Finding Kindness in Chaos and Darkness | Jaclyn Lindsey

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It was within a couple of years where rock bottom had been hit a couple of times. And, uh, I was becoming more and more aware that life was very fragile. And I saw mortality more often than I would have liked. And I do sit here today feeling very lucky to be alive. And the things that I came out of, you know, yeah, people weren't sure.

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if she'd make it to 21 kind of thing because of how much I was spiraling. My guest this week is Jaclyn Lindsey. She's the co-founder and the CEO of kindness.org. And we were connected through our mutual friend, Robert Peterpaul. So thank you, Robert. Jaclyn's journey is really a powerful story. And in her early years, she found herself on pretty tumultuous path. It was full of bullying, substance abuse.

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and really self-destruction. A painful adolescence and a troubled identity really threatened to overshadow this passionate, world-changing spirit that she always felt that she had. But it was this very struggle that set the stage for a transformative journey, one towards faith, resilience, and change. We can see how, despite her troubling early years, she managed to turn her life around, using her experiences to fuel her current mission of promoting kindness,

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and compassion worldwide. This conversation is raw, honest, and it really underscores the potential for change within each of us. Our past does not define us, but it really shapes us. And sometimes it takes just a single act of kindness to spark a life shift of monumental proportions. When I was finished having this conversation with Jaclyn, I was.

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so moved by the journey that she went on, the ups, the downs, the ups again, the downs again and finding the space that she's in. You wouldn't know it by listening to her at the beginning of this story and how kind she feels, but she really had quite a tough journey in her life. And so I hope that when you listen to Jacqueline's story, you feel inspired that even in our

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there is an opportunity to move through it to a space that feels real and helpful and kind to ourselves. Before we jump into this episode, of course I want to thank my Patreon members that are supporting two episodes every single month. This is the top tier on the Patreon, and I'm so honored that Traci and Miki and Emily have chosen to help and support this show.

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covering production costs and trying out new tools and those kind of things. So if you'd like to directly support the Life Shift podcast, head over to patreon.com slash the Life Shift podcast, and you'll be able to see all the different tiers that are offered there. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Jaclyn Lindsey. I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is The Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

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Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift podcast. I am here with Jaclyn. Hello, Jaclyn. Hi. We are connected through someone that I want to call a friend. I don't know him very well, but after having conversations on this podcast, I feel like I know everyone really well. And so Robert Peter Paul connected us, and I was really honored to have a conversation with him about...

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the loss of his brother when he was younger and how that formed his life and the things that he does now. And I love that you two are connected. So thank you, Robert, for connecting us. Yes, thank you, Robert. It's so fascinating to me because we were talking before recording, you know, like most people that listen to this show know that I don't do a lot of research because I just want like this vision that I have for this podcast is kind of like the people listening.

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have just walked into a coffee shop where two strangers are having a conversation for the first time and really just discovering something and having honest questions that may not be the questions they always get, you know, may not be the thing. So thank you for wanting to be a part of this journey. Thank you, I'm honored to be here. You know, and it all stemmed from, and I think your story is gonna be really relatable to a lot of people, I think. I don't know enough, but I'm guessing.

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And it all really started because when I was eight, my mom was killed in an accident. And of course, that moment changed my life. But the 20 plus years that I struggled to grieve her loss, I felt so alone in that circumstance. And I knew logically that I wasn't the only person going through that. But I think sometimes as humans, we keep these harder moments or we keep these things that like...

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Can I share this publicly? Is it something that people are gonna accept? And then, you know, we feel so alone in it. So I think your conversation today will help people that kind of maybe feel a little alone in their circumstance, feel a little bit more empowered to kind of talk about it and share it. So again, thank you for that, or what we're gonna talk about. Absolutely, and I hope that's the case. So before we jump into your story and kind of give the backstory and stuff, I'm wondering if you can just tell us who you are right now and what you do.

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and I don't think it'll give away too much, but just give us a like what you are right now. Yes, I'm Jacqueline. I'm a human sitting in St. Petersburg, Florida. I am co-founder CEO of a nonprofit called kindness.org. I am a wife to a brilliant, beautiful husband, my husband, Mansell, a mom to two beautiful, brilliant little boys, global citizen, advocate of changing the world. That's who I am.

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I love that. And I think, well, I wonder if you're, I'm interested to see if your story leads into why kindness.org exists and whatnot. So I like to have kind of, I know I'd love to see the before and after kind of of these life shift moments. So maybe you can kind of paint the picture of what your life was like leading up to what you feel is the most pivotal moment in your life that kind of changed Jacqueline from who she was to who she is.

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Okay. So I have memories, my youngest memories as a little girl, just knowing I always wanted to help people and change the world. My grandparents would talk about, as an eight, nine-year-old, me coming over for dinner, telling them how I would be first one president, and outlining my plan to help people, and could I count on their vote? And that just felt like my hard wiring.

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And over time, as I got older and then middle school, high school years started, things started to change. I went through a lot of bullying and very difficult, painful experiences that made it hard to know who I was. I definitely now on the other side understand a lot more of child psychology and what we're going through during those formative years. At the time, I would say I lacked the tools.

