The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Turning Pain Into Purpose: Lessons from Charlie Kirk’s Legacy | Ep. 131

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 131

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Turning pain into purpose is never easy, but it’s in our hardest moments that true growth begins.

In this episode of The Wellness Connection, Fiona Kane reflects on Charlie Kirk’s legacy and the powerful message of forgiveness shared by his wife, Erika. Inspired by this act of grace, Fiona explores how we can face tragedy without being consumed by it, and how resilience, faith, and values can help us move forward.

You’ll hear about:

Why forgiveness can be a powerful turning point.
How resistance, both emotional and physical,builds strength and capacity.
The importance of honest, even uncomfortable, conversations.
Ways to actively look for light, hope, and healing in dark times.

This conversation isn’t about politics, it’s about humanity, strength, and the choices we make when faced with loss.

✨ Share your thoughts in the comments: How do you find hope when life feels darkest?

Music by Josh from Pixabay



Outro: Music by Musinova from Pixabay

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I'm actually going to be talking about what we can do to make a difference, what makes a difference in this world, how do you find hope when it seems like it's all lost? And to give you a bit of background on this particular topic, two things happened. So one thing is I was talking to my husband and I said to him what should I talk about on the podcast today? What topic should I do? And he said do something good. And I said what do you mean by do something good? And ultimately, what I got out of him is he just meant do something positive. And I get what he means, and a lot of the topics I talk about are challenging topics. However, my goal is to try and bring some good out of it or have something useful and something that you can do something with by the end of it. So my goal isn't just to do misery and doom and gloom. It's actually to talk about real issues and real problems, but then also solutions or things that we can do that are helpful, that will help us. So, as I record this, I'm recording this just moments after watching Erica Kirk speak at Charlie Kirk's memorial service and that really inspired me. Now, for those of you who didn't see it or don't know of it, erica just forgave the man who assassinated, the young man who assassinated Charlie. That, to me, is really inspirational. I must admit, I haven't got there yet and I didn't even know Charlie personally. I'm still struggling with that one. I really admire her doing that and I think that that's.

Fiona Kane:

I talked about it in another episode a long time ago. I talked about when bad things happen in the world, how we need to look for the helpers, look for the good, look for the good things that will come out of situations, and this is another one of those situations because actually, what happened to Charlie was horrific, right, no questions asked. And I'm not even talking about politics here, I'm just talking about a human being, right? So doing that to another human being just because you don't like their words or you don't agree with them or their words you might find them triggering, is horrific. There's no other way about it. Everything about his death was horrific and we could stay in that place of being there, being in that moment and playing that over and over again and being in the horror. In life. We need to be able to move past that. We need to be able to move on from that.

Fiona Kane:

And I don't mean past it and move on from it as in not care, it doesn't matter. I don't mean any of those things. What I mean is to go to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing is to go to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing and the next thing is like what can I do? What can I do to make a difference? Or what can I do to give myself some healing? What can I do to bring some light into this dark place that I'm in?

Fiona Kane:

And that's what I'm seeing a lot of in regards to Charlie's death. You certainly see, you know the amount. I mean, look, there's been a lot of darkness as well, don't get me wrong. I mean, if you go on some of those sewers of social media platforms with people you know rejoicing about his death and laughing about his death and all of that, that's all there, that all exists, and I've seen plenty of it it made me really really angry and really really sad, and I think that, based on what Erica and other people have said about Charlie, he would be really sad For those people. He's just sad that there's this. So you know, what kind of soul do you have, or what's going on in your soul, to be celebrating someone's murder? I wouldn't celebrate someone who's who's murder, who I didn't like, or who was on a different, a different political team, or whatever I, just I wouldn't celebrate that. Uh, you don't have to care a lot, but, geez, basic human dignity and just human having a soul, just not finding it funny and not finding it gleeful. A bit of a basic place. Anyway, I'm going down the rabbit hole of the negative, and I told my husband I'd do the positive. So I saw all that, of course I saw that that was there. There's a lot of darkness there. The same time, though, what I saw was a lot of light. I saw many people say that they were going to church for the first time, or back to church and again.

