Episode 13: Kaitlin Curtice – A Fresh Vision for the Spiritual Life

Jared  

You’re listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet.

Pete  

I’m Pete Enns.

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas.

Intro  

Jared  

Well, welcome, folks! Today on Faith for Normal People, we’re talking about a fresh vision for the spiritual life with Kaitlin Curtice.

Pete  

Yeah, and Kaitlin is an author and a public speaker and an enrolled citizen at Potawatomi Nation. And she writes on the intersections of spirituality and identity and how that shifts throughout our lives. 

Jared  

Yeah, we talk about that quite a bit in the episode. Her new book is out: Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Everyday, where she examines the journey of resisting the status quo of hate by caring for ourselves, one another, and Mother Earth.

Pete  

And afterwards, don’t forget to stay tuned to our Quiet Time right after the episode.

Jared  

Let’s dive in.

Intro  

Kaitlin  

Pete  

Kaitlin, welcome to our podcast!

Kaitlin  

Thank you! Thanks for having me.

Pete  

Yeah, it’s great to have you. Well, listen, one of our core values here at the Bible for Normal People or faith for normal people—whichever one, both podcasts—is curiosity, and you talk about trading curiosity for security. And for you, what’s the relationship between these two? And how does curiosity sort of get swallowed up by the security needs that some of us have?

Kaitlin  

Well, I love writing about this, especially when it comes to our relationship to Mother Earth in that curiosity is often seen as a weakness, as is humility. So this humble, curious relationship to Mother Earth for many adults is seen as a sign of weakness, or “why would you posture yourself in that way?” And I always think back to like, sixth grade, when we’re taught—you know, in my math class, like we learned, our teacher had like the overhead projector, and he was teaching us how to fill out a checkbook, you know, it was like, one of our first like, “here’s how to be an adult” lessons. 

Pete  

Kaitlin  

And the I always think about that, as, you know, one of those moments where it’s like, “Okay, kids, you’re getting older now and so it’s time to take on the responsibilities of a citizen,” you know, it’s like, “It’s time to learn more about this capitalistic system that we all get to live in, it’s time to stop acting like a child,” you know? And I think that we get those messages in a lot of different ways. And I also say in my book, “Living Resistance,” that then we’re forced into a society that, ironically, for many of us, is not secure. It’s not a secure and safe place for many people. And so it’s a very strange thing because we’re taught to sort of put on this facade of knowing so much as adults of having all the answers. And instead it’s so beautiful to allow ourselves to become more like children, to become more curious, to become more lighthearted, to learn how to play again, to learn how to go outside and stare at a line of ants for 20 minutes and just imagine, or sit beneath a tree and just listen, or sit by water and just pay attention. I think it’s so beautiful, and especially in the sense of our faith, you know, I grew up Southern Baptist and we were taught fear and security over curiosity. It was about rules and regulations and you needed to stay in line or bad things could happen. You know, it was so based in fear and so learning to be curious again has been such a rewarding and empowering thing, for me, and I think for a lot of people in adulthood to, like, reclaim that idea.

Jared  

Maybe you can say more about this, because something that just struck me when you talk about the fear, is I think the fear feels pretty common. Like you said, being in an environment that we’re in, it’s not always secure. So the fear is there. And I don’t know if there’s a way to, you know, not get the fear. But then there’s the way we address it. And—you know, you mentioned growing up Southern Baptist, and that would have been more my tradition as well—where knowledge is the way to eradicate that fear, rather than what I hear you say is, there’s another path toward eradicating that fear. And it involves this curiosity and humility. But what allows someone to get to that place when there is fear? And sometimes it’s legitimate, not just anxiety, it is a legitimate fear. How can we address the fear to find a place of curiosity and humility without needing to go to that knowledge, which leads to kind of control and power?

Kaitlin  

Yeah, well, my answer to that was that I went to therapy [Laughs]. And because a lot of times, in religious traditions, those fears become just our complete every day and our relationship to God or to the sacred, which can be so dangerous. And so I wasn’t even aware of how much I feared. I wasn’t aware of how it controlled me, you know. 

Jared  

Kaitlin  

And so I think when I became an adult—and I will say, a lot of people can’t afford therapy, I couldn’t afford it. I actually had a Twitter follower of mine private message me and pay for my first year of therapy. 

Pete  

Oh, wow. 

Kaitlin  

So I will say that sometimes you have these incredible people that show up and say, “I know that you need this, and I want to be part of it.” And that was such a gift for me, but going to therapy just made me aware that, “Oh, this thing is fear,” or “Oh, this is trauma and fear,” or “What if there’s a different way?” And what therapy led me to is embodiment. And as someone, again, who grew up in a tradition where bodies were bad, and the goal was always the afterlife, the goal was always the crown in heaven, and so our bodies, and the earth, and paying attention to our bodies and care… It just wasn’t a conversation, you know? And so, becoming embodied as an adult, learning to listen to my body and listen to my systems and pay attention, and then also begin to be curious again—I think all of that paired together, for me, was a healing path where I could start letting go of some of those fears that I held onto for so long.

