What If I Don’t Know Who I Am: Identity, Trauma and Stepping Into the Unknown with Jedidiah Jenkins
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Is it ok if I don’t know ‘who’ I am…we all want to be somebody.
But what is a somebody?
—Jedidiah Jenkins
Thank you Newsstand Studio at 1 Rockefeller Plaza for providing a place for me to record this episode for y’all! No more Brooklyn closet recording!!!
This week, I’m chatting with travel writer, public speaker, and my good friend Jedidiah Jenkins. A few years ago, Jed made the decision to leave his job to pursue his dream: bike to Patagonia and write a book about it. And he did it. The book, To Shake the Sleeping Self, made the NYT Best Sellers List. Multiple times! Fun fact: we used to be roommates, so we share some fun stories from the good old days. We also chat about people-pleasing tendencies, learning to be your truest self, what our biggest fears can teach us, and why it’s important to name our traumas.
“When you start to step towards what feels true, you might ruffle feathers, but what you’ll find is people that look up and go ‘Oh my God, me too.’”
Being Gay in the Church
Jed was raised Christian, realized he was gay and was told it was bad.
“It’s a horrible thing to wake up into a consciousness as a child and realize that something innately inside you, everyone if they found out would reject you… That is a horrible darkness.”
This led him to try and be perfect. “If I’m not inherently good, then I must earn it.”
When he got to be 30 years old, he decided to really live his life, despite his biggest fear of being rejected.
Jed opens up about the complicated relationship he has with his mother throughout his journey of becoming who he really is.
When Your Biggest Fears Become Your Reality
I open up about when my biggest fear became a reality: my dad having a drug relapse—and found instead of destroying me; it became one of the biggest access points for growth in my life.
“Being tested is the revelation of who you are, so I wouldn’t trade that for the world.”— Jed
Jed’s worst fear was rejection by everyone, and the opposite happened. “I’m lucky because I have a mother who loves first and is righteous second.”
If you don’t heal your past; it will haunt you.
3 Practical things to do to begin walking towards freedom from trauma:
Identify + speak your trauma out loud in safe spaces.
Only then can you start to see how even the darkest moments have led you to who and where you are today.
Release it—if we don’t heal our past; it will haunt us.
Jed shares a quote from Onsite, a trauma workshop experience based in Nashville: “If it’s hysterical, it’s historical.” Even if we’re not aware of the trauma, our bodies and subconscious are.
Growth doesn’t mean that the struggle isn’t there anymore. It means you now have the tools to handle the struggle when it pops up.
“Walk in the direction of what feels right. If it’s not right, it will tell you.”
Resources
Keep up with Jedidiah at JedidiahJenkins.com and on IG at @jedidiahjenkins.
You can buy his book, Like Streams to the Ocean, here.
You can buy his book, To Shake the Sleeping Self, here.
Check out my IGTV response to purity culture here.
Check out Onsite, the therapist community in Nashville, here.
You can buy the book we talk about, The Body Keeps the Score, here.
Get updates for my book, Sexless in the City, here.
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