Kimberly, that introduction was so generous and lovely! As was this whole conversation. I'm also still buzzing from it. What a gift you are in this world, my friend. Thank you for all the care you put into this, and for just lighting up every space that you're in. I'd have this chat with you every week if I could!
Like I wrote over in notes, I too am still buzzing. Talking with you is like drinking some elixir from the gods. And I seriously will never forget the image of that sweet little orca licking the rain. Hmmm, a chat like this every week? Sold! Let’s start a new podcast. 😉(And I’m only half kidding.) Love you beauty.
So this has been one of my favorite of these conversations. And that is saying a whole lot.
I find in you both such a kindred spirit. And i feel in this connected group—particularly but certainly not exclusively of women—who’ve found each other and honor each other’s voices and hearts and minds and hold each other up something Kin the matrilineal orca structure. Like we’re gathering to blend and strengthen our wisdom.
What I’m trying to say is beautiful wisdom. I’m nice again struck, Kimberly, by your capacity for deep listening. And I’m once again struck, Kendall, by your capacity for communicating with all around you (land, animal, ancestor, self).
Yes, yes, yes! You said this so beautifully, Holly. From now on, I’ll forever see this Substack entanglement as an enriching, enlivening matrilineal orca constellation—each of us a bright point, moving together in unseen patterns. Through all we share here, we’re weaving a new—and ancient—text of wisdom: ever-changing, ever-nourishing.
Radiant, indeed, Kimberly. I too love that book by Ann Lamott _Help, Thanks, Wow_--I do think that's the one you're referring to. And this that you say, a perfect description of the creative life: "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."
Thank you, Mary! I love that this merging of the two spaces stood out to you- Kimberly helped me get my head and heart around that interstitial space so beautifully in this interview!
Marrying the natural world and science with meaning making is a powerful, and life-saving act. I love this about Kendall’s writing and I’d go as far as to say this intention may originate as a personal act of survival, but when we read it, she saves all of us.
I have just baked my way through a glut of eggs, smiling and tearful, while listening to both of you in this oh so beautiful conversation. So many words and lines will sit with me while I continue, especially where you both speak of the heavy weight of writing, the back story, the details, the filler... I would never have guessed, you make me feel just a little easier and less inadequate about my own constant battle with the stuffing!
Anyway, before I write a page of praises, I will stop and just say I am so in awe of both of you, what you write, your stories, how you tell them, your exquisite prose... without exception I sit back with a deep sigh and think - damn I wish I could write like that!
Thank you both, so much, for your gorgeous faces chatting and smiling though what would have been a very tedious hour. 😘😘
Well, now I'm teary and smiling over imaging you listening to this while cooking up a glut of eggs by your hill, Susie. And yes, the stuffing is the hardest part! And the joy and hilarity is that I, too, sit back and think, "damn, I wish I could write like that!" every time you appear in my inbox. I'm saving your piece about the storm for later when I can swim in your beautiful words!
Awww, I love that we could join you in your kitchen, mixing up a batch of sisterhood and tears. I think we all look at each other over here and think, “Oh how wonderful it would be to write like that,” and imagine it just pouring from their fingertips. But the weight is always closer to the truth. Even now as I type this comment, there are more backspaces and ums and ers and what-is-that-I’m-trying-to-say than anything else. I always feel like I’m pulling words from the good mud of my body and oh how rarely do they translate! But whenever I read both of you, suddenly it all becomes clear and I can rejoice in my friends finding the way for me. We are all wayfinding for one another over here, and it’s a tangled and gobsmackingly beautiful process.
Kimberly & Kendall, there are so many moments in this conversation that ring for me. The transformative power of spending time in nature. Surrender. Acceptance. Sisterhood. Listening without commentary or judgement. The truth as a deep Remembering.
Especially this:
"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."
