Amena Brown:
Hey, everybody. This week, check out this episode from the HER archives where I talked with Potawatomi author and speaker Kaitlin Curtice. Can you all believe it's been two years of the pandemic? This episode was recorded in May of 2020. Kaitlin and I had planned for our conversation to be a part of her book tour for her book Native: Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering God. The book tour was supposed to be in person, we're supposed to have this conversation in front of an audience but we had to pivot to Instagram live during the shelter in place. Listen in as we discussed Kaitlin's journey of decolonization and reconnecting with her identity as an indigenous woman. Check it out.
Amena Brown:
Are you there?
Kaitlin Curtice:
We did it. Instagram Live.
Amena Brown:
Oh, my gosh. I think you might be my first person that I ever done this type of thing. So-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Thank you.
Amena Brown:
... thank you for joining. Everyone, welcome. Prior to COVID-19, Kaitlin and I were supposed to be doing this live, in full effect in Atlanta. There's going to be a reading, we were going to talk, we were going to-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Drink coffee.
Amena Brown:
... hug you, shake your hands, we were going to do all sorts of things that we can't do now. So, I'm going to hold up Kaitlin's book even though I know it'll be backwards for you all. But this-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yay.
Amena Brown:
... see it right here. See? You need to do this. So, if you don't have a copy already, please, please, please get your copy and get maybe four more copies. I think you should buy five copies of Kaitlin's book is what I'm telling you. So, get this, you can get this from your favorite bookseller. We are recommending that that is an indie bookseller, if you can do it, we want to make sure we can help our indie booksellers during this time. So, if you have any favorites of those, do that. Kaitlin, we have so much to talk about.
Kaitlin Curtice:
I know.
Amena Brown:
A thousand things but I would love for you to maybe pick a poem from your book, would you do that and do a bit of a reading for us? Kaitlin's book is a mix of poetry and nonfiction, but you will get a chance to hear a little bit of the poetry tonight. So can you share with us?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Okay, I'm going to read. This is the poem from the very beginning of the book. So, from part one called Beginnings and this is the poem. So, the book is split into five sections and each section starts with a poem because I just wanted to give people a breath before you get into the hard stuff. So, this is the poem at the very beginning of the book. Before there was everything, there was nothing. But before there was nothing, there was something.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Something other, unbound, beyond, above, mystery. No one could grasp it then and no one can grasp it now, not even with these realities coming among us and creating something new day in and day out despite our dry and weary bones. Because before us, there was everything, and before everything, nothing was something and something was the beginning and we are just dust from its long, flowing robe.
Amena Brown:
Ugh, you all, I could do all the clapping like you would. So, I just loved getting to hear more of that and we got to hear a little bit of your poetry and lyrical writing in your first book, Glory Happening, which you all are also welcome to go and buy that, too. You can go and buy five copies of that if you'd like to as well. But it's wonderful to have that in each section, yes? There's a poem that corresponds with-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah, every essay has a prayer that's basically a poem behind it. So, yeah.
Amena Brown:
You all, I just, hmm. Okay, I have a thousand things I'm trying to talk to you about, Kaitlin.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Okay, let's do it.
Amena Brown:
So, let me try to think about even where to begin. I guess the one place where I want to start is decolonization and deconstruction are two big themes in this book, right? And I love that, as a part of your own journey and story, it was really beautiful for me to see that it's not just about decolonizing and deconstructing, it's about what we are rebuilding as well.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
It's about what we decide, we reclaim, we return to, what we make, what we create. You also have this wonderful quote in the book where you say, "Decolonization is always an invitation." Can you tell us more? What has the process been like for you decolonizing in general, decolonizing your spirituality? What does that been like and how do you get from the decolonizing and deconstructing to what you will build, what will be?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah. So, for those who don't know, decolonization is the very academic term. So, it can literally be like, nations breaking down their systems of colonization but I'm taking it on more of a personal level of let's examine what systems we participate in and let's figure out if we can take the colonization out of those things or step away from colonization. So, within Christianity, I'm asking, "Can we be Christian and get to a Jesus that's not a colonizer, that's not White like we've been taught?"