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understanding to navigate all of the hardships. And before I knew it, I was a young teenager that had gone from thinking I would change the world to being really engaged with extra activities, if you will. So drug use and drinking and partying and doing a lot of other things like petty crime type things. And so much of it was a means to escape.

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and I, or to fit in, to be confident, to feel good about myself. I didn't realize how much I was covering up the pain and running away from what was going on day to day at school and what I was experiencing from those around me. That today would be called bullying, you know, really traumatic things that I can now say that.

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post counseling. But at the time, again, and I think even back back then, this was 30 years ago, it was like, Oh, that's part of growing up. I think even our narrative around these things has evolved so much for good, certainly. So yes, leading up to my pivotal moment, I was lost. I was a drug addict. I had been expelled from high school. I had overdosed by 19. I had a full ride to school.

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college and I had lost my scholarship. I was broken. I had no idea who I was when I looked in the mirror. I was just really lost. I was really lost. I mean, I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling of like, you know, if you're being bullied and things are being told of you that probably aren't true, or you're being made to feel othered.

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then you actually feel like inside that escape, a lot of us would go down those roads to kind of get that acceptance. And you kind of alluded to that. Do you feel that a lot of that rebelling was like seeking some kind of attention from the wrong people so that the other piece would stop? Yeah, it's a great question. I think absolutely, yes, that's a component. I think it's also being naive, like not not.

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uh, having again, like going back to like a framework or the tools. I had very loving parents. Um, they were divorced, but they were so invested into me and so supportive of me. And I told them everything and talked about everything. And yet there was also this chasm where now we've talked through what I was going through back then, but how little they were a part of it and understood what was going on.

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I mean, that generation didn't have the tools to help in a lot of ways. And it wasn't like to their fault. It was just like they were doing the best they knew how to do with what tools they had. And I can see a similar feeling of like the grieving part as a child, like the people around me were just like, just make them happy. You know, like that's what he needs. And so did your parents, like, were they trying to help you in any kind of way? And it was just not serving what you needed at that time.

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Yes, I think they both were doing everything they could in whatever way they could. And yet they'd never fully understood the extent of what was going on deep within me. And I honestly didn't know the extent of what was going on. It was so painful. It was so embedded in my psyche. My hard wiring had changed so much as to what I was seeing when I looked in the mirror and believing about myself.

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And I didn't have words for it. I just had the feeling of pain and shame Driving me every day. Right. So like the drugs and those kind of things were almost like a mask to kind of feel less Mask numb to numb what I was feeling to distract me from what I was feeling. Yeah, it was Anything I could do to not feel That's what I would do. Yeah and escape like you said and you think that most of this I mean

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You said you've gone to therapy and counseling and those kinds of things. Now, looking back on that, do you think that most of it was from that bullying experience? Or were there other factors kind of playing into that? Oh, I think it's the bullying and the web of what comes around it, you know, who you become when you're bullied. I think there's a lot of ways you can navigate that, but I then began lashing out and hurting those around me. Again, my own...

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way, I think, as a defense mechanism to deal with things. And I do feel like the experiences brought me in front of other people that once you start doing drugs, then you're around a different group of people that are willing to go to greater lengths to do unhealthy things. And so I was getting more and more exposed to very unhealthy, toxic things that no one

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child or teenager should be exposed to. So it kind of becomes like a whirlpool that just kind of pulls you deeper and deeper and it's just like, there's no controlling it now. Did you know, that I'm always curious about this with, I've talked to other people that have had some kind of addiction of some sort, did you know you were not doing the right thing for yourself or were you kind of just rebelling against that feeling as well? I never.

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had the moral compass to realize that this was quote unquote bad. I thought that it was a way you grew up. You were curious. You dabbled. You, you know, saw what the world had to offer and made decisions for yourself. And I think to the idea of frameworks and tools like, I don't think I really understood what this could do to me. Taking drug use, for example. And I certainly didn't feel like there was a lot being done to prevent it. That's interesting. Yeah.

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Yeah, I never, the only thing I can kind of equate to like an addiction, and this is gonna sound really weird, so just go with me, but as a teenager, I felt like I was in depressive states or I would experience depression. And at times, I've admitted to feeling like I was addicted to that feeling, to that pity or that sadness or something, and it was so much easier to stay in that state.

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than it was to become something else. So I can kind of understand like where that just almost becomes this normal thing in which you just kind of keep moving forward. It's a phase of, you know, I'll be fine. I'm invincible. I'm a kid or a teenager. You know, you kind of have that feeling. Yeah. For, for most of middle school and high school, to be honest, I was holding these two, it was like a Jekyll and Hyde, these two.

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ways of operating, which was like by day by night. And so I was still like, captain of soccer team and volunteering. And yeah, I was still doing a lot of things that were good and right, for whatever the world standards are for being good and right. But that's interesting, though, because I think that almost gives us

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validation that the drugs or the things that we're doing on their site, they're not affecting the things that everyone sees as successful. So I'm okay. It's not too far. I'm not, you know, I'm not getting to this place. And it's like, because we've assigned that good grades equal, whatever we've assigned that to this other part, if it's not being affected, then I'm fine. Exactly. Until it is affected. Until until you hit like, there must be a point at which you're just like, okay.

