Kevin Faulkner, Author of "What Struggle Brings."

So pleased to have Kevin Faulkner on the show. He's an accomplished artist, graphic designer, and poet - and also happens to be my son. So I am proud of him as his mom, but also excited to share his work with you. 

My Amazon affiliate link to buy his book!

Kevin's Website - Wondered Bliss

Follow Kevin on Instagram: @wonderedbliss and @kevinfaulknerpoetry

Transcript

Laura Wakefield: 0:00

Welcome to The Joy fulicity Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Wakefield, and I'm very excited today to have on my first podcast guest, Kevin Faulkner, who's just put out his very first book, a collection of original poems and art called "What Struggle Brings." Welcome, Kevin. And I need to say... It's also extra special to have him here today because he happens to be my son. And so this book represents a journey that I kind of walked with him in some ways. I was there through the hardships and the things that sort of led to some of this and also through the joy of seeing it come through to fruition. How does that feel to have this finally published?

Kevin Faulkner: 0:50

It feels good. It feels good. I'm very, very happy to be here. Very happy to be here. It's a mix of emotions. It's a mix of emotions. And I talk about that some in the book. How it's both exciting. I have a product to sell. I can share my story and do all these things. But at the same time, I'm quite vulnerable in this book. I'm very honest, and I pride myself on my honesty. But it's a lot to put out. Some of it's heavy. Some of it's tough. So to wrap that up and put it out to the world and hope that they take it well. It's a mix of emotions, but it's also just an expression of my heart and soul. I put everything into this book. So to see it come together and be the final copy, the first time I picked this book up and I got my test proofs in the mail, it was almost an out-of-body experience that I was having, because I was for the first time kind of being able to see it, not through the critical designer eye, but through the eye of a viewer. And it was just an entirely different experience to watch it all come together, especially after years of working on this thing, to see it finally put together and published, it's many emotions all swirling at once, but I can't say that it's not good.

Laura Wakefield: 2:17

Yeah, I should say Kevin got a degree in graphic design. So when I say this is a self-published book, it literally is. He did all the design, all the art, all of the writing, everything. This is a big deal.

Kevin Faulkner: 2:33

Everything through and through. I mean, I couldn't make it any more me if I

Laura Wakefield: 2:38

That's absolutely right.

Kevin Faulkner: 2:40

I couldn't make it any more me. So.

Laura Wakefield: 2:43

So what led you to write poetry, Kevin? You have been a good artist since you were a little kid. You know, everybody always knew that you were an artist and creative. How did you get into writing poems?

Kevin Faulkner: 2:58

Well, you know, it's tough to say. Kind of the same process of how I started to draw and to create. You just kind of do it. You kind of fall into it. How does anybody know what they like? It just kind of happens.

Laura Wakefield: 3:15

Maybe through school assignments or things?

Kevin Faulkner: 3:18

Maybe. I had seen art, seen painters, seen this and read poems, seen other writers. I listened to a lot of music, a lot of hip-hop, rap, all that. All of that is poetry, too, just wrapped up in a slightly different form. And it's something I'd always enjoyed, but it was sometime mid-high school. It's the first time that I ever kind of really started to write, but it was very sparse, and I probably wrote 10 poems while in high school. But it's something mid-college I kind of fell back into. I'd stopped for a long time. I'd even stepped away from drawing and creating art for years, trying to do the right thing, trying to... I was undeclared in college for the first two years, and then I had to pick a major. I picked business finance, and it just, it wasn't me. It wasn't a fit. I felt so misaligned with my actual inner soul, and I ended uphad dropping out of college - you weren't very happy about that one. But in that process, that semester off, I had started to draw again. And I realized, oh, well, I might be able to do something with that. So I went, got back into school for graphic design, started exploring that, really getting back into art. And it was maybe a year or two later, almost by coincidence, I just started to write again. And much of it in the beginning was to music. A lot of it was songs in the beginning, but if you can hear my voice, I'm no singer. But the process of writing was just, it was a very freeing experience. It was another mode of expressing this thing inside of me that just wants to speak, that wants to sing really, but can't do it.

Laura Wakefield: 5:03

And how do you go from, I enjoy writing poetry, to I am a poet and I'm going to put together a book?