Thank you, Ann! What an incredibly generous comment this is. The quote you pulled landed back in my heart again this morning as I was sitting outside before anyone had woken up, watching our resident robin gather nesting supplies and hopping ever closer to me as I sat stock still, thinking, "is there anything more wonderful than gaining the trust of a bird?" Surely this is how we touch the Divine. ❤
I have shivers rereading that moment. Isn’t it wonderful how Kendall is able to merge God and nature through her writing? And how her readers experience this union every time we enter into her world? I will visit the Temple of Kendall any day because upon entering, she reminds us that she is not a singular place, but an ever-expansive relationship between attentive presence and this big beautiful earth.
A few days ago, I was reading an article in our local online paper, about a famous author of books for children and young adults, one of Vermont’s own, Katherine Paterson. Publishing over 40 books and the winner of some very prestigious awards , including two National Book Awards and two Newbery Medals. You may remember this one; Bridge to Terabithia , translated into over 25 languages. I thought about her quote as I read and listened along to this interview, one that will stay with me for a long time. You both might appreciate it.
“I carry my child self around with me all the time,”
she continued ,
“A lot of people don’t remember how intensely they felt as children.”
I immediately saw myself in that quote. My childhood was immersed in nature, bathed in ponds, streams, puddles , and probably a bit of mud. And yes, I was a very intense child. Kimberly, you know how I feel about your writing, and Kendall, I am just getting a wonderful sense of your words. Certainly, it has been my experience, that any human that has a strong affinity to nature and all her creatures, is a person worth more than all the riches combined, just to be called friend.
A very interesting conversation! As always Kimberly, you have your own delightfully unique way of casually bringing out the best and deepest part of each person who pulls up a chair. Very nice to meet you, Kendall !
So nice to meet you as well, Lor! I'm delighted to have discovered that this space really is one of the best places to find kindred spirits in this world. Your comment makes me want to get to know you as well. Interestingly, I reread Bridge to Terabithia just last year, and I appreciated so much how clear and honest and wise the narrator is. The characters are, indeed, intensely feeling people, and the fact that they are children only makes that more true. I also love what you point out here about a childhood immersed in nature, and how befriending animals creates a "person worth all the riches combined." Yes, yes, yes!
How ironic that you just read her book again last year! From another local interview, I kept this quote from 2022 , at that time she was 89 years old ! (why is it they always print a woman’s age ). As you know, Bridge to Terabithia was one of her banned books.
I love this quote;
“If you write a book that has any power in it, it has the power to offend. I don’t want to write a book that has no power in it, so I have to run the risk of offending.”
“She was named a Living
Legend by the Library of Congress. Paterson’s books are among the most beloved in children’s literature. They are also among the most banned”.
Ooh, I found this in my Notes, here is another part of the interview you’ll both find interesting. (One would think I have a ‘card catalog‘ of quotes on my phone, nope, just a coincidence that I happen to have kept these 🤔).
“Like most children’s book authors whose books have been challenged, Paterson finds it “ironic” that her book has been banned. Seeing as her own parents are Christian missionaries and she was married to a Presbyterian minister, she found it hard to believe that her book incited the idea of promoting secular humanism, New Age religion, witchcraft, evil, and is a danger to children. As time moves on, Paterson’s novel goes lower and lower on the banned books list, but its challengers prevail in hopes to avoid corrupting their children and to shelter them from the inevitability of death and grief.”
I can’t describe how happy it makes me to read you here Lor, introducing yourself to Kendall, already offering your abundant, glittering reflections. (I chose the word glittering this moment because I’m sitting aside a Midwestern lake in early morning sun, the sparkling light on the surface not dissimilar to the way your comments make this Substack community and the sweet nectar of connection always feel like pure magic.
You are going to LOVE (times a thousand) Kendall’s writing. I suggest going back to her very first chapter in the memoir and working your way through each one, slowly savoring her moments and the meaning-making that shines from them. They are joy and heartbreak and wayfinding and arrival conveyed through weird and wonderful stories of humans and animals sharing this beautiful planet.