Jared  

It may take me a minute to get to this next question, so let me process for a second and develop it because what you’re talking about too, I think, is related to something else you talk about, which is this relationship between story and personal evolution. But I think, for me, I come at it from this same perspective we were just talking about where knowledge, fact-finding, was the way to overcome our fear. And I can’t put all the blame on the Southern Baptist or even Western Christianity, because I think it’s just a priviledging of facts, of these unchanging facts that allow us to tame and control. I mean, that’s a product of the Enlightenment. That, like, goes way back. And I remember being reintroduced, you know, to my tradition as a Choctaw, and thinking it was all these stories—and I kept waiting for like, the punch.

Kaitlin  

Jared  

In this cosmic aphoristic way. And most of Choctaw stories are so practical that you almost don’t know what the moral to the story is. And there’s something there where, for me, it took me a long time for story and embodiment. Stories that were human and basic to get reenchanted because I think I’d been programmed to think in these, like, unchanging facts are the most important things. Can you talk more about that relationship between story, personal development, and how that fits this curiosity and humility as opposed to like the fact-finding and how we can find truth in storytelling, and maybe some of the deprogramming that we have to go through?

Kaitlin  

Yeah. Storytelling is so incredible because it’s so powerful for good and for bad. You know, like stories are how we control history, stories are how we control people, stories are how we control cultures. But stories are also very liberating as you just shared, you know, and the ways we tell stories can become so liberating. So, there’s a few things to that. Like my books are cyclical, they always are. I want them to be, instead of just linear, I want us to process stories in a cyclical way in hopes that it helps people understand that they themselves are not linear. Like they are cyclical humans, like we live by the seasons. We live in our own seasons in our bodies and in the world, like we have different seasons of life we enter into. 

And so trying to help people understand that the very sort of definition of a story is this beautiful power of evolving. Like, what does it mean for us to evolve? And, you know, we have to pay attention to the stories we tell about each other, and the stories we tell about ourselves. And I think for a long time, I kind of like, maybe blamed my younger self, or I told a certain story about her where even through therapy and through being a storyteller now and sifting through my deconstruction, or my, you know, all of these different ideas, I’m learning to tell the story differently, or I’m learning to see her more as she was than what I imagined her to be. And I think that it’s… It just speaks to how powerful storytelling is. And I think about this whole idea of your personal testimony, you know, remember, we always used to do that [Chuckles]? Like, you stand up in front of a group, or you’re going to witness to people and “Okay, Kaitlin, it’s your turn,” like we practiced writing them in youth group, you know, and it was so stressful for me because I was like, digging to make my story dramatic enough, you know, it’s like, “I was really awful. I sinned in so many ways. Let me tell you, how much of a sinner I was, and all the things I did.”

Pete  

Kaitlin  

When in reality, it was like, I accepted Jesus when I was seven. So, what sins had I been committing at six years old? You know, like, how bad was I at five? And so it was really difficult for me, but you have to force it, and it’s like, forcing this knowledge into your own story, forcing these ideas into your own story.

Pete  

It’s an alien script. 

Kaitlin  

Yeah, yeah.

Pete  

You know? It’s like, alien to your existence, that whole script.

Kaitlin  

And it’s dangerous, because of all the harm it does to the way that we see ourselves and see our beautiful journeys, and our humanity, and our sacredness, all of it, you know, and our relationship to God, Creator, the sacred. And so, you know, in my culture too, learning Potawatomi creation stories and learning language, because it’s all tied to story, gave me so much freedom to come out of some of those… I would say colonial ways that we would tell our stories in the church, and the way I thought of myself, you know? I just gained a lot of care, and nuance, and curiosity in the ways that I have begun telling my story differently and accepting that I have changed, that we all evolve, and we do change, and stories can change, and that’s okay. You know, they don’t have to be controlled, and kind of held tight in this one way, by us or by others. 

Jared  

You mentioned something around processing stories in a cyclical way. And I know, for me, it took a long time to wrap my hands around what that even means. Could you say more about that? Because I think for people who are… I mean, it’s the water we swim in to think in linear ways. So I’m not sure people really even know what that means.

Kaitlin  

Well, there’s so many different sort of metaphors I could use. Like, we talk about grief, like we talk about how grief is sort of like, “Okay, you start grieving here, and you give yourself a certain timeline. And by the end of that timeline, you should be done grieving.” And that’s not the way grief works. And I think, honestly, throughout our lives, we are all grieving different things in different ways, or putting grief into a checklist of like, “I am experiencing these things, so I must be done grieving for the day, or done for the month or whatever,” instead of realizing that we live in cycles. Cycles of grief, cycles of joy. I mean, we live a cycle of life and death as human beings. And that is scary, but it’s also really sacred and beautiful, too. 

And you’re right, we have been conditioned to these things. So, even thinking about, you know, my book is on resistance. And I end the book with talking about how resistance is a lifelong endeavor. It’s a lifelong embodiment because, sometimes, when we do these short term pushes for justice, or equity, like we like to go on Instagram and kind of give these challenges and a lot of times when we put people in like a strict timeline like this, the pressure builds so much on us to have this linear, sort of, you have to have these outcomes by this time, that we can get sort of frozen and terrified, or we get really shamed. Because we aren’t meeting the standards, we should be meeting on this linear timeline that’s been given to us. And so, I want people to think of their journey, their life journey is this big circle. It’s this big life you’re living now from your birth to your death, but then it’s also all the generations that come after you. It’s all the people who came before you and it is like- I see it almost as like a long horizontal oval and it’s like a loop that’s just repeating, right? 