Kevin Faulkner: 5:15

That's an even tougher question. Because really, when do you ever identify yourself with the things that you do? At what point do you make that switch? I write poems, but does that mean I'm a poet? Well, yeah. If you drew a picture, you are an artist. Many of us, we oftentimes... accept identity when other people call us that thing, when I've sold a piece or done it in a way that's respectable, right? I can put it on a business card or on a website and then I'm the thing.

Laura Wakefield: 5:52

It's almost like an outside force has to declare you a poet or an artist.

Kevin Faulkner: 5:55

I'm a poet when the world thinks I'm a poet? No. I'm a poet when I write poetry. I'm a poet in my thoughts. I'm a poet in this exchange, because this is just who I am. To be able to identify with it, that same thing has always been a problem for me. It probably wasn't until halfway through writing the book that I finally started to admit that I'm a poet or that I'm even a writer. It's just something that I do. I'm not the thing. There wasn't an exact moment where I started to realize it, but it was, yeah, about halfway through, I'd finally, and maybe it was because I started to see just the collection, the stack of papers that I'm sitting on. I can't have this many poems and not be a poet.

Laura Wakefield: 6:44

And what made you decide to turn that into a book? I know you were influenced by a couple of people.

Kevin Faulkner: 6:51

Yeah, absolutely. So that's a different story. So I had never considered writing a poetry book. It had never crossed my mind, even as a possibility. I wasn't really aware of self-publishing really being a valid option or anything. It had never crossed my mind. I was just writing to write, because it's something that just needed to be said from within. I never even necessarily planned on sharing many of them. But later in college, I met a girl. Lovely girl. She's my ex-girlfriend now, but her name is Ellen Everett. She's a poet herself. Go buy her books. "If Hearts Had Training wheels," " I Saw You as a Flower." They're on Amazon. Go give her all your money. But she is one of the sweetest people I've ever met in my entire life. But because she had already published her own book in 19, it blew my mind. I was like, oh, wow, that's fantastic. That's an option?

Laura Wakefield: 7:53

Yeah, can you do that?

Kevin Faulkner: 7:55

Okay. You can do that? She was like, of course you can. And I showed her some of my poetry, and she was like, oh my goodness, Kevin, of course you need to. And I'm still not even identifying as a poet. I'm like, I don't know. We'll see. But she kept encouraging me to write and write and write and write. And as I was doing it, sitting on that stack of paper, realizing how much these poems were affecting me. And and allowing me to overcome the nonsense and BS that was boiling inside of me, the good that it was doing for me and freeing my soul. Seeing that, I started to realize the good that maybe it might do for someone else, at the very least in validating their feelings and letting them know that it can progress and change. So about midway through that process, I started to see it kind of come together and it just became the one Ellen was telling me all the time that I needed to do it.

Laura Wakefield: 8:59

And that's so motivational just to have someone who believes in you.

Kevin Faulkner: 9:03

Oh, it was probably the biggest part. I say it in the acknowledgments. It's like I wrote a book because she believed in me.

Laura Wakefield: 9:08

Yes.

Kevin Faulkner: 9:10

And she pushed me at times, times that I was feeling insecure and all these things, dealing with all of my nonsense, depression, anxiety, all the things I was dealing with. She kept pushing me and kept pushing me and kept encouraging me, in just such a gentle and pure way. Like she genuinely believed that I was good and wanted to see me do it. She knew before I knew what it would be.

Laura Wakefield: 9:37

Well, and I like what you said that you were kind of earlier that you were using these to kind of process through some of the things you were going through, because the book is set up in three sections, the dark, the haze and the light and kind of a progression that you personally went on. And this book does share some tough topics, addiction and depression and some family drama that we had, and and all of that. It kind of paints a picture of a lot of pain, and I think that it's so important that that pain came out onto the paper and that you then want to share that to maybe lift somebody else that's going through a hard time.

Kevin Faulkner: 10:16

Of course. I mean, it was for me. One of my biggest pains in life, frankly, was the fact that I often hid my feelings. I often suppressed it. for the sake of other people's hearts. I didn't want to overload them with all of this stuff, and I was just drowning in my own emotions, the inability to get them out. But as I started to get it out, even just to myself, that process alone was the most powerful and wonderful thing that I've ever gone through. It's painful at times. It's not easy to address the things you've been trying to suppress.

