Gratitude - ⚡️Kristen Kalp

Gratitude

I’m preeeeetty sure my first words were, “I can do it myself.”

Turns out I can’t, though, and life keeps giving me fantastic people to help along the way.

In order of their appearance in my life:

Thank you to Fred Collins for seeing through me and encouraging the soft, tender creature that has always lived beneath the bravado.

Thank you to Johannah ‘Doey’ Smith, who taught me how to ask the right questions in the right order with great care and courage. Those queries stacked end to end dug the internal tunnels that are responsible for my coaching work.

Thank you to Barbara Kraszewski, who loved poetry with such joy that I felt okay loving it with my whole heart and writing it, too. Thank you to Rumi for writing words that warm my soul all these centuries later, to Tim Lenz for helping me realize poetry lived inside of me, and to Sharon Olds for letting me fall in love with my body, after all.

Thank you to Haunani Kekuna for being the embodiment of what it means to be an elder and wise woman without ever making me feel young and stupid. My most profound thanks for every bit of nourishment you’ve ever provided, particularly in meal form.

Thank you to Doug Boutwell for hiring me to write blog posts and answer e-mails and generally take care of people when I truly believed I’d be terrible at all of those things, but I needed the money, and then I found out I was actually pretty good at those things.

Thank you to Jon Canlas for answering wildly ambitious emails with a simple ‘yes’ and a can-do attitude. (Also thank you for making a book when we could have made money instead.)

Thank you to Jesh de Rox for taking a chance on hiring me to speak when you knew there was a 90% chance I’d fuck it up. Instead, we jumped in the pool and had a fantastic time. Thank you to Bob Goff for making loving everybody look so easy that I’m inspired to think it might not be so hard to love a few more people today. (Okay, one more person today.)

Thank you to Leila Chambers for continuing to hold the vision for Flying Kites, which opened my eyes to a bigger world and changed the way I do life from the minute I set foot in Njabini.

Thank you to Josh Pais, who helped me identify and then shift out of a few destructive ways of being, and to Marie Forleo, who was my business coach for a year. Thank you to Kendrick Shope, Jenny Shih, and Anna Kunnecke for fielding mastermind tangles and for giving me a place to fall down without any shame. Thank you to Vanessa Codorniu, who helped me identify my spirit animal and helped me take the first steps toward being an empath who didn’t hurt all. the. time.

Thank you to Michelle Cormack for designing everything, ever, for a number of years, even on short notice and with little direction.

Thank you to every human who has attended Steer Your Ship: Nicki Behm, Nick McArthur, Jenika McDavitt, Beryl Young, Erin Brule, Michelle Cormack, Lauren Guilford, Crystal Colon, Meera Graham, Nicole Hershey, Tina Heinnickel, Indriana Irawan, Jackie Hutchinson, Alicia Bruce, Amita Rao, Tyleah McGuire, Taryn Barbour, Steph Tanner, Heather Sontag, Laura Harris, Julie Abrera, Krista Trimble, Krystin Rempel, Emily Jaworski, Sarah Prall, and Barbara Pacejka.  You’ve taught me so much about being alive and the transformation that happens when we resolve to show up for one another.  Thank you so much for showing up.

Thank you to Nick McArthur for seeing far more in me than I had guessed was possible, and for remaking my website with Shannon Ksenak that one time, too.

Thank you to Morgan Day Cecil for doing yoga with me via Skype because I was too scared to go to a class in person, and to Ana Forrest for creating a nourishing, balanced, whole-human based yoga methodology.

Thank you to Pixie Lighthorse for teaching the class that made me pick up paint for the first time, and to Tara Leaver for the paintings and the classes that encourage me to keep going in entirely new ways. Thank you to Meri Cherry for showing me how to pick up art supplies and do it for the process: with kids and without, with a dog and all by my lonesome. (If you make it so easy that 3-year-olds can enjoy it, I’m in.)

Thank you to the authors of those books that have changed me, but whom I’ve never had the honor of working with personally: Brene Brown, Rob Bell, Liz Gilbert, adrienne maree brown, and Glennon Doyle, founder of Together Rising.

Thank you to Erin Telford for introducing me to breathwork as both a student and a practitioner, and to David Elliott for founding my breathwork lineage and continuing to teach me ways to hold space for a living.

Finally, thank you to Steve Croce for being the best human I know. Your presence frees me to be softer than I could possibly have imagined, and to share that softness in my work on the daily.