00:00:00 Grace Kinda
I was working with, you know, the folks that interacted with on a daily basis.
00:00:06 Grace Kinda
They really guided me and said, well, just go to the store, Have you heard about Jamaican Black Castle Oil?
00:00:13 Grace Kinda
It was those these little things that they shared freely and it it.
00:00:18 Grace Kinda
I felt like I was now becoming a part of the conversation.
00:00:22 Grace Kinda
And little by little the chemistry started coming back because then I would make something and say wait, wait a second, let me write this down, let me write this down, let me write this down.
00:00:34 Grace Kinda
So that that’s sort of the parallel of where how my self-care journey with a better natural started.
00:00:40 Grace Kinda
And as I started doing this care for myself, I started feeling better and at the same time I think I was also trying to understand what what else is there for me.
00:00:52 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Welcome to the Kooler Lifestyle Podcast.
00:00:54 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I’m your host, Matt Kuehlhorn, and I’m excited to have you join me as I interview community members and business leaders from the communities in which I live, work and serve through my business, Kooler Garage Doors.
00:01:05 Matthew Kuehlhorn
We’re going to bring you highlights on characters in our communities.
00:01:09 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Why?
00:01:10 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Because community matters, and I want to know more about who is behind our business and leadership in order to understand and support the community fabric that our relationships make up.
00:01:20 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And collectively, we can build stronger communities that support our lifestyles, our youth and our health.
00:01:29 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Kooler Lifestyle Podcast.
00:01:32 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I’m your host, Matt Kuehlhorn.
00:01:33 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Today I am sitting with Grace Kinda.
00:01:37 Matthew Kuehlhorn
CEO and founder of E Bear Naturals.
00:01:40 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And I’m really excited to get into your story.
00:01:43 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Grace, this is the first time we’ve met and already I can sense a grounded presence from you.
00:01:52 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And I’m just excited to learn about your story.
00:01:54 Matthew Kuehlhorn
So thank you so much for joining.
00:01:57 Grace Kinda
Thanks Matt.
00:01:58 Grace Kinda
I’m really excited to be here.
00:02:00 Grace Kinda
I’m ready to get started.
00:02:02 Grace Kinda
I just I just really appreciate having a space.
00:02:06 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I love it.
00:02:06 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I love it.
00:02:07 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And you are beaming in from Denver, Co, correct?
00:02:11 Grace Kinda
Yes, I am Cloudy Denver.
00:02:13 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Beautiful, Cloudy.
00:02:16 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Denver.
00:02:17 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I love it.
00:02:18 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Where did you grow up?
00:02:20 Grace Kinda
So I grew up in Kenya and I grew up in a little town called Meru.
00:02:30 Grace Kinda
It’s actually next to you can see Mount Kenya not too far from Meru.
00:02:36 Grace Kinda
But the interesting thing is I grew up in Meru, but my parents came from the village.
00:02:41 Grace Kinda
So in a sense that my growing up also was a part of going to the village back where my parents came from.
00:02:49 Grace Kinda
My parents came from the village, they met in the city and moved to this little town.
00:02:54 Grace Kinda
And so that experience of growing up, having moments when you travel far distances to see your relatives being immersed in such different, you know when you’re, when you’re driving down the road in Kenya, it’s one of the most beautiful places to drive.
00:03:11 Grace Kinda
You will see the zebras by the road, you’ll see the pink flamingos by the road, you’ll see vegetation and tea and on your way to the village.
00:03:22 Grace Kinda
So that was part of my growing up as well because we’re very tight knit as a community.
00:03:28 Grace Kinda
And you know, when about six years old, I moved from this beautiful little mountain town, quiet and sleepy into the heart of Nairobi.
00:03:38 Grace Kinda
So I am also a city girl in the sense where I grew up just seeing that the, the city in the background, the hustle and bustle of life, hearing the market sounds, just seeing it was very cosmopolitan at the time.
00:03:53 Grace Kinda
I also grew up in that and I also have a little bit of that in me.
00:03:57 Grace Kinda
So my growing up was, I think about it situationally where I actually was born, but also thinking about all of those experiences of growing up for me and nature and locations and just how they were is just a big part of what I experienced very early on.
00:04:17 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Wow, it sounds amazing.
00:04:22 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Kenya is a place I have not been to and my.
00:04:27 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Reference of it I guess would be movies or TV shows or books, magazines right?
