Kendall Lamb's truth is a remembering

How do we still feel wow and thanks inside of our pain?

One thing I regularly say is that truth feels to me like remembering. Anytime I hear or experience anything that feels really truthy, I have the sense of like, Oh I knew that, right? There's this homecoming, there's this recognition. And I think that's the process in writing—it's reaching for that sense of remembering.

-Kendall Lamb, writer, evolutionary biologist, marine ecologist

I’m just going to say it: I think Kendall Lamb is going to be one of those writers we’ll all be quoting and passing around in a few years. The kind whose work you return to when you need to remember what matters.

And yet, it’s hard to put words to what she leaves you with—because her writing, and her presence, invite you into that deep place where truth feels less like learning and more like remembering. Where a sentence arrives and something ancient in you quietly sighs and says: yes, of course.

Kendall is a marine ecologist, an evolutionary biologist, a mystic, a mother, a poet-in-disguise, and the author of one of my favorite Substack series, Touching the Elephant. Her animal encounter stories are wry, reverent, self-deprecating, and spiritually crackling—moving through the world with the kind of curiosity that watches a baby orca catch raindrops on its tongue and knows, somehow, the whole universe is contained in that moment.

She writes the way she lives: with a wild attentiveness to what most of us miss. And in doing so, she reveals the deep wonder woven through grief, transformation, love, and loss.

We sat down recently for this conversation, and I’m still walking around a little dazed by it. If you’ve read her work, you’ll know why. And if you haven’t yet, I can’t wait for you to discover her. We talked about it all—the ocean, orcas, anger as sacred teacher, the wisdom of wild grief, the tension between survival and wonder, and what it means to be, as Kendall says, “in my own created space”—where the scientist and the mystic-priestess finally meet, and writing becomes the place where they merge.

More than anything, I loved sharing time with her. And I think you will too.

So here is Kendall Lamb: luminous, soul-tuned, and deeply human—a writer I’m thrilled to share with you.

Kimberly

Okay. I'm just gonna stand here with this stupid grin on my face for a moment because I am so excited to see you, and especially knowing that we're in the same time zone, which probably doesn't happen often since you are a worldly traveler.

Anyway, for those that are not familiar with

Kendall Lamb

and her Substack Touching The Elephant. Oh my God, you are in for a treat today. I'm a little bit speechless right now just because her stories, your stories, Kendall, have moved me so deeply. I'm an animal lover, but the encounters and then the wisdom that you've drawn from those encounters just bring me to my knees.

So, and you’re self-deprecating, you know, all the humility, but then there's this deeply reverent, incredibly observational quality to everything that you do. So I'm even imagining as you wandered through your morning this morning, you were observing things that might be pieces to a story or a chapter later on. Your stories just crack open wonder for me, and that's what we need in this world. And that's why you've become truly my favorite read every week when I see your name pop up. I'm like, Ahhh! What's she going to talk about today?

I'm going to pull myself in because really could truly just gosh, but I want to hear you talk. I've been reading you for about six months now, and I'm still not sure how you do it because you're able to summon this quality where I’m laughing out loud and then literally bawling. So let’s talk.

Kendall

I'm so looking forward to this. Thank you. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time and it means the world to be sitting in this seat right now. I just feel like we're having a cup of tea together. So it's lovely.

Kimberly

We are!

So I want to jump in because I gave our audience a little bit of a background, but I really want to know how this all began for you. Before you were an evolutionary biologist and a marine biologist, it seems like you were already drawn to the ocean. So how did this begin for you?

Kendall

So I grew up in Tucson, Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. And that is an unlikely place to begin a love of the ocean, or maybe not. I think sometimes when we grow up in places that are so far removed from the ocean, the first time we see it, we can't help but love it. I'm always flabbergasted by people who don't feel enamored of the ocean. But I first started visiting the coast of California when I was a little girl, when I would visit my great grandmother at a nursing home that she lived at. And I was drawn to it right away. I could not get enough. And I was fortunate to be able to spend summers growing up in Laguna Beach at a little beach house. We had met a woman who would visit her grandkids on the East Coast every summer, and she would rent out her little beach house to my family.

And that's when I really started falling in love. I would go tide pooling every morning and there was this big rock that I would climb up on, on the beach called Whale Rock. And I would watch for dolphins and it was just a really magical time.

And then later when I was an adolescent, actually, this is a great story. I took a, like a Marine biology course—

Kimberly

In Arizona?

Kendall

In Arizona! They decided to do a Marine Biology course for my fifth grade class. And mostly we would sit in this little trailer and we would watch this old TV series that was called The Voyage of the Mimi. And it was a very young Ben Affleck. He was probably 11 years old when they recorded this. And they were on a sailboat called the Mimi and they would go out and they would do oceanography and whale watching and I was smitten. I thought, “This is the life that I need to live.” And so I would sit in front of this little, you know, they wheel out the TV and I would sit in front of it and I was just like, “This is it. This is it.” There was this internal calling and fast forward to my very first job working/researching whales in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

I was living in this incredibly run-town apartment with three other interns. I mean, it was lovely. This was an internship that we were paying for, and I think we got $20 a week for food. So we were poor and working 90 hours a week. And my very first day, I left the apartment and I walked out and the docks were right there. And what little tiny sailboat was sitting right out in front, but the Mimi itself from the voyage of the Mimi! It was the exact same ship, it was right in front of my apartment. And I remember just sitting down on the dock and being like, “You've got to be kidding me right now.” And it was covered in tarps. Like, I don't know. It looked kind of weather worn. Like no one had really been on it. And I wanted to tell everyone around me, like, this is a famous ship.