Thank you, Kimberly, as I look out across my own summer lake, I hope you are on vacation, feeling a cool morning breeze , gifted by water and wind. Finally, a cool breeze…
Weird and wonderful, I love when these two words combine.
What a wonderful, rich conversation! So much to savor, both Kendall’s insights and Kimberly’s perceptive questions. This gave me so much to think about and an urgent desire to dive into your memoir, Kendall.
I’m always blown away by stories of people in conservative religious environments who can think their way to an exit. My thinking was shaped by the fundamentalist cult I was born and raised in so I had no way to logically or critically think through whether or not these beliefs made sense – instead I had to accept condemnation to hell to leave the religion. It was a false choice, but the only one I had – of course not a choice at all.
It seems one of the most insidious traits of a cult is how it strips a person of their ability to think critically. What a terrifying place that must have been for you, Kelly—backed into a corner, left with no choice but to believe in your own damnation. I hope you’re feeling free of those false chains now, finding your way into a world that makes sense to you—one that not only honors your reason, but also supports and rallies for your well-being.
Thank you for this comment, Kelly, I've been thinking about it so much since reading it last night. That cultish indoctrination is next level, to be sure, and I wonder if it was also very isolating? I definitely resonate with that choice to stay or to be condemned, but I think in my specific situation there was a gentler, longer off-ramp. Perhaps only because I my mom was on a similar trajectory (hers was a rather violent excommunication) and she is my person. I knew that no matter what, I had a landing place that was soft. But I don't think that I necessarily thought my way to an exit (what a wonderful way to articulate that)-- I think I listened for it. It was all at once somatic and intuitive and, yes, a bit analytical as well. The cognitive dissonance reverberated through my entire physical, emotional and spiritual being until, like you, I had no real choice at all (unless severing yourself from your knowing is a choice- I'm sure we both know many who do this.) Anyway, I don't know if that made any sense but I'm grateful for the doorway into the conversation!
There was no off ramp for me - I had to rebel against God “Himself” and “choose” Hell as an exit. It was the only one available in the false binary that shaped my thinking from birth. I had to go against my parents whom I loved, especially my mother. I had to accept their belief in my condemnation to leave. Something in me (greater than the mind) was willing for all that to find freedom, truth, and myself (though I had no consciousness awareness of it at the time.) This was a lifetime ago and I’m so grateful for the teenager I was who was willing to risk it all. I wrote about it in an essay “Secrets of the 2x2s” for Memoir Land if you’re interested.
And yes, very isolating, Kendall. Hence - absolutely no alternative worldview available.
Ok, now I REALLY want to have a conversation with you, Kendall! I was thinking only yesterday how I had so many questions I wanted to ask you, especially since your background is in environmental and animal science. I've always been profoundly connected to nature, yet I chose to formally study psychology because I wanted desperately to understand my mother's and younger brother's separate but interconnected pathos. I wanted language for the dysfunction of my family system, and I wanted to do better.
I wish you and I could talk!
And I love what you said about thinking in prose. Yes! I've always been a deep thinker and feeler, too, Kendall. I think that's mainly why I have been drawn to your writing.
One last thing: I find conversations about religion to be fascinating. More and more I'm learning and hearing about the complexities of people's connections to and relationship with religion. You may or may not know that I used to be a branded Catholic author, and I walked away from religious writing a few years ago, for many reasons I wrote about in June on my Substack. People really opened up in the comments, and I could see by reading them that many of us feel conflicted about the religious worldviews in which we were raised, yet not all of us have a deconstruction story. Some of us are living in the margins and shadows of religion without having untethered ourselves from it.
It's much like you said - what's that space, that intersection between two contrasts or paradoxes? That's where I want to enter and occupy. I want to sit in the tension where two worlds collide and find a way to allow them to coexist.
What a beautiful gift you have in that women's circle, where you each hold space for each other without responding to what anyone says. How did that form?