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Now it's serious. Was that like, before you tell me specifically, was it a point where that was serious that led you to your change, or was it like later on down the road? It was within a couple of years where rock bottom had been hit a couple of times. And I was becoming more and more aware that life was very fragile. And I saw

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mortality more often than I would have liked. And I do sit here today feeling very lucky to be alive. And the things that I came out of, yeah, people weren't sure if she'd make it to 21 kind of thing because of how much I was spiraling. I wanted to say like the way that we've had a couple of minutes of talking and the way that you.

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and the way that you speak and the energy that you put out into this world, this early story isn't, like, it doesn't compute for me, you know, like, because it seems like this is quite a change. And so I just want to, like, make note that this just feels like a different person that you're talking about. So this is, I mean, it seems really significant. So just thank you for sharing that because I bet people that you interact with on a regular basis would have known.

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And it's important because we're humans and we make all sorts of decisions and some of them are not great decisions, but sometimes we can make really good ones to kind of fix whatever we were mistakenly doing before. And so it seems, I don't know you well, but it seems very palpable that this is the journey that you've taken. So kudos to you for sharing the hard parts because a lot of us don't, we just share the wins.

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Yeah, taking a lot of work to even be able to talk about it. But it's important because, you know, like, you look back at the younger Jacqueline, you can't really blame her. You can't really blame your parents. It's just like this cycle or cyclone of, of like experiences that just kept like going. And like most people could get caught up in it. It's not like...

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You were the one, you know, like it just happened to be you in this circumstance. So anyway, I'll let you tell your story. I just wanted to let you know that you could see, like it just doesn't make sense, like this version of you in that. So I think it's so great that you're sharing these hard parts, because I think it's important. Thank you, I really appreciate that. Yeah, so why don't you bring us, like, I mean, you mentioned all the things that you were bringing. You were addicted to drugs, you had overdoses, you had...

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dropped out of school or got kicked out of school of some capacity, take us to that point in which your life started to become this version of you.

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So I was very young, 19 to 20, had the experience where I got rushed to the ER after one particularly difficult night, botchress night. And my sister and her husband came to the ER to help me. I didn't know in the moment how bad things were, but they did. And they asked if I wanted to move in with them.

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I was living a wild life. It was the college life too. I think that's the other thing, the narratives we convince ourselves of, of what's acceptable. And that was, it felt very normal to me, very normalized. It was a very normalized way of living. But they knew when they came to the hospital, you know, something needed to change. My health, my life was literally on the line. So they invited me to move in with them. The journey for me is one

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that I never thought I would ever be on, which is one toward faith. I did not grow up in any way spiritual religious. It just wasn't a part of my vernacular or belief system. In fact, at this point, I was in religion classes to learn how to debate people because I was pretty anti all of that stuff. I couldn't under, my whole thing was like, if there was a God, then why? You know, I was that person and my sister had married a Christian.

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And I remember when it happened, I was almost like, we lost her to the dark side. Like I just was like, okay. And that's who asked me to move in with them. And what happened was it was a front and row center seat to seeing unconditional love in a way that I had never heard about, learned about, read about out of church. I think like a lot of people potentially

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listening or anywhere that we can think of the tension of hypocrisy within church and the narrative of like What they say they care about and stand for and what's really being translated to the world never added up And that was absolutely my belief system And then here I was in this home this intimate four-bedroom home where they gave me a room and they gave me

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a bed and they gave me love and it was all under this idea of like, we just want you to know like, doesn't matter what you do, we're going to unconditionally love you. And I did a lot of bad things there. I even though they had picked me up after this night and when the overdose happened and all of that, that didn't stop you. When you're in those places, you're so deep, you're so deep into addiction and you lose sight of everything.

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rock bottom isn't what changes you, or at least it wasn't what changed me. So I brought a lot of those things into their home, drinking drugs, men, and they consistently offered me what I now would call grace and compassion. They never judged me, and instead they just continued to try to be a place that loved me for all of who I was. So it was in that home and with them.

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that I started asking questions like, why are you being so good to me? I'm not used to this. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't making sense. Because, and did part of you think that because you, it didn't make sense because you were still doing the things that now maybe you thought society saw as bad. Exactly. Or unacceptable. Yes, exactly. So why still love me? Yeah, yeah. Were you almost like,

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This is like a side note, but like, I wonder if people sometimes feel that like, I'm gonna test you as much as I can because this is like, almost like a self-punishment. Did you have any of those kind of feelings? Like, I don't deserve this, so let me keep doing it so that you can throw me out like the rest of the people. Not intentionally, but definitely could have been subconscious. You know, I think, frankly, my life was so...

