01. The Pain of Not Living Your Purpose

In this first episode, Ariel Kiley shares her story of growing up with a mother who was a repressed actress. In her own confused search for purpose, Ariel set out to become an actress herself, and after having some success, learned that life had a very different plan for her. Listen in for inspiration and motivation on finding your own purpose, and choosing to follow your own path.

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Transcript

Description:

The Pain of Not Living Your Purpose

When a woman isn’t living her purpose, she suffers. In this episode I share the Lady Quest origin story. 

I gotta say, I have been wanting to start this podcast for over three years. And I thought, You know what? I think today's the day, I think it is time. So the lady quest podcast is really for witchy self aware, intuitive women who know they have a big life purpose here on Earth. 

And another way of saying big, could be deep, something that feels deeply meaningful to you that you want to do pursue create experience in this life. 

My personal passion is about helping myself and helping other women do that. And I've thought about this over the years why this is, and I really think it stems from my mom. 

I grew up in northern Vermont. And my mom was an actress. And she was an actress that was a repressed actress, because although earlier in her life, when she was 18, she had gone to New York City and studied with the famous acting teacher outta Haugan and gotten started, she kind of got scared out, she was very shy. And I think, you know, back then I think there was also like, just weird stuff going on with the industry. Like it's hard for to be a woman in the industry, creepy producers, all that kind of thing. 

And she ultimately turned around and went back to Charlotte, Vermont, and got married to my father had three kids became a psychotherapist, and put that dream on ice. And although she had done some acting work and started a theatre company in Vermont, and did that for a while, her dream wasn't fully activated. And this was a dream that had been with her since she was a tiny little girl, creating plays with her friend for her family. 

And so I grew up listening to my mom, talk about getting back to New York City, and getting back to acting. And it was like, she had been estranged from a long lost lover that was still out there somewhere. And she just needed to get back to it. 

And I think as a little girl, and as a teenager, hearing that from her, made me really understand how incomplete a woman can feel when she isn't living her purpose. And how no matter how full and rich and happy other parts of her life are. If she's not living her purpose, she's fucked. Like she's going to be in pain on some level. Something is going to be missing. 

And before I figured that out, I thought I wanted to be an actor. I watched my mom talk and pine talk about in pined for acting for so long that by the time I was 16/17, I'm like, Oh my gosh, that that has got to be the path that's got to be the most extraordinary way to live. 

So I wound up applying to NYU to go to Tisch School of the Arts for acting. I got in. I went there for a year and then I dropped out because I'm like, this isn't this isn't getting me to be an actor. As fast as I could be. This is a lot of money. There's a lot of extra classes. I should just live in New York City cocktail waitress, take acting classes and capitalize on my youth to get you know, agents and managers and get this show on the road. So I really did just that I got. 

Well, I started working for a manager for free. While I was cocktail waitressing to try and get my foot in the door. She started sending me out for stuff. And within four months of having dropped out after my freshman year I booked this role on The Sopranos, a guest starring role. I played a stripper that got pregnant and she gets braces and then she gets beaten to death at the end. 

And it was a big enough part that the casting director Georgeann walk in who is the wife of Christopher Walken, the hilarious character actor I'm Molly's more than just a character actor, I mean, but He is hilarious. Anyway, she put in a good word with some amazing managers. And then my co star Joe Pantoliano. He put in a word with his agents at Uta, this big fancy la agency. 

So then suddenly, I had like top managers, top agents. And I was primed to have this successful acting career. And I was going on auditions, and I was doing more acting training. And I was booking more stuff I booked part on law and order the TV show where if you live in New York City, like you're pretty much guaranteed to wind up on law and order, like, just by walking down the street, you might wind up on law and order. But anyway, I did book a part on it. And I came out to LA and was testing for different TV shows, which means it's just down to you and like a couple other people and you've signed the contracts and, and I was getting really close to a lot of stuff. 

And I just had this feeling like it wasn't it. Like whatever my mom's relationship to acting was. It wasn't my relationship I, I didn't love learning lines and trying to be these other characters. I didn't want to try to cultivate an emotional state that was different than the one I was in.

 I actually was getting really fascinated by spiritual teachings, in particular ones that revolved around the present moment. I loved the book, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And I started getting into some of the older kind of hardcore spiritual texts like I am that by Nisargadatta, and the works of Krishna merde. Jiddu, Krishnamurti. And I was just finding my actual passion, might interest that, that you know that feeling in you, when you just want to go down and down and down the rabbit hole further and further and further and dig further and further infatuation. 