Because that’s what human history is. It’s just these repeating cycles of generations and generations, and I want people to begin unlearning some of the linear ways we’ve been taught. And it is hard, Jared, you’re right. I mean, it’s very hard. But I think it challenges- You know, I know my readers are challenged by it, because they tell me they are. And I also am someone who doesn’t give answers in my books. I don’t want people coming to my books, I don’t want to just give them an answer. Because our answers aren’t always the same for all of us. I want people to come and just ask more questions and get curious and wonder about these cyclical ideas. Like what could that mean for my life? That’s what I hope people receive from my writing is like, maybe permission to, like, step away from all the pressure and the shame of not getting things right on some linear scale that we’ve created, and step into something that feels different, and I hope brings healing for people.

Jared  

One thing it did for me, I had to learn to let go of outcomes, and appreciate process. That’s what I kept running into, is linear was all about accomplishing something, because there’s a finish line. And it’s like, when I first started thinking of “cyclical” it was kind of depressing. Like it was like, “Oh, it’s just the same around and around.” 

Pete  

We’re not getting anywhere.

Jared  

Right? 

Kaitlin  

Yup.

Jared  

Exactly the idea-

Kaitlin  

Yup.

Jared  

And so then eventually, I had to shed that and just say, “Oh, there’s something to appreciating the process.” That was a whole new thought-

Pete  

I mean, it’s really wrapped up in success. 

Jared  

Pete  

I mean, how we define, like, “a good life,” and you get someplace in a hurry, because you’re gonna die. So you got to get there, you got to do this stuff. And that is—I mean, the metaphor I like, Kaitlin, is this: this way of thinking is baked into us. And we don’t even realize we’re a part of that machinery until something happens where we get enlightened, and it can be therapy, it can be other kinds of things, too. But you know, this movement towards success can kill us, I think. You know, it’s simply not a healthy way to live. I don’t think it’s… It’s hard to be spiritual and be success oriented, right? And by a certain time, because when you die, everything has to happen by then. And death is this horrible thing you have to avoid… But it’s become increasingly dissatisfying to me over the years. And the more I just stop with and sit with myself and think it’s like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, boy, I’ve been sold a bill of goods.” And that is- I don’t want to do that.

Kaitlin  

I know. And one of the hardest things for us, we’ve been programmed for success and outcomes, is to learn to just sit with ourselves, to sit with experiences, to sit. And that’s really hard for me too, it’s not like just because I wrote the book that I figured it out, you know, like we’re… I still want to like be going all the time, I still want to have my checklist. And I love a checklist, like I love it. But I also need to learn to sit with myself, to sit with others, to sit in the empty spaces. And that’s hard. 

Pete  

Which is threatening isn’t? It’s threatening, I think. 

Pete  

Terrifying, sometimes. I’d rather just succeed.

Ad Break  

Jared  

Kaitlin, you mentioned earlier looking at your younger self with a particular narrative lens, and you’ve you write in your book about connecting to our child’s selves. Can you talk more about that? Like, why is it important for us to do as adults? Or what’s been your experience with that?

Kaitlin  

Yeah. This also was kind of something that started when I started therapy. I write about it, I have a piece in Oprah Daily, and I write about, like, my child self haunting me. That there is this moment, I remember, it was just like, a few weeks where I just felt like [Scoffs], I felt like Little Me was like, in the room somewhere. You know, I felt like she was trying to say something to me. And it’s strange. It’s a strange feeling. Because I think for a lot of years, I was like, so glad to leave her behind. It was like, “Finally I can move on from whatever that mess is,” or “She messed things up so badly,” like blaming her or shaming her. And being in therapy and, and learning that she did the best she could, that she was dealing with a lot of really scary things and was basically setting safety measures up in my body for us now, and so it’s a really interesting thing for me. 

And I’ve learned this from other writers who do the same, that they’re just teaching about how to have a relationship to our child selves and how to have conversations with them or to let them know, “Hey, this is how I’m doing now. This is how we’re doing.” It’s really beautiful, like, or, “We’re working on this and we’re gonna keep working on it,” but to be able to thank them, to thank our child selves for doing what they could to just survive, to get through. And I have children and I’m around kids a lot and just seeing how beautiful they are and how much wisdom and strength they hold. And a lot of our kids shouldn’t be dealing with the things they’re dealing with and, you know, what we do when that happens is we create safety measures in our nervous system, and our bodies, and our minds, and our souls, and then as adults, we have to repair some of those things. And that’s sad that that’s kind of the cycle we live, but a lot of us do. And it’s very emotional for people to connect with their child selves. And I lead workshops a lot, where I have people write letters to their child cells, or they read a letter to Mother Earth, and for a lot of people, it brings up a lot of tears, it brings up a lot of emotions. And I think that just speaks to how important it is, you know, I don’t think we talked about it enough.