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bleak and lost and I, my decisions every day were just like how to get through the day covering up whatever I was feeling and going through. So I don't even know if I could be so calculated to know if I was doing things for that, but it could have absolutely been like an underlying way of how I operated. Yeah, I wonder, I mean, I just always curious, like, I think sometimes we get used to the bullying of the world and so that we kind of expect it. So we kind of

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prompt it in a way. So that's where that question came from. Not really placing that on you. I don't want you to absorb that, but I feel like sometimes we're weird as humans. We just do weird things. And so sometimes we absorb, like I don't love that feeling, but I expect it. So then I try to create it. Yeah. Yeah, what I do know is I was in a lot of pain and so I wanted to cause pain. Like I do think that I had...

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a very unhealthy cycle being perpetuated that like, I'm feeling this and it will now be how I put it out into the world because this is all I understand or know right now. So, some of the leaders. I mean, they gave you unconditional love and maybe in sometimes it was like you felt it was undeserved in some capacity. Absolutely. Yeah, I think what I started to go through

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I would say wrestling. I was wrestling with my identity, with my life, with my purpose, my why, my being, my mortality. And so I was coming home burgeoning with questions and they brought just endless patience and unique perspective. And then one day I said, why I might come to church with you? Like, I'm kind of curious, like how you can be this way to me.

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and be this like really beautiful reflection and representative of who you say God is. And yet it feels so antithetical to what I'm used to. So I was really curious to learn more. So I began going to church with them. And that was really wild because I would many Sundays show up from like the bender from the night before. And like walk in to meet them, you know, but what started to happen, Matt?

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as I started to feel something change within me. It was an environment where I felt loved and safe. And here I was thinking, the church are the biggest bullies of all in our world. And they were offering me an olive branch to say like, come be here, be loved, don't do anything. You don't have to, we expect nothing of you. And the pastor at that time,

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He had a really similar journey to me, which I think was a huge part of how I felt so connected to what was going on. And I felt unjudged. I felt like I could show up there, drunk, addict, all the things I was going through promiscuity. And he just showed up with his own journey and he's like, it's okay, everyone has a story and all stories.

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are welcomed. And, and so that's where I started to be more open minded to the possibility of faith. I mean, that story about your pastor just sharing a story tells you all we need to know about why you have your podcast, why this podcast exists is because when we can see our own experiences and someone else that's kind of made it to

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another place that doesn't seem so dark and bleak. It creates something in us that kind of like, maybe there's a little match, you know? It's not a full candle. It might just be a match, but then that kind of grows. Do you see that knowing his story too was a big part of that connection there? Or was that just kind of, okay. Oh yeah, yeah, because I think, again, my ignorance, I suppose, was like,

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church people are goody two shoes or they're very pure or they're not willing to be messy and here was someone coming in being like, I did all the things. And he was open about it? Every sermon. Yeah. Well, that's really helpful. It's the connection of the human connection of story. I think it's really important. Were you going in when you first agreed to go or when you first asked to go to church?

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Was your mindset, or if you can think back, was your mindset kind of like, I'm going to prove that I'm right about church because this can't all be? Why are these people like this? Was any part of you like, I want to prove this wrong? By then, no. I was so desperate for something, so desperate for something that this was like the Hail

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Because what I was doing by day at that point and by night, it was about trying to fill a void. It was trying to cover the pain. It was trying to compensate for the sadness. And it wasn't working because every day I'd wake up ready to do it again because the void still existed. And at that point was getting bigger. And so it was almost like desperation brought me to the steps of the.

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And then, I mean, and then the happenstance that the pastor had a similar story to it's like, right place, right time, also being willing to take this on. Was there, at what moment or like, how far into this journey did you kind of start to give up those other things that were consuming your life? And like, how did it start changing for you? Do you remember? I do. I mean, that

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That actually, that question, that is the pivotal moment, which is I was going and also not changing. I was curious, but still stuck in my ways. I was desperate and hungry for change and yet not changing. And that had been happening for a few months by this point, exactly how long I don't know for sure, but I do know that one night, April 1st, I went out and...

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typical night, it was a Tuesday night and had a really long night and was home and was doing my typical things that I was doing by that point, middle of the night. And I felt like I heard the audible voice of God say, I love you and I don't want this for you. And if you just let it go and just follow me, I will be here like always for you.

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And of course I was like, oh my gosh, you're drunk. This is ridiculous. And I was like, but something just happened that I have to acknowledge. And I was wrecked. I was crying and I went to bed. And I woke up the next morning, Matt, and I genuinely felt like the whole world had changed. Like the colors.

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my lightness. And I can't say it was like an easy overnight, like I walked away from everything. But I woke up and said, I'm forever changed. And I know that something powerful happened to me, spiritually happened to me, I feel like I met God. Now, who God is and how that's evolved, I know we'll get into. But in that moment, I was like, this is God, this is Jesus, this is

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me being invited into something beyond myself where I'm compassionately loved, unconditionally loved. And yeah, I pretty much walked away from everything at that point. I went back to work on my scholarship. I got healthy, I got clean, I got largely sober and just really completely one-ated my life. Wow. And that is quite a difference because earlier version of you was so like...