Laura Wakefield: 11:00

Well, and to write a poem about something, you have to take a good look at it.

Kevin Faulkner: 11:04

I'm analyzing it and organizing it and doing all these things. And it was that process, because if you've ever felt anxious or you have a very creative mind, it can swirl and swirl and go down rabbit holes in each and every direction, and it can leave you in a muddled mess. But this process, it helped to organize. It helped to clear my mind of all of the nonsense that didn't actually fit, but was taking up space unnecessarily. But yeah, and helped me address those things. But this process of putting it through and overcoming it as I've gone and seeing that process, seeing it happen in me, knowing the depths of what I've felt before, and now seeing that light, living in that light. All I want to do is share, you know. When the cup is full, it overflows, you know?

Laura Wakefield: 12:07

Well, and I think that there's something about seeing that the things that you've been through might be able to help someone else that gives them a purpose and it makes it feel more okay that, you know, that you went through it, you got through it, and now there's a reason for that. That you're now going to be able to help somebody else. I find comfort in that.

Kevin Faulkner: 12:31

Oh, absolutely. And that's something I've mulled over a lot is that idea of purpose. It was one of my big pains for a long time, because I had fallen away from religion and I was a real strong atheist for a long time. Very nihilistic, all these things. I couldn't see the purpose for anything that was happening in my life. I couldn't see the purpose for life in general. And there's some big discussion that could be had just off of that.

Laura Wakefield: 12:59

But a lot of that time is talked about in the poems that are in the dark section.

Kevin Faulkner: 13:04

It is. It is. It's all there.

Laura Wakefield: 13:07

And I should say, I don't remember if I said this earlier, but there's a lot of cursing in here. There's a lot of tough topics. So be prepared.

Kevin Faulkner: 13:14

I say what I say.

Laura Wakefield: 13:16

If you read the book, that it's not necessarily always hearts and flowers. It's a tough book, but it ends in light. And that's super, super important.

Kevin Faulkner: 13:28

Of course. And that process, I mean, alone, it's a tough one to find that purpose in, but to know that everybody is going through something and to know that what I've been through and how I've come out of it could help, I mean, of course that gives a purpose. Of course it gives a purpose. And that alone, I mean, I think people will go to the end of the earth if they believe they have a reason to do so. They will go through anything. They will put themselves through the hardest things in life if they believe it's for a purpose.

Laura Wakefield: 14:03

Yes.

Kevin Faulkner: 14:04

And that, that is the key to life is to have purpose in all the things that you do. I had battled with that for a long time.

Laura Wakefield: 14:12

Yeah. And I think too, like we've talked about this before, but there was hesitation to put this book out.

Kevin Faulkner: 14:22

Hmm.

Laura Wakefield: 14:23

It kind of is like a little bit of an expose on some things in our family and

Kevin Faulkner: 14:30

And expose on me.

Laura Wakefield: 14:31

On you and on just some things our family had been through. And there's this hesitancy to put that out for public consumption, you know, on social media and different places. We want to present this very rosy image all the time, but it's so important to have that level of honesty because nobody is problem free.

Kevin Faulkner: 14:53

Nobody.

Laura Wakefield: 14:53

Every single person has something going on in their life or they have had or they know someone who has.

Kevin Faulkner: 15:00

Or they're about to go through.

Laura Wakefield: 15:01

Or they're about to. Yeah, exactly. And so the more open and honest we can be about some of that, I think it gives other people permission to maybe share what they're going through.

Kevin Faulkner: 15:13

It's one of my biggest gripes with the modern world and social media and all this is that we really are putting out, like you said, this rosy idea of what our lives are. And we know that's not the whole truth. We know when we're posting just the smiley times that we were going through all this other stuff we didn't share. But as you're viewing all of your friends and family and strangers on the internet, going through, you're looking at everything like, oh, their lives are so perfect. Their lives are so perfect. And it leaves you feeling more alone than you've probably ever felt. In your sadness. I'm the only person experiencing this. Nobody will understand me. Well, the truth of the matter is everybody will, but it's uncomfortable to talk about. We don't like to share it because, you know, these are the hard things. These are the things that maybe might make someone look at me different.