Pete  

You know, we’re talking a lot about spiritual development, I guess is a fine way to put it, and I’m wondering if you could flesh out a little bit more for us, because I’m sure people have a lot of curiosity about this. You’ve mentioned your Southern Baptist upbringing. And then you mentioned therapy as a transitional moment for you. But could you fill in some of those gaps for us? Because again, I’m imagining people listening to this and saying, “This is speaking my language, I want to know more about your own journey.” So like, when was it prompted? When did you see the problems that you felt you needed to transcend? And how did you do it?

Kaitlin  

So, I grew up Southern Baptist, and, you know, went to Southern Baptist Church through high school. And then after high school went to a, you know, more charismatic—which felt like really freeing from the Southern Baptist upbringing. I had to like, go to a church that was much more charismatic, in thought and study and worship, you know. And then also, I’ve just always been put in place of being a leader in any church I would serve. Small group leader, worship leader, like just always in leadership positions, which I now see as really detrimental to my health, you know, to be put up as a leader of youth worship at the age of 13, or 14, or whatever, you know, like, there were… I wanted to lead, but also there were things placed on me responsibilities I shouldn’t have been carrying at such a young age.

Pete  

You were on the fast track to success. 

Kaitlin  

Oh.

Pete  

Right? 

Kaitlin  

I was gonna be a famous worship leader, Pete.

Kaitlin  

It was gonna be great. 

Kaitlin  

Yeah?

Pete  

Kaitlin  

And so in college—I mean, I got married young as well. So, I will say that that was a journey that my husband, still now—we’ve been married almost 15 years, so this has been a journey for both of us, like changing together, leading together. And I write about it in the book as well, when I entered college and took a world literature class, it was like, beginning to burst my bubble and helping me see—I mean, I always loved studying like other cultures and religions, and trying to be curious, but then there’s this thing holding you back. And it’s your religion. Like, trying, like, I would step closer and closer to like, being really excited about these things I’m learning and then it’s like you run into a wall, and that wall is this God that you’ve been given that says, “Don’t get too close to that, it’s dangerous,” you know? 

And so my world religion class in college, and then studying social work, began to allow me space to ask those questions. And I still led small groups. We went to church, you know, for years, we don’t go to church now, so we’re not a part of, you know, an institutional body. And I know that always kind of throws people off as well. And I travel and speak and, and write my books, but a lot of people aren’t. So that’s another part of the journey. But it took me, yeah, I think it was my like, mid to late 20s. You know, I had two kids. And I’m asking these questions about my identity. What does it mean to be Potawatomi? What does it mean to be a Christian? I’m reading books by Richard Rohr, and, you know, learning about the CAC and like these different aspects of Christianity I didn’t grow up with, which was really freeing for me. Can I think of God as something other than this, like, patriarchal man in the sky, who’s really mean and quite hateful? Is God something other than that? You know, I needed to ask a lot of those questions and expand my ideas of prayer and love and fear and curiosity, all these things, like what do they mean in my real life? And I think that led me here. I mean, starting therapy when I was a bit older, and you know, I mean, therapy, just hands you a giant mirror, and you have to look into every aspect of your relationships and yourself and it is scary. And then it’s really beautiful when you start to listen again to yourself, and you pay attention.

Jared  

You mentioned, just in the list of things that you really had to change your thinking about, prayer. And that’s something that our listeners ask about and talk about quite a bit as they’re shifting their thoughts about God and religion and spirituality and spiritual practices. I think that’s one that’s hard to get their arms around. Can you talk about how that transition for you and what that looks like now?

Kaitlin  

Yeah. I think that the best thing for me is to not feel like I have to have a prayer journal. And I say that because I grew up with these-

Pete  

Jared  

Oh. Yeah. 

Kaitlin  

What?

Jared  

Maybe you can educate Pete Enns on a little bit of this evangelical world, the prayer journal.

Pete  

Kaitlin  

Well, I had quiet time journals, and then I had separate prayer journals. And then I had- I’ve always been a journaler. I have so many of them still. But my prayer journals were always like, “Hey, God, here are all the sins I’ve been committing. I’m really sorry, I don’t talk to you enough. Praying for some people. Thank you for still listening to me even though I’m so sinful.” You know, like, it was just like the same outline over and over. It’s quite sad. I mean, it’s really quite sad. But then I’m also doing these journals, and just feeling guilty all the time. Because I know I’m not praying enough. I’m not praying hard enough. I’m not doing this enough. I don’t really feel like reading this book anymore. But I have to because it’s the Bible. And I go to the Christian bookstore, and I don’t like any of the devotionals but I’m supposed to be reading them as a young Christian girl, so I better buy one and read it, even though I think the questions are stupid. You know, like, I just- you had to do it! And so, my prayer life was so frustrating to me because it felt so shallow, but I felt so shameful all the time. And so I don’t keep a prayer journal now. 

