:29
nostalgic, it's beautiful, whatever. But I also realize
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there's a part of me in there that has like this longing,
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there's like this desire for that kind of like connection
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with family, or you know, just that scene, and who's to say it
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could be a shit show inside that house, right? Everybody could be
13:49
drunk and fighting, who knows, right? Always it's the outside
13:52
looking in, but we have this idea in our mind of what it
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could be like, and I was thinking about this, so we
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sometimes think of this sadness, or this longing, or this grief
14:05
that we're feeling a lot of times. It's like for the things
14:09
that we wanted that never happened for us. You can think
14:14
of it like people call it different things, but you can
14:16
call it like the never life. You know, the never life is the life
14:20
that didn't happen, or the things that didn't happen, those
14:23
missing pieces that didn't happen, and I think Cheryl
14:28
Strayed, the writer Cheryl Strayed, she calls it the quote
14:32
unquote the sister life, right? So think of it like the path you
14:36
never went down, the life you dreamed of having that didn't
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happen, for whatever reason, it just didn't happen, right? It
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never came to be. Your ideas, your dreams, your thoughts of
14:46
how it should be, or you wanted it to be, or whatever. It didn't
14:49
happen. It's the thing that we, we hoped for, or the thing that
14:53
we thought about, or the thing that we dreamed about, or maybe
14:56
for some people it's even like what they expected to happen.
15:00
But wouldn't happen, didn't happen, couldn't happen, and now
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won't happen, and the, the never life is a deep grief, you know,
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it's like, and it could be about anything, it could be about your
15:12
career, like, oh, I always thought I was going to be right,
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I've seen this happen to people who thought that they were going
15:18
to be like professional athletes, people who thought
15:23
that they would be in a different place by now, whether
15:26
it's in corporate or in their career, or somebody who's an
15:31
artist of some kind, a musician, a singer, whatever, a writer,
15:35
right. It's the things that didn't get explored, the things
15:40
that I would say didn't get their time in the sun, the
15:42
things that didn't come to fruition. Maybe it's the
15:46
relationship ended, there was a divorce, or you never had kids,
15:50
weren't able to have kids, or I mean, the reality of it is, is
15:53
that it can show up in so many different forms, and it's
15:57
really, it's really individual, right? Like any grief that I
16:03
might be feeling about those missing pieces, or about the
16:07
never life, the life that didn't happen, or the sister life.
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Cheryl Strayed says that a sister life is like the life you
16:14
didn't live, but could have lived if you had made different,
16:17
different choices, or there had been different circumstances.
16:20
It's, it's, she says, quote, well, I'm quoting, but I don't
16:23
know if it's her exact quote, but it says it's the version of
16:26
you that exists in theory, but not in reality, and I think a
16:30
lot of us, as adults, you know, we sometimes get confused about,
16:34
like, why am I feeling this way, why did that picture, that song,
16:37
that sound, that scene, right? Like, sometimes you'll, I mean,
16:41
mine can be very obvious, right?
16:43
My mother, you know, being killed when I was 12, like, I'll
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sometimes see a commercial or whatever, and there's a mother
16:51
and daughter doing things together, and I just start
16:53
crying, and I'm like, oh my god, because you're thinking about,
16:57
like, for me it's the things that won't happen, and when I
17:01
think about this person who just died, it's like now the things
17:04
that won't happen, I'll never get to meet them, they'll never
17:06
get to be a moment of fill in the blank connection, knowing
17:11
that person, reconciliation for what was possible, for the
17:14
things that never happened that didn't happen, and now can't
17:17
happen, you know, and so, like, I was saying, we'll see, we'll
17:23
see these, we'll hear a snippet of a song or a smell or
17:26
whatever, and we have these feelings that well up inside of
17:29
us, and it's like, yeah, like 5057 year old me can totally
17:34
rationalize it and be like, well, you don't need those
17:39
things, you have a life you love, right? You have your
17:42
