There’s a kind of noise that doesn’t come from sound. You’ve felt it before when someone walks into a room and the air shifts. They didn’t announce themselves, didn’t wave a flag, and didn’t even try. But you noticed. Everyone noticed.
That’s what I mean by living loud without saying a word. And here’s the trick: it’s less about who talks the most or carries the flashiest title, and more about who knows who they are when nobody’s clapping.
The Quiet Kind of Confidence
Self-acceptance doesn’t arrive like a lightning bolt. It creeps in after years of doubting yourself, covering up, trying to shrink into spaces where you never belonged in the first place.
Kimi Cole, who wrote Kimi•isms: Wit, Wisdom & Word F*ckery, says it plainly: “True confidence does not come from knowing others, but from knowing and accepting ourselves.” She really meant what she wrote as a motivational quote. She lived it. For decades, she lived behind a mask, pretending to be someone she wasn’t until she eventually stopped pretending.
Imagine carrying that weight for fifty-plus years, then suddenly choosing yourself. That’s not just bravery. That’s volume. That’s presence.
And it’s contagious. Readers say her book feels like sitting across from a friend who’s done the hard work of acceptance and dares you to do the same. One early reviewer said, “Kimi makes you laugh in the middle of hard truths, and that’s when you know you’re in the presence of someone who has lived it.”
Loudness Without the Megaphone
We’re conditioned to believe confidence is performance. The loudest voice in the room. The bold speech. The perfectly lit selfie, complete with the just-right caption.
But what if confidence doesn’t need to shout?
Think of a person who doesn’t rush to fill silence. They lean back, breathe, and let others scramble to prove themselves. Their calm says more than a thousand words could. Their very being is a kind of punctuation mark.
Kimi’s fragments of her journal notes, sharp observations, and throwaway lines capture this better than a lecture ever could. One of my favorites: “Living out loud does not necessarily require opening one’s mouth.”
That line sticks because it’s so contrary to what we’re taught. But once you get it, you can’t unsee it.
The Glass House Dilemma
Here’s the thing about living loud: it invites scrutiny. People love to throw rocks. And Cole has seen more than her share of stones hurled her way. Transitioning in midlife, stepping into public spaces as an openly transgender woman, she had to face the judgments of people who assumed they knew her better than she knew herself.
She doesn’t sugarcoat it. She writes about trolls on the internet, political cruelty, and the absurdity of strangers acting like experts on your life. Her response? Humor, mostly. And a refusal to play small.
One fragment reads: “So many with extremely negative views on life do not realize that they are the bitter taste that clouds their own views.” In other words: let them stew. You don’t have to sip their poison.
Living loud without words means refusing to bow to every critic. You don’t owe the glasshouse dwellers an explanation.
Power in Stillness
Think about your own life for a second. When have you been at your most powerful? Probably not when you were trying to prove something. Not when you were trying to win the argument. More likely it was when you stood your ground, calm, steady, unflinching.
There’s a story in Kimi•isms: Wit, Wisdom & Word F*ckery about her motocross racing days. She pushed herself to the edge, took crashes that would’ve scared most people off, and kept going. The racing itself was loud, with engines screaming and dirt flying. But the power came later, in the stillness after the checkered flag, when she knew exactly who she was regardless of anyone else’s scoreboard.
Confidence isn’t the revving engine. It’s the quiet after.
Challenging Stereotypes, One Page at a Time
Living loud without words also means refusing to accept the roles society hands you. For Kimi, that meant rejecting decades of being told she couldn’t live openly as herself. For you, it might be the role of “good girl,” “quiet employee,” “team player,” or “background character.”
Her book challenges that nonsense with wit sharp enough to draw blood. She dismantles the stereotypes we cling to about gender, about politics, about how life “should” look, and replaces them with messy, honest alternatives.
She writes: “Pay attention to what ‘everyone else’ is doing…and then do something different. Life is too short to simply fade into others’ routines.”
That’s not just advice. It’s a dare. A dare to stop following the script.
Living Loud in Your Own Way
What does this actually look like day to day?
- Walking into a room without needing to fill it with noise. Your presence is enough.
- Call the person you’ve been thinking about instead of waiting for the “right moment.” (Kimi would say: stop needing a calendar reminder.)
- Writing down three things you’re grateful for, even when the day is awful. Gratitude as rebellion.
- Refusing to swallow someone else’s bitterness. Their poison, their problem.
- Laughing at the absurdities instead of collapsing under them. Humor as survival.
It’s not complicated. But it does take practice.
Why Readers Keep Coming Back
What makes Kimi•isms: Wit, Wisdom & Word F*ckery stick isn’t just the punchy one-liners or the social critiques that make you nod in recognition. It’s that the fragments add up to something bigger, a way of moving through life that feels authentic, messy, and hopeful.
Readers compare her to Anne Lamott for her raw honesty, Fran Lebowitz for her bite. One wrote, “It reads like coffee with a brutally honest friend who makes you laugh even as they dismantle your assumptions.”
That kind of praise isn’t manufactured. It’s lived. And it’s why people don’t just read the book once. They keep it nearby. Dog-ear it. Argue with it. Quote it in conversations.
Your Turn to Turn Up the Volume
You don’t need a megaphone to be heard. You don’t need a title, applause, or permission. You need presence. Self-acceptance. The guts to show up as you are and let the silence do some of the work.
Kimi•isms: Wit, Wisdom & Word F*ckery isn’t a book that gives you a 10-step plan to get there. It’s a book that shows you through fragments, through laughter, through lived scars that you already have it in you.
So if you’re ready to live loud without saying a word, maybe start here with the kind of wisdom that doesn’t fit in boxes, with the humor that takes the edge off, with the hope that refuses to die.
Grab Kimi•isms: Wit, Wisdom & Word F*ckery on Amazon. Please keep it on your nightstand. Flip it open on days you need reminding. Then go out and live louder than words.