Your past is your start, not your sentence Pt. 2

You can hear it in Ken’s voice from the start: he’s not chasing perfection, he’s chasing clarity. We open with gratitude, faith, and a real acknowledgment that 2026 has already brought losses, conflict, and pressure for a lot of people. Instead of pretending it’s fine, we sit in the truth and still choose a stance of positivity, peace, and responsibility for how we show up for the people we love.

Then we rewind into Ken’s teenage years, where identity feels shaky and consequences feel distant. We talk about what “living in the moment” actually means, why community matters more than we admit, and how easy it is to confuse confidence with being untouchable. Ken shares how poor choices led to jail time and how shame can harden you if you let other people define you by your lowest moment. The through-line is self-forgiveness with accountability, plus the belief that your past can be a teacher without becoming your prison.

The most emotional section lands in Ken’s twenties, when he describes a full-term stillbirth and a crushing chain of losses that followed. We talk about grief, mental health, isolation, and the scary thoughts that can show up when you’re running on autopilot. But we also talk about healing, finally letting yourself feel, and becoming the author of your story, not the hostage of it. If you care about resilience, trauma recovery, spirituality, and honest personal growth, this one stays with you.

If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with someone who needs hope, and leave a review. What part of your past are you ready to stop fighting and start learning from?

Transcript

Welcome And Opening Positivity

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thank you for joining me for another episode of a text.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Turn a little bastard Bills. I'm a poacher, I'ma outcast it. That's what happens. Thrown to the motion, prone to the focus mind. Stone to the motion to silence, oh that might as touch. That's just all I'm owning. I'm lost. Something I can gas away. What idiots waves open up to take me past this place. Remove my master master, selling past the masquerade. My master step the master, must have rubber seed of faith. Now I'm leading toward an epic change. My dream attempts to be leading on his mighty name. Once it rearranged, escape is written on his page. I'm on a course in Ace of Pain and lost his CSPOA.