Laura Wakefield: 16:05

Right.

Kevin Faulkner: 16:05

Or make them judge me.

Laura Wakefield: 16:07

Or that what we're going through is forever. That we will always feel... this way and that's what i love that this book moves you on a progression out of darkness and into light. It's not like you ever get done with that process, you know, life keeps going and you there's starts and there's stops and there's rewrites and all that sort of thing, but if you are struggling it's not necessarily forever.

Kevin Faulkner: 16:40

No it's not. And it's something like, I organized my book in those three sections, the dark, the haze, and the light, because that is the general progression of the states that I went through, how I was living in this darkness, and then starting to kind of come out of it, starting to find new identities and new things, but that's a tough space to be in. You don't know who you are. I spent so much time as a pessimist, as an atheist, as all these things, Who am I now as this hopeful person? What am I supposed to expect? That I'm happy now? I'm not angry anymore? A lot of these things are my shields and my safety net, however destructive they were. But it's like now the world's scary. I have to go do something I'm not familiar with. It's a rough spot to be in. And you don't know what's going on.

Laura Wakefield: 17:31

Isn't that always true as we go throughout our lives that every single thing we go through, whether it's good or bad, shapes us and creates a new person, essentially.

Kevin Faulkner: 17:40

Oh, absolutely.

Laura Wakefield: 17:40

And we almost face every day, every moment as a new person.

Kevin Faulkner: 17:43

Oh, you are, because you've never lived as that person today.

Laura Wakefield: 17:49

Yes.

Kevin Faulkner: 17:49

Today's battles. They may be similar, but one thing that I point out in my book though here is that although I put it in this nice little progression, dark to light, it was anything but a clean progression. To find my way out of my anxieties, my fears, my self-judgments, my addictions, everything that had built up, it was all over the place. Up and down, left and right. Kind of like a stock market chart. It goes up and down, up and down, up and down. But it was following a trend. But it is anxious time. These things are not easy to deal with. And they're even harder to deal with when you feel like you're alone. And that's my motivation for putting it out. It has been nerve wracking to put this out, because I'm putting out my darkest moments. I'm putting out all the things that I wanted to hide for many years. The world may judge me. Many people might not like this book. Maybe it confronts them and they don't like that. I don't know. But I put it out anyway, because if there is at least one person out there who it makes them feel not so alone, then it was worth it. If it helps them get through it, it was worth it because I know how bad it can feel. I don't want anyone to feel that way. There's better ways of being.

Laura Wakefield: 19:12

Or if they do, you want them to know that there's hope.

Kevin Faulkner: 19:17

Of course, of course. With a little bit of time and effort aimed in the right direction, you can overcome anything. And I genuinely believe that.

Laura Wakefield: 19:27

Would you be willing to share a couple of poems from the book?

Kevin Faulkner: 19:32

Of c ourse.

Laura Wakefield: 19:33

My favorite one, Kevin knows, I like a lot of them, but my favorite one has always been a poem called Don't Get Too Lost to Fly. And I'll show the accompanying artwork. There is artwork all throughout this book as well. Not for every poem, but but all throughout the book, there's, there's original pieces of art that Kevin has done. It's, it's, it's really a lovely book. And like you said, this represents when I look at it, it represents not just art and poetry. It's my son. This is Kevin right here. And it's lovely to me.

Kevin Faulkner: 20:06

I'm trying to make it as cool as possible. I know everyone loves a picture book, but yeah, no, it's together. I mean, it's, it's been my heart and soul put in every page. I've gone over everything. But yeah, I'll share this poem here. This is a love. It is one of my favorites. But don't get too lost to fly. Birds will spread their wings to fly and ride the wind to where it goes. Whether tree or mountain high, their future is never told. They could go anywhere. I wonder if that scares them. I wonder if they stress sometimes, like I don't know what's there, I should turn back, I think I've changed my mind. But maybe they don't think. Maybe they just trust their wings and take a flight. Maybe stress is just a people thing, a curse of having bigger minds. Birds developed wings. They're free to go get lost and find their hope. We get lost in imagination. But like the birds, we'll always need the earth to find home.

