My Life’s Lessons – Kristina Kalapos

Sailing Naked – How a Hungarian Freedom Fighter and His American Daughter Resolved Intergenerational Trauma

Available 15 October 2025 in the UK and EU through local booksellers as well as major retailers. Sailing Naked will be released in the US on 6 January 2026. Want a compelling read?? Buy yours now!

Synopsis:

Sailing the high seas, clothes were always optional. Why settle for plain vanilla when you can be an outrageous chocolate sundae—overflowing with flavor and a few nuts on top?

Frank thrived on creativity and contradiction. Whether he was sailing the Pacific, debating the virtues of growing vegetables in the desert, or simply losing himself in conversation, he did it all with flair. The ascot and Wayfarers he wore were more than style—they were the bow on a loosely wrapped package, the final flourish on a life lived vividly.

Yet beneath that charm lay the shadow of a past he could never escape. At twenty, Frank fled Communist Hungary in 1956, carrying with him both freedom and the wounds of exile. He was no man for excuses; he simply chose to live at the farthest edge of everything—having once known the suffocating stillness of censorship, he sought only extremes.

Kristina’s memoir is a raw, lyrical exploration of her life with her father, a Hungarian Freedom Fighter turned political refugee. Through love, loss, and turbulence, she unravels the story of a man celebrated for his courage yet undone by his demons. Though he earned entry to the United States through a visa recognizing his service as a translator for the Austrian border guards, his spirit remained haunted by the Russians and their tanks. Drugs and alcohol became his refuge until his final breath.

Where hope flickered, despair often followed. Few could comprehend the emotional wreckage born from a youth of hiding carrots, stealing chickens, or dragging a wounded comrade from the reach of Soviet bullets. In the end, hindsight became a reflecting pool—showing a thousand ways Kristina and Frank might have found peace together.

This is an account of her path to find peace, via Venice Beach, California in the 1970s, Seville, Spain in the 1980s, Michigan, Chicago, Switzerland, Hungary, the Isle of Wight and Mexico.

Early praise for Sailing Naked includes:

“A compelling expression of vulnerability and acceptance… A must read!” — Evelyn Farkas, Ph.D., National Security Expert and Fellow Hungarian

“Her lesson to all of us is to have empathy for oneself and to honor and develop your highest self.” — David Evrard, Author and Entrepreneur

“Through storm and hellish situations, Kalapos unflinchingly documents her father’s struggles and her own quest for inner peace. A moving tale of compassion and acceptance.” — Zilka Joseph, Author of Sweet Malida: Memories of a Bene Israel Woman

About Kristina Kalapos:

Kristina is an entrepreneur, writer, adjunct instructor, and ski instructor, she has built a dynamic career defined by creativity and resilience. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, she remains deeply connected to her Hungarian roots and has successfully founded two businesses. Her intuitive vision has guided her work in business, in the classroom, and on the ski slopes alike. Kristina attended elementary and junior high school in Traverse City before moving to Harbor Springs for high school. She currently lives in Northern Michigan.

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It is nearly impossible today to get out of bed and face the day with 100% enthusiasm and conviction. Even on the best days, shit gets in the way. Some days, I absorb it like a sponge, while others I repel it with all my might and let it roll off of my back.

The ebb and flow of that balance requires a conscious persistence or does it?

Is perseverance innate or learned?

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If it is learned, I don’t ever remember it being taught. If it is innate, I have the genetics of perseverant gold embedded in my DNA by the unwavering will of my grandparents and father.

Science will tell you its learned but I choose to believe it is both. When you persevere at a young age, you do without knowing you are so something innate drives that urge to persist despite setbacks and struggles.

With age comes wisdom, critical thinking, and the ability to understand the broader concepts of mindsets, perseverance is clearly developed through a pattern of learned behaviors, observations, experiences, and challenges.

Where does resilience enter the picture?

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Resilience is your friend pounding on the front door trying to wake you out of a dead sleep to get your ass up and moving when all you want to do is pull the covers over your head.

One cannot persevere without resilience.

If we could, our time on this planet would require absolutely no effort. Everything would just happen exactly the way you planned it. Graduate with honors – check, make a million bucks – check, score every opportunity – check, and build the perfectly infallible life – checkmate!

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Resilience enables persistence and creates an energy that endures through the largest of challenges. Without resilience, prevailing is an accident. Like walking on thin ice hoping not to fall through. Resilience doesn’t make the ice thicker, it creates the belief that it is.

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Perseverance keeps you taking one trepid step at a time knowing you might fall through at any moment. Resilience leaves you knowing if you do, you have a plan to get out. You might be cold and wet, but you get out and move on.

Just like the ole wise tale of The Tortoise and the Hare. The tortoise prevailed because it persisted in taking one step at a time. As they say, ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’

If you trip and fall do you lay on the ground writhing in agony, or get the hell up and try again?

I am not sure when in my life I understood or could recognize what perseverance and resilience even looked like but reflecting on my experiences, I relied on both very heavily to prevail in my accidental and purposeful endeavors.