00:04:35 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And what you just described is pretty much a wide spectrum from mountain village to city and everything in between.
00:04:44 Grace Kinda
Yes, I, you know, I, it’s very interesting.
00:04:47 Grace Kinda
When I came to the US and I found people who lived in place and that was very peculiar to me.
00:04:55 Grace Kinda
So I I came here on a scholarship for young women and I came here when I was 18.
00:05:02 Grace Kinda
And I think part of the reason I was so confident in coming here, you know, as a young person, because I was so used to this experience of new experiences all the time.
00:05:14 Grace Kinda
And so when they encountered people that had lived in Pennsylvania all their lives, I was like, where else have you been?
00:05:21 Grace Kinda
So I was really curious.
00:05:22 Grace Kinda
That’s something in hindsight, it was probably like a very moving from Kenya to the US with I think a suitcase, a big Samsonite suitcase and a carry on bag and yeah, let’s do it.
00:05:37 Grace Kinda
It was really, it just kind of stopped me in my tracks a little bit.
00:05:42 Grace Kinda
But it was just, I think that that spirit and just seeking out new experiences is just, I don’t know how to explain it.
00:05:54 Grace Kinda
It’s sort of a I don’t know how you travel before we travel is sort of like a rejuvenating space for me.
00:06:04 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah.
00:06:05 Luke Hylton
Hey everybody.
00:06:05 Luke Hylton
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00:06:07 Luke Hylton
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00:06:09 Luke Hylton
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00:06:11 Luke Hylton
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00:06:14 Luke Hylton
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00:06:25 Luke Hylton
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00:06:33 Luke Hylton
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00:06:39 Matthew Kuehlhorn
You came to the US 18.
00:06:49 Matthew Kuehlhorn
You’re in Denver now.
00:06:51 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Connect the dots.
00:06:52 Matthew Kuehlhorn
How did this play forward?
00:06:56 Grace Kinda
So I’ll start actually with one I have to recognize my mom.
00:07:02 Grace Kinda
So my mother became a widow at a very young age, in her early 30s.
00:07:08 Grace Kinda
My dad and my older brother, and with widows in the African context, especially in Kenya, there’s a lot of issues that surround the rights of widows because it’s sort of a patriarchy space of patriarchy.
00:07:23 Grace Kinda
So when someone, a protector in the home dies, it’s sort of life stops for the woman.
00:07:29 Grace Kinda
And my mom had a lot of responsibilities afterwards.
00:07:32 Grace Kinda
So I want to praise my mom because she’s the one who went above and beyond to truly get me even to the to the doors of you know Villanova where I went to eventually went to college.
00:07:45 Grace Kinda
So she really advocated for me she she invested a lot of time and resources and helping pay for my SATI, never experienced an SAT before that.
00:07:55 Grace Kinda
But you know we we we talked very differently in Kenya sort of the British system and the American system is quite different.
00:08:03 Grace Kinda
So I I she, she advocated for me and I followed her.
00:08:06 Grace Kinda
I followed her guidance and we got connected to Zoardi Africa, which is an organization that supports young women who without that we wouldn’t necessarily have gone sought higher education because of resources.
00:08:20 Grace Kinda
So it was just a combination of that and eight months between my SCT and you know, within eight months I still not yet turned 19.
00:08:29 Grace Kinda
I turned 19 in America.
00:08:31 Grace Kinda
I came here in August, I turned 19 in November, so I went to Villanova.
00:08:35 Grace Kinda
And this is sort of where my story kind of begins, because I came in with a goal of studying medicine, and this proved to be a very difficult challenge because I didn’t quite understand.
00:08:49 Grace Kinda
Our systems are different, so not only did I not kind, I had a challenge of culture.
00:08:53 Grace Kinda
I also had a challenge of grasping concepts, but also was lost in a way.
00:08:59 Grace Kinda
I was lost in a way.
00:09:01 Grace Kinda
So I struggled quite a bit in the first year, and what came out of that as I did my own work, was realizing that chemistry the way I was, I understood it.
00:09:12 Grace Kinda
I also want to say that I’m a big chemistry nerd.
00:09:16 Grace Kinda
I I become, I can.
00:09:18 Grace Kinda
I can truly say this because back then I left my biochemistry major to pursue sociology.
00:09:24 Grace Kinda
And the reason why I did that is I felt the loneliness in my soul.
00:09:29 Grace Kinda
There’s something when you leave home very young and lack those social supports.