And sometimes maybe I might write something that’s akin to prayer, or I write poetry, really, that has become prayer to me. But that has been liberating for me to let go of that kind of rigid thing that I kept, in my mind, failing at for so many years, to say prayer is like the breath I’m taking right now. Prayer is me looking out this window at the trees outside and just smiling at them. That’s a prayer. Allowing again, God, or the sacred, or Creator allowing this expansiveness to exist. And I mean, in the book, I say, prayer is me decorating my home, prayer is me… It is me making a beautiful meal for myself or my family. Prayer is walking my dog, prayer is so many things. But again, when we constrict it to these boxes—prayer is cyclical. It’s not linear, you know? Like, when we restrict it to these boxes, and this kind of thing “otherwise you’re failing” we lose what prayer is completely.

Jared  

And what I’m hearing you say, too, is it’s also more integrated now into who you are. That who you are and how you experience the world is allowed to help define and shape what prayer can look like.

Kaitlin  

For sure. 

Pete  

Yeah. You know, you and Jared were talking earlier about—this is just a thread that’s coming together for me—but how knowledge did not eradicate fear. Right, Jared? You tried to gain knowledge to eradicate fear. But what you’re talking about with taking a world religions class or doing social work in college, that knowledge actually creates fear. And that I think, is one of the ways that this journey begins for people is just once you leave the farm…

Jared  

They know too much.

Pete  

Yeah, once you leave the farm, and no one’s telling you what to think anymore—

Kaitlin  

Yeah.

Pete  

—and you feel guilty as heck for thinking it. But you also see—I’m going to use your word—a sacredness in your own intuitions, your own experiences. And Jared and I, we’ve talked a lot about how that’s exactly what our traditions don’t want us to do. You cannot trust your intuition, because you’re a broken worm. And you deserve to be stepped on or something, right. And you’ve said before how hurtful that is, it’s not just it’s not good, it actually stays with you. That gets baked into you, like, you know, flour in a cake, you can’t take it out. You have to do something very radical. You can’t extricate it very easily, because it’s so deeply baked in. And I just feel that leads to a very unfulfilling, an un-serene life. Always afraid.

Jared  

Can I ask, just as a follow up: How has your connection with your culture and your tradition—just your family tradition, Native tradition—helped with that transition? Because again, sometimes it’s not so much what we’re walking away from as much as the power of what we’re walking to. So what was the power in the story of your native culture that was compelling you?

Kaitlin  

Yeah. I mean, I think I realized sort of the depth of the depravity of colonization, when I started, like—you know, I’m not anywhere near ever being fluent in Potawatomi, but I am I study like through an online program from my tribe—and when I first heard a prayer in Potawatomi, or when I hear about that we believe that the Milky Way is the spirit path. It’s this path that our ancestors live on. It’s this journey they’re taking and when we look up and see the Milky Way, that’s them, you know. Like there are these ideas that are set in our language that are so beautiful and tangible, and just gave me so much, like a deep breath, like gave me so much room to say, “Oh my god, this is for me I can- I’m safe here like I can live in these beliefs, I can understand the way the world works through this language that my ancestors carried, and that I’m learning pieces of our cultural stories, or any aspect of our culture that is meant to teach us who we are, and how we see the world and how we see creator and Mother Earth,” like, all of those things have been so freeing for me, but also have illustrated how much we’ve been colonized and how much has been stolen from us and continues to be stolen from us. And so it’s like, it was so liberating, and then just deeply depressing, and made me really angry and made me realize how much I need to keep doing this work. You know, it was like so many emotions all at once. But that is the Potawatomi experience, that is the indigenous experience is holding all of these things at the same time.

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Pete  

You mentioned ancestors, and maybe we can flesh that out a little bit too, because the whole issue of meditating on our ancestors—and if I can set this up a little bit, my sister Angie, she’s the family historian. And she’s traced lineage on both our sides, going back several hundred years into Germany and Russia. And I have this family tree, and I’m reading the names and the dates of births and deaths, and I feel connected. And I also feel connected from an evolutionary point of view, because we, you know, we share DNA, and I’m carrying them around with me somehow, and it’s, it’s a beautiful thing to sort of broaden your perspective on your own puny little life and how others will be looking back at you in the same way—hopefully—in generations to come. But this is probably a much more central or important part of your spirituality. So, could you flesh it out for us and help us understand what that means to meditate on our ancestors?

Kaitlin  

Yeah. I share in the book about this moment where I was doing sort of an ancestry meditation through the book, “My Grandmother’s Hands,” and, you know, it was just this moment where you close your eyes, and you try to picture your ancestors, or you try to have this experience. And I was feeling silly and frustrated, because I’m like, pretty sure I’m not gonna see anything, or I don’t know what I’m doing with this, you know? And then I had this really beautiful vision of ancestors from all sides of my lineage, you know, European ancestors, Potawatomi ancestors, I have a mix like many people do. And they were all together, they were all walking this dirt road, and the woman closest to me on the end, like I’m standing on the side of the road and as they walked by, she offered her hand to me, and it was for me an invitation to ask if I want to be a part of the healing journey of my ancestors, because those ancestors maybe shouldn’t have been walking together. 