Laura Wakefield: 21:15

I love that. And that poem came to me at a time when I was struggling with some anxiety and some fear about the future. And there was something so hopeful about that imagery of the birds taking flight without fear that was very moving for me. And we've talked about this, that what the poet means when they write it and what the reader takes from it aren't always the same. Like it'll hit, it'll come to you where you are at the moment and it will speak messages to you that you need to hear at the moment. And that one really did for me.

Kevin Faulkner: 21:52

Yeah. And I'm glad it did. And in many ways that was what I was going for, but how it will affect you is different than how it affected me when I wrote it. When I wrote it, though, I mean, I was literally out watching the birds. I was sitting out in nature. And I was just observing them. They were picking up and flying all over the place. You'd see them. Try to track one, you'll lose yourself. They're everywhere and anywhere. But what was catching me about them was that it was just as if it's their nature. They're I don't think they ever think not to fly or ever fear the process of flying or where it might take them. It's just what they do. There's no back or forth. It's just who they are. So they would have no reason to fear, right? But I was sitting there comparing the differences between us and them. And obviously we can't fly, but we as humans, we've been blessed with this amazing intellect and creative ability to have ideas and to create with our hands and build and create the lives that we want to live. And like the birds and their nature just to fly, that should just be our nature to create, to think, to ponder, to do these things. Yet so often with unchecked anxieties and things, we'll find ourselves locked in thought, locked in fear, of bringing our thoughts to life, to go create, to go build the lives we want, when it should just be our nature, right? But looking at those differences between the two, it's just funny how different we are, how similar we are. At the end of the poem here, I talk about how both with the birds and with us, it's like the birds, they'll fly around all day. But they always need to come back to Earth. This is where they find their food, they find all the stuff to build their nests, all these things. They are an integrated part to this life, to this Earth. And so are we. And as I was thinking about that and looking at the similarities instead of the differences between us, I myself was outside nature watching, which I hadn't done for a long time. And as I was remembering back to the different periods of life where I was extraordinarily anxious and fearful and angry and all these things. I was very busy with school and college and with work, everything. I was spending all my time indoors on computers, disconnected from the earth, disconnected from life, disconnected from even the stuff I was engaging in because I was too lost in my mind. But it wasn't until I really started to just reintegrate and start to go outside, start to re-engage with life in a meaningful way, that a lot of these fears started to drift away.

Laura Wakefield: 25:00

Yeah.

Kevin Faulkner: 25:01

It was a beautiful thing as it started to happen.

Laura Wakefield: 25:03

It comes back to what's real.

Kevin Faulkner: 25:07

Yeah, of course. Of course. And how lovely it is.

Laura Wakefield: 25:11

Yeah.

Kevin Faulkner: 25:12

Like if you're ever thinking life isn't worth living, go out into the woods and just look. Just observe. Watch life happening all around you. It is this beautifully intricate system that we are a part of.

Laura Wakefield: 25:27

Yeah.

Kevin Faulkner: 25:28

And that we need to be engaging in it. Otherwise, you lose sight and you lose connection.

Laura Wakefield: 25:33

100%.

Kevin Faulkner: 25:34

And you find yourself trapped in fears and not even living the life that you want to live instead. It's just silly. It's just silly.

Laura Wakefield: 25:42

Do you have a favorite poem in the book?

Kevin Faulkner: 25:46

That's a tough one. That really is a tough one. I have many favorites. I don't even have a favorite color, to be honest with you. But if I had to pick one to share, I'd gone through this one called conflicted. It's kind of stemming off of some of those ideas of unfettered imagination how can lead to anxieties and all these things. That can be a reality. Absolutely, that can be a reality. And probably most of us have felt that way. Gotten too lost in fears and start fearing things that will never happen.

Laura Wakefield: 26:20

Right.