Fiona Kane:

Whatever your opinions on church or not, or whatever, my opinion is that I've never really been super religious and that way inclined. However, the older I get, the more I see what Christian values brought to our society. And Christian values are good, solid values, and when we don't have them in a society, all sorts of awful things replace it. So what I'm seeing is a lot of darkness and a lot of dark sort of cult, like horrible things that have come into in place of Christian ethics, explained by the things I just told you about the people celebrating. So the more I see that, the more I think that our society does need Christianity. You know some version of Christianity and I'm not going to get into the religious side of it because I just don't understand it well enough to preach it or talk about it but the way I see it, it's just the difference between light and dark, and darkness is prevalent and we need to overcome that and I think some good Christian ethics and a good Christian society is a great way to move towards that.

Fiona Kane:

Is Christianity perfect? No, by no means no. But I just, like I said when I've weighed it up and when I've seen the different societies and the different ways society behaves in my lifetime, a society with good Christian values is a good society overall and it's probably the best of a bad bunch of options, but I think it's a good option. So what I'm seeing is I'm seeing people say they're going back to church and they're, you know, young men saying I'm wearing a suit. Now I'm going to go and you know I now understand the value of getting married and having children, all the things.

Fiona Kane:

Essentially, what I'm seeing is he's brought a lot of people to the light, to some sort of light in their life, and to people who want to move forward, people who want to make a difference, people who want to take their own life seriously, and I think that is wonderful. So I think that his legacy is what we will see. It's like, well, you know, when I was talking about, you know, moving on from the moment and from the horror. It's like moving on to what will be built out of this, what will come out of this, and sometimes, when we're in the horror of a moment, it is really, really hard to see what that could be. And it's really hard to believe in light when you only feel and see darkness. And it's really hard to see, like you know, something good can come out of something bad, and it can and I think it will. You're seeing it happen already. So, you know, so many people are going to be speaking up now because they encouraged by charlie and by erica and by, you know, the people who love them.

Fiona Kane:

So I think that that, overall, as horrific as this has been, I think the fact that he named his organization Turning Point, usa, I think it was very prophetic. The fact that he's named Kirk, charlie, kirk or Kirk is a word for church in Celtic languages and in, I think, german apparently as well. So that's what I heard this morning, the German bit. So I'm not sure. Yeah, he turning point and his life. He worked hard to create this change and it's coming, and his death is actually what's going to create that point.

Fiona Kane:

That turning point and Erica, her ability to forgive, I think is really important as well, because what you will notice is that, in response to this, that um, for the most part, if not totally, most people, in response to this, who are on um with a conservative side or christian or whatever, they've reacted with prayer, visuals, they've reacted with love and with, uh, just coming together in, you know, trying to make sense things, but they haven't reacted by trying to destroy things and tear things down. And I think that that is with Erica choosing to find a path of forgiveness. I think that makes a big difference too, because if you think of the turning point that we're at, that sort of point that we're on right now where things could go a few different ways. Based on this, the fact that she's chosen forgiveness and she's chosen light, I think, will encourage a lot of people who follow Charlie and who are feeling really hurt and angry to go in that direction as well, and she could have just as easily said a whole lot of different things there and encouraged a whole lot of other stuff, right? So, again, I think it's really beautiful that she's chosen this positive path and going towards a light.

Fiona Kane:

Now, one thing that I also wanted to talk about is and I think I'll do another episode where I talk about this in more detail but to live a good life, to live a life like, to feel like you, it's worthwhile you actually have to have some discomfort in your life. You know you, actually to build something worthwhile, there needs to be a level of discomfort. We need to have resistance in our life for things to get better and what I mean by that is, if you think about even just physically right We've heard of resistance training, you know gravity, that sort of thing right. We need essentially to build muscle and to build bone. We need resistance, right. So we need to actually work them hard. We need to, you know, carry heavy things, that sort of thing.

Fiona Kane:

Well, it's the same emotionally, and I've talked on and on, I've been talking about capacity building a lot here, building capacity emotionally and spiritually and managing your mental health, that kind of thing. And a lot of that comes from resistance, and it's a resistance of going out and giving it a go, showing up, going for a job, asking someone out for a date, showing up, being prepared to have your heart, you know, asking someone out for a date, showing up, being prepared to have your heart broken, being prepared to hear a no, but you just keep going. You just keep going and which is exactly what, um, you know, charlie did and he sort of started all turning point when he was 18 and everyone probably thought he was a joke. And who is this kid? And look what he, look what he did.