But yeah, so it was a really interesting full circle moment.

Kimberly

You have incredible coincidences like that. Those thread throughout your stories. That's remarkable. But it makes me wonder because I talk about this with my husband too. He has a lot of coincidences happen. And he always, similar to you, grew up very fundamentalist Christian, now is proudly adoring of the universe without the need for any sort of God to hold it all. But he feels like it's just because he's really, really observant. He's always noticing things. And so maybe the more that we notice, the more coincidence arrives or all of the occurrences that are already happening, and we just happen to miss them when we're picking our nose.

Kendall

I think you're right. My husband always tells me that I have far more stories than he does. Like he'll say I have one story to every hundred stories that you have that are extraordinary. And I don't think that's true. I do think—I'm with your husband—I think that I just collect them and there's, you know, there's this secret stash, this pocket that I put them in and I weave more meaning into them. But I do think it's a deep noticing. I think that that's largely what it is.

Kimberly

So did your writing, since you've been collecting this beautiful pocket full of stories, were the words coming to you when you were a child too, sitting out on those rocks and wandering through the tide pools, or did the words come later?

Kendall

I, that's such a hard question to answer because I don't—my writing voice and my interior thinking voice are the same. And I don't know if that's true for everyone, but I—andI don't want this to sound pretentious—but I think in prose. And so long before I started writing, I was speaking stories into my mind. I don't know if that's because I've been an avid reader since I was a little girl. I mean, my dream as a child was to get locked inside of a library overnight so I could read all the books without anyone telling me that I had to go to sleep. My grandmother was a librarian. I mean, libraries are like my first love in life. And so I grew up with words and stories, a very rich and real part of my environment.

And maybe because I am a person who notices things, I don't skim over things. I really pore into sentences and structure. I do that on Substack as well. I find it to be insulting to glaze over the way that a writer writes. So all that to be said, think that words have always been a part of my interior landscape. So I did keep journals and things like that, but a lot of it was happening more so inside my head.

Kimberly

And I'm gonna imagine because you say think in prose, that almost invites the insights to come as well because you're deliberating on those words and you always draw an insight. Well, no not always. I mean, it's not like it's formulaic, but it's almost how you make meaning from the world. And I wanna read something here from one of my favorite chapters, the Silent Scream. It's hard to pick a favorite chapter, but in this one, Silent Scream, you say,

Sometimes healing begins with a silent scream, an erupting flame, the primal calling-out of our pain and heartbreak. Only then can the wildflowers move back in. And their fragrance will not be for the heels that crushed them— one final act of benediction in death—it will be for the whole wide world. That’s where you’ll find me: laying in a field of flowers after a burn, having screamed myself back into quiet repose. That’s where forgiveness finally takes root.

This story is so powerful. And to know that a seal, a sea lion took you there.

And I'm not going to spoil the whole story for everyone, but because you just got to read it. especially for women to feel that scream deep in your chest and the way that the sea lion gave that to you and then you gave it back is just like, Ahhh! It's a movie. So when that happened, in that moment of the scream, were the insights pouring out of you or did this come later as you started writing it all down. What was that like for you when you screamed and let yourself burn in the ache.

Kendall

That's such a good question. I think the insights came later, but I knew in the moment that something really powerful and visceral was happening.

I think because I was raised in this very conservative Christian environment, one of the things I was taught really early on was that anger was not an acceptable emotion for women to feel, for men as well, but particularly for women. And so I think that eruption happened when I felt like that seal gave me permission to release the anger inside of me.

It was such a catharsis. It was obviously that moment that I write about in the story of just this very specific anger that I was harboring over a relationship that had gone awry. I think there, you know, it's like anger is like grief. I think when it comes out, it invites all of its friends with it, especially if you’ve been suppressing that a little bit. And so I think all that anger came out. I think after the moment happened, when I had realized in this sort of rung out state that something really important had happened. That's when I sat with it said, okay, “What was that trying to tell me? What was that really about?”

Kimberly

Yeah. And remind me, were you married at that point or had you left the church or like, were you able to kind of explore this emergence with anyone?

Kendall

No, I wasn't married at the time. And that was a really solitary endeavor at that point in time, sort of disentangling myself from religion while still having this really rich interior spirituality. It's really interesting because me leaving the church wasn't like an isolated moment. A lot of people have a moment that's very dramatic and they're just done. Mine was a multi-year process of just trying to figure out what was real and what was really not serving me and felt really hollow. And I did most of that untangling I would say alone but also with authors. I mean this is the magic of writing right? Like I think books walked me through that process. So I have a number of people who I felt like I was collaborating with across the page to get there. But yeah, I wasn't married. Most of this, I talk about sort of feeling like that process happened underneath a bed where there was this me that was underneath a bed for a long time and I sort of lit candles under there and I had all my books, but I was really afraid to come out from under the bed because there was still some boogie man out there of disappointment and disapproval that I wasn't ready to face until really very recently, the last few years.

