Welcome to COURAGEOUS AF
Being Human Takes Guts
In this first episode, Kyle shares about who she is, why she's here, and part one of the story that changed the course of her life when she was just eight years old.
She talks about the importance of finding courage, and why creating this podcast matters so much to her.
To follow and learn more about Kyle, visit:
www.instagram.com/courageous_af_podcast
Warning: This episode uses strong language. Please use care while listening.
The first three episodes cover the subject of suicide. Please reach out for help if you or anyone you care for is in need by dialing 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, Available 24 hours.
Transcript of full Episode:
Welcome to the Courageous AF podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Hollingsworth. This podcast is not just about having courage. It's about the human spirit, creativity, resilience, and what's possible no matter what life brings. In this space, I share my own journey of healing, of rediscovering my voice, my power, and my passion after four decades of living a life riddled with trauma, abuse, and pain.
In my heart, I believe we are all courageous AF, and being human takes guts. We're in this together. Hello. Hello. I'm Kyle. This is Courageous AF, and so am I. I'm here to talk with you about so many different things, all of them having to do with living a more courageous and creative life. It's something that's very important to me.
And for this first episode, I really want to just talk about who am I? Why am I here? What do I know? I made a big decision to finally launch this podcast on Valentine's Day. And the reason I did that is not because I'm a great celebrator of Valentine's Day. It's not because I think Valentine's Day is like so sweet and perfect and all that.
It is because, um, my journey, my trauma journey really began wholeheartedly on Valentine's. day when I was eight years old in 1975 and the event that happened that day basically redirected the entire path of my life. It impacted me in ways that I still am uncovering and discovering and healing and it set a tone for decades of difficulty, challenges, heartbreak, just never really feeling as though I was safe in the world.
Never really feeling as though I fit in the world or belonged in the world. And it has taken a lot of work for me to get to the point where I can wholeheartedly say, I'm courageous as fuck. Yeah, I am. And now that I've discovered that courage and that I continue to grow around this idea of being wholly completely expressed creatively and living a courageous life, Facing fear, pushing through the things that scare me.
I really want to be here to shine a light for other people. I really want to be a lighthouse for those people who maybe aren't on their path where I am yet because God, I needed it. I needed people who could help me, who could show me what was possible and who could help me to see that I could survive and I could change the story of my life.
I could break the family, the generational stories and the trauma. You know, that's such an overused word. But the truth is I'll use that word a lot because I haven't found a better one for it. And you know, I used to wear my trauma like this big heavy weighted cloak and it was, I was heavy. I would walk into the room and I would feel, I think I exhausted people to be perfectly honest with you.
But over the years I've done this just a tremendous amount of work and with every new step toward my healing that a layer of that cloak has peeled away and it's lighter and lighter and lighter. And I want to help share stories and I want to talk about how I got to this point and continue on my journey.
And honestly, another thing that I want to say is that I think I feel like it's so important, especially for women, for us to speak up and to share our truth and to share our stories. Because when we do that, those of us who can do that, it gives permission to our sisters and brothers. It gives permission to others to be brave and to speak their truth and to share their stories because it's by sharing that we can find connection and we can remember that we're not alone and we can remember that we're all going through things, you know, and some of us.
Have a lot more to handle than others. That's true. Yes, that's true. Absolutely. So I just want to be here and be as authentic and courageous and honest and fucking forthright as I can. Because I think it's important. It's important for me. It's important for my continued growth to speak my truth and use my voice in the ways that I can.
And it's also important because I know that somewhere out there, there's someone who needs to hear something that I'm saying. So I'm trusting that and I'm stepping forward with courage into doing this. Podcast. I can tell you that I've actually stalled for almost two years. I wanted to do it for a long time and I kept second guessing myself and kept putting it to the back burner.
And I was going through a huge life going through a huge life upheaval last year. And I finally got to the point where I'm like, Kyle, what are you doing, girl? Like get out of your own way. Cause that's all it is. I'm the biggest obstacle in my own life. Of all the challenges I've had in my life and of all the obstacles, whether seen or unseen that have been in my way, I am the biggest of them, honestly, especially in this stage of my life, like it's the beliefs that I have.
It's the limiting beliefs that I have. It's the second guessing. It's the fear, right? That keeps us from speaking out and from doing the things that we're called to do. I love speaking, and I love storytelling, and I just, yeah, I felt this was something I wanted to do for a long time. So if you're here for this first episode, I'm really happy to have you here.
I may be for you, I may not be. I'm not for everybody, and I, you may find value with me, and if you do, I hope you'll stay. I hope you'll also give me ratings and reviews and all the things that will help me to create something magical with this. For now, I'm just going to share with you, and I think it's really important that I start at the beginning.
So I'm going to tell you the first part of a story. That began on Valentine's Day of 1975. I was eight years old and my sister was nine and a half and we lived with my mom. We called her mama. We lived with mama in the South in a little brick house and my mother and dad had divorced five years prior.