You know, like, we are pieces of all of our ancestors. And for those of us where that can be really complicated. For me, it was an invitation. What if my work that I do today, what if the truth telling I’m a part of is a response to who they were and a challenge to who they were and me saying that I still want to be a part of their healing, right? Because we don’t live linearly. We live in these cycles. And so can my life be a part of their healing, and my healing, and the healing of those who come after me, you know, in that whole idea that one day we are going to be ancestors. So, if we can’t sort of communicate in ways with them, then, you know, what will future generations be able to do? I hope future generations can still heal me even after I’m gone. I hope that I can be connected to them in that way. An

d that was a really moving experience for me, but also like a challenge that I need to be paying attention. And I need to be paying attention to the way history works. I think that we interact with our ancestors by paying attention to history and telling the truth about history and the world that we’re living in. And I think all of that is a conversation is a kind of prayer, like I mentioned earlier. And you know, some people have very specific practices, you know, we know of different cultures that have ancestral areas in their homes and places where they can pray and interact. But it also is just also on sort of that meta level of the healing that we can do across generations and what that means.

Jared  

You know, your book is Living Resistance. And you have a story about becoming present in the midst of this frozen burrito and a snoring dog and I appreciate the story of it. 

Kaitlin  

Jared  

But can you talk about how presence can be resistance, because I think that is a little counterintuitive for folks.

Kaitlin  

I love that you brought that story up, because when I wrote the book I was like, [Laughs] people are gonna either think this part is just super weird, or they’re gonna appreciate it. And I don’t know how it’s gonna go, but I’m gonna write it anyway. 

Pete  

Kaitlin  

And it was a very, you know, just one of those visceral moments where I’m eating a frozen burrito and I’m drinking a glass of water, my dog is there. It was one of those moments where I was choosing presence, I was choosing—perhaps not health—but I was choosing presence. 

Pete  

Kaitlin  

And as someone who learned disembodiment and dissociation early on in my life, for a lot of years, I didn’t really know how to be present. I didn’t know how to be present to my body, to my nervous system, to the people around me sometimes. There was this haze or this wall that I was putting up again, for protection, right? My child self was learning to do this in response to trauma, in response to a chaotic world, right? And so presence for me is literally a form of resistance. Our society, our status quo, doesn’t want a bunch of people who are present to our present to our bodies, present to our healing, present to our trauma, and our grief and living into that in learning to heal on our own or together that is that poses a threat to a status quo of “check the right boxes, and don’t be curious, and live into this capitalistic, consumerist society,” like this colonization, like it’s not about presence. It’s about control, right? It’s about these other things. And so, being present, being present to our lives, being present to our bodies, listening. Being present to other humans, being present to Mother Earth, and the creatures around us, that is a beautiful form of resistance, because it pushes against that toxic, colonial status quo and says, this is a form of healing. This is a form of healing ourselves individually, but also collective healing is being present to all of these things.

Jared  

That’s great. Well, I don’t want to change the subject too much but I’m going to because this is more of a personal question for me as often the kind of token indigenous person at Thanksgivings, you’ve often shared, I think, very practical tips for folks who aren’t sure what to do with Thanksgiving, but want to decolonize or Indigenize the holiday so can you share some of those again? For me, it’s like, I’ll put together like a Choctaw prayer or something that we can say at the beginning of the meal. But pretty much everything else is the same. So for people who are interested, I just thought maybe we can end on some practical tips around Thanksgiving in particular.

Kaitlin  

Yeah. And this is so complicated. It’s one of those things where you have to hold space for people, that some indigenous families will never celebrate this particular colonial holiday. Some families love it, and they love sharing food, some families do it just in a different way, like, and that’s just Indigenous people, then you have everybody else. Like I think people need to be aware that like, we don’t all think the same about this particular holiday or any holidays, like I always try to remind people of that, because they kind of want my ideas, and then just want to copy and paste that onto everyone else, you know? And I have to remind them, like, we’re all different. We all have our different ideas. You know?

Jared  

It’s so important because my family—being Indigenous or Choctaw, like, yeah, they don’t have any problem with it. And sometimes they can be annoyed that it’s like, they get shut down from their own perspective. And it’s like, well, for indigenous people, they’re like, but we are indigenous people, and we don’t have a problem with it. It’s like, no, no, no, you don’t know. 

Kaitlin  

I know.

Jared  

And it’s like, their voice gets silenced on their behalf. It just feels really paternalistic.

Kaitlin  

Yeah, it’s frustrating. It’s very frustrating. And so every year, of course, people are asking me what to do. So I thought, in this new book, I would like put a few things like, can we decolonize this holiday fully? No, because it’s a colonial holiday. But the idea of gathering at a table and sharing thanksgiving, sharing the beauty of food, that’s amazing, you know? And that kind of treat it the way I would treat children, like read these children’s books on Indigenous cultures, like, look up whose land you’re on. And not just that, but like, look up, where are they? Are there Cultural Centers near you? Are there sacred sites near you that you should know about? Can you pay rent to a tribe that’s near you? Could you, are there ways that you could be paying better attention? Like buy an Indigenous cookbook and support Indigenous artists. 