Fiona Kane:

We need to understand that we need resistance in our life to achieve things in life and I think that sometimes that's where we get it wrong in parenting and where we think that we need to make things easier for our children, pave the way and make things easier In some regards. Yes, especially very, very, very young children need, you know, lots of cuddles from their parents and and lots of um, lots of love and support and all of those things. As we get older, though, we do need to have more and more resistance, and resistance is just like letting people, letting your children, letting people learn how to have discomfort, like I've talked about before. You know safe spaces in universities. We don't need safe spaces. We actually need dangerous spaces, and I don't mean dangerous as in the one that we've just seen. I mean dangerous ideas. I mean a place where we can talk, a place where we can feel triggered about something that someone said, but we can handle it. You can cope with that.

Fiona Kane:

If someone says something that you dislike and you feel triggered, well, it says a lot about you, doesn't it? And sometimes it might mean that they've said something really horrific and really awful and you feel triggered and there's some information for you that that's not a good person to be around, or you don't want to go down that path Absolutely. That's how I felt this week, watching all people's reactions at the same time. Sometimes you feel triggered because someone's told the truth, and the truth is often the thing that triggers you the most. So when you hear something that's really, really truthful, that often is activating you the most. So, when you do get activated by something that someone said, when you you do feel triggered, examine that in yourself. What does that mean? It might be data about the safety of being around that person, but it also might be data that's telling you a truth. It might be data that's telling you to re-examine, maybe, how you think of something and what you believe about something. But that is actually really really good for us to learn how to sit in that and learn how to reflect, and you reflect on things you've heard and things you're hearing and then you decide for yourself. But if we're like triggered, triggered, bad, bad, evil, evil we don't learn anything, right? So we need to actually learn how to be in that uncomfortable feeling and therefore we need resistance in our lives, right? You know, and you see this happen.

Fiona Kane:

I heard Matthew McConaughey was talking about this in an interview the other day that I saw on the Diary of a CEO podcast podcast, is that what it's called? I think that's what it was Stephen Bartlett, I think, is his name and he was talking about this. It was a really good interview and he said you know, and you see it so often, right, when you have a certain level of success or when you have a certain level of ease in life, what can happen is you've got no resistance, so you've got no reason for being so, you're not doing anything worthwhile. You, you can't motivate yourself. So sometimes we need to create those things in our lives.

Fiona Kane:

So if you're in a situation even if you're not Matthew McConaughey and rich and powerful and all those things, even just in your everyday life if you're in a situation where, I don't know, you're living with your parents and you don't really have much responsibility and you don't have to worry about paying bills too much and those kinds of things, well, create something that gives you resistance. Go and get a job, whatever that job is. Learn how to manage yourself in a space with other people. Learn what it's like to work hard or go and volunteer somewhere, or go and join a debating team or go and join a sporting team, but go and do something and get involved in the world and you know that is where you will learn, that's where you'll get resistance right, that's where you'll get pushback and that's where you will actually learn how to be a better person and that's where you grow. So, like I was talking about with growing muscle from resistance training.

Fiona Kane:

We grow our mind and ourselves from resistance, from going out and being in the world and learning that you don't always get your way. Sometimes you fail, sometimes people hate you, sometimes people love you, sometimes people lie to you, sometimes your dreams are shattered. Sometimes you win, you get your dream right. All of these things are true and you know it really, really hurts to be heartbroken and it's really really beautiful to be in love and all of that. That's a full life. That's what life is about. So we need to actually go out in the world and we need resistance training.

Fiona Kane:

So, besides the physical resistance training that is really important and I've talked about that in other episodes we need resistance spiritually, mentally, and you do that. You get that toughness by being prepared to go out and talk to people and by being prepared to meet people and just doing something that makes you uncomfortable. I don't mean uncomfortable, stupid uncomfortable, like you know, go and take a bunch of drugs and drive a car. I don't mean that. I mean uncomfortable, as in hearing something that you're not prepared to hear or seeing something from a different way of looking at things. I'm just encouraging you to be prepared to feel triggered by something that you might not understand or don't agree with.