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guys, calm it down, right? Like this is what are you talking about? And then within you, you had to find that willingness to listen. Was there part of you that didn't change at first because you were afraid that you didn't know who you were without it? Honestly, I was so overcome with a joy that I hadn't felt since I was a little girl. There was nothing else that I could feel except like,

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an inexplicable joy, like a really unbelievable, pure groundedness into something outside myself. It's fascinating. Yeah, it was so tangible. It was, I could feel it. I could touch it. And so everything else at that point, and frankly, the pendulum swing, I don't wish on anyone because I went through a lot with the 180. Oh, I bet. Yeah. And yeah.

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So it was... But again, that's part of your story. That's part of how you became you and this version of you that had to learn in that particular way. And so of course, yeah, we wouldn't wish these particular pendulum swings or experiences on other people, but fortunately or unfortunately, they've kind of shaped us in the way that... Just as unfortunately, the bullying and all that in your early childhood shaped you into that person that you were.

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before you've had this moment. And so, you know, I think it, I don't know. I think sometimes these things are like, you know, this is as spiritual as I will get, but sometimes I think these things happen in the way that they should so that eventually we get to the people that we want to be. Exactly. You know, and I think it's so fascinating though, that like, I love that, here's the part that I love, is that you admit

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to early, early version of you, didn't really buy into spirituality or church, maybe spirituality, church, organized religion, whatever that may be. And you took the baby steps, you took the willingness to go in, and then you had a very profound experience that changed everything for you. Like literally everything, right? Like I mean, it's- Everything. Like what time period, like, not what time period,

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distance of time would you say from that last night of real messiness and then hearing what you heard to when you felt like a different person? I know you said overnight things change, but like when did you really feel like you were now in this version of Jacqueline? Oh, so this version's a very different version from that night. Okay. In the best way. Okay. In the best, best way.

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Well, it sounds like that night was pretty good, too. It was amazing. It happened. That happened about 20 years ago. Exactly. Exactly 20 years ago. And that, honestly, like I literally mean, I woke up a new person. There's a quote that I've now learned in the Bible about Paul, who was like a sinner and became a saint. And it's like he had scales on his eyes and they were taken off and he could see again. And there's

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another one that says, therefore, if you are a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come. I didn't know those things that day when I woke up, but I can say that's literally, I literally felt like an unveiling over my eyes that I saw the world through love and goodness and kindness instead of hate and pain and sorrow. And I felt like a new creation. I felt like little Jacqueline creation coming back, like my little self that was

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hopeful and passionate for people. It was like all of that was resurrected back up in that moment. Wow. How did, did the people around you notice that? I'm assuming they did. And was that, how was, do you remember their reactions to that next week or however that goes, your sister and your brother-in-law? Oh yeah. I mean, it was amazing. We're still, they're still.

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huge parts of my life. There was a lot of like shock and trepidation and like, is this for real? But from them, they were like, we're not we were just waiting like they felt and saw the whole thing unfold. They were at the house the next morning and I was like, you won't believe what happened. I think for a lot of my old friends from like my past life, it was very like, hmm, okay, Jacqueline.

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you'll be back kind of feeling. Yes, exactly. But for the most part, I think people felt there was a lot of gratitude for something, whatever it was that caused me to change because hopefully this meant I would make it and I would not end up in jail or worse. Or the path you were taking was clearly not good for you or maybe the people around you. And so, yeah, I could see there would be a lot of hope.

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Have you had those conversations? Have you sat down with your sister and brother-in-law and just talked about those moments? Yeah. I bet it's fascinating to think about and reflect on. Because I'm also sure that you see things differently in a way that how you experience them might be different from them. And sometimes going back and having those conversations are really interesting. I did that when I recorded my episode of this show. My dad listened to it in full. And he lived the whole experience with me. And he's like, well, that's.

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Not quite how it happened, but that's how I felt it was, as an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old, so I bet that conversation was quite interesting. But you just alluded to, now you're even, this is a newer version of you in the last 20 years. How did that evolve, or what evolved from there? Because it sounds like a 180 is pretty impressive, and life was pretty impressive from that point on. Yeah, so.

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I think like all the tensions I had about church, they were subsided and they were put away on a shelf because I had this newfound feeling of faith that was motivating me and driving me to kind of ignore those things. And I gobbled it up. And so I think at that time, early 20s, new to Christianity, I...

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now kind of describe it, that I was given a very black and white framework of what it now meant to be a Christian. And that framework was a lot of you do this, you don't do this, we love this, we don't love this, these people are okay, these people are not okay. Like all of a sudden it became a lot of checks and balances and who's in and who's out, which literally is the antithesis of that, of both the little girl and the, you know,

38:53
teenage girl who was just a lover of people and couldn't reconcile with the idea that there would be people not welcomed somewhere. It's like, wait a minute, if I'm here and I'm coming from all of this and I feel like God can love me, but I couldn't understand it. And so I took it. I took it as truth. I took it as real truth and then lived a life throughout my twenties that was really rested in.