Pay attention to those things, read a prayer that’s different, tell the truth about history. Look something up about the stories we tell and that’s scary for people. You know, challenging history is scary. I mean, I remember one Thanksgiving I had written a piece for like our local sort of newspaper about this holiday and how hard it is and I was just feeling so much of the tension of it. And it was like, it was a time I was grieving the America that I used to celebrate, you know? I grew up celebrating the pilgrims and the Indians and this like, I mean, I grew up with all of that. And there was a moment of me acknowledging that things weren’t the way that I grew up thinking they were, and there is a real grief to that. It’s okay that this holiday and others like it can bring up some grief for people. It’s okay that it’s complicated. And I think that people just need to have permission to honor that. And to also be able to just celebrate giving thanks and also to make giving thanks, like, make that a regular thing, not just one day a year we’re going to be thankful. And then forget what that means on a daily basis. I think there’s just a lot we can learn from this extension of understanding what gratitude is. And I think that’s always something to take away from this particular holiday as well.

Pete  

Right. And that’s a great note to end on, I think, Kaitlin, the hope in the future and the promise of living better. So, thank you so much for spending some time with us. This was fascinating. 

Kaitlin  

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jared  

And now for Quiet Time.

Pete  

With Pete and Jared.

Jared  

So, Pete, what does it mean in your own life to resist seeing your life in this linear framework, and moving towards a cyclical framework? What’s been the impact of that? Or are you there? What does that mean to you?

Pete  

Yeah, well, that’s just it, you know, my own life of resisting, seeing my life in a linear fashion. I’m not sure I’ve done that. I mean, I’m aware of the differences. You know, I mean, academically just aware of the differences. But seeing my life as- Not just my existence is cyclical, even though that’s true. It’s a recurring cycle in our lives of triumph and challenge and all things like that. But looking at everything in a cyclical way, I have to think about that some more. That’s very intriguing. And I think, like we talked about with Kaitlin to think that way, disabuses us of certain notions of linear success and progress and things like that. But honestly, you know, I’m thinking about it. Have you figured this out?

Jared  

I haven’t figured it out. But I’ve done a lot more thinking because, you know, my culture is Native. And as Choctaw, I remember reading, “God Is Red,” and he talks about it. He talks about the cyclical piece in there. And I was intrigued, and I spent a lot of time really having to focus because I didn’t know what it meant. Like, I had no idea what he was talking about. 

Pete  

Jared  

And so I spent a lot of time, yeah, like, meditating on how our narratives about our lives, our dominant metaphors, we call them meta-metaphors.

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

Are linear. We go on a journey. Journeys have a beginning and they have an end. That’s a very linear way of thinking about things. So it’s so… It’s the water we swim in, in a way that it took me, I would say, months of intentional thinking and deprogramming to even- I remember having a couple of “Aha!” moments where I just get this like flicker of a moment of like, “Oh, I think I got it, oh, no, I don’t have it.”

Pete  

Jared  

And doing that for like months to where now, because it does do these things that you’re talking about, for me, it led to- It’s like a U-curve, where there’s a depressive element, there’s a loss, when you first kind of come to it. And then you start to see that there’s value in it. It reminds me a little bit of every year, we put our video games away for our kids. So they get them out in the winter, and then we put them away in the summer. And those first two weeks of summer, my kids are so disoriented, like so bored, don’t know what to do. 

Pete  

You’re cruel.

Jared  

They’re complaining about everything, they genuinely are like, you know, NPCs in a game where they’re just like, aimlessly wandering and bumping into things, they don’t know what to do. 

Pete  

Jared  

But over the summer, they start to fill that void with other things. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

And by the end of the summer, they’re not even thinking about it. They’re creative, they’re doing all these things. That’s kind of how it felt like for me is, “Oh,” once I cracked the code of like, “Oh, I can think of it differently,”  I actually felt a profound loss. A loss of purpose, a loss of progress. Like if it’s always just returning, if it’s a cycle, well, what’s the point of any of this? 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

But even that feeling, I had to recognize that feeling and that thought was coming from a linear point of view. Yes, within that framework, there is a loss of purpose there is a lot of loss. 

Pete  

Right, yep, yeah. Yeah. 

Jared  

But once you can move to something else, there’s a lot of value and beauty in another way of thinking.

Pete  

Yeah, that’s a great analogy with the video games like that. 

Jared  

Pete  

I mean, just one quick thought in your journeys are linear, but I think of like Campbell and the Hero’s journey, you always come back to the beginning.

Jared  

You always return home or home. 

Pete  

You return home and [Unintelligible]

Jared  

Speaking of “The Lord of the Rings” and, yeah.

Pete  

And that’s, to me, that’s actually a really good example of the cyclical way of thinking, you know.

Jared  

Right, right. But it’s interesting because I think we don’t often think about that part of the hero’s journey. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

We think of it as riding off into the sunset. 

Pete  

Right, exactly. 

Jared  

Instead of, no, there is often in these myths and epics, there’s a return home with a new sense of wisdom and experience that you’re bringing back to the community. 

Pete  

Yeah, exactly. Right. Right. Yeah. So.

Jared  

But, I mean, I would encourage people to go on the journey. If nothing else, I like to have different tools in my toolkit. I don’t like that I’m always swimming in this water that I’m not aware of, because I’m a controlling person. 

