#myendof2019 | I haven't Posted Since August...
The last post I put together was in August 2019. I’ve written nothing for myself since then, but so much has happened in that time. Namely the end of 2019. As you may know, 2019 started off with me living in the remnants of my 2018 decision to FUCK ALL THIS SHIT, and quit my job. In addition to saving my sanity, I now, realize that was actually my mind, body and spirit telling me to rest because I was going to need it.
The whirlwind of 2019 left me in a place where I had to genuinely reflect on what is now and what is next. In the top half of the year I was redefining for myself what success could look like outside of the context of a job. It forced to my to define my career by my personal mission and movement, and not by the company or companies signing my checks. Without a job, I was still Kai Deveraux Lawson, culture keeper & truth teller; saying the shit everyone thinks and simultaneously forcing mirrors to the faces those who have the power to make decisions, yet won’t because of (insert every excuse we’ve already seen). I can admit by July 2019, I was back in full swing of swag. I walked into rooms different, I asked for what I wanted more boldly, and I stuck close to my boundaries more tightly than I ever had in my life. Somewhere around July, I was pretty sure I figured life out… That was a rookie mistake.
SOMETIMES, when you finally get your shit together, and you learn how to walk on your new version of settled ground, life comes back around and knocks you right back on your ass, just so it can ask you; did you really learn what I told you to learn?
Like I said, my last post was in August. August 14th to be exact. I was 6 months into a more confidently peaceful headspace, 5 months into a new job, and 8 weeks back from my first time speaking internationally in Cannes, France, and I was strong. Then on August 17th, via text message, my brother had informed me my mother was in the hospital and she had suffered a stroke.
If you know anything about me, I DO NOT play about my family. So that text message took me the fuck out. Every bit of strength and confidence that I had worked so diligently to force back together over the last year, in a moment, left my body. I was shook so deeply, to my core. Much like everything I am learning about adulthood, this didn’t make sense. My mother was 3 days shy of her 59th birthday. My mother had been on a health kick for about 2 years. My mother was just with me less than 24 hours before and she was fine. We even threw bottles of Rosé down our faces in the Hamptons. How does this happen, when my mother isnt done being my mom?
My mother was in and out, but mostly in, the hospital for a total of 8 weeks. In this time she had endured the stroke, a heart attack, heart bypass surgery. While she was physically fighting for her quality of life, I was emotionally fighting to maintain the maturity and stability I had worked so hard to restore. I grappled with a new reality, of mortality and succession. If mom can’t be the mom right now because she needs to be taken care of, that left me in charge. I was not prepared to be in charge, but it was the thing I needed to do.
During this time I was still working full-time, traveling back and forth to Philly, interviewing for an opportunity of a lifetime, flying all over for speaking engagements, and taking some time to cry in dark private corners because I just couldn’t understand why in the entire fuck, life has to be so hard and mean some times. On the outside, everything looked perfect. My pictures on posters, my voice heard on stages, on the inside I was grappling with the idea of what it means to have everything you asked for, when life was never meant to guarantee you the only thing that matters— your life and the life of the people you love. That’s real adult-girl shit and it’s a really lonely space.
So I took the rest of the year off again. Not from work, because by the grace of Judy Jackson, I had finally entered into a working role that wasn’t actually work because it’s my passion. But emotionally, I took the rest of the year off to rest my mind. I didn’t birthday, at least not the way I usually do. I didn’t celebrate thanksgiving, and for the record that is MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY. I also didn’t really do Christmas and I didn’t do New Year. Instead, I took a trip to Thailand, and reflect on my “why”, and I sat in the fact that despite every monster that had been thrown my way in the last 365+ days, it never broke me.
By the end of 2019, I had so much to be grateful for and I wanted to take the time to intentionally sit still and intentionally reflect. So I didn’t write. I observed. I felt. I experienced. I sat my ass down to just BE in the moment, for a moment. And those final moments of the year were perfect. Without worrying about what could have been, and without worrying about what could be, everything was good in that space of now…