Kaitlin Curtice:
And what I'm learning and understanding is that deconstruction and decolonization for me have gone hand in hand and that it's not just like you flip on a switch and you're done. It's not like, "I'm the colonized now, it's all good," or, "I've deconstructed now," these are very long processes that, I think, are a lifetime. I mean, this is what being human is, if we're born into a world that's a colonized world, it's going to take our whole lives to continue breaking that down but I think that's also really beautiful because we get to do together, this is what it means to be human.
Kaitlin Curtice:
And I think, for me, it's just, when you become an adult, you begin to ask questions of the systems you grew up in and so it's a natural process to ask these questions and to go on that journey of really considering, "Am I the only one who does this? Are other people doing it?" finding your people. There are so many people who are on this journey, there are so many people who are asking, within Christianity, can this thing be decolonized or not and I think that we have to find new ways to talk about it and we have to journey together through it. This book was hard to write, it was hard to write because decolonizing is, it's painful, you're examining and you're looking and you're facing truth, and then you're digging out what you can get rid of and you're keeping some, it's hard but it's beautiful, it's a beautiful journey, too.
Amena Brown:
I want to know, can you think of, and I'm sure this came up in some book chapters, too, but can you describe to us was there a moment or a catalyst that you felt was a tipping point on you beginning that decolonization journey? In your book, you talk about your time growing up closer to a Native community.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
You talk about your time growing up being in this totally different environment that was very Southern Baptist and White. What was a moment or maybe some key moments where you felt like there was this tipping point in you of saying there is decolonization work I want to do?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think Standing Rock was one of the first spaces that just broke me wide open to, okay, this is the indigenous story and I'm part of it and something has to be done. And so, that breaking open, just coinciding with my own journey of listening to myself and honoring my ancestors in a way that I hadn't been taught to do before, coming back to myself in a way. And then that coincided with me, let's say, becoming a worship leader in a church that's progressive and then realizing that they don't actually want the Native parts of me really, that they're uncomfortable with those parts, then it's like, "Well, what do I do?"
Kaitlin Curtice:
It's literally like, "What am I supposed to do right now? Do I stay here? Do I stay with only parts of me in this building and with these people? Do I choose to leave?" And in that moment, I chose to leave and then when I realized that church really might not be a safe place for me anymore, I think that that was like, "Okay, if this system I've grown up in isn't safe like I thought it was and able to deal with my change and transformation, then I don't know how to be a part of it," and so I had to start asking those questions.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Oh, so I participated in these missions, I participated in purity culture, I participated in the way that these people are treating me, I probably participated in that toward someone else. And then you just start going back in time and recognizing all these things that you did. I want to send emails to all the people in high school that I witnessed to and tell them I'm sorry all the time. I just want to be like, "I'm really sorry about that."
Amena Brown:
Yeah, I think about some of the places that I went growing go up on mission trips and just want to be like, "If there was a way to somehow have a translator in this particular community where we were and be like, 'Oh, the people here in their language, I'm sorry for this bull right here. Sorry about that, please.'" Oh, gosh.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
It's such a real thing. It makes me think, too, Kaitlin, just as I was reading through your book and in my own process of decolonization and deconstruction and how both things can be very scary, especially as they are connected to your spirituality and as they might be connected to your personal identity, because then you're starting to be like, "Well, if I start decolonizing and pulling out the books I was told to read and the people's voices I was told to believe are the truth tellers," and then I realize, "Well, they're not telling the truth," and that starts pulling out from under you all these things. Just feeling like you're out there floating now.
Amena Brown:
I remember having this moment when I was in college, and I graduated from Spelman College, and Spelman, for our people watching that aren't familiar with it, Spelman is one of two all Black, all women universities and colleges in America, and I was coming from a Black Pentecostal church background. And I remember the first class I was in where one of my classmates was doing a presentation and she poured libations for her ancestors before she started her presentation and I had no theological framework for that so I was like, "Ooh, the devil is so close."