Why Share Life Out Loud

Teenage Choices And Identity Confusion

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Welcome back, guys. Welcome back. We made it. We made it through another week. Another blessed. Another eventful. Another day. Consider yourself favored and divinely blessed. I would like to take this moment to thank all my listeners. I appreciate the follow. I appreciate you guys sticking with me. Um you know, life be life. So I do try my best to um take note of my day-to-day and try to understand from my perspective. For me to do this, to do this podcast, it means that I have to, you know, put my feelings out there and try to articulate it in a way for everybody to follow me and for it to actually make sense. And uh these last few months, you know, we in 2026 now. Um I'll say it has been already some ups and downs. Um, some good people in my life have left. Uh, I've found out some interesting truths from other people as well, and you know, just trying to navigate this life, you know, this world, guys, has been on the up and up, and then on the the downhill slope, you know, and I think I can speak for all of us to say, man, it has been a worldwin, you know, whatever side of the world that you are living at. Um, I want to extend positivity as much as I can to navigate this ship, what we call life. We have a lot of war in certain areas, they have been, you know, uh Mother Nature has not been kind to some of us, right? We have lost homes, we have lost people that we love, and you know, from one person to another, you know, I'm right there along with you guys, you know, Ken isn't exempt from life. None of us are, right? So we just try our best to be the best version of ourselves that we can be, and again, a positive role model to our friends, to the people that we love. Um, I just want to be one of those people. If you don't have anybody that can say, you know, brother, sister, you know, I'm here with you. We all fight in a good fight. And I'm definitely praying for everybody, you know, whatever that you believe in, understand that it's always a greater power than yourself. And once you can understand that, there can be a peace that can overshadow the wrong in this world. Um, so that is my opening remarks, and again, I appreciate you guys for everything um giving me the love and the appreciation that allows me to continue to do this. So, with that being said, let's get into the episode. Um, I want to take this this time to highlight um in my past few episodes of Saints Journey um when I was introducing myself. Alright, I left it on the little boy kin. So now I want to talk about the teenage in my 20s. Just to give a little recap, you know, my young adolescent stage was you know a roller coaster to say the least. I was introduced to life very abruptly, but I believe that with the people that was in my life at the time, um, and that showed me better ways to how to handle and to navigate, you know, I definitely took my hat off and definitely appreciate them because I definitely won't be the man I am today um without them for sure. Um so I definitely appreciate them, love them if they're still here on earth. Understand that even if I don't say it, I appreciate you so much. And you know who you are. And for the people that, you know, aren't in my life and they felt that they needed to, you know, go a different direction, you know, I love you guys too because you guys also taught me a different lesson that you know at the time I probably needed, you know. Um we are are not perfect, so we just can we can only do the best that we can with the cars that have you know that we have been dealt with. So um saying all that, I want to jump into Kin's teenage life. Um probably from you know 13 to 19. Um I made some choices, right, like we all do, that we have to deal with, that we have to figure out on the fly. If you are blessed with a community of people that are around you that have positive intentions for your life, I'll say hold on to them. Um, I'll say appreciate them. Uh, though at the time, you know, you never know because it's a it's a slippery slope. Because, you know, what's to saying you don't know what you had until you have lost it. It's very true. To be able to recognize the turn of events that can happen. I feel like some people are blessed with it because they're living in the moment, right? But I can say about at least 90% of us in this world don't live in the moment. And what does living in the moment mean? It means that you are actually paying attention to your surroundings, to the people, to your placement, to the experiences, to the choices that you're making at the moment, and you're seeing how it dictates your your next walk, your next step. Now, Ken wasn't necessarily what you call the best teenager, right? Definitely lived life on the edge, definitely thought that he was bigger than what he was, and it was so easy for him to disregard the past mistakes that he has done and to relish in all the wrongdoings. Now at the time, you know, I didn't know because you know, I'm still technically a kid, you know, and I was I was really confused on my identity. And I mean, as a teenager, who is it, right? There are few people that understand who they are very early, and I think I understood who I was when I was younger, but I think because it was in a different environment that I came to understand what life started, you know, what life actually means, but I didn't fully grasp that what I do can affect others, and because I, you know, I'm a small minute cog in this whole machine that we call the world, right? So I I assume that who's looking at me, who's paying attention to my everyday wrongdoings? Man, was I surely, surely the same. Because, like you know, like I know, there are always people that watches you from afar that you would never expect. Whether it be from an enemy or a friend, you know, whether it be from a family member to a complete stranger, you really don't know. And I always kidding myself to think that I figured it out. I mean, again, what teenager doesn't, right? They just feel like they are on top of the world and they got it, they got it made. Now, again, there are certain people who have been dealt an amazing hand. I mean, their cards, if anybody knows spades, uh, spade is a card game that the highest card wins, and obviously, because of the name Spades, Spades is the strongest suit in that card deck that trumps everything. Some people have a whole hand of spades from the lowest to the highest. And if anybody who's played the game, man, if you have a whole hand of mostly spades, you know you got it, you know you won. And there's no making any mistakes because anything that you do, you're just gonna bulldoze it. That was Ken. You know, I made choices that put me behind bars, right? You know, on this podcast, we we are transparent. I like to be 100% because I like people to understand that if there are other people that actually went through the same situation as me, understand that you was never alone and we all just have to learn, right? Um, but yeah, that put me behind bars at a very young age. And um wasn't my it wasn't my crown achievement. I've hurt people that are very dear to me, and I want to highlight this as well. When you make a mistake, your mistake that you made is your mistake.

unknown 13:55

Okay?