00:09:34 Grace Kinda
I kind of forgot.
00:09:36 Grace Kinda
I kind of lost that sense of belonging, you know, even through my travels, I was now alone for the very first time.
00:09:43 Grace Kinda
So somewhere along the line I felt this sense of being lost.
00:09:47 Grace Kinda
But I found myself and I would go to these humanities.
00:09:51 Grace Kinda
I was fascinated.
00:09:53 Grace Kinda
So I I had to make the decision to make put my chemistry and dream you know, on park cuz I said I need to do something different.
00:10:03 Grace Kinda
So I did sociology and it is one of the best experiences of my life.
00:10:07 Grace Kinda
I got to understand why language is important cuz then I could be able to speak.
00:10:12 Grace Kinda
I you know, I was really fascinated with psychology and sociology because they spoke language.
00:10:18 Grace Kinda
They also spoke about people that I hadn’t seen in society.
00:10:23 Grace Kinda
So for example, I got to learn about in Kenya, never learn about the African American experience in the African American story.
00:10:32 Grace Kinda
And it became something that was so important to me because I thought this is my new community.
00:10:37 Grace Kinda
So in those ways it that part filled out my life.
00:10:42 Grace Kinda
So I finished my degree and I decided to go back and do a master’s in our in counseling, specifically on clinical mental health.
00:10:51 Grace Kinda
So I did that for two years.
00:10:54 Grace Kinda
I worked in addictions treatment and that was another experience.
00:11:02 Grace Kinda
Because then you meet people, they’re not just textbooks, they’re people.
00:11:07 Grace Kinda
And you’re there to serve people.
00:11:11 Grace Kinda
And in the times will be the most challenging thing I could ever get up and do is to do a 30 minute session.
00:11:20 Grace Kinda
The most is 3 hours trying to talk to folks that are struggling about recovery and sometimes I struggle to believe in myself because I could see I could see the tension so it rounded me out more.
00:11:36 Grace Kinda
I think about these experiences is it helped me be conversing to myself, which is something I thought I lacked at the time.
00:11:45 Grace Kinda
And that became a big tension for me mentally.
00:11:50 Grace Kinda
And one of the things that was happening at the time was my journey with my beauty.
00:11:56 Grace Kinda
Remember, I’m growing up here in the United States between 18 and 24.
00:12:01 Grace Kinda
I’m trying to sort of build my own sense of self.
00:12:05 Grace Kinda
What does beauty look like?
00:12:07 Grace Kinda
What does feelings confident really look like?
00:12:10 Grace Kinda
And back in back in 2010, 2008, around that area, there were no there, there was no representation, you know, walk into CVS and there was truly nothing for me.
00:12:23 Grace Kinda
And that made my mind messed up.
00:12:27 Grace Kinda
It messed up my mind a bit.
00:12:28 Grace Kinda
So it came up a point when I was working as a therapist where I was extremely stressed and I suddenly started thinking about self-care.
00:12:39 Grace Kinda
It just kind of popped in and said okay, what are my sisters doing?
00:12:43 Grace Kinda
Because then I was able to have conversations with people and go and ask for help because I was so far away from my family and I knew that it would be hard for them to understand.
00:12:57 Grace Kinda
But I was able to talk to my sisters for the first time and understand how to ask for help.
00:13:03 Grace Kinda
So my sisters guided me.
00:13:06 Grace Kinda
I’m talking about the ladies that I was working with, you know, the folks that interacted with on a daily basis.
00:13:14 Grace Kinda
They really guided me and said, well, just go to the store.
00:13:18 Grace Kinda
Have you heard about Jamaican Black Castle Oil?
00:13:20 Grace Kinda
It was those these little things that they shared freely and it it.
00:13:26 Grace Kinda
I felt like I was now becoming a part of the conversation and little by little the chemistry started coming back.
00:13:32 Grace Kinda
Because then I would make something and say wait wait a second, let me write this down, let me write this down, let me write this down.
00:13:42 Grace Kinda
So that that’s sort of the parallel of where how my self-care journey with a bare natural started.
00:13:48 Grace Kinda
And as I started doing this care for myself, I started feeling better.
00:13:54 Grace Kinda
And at the same time I think I was also trying to understand what what else is there for me.
00:14:00 Grace Kinda
I felt that I was working with people, but I truly wanted to be a part of the process upstream.
