Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Rob Kenney – Lemons to Lemonade

As per my usual Sunday pattern, today I am highlighting Rob Kinney, as someone to be admired and respected for turning lemons into lemonade.

From the Epoch Times, Inspired:

“Born in Louisiana, Kenney was the seventh of eight children. His family followed his father’s work, moving from Kansas to Louisiana, and eventually to Seattle, Washington. Life was good for the family during Kenney’s childhood years. However, after moving to Washington, Kenney watched his family disintegrate.

His mother, who originally hailed from a big family, coped with feelings of loneliness and anxiety by turning to alcohol to sedate herself, and as a result, she became unable to care for her children. Meanwhile, Kenney’s father gained custody of the kids, and then he, too, began to fade into the background. With the older siblings grown and moved out of the house, Kenney’s father would habitually provide groceries for the younger kids during the week and then just disappear.

Finally, when Kenney was 14, his father came home with the news that he was “done raising kids.” Kenney remembered hearing his father say that the younger kids would either go to foster care or live with their older siblings. That year, Kenney moved in with his newly married 23-year-old brother and his wife, Rick and Karen.

“I was bitter for a long time,” Kenney recalled. Due to his past, he harbored bitterness and frustration toward his parents, which “wasn’t healthy,” for a long time.

During the Covid-19 pandemic and the isolation that ensued, Kenney saw a real need for people to connect with one another, and he luckily had a library of “Dad wisdom” stored up, along with his daughter’s persuasion to start a YouTube channel for “advice.”

“My daughter kept bothering me to do it,” he recollected. “I ran out of excuses, and so, I finally had my first upload on April 2 of 2020.”

His production, which is low on bells and whistles, is a compilation of simple recordings made on his phone camera. No makeup, and no fancy equipment, but just like a simple conversation with Dad.

“I’m just trying to be myself and trying to communicate like I would be talking to my own kids,” he said.

Originally, he thought his YouTube channel would help “maybe 30 or 40 people,” but he and his family watched in surprise as the number of subscribers climbed, from 300 to 1,000, and now it’s up to 4 million people.

Kenney’s challenges have helped him to have empathy for the pain of others who have been wronged. He reads comments on his channel about the “tough stuff” people have been through, and he said that his heart breaks for what people endure, and yet, he knows that living in the past is futile.

“You kind of waste your life, right? Years go by and you’re missing out on opportunities because something happened to you in the past,” he said. “Bringing the past into the future—it’s not beneficial.”

Thus Kenney hopes to help others forgive, move forward, and take ownership of their own lives, rather than dwell on the things in the rearview mirror.”

Kudos to Rob Kenney. A real life example of turning lemons into lemonade.

6/26/22

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