And.. you are not a poet in disguise. You ARE a poet! Own it. ♥️
THANK YOU, Kimberly, for hosting such a powerful conversation with such an incredible writer!
We absolutely should talk, Jeannie! I would love that. I am so fascinated by your background in Catholicism, and do love wading into those liminal, intersectional spaces. People really do have complicated relationships with their religious roots, and I think the more we talk about it and provide frameworks and permission structures for it to be messy and also really beautiful, the more people can heal from what ails them and take what brings them joy.
And thank you for all the mirroring and encouragement here (and everywhere- you're such a safe space, really). I own that I am a poet! 😅💛
Oh! And the women's group really just found me when I needed it. It's as simple and as complicated as that. We have set our group size to 10 and we have a loose "structure" to keep the container healthy, but what I love is that this is something that really anyone could begin in their own community. Let me know if you'd like more specific details. And again, we should absolutely have a chat soon!
Also: what do you think about you and me scheduling a Substack Live where we provide an open and safe space by conversing about the complexities surrounding religion and faith?
Gah! There is so much to love in your comment I don’t even know where to begin Jeannie! I’ll rest with you in that beautiful tension, where all creation arises— pain and joy, uncertainty and clarity, darkness and light—all necessary lovers on this earth. How easy it is for humans to forget we thrive on this duality, and is the fertile ground from which everything arises. Thank you for being here to celebrate Kendall with me!
I’ve been soaking up this conversation in a post-run high. There’s so much to love here, I hardly know where to start. Matrilineal orcas who value elder wisdom! A women’s group that holds each other’s stories in silence! A baby orca catching raindrops on his tongue! Poetry as concentrated prose! Byron Katie and Annie Lamott, two of my favorite teachers! (My mother and I read “Help, Thanks, Wow” when she was dying. She, a lifelong agnostic, trying on Annie’s compassionate, irresistible words. 🥲)
Thank you both for gracing Substack with your full selves and your beautiful writing.
Julie, I love that you read Annie's book to your agnostic mom when she was dying. Oh to be the kind of writer who stirs up that kind of curiosity and reflection in others. Thank you, thank you for this wonderful comment!
I know right? Kendall’s words paint forever landscapes in my minds-eye and I’m a better, softer, fuller human because of them. So glad you enjoyed it as much as I did!
There was so much you said, Kendall that resonated with me. Especially, your experience of chameleoning — I did the same thing for far too long. I also love your commitment to sit in the grey, to acknowledge nuance, and to resist neat binary’s. And of course your reverence and love for animals and the ocean is just infectious. I am an ocean junkie myself!
And, as usual, Kimberly, you orchestrated this interview beautifully. The whole thing was a symphony.
Thank you, Michael- what an incredibly thoughtful comment. It's always good to meet fellow recovering chameleons! It's so refreshing to stop trying to blend in and please others- and it's the best way to find your actual people. I'm also unsurprised that the gray area resonated-you swim in those waters so beautifully yourself. And shout out to ocean junkies all around!
This was so rejuvenating to on a cellular level. I loved the conversation here and the touch on how nature brings us back to our bodies and the general acceptance of “what is” that animals reflect to us.
Kimberly, that introduction was so generous and lovely! As was this whole conversation. I'm also still buzzing from it. What a gift you are in this world, my friend. Thank you for all the care you put into this, and for just lighting up every space that you're in. I'd have this chat with you every week if I could!
Like I wrote over in notes, I too am still buzzing. Talking with you is like drinking some elixir from the gods. And I seriously will never forget the image of that sweet little orca licking the rain. Hmmm, a chat like this every week? Sold! Let’s start a new podcast. 😉(And I’m only half kidding.) Love you beauty.
Excited for this — two of my favorite people here! Going for a long run today and have this cued up. 🥰
So this has been one of my favorite of these conversations. And that is saying a whole lot.