Kaitlin Curtice:
Clutching your Bible.
Amena Brown:
We will have to rebuke, rebuke hands. Oh, no, I didn't even know how to process any of that, Kaitlin.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
None, right?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amena Brown:
And then years later, and especially as I feel like came into my own more as a poet, as a performer, as a speaker, then it wasn't as odd to me to think about how the women before me are present with me. In my work, as I write, as I'm on stage and you and I just, in our friendship, talk a lot about that, how the women that we know in our family line but even the women ancestors we don't know, how they are informing our process and how we become who we become. Can you tell me how you think about that? How does your connection to, your remembrance of, your honor of your ancestors and, in particular, those women ancestor? How do you find that entering your space as an author, as a writer?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah. So, the name of our tribe, the Potawatomi tribe means the people of the place of fire and I've always loved fire anyway and so the fire metaphor has always meant a lot to me of keeping that fire burning. And what is beautiful about what you said is the women that we never knew or names we might not even know who are still the ones who came before us like my grandma who's Potawatomi. So, my Potawatomi grandma has visited me in dreams before and I write in the book about, at our last house that we lived in, there was a tree in the backyard that reminded me of her and I don't know why, it just did.
Kaitlin Curtice:
So, when I visited that tree, I felt like I was close to her and it's strange because she died when I was in high school and we never talked about being Potawatomi, it wasn't something we talked about at all. It was just even if she didn't talk about it, she's still Potawatomi and that's still who I am. And for me, I think everything started happening in me, this shift, when I had children because I realized, "What am I going to give them?" They deserve to get more than I got and I want them to have that. I don't want to be ashamed of who I am or not know how to talk about it.
Kaitlin Curtice:
And along the way, when it has been hard, what I've remembered is the women who walked the trail of death. So, the women who marched from Indiana to Kansas in this forced removal who carried their babies and who didn't give up and they knew that along the way that they might lose parts of their culture and they were holding on as hard as they could. And this way that assimilation just takes from us and it's just we hold on for dear life and we claim resilience when and where we can and I just I feel like those women are constantly reminding me of who I am in ways that are probably not even conscious to me, they're just there.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
And that is very scary to Christianity, that whole idea.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Kaitlin Curtice:
There's so much of it that is scary to people but so much of the world lives like that. We listen and learn from our ancestors and we learn from ancestors mistakes. I have native and non-native ancestors, I have ancestors who did things that were atrocious that I need to learn from that and be better. I'm aware of the full spectrum of my ancestors and I have to be available to that, to those lessons and make sense of that for my life and do what I need to do. And that's also why decolonizing is so important because I decolonize for all of them. So-
Amena Brown:
Oh, that's so powerful. That's so powerful to think about. I want to ask the question but I got to tell a little bit of a story and I'm more so telling the story for our people that are watching and listening as you and I have talked quite a bit about this when we were not recording for the public. But I took a trip to Rwanda, actually, my last trip to Rwanda, I took with a team of Black leaders and they were leaders in different capacities, some business, some theology, some pastors, there was a lot of different roles each of us had and we were taking this trip through Rwanda, to this particular area and we were riding past this village.
Amena Brown:
And in the village, as we're passing by, it just looks like all the people in this community are working construction is what it looks like. And so, as we're driving past, most of us in the van that we're in are Black from America, and then our guide, she is Rwandan and Black, and then there was one White man from the organization on the American side that we were working with. And so, we stop in this village and while we're there, we're asking, "Well, what's happening here?" because you're just walking by seeing all these people doing construction that you wouldn't think would be doing that kind of building.
Amena Brown:
And so, our guide was explaining to us, she said, "There are people in the community that are elderly, that need better homes, that need access to water so the community is building these homes for them." And so, then, someone else on the bus said, "Well, where are they getting the money?" And she said, "Oh, the government. The government gives them this money to do this building."