00:14:08 Grace Kinda
I always think about a long time ago, this story about a river and people keep falling in the river and you continuously trying to take them out of the river, take them out of the river until you realize that maybe you need to go upstream and figure out where people keep falling in the 1st place.
00:14:27 Grace Kinda
And it was that switch that truly made me understand that I need to step out of this role and I need to step in the space where I can see what’s happening and contribute to this conversation.
00:14:39 Grace Kinda
That my journey then took me into program developing programs, helping be part of the process, you know, doing events and, you know, but one of the one of the things I really loved about that stuff is it gave me a voice and it allowed me to amplify people’s voice through my work, the work of my hands.
00:15:00 Grace Kinda
And I felt that that was really cool.
00:15:02 Grace Kinda
So I did criminal justice and reentry work in Philadelphia.
00:15:06 Grace Kinda
I loved that quite a bit.
00:15:07 Grace Kinda
And then I got a job in 2019 here to work in Colorado, actually.
00:15:14 Grace Kinda
And it was an accelerator program.
00:15:16 Grace Kinda
So we would work with, you know, we would work with grants.
00:15:21 Grace Kinda
We would work with different forms of money that’s dedicated towards impact and work to identify organizations, nonprofits and profits that are working to advance social impact work and support them through resources, Technical Support in the system.
00:15:37 Grace Kinda
So I did that here in Denver.
00:15:39 Grace Kinda
It was such a great time.
00:15:41 Grace Kinda
It was a culture shock because Denver is so different from Philadelphia, where I was.
00:15:47 Grace Kinda
Yeah.
00:15:47 Grace Kinda
But I think that’s a long story of how I got here and I just have so many experiences.
00:15:54 Grace Kinda
It’s hard to quantify where to start.
00:15:58 Matthew Kuehlhorn
It’s Amazing Grace.
00:16:00 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And you know, every time I get in these conversations, I’d love to start in the back and build out this context, cuz now I’m seeing where there’s small town rootedness.
00:16:12 Matthew Kuehlhorn
In real deep culture.
00:16:15 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And then bouncing into the city, bouncing into a different country, different culture.
00:16:21 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And yet having this desire to make an impact work with people, infiltrate chemistry and and psychology and all the things.
00:16:31 Matthew Kuehlhorn
So here’s here’s a question for you.
00:16:35 Matthew Kuehlhorn
As you mentioned, you know the analogy of the river and people falling in the river and pulling them out.
00:16:41 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And then they slip in the river again and pull them out and now you’re going upstream is would you say that there is a direct correlation with self-care and not falling in the river?
00:17:01 Grace Kinda
You know, I there’s something about falling in the river.
00:17:08 Grace Kinda
You know, I I’ve come to appreciate the voice of lived experience and I think lived experience is truly that.
00:17:19 Grace Kinda
And maybe for some folks, you know, I think about the stages of awareness.
00:17:24 Grace Kinda
There’s so many things that for me if I really, truly look back, I could really maybe track back to the pre awareness stage because things take time.
00:17:35 Grace Kinda
Stories are like years and decades long and maybe in some ways we might be privileged to not have been falling in the river.
00:17:45 Grace Kinda
But I think many people who who attempts of care have fallen in the river and and understand so it’s so it’s it’s you know speaking as someone who you know I know for some you know when I enter communities or or my my excitement to work with people doesn’t.
00:18:05 Grace Kinda
I recognize it doesn’t necessarily mean that the relate to me in the sense that they have understood what it is to fall in the water.
00:18:14 Grace Kinda
And maybe my advice isn’t necessary or it’s not ready to be heard at that moment in time and I accept that.
00:18:23 Grace Kinda
You know.
00:18:24 Grace Kinda
But I’ve fallen in the river of thinking I know enough time.
00:18:28 Grace Kinda
Yeah.
00:18:30 Grace Kinda
Yeah.
00:18:30 Grace Kinda
To truly understand.
00:18:32 Grace Kinda
You know.
00:18:33 Grace Kinda
I think some of that, it’s sort of hard to tell are the experiences.
00:18:38 Grace Kinda
You know, the experiences where you haven’t fallen in the river at some point.
00:18:41 Grace Kinda
We all have that experience.
00:18:43 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Yeah, yeah, that’s a great point.
00:18:46 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I just think of I hear self-care, I hear self love, yes.
00:18:51 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And you mentioned addiction or recovery.
00:18:54 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I spend some time in drug prevention, which is different and yet similar in the sense that it’s a lot of skills.
