Kent: Crying for Generations
Kent grew up in the northwest and came to the medicine this year. Well spoken with lots of gratitude, he shares the story of his traumatic lineage and what it has been like to dive into the heart, feeling the tears of generations before him.
I feel like I went through a phase of having a tremendous amount of anger in my life. Maybe I was angry at myself, angry at others—just anger coming from almost an unknown place. And that anger is really dissipating. It's really leaving.
After the ceremony this weekend, I went into Monday with a heart that was so open and vulnerable, just on the verge of tears in the best way. Showing up in the world like that is pretty amazing.
Not being scared of it, not feeling like I have to protect myself from my vulnerability, but being able to go downtown and just show up with an open heart—even if it feels like I might start bawling. It felt really good.
To bring the open heart wherever we go, without our old defenses, is how we're ushering in a new and beautiful world.
I definitely felt that after the ceremony. My heart was completely cracked wide open, spilling open with all this old stuff leaving and all this new, beautiful energy entering. It was overwhelming.
I mean, I was just crying, you know? And it was probably all the emotions that lie behind tears—I was probably crying them all out. Happy, sad, mad, glad—it was all present. And I was there for it.
It felt really good to just be present, not run from those feelings, and just dive deeper. One of the practitioners told me, when I was crying a lot, “Instead of crying out, what if you took that energy and breathed deeper into your heart? Instead of taking the energy outward, what if you took it in and went deeper?”
That really struck me, too.
When I think about that, it almost puts me on the verge of tears. It really does—to go deeper into who you are, how you feel, how your heart is opening, and how it yearns to be more open again. Not only for you, but for everybody around you. I think it's one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves.
In that moment when you were being directed to take a lot of energy and direct it inward to the heart, what did you find?
I found the biggest sense of peace and relief in my entire life. I could stop the struggle, stop the striving, stop the proving, stop wearing the veneer or the facade, and just allow myself to be me.
Even though I didn't really know this new version of me, I could be okay with the unknown and welcome it. In some ways, not knowing is knowing. In a word, it was relief.
The deeper I went, the more tears there were, and the more joy and relief showed up. It's hard to put words to what happens when you break through like that. And I felt like that's what I was doing.
I was breaking through these old patterns, these beliefs, these thoughts—all these things in my head. I was moving them from my head into my heart, and then deeper into my heart.
I often hear it said that the longest journey we take as humans is from our heads to our hearts. It's been a long road for me, but I'm happy that I'm still on that path and that I'm deeper in that heart space.
You have quite a bit of history and story. How would you define that struggle?
Everybody has some sort of adversity they live with. Some are conscious of it, some aren't. I think a lot of what I dealt with early in life was just right in my face.
I had a very bad accident as a kid. I accidentally drank paint thinner when I was 18 months old and was hospitalized with chemical pneumonia. From there, it was just trying to piece life back together.
When I was nine years old, my grandmother killed herself on Easter. When I was 19, my dad dove out a window. He survived, but he lived with mental illness his entire life. I dealt with an immense amount of trauma, post-traumatic stress—you name it. It was all loaded into this vehicle. I packed this vehicle so full of stuff, consciously and subconsciously, with all these things.
In the last year, I really came to realize how huge this generational trauma piece was. It wasn't necessarily just the things I experienced in my own life with my grandmother and my dad. It was what I was experiencing in quiet moments when I thought about all the generations that came before me, and all the things that maybe white men of European descent may have done to themselves and to others—all these things.
Once I started realizing all of this, I had trouble reconciling it. I didn't know what to do with it, but I knew I needed to make some sort of attempt to clear it out of my being, to somehow clear my field, clear my channel.
Even before I found Aya, I started visualizing whether there was a way I could become more of a beacon of light and a beacon of hope for those who came before me and those who will come after me.
Then, through Aya and different ceremonies, particularly this most recent ceremony, I went in with the intention that I was going to do this—that I was going to attempt to let this go.
When we were sharing our intentions before the ceremony, I couldn't even get through mine because I was crying so many tears. And I knew these tears weren't mine. They were coming through somewhere else, through the lineage.
I felt like I was crying for generations. I had such a clear intention that I wanted to heal this bloodline. I needed to. I had to. There was no other choice.