Pete  

Jared  

And I don’t like thinking there’s things that are affecting me that I’m not aware of. 

Pete  

I know. 

Jared  

So it’s worth the journey to like, yeah, think through it. And there are, again, like God Is Red and these other books learn from, like, Native peoples I think is pretty good.

Pete  

Right. Well, so what about this inner child business? We talked about that too. 

Jared  

Yeah. 

Pete  

Are you all over that?

Jared  

You know, it’s interesting. When we talked about this with Kaitlin, I did some thinking about it. And there is—I think in Kaitlin’s narrative was more around being gentle with the inner child.

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

Mine is less that. I feel pretty proud and confident of sort of my inner child, it’s been more for me a move toward remembering. And I have this story I used to talk about a lot, you know, 5-10 years ago when I was doing this work, but my second son Tov, he came out, like, just like me, in so many ways. And he reminded me, like, his toddlerhood reminded me of who I was as a kid.

Pete  

Jared  

Things that I had forgotten. And so from that time on, I kept talking about him as my mentor. And he was helping me recover my “Tov-nes.” 

Pete  

Jared  

Which, you know, again, his name means “good,” which is also a little ironic and interesting. But for me, this inner child work is a remembering of who I was as a kid, because as an eight on the Enneagram, you like, you get this hard outer shell and you have to defend against things. I was really sensitive as a kid and so I didn’t want to get my feelings hurt, and I didn’t like being embarrassed. But everything kind of embarrassed me. I was very sensitive. And Tov reminded me of that. And so when I think of inner child I always think of that period of time where I started being more open, more vulnerable in my relationships, because of this Tov-ness, that again, having Tov here reminded me, like, “Oh, this is how I was, and I liked that about me.”

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

Who I am now is not bad. But I liked that. And so that was the journey of like, thank you to these defenses I’ve built up over time, they served a purpose. But now I’m in a place where I think I can say goodbye to them, and try to recover this sense of childlikeness that I think was good. So what about you? 

Pete  

And it sounds like you’ve thought a lot about it. 

Jared  

Yeah.

Pete  

Yeah. I mean, for me, I didn’t really even… I was a psych major in college. So I heard the phrases, but in the communities where I hung out with was like, [Scoffs] “Inner child? Oh, isn’t that nice?” And until like my late 40s, and family therapy, and then you start doing this inner child work, and I’m like, “Oh, okay.”

Jared  

Mhmm.

Pete  

And embracing your inner child is not a foolish, new agey, stupid thing. It’s actually like, remembering, right? 

Jared  

Pete  

And that, to me, has sort of grown in like, in therapy and thinking about family of origin and influences and what you were alluding to, not always helpful coping mechanisms as a child to survive in certain ways. 

You know, I’m trying to paint a bleak picture of my family of origin, but we all have issues to deal with, right? So, a lot of my personality traits, I can sort of now remember and trace back how they developed as a child, you know, and so it’s, I think, it’s important to do that. And for me, it’s been about seeing my whole life as a whole thing, and remembering who I was, and being kind to that. 

Jared  

Mhmm.

Pete  

And, as a result, being kind to myself now. I mean, one phrase that I remember hearing was, “Thank your inner child for having the courage to survive X, Y, and Z. But now say, okay, adult Pete is here, I’ll take care of this. You don’t have to do that anymore.” Right, it’s like, that was a very empowering thing, a thought that somebody gave me. And so yeah, I do believe that if we just compartmentalize our existence and think about our childhood is just that immature stuff and blah, blah, blah. It does affect us throughout our lives. All of us, everyone, and it’s good to embrace that, I think.

Jared  

Yeah, one thing came to mind that I would maybe recommend if anybody hasn’t watched it, there’s this documentary on Netflix called “Stutz.” And it’s Jonah Hill—

Pete  

Right, yeah.

Jared  

—interviewing his therapist who has wonderful tools, but a lot of it you could sort of package in this inner child work and framework. And there’s this really powerful part at the end where Jonah Hill has this big picture of himself as this young, very young person, and how a lot of his healing came from looking at that with compassion and bringing that former self along rather than saying, “I’m only successful because I got rid of that guy. And I don’t want anybody to see that guy. Because that guy was not successful and not good.” Instead of saying, “No, that’s the guy that got you here and bring him to the party.” So it was really powerful. And I would recommend anybody watch it. 

Pete  

Yeah, yeah. And that makes us, I think, also if we’re compassionate with ourselves, we may be more compassionate with other people, because they have a story too.

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

Even if they don’t know it.

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

They do.

Outro  

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give. 

Pete  

And, if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join. 

Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show.  

Outro  

Thanks for listening to Faith for Normal People! Don’t forget, you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, The Bible for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Steven Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.

Pete  

I think of like Bill Campbell and the Hero’s journey. The journey always comes back to where you begin. The Gilgamesh epic—

Jared  

I think it’s Joseph. Joseph Campbell.

Pete  

Joseph Campbell. What did I say?

Jared  

Bill.

Pete  

Hey, Bill. I think he pitched for the Oakland A’s. Anyway, uh…

Jared