sweetie, you have all your furry kids, you do work that you love,
17:46
you have friends that you love, etc. etc. right. And, and yet,
17:51
there's a part of you that there's a kind of grief and pain
17:55
that the quote unquote never life like brings up, because
17:58
you're really aware of what's now missing, you know, I think
18:03
about it. It's like my mother didn't get to see me, you know,
18:06
graduate from like junior high and high school. She didn't get
18:10
to see me go to college and graduate from college, didn't
18:14
get to see me start my own business or get married, or like
18:18
all the, you know, million and one things that have happened
18:21
since, since she's been gone, you know, all these years, like
18:26
45 years, you know, it's just crazy, and it's there's a
18:31
loneliness that comes to this kind of grief, I think, the
18:34
missing piece grief that nobody ever really talks about, because
18:39
I get it, you know, we're kind of told, like, focus on what you
18:42
do have, and I 100% agree with that. Like, we want to be
18:45
grateful for what we do have. We want to be grateful for all the
18:49
dreams that did come true, all the life that did happen. And I
18:54
think we would be remiss if we didn't talk about those
19:00
invisible pieces, those missing pieces, the longing that's still
19:04
there, you know, and it's, I mean, in death can feel like
19:09
this very final thing. It's like, oh, well, now this is
19:12
never going to happen, you know. And sometimes, sometimes we find
19:16
out more about people, we get to know them through talking with
19:20
others or seeing their home or doing research or whatever, and
19:25
yeah, we can still find out and try to fill in some of those
19:28
gaps, fill in some of those missing pieces, but there's also
19:32
going to be this like the longing for the unknown, right,
19:41
this thing that now it's just not ever going to happen, and I
19:45
just wanted to talk about that, because it can, this kind of
19:49
feeling, this kind of grief, call it, and those kinds of
19:53
traumas that we talked about earlier, they can really easily
19:58
be overlooked because. Kind of unseen, and people will just be
20:02
able to just focus on the good stuff, focus on what you do
20:05
have, right? Yes, and we want to be able to, we want to be able
20:11
to kind of give, give voice, I think, to the Neva life, to the
20:16
sister life, to the things that now, first of all, to the things
20:20
that didn't happen that should have happened, you know, but
20:22
also to the things that now won't happen, those missing
20:25
pieces that are never going to be able to get filled in the way
20:28
that you had hoped or dreamed or wanted, and it's a real mourning
20:32
process, right? It's like, first of all, there's grief, grief,
20:36
right? And when I was thinking about this today, like, why are
20:38
you so sad, and I was like, okay, well, again, I can
20:41
rationalize and justify that new grief, it stirs up old grief.
20:46
I was like, yes, I'm like, that's true, so I get it, and I
20:50
was just like, oh, I realized, like, I'm really, really sad now
20:54
for the things that are never going to happen, and so the
20:59
advice that I gave myself, that if you find yourself also
21:02
experiencing this again, whether you're going through, you know,
21:08
a miscarriage, or you haven't been able to get pregnant, or
21:12
you know, again, your relationship ended, or your
21:14
career took a turn, you didn't get fired, or you didn't get the
21:18
job you wanted, or the book didn't sell, or whatever, right?
21:22
You want to buy land, and you want to build a like there's
21:25
1001 ways that we can find ourselves with missing pieces.
21:31
So I was like, okay, number one, what do I want to do with this?
21:34
I said, well, we're not going to push it away, right? We're not
21:37
going to abandon ourselves, right? I just did an episode
21:39
about that a few episodes ago about not abandoning ourselves,
21:42
so I'm like, "Alright, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna abandon
21:44
myself. I'm gonna sit with this, and I'm going to be with these
21:48
feelings, because I want to feel these feelings. And then the
21:51
other thing is, one of the, one of the missing pieces of my
21:54
childhood was tenderness and mercy. I don't think I got
21:57
enough of it. I don't think many of us, a lot of us like mass
22:02
holy blue collar kids, didn't get enough of it. It was the
22:04
whole, we're the whole suck it up and stuff it down kids. You
22:07
know, I'm like, alright, be gentle with yourself. It doesn't
22:10
have to make sense. You feel how you feel. It doesn't have to
22:13
make sense. So, so let's just be with it. Let's be gentle with
22:17
ourselves. Let's be like tender and merciful and compassionate
22:22
with our feelings, and then you know, slowly, and I'm not saying
22:26
it happens quickly, I mean, I can turn things over pretty
22:29
quickly, I've had a lot of experience at this, but it
22:33
doesn't mean that I always should. Do you know what I mean?