Actually, we had moved around a lot. We had bounced around a lot and at this point we found ourselves in this little brick house on a little road in South Carolina. At that point, cartoons were this amazing, magical thing that only happened on Saturdays. You know, there was no internet, there were no cell phones, there was no like 300 channels, there was a few channels.
And so Saturday was the day we waited for all week. Saturday was like, that was the super exciting thing is to wake up at like six or seven o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, go get a bowl of cereal and plop down in front of the TV and watch Scooby Doo or Josie and the Pussycats. There was So many.
So Valentine's Day had happened on Friday and what made it special this Valentine's Day in my mind was mama gave us each a box of Whitman samplers. You know those little tiny ones that have six pieces in it with the yellow and the flowers and all the things and I remember thinking that was amazing and I ate a piece.
I might have eaten two, I'm not sure, but we put them in the refrigerator so that we could have the rest the next day and we went to bed. I got up first and I would walk from my bedroom that I shared with my sister. I would walk across the hall and use the bathroom and then I would go and either wake her up or just go to the kitchen by myself and fix myself a bowl of cereal.
And so on this particular morning I woke up and I noticed as I crossed the hall that my mama was not in her bed. Just a notice thing. I had to pee and I walked toward our bathroom, but the door was locked. This is the bathroom my sister and I used that was across the hall from our room. My mother had her own bathroom in her bedroom.
So the light was on and the door was locked. And I had this really weird feeling. And I went back into the bedroom and I got my sister and I woke her up and I said, Hey. I can't find Mama and the bathroom door is locked. And so she got up and we came into the hall together and we were at the bathroom door and suddenly got really afraid and I think our imaginations just were really running wild and I thought there was somebody in the bathroom.
Maybe they had Mama. So I remember going and getting a knife. I'm going to stop here and actually say, now, these are my memories and I know memories aren't always exact. So everything I share on this podcast, I'm going to be sharing from the perspective of my own experience, my own memory. I'm not speaking for anybody else.
Okay. So I remember having a knife in my hand at one point. I remember Lisa and I walking room to room and looking behind the doors and there was a real fear developing because this was very strange. Our mama was not up. or in bed or in the bathroom. And I noticed also something else. There was something on her bedside table and I'll come back to that, but I just am noticing again.
And so we kept going throughout the house and we ended up back at this bathroom door and we're now we're knocking and we're calling out to mama like, where are you? You know, who's in there? And I just remember this look going back and forth between us. And then I remember the front door opening. And you could see the front door from where we were standing outside of the bathroom.
And you could also, I mean, there was a clear line so we could see each other and the door opened and it was my mother's boyfriend. I'm not going to use any real names here either. Just so we're clear. I'm going to call him Howard. So Howard was standing at the door and he had this ghostly look on his face and we were both talking at the same time.
Oh my gosh, where's mama? We can't find her. The door's locked. And it was like a millisecond, it feels like, and he was at our side, he was right there next to us. And he asked us to step back, and he tried the lock, and then he backed up and he busted the door open. It was very loud. It was very dramatic. And I looked in as he stepped into the bathroom, and we saw Mama in the bathtub.
And I remember her looking so beautiful, actually. She was lying with her head off to the left side. And she looked like she was sleeping. The light in the bathroom felt really bright and he ran to her. It was so fast that he turned around and he just took both of us and he ushered us across the hallway to our bedroom and said, wait here, shut the door.
And we're just in there and it feels like forever. And anyway, within seconds, even though it felt like forever, I guess it was seconds. I don't know. This is one of those things, you know, he came back in the room. And he sat down on the bed. And I remember he was sitting on my left and my sister was sort of standing to his left and I said, is mama okay?
Is she hurt? Is mama okay? And he said to me something that if I were older, I probably would have made immediate sense out of. But because I was eight and because I really didn't know any better, I didn't understand it. What he said was, she won't be hurting anymore. And that landed very differently with me than it did with my sister.
And so I was just looking at him with these wide eyes and I had no idea what he had just said to me. I really didn't understand, but he closed the door and he said, stay here. And so I'm sitting there with this piece of strange information. I don't know what that means. My sister at this point began really crying and screaming and pacing back and forth through the room.
It was very intense. And suddenly, like it seemed again, like moments later, I could hear people talking in our house. There were people in our house. And I heard like this kind of crackling sound. I heard like a walkie talkie and I heard footsteps down the hall and it felt like there was a lot of people in there, like there was a lot of people.
And I heard some of the things that they were saying and there was murmuring and questions and all of that. And this felt like it went on for a really, really long time. And I don't know how long we were in that bedroom. And I don't know how long it took for everyone to do what they did. But I know that when we finally came out of the bedroom, Mama was gone.