00:19:03 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Education and awareness.
00:19:05 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And what I found in my studies was that there were no drug problems.
00:19:09 Matthew Kuehlhorn
There was life.
00:19:11 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And underlying any quote UN quote problem, There could be trauma, there could be awareness, there could be a self love component to the game.
00:19:26 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And so I love that.
00:19:28 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I love the perspective.
00:19:29 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I think, yeah, we do have to live through experience, and so we’re going to.
00:19:33 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Touch the We’re going to touch the fire, we’re going to jump in the water, we’re going to slip and fall on the water and pull ourselves out or have the assistance of community or other members help us out of there.
00:19:44 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And then we’ve got new awareness, new experience to set our feet on.
00:19:50 Grace Kinda
Yeah, I would also like to add that the sense of community, you know, thinking about it in a 3D experience that.
00:20:03 Grace Kinda
Part of self-care for some might be having the persistent person who who has not had that experience but can see you know a different side of what’s happening.
00:20:13 Grace Kinda
You know part of that is recognizing that it’s an ebb and flow.
00:20:16 Grace Kinda
Part of that is recognizing that there could be other people who might be involved in that conversation.
00:20:22 Grace Kinda
I think self-care is sort of like knowing that you fell or knowing that you being in that space of consciousness.
00:20:30 Grace Kinda
I think like whether it’s listening to your body or listening to your gut.
00:20:35 Grace Kinda
I think that’s the part that for me, when I experience an experience, when I feel, especially when I worked in therapy work, you know, you can imagine sitting with 25 different people who bring in their life problems and the only thing that might connect them is a desire to stay clean.
00:20:53 Grace Kinda
But a desire does not necessarily translate into action.
00:20:57 Grace Kinda
But when you look at the group and you look at yourself in it, I came to realize that what happens in here is the model of what happens outside.
00:21:07 Grace Kinda
You know, in the sense that you can just sense unspoken.
00:21:10 Grace Kinda
You can just sense how people sit and how they relate to each other and be able to talk about them and be able to bring it to the person in an individual and say I noticed this, I don’t, I’m not the expert, but I would love to.
00:21:25 Grace Kinda
I noticed this.
00:21:26 Grace Kinda
I see you and you can tell me no, but I think there’s there’s nuances and that’s why I really, I really came to appreciate just all the the work that has found me so far because it truly has boiled down to the conversations for me problem solving, community building.
00:21:45 Grace Kinda
It’s it’s just what problem are we looking at, what are we looking to solve together and and that for me in the moment that provides me self-care.
00:21:59 Matthew Kuehlhorn
How would you define self-care?
00:22:04 Grace Kinda
Man, this is different.
00:22:05 Grace Kinda
This is difficult.
00:22:09 Grace Kinda
I think that self-care is a gradual process.
00:22:18 Grace Kinda
There is no moment like one moment of self-care.
00:22:24 Grace Kinda
It’s a continuous.
00:22:25 Grace Kinda
I think of it sort of.
00:22:28 Grace Kinda
But like, you know how a heartbeats 72 beats per minute.
00:22:33 Grace Kinda
I think software need is something that needs to happen in its own time.
00:22:37 Grace Kinda
It’s sort of like a rhythm that needs to to run.
00:22:42 Grace Kinda
And I think it’s a combination of things.
00:22:46 Grace Kinda
Because I’ve worked in mental health and I I’ve experienced mental health and I know the importance of rhythms, right?
00:22:56 Grace Kinda
I would struggle with anxiety.
00:22:58 Grace Kinda
So a rhythm of self-care would be counting, you know, or certain mantras in my head.
00:23:06 Grace Kinda
Or I read books.
00:23:08 Grace Kinda
I’m a big fan of science fiction, so I lose myself in these huge books.
00:23:12 Grace Kinda
I print out quotes.
00:23:14 Grace Kinda
I understand that about myself.
00:23:16 Grace Kinda
And so I am in a continuous.
00:23:20 Grace Kinda
I force myself to be in that continuous state.
00:23:24 Grace Kinda
You know, it may be listening to my body in terms of I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience where you lose something and you’re looking for it and a random place keeps popping up in your head to look, but you deliberately don’t go there and you go everywhere else but the thing.
00:23:46 Grace Kinda
And then you’re like oh the 1st place I thought of is where I could have checked.