Kimberly

Wow, I didn't know that. Your wisdom feels ancient. So to know that some of these insights are two years old. As you're talking and I'm thinking—because if the mental understanding of everything needed to come on board after the instinctual visceral screams and entanglements, all of that needed to first be felt in the body, it then makes sense that you've been drawn to these animals. And these animals have been drawn to you, in a way. And I'm just making that connection now that in a way, it seems like all along, something deep inside of you has been looking for guidance on how to listen to those deep, deep, deep primal instincts. Does that ring true?

Kendall

Yeah, that's a really astute observation. I think animals help you exist in time in a very different way than even other people can. Observing animals is a really somatic practice for me. And it helps me take down a lot of my guards, I think. I'm very unguarded in the natural world. So yeah, I absolutely think that helped the process.

Kimberly

But then of course you're inviting danger in with that. In one of your pieces you talk about danger and magic sitting side by side. And to be alive in this world, you must, must dance with both. And so there's this, there's a tension between the two, I guess. You have to make peace with those parts of yourself, between survival reflexes and the wonder. And was that easy for you as you started entering into these more dangerous situations? I mean, you've had shark encounters and you slice through whales with a knife, not alive, but I mean, you've been right on the edge of life and death a lot.

Kendall

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's been my greatest teacher because we do have this really intense desire as humans to create these binaries of good and bad and frightening and joyful. I'm always most interested in the intersection of the two. I feel like those places have been my teacher more than any other. And so when I find myself in a dangerous situation, I'm also still looking for the beauty. I don't want it to just be a flat two dimensional experience. I want to be aware of how when in danger, I feel more alive in my body and how when I'm in beauty, there's sometimes this edge of grief that sits right on the perimeter of that. Because sometimes when things are really good, we harbor our own different kinds of fears that that will be taken away from us. So that push and pull is something both in my writing and also just in life that I'm most interested to lean into. I think sometimes we are so afraid of those gray spaces, and for that, I am very grateful for my early upbringing because again, I wasn't encouraged to sit in the gray. And I think there was this really early rebellion in me that was like, “Mmm, that's actually my place. That's my jam.” And so I often sat in the gray place and sort of side-eyed all of these things that I was supposed to have very definite feelings about. And I'm really grateful that I was able to listen to that and lean into that because that's my favorite. That's my favorite thing.

Kimberly

You did have that even as a little girl. I love the scene of you in your tight fitting shoes and your church dress. And you heard from someone in your family that they were pagans in town and that somehow—who was it? Was it your aunt that told you this? That they danced naked under the moonlight?

Kendall

It was a conversation I'd overheard between two old women sitting in some church pews behind me. There's whispered conversation about the they were called the Rainbow People. And I don't know if they still exist or not. But just the name I mean, sparked my interest as a kid, I was like, “Oh the Rainbow People, that sounds fun!” And so, yeah, I, I always gravitated towards mysticism as a kid, I didn't have language for it at the time. But this idea of a group of people dancing naked in the moonlight. I was like, “That sounds fantastic. I want that.” And it was so forbidden, right? It was like, I was supposed to be buttoned up and I was supposed to be frowning on that with all the other proper people. And, you know I wasn't so evolved that I didn't still really very much want to be the good girl and belong in that group. I was definitely very bound up in that for a very long time. Like I will be the best, most proper, above board child. But there was always this underground desire for what was more dangerous or what brought up my curiosity.

So yeah, that moment as a kid when I was—a little girl walked into a cafe that I had been sitting in and she was one of the Rainbow People. So she was like barefoot. And I said, she just, she looked like she belonged in her body. She carried herself with ease. And here I was feeling very uncomfortable physically in the dress that I was in and my, probably my stockings. And I made eye contact with her and it felt electric. It felt like there was the wild woman that what I would become someday inside of me was recognizing that in that moment. So yeah, there were definitely threads of that through my childhood.

Kimberly

I love that chapter because I think you, if I'm correct, you contrast that experience as a child with you in the shark cage. Is that correct? And so there's this feeling of being in the cage of what you were supposed to be and that you're supposed to be happy about the cage. I think you even say, But I can't, but I can't stop thinking about those bodies in the moonlight, arms raised in supplication, wild and unbound. And I wonder what that kind of freedom feels like.

For this little girl to feel that already. It's fascinating. I'm jumping ahead because there's just so many quotes here that I have that I want to just share with everyone. But I also want people just to go read and maybe you need to find them yourself. But let's talk about, you touched on this a little bit, but what do you think ultimately this compulsion to be near animals and be in the ocean is teaching you about your own transformation?