39:22
pursuit of goodness, pursuit of God, pursuit of faith, but really, really connected to that black and white way of living. Got married in that way of living and moved my life in that way of living, was a part of a church in that way of living and believing. And in my 30s, so about a decade after that, I started realizing, wait, there's work being done here. There's...

39:50
a tension that's unsettled in me that I can't ignore anymore. What is that tension? And I started realizing that what I really believed about our world wasn't adding up to what I was told God believed about our world. So my husband and I did the really hard work of trying to figure out what do we believe, not what we're being told to believe, not what the pulpit is saying we should believe, but like

40:19
what's our own pursuit of truth within all of this? And that took us on a really, really beautiful, really intense, really hard journey of curiosity and discovery and seeking to figure out who is God independent of the church and who is God independent of what we're told God is and who God stands for and what he believes, he or she believes. You know, the first thought that comes to mind is basically, go with me.

40:49
your 20s was almost like, let's wrap you in this cocoon, we'll protect you in a way that you need so that you stay away from X, Y, and Z. You stay away from the bad stuff. You're going to absorb some of the things that don't align with you, but just like you're going with it because it's part of your cocoon, if you will. And now in your 30s, that earlier version, even though she was a little bit rebellious or a lot rebellious, that didn't quite believe in

41:18
like these are the rules and you're stuck with it, she was coming back a little bit saying, hey, you might wanna consider that, that like there's not just like one way to do everything or one way to believe something. Is that, am I seeing this in a right way of where you're like kind of, there's more than this. And that earlier version that was like, stay away from the church kind of feeling was kind of emerging in a way that you can still be, you can still have a faith, you can still have a belief.

41:49
but it doesn't have to be one way or no way. Exactly. You're spot on. It was said so eloquently. Plus one, what you said. A plus. I think that is fascinating because I think so many people that don't consider themselves religious, but they consider themselves spiritual, can totally understand that part of your journey is because like,

42:16
I don't want you to tell me who I can't love or like or be around or accept or that they're going to hell just because they did X, Y, and Z. When in your example, I did all the things that were sin, you know, like I sinned. Yeah. Does that mean like, why am I here? But, you know, so I think that that is so relatable in the sense that like you made the hard decision to find what you really believed and why is that a hard decision for us?

42:45
I know. Right? It seems so counterintuitive. Like we should go with what we believe, not what other people, but it's so hard. It's so hard. And you've got your familial pressures, societal pressures, peer pressures. You have so many things that are informing you that are like data points within you. And that's what I had to strip away. That's what the work was. It was like the thirties, the young early parts of my thirties were like, wait a minute.

43:15
for me to live the next 60, 70 years in truth and solid standing of me in this big world, this one person in this huge messy complicated world, I couldn't just be going robotically through the motions anymore. And so then I had to do the separation of what is not being regurgitated, but what's actually from within. That's my belief in truth.

43:45
I was thinking about the pivotal moment. It was between these two because in a way what happened in my 30s was almost even more defining. Oh really? Because now I'm living in my truth that's true and like real. It's not a prescribed one. Exactly. But do you feel like you needed that prescribed one? That's why that was my official.

44:13
pivotal moment, you know, because today Matt, where I've landed and what I've gotten to and this is what feeds into why I launched kindness.org actually, it's like, I am for humanity, I'm for the belief in every single human, still believing in God and still believing we're a part of this ecosystem of God. But I've realized I have no other job than to love every human that I meet.

44:43
and to not prescribe or judge or assume or dictate their life because who the heck am I to think that that's what I'm here to do? And I had to separate that expectation and realize when I think about being, you know, the church will say like a servant, like being a servant on earth or servant to God or something, when I started just looking at every word I was using, every definition, everything I held to it, I said,

45:11
if I was going to show up truly authentically every single day, I want to reflect the unconditional love that I experienced 20 years ago, which had no strings attached to it. And so people think that that means I'm sacrilegious or they think that I'm not standing true in faith or who God is. And that's okay. You know, I don't want to be someone who's projecting anything other than compassion and kindness and love for each person.

45:41
and the sacred story that they're holding. It sounds like the person inside you and the thing that you're projecting are all the things that you needed as a teenager. And now you're creating that for the world of the other Jacklins out there, the other teenage Jacklins, and however they grew up to be of like, these are the things that I was really probably craving the most that I was running from or not finding where I wanted them.

46:10
and now you're creating this on your own journey. And here's a question, I don't know if this is offensive or not. If you've kind of created your own, I'm assuming here, what works for you in your faith, your belief, why does it have a definition of Christianity? Is there a reason that you identify a particular way with a particular?

46:38
definition in that way? And this is just ignorance on my part, so. No, I love that. That's a really wonderful question. Yeah, I think I say I still identify most to Christianity, and yet so much is conjured when people hear that. So I wouldn't say it's like something I cling to as like, I am a Christian. It's like that does, because I think of what that can do with the weight that people hold with that.

