Learning a thing or two from Kesha

February 2022--Sometimes you meet someone and there’s this instant connection. You can’t really say for sure why—you just know you hit it off with this person. I’m finding that quite a bit this winter with new people I’m meeting on a weekly basis. And I’ve got to admit I am enjoying these new connections immensely.

It made me start thinking about a woman I met years ago. She was hired as a web designer for the department in which I was working at a local community college. It was a temporary hire—but after just a few weeks, I had hoped it would have been a permanent hire.

Her name is Kesha—and from the first meeting I had with her I knew I was going to like her. How can you not like someone who calls you “Jodi-Odie?” She was intelligent, a whiz with computer skills and had great design ideas. We collaborated daily on projects, and I liked her openness and willingness to hear me out with ideas I had for content—and sometimes even with design. Even more so—we had fun working together. I don’t think there ever was a time we were working on something that we weren’t laughing. Even with all the laughing, though, we were productive and getting the job done.

There was no drama with Kesha—no gossiping about others, no negativity, no harshness. I liked that. And I liked her creativity, her positivity, and her can-do attitude.

We couldn’t have been more “different” on several levels—Kesha was single, no children. I was married with three children. Kesha was young (er); I was old(er). Kesha lived in the city; I was a total surburban soccer mom complete with a minivan.

Kesha could drive the expressways with no hesitancy; I didn’t like to make left turns. (Still don’t if I can avoid them.) Kesha was a fashionista; I couldn’t match my socks. Kesha was an artist; I couldn’t stay inside the lines. Kesha was driven to do more; I was content where I was.

Yet, despite these differences, we bonded. Maybe it was because of these differences. Or maybe it was because of our commonalities—we both had a strong work ethic, set goals, stayed focus, and laughed. Boy did we laugh.

I admired (and still do) Kesha’s take on life. (She likes to say she came into this world like Athena: sprung from her mom’s head fully grown.) She really had it all together—a great career, social life and always seemed to be so happy. She never really complained—at least not to me.

It wasn’t until later that I started to learn about Kesha’s health concerns. It surprised me. She never mentioned a lot of this while we were working together and once I learned of all this, it saddened me. And at the same time, she became more of an inspiration.

She could hold down a full-time job, travel the world and laugh—and do all this despite her health challenges, like asthma, a collapsed lung, pneumonia, and kidney stones. She has had cervical cancer and a tumor in her esophagus, which had to be removed and she now has a prosthetic connecting her esophagus to her stomach. She is a diabetic and is losing sight in her right eye.

When I think about all she has gone through, all she is going through and all that is still to come—I am in awe of how she doesn’t talk about it. She says it’s because she knows we are the stories we tell and she never, ever wanted her story to be a sad one—so she doesn’t focus too long on her ailments. She only recently started to be verbal about these challenges. While, she says, they haven’t always been received positively, she reveals her challenges because it makes her feel authentic and true to herself.

And a big part of her being true to herself is being committed to family and friendships, a life of learning and being committed to her faith. When it comes to friends and family, she appreciates her surroundings, and she sees love in everyone she encounters. She tries to create a lasting relationship with open, honest, humorous, ambitious, and spirited people who enjoy life even more than she does. And she tries to be comforting in times of frustration and strong in times of peril. Kesha also is accepting of people, patient and places few expectations on others.

When it comes to finances—Kesha strives to keep moving on up the ladder and be successful. And from what I can tell, she is doing just that. She wants to be financially secure enough to maintain the lifestyle of her choice, leave a legacy and assist others in need. That’s Kesha—always giving.

She also keeps on learning—whether in a classroom—like graduating at the top of her class—or from experience—like learning about different cultures in her travels. This woman thinks nothing of hopping on a plane and heading out to new and exotic locations. She has been to 48 states—just missing Alaska and Hawaii—but something tells me she will get to those last two!

I marvel at the fact that she has seen almost every state. Because her parents were originally from Arkansas, the family trips began by returning to Arkansas pretty frequently and then spread out as the years went by. Her parents, though, have never left the country and her mom doesn’t fly. So, all those trips to all those states were done by car and train.

But Kesha does fly. In fact, I’d say she soars. Traveling recharges her so she does it as often as she can. She’s been to Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Turks and Caicos, the Cayman Islands, Mexico, France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Italy. Her favorites? Paris, Berlin, and Honduras. She says she’s the happiest in these places because all the stress is gone.

She enjoys the arts and creating art, restaurants (fine dining, not so much fast foods), cooking at home, theater, concerts and visiting galleries. She has a passion for real estate and now that is her main business. She’s always up for a good comedy with Eddie Murphy or Dave Chappelle and reading books—her home is filled with books!

And her faith—it’s a strong presence in her life. Her faith in God is the center of her being. She admits some days she fails and falls and some days she’s just what God meant her to be. She studies the Bible and wants to gain an understanding of other religious text.

I don’t get to see much of Kesha these days. Our lifestyles and responsibilities have pulled us in different directions, but I think of her often. Can’t help it when I see on Facebook one photo after another of the beautiful destinations she has traveled. And the crazy laugh in some of those photos, I can almost hear it—and I laugh along with her.

I don’t have to wish her well. She’s doing an extraordinary job of that on her own. She knows her lot in life and she’s making all the very best of it. Something we all should be doing. We’re all facing challenges in life—heck it wouldn’t be life without them. But it’s the lessons we learn from those challenges—it’s how we come out of them that helps us move forward.

By all accounts, Kesha keeps moving forward. She does it with a beautiful smile and an infectious laugh and she totally has learned to

take it one day at a time…

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