I find in you both such a kindred spirit. And i feel in this connected group—particularly but certainly not exclusively of women—who’ve found each other and honor each other’s voices and hearts and minds and hold each other up something Kin the matrilineal orca structure. Like we’re gathering to blend and strengthen our wisdom.
What I’m trying to say is beautiful wisdom. I’m nice again struck, Kimberly, by your capacity for deep listening. And I’m once again struck, Kendall, by your capacity for communicating with all around you (land, animal, ancestor, self).
Yes, yes, yes! You said this so beautifully, Holly. From now on, I’ll forever see this Substack entanglement as an enriching, enlivening matrilineal orca constellation—each of us a bright point, moving together in unseen patterns. Through all we share here, we’re weaving a new—and ancient—text of wisdom: ever-changing, ever-nourishing.
Oh my goodness, "matrilineal orca constellation" might be my new favorite metaphor for this gathering of women!
Radiant, indeed, Kimberly. I too love that book by Ann Lamott _Help, Thanks, Wow_--I do think that's the one you're referring to. And this that you say, a perfect description of the creative life: "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."
A beauty of an interview, Kimberly.
Thank you, Mary! I love that this merging of the two spaces stood out to you- Kimberly helped me get my head and heart around that interstitial space so beautifully in this interview!
Marrying the natural world and science with meaning making is a powerful, and life-saving act. I love this about Kendall’s writing and I’d go as far as to say this intention may originate as a personal act of survival, but when we read it, she saves all of us.
I have just baked my way through a glut of eggs, smiling and tearful, while listening to both of you in this oh so beautiful conversation. So many words and lines will sit with me while I continue, especially where you both speak of the heavy weight of writing, the back story, the details, the filler... I would never have guessed, you make me feel just a little easier and less inadequate about my own constant battle with the stuffing!
Anyway, before I write a page of praises, I will stop and just say I am so in awe of both of you, what you write, your stories, how you tell them, your exquisite prose... without exception I sit back with a deep sigh and think - damn I wish I could write like that!
Thank you both, so much, for your gorgeous faces chatting and smiling though what would have been a very tedious hour. 😘😘
Well, now I'm teary and smiling over imaging you listening to this while cooking up a glut of eggs by your hill, Susie. And yes, the stuffing is the hardest part! And the joy and hilarity is that I, too, sit back and think, "damn, I wish I could write like that!" every time you appear in my inbox. I'm saving your piece about the storm for later when I can swim in your beautiful words!
Awww, I love that we could join you in your kitchen, mixing up a batch of sisterhood and tears. I think we all look at each other over here and think, “Oh how wonderful it would be to write like that,” and imagine it just pouring from their fingertips. But the weight is always closer to the truth. Even now as I type this comment, there are more backspaces and ums and ers and what-is-that-I’m-trying-to-say than anything else. I always feel like I’m pulling words from the good mud of my body and oh how rarely do they translate! But whenever I read both of you, suddenly it all becomes clear and I can rejoice in my friends finding the way for me. We are all wayfinding for one another over here, and it’s a tangled and gobsmackingly beautiful process.
"We are all wayfinding for one another over here, and it’s a tangled and gobsmackingly beautiful process."
Yes, oh my goodness yes! 💛
Kimberly & Kendall, there are so many moments in this conversation that ring for me. The transformative power of spending time in nature. Surrender. Acceptance. Sisterhood. Listening without commentary or judgement. The truth as a deep Remembering.
Especially this:
"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."
Thank you for this hour.
Thank you, Ann! What an incredibly generous comment this is. The quote you pulled landed back in my heart again this morning as I was sitting outside before anyone had woken up, watching our resident robin gather nesting supplies and hopping ever closer to me as I sat stock still, thinking, "is there anything more wonderful than gaining the trust of a bird?" Surely this is how we touch the Divine. ❤
I have shivers rereading that moment. Isn’t it wonderful how Kendall is able to merge God and nature through her writing? And how her readers experience this union every time we enter into her world? I will visit the Temple of Kendall any day because upon entering, she reminds us that she is not a singular place, but an ever-expansive relationship between attentive presence and this big beautiful earth.
