FALLING UP

My name is Kendal Thompson, I am an artist and this, is my story of trust and change in my perception through healing.  

My life as an artist began with the purity of creating from the heart, but like most, I lost my way. Mesmerized by the sparkle of the ego and the appearance of physical 3d success, I began to suffer. My journey of returning home to myself and my truth as an artist has been excruciating at times, but with each bit of pain and new light is shed as to why art created with love is the only way.  

 I grew up in a two-parent household in small town Ontario Canada, I was raised with my younger sister, a dog and eventually a cat. The things I wanted were provided for me, with some extras and I didn’t feel as though life was imposed on me by my parents. I felt free to dream of a life I wanted to live and felt free to explore my imagination and discover my own views.  

It sounds great, even reading it back to myself I think, “wow yeah, I had it quite good” but the truth I have discovered as of just recently is the fact, that it doesn’t matter what you are being given or shown if the energy behind it doesn’t match.  

My parents struggled. They struggled with finances, they struggled with themselves, at times they struggled with each other, with being parents and with their own pasts. I felt that. I had no clue I was feeling that, but up until I decided to write this essay, I felt it.  

I was always into doing something creative, whether it was painting or dancing, even dreaming up new ways of living or how I wanted to be when I was an “adult”. Creating is what came the most natural to me.  

Singing was my first love; I began singing around the age of three. I would hide under the dining room table and make up songs and just sing at the top of my lungs. I believed I was invisible beneath the table hidden by only the ever so slightly dangling table cloth, stopping if anyone were to walk by or acknowledge my existence. I was terrified of being heard. 

 Eventually other forms of art became more comfortable to me than singing, so I moved away from that to explore other creative endeavors, such as visual art and became exceptionally great at day dreaming and escapism.  

When I was 12, I made a friend who sang freely, while we spent more and more time together, I was eventually reminded of what I was missing. I had run for long enough and though I was still riddled with the fear of being heard, I felt safe enough in her presence to explore my voice once again. To my mother’s surprise I eventually asked if I could be enrolled into singing lessons, I felt strengthened by the support of my friend and inspired by the “Girl Power” movement provided by the Spice Girls. With my new found confidence from the outside world, something inside me agreed and told me I could do this and I should follow through with the steps I needed to get me there.  

But where was “there”?  

The entertainment industry was (and still is), a beast that was roaring heavily, convincing myself and others that fame and fortune await just on the other side of your talent, all you have to do is “get noticed” and suddenly your world would sky rocket to endless possibilities and money. It looked exciting and it looked like where I wanted to be. If I were famous, I could see the world and not live in this little hick town anymore, be acknowledged, be respected, and most of all loved for doing a thing that made me happy. It felt as though fame was the thing that understood how important it was to dream, and would honor that dream. To me, fame knew that what was inside my heart was important and that would allow me to live a full and happy life. I just had to get famous, that’s it.  

I followed my dream to the city of Toronto, Ontario, the closest hub to what was going on. By now, I had taken all of the lessons, played some shows, learned guitar and had written a handful of my own songs. I had some notable events under my belt and felt I was a big fish in a small pond, I needed to spread my little singer-songwriter my wings and be spotted by a big wig agent who would tell me I was a star.  

I knew big things awaited me; I still know big things await, but what I arrived to on the other side of that hour-long highway drive to Toronto wasn’t exactly the golden gates to fame.  

“The struggle is real”- a phrase I’ve heard often in the art world, and life, I've often used it myself and it was something I truly believed to be real. Like I said before, I felt it, I felt it all the time, I just didn’t know what it was, and I certainly didn’t know until recently, that it wasn’t mine.  

I believed my ego when it was blinded by thoughts of fame as the key to my happiness, I did this, wore that and even apologized for things I didn’t feel I did wrong, so I could get there. I wrote songs that weren’t about any real experience of my own, I went to every single party and allowed toxic people make me special promises they couldn’t keep. The struggle WAS real. The turmoil I felt with every decision I didn’t agree with, the jokes I would make about the things I would do to “get what I want”, were all digging a bigger and bigger hole inside of me.  

This vast emptiness I was creating for myself needed more and more in order to feel satisfied. Suddenly, small achievements weren't enough and I became so codependent and so attached to the outcome of each and every single piece of “art” that I put out that the darkest of thoughts would take over when the high wore off.  

Was this my dream? To feel like I was constantly walking uphill in the snow, with no shoes on? Did struggle make it necessary for me to appreciate anything? My life didn’t feel like this when I was dreaming of my future as a child. When I sang it was because it made me so happy it just had to come out of my body, it had to be expressed, there was no expectation behind it, it was just my pure joy from my tiny little heart.  

I took to looking at my life, at my parents and those around me. I wondered how could I be following my dream, yet experiencing so much emotional turmoil and lack. I was fragmented and at odds, with myself.  I have realized that though the struggle isn’t real, the generational trauma is. The grandparents who experienced the great depression and wars to our parents who experienced wars and financial crises, the list goes on, but the reality is that I, have always been provided for, I have food, I have necessities and I have shelter. This struggle, this lack, this need for having so much, wasn’t mine. All I ever wanted was to create art and feel safe and supported in this world. I didn’t need and I don’t need fame to do that. To call myself an artist yet live to only please my ego demands was causing me to live completely inauthentically, and that’s not what I came here to do. That’s not what it means to create art. We love art in all of its many forms because it connects us to our own truth, our own heart, it makes us feel joy when we create ourselves and it makes us feel seen and heard by others who share theirs with us. It’s connecting, it’s pure, it’s love and that is everything I want the world to be. The more I clear the wounds and projections that have clouded own vision the more I can my life the way I want, creating how I want to create from MY heart, and to me, that is the only way.