Amena Brown:
So, for some of us, in our Black American context, it just conjured up images of the projects and when the government gives money to show people to this one area, tell them this is where they have to be, tell them what materials it has to be built out of and our guide had to tell us, "Oh, no, that's not what I mean." She said, "Our government works in more of a communal way." And so, she was like, "The leaders of the village go to the government and say, 'Here's what our village needs. Our village needs these homes for these elderly people.'" And the government says, "Here are the resources you need for that," and everyone in the community comes together to accomplish it.
Amena Brown:
And she had to explain to us the difference between Rwandan history and American. And as she's talking, I'm also trying to translate, not in a language way, but just translate what she's saying, how would that apply in America?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
And of course, in the story of Rwanda, we are seeing these two tribal groups of people, one that committed egregious acts of violence against the other, but the party that had been oppressed, the people that had been oppressed came into power in Rwanda and that changed a lot of how the country was led. And so, I said to our rest of our people in the bus, they said, "It's like if you would imagine what would have happened to America if Black and indigenous people had come into power and had been what we are calling the fore parents, the forefathers and foremothers of the country.
Amena Brown:
Imagine if we were looking back to that. And instead of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and whoever those other names would have been, that those would have been Black and Indigenous people." I always wanted to ask you and would love to just hear you riff on this for a minute. If you could reimagine America, if Black and Indigenous people had come into leadership here, if Black and Indigenous people had built what we are now calling America, what do you imagine this country would have been like?
Kaitlin Curtice:
You know what's so sad and hard about this is that we are so colonized in our thinking that it's hard to even figure it out. It's so hard to even imagined it because we've never seen it and it's so hard to even conceptualize, you know?
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
And that's so sad to me that I have to even think hard to get there. But what I think about is these ideas, which is ideas of indigenous people all over the world, these ideas of kinship and belonging and community, it's a communal way. COVID or a pandemic wouldn't be dealt with with these individualists who are rising up, it would have been dealt in a communal way, dealt with in that way. These ideas of how do we take care of each other as a whole and how do we act in relationship to one another in the earth, that's what I imagine is these partnerships and collaborations that come together over caring for the earth and caring for each other. Because that's what I see today in these small collaborations, that's what I see is Black and Indigenous people coming together to say what needs to be better about this and what does decolonizing look like. Well, it looks like we hold each other up and we hold space with each other.
Kaitlin Curtice:
And for Natives, we pay attention to anti-Blackness in the Native community and we talk about that. And, I'm a White passing Native, so I talk about Black and Brown natives and how they face oppression very differently than I do. We just have these honest conversations but they're rooted in kinship and they're rooted in belonging and that is just not the way that America has been built by whiteness, it's not built that way. It is built by manifest destiny and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, all of this empire Christianity mixed. And how would we have grown together in honoring our ancestors then, you know?