47:08
And I don't know what people look at a Christian, what they think about their belief systems, but I don't probably hold true to much of what Christianity would say is true. I don't believe in hell, for example. I don't believe in a place like that. I don't believe in people can't be gay. I mean, just these things that I did hold true. And all of a sudden I'm like, how did I?

47:34
Like, so I think, but I still believe in the bigness of God and love. And I think on earth, we've put terms to it. And I guess because my personal experience was one tied to Christianity. But now I can respect a lot of where we're born, like culturally, what you're exposed to growing up. I could have been born somewhere else and exposed to a different faith or religion. And that would probably ring truer to me. So I think it's just being very sensitive and aware.

48:04
to the terminology, I would say I'm definitely more spiritual, but I find grounding in my familiarity with Christianity, I guess. It was just out of curiosity. It's good. Sometimes part of me, I've never really been religious. I grew up in my family's Catholic, and so I had to go to things like that. And I was just like...

48:31
There are so many rules that I feel like I can't follow. Like this is just, this doesn't seem acceptable to me. And so, you know, I've never really identified with anything and I'm like, none of us will really know until we're done, right? So if you can find like someone like yourself, you can find this joy and this love and this feeling of, like, I feel comfortable, happy.

48:58
accepted loving in this space. And I believe there's more than just us hanging around here. There's a bigger purpose here. There's a bigger energy out there and those kinds of things. I think it's beautiful. And I think that everyone should be so lucky in a way to find this space instead of, this book is telling you exactly what you need to do on Mondays and then on Tuesdays, you must do this and don't associate with those people.

49:27
because, you know, X, Y, and Z. So, I mean, I love your definition of how you feel and how you approach the world. I think it's a beautiful journey. And part of me thinks that there is still this part of that teenage rebellious Jacqueline that kind of feeds into that a little bit of like, who are they to tell me what to do? I can still do the things that feel right for me, whether they're right or wrong. Up to you to decide. Yeah.

49:57
Yeah, I agree with that. I think now I'm a mom and I've got kids and I'm looking at them and I'm like, wow, when I think about how it translates into what we're being taught and what we're hearing, where I've landed, ma, is the only thing I know is I don't know much. I don't know anything when it comes to this. I don't know the truth of it. I think I know my truth.

50:26
of it all and I'm one person within it, the world. So I'll find out one day. But for right now, it's trying to, I go into every day, open-handed surrendering to my ignorance and trying to realize and accept with humility that I want to live a life of curiosity and open-mindedness and not acting like I have all the answers. On the contrary, how little I actually...

50:55
can know or speak to. I love it. I don't specifically love the pieces of your journey that were really hard, but I think that a lot of those pieces probably make you a better person now. Even those really, really messy, terrible that you wouldn't wish on anyone. Right? I bet there are moments where you're just like, this is why.

51:22
everything I do now with kindness.org or everything that I do now, this is why it all matters. This is why I had to go through that. Yes. Oh, a thousand percent. Yeah. Now I can own my why and be like, okay, I've been through the counseling, I've healed, I feel full and whole. I look in the mirror and can love myself and speak truthfully and kindly to myself. And it's the fire under me to do the work every single day to figure out.

51:52
Okay, what does kindness in our world look like for all? With a mission of kindness.org, do you feel that that puts some pressure on you to always feel a certain way, or do you still allow yourself to be a human and sometimes just have your moments and have your days? Yeah, I mean, I hope the latter is, like I'm flawed. Do you let people see your flaws?

52:20
I think so. I would ask, you know, my team, I try to lead with vulnerability or authenticity or creating psychological safety is like kind of a new buzz term right now. But with my husband, you know, once or twice for sure, if we're in a fight, he'll be like, I thought you're the CEO of kindness.org. So he's definitely seen different sides of me. No, look, I

52:48
I've got things about me I don't love, and I just wake up trying to figure out how to commit to do better and be better. But I think part of the complexity of kindness is actually you don't have it all together, and it's willing to say, like, in the name of kindness, it's holding space for all of it. Can we know kindness without knowing those other pieces? I think...

53:16
That's very existential. But if you if you were to ask the like, 7 billion plus, what are we at 8 billion, I should know that exact figure 7.2 billion people. I haven't counted recently. We'll go with 7 to 8. We'll do our census after. But, you know, if you were to ask any of them, basically, every human actually understands kindness, they have the capacity for it. It's an innate part of how we're hardwired as humans. What we do with it.

53:45
how we choose to act on it, what we're taught about it, all these things begin to form how we handle it publicly, how we handle it in the world, how we handle it for ourselves. So yes, I do think it's possible, but I think like everything, language is the key to how we understand and communicate. So it's the vernacular, it's like what is kindness conjuring for you. It's like Christianity. Yes. In the way like. Exactly. It's how other people are.

54:14
seeing what kindness is. So in that vein, or to quote Robert Peter Paul, what does kindness mean to you? Okay, goodness. So we talk about this a lot. As an orc, yeah. Oh, just to me, just to me. Just to me. I feel like it changes day by day based on where I'm at and what I'm feeling. In this moment in time with all that's happening in our world, kindness is courageous.