22:36
So I'm trying to give myself grace, and I'm trying to give
22:38
myself that space to like sift through the ashes of of the
22:43
never life, the thing that is burned down with with this with
22:46
this death, so it's like, okay, being in the acceptance of it,
22:51
moving towards that acceptance, sometimes it will come quickly,
22:55
right, sometimes it takes some time, and then after that, for
22:59
me, it's always like that question. This is me. I'm not
23:02
saying this is how you should do it, but like step one, let's be
23:06
with it, be with your feelings, sit with it, spend some time
23:08
with it, you know. Be gentle. Number two, be gentle with
23:12
yourself, compassionate, be tender, be merciful, like
23:17
nurture and nourish those younger parts of you that are
23:19
doing the grieving that didn't get what they needed, and now
23:22
are thinking about the things that now won't happen, or can't
23:25
happen, or didn't happen, or whatever, you know, and we move
23:28
towards acceptance, and part of the acceptance, there might be a
23:31
lot of different practices in there, right? Maybe you journal,
23:35
maybe you do whatever, right, maybe you write it down, maybe
23:38
you see, seek therapy, whatever the thing is, but we're moving
23:41
towards the acceptance of this is how it is. A lot of times our
23:45
suffering is coming from the resistance to what actually is
23:49
and what happened, so we're, you know, being with that. And then
23:53
the next step is the one that I always call now what? Yes, these
23:58
things happened. Yes, this is the new reality, whether we like
24:01
it, don't like it, confused by it deeply, and mourning, grief,
24:04
whatever. And then for me, it's always like, now what? And it's
24:08
another way, like this is like, because what happens is when
24:11
we're in the missing piece pot, it's all of the what ifs, it's
24:15
all of the what ifs, what could have been, what didn't happen,
24:18
what we wished happened, it's all those what if that, what if
24:21
I had done that, what if I didn't say this, what if I
24:24
didn't do this. It's like all of that, the never life stuff,
24:26
right?
24:28
But at some point we get to focus on call it new pieces or
24:35
the new dream, or now that this is how it is, now what? What can
24:40
I focus on now, like, where can I put my energy now, or how can
24:44
I reconcile this now, or whatever the thing is, but we
24:47
get to move on, we get to move, and that doesn't mean you get
24:50
over it, doesn't mean you just go like, move on, get over it,
24:53
it's not that, it's like, you know, when I think about, you
24:56
know, we were outside the other day, down in the. And we have
25:01
these milkweed plants, I didn't even know they were milkweed.
25:04
Hello, City Kid, like a few years ago we had these two
25:08
rando, like, like little flowers, tall flowers, and I
25:11
took a picture and I put it on the internet, because, yeah, I
25:14
know I can Google, I know I can Google it, but I like to ask my
25:17
smarty pants friends, so I put it on Facebook or something, I
25:19
was like, hey, hey, nature people like God, and is what the
25:22
hell out of these things? And everybody wrote back, it's
25:24
milkweed, you're so lucky, the butterflies love them, blah blah
25:27
blah. Well, I can tell you that over the next last two years,
25:31
last two years, there's now like a shit ton of them, and we're
25:34
just kind of giving up a portion of our yad to them, because we
25:37
love the butterflies, so we're like, okay, but when we were
25:41
down in the yard looking at him, that was a little side, that was
25:44
a little side quest. I apologize, and I'm back, but my
25:47
sweetie said, 'Look at them, they're all leaning towards the
25:50
sun, and they were where the sun was in the sky. The plants had
25:53
all kind of like turned, and they were like, 'How sunflowers
25:55
do, and they were like leaning towards it. And when we get to
25:59
this, this last step here, the new dreams, the now what that to
26:04
me is like my leaning towards the light. It's like I'm not
26:07
going to run from the dark, but I'm going to drag this darkness,
26:10
these feelings that I have, and I'm going to bring them into the
26:12
light. That to me is like how I think of the healing process. I
26:16
always say I don't want to sit in the shitty diaper, I don't
26:18
want to sit in the pain and the remorse, and the regret, and all
26:22
the stuff. It's not that I can't be with it. I personally don't
26:28
believe in being with it any longer than I need to. Like,
26:33
it's more like, and it doesn't mean that it doesn't still flash
26:37
in my mind, or things don't come up. I'm not like wiping my hands
26:41
and tying these things into neat little bows. I don't think life
26:44
is like that. I think there's always going to be like residual
26:49
grief. I think that's just the way it is, right. Life is life
26:52
is intense, a lot of things happen, but what I'm saying is,
26:55
at some point we turn back towards hope and we start to
26:58
turn towards what could be, right? So, instead of that never
27:02
life or that sister life or those missing pieces, we start
27:05
to create the new life, a different life.