What this world needs now.
Kimberly and Kendall know.
Let’s listen and learn.
A few days ago, I was reading an article in our local online paper, about a famous author of books for children and young adults, one of Vermont’s own, Katherine Paterson. Publishing over 40 books and the winner of some very prestigious awards , including two National Book Awards and two Newbery Medals. You may remember this one; Bridge to Terabithia , translated into over 25 languages. I thought about her quote as I read and listened along to this interview, one that will stay with me for a long time. You both might appreciate it.
“I carry my child self around with me all the time,”
she continued ,
“A lot of people don’t remember how intensely they felt as children.”
I immediately saw myself in that quote. My childhood was immersed in nature, bathed in ponds, streams, puddles , and probably a bit of mud. And yes, I was a very intense child. Kimberly, you know how I feel about your writing, and Kendall, I am just getting a wonderful sense of your words. Certainly, it has been my experience, that any human that has a strong affinity to nature and all her creatures, is a person worth more than all the riches combined, just to be called friend.
A very interesting conversation! As always Kimberly, you have your own delightfully unique way of casually bringing out the best and deepest part of each person who pulls up a chair. Very nice to meet you, Kendall !
So nice to meet you as well, Lor! I'm delighted to have discovered that this space really is one of the best places to find kindred spirits in this world. Your comment makes me want to get to know you as well. Interestingly, I reread Bridge to Terabithia just last year, and I appreciated so much how clear and honest and wise the narrator is. The characters are, indeed, intensely feeling people, and the fact that they are children only makes that more true. I also love what you point out here about a childhood immersed in nature, and how befriending animals creates a "person worth all the riches combined." Yes, yes, yes!
All I can emphasize here, is YES, you do want to get to know Lor. Like the way morning birdsong reaches toward the sun.
How ironic that you just read her book again last year! From another local interview, I kept this quote from 2022 , at that time she was 89 years old ! (why is it they always print a woman’s age ). As you know, Bridge to Terabithia was one of her banned books.
I love this quote;
“If you write a book that has any power in it, it has the power to offend. I don’t want to write a book that has no power in it, so I have to run the risk of offending.”
“She was named a Living
Legend by the Library of Congress. Paterson’s books are among the most beloved in children’s literature. They are also among the most banned”.
Ooh, I found this in my Notes, here is another part of the interview you’ll both find interesting. (One would think I have a ‘card catalog‘ of quotes on my phone, nope, just a coincidence that I happen to have kept these 🤔).
“Like most children’s book authors whose books have been challenged, Paterson finds it “ironic” that her book has been banned. Seeing as her own parents are Christian missionaries and she was married to a Presbyterian minister, she found it hard to believe that her book incited the idea of promoting secular humanism, New Age religion, witchcraft, evil, and is a danger to children. As time moves on, Paterson’s novel goes lower and lower on the banned books list, but its challengers prevail in hopes to avoid corrupting their children and to shelter them from the inevitability of death and grief.”
Why oh why have some humans fallen so far from the truth of their being?!
I can’t describe how happy it makes me to read you here Lor, introducing yourself to Kendall, already offering your abundant, glittering reflections. (I chose the word glittering this moment because I’m sitting aside a Midwestern lake in early morning sun, the sparkling light on the surface not dissimilar to the way your comments make this Substack community and the sweet nectar of connection always feel like pure magic.
You are going to LOVE (times a thousand) Kendall’s writing. I suggest going back to her very first chapter in the memoir and working your way through each one, slowly savoring her moments and the meaning-making that shines from them. They are joy and heartbreak and wayfinding and arrival conveyed through weird and wonderful stories of humans and animals sharing this beautiful planet.
Thank you, Kimberly, as I look out across my own summer lake, I hope you are on vacation, feeling a cool morning breeze , gifted by water and wind. Finally, a cool breeze…
Weird and wonderful, I love when these two words combine.