Kevin Faulkner: 26:23

But there's also realities to your life. Things that have hurt you. Reasonable things to fear, right? And, something in my life that hurt me several times was this silly thing called love. Because you're putting your heart out on the line. You're vulnerable in these moments because you're letting yourself be connected to someone. And if that breaks, that hurts so bad. And it's real. Nothing that I had experienced there was fake. And I had reason to be fearful. But at the same time, it's also so worth having. But I kind of get into this poem here. Some of you said this is probably one of my tightest poems. And And I do love how it turned out. So I'll share this one with you and let you see if you like it. But Conflicted. Love is what matters, right? That's something I've been hearing my whole life and I believed it. I've built up expectations with a dream of what it feels like. And for the most part, I've been wrong. Which doesn't mean it's bad. It's just different than I thought. It's really more responsibilities, because tending to a heart was never meant to be an easy thing. You've both lived your lives apart, and then one day the two start melding, quickly turning into one that then the two of you are sharing, and that is terrifying. The thought that my life here is not my own, the fact that someone else relies on me, am I grown enough for this? When I barely know myself, do I have enough love to give? And if I give you all my heart, will you commit the same or up and split? I've seen it all before and now I'm hesitant. I have trouble trusting folks. Shit, I have trouble trusting me. My heart's enthralled in rope and chains, a tangled lock that wound for free. I'm sure I could get out. But would that really be the better thing? I've been conflicted. End scene.

Laura Wakefield: 28:34

I love that because you don't get to be... an adult without having felt those feelings. There's almost, I mean, there are those very rare few people that fall in love with their high school sweetheart and get married and are married for 70 years. You know, that does happen. That's the rare thing.

Kevin Faulkner: 28:53

That's a beautiful thing. Congratulations to them.

Laura Wakefield: 28:55

Yes, absolutely. But most of us do suffer heartbreak at some point in time. And I liked what you said about how you start to mistrust not just other people, but even yourself within relationships.

Kevin Faulkner: 29:07

Yeah.

Laura Wakefield: 29:07

And once you start doubting yourself, it just complicates all of it. So I love, love, love that.

Kevin Faulkner: 29:14

Yeah, well, it's tough because, you know, at times I've been hurt by others. At times I was the problem. At times I have broken hearts. And to sit there, I mean, to deal with the pain of your broken heart is one thing. To deal with the pain of knowing that I shattered another heart is a whole other thing. That's a guilt that you have to sit with because you know the pain of how bad it hurts.

Laura Wakefield: 29:42

Right. If you've been on both sides.

Kevin Faulkner: 29:45

Yeah. And you're like, oh, hell, I did that to them.

Laura Wakefield: 29:48

Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Faulkner: 29:50

I don't want to hurt anybody else, but me and myself, I was running from love for a long time and had a series of, mishaps I'll call them, mistakes.

Laura Wakefield: 30:02

That's a good way of putting it.

Kevin Faulkner: 30:04

A series, I'd say. And you start looking at your track record and building up judgments of yourself and all these things. And you're tired of the life you're living. You want this thing over here, but you're terrified of it. You're terrified that you will even be able to handle it because you've run from it before.

Laura Wakefield: 30:24

Well, and that kind of conflict, will often lead you to just retreat and withdraw and just not participate. You feel a little paralyzed. by conflict like that, I think, sometimes.

Kevin Faulkner: 30:37

I did for quite a while. Yeah, for quite a while. I definitely had stepped away from the dating scene for probably a good year, year and a half, two years before I met Ellen. And we just kind of fell together and all of this started happening and led me to where I am today.

Laura Wakefield: 30:59

And I love that you guys are still such good friends. I'll put some links to Ellen's books also. Yeah, definitely. Maybe I can even talk her into coming on the show at some point.

Kevin Faulkner: 31:08

Oh, I think she'd love to.

Laura Wakefield: 31:09

She's a lovely person, and I'm very grateful that she came into your life and kind of was the catalyst or part of it to get this book to come to be.

Kevin Faulkner: 31:23

Of course. She played a massive role in so many things, and that is the power of love. That is the power of love. of this type of beautiful thing. Love when lost can shatter you. But love in itself will heal every wound. It really will. It really will. And she did. She just came in with this very kind heart and just showed me in so many ways that it wasn't love that was wrong. It wasn't that. It was maybe the way that I was approaching it. Maybe with the people I was trying to approach it with. But love in itself is only wonderful. And that's why losing it's so painful. But it's a tough thing and one of the most beautiful things in life. So we must face it. We must go after it. We must never stop searching for love.