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Today, I know definitively with 100% certainty that I would not be where I am without the benefit of both. There are countless times in my life when pulling the covers over my head seemed the only way out, and yet I kept slugging along.

My PR has served me well. It laid the foundation that created opportunities in each of my endeavors and has not let me down.

Not even once.

Life in Death Situation

A timely reminder to leave no hug un-hugged! Squeeze a little harder for a few seconds longer…

The precarious nature of our existence is never clearer than in the face of death.

If mistakes are life’s pencil sharpener, then death smacks of ridiculous frickin clarity, that is if you are paying proper attention. As with all life events innately designed to have you on your ass buried in the weeds, death attached to someone with whom you share the same DNA is the international champion of such events.

The prize, a gold-plated shovel necessary to dig the hole to wallow-dom. Welcome to the club for you have arrived.

I was 24 years old when my father died unexpectedly. Before my head stopped spinning, I had pitched a tent in wallow-dom. Second guessing took the first of many prizes pacing neck in neck with what if’s.

If the club had a secret handshake, I mastered it with my eyes closed.

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Resources were scarce, and compassionate knowing nonexistent in my cavalier life that just delivered my first real job and bills to pay. In the 80’s people whispered cancer in fear of being discovered so facing death was best done alone. No RIP social media posts granting space for hashtag empathy.

Deal and move on please, you are blocking the entrance!

Through her bionic wisdom, capable of scaling mountains, climbing down deep holes and crossing oceans, my mother delivered something that helped me pack up my tent and leave wallow-dom – M. Scott Peck’s, The Road Less Traveled. Beautifully tattered and yellowed after 35 years as a reference, it is a timeless must read for those seeking a deeper meaning in life.

The Road Less Traveled

I read this book two separate times, 23 years apart. I derived separate and significant insights each time. Like a fine wine, the message aged well and spoke more broadly to me and the areas of my life that time had tested.

Immediately after my father’s death, one of my many answerless questions… Does the pain of death perpetuate death (physically or spiritually) or life? Page 133, delivered my answer. This is a glimpse of why Peck’s book has sold over seven million copies and why it is clearly, a life in death situation:

“If we can live with the knowledge that death is our constant companion, traveling on our left shoulder, then death becomes our ally and a source of wise counsel. With death’s counsel, the constant awareness of the limit of our time to live and love, we can always be guided to make the best use of our time and live life to the fullest. But if we are unwilling to fully face the fearsome presence of death on our left shoulder, we deprive ourselves of its counsel and cannot possibly live or love with clarity. When we shy away from death, the ever-changing nature of things, we inevitably shy away from life.”

Can I get a mic drop please?

Even today, these words produce goose bumps and make my heart race. What a gift! They made me feel lucky to have lived and survived a death of such significance in my young life. What a blessing, always ‘traveling on my left shoulder.’ Death’s presence perpetuates life, love, honesty, openness, expression, and the values inherent within them.

No room for complacent wimps.

Next in line, please step to the front.

Perseverance – Finding the Light at the End of the Tunnel

Admittedly, I have been a bit underwhelmed and uninspired of late… a bit ho hum. On the eve of the 364th day of my year, I find myself in some heavy, deep reflection.

Rut Ro.

Isn’t that what birthdays are supposed to do? Pause, reflect, embrace, and saddle up for the coming year.

So here I sit, thinking about the how, the when and the why of my countless experiences. Specifically, the one’s through which I managed to persevere. I don’t remember making a conscious choice to persevere, rather, I embraced the characteristics of one who chose the opposite of conceding defeat.

I chose not to settle in the muck.

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There is great discomfort in the swamp, only matched by the discomfort of trudging through it. I guess my underlying hope is/was I will eventually make my way out of it.

The problem is, you don’t know you will come out the other side, until you have arrived on the other side!

I am fortunate to have had worthy examples of such a trek in my life, but as observations rather than teachings. My Hungarian grand parents exemplified the extremely consequential necessity of NOT conceding defeat at levels that make my challenges seem like a walk through the rose garden, merely dodging thorns.

Their unwavering, resilient determination gave me my life. That is a heavy load.

Reflection is a powerful tool and my perspective is rooted in it.

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It is a subjective process that includes a dash of rationalization. I would rather rationalize my way through the swamp than drowned in it. Writing has given me that pause. The time necessary to slow my roll, reflect, process, push on through, and eventually find gratitude in all things past and present.

As I have said many times, I am where I am because of where I have been. The good, the bad and everything in between. Water under the bridge is water under the bridge! I can’t push it back up stream and make it come down differently.

Embrace it and move on!

If that makes a bad thing not so bad, or something I expected, exceptional, I’ll take that every day!

Persevering is the strongest of P’s in my Pod. With a lifetime of experience behind me it’s easy to reflect on its significant impact in my life’s direction and outcomes. The fortitude, determination and will to endure has served me well.

