We’re looking forward to introducing you to Jacy Kirby. Check out our conversation below.
Jacy, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
I think others struggle with their identity of self without ever verbalizing it aloud. We live in a society that oftentimes, whether it be by family, friends, coworkers, social media, etc. tell you what and who you are. They define your self without ever giving you a chance to find it. To search within yourself for your self. This creates friction with who you are versus who you are told to be, regardless of sex and gender. Men are told to be tough, shove their feelings down. To talk about what hurts you is to admit you are lesser as a man, and instead you should work until your body and brain can no longer take the toll you’ve punished it with over the years. To be a woman means you have to meet the era’s current beauty standards. If your body does not look a certain way then you are deemed lesser than by a zeitgeist that changes faster than a Midwest weekly forecast.
This separation of what someone wants internally versus what the world tells them they should be creates a divide between the self. I have found for myself, at least, it of good practice to check in with your self; sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, but often enough that I don’t start to forget my own self’s true desires in life. Who do I want to be? What version of myself is going to lead to fulfillment? I think if more people started to really check-in with themselves, you’d start to see a world that instills confidence, not just a flashy display of a hollowed out, cheaper version of it.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am a published author, professional writer, and a health and wellness coach of over eight years. My coaching, as well as my writing, focuses on mental health and behavioral change. Finding the inner self, and cultivating an internal environment that is conducive to self growth.
I myself have struggled with a binge eating disorder, bulimia through exercise, an autoimmune disease (shoutout to the Mast Cell Activation Syndrome crowd!) and all of the other mental health diatribes that come along with having a rift between the self and perceptions of who I should be because of an archaic belief much of our society holds as to what a man should be in life.
My most recent book of poetry, “Recovery: The Spaces Between My Eating Disorder” deals with what my recovery looks like, and what struggles I still face within my own internal workings. Within this book, as well as my others, and my coaching, I aim to garner a place of mindfulness and centeredness so that people can find themselves without fighting against themselves.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
Growing up in a small town, I learned many ways of being a man I am still working at unkinking almost ten years later from my psyche. To many who have grown up in a similar fashion, drinking and working until your body can’t anymore is just a way of life. Refusing to talk about your feelings because you’re told that makes you weak and instead bottling them up is a common coping mechanism that I myself believed to be law. I believed to be a man you had to be harsh, loud, unmoving in your beliefs. If someone disagreed with you, then you steamrolled them with argumentation until they agreed with you or submitted. This created a huge chasm in who I wanted to be versus who I thought I had to be.
I originally got into boxing and kickboxing in large part because I believed it’s what you did as a man to prove your worth. Fighting with your fists and feet against someone else seemed a whole hell of a lot easier than fighting against myself, so I dove in head first and didn’t look back.
This way of thinking, of course, only lead to further infighting within my self. It caused me to crash and burn. Over the years, I’ve learned that to be a man is to be able to be many things. He can be soft spoken in conversation, but he can be firm when he needs to be. He can lead with the best of them, but he also knows when it is better to allow someone else to take charge. He can not only enunciate his feelings, but he’s not controlled by them either. He is loving, caring, compassionate, not just to himself, but to others. Friends, family, strangers. He is peaceful, choosing to deescalate rather than instigate, but he carries the capacity to defend himself and others if need be. To be a man is to be many things, but it is not to be mean, to be brash, to be harsh.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me to be grateful, for there is no knowledge of success without also knowing what it is to suffer. Life is a balancing act; a duality. To know good is to know bad, and to know either is often a matter of perception. Pain is very real, but what we choose to do with it defines how we move forward in life.
At my worst, binge eating for days at a time and then starving myself with only water for just as long, I was lost in my own suffering. But I always held on to a sliver of a thread of light that one day I would figure things out. I would overcome my suffering and see the clear blue sky overhead once again. This, I have found through the many years since, was a faulty way of thinking, for there will always be some semblance of suffering, but it’s how you carry it, how you think of it, that determines what it does to you and what you do to it. I used to think I would wake up one day and be done with everything I struggled with. I’d see the light, whatever that means, and be “cured”. I have since come to know that my suffering allows me the ability to practice gratitude, mindfulness.
I am grateful for my struggles. They taught me how to be easy with myself. They taught me how to fight for myself without fighting against myself. If you combat fire with fire, all you’re doing is burning down a forest that needs some rain. When I find myself struggling now, I take a moment and reevaluate my situation. What can I learn from this? Where can I grow from this? Can I approach this way of struggle from a different perspective? Can I approach it with different feelings and ways of thinking that will better deal with whatever I’m struggling with?
This is not to say struggling is easy, but it gets easier when you meet yourself with patience rather than friction. It’s not about being in a place you don’t want to be, it’s about taking heed of where you are, finding your footing, and find yourself within any situation that presents itself to you.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
I believe I can make the world a better place, one small action at a time. One smile to a stranger, holding a door open, picking up trash along the road when I’m out for a walk, being kind where being crude might seem easier. At a macro level, making change can seem overwhelming. But when you focus on the small things, on the people around you, you can make strides to enact positive change in almost everything you do.
This isn’t to say it doesn’t take effort. It does. We are in a time period where society often pushes self preservation and workloads so overbearing that in the free moments of the day, people are so tired they’d rather go on autopilot than do much else. I get it. It’s hard. But so is living in a world that fosters hate, bigotry, and isolationism. I, you, and we have the power to change this world for the better by simply being kind. By doing the small things throughout the day not because it will lead to any reward for ourselves, but because it is the right thing to do. Kindness is free, so should our ability to help where we can when we can.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. When do you feel most at peace?
I feel most at peace when I am with my wife, Chloe, and our one and half year old golden retriever, Teddy Bear. They are my calm, my foundation, my self’s safe space. Without them, I don’t know where I would be, but I would certainly not be where I am now; further along in my eating disorder recovery than I’ve ever been, further into self discovery than I’ve ever been, and more at peace with myself than I’ve ever been.
Everyone needs a safe space. Someone they can call, text, or talk to when times get tough. Someone that loves them for them, not what they can do for the other person. My wife, Chloe, is the most selfless person I’ve ever met in my life. She’s also the beautiful, inside and out. She is someone I look up in the ways in which she carries herself as a person, a spouse, a leader, and all of the other many things she is to so many other people. Without her and Teddy, my relapses would be much worse, and my spirals would be that much more volatile. They are my peace, they are my calm.
Whatever is after this life, I hope to find them again and again, not because of what they do for me, but because of who they are intrinsically. Selfless, compassionate, loving, caring, and kind, the likes of which that make this world a better place.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: jacykirby33
- Facebook: Jacy Kirby
- Other: https://linktr.ee/kirbstop