What a wonderful, rich conversation! So much to savor, both Kendall’s insights and Kimberly’s perceptive questions. This gave me so much to think about and an urgent desire to dive into your memoir, Kendall.
You are in for a treat Amy! Thank you for being here with us. 🙏
What a wondaful thing to hear, thank you Amy!
I’m always blown away by stories of people in conservative religious environments who can think their way to an exit. My thinking was shaped by the fundamentalist cult I was born and raised in so I had no way to logically or critically think through whether or not these beliefs made sense – instead I had to accept condemnation to hell to leave the religion. It was a false choice, but the only one I had – of course not a choice at all.
It seems one of the most insidious traits of a cult is how it strips a person of their ability to think critically. What a terrifying place that must have been for you, Kelly—backed into a corner, left with no choice but to believe in your own damnation. I hope you’re feeling free of those false chains now, finding your way into a world that makes sense to you—one that not only honors your reason, but also supports and rallies for your well-being.
Thank you for this comment, Kelly, I've been thinking about it so much since reading it last night. That cultish indoctrination is next level, to be sure, and I wonder if it was also very isolating? I definitely resonate with that choice to stay or to be condemned, but I think in my specific situation there was a gentler, longer off-ramp. Perhaps only because I my mom was on a similar trajectory (hers was a rather violent excommunication) and she is my person. I knew that no matter what, I had a landing place that was soft. But I don't think that I necessarily thought my way to an exit (what a wonderful way to articulate that)-- I think I listened for it. It was all at once somatic and intuitive and, yes, a bit analytical as well. The cognitive dissonance reverberated through my entire physical, emotional and spiritual being until, like you, I had no real choice at all (unless severing yourself from your knowing is a choice- I'm sure we both know many who do this.) Anyway, I don't know if that made any sense but I'm grateful for the doorway into the conversation!
There was no off ramp for me - I had to rebel against God “Himself” and “choose” Hell as an exit. It was the only one available in the false binary that shaped my thinking from birth. I had to go against my parents whom I loved, especially my mother. I had to accept their belief in my condemnation to leave. Something in me (greater than the mind) was willing for all that to find freedom, truth, and myself (though I had no consciousness awareness of it at the time.) This was a lifetime ago and I’m so grateful for the teenager I was who was willing to risk it all. I wrote about it in an essay “Secrets of the 2x2s” for Memoir Land if you’re interested.
And yes, very isolating, Kendall. Hence - absolutely no alternative worldview available.
Thank you for sharing! I will queue it up to read. 🙏
Thanks Kimberly! I appreciate the interview and the interest!
Ok, now I REALLY want to have a conversation with you, Kendall! I was thinking only yesterday how I had so many questions I wanted to ask you, especially since your background is in environmental and animal science. I've always been profoundly connected to nature, yet I chose to formally study psychology because I wanted desperately to understand my mother's and younger brother's separate but interconnected pathos. I wanted language for the dysfunction of my family system, and I wanted to do better.
I wish you and I could talk!
And I love what you said about thinking in prose. Yes! I've always been a deep thinker and feeler, too, Kendall. I think that's mainly why I have been drawn to your writing.
One last thing: I find conversations about religion to be fascinating. More and more I'm learning and hearing about the complexities of people's connections to and relationship with religion. You may or may not know that I used to be a branded Catholic author, and I walked away from religious writing a few years ago, for many reasons I wrote about in June on my Substack. People really opened up in the comments, and I could see by reading them that many of us feel conflicted about the religious worldviews in which we were raised, yet not all of us have a deconstruction story. Some of us are living in the margins and shadows of religion without having untethered ourselves from it.
It's much like you said - what's that space, that intersection between two contrasts or paradoxes? That's where I want to enter and occupy. I want to sit in the tension where two worlds collide and find a way to allow them to coexist.
What a beautiful gift you have in that women's circle, where you each hold space for each other without responding to what anyone says. How did that form?