00:23:52 Grace Kinda
Yeah and that recognizing that cuz those are for me, it’s a lot of mental work for me.
00:23:59 Grace Kinda
That’s self-care.
00:24:01 Grace Kinda
And when I can I tell people freely I will delude myself into, I will delude myself into self-care.
00:24:10 Grace Kinda
I will tell myself whatever it needs for me to practice self-care.
00:24:14 Grace Kinda
Not self-serving self-care, but self-care when I’m actually listening to the parts of my body because my brain is too busy doing whatever it needs to do so for self-care for me is a rhythm.
00:24:27 Grace Kinda
self-care for me is is accepting.
00:24:31 Grace Kinda
self-care for me is actually becoming aware and that takes that takes work, but it’s a rhythm.
00:24:39 Grace Kinda
Making you bed every day is self-care.
00:24:42 Grace Kinda
It might sound a bit, you know, it’s very random.
00:24:46 Grace Kinda
But when you listen, when you pay attention to where you sleep, where you eat, where you lay your head, the basic humanity needs, when you can truly step outside of yourself and listen to your base needs, I think that you’re practicing self-care.
00:25:06 Grace Kinda
I really do.
00:25:08 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I love it.
00:25:10 Grace Kinda
I kind of figured there would be a deeper answer from you on that question and you can prove me.
00:25:16 Grace Kinda
Please feel free to ask it.
00:25:18 Matthew Kuehlhorn
No, no, the the, the delivery was great because there there’s so much depth in there.
00:25:23 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And I guess, you know, for the listener and you know, to summarize what I think I just heard was, you know, selfcare is around presence and you just use the words of step outside of yourself, which to me is stepping outside of our ego.
00:25:43 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And potentially going deeper into our body and soul and having this connection right And just in our conversation, Grace, it seems like this connection goes, goes deep into the roots of a family of community and of story, of meaning making.
00:26:03 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And we pull this together so that we don’t get caught up in the mental ego game.
00:26:10 Matthew Kuehlhorn
We gain this presence that can.
00:26:13 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Ultimately, allow ourselves to realize that we are beauty in every moment and by honoring that, we have self-care, whether that’s cleaning with good products or reading or stepping out of the busy, busy race, right.
00:26:34 Grace Kinda
Yeah, is that kind of I think, yeah.
00:26:36 Grace Kinda
I think that you know, the, I think the reason why for me that self-care is still sort of an iceberg for me.
00:26:47 Grace Kinda
The more I think I know about myself, you know, the more I sort of understand the way I am, the way I am.
00:26:55 Grace Kinda
And that that takes a lot of courage.
00:26:58 Grace Kinda
Because I think for me, I’ve experienced, like when when I was my dad and my brother when I was very young, like I was eight, I still experience that feeling.
00:27:13 Grace Kinda
And it’s hard to truly like 26 years later, right?
00:27:19 Grace Kinda
And that’s pain.
00:27:21 Grace Kinda
And I when you live with pain, you become very aware of the place that pain can have on you.
00:27:30 Grace Kinda
So it can be a momentary moment of pain, a huge point of pain or multiple points of pain.
00:27:38 Grace Kinda
And people experience that physically, mentally, in the spaces they’re in, in their homes, in their families.
00:27:46 Grace Kinda
For me, what I had when I was in Kenya, I lost a huge I lost almost half my family.
00:27:53 Grace Kinda
So I think for me was trying to understand what what family then means, what what support truly means, what confidence truly means.
00:28:04 Grace Kinda
Because I sort of retreated into my shell and the more I experienced the world.
00:28:10 Grace Kinda
And I think chemistry, when I talk about these points in my life or these experiences, they’re really a series of coming out experiences, awareness experiences, me becoming aware to the pain in my in my existence, the things that made me uncomfortable.
00:28:27 Grace Kinda
And so Selfcare was learning to listen to myself.
00:28:33 Grace Kinda
When something didn’t feel good, you listen to yourself and you it just started simple like that.
00:28:40 Grace Kinda
I think that when you experience pain and in this society where you have to cope, a lot of it comes.
00:28:47 Grace Kinda
It comes involved with a lot of loneliness and a lot of feelings of exclusion.
00:28:53 Grace Kinda
But for me, I would speak for myself, learning to the language of pain.
00:29:03 Grace Kinda
I think that then I could understand why I struggled when I first came to America.
00:29:09 Grace Kinda
It helped me understand the struggle of being raised up without a father and a widow in a family that didn’t have a lot of resources.