27:09
I can't always say if it's going to be better or not better, but
27:13
there's still, there's still so much to look forward to, and so
27:18
I hope this has been helpful for you in some way, I mean, for me
27:21
it was really about just acknowledging that there's these
27:25
lonely kinds of grief about grieving the life that didn't
27:28
happen and now can't happen, right, but it's also right that
27:32
trauma, because trauma is not just the bad things that
27:36
happened, it's also the good things that didn't happen that
27:39
should have happened, you know, and it could be everything from,
27:42
like, you know, if you're a little kid and you're a child
27:44
of, like, divorced parents, and one parent is supposed to pick
27:47
you up on certain days of the week, but then they would just
27:49
ghost you, or they were, like, deficit dads or missing moms, or
27:53
whatever the thing was, and they didn't keep their word, or they
27:56
always let you down, or whatever it was, you know, there's really
28:00
real, I mean, there's really real and significant effects to
28:03
the things that are missing. So, my hope for you, you guys, is
28:07
that you start to find those missing pieces within yourselves
28:13
and within your hopefully loving and fruitful, and what's the
28:19
word I'm looking for, reciprocal relationships, healthy
28:24
relationships, where the love you give is also the love you
28:26
receive. This is how we heal. We're not islands, we don't heal
28:32
on our.. we, I mean, not that we don't have the capacity, our
28:34
bodies can heal on their own a lot of times, and I think a lot
28:38
of times we can do the work to heal, quote unquote, ourselves,
28:42
but I also think that it doesn't happen in a vacuum. I do think
28:45
we need each other, and I do think this is one of the
28:47
greatest gifts of, like, good family and good friends, is that
28:51
we, that we help each other on our healing journey, and
28:54
sometimes it's just somebody's very present presence, somebody
29:00
who can really be with you, who really sees you, can listen and
29:04
can support you and love you. So, if you are in a season of
29:09
mourning the never life, or if you are in a season of mourning
29:13
the things that should have happened that didn't happen, you
29:15
know, if you didn't have an unshaming witness, if you didn't
29:18
have somebody to protect you, if you didn't have family members
29:22
to step in to stop it, if you had people who everybody just
29:25
turned a blind eye, you know, 1001 ways where we harm and hurt
29:30
each other. My heart is with you, and I'm sorry, and I'm
29:33
hoping that you know that you know I always say this, like
29:39
just to my example of this person who I didn't get to know,
29:41
who, who died, and I'm grieving that, you know, it's like I
29:45
don't have to know you, quote unquote, personally, like we may
29:48
have not have met in real life, but I still care about you, and
29:53
I still love you, and if you're out there and you feel alone,
29:56
just know that there's another person in the world who I. Hold
30:00
you in my thoughts, even if again I've never met you, or
30:04
whatever. My love, my love extends to you wherever you are
30:08
in the world. And I hope that you can sit with yourself and be
30:12
gentle with yourself and your feelings, and as time allows,
30:16
and tools are available, and you have hopefully a soft, gentle
30:20
listening ear, that there's an acceptance to the things that
30:23
have been missing, and now we can go about to finding and
30:27
filling our own missing pieces in a beautiful, in a beautiful
30:32
and loving way. So that's what I have for you today, guys. Thank
30:36
you so much for being here. I super duper appreciate you. I
30:40
never take for granted that you're spending some time with
30:42
me, whether we're in the car together or walking your dog or
30:45
out in nature, or wherever you're listening to this or
30:48
watching this. Just thank you for spending some time with me.
30:51
I really appreciate it, as always. Just go to my website,
30:55
Karen kenney.com if you want to get on my mailing list. I'd love
30:58
to have you join us.
30:59
If you want to find out what kind of shenanigans I'm up to
31:03
with Right Club and yoga classes and Thai yoga body work and the
31:07
nest and working and mentoring or coaching, if that's your
31:10
thing. This just, you can find me, Karen kenney.com And just,
31:15
thank you for so, for being a part of the Karen Kenney Show,
31:18
our little community. I really appreciate it. Okay, wherever
31:22
you go out in the world, may you leave the animals and the planet
31:27
and the other people in yourself better than how you first found
31:30
it. Wherever you go, may you and your presence and your energy
31:34
and your love and even your missing pieces, right, the parts
31:38
of us that we are slowly, I always say gradually, but
31:41
inevitably, healing. May it be a blessing. Bye bye.