Grounded Rebuild

Hi there, I’m glad you made it. This is where things get a bit more relaxed.

I’d like to invite all who’ve made it to this point to breathe. I know it’s been a bit intense & probably scary up to this part, but this is where you  get to share some of the load.

Now, let me be clear upfront, I do not, and will not pretend to have all the answers. But, what I do have I am more than willing to share with you all if it helps you move forward in your journey. And, what I have are my own personal experiences.

A lot of what I have to offer is based around the gift of empathy and discernment that I have been blessed to receive by God.

That which I can answer, I will answer with full transparency and honesty. The things I cannot answer, or don’t have an answer to, I will admit that I do not know, but I will seek to get the answer for you if I am able. There is no pride in me in admitting what I do not know. Nor, my family, should there be any shame, guilt, or anxiety in you about bringing your questions or concerns to me. What we discuss in private is between God, you and I alone.

Questions, reflections, general thoughts are all invited and encouraged here. I’ve been through a great deal in my life and so there’s not much that I have not heard. You cannot offend me either because Grounded Rebuild was built by me, but for you, my family.

This is an open door for you to walk through at your own pace. We will meet wherever you are and walk through this door together as family.

Below, you’ll find my email as well as a form where you can contact me directly. I love you all.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this page is to grant guidance to you, my readers, all of the resources that I have personally used to rebuild my own life. These resources have acted as a guiding light for me as God began to prepare me to build Grounded Rebuild.

So, now family, I share these very same resources with you as references to aid you in the journey of your own rebuilding process. By no means are they meant to be consumed all at once; nor are they meant to provide answers on their own. Because the answers you seek are already within you. These resources are simply meant to stimulate, support, and encourage the thought process sequencing that you will undoubtedly encounter along this path. I also encourage you all as individuals to slowly embrace the readings listed below at your own pace according to where you are in your own journey.

Lastly, it has been my experience that everything has a purpose, even if it doesn’t resonate in the moment. So, I challenge you and once again encourage you to linger in familiar feelings of discomfort. And while there, don’t dwell on what it is that made you bury these feelings, but instead, look deeper to see what each of those feelings, or moments in time are there to teach you. Because even pain has a purpose if we’re willing to learn.

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE (PLACEMENT)

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READING & REFLECTION

The four books listed below were chosen carefully and purposefully because they address the areas that I encountered when first beginning my own Grounded Rebuild. They are merely recommendations because it is my understanding that for a true rebuild to happen, we must begin where it all began.

BOOK 1

Emotional Intelligence — Daniel Goleman

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This book helped bring awareness to the emotional responses/reactions that quietly influenced my thoughts, decisions, and behaviors. There were many times I felt overwhelmed by emotions without understanding where they were originating from or why they seem to override my logic and very best of intentions.

For Grounded Rebuild, this book will be a support to and through the process of self-awareness. It can help you identify toxic and destructive emotional patterns that were developed early on in our lives that we were never able to identify. This book will help to provide a language for the internal experiences that we falsely named “Trauma”, but in reality, was only ever our teachers.

This book was chosen as one of the starting points because rebuilding requires a level of awareness that can only be grasped if we understand the emotions attached to our past experiences. We cannot rebuild what we will not first acknowledge, accept and embrace.

BOOK 2

Focus — Daniel Goleman

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Focus addresses our ability to sustain attention and discipline of thought. It also requires that we remain in the present as opposed to dwelling on the past or worrying about the future during challenging or uncomfortable moments. When we begin rebuilding ourselves, one of the earliest obstacles we face is our inability to remain consistent. We usually start out with a purpose in mind but we eventually lose motivation over time without that consistency that only comes by a purpose driven clarity of what we’re truly trying to achieve.

Focus supports our ability to remain engaged with the internal work required for success in Grounded Rebuild. It helps explain why distraction, avoidance, and mental fatigue often appear once internal change is clearly evident. It also helps strengthen our capacity to not only be present, but remain present while searching our pasts reflectively, despite the difficulty of what we will undoubtedly encounter.

This book was chosen early because rebuilding requires constant and continued engagement. Awareness alone cannot create change within us unless it is followed by unwavering devotion to act upon what we are learning about ourselves.