Amena Brown:
Right.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Even that, that comes back now, that would be such a different space in our life than it is when we've grown up colonized and within these systems of whiteness.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. You referenced in your book Black Panther and this idea of a place like Wakanda that had not been affected by colonization. And so, when I think about this question, even when I was working on a writing project recently where, in the beginning of what I had to write, I really wanted to honor the Muskogee people because I was writing about something Atlanta related-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
... and I can't write about this land without writing about that. And as I was digging into some research there, it just made my brain reimagine the nations that were here, are still here and what it would be like if we could have that experience to get to reimagine that. What would it be like to be here in Georgia or in Atlanta where we are and to see what the people who are on this land, what they were like and what they were doing and how we have found ways to participate in some things together and honor the differences. I get really excited about it and then I remember, as we were talking about it at the bus we were in, it brought this deep lament in the bus. I remember, as we were talking about it, we all got really quiet and had to really have a moment of prayer right there and just lamenting that, unfortunately, that's not what happened.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
But I one of the things I have loved, not only about being your friend, but also just learning from you, is this constant reminder that Indigenous people are here, that when we talk about Native and Indigenous people, we're not talking about some long time ago, we are also talking about today. And I'd love to hear from you who are the Indigenous leaders although we think about what would have happened if Black and Indigenous people had been the founding government of America? And thankfully, we have so many Black and Indigenous leaders who are organizing today who are reimagining America, right?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
Who are maybe some of those people or just some of the work that is really inspiring you right now?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah, I love that. Because even in Native, I've mostly tried to cite Indigenous authors just because if my book is the first book that anyone reads by an Indigenous person, that, first, makes me sad because I don't want it to be my book that's the first one, I want it to be someone better than me. But I hope that they go to the back and see this list of all these possibilities and it's not like I'm citing all Christian Natives, it's people, I mean, it's socialists, whatever, whatever kind of Native, just read about us, learn something different, learn the truth about our history.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Oh, gosh. Okay, I have so many leaders that I love but Tara Houska who's a climate activist, Winona LaDuke who runs Honor the Earth, they're just incredible. I buy wild rice from them and so they harvest pipeline free wild rice, so just reconnecting back to the land. Dallas Goldtooth and my friend Nick Estes both help with organizations that are just doing incredible work and I just love it because we all might imagine things a little differently in the way that we decolonize.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Right now, all that I can get to is I need to decolonize my Christianity and they're talking about the systems and they're talking about governments and they're talking to indigenous people all over the world. So, it's like we're all having this conversation in our different contexts, you know?
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Some of us are academics, some of us are not academics, some of us are artists and we're just trying to create what we can where we can and I think that that's really powerful and important.
Kaitlin Curtice:
What's sad to me is I see these incredible people, and I know that in the general audience of America, they're not going to be heard and I'm not going to be heard. Because the indigenous story is so much in the past to people and I hope that books like mine help wake people up to that reality that we're here and we're creating things and we are leading, whether you recognize it or not, we're leading things.
Amena Brown:
Yes, yes. This is my reminder to you all, if you are late to this conversation, this is Kaitlin's new book, Native, just out this week. Go, as soon as you finish listening to us, and buy five. Buy five copies of her book.
Kaitlin Curtice:
That was the magic number.
Amena Brown:
Okay, I want to ask you also about ritual and ceremony. You talk about this in your book, we talked about it, too, but you write about this in your book and the importance of that in your heritage and in how you are reincorporating certain things into your Christian spirituality as well. And I would love to know, specifically, what are the rituals or the ceremony, the honoring that became a part of your writing process in this book? Did you find yourself returning to certain things or certain ways of being? You talked about this tree that you had at one of the places where you lived, what are some of the things you found yourself returning to as you were in the writing process on this book?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah. So, this book was really, at times, painful to write. A lot of times, for me, writing is self-care and it's good to process through writing, parts of this book were like, "I'm going to have to write about this really traumatic thing and I really don't want to but I know it's important." And there were moments where I had to smudge, before I was writing, sideburn sage or I would do some of my Potawatomi online lessons just because it's just like grounding myself in our language.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Because learning to pray in Potawatomi was one of the first things that made it so real to me that we have this beautiful, rich heritage and story that I was never aware of until adulthood and it was like I was so thirsty and hungry for something and I didn't know what it was until I knew what it was. And so, praying in Potawatomi has been just such a balm to me and like good medicine to me. It's funny because I've always been weirdly ritualistic. So, I'll be like, "I want to wear this ring every time I do this thing," or I would do weird stuff like that.
Kaitlin Curtice:
So, for this tour, I'm wearing the same lipstick for every event because I don't know why, I just am, but for some reason it's important to me. So, when I was traveling and speaking, I had a braid of sweetgrass that a friend gave to me and I would take it everywhere I went to speak. And I have earrings that have sacred medicine in them that a friend gave me and I would wear those when I spoke, so just these things that are just good energy and protection that a lot of people probably wouldn't understand. There's a song by Frank Waln that's called Good Way and I would listen to it before certain talks if I was really stressed because it's a song about just living in a good way and honoring yourself and honoring your creator and it's just a beautiful song by an Indigenous person so it would ground me in what I was about to do.