Kendall

I think anyone who spends any time in nature can't help but recognize that transformation is the norm, right? We really don't love change. I mean, I'm not, I'm not immune from that. For all the travel and all of the wild life changes that I've done in the last 15 or 20 years, transition is still really hard for me. I like to nest and be comfortable. I like the illusion of stasis. And I think being outside, whether you're seeing a chrysalis or you're seeing a snake shedding its skin or you're an animal growing old and not even being able to stand up or something that's emaciated, there's this acceptance that animals have for the inevitability of change that is incredibly inspiring. They don't have this narrative about how things should be that we get so stuck in. Even when things are hard, even when something tragic is going on, there seems to be this surrender to it that I think definitely helps me with my own transformative moments to try very hard to have open hands and to be a bit more accepting of whatever is, whatever it is that's unfolding with less resistance. Yeah, I think that's been such a teacher for me.

Kimberly

It is such a teacher. I completely agree with you, Kendall. And also the give and the take that happens in nature. I mean, humans do it all the time too, but there's another narrative that we—the guilt and all these other layers that we put on it. But in nature, when my hens were killed by the bobcats, it was like the bobcats are just doing what they're meant to be doing. And those babies, the baby bobcats that were born, are they supposed to starve so that the hens can live? And did that dialogue happen in the mother bobcat's head? No, it's just this constant transmutation of life that is such a wonderful teacher.

Kendall

Yeah, transmutation is a great word. Yeah, it is a wonderful teacher. And I think we are very quick to label things good and evil. And I just think it's more nuanced than that. It's more complicated. And the more and more I can release my desire to label things and provide a narrative that makes sense to me, the more I can just be present to what is and stop trying to fight what reality is. I think it's Byron Katie who says, “If you pick a fight with reality, reality will always win.”

Kimberly

Or bite back.

Kendall

I don't think animals pick fights with reality. I think that they just, they live in a constant acceptance of what is. And we would probably be much more peaceful if we were also able to get there.

Kendall

So there's a tension then between the scientist part of you who's out there doing these projects and researching. I'm remembering the whale that washed up ashore and you had to be a scientist and, and take the knife and, and open up the whale and find out what had happened. And, and then you drop the knife in there, which is–again, your perfect balance of the humor and the humility I love so much—but that you didn't want to be a scientist at that point. You didn't want to just, you know, brush off your hands and go, Well, okay, and we have to move on. You wanted to be a high priestess and offer this beautiful benediction to this whale. You walk that tension so beautifully.

But seems like there's often a compromise, right? At some point, did the high priestess have to go, Okay, we've just got to move on.

Kendall

Yeah, yeah, I think it's interesting because this question about sort of the mysticism, the high priestess versus the scientist, both sides of that have provided, again, that tension in the middle, right that I don't often get to explore when I'm in either spot. In a lot of scientific communities, I definitely had to silence that part of myself and just do the work. It doesn't mean I wasn't still making that prose in my mind that we had talked about before when I was out there researching whales and I'm trying to get the data down, but I'm also seeing things and I'm being discouraged to make meaning of that. We're just getting the information down, which was such a viscerally painful experience for me sometimes because I can't help but see things with wonder.

So there was a definite tension there. Like I remember I was on a boat one time and there was a mother fin whale with her calf and whales will often leave their calves at the surface when they go down on deep dives because the calves don't have the lung capacity yet to get down there. And so she had taken a big breath and gone under on a dive.

And she had been trying to keep her baby away from the boat while she was at the surface. So our engine was off, but the baby was clearly curious. But as soon as mom went down, the baby came right up to us. It was like, “All right, well, now I have a chance to see what's going on on this boat full of people.” And right then it started to rain. And I swear to God, the baby opened its mouth and it stuck its tongue out. And it was such a sacred moment of recognition. Like we've all seen children do this. It's just catching raindrops on your tongue is just a fun thing. And maybe this was this baby's first time in rain. And I'm sitting there supposed to be just describing the behavior, right? Just cataloging it with this analog code. And there are like tears streaming down my face because it's also just such a gorgeous moment that's happening. And there's just, I'm of course, I'm starting to weave meaning into it. And I'm like, I want to write about this.

So in many ways, like, yes, I came up against that in the scientific communities. And then growing up in religious communities, I was told that you sort of have to decide whether you're gonna accept a religious narrative about what this world is and how it was made, or you can do the scientific narrative, but you can't do both. One has to, you know, the religious one needs to have authority. And that also gave me a lot of difficulty growing up because I loved...as an observer of nature, I loved how the deeper I got into nature, the closer I felt to God. And I felt like everything was a revelation. And there wasn't anything we could see or observe in the natural world that would take us farther away from that source. That seemed absurd to me. And so writing has become my favorite place to merge the two. That's what really feels liberating to me because I'm not in either community. I'm just in my own created space where I get to bring in my love of the natural world and science with my meaning making.

Kimberly

Oh, I mean, it's deeply spiritual. I hear that in all, it's like I learn, I learn about parasitism and mutualism and I'm also reading something that should be in scriptures. So I mentioned earlier that my husband grew up fundamentalist Christian as well and he loved National Geographic when he was a little boy, just pored through it. And at one point, because his dad figured out that Nat Geo was all about evolution, he canceled the subscription. And Dave, my husband, just felt so heartbroken because he felt like those pages were his Bible. It was where he was learning about love and forgiveness and care and wonder and all the things that he wasn't sensing when he read the Bible and and it just it broke him that you know, they couldn't have that magazine in the house anymore.