Living In The Moment Matters

Jail Time And Self Forgiveness

Purpose And Being Built For Now

Twenties Chaos And Crushing Loss

Grief Healing And Becoming The Author

SPEAKER_00 13:55

There's nobody else in this world that can point a finger at you and tell you you're a bad person. Why? It's because the person who's also pointing the finger at you is also a bad person. Don't allow somebody else to belittle you because they want to feel good and because they know that you're hurting and you're weak, and so they want to you know hark on the fact that you're not in your best version of yourself at that moment. So everything will hit you like a ton of bricks. Just wanted to say that because I'm sure there are people in this world that will always point fingers at you, that will always try to uplift themselves because they themselves know that they are not perfect. Nobody in this world is perfect but one person, and he's alive and well, and that is Jesus, but neither here or there. We all have to live with our past mistakes, we all have to live with the words that come out of our mouths. Now, I'm sure you're asking, why, Ken? Why are you talking like this? Well, because I want people to know that when you are trying to become something, right? If you're trying to become a better version, you have to go through these moments. And it's really tough in hindsight, right? It's very tough when you look back and you like, man, when I change those experiences, because without those experiences, will I be able to be the best the best version of myself today? Probably not, honestly. And even if you were to go back and you know, we had that power of time and were able to go back, you understand that this the significance of those moments has shaped you to be a stronger version of yourself. Nine times under two, you're gonna look back and you're gonna be like, No, I'm gonna leave that right there. Now, unless it was something real diabolical, right? And you just like yo, we can we can X that out all the way. That's not gonna change nothing because I know what I did at that point was just totally wrong. But again, ask yourself if you were to take that diabolical situation now, and then your trajectory turned to be completely opposite, right? Would you actually take it out? I mean, I would, yeah, I would love to change some of my trustes. I mean, who would, right? I mean, dang. I would love to change it. But let's just ask ourselves that with that time, with that moment, can Sally, Sam, Ken, can we be who we are today? Can we be mentally strong to combat this crazy roller coaster of life? Because check it. We are born in a certain time like this. So the way I look at it is you have to be equipped to be able to combat what today is, right? I've I believe our parents are or or I'm sorry, not our parents, our great grandparents, right? If they were to be plopped in today's society, do you think they would be able to survive and combat what we go through every day? Because, you know, we look back in their time, and you know, you have the depression, and then you have segregations, and then you have wars, and you know, we can say, like, as of now, the kids today would not be able to survive our great-grandparents' time, and I feel like our great-grandparents' time cannot survive in our day and time, so we are born for such a time. So look at yourself and say, Why was I here? Why what is my purpose in this life, and why was I born in this period? Because you are the right person for the right time, so there's no point of changing, right? There's no point of trying to rehash your past mistakes. Accept what you have done, accept the the path that you have chosen for yourself that for it to be right. Accept the fact that you are here for a time and a purpose. Do not teach yourself to think like, oh my gosh, you know, like I'm so weak, or I'm I'm I'm not ready to combat this, or I'm not ready to deal with the situations. Yes, you are. Now that's you know, when you start thinking that way, that's more of a coward way of thinking because it is so easy for us to disregard and to run away from our present issues, and I'm telling you guys, I'm speaking to myself. I'm always talking about my point of view, yes, because obviously it's my podcast, but no, but like I'm I'm no different from you, you know. I breathe and eat the same type of fruits, maybe different flavors. But we all have to breathe and eat on this earth, so your problems is no different from mine's. It may be wrapped in a different way, but in all totality, it's all coming out to be the same type of issues. So there's nobody who's gonna be, you know, exempt from these tests. All we gotta do is look at our past grades and just try to be better than what we did yesterday. So I was a hard-headed teenage, teenager. I decided to, you know, do drugs, drink, um, you know, I went to college. I thought I excuse me, I thought I figured it out. And but I was I was mad at myself. I was running. I was I was angry, I was confused, I was misled, I was holding on to grudges that poisoned my mind at the time. And there were a lot of uh unresolved issues that what that that actually um that personified itself from the beginning, you know, and what I've talked about in the first first portion of the podcast, you know, the younger me. That part of me, the the younger kin, hasn't fully resolved those issues. Issues of understanding what happened and why it happened and how it happened. And the end result is now I'm here and I'm a teenager. And I just felt that everybody kind of just let me go and just gave me a free-for-all. Like, okay, well, Ken, you are old enough, you understand, you made these choices, so now you have to deal with it. And I felt that I was just kind of thrown into the fire really early in life, that I I had to kind of maneuver uh through a lot of you know hoops, and obviously I went through a lot of wrong doors that equaled into wrong choices and being around wrong people, or or the people that I thought that was supposed to be on my side wasn't on my side, but they was plotting my downfall. Um, they were jealous, um, they saw something in me that made them feel some type of way, but I didn't see that within myself, so I was a threat to certain people, and it just kind of mirrored chaos, you know. That's really all I saw in my mind was just chaos, and I just I really didn't see a way out, you know. I mean, how many of us go through every day in our own chaos, in our own day-to-day, and we just see no way out. We just feel like if we can just roll up in the ball, man, and just go in our room, close the door, kids, husband, wives, whoever, just go away. You know, everybody