00:29:19 Grace Kinda
It helped me understand the reason why I felt like I’d sealed myself, and I didn’t when I switched from chemistry to sociology, because that’s like in Kenya, Everyone is supposed to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer and technician.
00:29:33 Grace Kinda
And I’m here.
00:29:33 Grace Kinda
I’m going to do this thing.
00:29:37 Grace Kinda
So I, you know, I I had to.
00:29:41 Grace Kinda
I think it was something that a drive.
00:29:45 Grace Kinda
You know I a drive that I I didn’t know what it meant like but one thing about me is I will reflect.
00:29:53 Grace Kinda
I think it it it it for me maybe perhaps what you see is grounding is I hold a bit of a lot of reflection and I’ve also done a lot of things just the same way I’ve traveled.
00:30:07 Grace Kinda
I really see.
00:30:09 Grace Kinda
I love Denver because people have no choice but to contend with nature.
00:30:15 Grace Kinda
It’s there to deal with it and nature is there and people will have their relationship with it traumatic and otherwise.
00:30:24 Grace Kinda
But it’s a thing and and pain and selfcare work together and there’s no bigger or greater pain.
00:30:32 Grace Kinda
It’s just how how you love yourself through that pain.
00:30:37 Grace Kinda
It.
00:30:38 Grace Kinda
I think there’s a part where you can bring choice into these spaces.
00:30:44 Grace Kinda
I think that’s where Selfcare is most powerful because you have your own agency and you take that in and you know, and I, it’s a journey of owning that space and doing, you know, I truly have a say in my own.
00:30:58 Grace Kinda
I truly have a say in my own life, not anyone else’s, just my own.
00:31:04 Grace Kinda
And that’s enough.
00:31:05 Grace Kinda
Yeah.
00:31:06 Matthew Kuehlhorn
It’s a great message.
00:31:08 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Tell us about Ebere Naturals.
00:31:10 Matthew Kuehlhorn
How’s it different?
00:31:11 Matthew Kuehlhorn
How do we find you?
00:31:12 Matthew Kuehlhorn
How do we get in touch?
00:31:14 Grace Kinda
Yeah, so Ebere Naturals is a Denver based company.
00:31:18 Grace Kinda
I am home making all of these products by hand.
00:31:23 Grace Kinda
I incorporate natural African remedies.
00:31:28 Grace Kinda
I use a lot of herbs and oils and incorporate a lot of ancient knowledge that’s been used, whether that is fermentation, letting up, letting it sit in the beautiful Denver sunlight for a few hours.
00:31:40 Grace Kinda
I put a lot of love and care into the products that I make and my goal is to replace everything in your bathroom, in your bedroom with quality ingredients and make you feel good and also protect your skin and also help you connect with nature.
00:31:54 Grace Kinda
I’m online, I have a website www.ibernaturals.com
00:31:59 Grace Kinda
You can also find me on Instagram, Facebook, pretty much.
00:32:04 Grace Kinda
Let’s see as well under the same thing @ibernaturals.
00:32:09 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Love it.
00:32:09 Matthew Kuehlhorn
And just for the listeners who are not watching the video, it’s I-B-E-R ibernaturals.com
00:32:19 Matthew Kuehlhorn
We’ll have these links in our show notes and tie you into Grace’s Social as well.
00:32:26 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I encourage you to reach out.
00:32:28 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Check out the website.
00:32:29 Matthew Kuehlhorn
It’s actually absolutely beautiful.
00:32:33 Matthew Kuehlhorn
It’s really well done.
00:32:34 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Grace and I just appreciate your grounded presence this morning.
00:32:40 Grace Kinda
Thank you so much, Matt.
00:32:41 Grace Kinda
It was a pleasure and it better means you are beautiful, so deal with it.
00:32:47 Matthew Kuehlhorn
So deal with it.
00:32:48 Matthew Kuehlhorn
I love that.
00:32:50 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Love that.
00:32:51 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Beautiful.
00:32:52 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Thank you so much, Grace.
00:32:53 Grace Kinda
Thank you.
00:32:54 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to the Kooler Lifestyle Podcast.
00:32:58 Matthew Kuehlhorn
We count on your subscriptions, your likes, your shares and I encourage you to do that.
00:33:02 Matthew Kuehlhorn
Now, if you’re watching on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe lower right hand button.
00:33:07 Matthew Kuehlhorn
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