Kendall

Oh that's so sad. And I get it. think getting a degree in evolutionary biology was a middle finger to—it was like my first big rebellious act. Because I mean, yeah, I, I remember telling a science teacher in high school when I was really in my “fundy” stage and I was like, “I'm going to be the best conservative Christian ever.” Like, “You might have evolved from a monkey, but I didn't.” Like some sort of cheeky response that I think that I was repeating from I'm sure that I was repeating from something I'd heard in church. I wish I could go back and apologize to that poor teacher.

There's so much in my life, I can't tell you exactly why I've done it, Kimberly. I think that's so true of so many of us. I look back and I'm like, gosh, that was a really interesting choice for 20 Kendall's ago to decide to do evolutionary biology. But it became a big spiritual awakening for me to be able to really reach into our interconnectedness and our shared common ancestors. I mean, when we talk about unity and oneness, nothing speaks more profoundly to me of that process than this continuous rolling of one species into the next and to the next that has gotten us to where we are right now.

And so, yeah, it definitely was one of the big light bulb moments for me in my spiritual journey of, “Okay, these things don't clash. This is actually deeply spiritual and truthy. And I either need to trust that or I need to trust something someone else is telling me. And I don't think that I can do that and be a whole and integrated person.”

Kimberly

I'm fascinated by how you knew that, especially with our other primal needs of being part of a tribe and being accepted. And you also do talk about, you know, sort of self betrayal. There were periods where—it's not like, you knew this voice and just forged ahead—it was this, again, this tension between this girl that was compromising herself a lot in relationships and then also something primal that was like, “No, I know what I want.” And in fact, you actually talk about your relationships quite a bit. It's a theme that runs through a lot of your chapters, boyfriends and husband. And you talk about it with such grace, even the ones that were parasitic for you.

I want to talk to you a little bit about that self betrayal because as women—men and women, let's not be gender specific here—but we human beings, we betray ourselves often. And you said in one of your chapters, Yoked you wrote, I was always trying to be smaller, softer, more agreeable, more spiritual, less carnal, less curious.

So I believe writing, as you said, has helped you repair those moments, but has there been anything else that's really helped ground that transformation for you, to not betray yourself?

Kendall

Other women. It's interesting, I don't write about it much and I would like to start writing more about it, but one really common theme in my life, and I'm so unbelievably grateful for this, is I have always been surrounded by strong circles of women who challenge me, who think differently than I do, who see the world a little bit differently, and who hold this really sacred space. I mean, starting in high school, my high school group of girlfriends were not in the Christian church whatsoever. They were activists and poets and scientists. And I always felt like when I was in that group, I could be most myself. I wasn't chameleoning because—I always use that word chameleoning, often in my relationships with men, I always was asking, like, who do you want me to be? And I will be that person. And I'm going to be the best version of that person possible. It was almost like a game. Like, there was this wiser part of myself over here that was seeing what I was doing. And then there was this part of me that's like, “no, but watch. I can be the perfect person for this guy. And I was really proud of that. I was like, “I can roll with this guy who doesn't like anyone else will fall in love with me.” And then it would happen and I'd be like, unfortunately I don't like him. But he really likes me and I feel like I've accomplished something.

So that took some time to unwind right? But when I was with my women, I mentioned I have this incredible group of women that I met on Catalina that we've been friends for 20 odd years now. That was like an immediate sisterhood. There was an incredible group of women that I got to live with in the wild in Alaska for many years. And these were women we were doing full moon circles and we were doing night hikes and we were sitting under the aurora howling like wolves. Women have always given me permission to be my wildest, most free self. And here where I am in Winthrop now, I have a women's circle that is my church. We meet once a month and we sit and we, it's a very transformative process. We just listen to each other. This is a radical thing that shouldn't be radical, but we each get about 10 minutes to share whatever it is that we want to share. And nobody comments on what the other person has said. There's not advice. There's not feedback. It's just space holding. And people are weeping and crying and sharing their most vulnerable selves. And then it's quiet and we soak it in and we hold it. And the next person goes and this is what's helped me ground in the midst of all of that. I don't know if that answers the question quite the way that you had asked it, but it felt—

Kimberly

It absolutely does, Kendall. you know, my mom has a similar group. She's always had women's groups growing up. When I was young, she had two women's groups. And then when she went off after my dad died, she went and formed one in even like Scottsdale, Arizona, where—you just shop together, you don't have women's groups—she formed one there. Everywhere she's gone. And now she has one in Colorado where they do something similar. They don't comment they just share and they also spend about a half an hour sitting in silence together. I envy that. I eally do. My own rebellion was to like not do—my mom and dad were into men's groups and women's groups and all the groups and goddess groups. And I was like, “Ahh! I don't want any of it!” But I can see how incredibly important and what a model that is for life, how to hold each other without needing to fix it, without needing to offer advice. The holding is enough. So often it is enough. And women know that inherently.

Kendall

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. Yeah, we do when we let ourselves and when I see women picking each other apart or not supporting one another, I just want to be like, Hey, just do this instead. There's so much wisdom between—and it's again, it's not gender specific. I would love it if men were able to do the same thing or there were more opportunities and spaces for men to do this. I think that it would change the world. Bu that's been deeply healing for me.