And.. you are not a poet in disguise. You ARE a poet! Own it. ♥️
THANK YOU, Kimberly, for hosting such a powerful conversation with such an incredible writer!
We absolutely should talk, Jeannie! I would love that. I am so fascinated by your background in Catholicism, and do love wading into those liminal, intersectional spaces. People really do have complicated relationships with their religious roots, and I think the more we talk about it and provide frameworks and permission structures for it to be messy and also really beautiful, the more people can heal from what ails them and take what brings them joy.
And thank you for all the mirroring and encouragement here (and everywhere- you're such a safe space, really). I own that I am a poet! 😅💛
Oh! And the women's group really just found me when I needed it. It's as simple and as complicated as that. We have set our group size to 10 and we have a loose "structure" to keep the container healthy, but what I love is that this is something that really anyone could begin in their own community. Let me know if you'd like more specific details. And again, we should absolutely have a chat soon!
I want more details please Kendall.
Also: what do you think about you and me scheduling a Substack Live where we provide an open and safe space by conversing about the complexities surrounding religion and faith?
I think that's a great idea, Jeannie! Let's make it happen!
Messaged you, Kendall. :)
Thx Jennie!
Love this.
I love it, too, Kimberly! You and Kendall opened up such a powerful discussion. So much beauty, honesty, and bravery. Thank you both.
Gah! There is so much to love in your comment I don’t even know where to begin Jeannie! I’ll rest with you in that beautiful tension, where all creation arises— pain and joy, uncertainty and clarity, darkness and light—all necessary lovers on this earth. How easy it is for humans to forget we thrive on this duality, and is the fertile ground from which everything arises. Thank you for being here to celebrate Kendall with me!
What a delight on my part to discover your gifts through Kendall's interview. ❤️
I’ve been soaking up this conversation in a post-run high. There’s so much to love here, I hardly know where to start. Matrilineal orcas who value elder wisdom! A women’s group that holds each other’s stories in silence! A baby orca catching raindrops on his tongue! Poetry as concentrated prose! Byron Katie and Annie Lamott, two of my favorite teachers! (My mother and I read “Help, Thanks, Wow” when she was dying. She, a lifelong agnostic, trying on Annie’s compassionate, irresistible words. 🥲)
Thank you both for gracing Substack with your full selves and your beautiful writing.
Julie, I love that you read Annie's book to your agnostic mom when she was dying. Oh to be the kind of writer who stirs up that kind of curiosity and reflection in others. Thank you, thank you for this wonderful comment!
I'd forgotten that until you started talking about it, or Kim did. Makes me want to pull it off the shelf and revisit. ❤️
I know right? Kendall’s words paint forever landscapes in my minds-eye and I’m a better, softer, fuller human because of them. So glad you enjoyed it as much as I did!
Such a wonderful interview.
There was so much you said, Kendall that resonated with me. Especially, your experience of chameleoning — I did the same thing for far too long. I also love your commitment to sit in the grey, to acknowledge nuance, and to resist neat binary’s. And of course your reverence and love for animals and the ocean is just infectious. I am an ocean junkie myself!
And, as usual, Kimberly, you orchestrated this interview beautifully. The whole thing was a symphony.
Truly great stuff you two :)
Thank you, Michael- what an incredibly thoughtful comment. It's always good to meet fellow recovering chameleons! It's so refreshing to stop trying to blend in and please others- and it's the best way to find your actual people. I'm also unsurprised that the gray area resonated-you swim in those waters so beautifully yourself. And shout out to ocean junkies all around!
Yes exactly! You can’t find your people if you don’t show your true colours. Here’s to being recovering chameleons and ocean junkies! :)
Wow I'm so grateful to learn about Kendall <3
This was so rejuvenating to on a cellular level. I loved the conversation here and the touch on how nature brings us back to our bodies and the general acceptance of “what is” that animals reflect to us.
Thanks so much for this great 😍