I have to find something that ignites my soul
I came from a very traditional hierarchical background. I worked in corporate for a really long time and I would have stayed there if I wanted stuff easy. In the corporate world you know the structure, you know your place and there is no swaying in and out of the lines. But I wasn't learning. I wasn't learning particularly about me, I wasn't going deep about me, who I am as a person, and it was draining for me and my soul. I knew that eventually I was gonna explode out of that box. I was just turning into this little tiny, confined person. And I was like, “Nope, I have to break away. I have to find something else. I have to find something that ignites my soul.”
“I feel Deeply free” Kiana Elkins on a Loving practice
I was introduced to the concept, “a loving practice,” from All About Love. In that book she says that loving practice is not just about self-satisfaction. It's the way that we end domination and oppression. She talks about it throughout the book but I was like,”What does that mean? What is a loving practice? What does that actually look like? So I started talking to people and exploring what it means to engage with love as a practice. I offered a course called Cultivating a Loving Practice, where I break down a theoretical framework around loving practice. I was asking people to do the work to build community and they were like, “Yeah, that sounds good. But it means I have to have a hard conversation with my best friend, and I don't want to do that.” So now a lot of my work focuses on conflict. I identify conflict as a way to practice love. The willingness to be in conflict is an act of love.