Kimberly

Yeah, I'm so glad that you have that. I'll be up there for the next one. I'll just drive up, you know, 10 hours. Can I think it's maybe a 12 hour drive? I'll be there.

Kendall

You're welcome! Anytime.

You can just sleep. I mean, that's the great thing. You don't have to show up all put together. You could just curl up in a fetal position and listen to what was going on.

Kimberly

So beautiful, Kendall. So I want to talk a little bit about some of the humor that you weave in because we think like, “Oh sacred animals and extraordinary encounters!” And the reality is, is that you have had some really goofy moments with animals too, like this whale sneezing on you. Which is just another beautiful way to ground the sacred. So in one of your stories, you talk about how you were standing out on the—where were you? Were you in Maine and the storm petrel landed on your head and you were so absorbed in doing your job and charting/keeping your eyes on the ocean and here this storm petrel was just perched there—for hours, not a second, for hours!

So I wanna know as a fun little exercise, are there other things in moments in your life where something has landed on you without your knowing, like just like the little bird.

Kendall

It's such a good question. And thank you for bringing up the humor. I think it's so important to infuse our writing with humor and lightness when we can. I do touch on a lot of really heavy subjects, but I also love to laugh at myself and I have been in some truly absurd and embarrassing situations at times. Where I'm sure that day on the boat I was trying to be very “serious science Kendall”—I'm wearing my storm suit and I have this big hood on and I'm searching for spouts and we're doing very important work on whales. And here this bird is sitting on my head the whole time and for a very long time, as you said. And it's so good. So like, I think the bird represents a lot of things. I think the bird represents levity sometimes where we're asked to hold things a little lighter and take ourselves a little less seriously. And I also think the bird is a metaphor for things landing before we realize that they're there sometimes.

Right now, I think that that bird in my life is poetry, interestingly enough. I have started to write poetry and it's largely because of my readers. I have a few readers who are like, Hey, I think you're a poet. You should write poetry. And I was like, I'm not a poet. I have a book of Mary Oliver poems, like on my bedside every night. I mean, I love poetry. And I was like, No, I'm not a poet. And then I was just like, okay, fine, I'll give it a go. And that felt like the bird on the head moment. Because once I started writing poetry, I was like, Oh no, I've always been doing this. I just haven't been pulling it out. It's like, you know, when you're reducing something on the stove—is prose into poetry sometimes. If you're already writing prose, you just have to make it even more potent and even more concise. And that has felt really fun and very rewarding because sometimes filling in the backstory feels really cumbersome to me. I don't want to do that. I just want to get to the punchy moments that make you gasp or make you cry. And I'm like, Oh I can do that even more concisely with poetry. But that's been a fun revelation to know that that bird, so to speak, that poetry bird has been sitting inside of my writing for a really long time. And I'm like, Oh you were there this whole time! So yeah.

Kimberly

All along just sitting on your head. Really, you are a poet. I totally understand the “I don't want to do the details and the backstory” and I think I'm a little ADD with that or something where I just get impatient with myself. You do a beautiful job at building backstory. But I would go as far as to say that every one of your chapters, not that you should, because they're perfect as they are, but you could distill them into poems because all the elements are already there. That final twist where you're suddenly like, she wasn't just talking about a whale. She was talking about motherhood, you know? You're like, whoa! So it's very clear that this poetry bird is alive and well. And I would say not sitting on your head anymore, but inside of you.

Kendall

You know, thank you. And I just wanted to comment on what you had just said about reading through these things and being like, my gosh, you're not just talking about a whale. This is actually about motherhood. This is how I feel as a writer writing these things. And that's where I get into writing as a spiritual practice is because I don't often get into my writing knowing what I'm doing.

I don't have this really clear outline where I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna tell this story and then this story and then it's gonna land and tie into this thing. I found that—I always talk about how I have to invite in my muses. It's like, I need to invite in this collaboration between myself and whatever else is coming through in a way that forces me to get out of my own way. In the beginning, I really argued with that voice, because I'd be like, Okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to tell a story about whale snot in my eye. And the voice would be like, Okay, but you need to bring in this story from when you were 10. And I'm like, No, that doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about.

And so I would really come to heads with it, until I started letting go a little, like I kept getting to this point in my writing where I would just be hitting these walls. I was like, I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know where this is going. And that voice would get more insistent. And I'd finally be like, Okay, fine! I'll write about that thing! And I would start writing that and it was like suddenly I was releasing myself to the river. I wasn't hitting against the current anymore and I would be like, Oh this is where you wanted to take me. And so I often find myself tearing up or getting a bit breathless in my own storytelling process because that feels really otherworldly to me, if I'm being honest. I don't know where they're going. And often I will just show up at the cafe that I write at, and I will sit quietly staring at the river for a while and just saying, OK, whenever you've got something, just let me know. And I'm starting to learn to trust that.

Sometimes I have an idea, but I often, I won't get it, or I'll be driving with my daughter in the backseat at a completely inconvenient time, and then I'll have this moment of like, Oh that's the next thing. That's how I need to approach this.