just leave me alone. I don't really have the energy to deal with, you know, what's coming, you know. This is just a little bit too much for me. I mean, again, guys, this is this is this is life, right? Life can be hard, but it can also be beautiful. I'm telling you, it could be extremely peaceful. Yeah, we just have to recognize those moments sometimes because it doesn't last for long. It doesn't last for long. You just have to know when those opportunities come, learn to rest, you know. I I believe that would be the greatest advice for anybody who's going through turmoil at the moment. Find a moment just just to rest. Take a breather, take a couple puffs of fresh air. Breathe in that oxygen, let that carbon dioxide out. Alright? Seriously. And you know, mental health, I never really believed in before because obviously of the the era that I grew up in and the type of people that I have, we wasn't necessarily taught that. We know it was a thing, but we didn't really think it was because it's like who really cares about your mental, right? But it was really, I mean, I think at those times, you know, the 80s and 90s, that was the transition because if you lived in that era, in that era, you are in between the old school regime, right? You still had a little bit of segregation and some prejudice, racism going on, and then we were going into the new mill the new millennium, so it was kind of a weird, arterous, like just like what the heck is this? Like, you know, you go from one set of of of a way of living to a whole different one, you know, the technological uh influx that happened so fast, you know. Uh, anybody who is just as old as me, that Y2K was crazy. You know, the grid is gonna be shut down, the government's taking over the computer. I mean, oh my gosh, it was wild. I mean, let's let's just be aware that when we are when we are just trying to understand what our next steps are, don't overthink it, don't look at it in a way of being a chore. Look at it as like a new opportunity and a new beginning. Because I think for myself at the time, everything was a chore. Everything that I did just didn't make sense, and I just did it because it felt good. Or I felt like it was the right choice. And you know, not to say that everything I did was bad, you know, there were some really great moments that I can say that also probably helped me to be who I am today and the type of people that I met at the time because you do meet people when you're hurt. You meet the right people at the right time. This I don't think I don't believe in like happenstance. I believe in divine unity and divine intervention. There are times where people come into your life when you're at your most vulnerable time that you never probably would ever met if you were just you know on the up and up all of the time. If a person tells you they have never struggled or always have, oh man, you better run. They're crazy. They're the Jeffrey Dahmer's of the world, they'll kill you, man, they'll eat you up. But just highlighting that, you know, that was a turning point for me because a lot of the ways and my habits were instilled that I instilled in myself at that time. Now we're going to fast forward to the 20s, the 20s of Ken. Man, one word to sum that up. Exhilarating. It's never a dull moment from 20 all the way to 29. It was never a dull moment when it came to problems, when it came to uh blessings, when it came to a vicious cycle of mess and chaos, to a roller coaster of amazing experiences, stuff I would never change, and stuff I really wish that it could have turned out a little bit better. But like I said before, everything happens for a reason, every turn of events, every major event that happens in any person's life, it's it's supposed to happen. And never take for granted the people that you pass by because they might not always be there. Get what you need from them, get the knowledge, get their experiences, get their ways, and if it really correlates to who you are, take bits and pieces and make this into a superhuman because I mean who's to say they're gonna stick around, right? So you just want to, like I said, live in the moment, relishing the fact that these people are the people that need to be in your life in this present season. Um of the biggest good and bad moments of my twenties was loss, was the bad. The amount of decisions that I made, the my mental fortitude wasn't strong, and so that allowed me to make really weak decisions that affected other people that were around me as well, and that had a huge impact on my life to highlight loss. I was in a relationship, and we had an amazing opportunity to have a child, um, and that experience probably shaped me to be the man I am today for sure. I was a very pivotal turn of events for me when it came to lost, when it came to mental stability, when it came to my spirituality, when it came down to who kin will turn into. In hindsight, I think I made the best decisions that I could at the time, not really understanding what could happen or what will be the outcome of these decisions. And at the time I really didn't care, you know. I had people who fought against my character, I had people who demean me, I had people who blame me, I had people who just I don't know, they they had it out for me, you know. Again, I wasn't the best person, but some of the stuff that people did or said to me, I I really did deserve. And even to this day, it's still kind of confusion sometimes, you know. I just look back and reminisce some stuff and like wow, that's you know, could have happened a different way for sure. But if you can read between the lines, you know, the baby didn't make it. That's what you call the stillborn stillborn is the baby was fully ready to come out, but uh didn't make it uh in the delivery process, uh uh basically uh suffocated within the sack, Ariel sack, and uh it's a chilling situation when you excuse me, when you get that call and the person who called you had no feelings, like they just said, you know, oh, you know, the baby died, and I think any sane person would probably look at that and be like, why would you even say it that way? Right? You know, and and you know, thinking back, it was a lot of things that were against me that I didn't really see that was happening behind the scenes, and I definitely try to be as positive at those times because you know, if not, I will go absolutely crazy. Any any person, but to live through a baby passing away and having it full term and and and being ready for it to come, you're meaning them, and then it was just completely taken away at the last second, is not something that you can put into words, but it is an emptiness that you