BOOK 3

Crushing — T.D. Jakes

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Crushing speaks directly to the effect that pressure, hardship, and prolonged difficulty has on our identities as individuals. Many of us unwillingly, and at times, unknowingly carry the weight of experiences that shaped us without our consent, into the people we eventually become once we age out of childhood.

For us here at Grounded Rebuild, this book helps us reinterpret and redirect pressure. It encourages reflection on how adversity has influenced our beliefs, behaviors, and self-perception. It also helps us identify what has been formed through the hardships and what we must now address consciously if we are to course-correct and reclaim ownership of our lives.

This book was chosen because many of us begin rebuilding during or after seasons of significant strain. Understanding the role of pressure helps us prevent confusion, discouragement, and misinterpretation of each of our own life experiences.

BOOK 4

Let It Go — T.D. Jakes

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Let It Go focuses on our internal mechanics of how we process our self-diagnosed, or most times, professionally diagnosed past traumas. Specifically referring to the release of emotional attachments to pain, resentment, regret, and unresolved experiences that continue to influence our present thoughts and behaviors.

For Grounded Rebuild, this book supports the act of relinquishing the unnecessary, toxic feelings that have shaped us for far too long. Rebuilding requires confronting what we’ve carried forward and asking ourselves two very important questions: Is this who I really am? And is this who I really want to be?

This book was chosen as a starting resource because rebuilding cannot occur while emotional burdens from our pasts continue to dictate our present choices. Release allows room for rebuilding, moving ever forward with true clarity of purpose.

CLOSING STATEMENT

Together, they support awareness, endurance, understanding, and release; the elements most people encounter at the beginning of a Grounded Rebuild.

Hello to all my newfound family reading this. I am the Owner and Founder of Grounded Rebuild. My name is Jerry Kirksey.

Grounded Rebuild is a space that I have built for those of us who have ever had, or possibly still have, the feeling of being lost, damaged, or even broken due to the trials and tribulations we were forced to endure while growing up. It is a safe haven for any and all who have been wounded by life and want to heal, but either don’t know how to, or are unaware that there is a way to do so.

The understanding and required wisdom necessary to begin my own rebuild began when I realized that despite being a grown-up, able to do as I pleased, I was not happy. I couldn’t comprehend my lack of happiness despite having nearly everything I wanted materialistically: woman, a little money, health, my freedom. But then I had the epiphany that just because I was grown, didn’t mean that I was an adult. That told me that something was missing. And that, my family, is what we are here at Grounded Rebuild to find out: “What is the missing component?” Because we cannot build, or rebuild anything without a foundation; and how can we begin working on a foundation when there is clearly an element missing that we have yet to identify?

Well, what I discovered was that the component wasn’t actually missing; it was buried and locked away within me. So the questions I was forced to ask myself was: “What is it? Where is it? How do I find it? And, once I’ve found it, how does it fit into the structure of rebuilding who I am?”

You see, being a grown-up is merely a societal term that everyone eventually ages into, however, being an adult is something that a grown-up has to become. Through the gift of discernment, I finally understood that adulthood required attributes that I did not yet possess at that time.

Grounded Rebuild exists to unveil not just the symptoms of a problem, but to gain clarity as to the roots of what that problem is. It exists to give language to a part of ourselves that we were unaware even had a voice. Grounded Rebuilds intention and purpose is to help all that are willing to put in the work required to journey inside oneself to discover that missing component, annihilate the image you were forced to present to the world and finally rebuild the true you from the ground up.

I am qualified by the authority of my lived experience. I am qualified by the pain that tried but couldn’t break me. Qualified via the years of alcohol and drug abuse that could not keep its vice-like grip on me. I am qualified to build this foundational support for you all because I did it first. I did it to show those still searching that pain isn’t the end; and neither is addiction. We can rebuild.

Grounded Rebuild is for me. Grounded Rebuild is for you. Grounded Rebuild is for us all; because the ground for rebuilding begins within each of us, so long as we are willing to endure ourselves to finally free ourselves from who the world tried to force us to be. Hence, the missing component.