Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing, and Hope

You are not your past. You are prepared for your future. A yes can propel you, but a no will never hurt you.

People need to understand that they are always consciously or unconsciously affecting the choices and dreams of others.

I have learned that to have a healthy life, you must acknowledge tensions or disagreements—not avoid them. Each moment in my life that I viewed as horrible or hurtful at the time was actually a message that I needed to receive, learn from, and use to inspire others.

Culture is about what people feel, and how they experience the world around them.

The definition of culture is the customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. it's also defined as a set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or person. everything described in this definition is about the emotions, feelings, hopes, and desires that people and communities hold close and pass on to future generations.

Being open starts within ourselves: forgiving ourselves for our perceived shortcomings, for the traumas of our past, for not always making the best choices for ourselves and others. For not always responding to conflict in a healthy way.

You are not your past. You have prepared for your future. A yes can propel you, but a no will never hurt you.

That’s what anxiety is. It’s not necessarily that you’re fearful. It can be something from your past, present, or future that you know you have to tackle.

When I initially arrived in LA, I had dreamed about being Oprah but I thought my dream was too big. I couldn't be her, that was true. I could never be Oprah, but I could be Karamo.

If you allow people to dictate your self-esteem based on their opinions of you, you will always fail.

I can't know what the future will hold. What I do know is that we all have the ability to effect change within ourselves and outwardly. We can reach out to one another and find ways to move the needle on success and love.

What I realized was that my dreams scared them because they were scared of their own dreams in a sense. They thought it was healthy to make me afraid of my dreams. Failure can be crippling but to me it's also a stepping-stone to greatness

We often develop into who we are based on how people interact with us, but as we get older, it is our responsibility to grow based on how we feel about ourselves.

It's very easy, when you have a book, to pick one line and say, "Look what this sentence says." But it's like, "Girl, read the rest of the paragraph.

The beautiful shades of the world are the colors of love that pour out from the light within us all.

Making over your inside is just as important as making over your outside. For people to maintain exterior change, they have to have a greater or equal internal change. I illustrated how internal changes give people the ability to evaluate and understand why they didn’t make that change before and how they can maintain that change in the future.