Fiona Kane:

If you normally watch or listen to podcasts that are on one side of politics, I encourage you to listen to something on the other side. And I do it. I do it, I regularly do it, and sometimes I feel triggered while I'm listening to it. Oh, these people are idiots. But I do it because I want to know what they're thinking. And I do it because I don't ever want to be so closed that I'm only in an echo chamber and I only ever hear yes, you're right, yes, you're right, yes, it's all you know. I don't want to just hear that. Of course, it's comfortable to hear that and it's nice to hear that, but there's no resistance involved in that. There's no growth involved in that. So growth is involved when you're prepared to hear the other side.

Fiona Kane:

Now, if you're in this situation whether it be this charlie kirk situation or whatever it is and there's someone who's on the other side to you it could be me, um, and, or it could be whoever it is reach out to that person. I, like you know, have conversations with people. I want to have conversations with people about this because I've seen people on facebook saying how could you care about charlie's death because he was all insert evil, blah, blah, blah all the things that are said about him that are simply not true. So how could you whatever and they're the conversations we need to have Not fighting about it, saying, well, you're this and you're that and you're an idiot and whatever, but conversations where you actually say, okay, let's have a true good faith conversation and talk about why I support Charlie Kirk or why I don't, or whatever the situation is. You'll find you'll get some value out of that. Use this as an opportunity, like, I hope that every university not just in the US, but honestly I hope every university in the world creates, uh, you know, a Charlie Kirk debating club and has a Charlie Kirk statue and and a place in, you know, in every courtyard of university or where it's a place for free speech. If we got that, that would be amazing Again, whether or not you loved him or hated him.

Fiona Kane:

But we need to have free speech. The cure to bad speech is more speech, not shutting down speech. So we need to learn how to be uncomfortable. We need to have resistance in our lives and we need to learn how to be uncomfortable. We need to have resistance in our lives and we need to learn how to have conversations and um and we need to also learn to look around and look for the good, because sometimes we get so caught up and me included, don't worry about that we get so caught up and only seeing a bad thing and of course in the moment we see that that's of course, that's natural, but we get so caught up in only seeing what's wrong, only seeing what's bad, only seeing the dark, whatever it is. We need to actually actively look for the light, whatever that looks like we need to actively look for whether it's that beautiful person or that kind person or those kind words or that, whatever it is. We need to actively go and look for light when we're in dark and not only focus on the dark, because many of us only focus on the dark and that just pulls you down and it keeps you there.

Fiona Kane:

So if you want to stay in a place of misery, stay in that place where you just over and over and over again, are in that place and can't move on. And on that note, like I'm not, that's a whole other thing. But I'm not saying that people don't have like PTSD or that things don't happen where that's a problem. But if that is a real problem, obviously go and get help so you can move past that. Because I know myself for me, I certainly experienced that after my mother passed away, I had a lot of for a long time. A lot of the negative things, all the really challenging things were really prominent in my mind and I had trouble moving on from it. So no judgment about inability to do that, but just try and get help to do that. If you need help to do that, because you will win from doing that, I promise you.

Fiona Kane:

It's only a good thing to learn how to move past it and just see the light and see beauty and see love and see kindness and look for the helpers, look for the good things out of situations, and that's what will help you bring you to the other side, even if ever so slowly, that's what will help bring you to the other side. So I will leave it at that. Look, I hope that my husband will approve. I know there are some dark moments in this, but I was also trying to find the light and I was trying to find the good and my intention was to find the good in this, so hopefully he'll say it was good. We will see. Probably not, that's another story. Look, please like, subscribe, share or write a review, or write a reply and tell me what you're thinking, what your thoughts are on this.

Fiona Kane:

The idea of this podcast is real conversations about things that matter. These things matter. I want to have real conversations. Real conversations are uncomfortable but at the end of the day, I really want positive to come out of these real conversations, no matter how hard they are. Anyway, I will leave it at that. Have a great week and I will talk to you again soon. Thank you, bye.

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