Laura Wakefield: 32:21

I agree. I agree.

Kevin Faulkner: 32:22

You have to do it.

Laura Wakefield: 32:24

Kevin, I have one more final question for you. But before I get to that, where can people find this book? Where can they connect with you? So everybody knows how to find Kevin Faulkner and What Struggle Brings?

Kevin Faulkner: 32:36

Yes. So the book is available on Amazon. Search up What Struggle Brings by Kevin Faulkner. You should be able to find it. If it doesn't pop up immediately... Search for it in the books category and it should pop up. Amazon's search tool isn't the best, but you can find it there. I have a website, wonderedbliss.com. Follow me on social media, @KevinFaulknerPoetry or @Wondered Bliss. And I too will have a podcast of my own I'm launching very soon, which will be The Wondered Bliss Podcast. So you should be able to find me in all of those places. But yeah, what's your final question?

Laura Wakefield: 33:19

So my final question is, to anyone out there who is wallowing in the dark currently of their life, they're struggling, they're suffering, maybe they're dealing with addictions, maybe they're dealing with a different kind of pain, but they feel like they are in the dark part of their life. What would you say, after having been through this journey and written this book, would be... I know this is a huge question to put into just a couple sentences, but what would you say would be the key to reach back toward light? What's the starting point? What gets you going back toward light and toward joy?

Kevin Faulkner: 33:59

Of course. Well, it starts with buying my book. No, I'm k idding.

Laura Wakefield: 34:04

Welldone.

Kevin Faulkner: 34:07

But I say it in the book. I talk about it. I would tell you to write. Write. The process of writing. The process of organizing your thoughts and preventing them from continuing to swirl. Of just getting your thoughts out from inside of your mind and in your body onto paper. It solidifies them. It finalizes them. And it creates this separation between the problem itself and the life that you're living. The experience that you're having. And can allow you to... experience your life in a new way with new perspectives. Especially if you want to go through a process of writing poetry, things like that, where you really have to to sit with it to make it rhyme to to follow a cadence to do these things it really makes you address the things that you're facing. But you have to be willing to be honest with yourself. It doesn't have to be in poetry. It can be journaling, scratch notes on a napkin, whatever it is that helps you get your thoughts out in an organized way, do it. You don't ever have to share with anybody. You don't have to do it. It's a terrifying thing to do, I'll tell you what. But just going through that process alone was one of the biggest factors for me. Because frankly, I always bottled my stuff up. I never told anybody. And I even tried to tell myself that I was fine, that I didn't have any problems. And it just let it boil and fester under the surface. So get it out, put it on paper, write it. Do everything you can to understand what is happening to me right now. What am I actually dealing with? Because with this mind that likes to swirl and go, you'll be off on 20 different tangents. And all of a sudden, you don't know what is actually bothering you anymore. What is the root? What's the cause? What are you really feeling? Get it out. Write it down. And read it to yourself and tell this story to yourself as if you're someone who gives a damn.

Laura Wakefield: 36:19

Because you should be.

Kevin Faulkner: 36:20

Yeah, you should be. It's your life. You should care about your life. If you don't, you should write about that to understand why.

Laura Wakefield: 36:29

Absolutely. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for being on here today. Kevin has been my guinea pig on figuring out how to do an interview. And I have to do have a little confession here. We actually recorded an entire podcast interview before realizing that I had not hit record properly. Kevin is a very, very good sport to have sat...

Kevin Faulkner: 36:50

30, 40 minutes in weren't we?

Laura Wakefield: 36:52

Yeah, yeah, we were. We were well into it and he's a very good sport to agree to do it again with me once we realized that.

Kevin Faulkner: 37:00

I think some of my answers were better in the first one.

Laura Wakefield: 37:05

It'll be a great story to tell of my very first interview that didn't get recorded. Thank you for joining me today on The Joy fulicity Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and share and come follow me on all major social media sites at Joy fulicity or on my website, joyfulicity.com. You can follow the link in the description for this episode to all of the places that we can connect. Have a great day, everybody. And remember, dare to dream, plan to play, live to learn.