54:45
individual, like for yourself or for others? Everyone. I think it is not a nice to have, it is a necessity. And too often it gets a bad rap as being soft. And I think it's one of the hardest things that we do is to choose kindness for someone. I would agree. I think, I don't think I've ever really thought about kindness.

55:14
as a standalone item and if I think about myself and what I feel that kindness might be in relation to maybe the Life Shift podcast. And for me, I think the way that I can show kindness is to listen to other people, to listen to understand, and be genuinely curious about their experiences. I feel like that's how I'm.

55:42
exuding kindness in my own way that maybe 20 years ago version of Matt would be gifting someone is kind of, you know, like it was very materialistic. It was, it was less about the connection and was very materialistic. And I think now it's like, no, but I want to know why I want to know you. I want to know why. And so I think that's how I'm seeing kindness these days. I love that. Thank you for sharing.

56:10
Thank you for what you're putting into the world. Thank you for sharing your story. I think it's so relatable, you know, and I always get a little bit worried when someone wants to share something about like their faith or their spiritual journey, just because of my own preconceived notions of my own experiences. But I think yours is beautiful in the way that it unfolded. And I think so many people can see that like...

56:35
there's this desperation stage, and then there's this stage where you feel like you finally belong, and there's something that you can hold onto, and it's like this anchor. So you're not sinking anymore, you're just on the boat, and it's not moving, and you're okay in the storm. And then you put the sails up when you were ready, and you kind of just went off. I don't know why I went on a boat tangent, but here you are on your sailboat now.

56:59
Defining the direction that you want to go because you can put up those sails however you want So I think it's beautiful and thank you for just being open about it. Thank you Thank you for holding the space for me to feel safe to share it. I love the boat analogy I might use that boat analogy. I think that's a really great Synopsis I feel like you know you were in the storm and then you got you know some calm waters for a little bit Which maybe you needed that and you probably did need that

57:27
to get out of the spiral that you were in. If you could go back to that Jaclyn making those decisions when you were 18, 19 years old, this version of you, is there anything that you could say to her or do with her or be with her?

57:48
You're loved, you're beautiful, you're gonna be okay. Yeah, she needed to hear it. Oh yeah. She needed a hug. Yeah. But as we said before, you know, to get to this version of you, you probably needed to, I mean, I hate to say it that way, but you know what I mean? You'd kind of like had to go through these experiences to become this person that you are today, putting this warmth and...

58:18
love out into the world. When I was getting really into my faith, I had so much shame that no one would want to marry someone with damaged goods like mine. Because again, I was stepping into what felt like a purity culture and what was good and right of a woman. And I definitely wasn't carrying any of that forward. So I was wrestling a lot with shame and

58:46
My now husband and I had like one of our first outings, which was really at that time as friends. And I had not been vocal about my past with many people. But for whatever reason, uh, he created a place where I felt so safe to be really honest. And I like word vomited so many things like definitely things I didn't I spared you from today because I'm just

59:12
keeping it classy, but like just really laid out some stuff I had been through that I was so ashamed of, but I was just like getting it out. He just gently leaned over and he's like, I hope you know all of that is what made you who you are today and look at you. You are incredible and I hope you don't carry shame that this is your past because your past made you who you are in the present. And that's always stuck with me, that idea that like...

59:41
Our stories are what make us. What you do with your stories is up to you. I hope anyone listening who's carrying anything, shame or anything connected to that is able to honor it for what it's done to help them live today who they are, where they are, and they can use it for good in some way. I couldn't have said it better. I think it's important that we understand that

01:00:09
We're just humans here trying to do the best that we can with what we know how to do at the time. And sometimes it's not gonna be good. Sometimes we're not gonna make the right decision or what seems like the right decision and we'll learn from it, hopefully, you know? And we'll become the people that we're meant to be. Thank you so much for sharing your story and how you got to be this version of you. I feel like I know you so well now, so thank you for that. If people want to like...

01:00:38
connect with you, learn more about you, see what kindness.org's doing. What's the best way to kind of get in your orbit? Ooh, I mean, we're really- Or your sailboat. Yeah, get in the sailboat. We're on social, where kindness.org is our site. We write to every email we get. Yeah, we have everything on the site that you can find more out about us. And I personally am not super active on social, but I love connecting to anybody. So you can write an email if you wanna connect with me. And...

01:01:07
it'll get sent to me. So yeah. And what is the name of the podcast that you've recently launched? Ah, why kindness. And it is big explorations and conversations into the role kindness can play in every single person's life, wherever they are in the world. Awesome. Well, we'll share links to your organization and your podcast so people can listen and be more in your circle and learn more from you and the people around you. I just,

01:01:37
Thank you for just wanting to do this, being a part of this. Thank you to Robert for connecting us and thinking this would be a good conversation. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. And if you're listening and something that Jacqueline said resonated with you or you know someone in your life that might need to hear Jacqueline's story just to see that maybe they're not alone, if you would share this episode with them, we'd be so ever grateful. And with that, I will say goodbye until next week when I'm back with a brand new episode. Thanks again, Jaclyn.