Kimberly

You call it other worldly, Kendall. And I almost, it's funny because I was thinking it's both, of course, but I was thinking it's extremely embodied that these stories are coming from the deep, deep cellular memories. And then I was thinking, well, in our cellular memory, there is that ancestral memory, which can go back not just through the human, you know, lineage, but through our ancestors all the way back to the single cell bacterium. So you're calling upon these voices as you write. And I think it's beautiful that you're leaning into that trust that you don't need to have the whole thing mapped out because the voices are all there ready and waiting, probably raising their hands going “Now pick me, pick me!”

Kendall

Yes, and I think that otherworldliness that I spoke of comes a lot from my early conditioning of thinking about the spiritual as being out here, right? Like we put our hands up, we do this a lot, instead of right here, which is where I've come to understand that it comes from, right? Is that it is a deeply embodied part of ourselves that is an internal well.

One thing I regularly say is that truth feels to me like remembering. Anytime I hear or experience anything that feels really truthy, I have the sense of like, Oh I knew that, right? There's like this homecoming, there's this recognition. And I think that's the process. I think that's the process in writing is it's reaching for that sense of remembering when you land on something and it feels deeply true in a way that you didn't quite realize until that moment. Yeah.

Kimberly

Yeah, that is so beautiful. That truth is more of a remembering. It has to be. And I don't know if—I just finished a book by

Sophie Strand

called The Body is a Doorway and—

Kendall

Me too. Loved it.

Kimberly

I'm actually interviewing her next week. I wish you could join us.

Kendall

Oh my gosh, I'll be right there as a fly on the wall. My goodness.

Kimberly

Yeah, both of you, write from that place of beyond self, even though these are very personal stories, there is absolutely the universal woven through it, but universal doesn't even feel right. It's mystical. It's ancestral.

Kendall

Not that I can compare myself to Sophie Strand in any way, but I think that there's this porousness that you become really acutely aware of when you are, when you're a student of ecology and that feels a little cold. But when we enter into a landscape on a microscopic scale, the difference between self and other becomes almost impossible to detect. We know this in like particle physics and stuff like that. The smaller you get, the more mystical it seems. And we start using mystical language rather than really scientific provable language. And I do think that there is this beautiful spirituality in being able to understand how deeply interconnected we are with self and environment and the very structure, the atomical structure of everything.

Kimberly

And maybe writing is just a fine tuning of that listening because the voices are all there. It's just that many of us aren't listening. And through your writing, there's a deep, deep listening. I know you're not in Africa or Denali, but in your backyard, I imagine you're even listening. As you walk your daughter to the car, you're listening.

Is that part of your daily life still?

Kendall

Absolutely. Yeah, I think I'm always looking for—I mean, not always sometimes I'm just woefully lost in my head and my very small internal closed off space—but in my better moments when I am able to stop and look around, I definitely try to pay more attention to those moments and what I can personally draw from them. Even if they’re really small ones.

I mentioned that my sweet sweet cat has been bringing birds into the house, more than I’d like her to. And just last night she brought in a mourning dove and I thought it was dead. It was very still on the floor. So I picked her up by the scruff and put her outside to collect this bird, and realized she was very much alive. And just in shock. Just holding her body, feeling her heartbeat, and bringing her out beneath my willow tree and sitting with her for a moment. Again, there’s that porousness, that moment where you’re aware of the complexities of being angry with my cat but also immediately forgiving her, because she’s just being a cat, and then feeling such compassion for this poor bird. It allows a doorway for you to open into your own moment. That messy in between.

Kimberly

I love the messy in between. So I know this is probably a horrible question, but if you had one animal to write about for the rest of your life, what would it be? And what would that, what is this question that Kendall will be asking for the rest of her days?

Kendall

My very first love were orcas. I mean, I've had a lifelong fascination with them. I'm still totally in awe that I was able to work with them for several years in the San Juan Islands. And I never ever got over seeing them. I mean, the people I worked with on the boats thought that there must be something wrong with me because every time, I mean, it would be my third trip in a day seeing the same pod of whales and we would see them and I would become seven years old. I was like jumping up and down. I just, I could not get over how sacred they felt and how wise and how grounding it was to be around them. I just, I can't explain that exactly. I think orcas are incredibly sentient beings. There's the scientist in me that knows their brain structure and the amount of empathy that they have capacity for. Their intelligence. There's the wild woman in me that loves the matrilineal structure of their pods and the fact that the oldest females in the pods are not in charge of the pods because they are the oldest females and because they've got the most—they're the most fertile, usually when you have matrilines, the leader is the most fertile female, the one who's still producing a lot of offspring and has a lot of value to the pod or to the group that way. But in orca societies, the oldest female is in charge long after her biologically reproductive days. Orcas go through menopause like humans do. It's not a very common thing in the animal world. They're in charge because they have the most knowledge and wisdom. And these societies value wisdom in a way that's we just don't know that much about it. They still hold so much mystery. And so I just wanna follow them around constantly and ask them questions about everything. What do you see and what do you want? And what does this mean? And what is your language for this? And how do you see the world in a way that is both different and the same as the way that I see the world? Those questions are always in my mind when I think about that.