I feel like I didn't heal it all the way, but man, I made a huge dent in it.
And I know how to do this more now. I know how to get to this place, and I know how to work with it so I can continue doing this—not only for me, but for future generations and potentially for those around me, too.
I look forward to exploring this more: this generational trauma, unraveling it, being radically honest about what happened in life, and showing up with love, forgiveness, peace, and empathy—to find more joy and bring more light to this world.
You were flowing with gratitude on the other side of both nights. And even this week, it's really been a reflection of what you described as coming home—both to yourself and to other people who see you.
Yeah, I'm tearing up right now.
Flowing with gratitude, for sure. I said it over the weekend: due to circumstances in life and all the things, I've been in relationships throughout my life, but deep down, I've just felt really alone.
I feel like being in this community for such a short time has given me a lot of eyes and ears—people who see me and inherently understand me.
It's a relief to be seen, validated, and understood on all levels. And I mean that. It's very strange.
These are connections I never really thought existed, or that I could ever get to or find. But somehow, I found them. And thank God, because it's life-giving in so many different ways, including ways I can't explain.
I'm very lucky to have found you guys. I mean, I could cry right now and cry for a long time. Yeah. Very, very cathartic. But I've been in that space all week, in and out of the tears.
Speak a little bit to what you feel this third act is for your life.
I've been thinking about that a lot. I turned 62 in February. That's hard for me to believe. In some ways, I feel like I'm aging backward. At least I like to tell myself that I am.
You know, that “third act”—I wish I could take credit for that. I recently heard Jane Fonda talk about the third act and how life is really split up into threes.
For me, what's really resonating is that I know I'm well on the path to healing myself. I've spent a lot of time—60-some-odd years—working on me. And it's almost like I'm getting to a place of, “Okay, enough of me.”
I'm done with me. I'm not fully done, but I'm healed enough that I really want to help others. I have a deep desire to help others in some form.
I'm not sure what that's going to look like, but that's really what I feel I'm being called to do. It's what I think about consciously, and it's how I live my everyday life, even in the mundane things I do.
I just try to be kind along the way. I try to be helpful. I try to meet people where they are.
I think those everyday practices are only going to be amplified into something else. I don't have a vision for it yet.
It's interesting not to have a full vision or picture of what it needs to be, because I spent most of my life trying to be in control of those things.
This feels a little more like, “Okay, now that we've come here, can you find the faith and trust in the universe to let it show you? Can you see some signs along the way? And then you'll know.”
That's what I'm trying to work toward: having that trust and that faith.
Following the nudges, the deep listening, and letting it be emergent—which is much more exciting anyway.
Yeah, exactly. I think when things emerge organically from our hearts rather than our minds, that's more of the divine speaking through us instead of our brains trying to overanalyze what it should be.
It's that shot to the heart. You have that inner knowing of what it is inside you—not in your brain, but in your body. And I think that might mean more.
Probably means a lot more.
Is there anything else you feel within you that you would want to share with the community of SOULS?
Yeah. Well, I've said this so many times: the amount of gratitude I have for you guys, your team, what you're trying to do, what you're trying to build, the hope you're giving people, and the hope you've given me in such a short period of time—I just can't thank you guys enough.
It sounds really cliché as I'm listening to myself right now, but it is just so profound. I'm kind of in awe.
I'm looking at this and thinking, “Is this some sort of trick? Is this magic? What is going on here? What world is this?”
But whatever world this is, it resonates with me so deeply. I think this community is one of the best-kept secrets I've ever seen, or ever been privy to.
It's like, “This club—how'd you get invited to that?” How did I get invited to this?
I can't imagine trading an experience like the one I had this past weekend for anything. It was one of the best days of my life. I wouldn't trade any amount of money in the world for the experience I had last weekend. I mean that. I really do.
These are things you have to experience for yourself. That experience cannot be purchased, traded, consumed, or negotiated. There's no stock option for this. You just have to show up with your heart.
This community is amazing. I'm glad to be a part of it. I want to attend more sessions. I'm not sure what the future holds for me, but I think you'll probably see a lot of me floating around here—in every sense of the word floating.