Today’s swamp is in the distance, potentially avoidable if I navigate the appropriate detour. As they say, with age comes wisdom. Having made a life time of mistakes has sharpened my ability to avoid a wrong turn in my future.

Fortunately, my hardships are in the rearview mirror resting neatly amongst the other shiny tools in the back seat. I know there is potential to be neck deep in the swamp, gasping for each breath before I’m sucked in by the muck.

I am hopeful the tools I have employed effectively in the past will encourage balance and harmony and enable peace. And steer me clear of the muck. It is a more difficult equation when I can’t control the outcome of something so I try to focus on the things I can control.

Persevering through difficult circumstances has served me well. That persistence points me in the right direction and invariably leads me right to the light at the end of the tunnel.

There really is no other choice.

Perspective – One of the P’s in my Pod

I was talking with a friend recently about thoughts and perspectives and how and why we come to the reality of our positions. I wondered, is everyone’s mind in over-drive all the time or just mine?

My overthinking doesn’t render me in the abyss of indecision, rather it never leaves room for pure and utter silence.

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Have you ever wondered how much ground a squirrel can cover jumping from one tree’s branch to another? Or why a No. 2 Pencil is numbered and reigns supreme?

I didn’t think so.

I split hairs, connect dots, analyze angles, sharpen pencils, pull weeds in the desert and then put it all together in one cohesive anthology. It leaves me in the space of a pretty firm opinion.

People close to me are prepared for the challenge. I am neither obstinate nor a, my-way-or-the-highway kind of gal, but you can be sure I have covered all the perceived angles.

I am a good listener, I ask a lot of questions, and I can admit when I am wrong.

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I challenge other’s positions with an open mind knowing I can’t learn something new without understanding another’s perspective. It is critical to have a voice of conviction when sharing our beliefs if there is value in moving the needle one way or the other.

Nothing worse than wishy-washy.

The best orators cultivate mindsets rather than fix broken records, not just because they are firm in their conviction but because they lead and live through their example. Their passion and commitment to their belief lies beyond the words that encapsulate it.

That is a person who can push the needle.

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I would very much prefer and accept someone’s counter conviction if they themselves lived, breathed and walked in the space with it. I always say, the loudest homophobes are closet-ed gays. It’s their very vocal condemnation and projection of a belief that they clearly do not subscribe to since they hide under the pretense with enormous disdain.

Swap out any 2 things and you will see the pattern.

The loudest complainers carry the biggest shovel.

Those shining the brightest spot light are deflecting their own shadow.

Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones.

You get the idea. Pure hypocrisy.

It is okay to be on 2 different pages when our beliefs are foundational to the way we conduct ourselves. It is not about always being on the same page or about being a goody two shoes, or living infallibly or being the brightest star, it’s about owning your words and your commitment to them.

Simply, our perspective should align with our conduct. Period. 100%.

It seems easier to pretend to be something we are not rather than just own the air and space in which we exist. There was a time in my life when this was more difficult than it is for me today, but if I had to pin-point it, I think it foundationally changed when I stopped giving a shit about what other’s thought.

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When I let go of the frame through which I thought other’s would define me and lived more transparently, I became capable of living authentically.

When I aligned my words with my actions, life got a lot easier. Today, my not giving-a-shit attitude is not cavalier nor malicious, it simply enables a space and time to live in my words and beliefs.

It is foundational to my perspective and worldview. It is one of the P’s in my pod.

8 Significant Lessons I Learned From Screwing Up

Since I learned the best lessons in my life through the mistakes I have made, this list could be seemingly infinite because I have made countless ones. There are several that tripped me up for years before I realized I had the power and ability to make a change in the behavior that was causing me so many issues.

The best description I found was looking through the lens of a victim vs a creator.

As a self-imposed victim, I didn’t necessarily blame others for my struggles, mistakes or failures, rather absolved myself from the equation by not being accountable to my actions. As if, the swamp I found myself in existed outside of my ability to see the mountain I could scale.

I didn’t necessarily mope around mumbling ‘woe is me,’ rather silently felt unworthy of progress which left me insecure and scared about my future or any potential success that awaited. I took small steps in the beginning but when I could feel and see that switching my mindset from living irresponsibly to owning and creating my direction, my life began to change.

This change began somewhere during my college years, as I realized the benefits of my focused work, and hit me smack in the face on the heels of my father’s unexpected death when I was 24 years old.

Death with no notice stops you right in your tracks. It left me reflecting on the things I had done that directly hurt others and inadvertently hurt me.

There was no re-do button.

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Not all of my lessons revealed themselves in this exact moment, but it sure as hell sharpened my attention and enabled me to take steps in a positive direction, correcting one mistake at a time.

Here are my 8 teachers.

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Silence is Not Golden

In my youth, I retreated with my emotions and closed up like a clam burrowing in the sand. My mantra, ‘I don’t want to talk about’ when asked about what bothered me, did not serve me well! My father’s death taught me the significance of sharing love, telling people my feelings, speaking my truth, and asking the hard questions in real time, not with hindsight.