Kimberly

I love that question. I love that last question around how do you see the world differently than me? I think about that all the time when I even just, we have three stray cats running around our yard now. I don't know where they came from. And I wanna know how, even how they see the world differently than our indoor cats—I mean, obviously we’re all here on a primal level for survival, but what else, you know, what else are they squeezing from their days? They certainly are playing. Play feels like a big part of it.

Kendall

Yeah, and I think, you one of my favorite things that you've written was about how inadequate language is, which is a great thing to explore as a writer in writing. I mean, the irony of that is definitely in the piece, which I love that you're like, I realize I'm trying to find words for not having words. But I think, you know, one of the wonderful things about asking those questions of the animal kingdom is that you're looking at species that are largely language-less, or at least they have a different way of doing language than we do. I shouldn't say they don't have it. But moving through the world more silently, how much more you're able to take in, and in such a different and deeper way, I think.

So yeah, think it is a good question to ask. It's a good practice.

Kimberly

It is a good practice. It's a good practice to shift our thinking always and not assume that what we are perceiving and thinking and understanding is even correct or our own.

Kendall, I could talk to you for days. We might have to have a part two. And you're still writing. So I have, first of all, how many more chapters?

Kendall

I don't know exactly. I'm guessing I have about 10 more. And I've recently decided—it will be my first trying out of this here. But you know, the first part of the book, so chapters one through 19, I think were really largely focused on animal encounters. I've been struggling with part two, because I feel like I'm entering into part two, starting with the letter from Denali of a very different part of my life that formed me in really good and hard ways. But I think part two is going to be more from the perspective of the land itself, of place, more than animals. So I think animal will be part one. And I think I'm coming into part two, which is more land based. And Denali sort of set the stage for me on that one when she was like, No, we're going to talk about this from the perspective of land of place.

So, that's what you can look forward to coming up—there's going to be a lot more place-based wisdom, hopefully.

Kimberly

Amazing. I felt that. The letter from Denali, you gave voice to a place I have never been, but I felt after reading that letter that I knew her. You hinted at there's some transitions happening for you and you don't have to reveal all of what's happening, but I want to know—because one of the things, you quoted Annie Lamont in one of your pieces—her prayer, Help, Thanks and Wow. And I want to know how that is living in you, even as there's something new emerging. And I don't know what that is, but how is this prayer shifting for you? Or is it even shifting? Or is it still continuing to be a thread that you live by, a mantra that you live by.

Kendall

I mean, I love Annie Lamont. She's so amazing. I think that the prayer is the same. I just think what's really interesting when you're going through these hard shifts and transitions—I'm at a place where, and I won't get into the weeds on it, but I don't know what's next—and I'm trying not to rush through this moment. I think sometimes when we're in these hard, messy, unfixed places, we wanna get to the other side. I wanna envision what's next and then I wanna like fling myself into it to make that reality come true. And I think that the help, like I'm deep in the help prayer right now, but the wow and the thanks I'm trying to sit in in the context of how do we still feel wow and thanks inside of our pain? Like, I think pain can be a wow moment when something is revealed to us that's really a hard truth.

The thanks comes from knowing that now. I think there can be gratitude in our—and not to sound like I'm some Zen master—but I think that there is gratitude in being able to recognize our pain points and what we can and cannot tolerate anymore. And there's a prayer in that too and to be able to sit here right now saying, Okay, I don't know what my life is gonna look like a year from now, but wow, and thank you for showing me what my reality is right now in a way that is helping me follow those threads and connections to the next thing that I need to do. And I'm trying to do that really slowly and intentionally.

Kimberly

Yeah. That's beautifully said. I completely relate. It's as that is the work of Unfixed. is finding the wow in the pain and is finding the thank you in the pain. Not dismissing that we also want to be out of the pain. But it, allows that spaciousness to, to happen.

I mean, it is so much of how nature is all the time when nature is in the middle of winter, it's not going, Gosh darn it, I wish it were spring! It's really so obvious. And yet as humans, we really, really, really do like to try to manage those spaces as best we can, control them as best we can, and move out of it. But I love that how you reframe that help thanks and wow is also in within the pain. I think when Anne Lamott wrote that it was the wow was after—like “Wow and then look at this! This is so beautiful!” But it's also beautiful when we're in the dark place.

So you have so many people holding you on substack in whatever transformation you're going through—you are absolutely radiant human being and I feel like I've been talking to Kendall but I've been talking to all of the ancestors that have built Kendall and made you who you are because wow. Wow, I'm in the wow! I'm in the I'm in the “baby-orcas-sticking-her-tongue-out-in-the-rain-moment.” So thank you for sharing this time.

Kendall

Thank you. And right back at you. I do feel very held in this community and you've been a huge part of that. What a gift this has been to be able to stretch my wings in a place that I feel so unbelievably seen and encouraged and supported.

Yeah, I just feel deep gratitude for that. So, and thank you for this conversation. Your questions are so rich and you spend so much time with them and that's so meaningful. It really, really is just to have that.

Kimberly

Thank you for recognizing that. I love it. It's just pure joy for me.