have going forward, a fruit of the loins, a version of yourself died with that kid, and um that same time of me losing the kid that same week, you know. I lost a car, lost my home, lost a job, and I didn't have time to really think about what was happening because life was still happening, you know, life be life, right? The world still continues regardless of what you're going through, the type of loss that you're going through. Nobody cares. I had to go back that the next week, so I didn't really have time to rehabilitate and to mourn or to, you know, I just you know, as a man, we have to make tough decisions and we have to know when to yield and when to persevere. And at those times, I didn't really know either or. I think I was just living. I I became a robot, you know, it's like my body was an autopilot for a very long time. And in those autopilot years, I just relished in anything and everything. Everything was a great idea. I pushed people away, I didn't talk to family, I was mad at the world. I was I mean, I wanted the world to burn, you know, and I even had suicidal thoughts. I even had murderous thoughts. Stuff that I never even thought of in my life. I'm not even, you know, if anybody who knows me, I'm definitely not that type of person. Far from it. So it scared me. And I knew that these thoughts wasn't my own. I knew that I had to fight it, I knew I had to become stronger, right? I had to live for my son. I don't want him to look down on me and be ashamed that his father gave up. And when you have that perspective, it helped me. I can't speak for everybody who also have been through similar situations as me, if not worse. That it's never easy, but you know that you have to continue. There's no stopping. And so that went on for a while, and that shock, I was never able to mourn. I was wasn't really able to cry as much, you know, and I had to go through that situation really alone. I really had nobody around me. My family was going through some stuff at the time, so nobody could really come and give me that you know, that support. I had no support. So I had to figure it out, you know, and I had to lean on anybody and anybody, you know, like me. But saying that, I met some great, amazing people who to this day are still good friends. We have you know traversed the oceans through the wickest, the wicked of storms, and around those times I was also able to see some of the realness and some of the fakeness of people. So I opened up my eyes to a lot, you know. But it took years before I was able to actually cry. I mean, I was telling my parents this, you know, like the first time I actually it well the first the actual time it hit me, it was years later. It was like four or five years later when I'm working and that worked, and I just started crying, you know. Never really took the time to deal with it, you know, men have a hard time dealing with feelings sometimes, unless you were taught that some of us wasn't, most of us wasn't really taught how to, you know, understand feelings and deal with it at the time. You know, we we are just taught to brum rush everything. So it took a while for me to understand why I'm crying and what this was, and I mean it was just uncontrollable. You know, I had to excuse myself because it was just it was a lot. But I also appreciate that moment of vulnerability. Because nor was I embarrassed about it, but I was just relieved to finally to say, like, you know, I just felt like I'm human. You know, I didn't feel that I made a mistake. Because a lot of those, a lot of that I took upon myself, it was my fault. Everything was my fault. I took it, you know. I crucified my own self every day. And anybody who's gone through that know exactly what I'm talking about, but understand that everything that bad ass happened to you is a lesson, it's a lesson for you to learn and to grow from. That part of my life was a huge lesson. Of what of what it was exactly, I wasn't too sure, but thinking back on it now, it prepared me for today. It made me stronger mentally, and it made me more emotionally available to the people that's around me as well. That I'm able to speak to people on such an intimate and deep level because I also have gone through it and gone through it and persevered and came out of it. So that's why I'm able to talk about it now. I wasn't able to talk about it before. So that's what we call healing in dealing with the root issue and understanding what it is and what it meant, right? In the same time, this is the positive side. There were there was a shift, there was a change in my life that I will never forget. In that time, I became a blank canvas. You can paint me to become anything you wanted me to do. And I probably would have turned into a villain or a hero, right? I still had enough sense to know that there's there's a place of where I do not want to turn into. I don't want to go there and I don't want to become that person. I still had that much mental power. I didn't have much, but I had that I had enough to at least know that I don't need to go that far. There was a lot of shifts, and then there was a lot of changes that was happening, and I am still, you know, uh eating off of that change. I love it. It made me stronger, it made me more open, it made me seem regular, made me felt regular. So to anybody who out who's out there who's gone through that or you know gone through some really, really tough, really tough uh moments in. I'll leave you with this. It was never wrong. It may have felt wrong, but it was never wrong. You have to be the author of your story. You have to know how to take control of your thoughts and actions. We have to experience that. We have to to understand the blessings and and the amazing experiences that can come from that. You have to have both. Because without that, what is the lesson? And what is the curse? If you always have curses, you will feel that you are a bad person. But if you always have lessons, you will understand that bad is good as well. If you just change the way you you think about it and change the fact that you're also not perfect, your parents wasn't perfect, your siblings aren't perfect. It creates a whole new eforia of peace in your mind that you can just say, Well, that is the moment, and uh it's gonna it will change eventually, you know. Bad don't last, just like good don't last. Alright. So I'm gonna leave this on that note. Um, this is part two of from my previous episode. Um, and I will be it would definitely be a part three to to end this one. But I thank you guys, I love you guys, and understand that I'm always here for that positivity. All right, so it's your boy Ken the Whiz, and I'm signing out. Peace.