That was not with acting. There was something about acting, that I enjoyed, which was playing lotto. Like the idea that I could book something. And within two weeks, my entire life would change. And I would make a lot of money and a lot of people would love and admire me. I was into that. But I was like, Oh, shit, I gotta do this, this acting in order to do that. And I just do not have the disposition for it. I just didn't care. So ultimately, I quit. 

I remember all this crazy stuff was happening to my car. Like and I had heard because I was into all these different spiritual teachings I had heard your car is symbolic for how you move through life. So my car was getting vandalized like crazy, I would come out, the tires would be slashed, the windows would be smashed. This happened four or five times within the span of maybe four months. And finally, the last time it happened, the driver's side window had been smashed in. And there were these shards of glass all over the seat on the driver's side. And I was so tired of cleaning it up and dealing with it, my car getting vandalized that I just went back into my apartment. I got a towel, I put it over the shards of glass at this. 

By this time, I was living in Los Angeles. So that's why I had a car driving around. I just put this towel over the shards of glass. And I sat down, like with a crunch and just drove around without even having cleaned the glass out. And that day, I was working a catering job. And I remember I was in the valley, and I drove to this underground parking area to go up to this bagel shop to get a bagel. And I got up I got out I got the bagel. I came back I sat on the towel on the broken glass, eating this bagel in this underground parking lot. And I had this thought I can just leave. Like I don't have to do this anymore. I can just leave.

And I was young I was I think I was like almost 22 or something. And it was the most liberating feeling I suddenly have and had and then within two weeks, I told my agents and managers I rented out by that time like a girlfriend and I had been sharing a studio apartment, a girly man acting class. I rented out my half of it. And I got in the car and I drove back across the country to Vermont, where I'm from to just start over and really find out find out what I like. 

And that, I would say is the other half of why I'm so intrigued by helping women find and follow their callings A, because, you know, I saw my mom not following hers and not and how devastating that was. And be, because I had this experience of really committing myself to a calling that wasn't mine. And realizing, even though I had the most amazing opportunities I had once in a lifetime kind of opportunities as an actor with the agents and managers I had, and I could have even booked something, I probably would have booked something if I stuck around. Like I didn't want it. I just didn't want it. 

And that was a huge mindfuck to be like how could I not want this and a lot of my peers that I went to Tisch with. It was very odd for them that I got out, I got everything. Supposedly we wanted to set ourselves up. And I just, like walked away from it because I didn't care. Because it wasn't my dream. 

So I should tell you. So you know, my mom ultimately did circle back to New York City. She lives there. Now she owns an apartment just above Central Park in South Harlem. And she's just fully she's like full on living her calling. She's, you know, teaching acting, she has her own theater ensembles. She's booking parts and independent films and things. And she's just 100% doing it. She actually just yesterday got back from the Sarajevo Film Festival where she was for a week because she was in a short film that was there. So she just so you know, happy ending there. She's fully in her calling at this point. And thank God, because I think it's really hard to have a parent that isn't doing their thing. They just start to kind of wither and shrivel up from what I've seen. My mom's only getting bigger and younger. So she's doing her thing. 

And I've really spent these years since I left acting, searching and seeking following the breadcrumbs to find out like what do I care about? What am I here to do? And that has involve very deep dives into spirituality into meditation. 10 years as a yoga and meditation teacher, there are certain practices I have done, to reconnect to myself and my sense of path and purpose. 

And those practices are what I really want to share with you. My invitation to you as I wrap up this recording is to just feel into the energy in your body right now. How has hearing the story of my mother affected you? How are these ideas about connecting to and following your callings churning inside of you? And if you feel a little something extra going on right now, you might want to do a little journaling. Just give yourself time to do a little more thinking on what's coming up for me. What might my deeper self be wanting to tell me? Okay, thank you so much for tuning in to this first episode of the lady quest podcast. And I hope you tune in for the next one. I'll be back soon.

If you like this podcast, you will love the lady quest program. join my newsletter through the link in the episode description. If you want to learn more about Lady quest, my one on one coaching work and get invited to free transformational workshops. I teach on a regular basis online. Also, if you want to make my day you could leave a five star review for this podcast. Thank you so much for being a part of my world and I look forward to being with you again very soon