And I know that I think probably within about an hour or so of that, one of her friends, I think it was Beverly, came and picked us up and took us to her house. And I remember kind of going into this sort of catatonic kind of place where I just, I just was playing and just checked out. I'm struggling to come up with a name that I'm going to call my sister so that privacy is respected.
And I think I'm going to give her the name Lisa. So Lisa had to have some sedative so that she could sleep because she was absolutely just traumatized and yelling and screaming and crying and so, so, so upset while I was kind of oblivious and confused and playing with. Beverly's Kids. I don't know what I was thinking exactly.
I just know that I was in this very strange, stunned, and confused place. And it felt like it lasted for a while. And I'm going to stop there and continue in the next episode where I'll explain a little more about what happened and then the next event that immediately followed this. It was Wow. It was something I couldn't even talk about for such a long time without absolutely sobbing, and I'm just so grateful to be in a place where I can share it because I think it's, I think it's important, and um, I want to tell you more, and I also want to keep this first episode brief enough that it's digestible and not too drawn out.
I do want to say that if you continue to listen to these episodes with me, I do cuss a bit. I do share topics that are really difficult. I will find the courage to share and talk about things that might make some people uncomfortable and I will try to preface the podcasts. I'm going to give a little bit of a warning that some of the subject matters in there.
I'll put that in the notes so that you can have discernment when you choose whether to listen to an episode and I'm not here to stir anything up or upset anyone. I'm also not here to share these stories as a way of seeking attention or even sympathy. I don't need it. I'm good. I'm really, really good.
And what I'm doing is sharing my stories because I can remember over and over again looking for someone who'd been through what I'd been through, who'd experienced what I've experienced. And it's a lot. And when I could find people who'd survived it, it was like I could look to them and go, okay, I can see that what's possible.
It's like seeing a, an island out in the middle of the ocean, right? You can see. If somebody else survived what happened to me, what I experienced or worse, you know, then so can I. And so I think it's just so vital to have that. And I find it very important. I find it a high calling for myself to, to be able to, to share these things.
And so before I go, I'm also just gonna, I'm not going to have any sort of set order. I'm just talking y'all. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself, who I am today, where I am in the world. My life has been incredibly rich and diverse, but it's always been driven by creativity. I've been an artist since I was a child.
I bring creativity to everything that I do. And as a friend of mine describes me, I'm compelled to create. So every day I'm doing something creative every day, all the time. And one of the ways that I've had to find courage over the last I am a multi passionate, multi faceted, neurodivergent person who has a lot of different talents and a lot of different gifts.
And to be clear, there's a shit ton of stuff I don't know how to do and I make a lot of mistakes and I am not the wisest person in the world. I am just a person who has Lived through some of life's biggest losses and experienced some unbelievable traumas. Who's not had the courage, I'm not gonna say that, because I didn't always have it.
I was scared to death. I found the courage to go through those dark hallways and to look at the things that had happened and to heal those wounds and to grow from it and to literally change the direction of my life. And as I say that I'm imagining this huge cruise ship and I'm having to turn it. And it's taken me 12 years, 13 years of real.
work to get to the point that I am now and I'm such a student and I'm always learning and there's so much more to do and to be and to learn and to heal. But let's do that together. I feel like now's the time to do that with community. And I will also say that the podcast name Courageous AF that came from a Facebook group that I have.
I currently have a group there that's private, which you are more than welcome to join where I share my stories and I share my learnings and I share some live videos and I talk about my journey. I'm not sure how that group will evolve now that the podcast. is coming out, but I think they'll probably go hand in hand a bit.
So you're welcome to join me there. And in my life right now, this podcast is very important to me. My art is very important to me, my family, my husband, my dogs. And the other thing that's very important to me is personal growth and transformation and my journey as a Reiki practitioner and as an intuitive, as a medium.
Um, as a sound healer, as an illustrator, as a fine artist, as a speaker, as a teacher, as a workshop leader. All these things are alive in me, and they're all driven by this real deep desire to create and to help others. It's so important. So I'll bring a lot of conversation about all of it to this place, as well as my stories, as well as what I've learned, as well as ways that I've found healing and ways that I have found growth and ways that I've been able to learn and grow from some of life's biggest challenges and also how in the hell I've come to a point in my life where I can embrace all of it and accept it and choose it.
I think that's the most courageous thing I've ever done was to finally make peace with all that occurred in my life and to. To choose it, to not want to change it, to not want to make it any different, because that was causing me a lot of pain to want everything to be different, including this thing that happened on Valentine's day with my mother.
I'll say more about it on the next episode. I have a commitment to keep these easy to digest, at least for now. So I'm going to sign off for today. If you listen to this, And you want to come back for more, please do join me for episode number two. I'm going to be releasing these podcasts once a week on Wednesdays, and I am grateful for anyone and everyone who's listening.
I appreciate you and I'll figure it out as I go, right? That's what we're doing here. Stay courageous. Love y'all.