Kaitlin Curtice:
And because I go and speak in predominantly White spaces and I speak at places where I don't know how I'm going to be received, it's been really important for me to ground myself in my reality. Like, "This is who I am. That fire is in me, this is why I'm called to do this work, this is why I won't give up." And when the certain events are especially hard, I have to just have the music and the earrings and the sweet grass, I need these things to hold me because I just need to remember.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, same, same same. I miss it terribly right now that I'm not able to do stage work but-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
... when I was doing all this stage work, imagining 18-year-old me that was like, "Libations in the name ... No." And then all these years later, I feel like one of the times in life that I feel that presence of my grandmother or my great grandmothers or even the women before me that I didn't know is that few moments right before I have to go on stage.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
I mean, that's just always a time of prayer for me and always a time of calling upon their courage, the courage that it takes to stand in what was their moment and experience those parts and I think having rituals to remind us of that, I think, is so beautiful. And I have a request, because one of my favorite poems in here was one that you wrote to your ancestors, would you read that for us?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah. Let me get my book. My phone's dying so I'm like, "No," getting to a charger, oh, my god, Guys. Doing technology is hard, it is hard.
Amena Brown:
It is so hard.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Okay, hold on. Let me put my charger where it won't fall. So, I set a rock on the cord so that it is in place. I got it down, don't worry. Okay, let me find it. Okay, yeah. So, this is a chapter, the chapter is called Ancestors and this is a poem that I wrote to my ancestors. Passed on one, I see you there, not your skin and bones, nor the frame that once held you. I see your aura, your spirit, your essence. I see the glow of who you once were and who you are today. I see somehow the imprint of what you've left me here. It's not a thumbprint but some other form of spirit code somehow the shape of you carves lines into the essence of who I am, somehow I am enough because you were enough.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Ancestor, your name will always be the sound of breath in my lungs. Ancestor, your face will always look like the face of my own children. Ancestor, your essence will always feel like the wind when it slips through the tree branches singing a song. You, dear one, lead me still. I feel the gifts you've left me and I wonder how much more is waiting. I learn my own way as I reckon with your mistakes and realize that you were human once like I am human now. I wonder how much you notice from the other side. What does God feel like? I'll wait and one day you'll show me.
Amena Brown:
Oh, oh I love that so much.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Thank you.
Amena Brown:
That question of what does God feel like, it's so powerful, Kaitlin. Okay, I have one more quote I want to read. You all, Kaitlin and I are just going to be talking till Instagram be like, "You all can't talk no more." So, we're just going to keep talking till it's done. But I have one other question I wanted to ask and that was just this powerful section you had. This is from the chapter Self-examined. And you have this quote here that says, "For Black people, indigenous people and people of color, it is especially difficult to approach the topic of self-care because the system of self-care is often so unreachable for those who do not have the money to take care of themselves.
Amena Brown:
There are many layers of privilege in the conversations and self-care is often commodified, becoming yet another product of capitalism. When this happens, it also becomes harder for many of us to care for ourselves, we must consider all of this and we must consider how our oppressive systems keep so many from getting the care they need. Self-care is for everyone to help us be more healthy humans, but to get there, we all need to be honest about how the system of self-care works for all of us."
Amena Brown:
Whoo, I love that you took some time to excavate this because I think self-care is a question I want to ask every woman of color that I ever interviewed. I always want to know how are you taking care of yourself in the midst of resisting empire, in the midst of decolonizing, in the midst of the deconstruction, in the midst of facing White supremacy every day, how are you taking care of yourself? And then sometimes, in some shallow ways, it's like what's being put upon us is this idea that it's getting your nails done, it's getting massages. And I'm not saying those things can't be self-care but you examining here the systems of self-care was so powerful and I think it gives us a more holistic idea of what that actually means. And I would love to hear you talk more about how you find yourself finding a process of what holistic self-care looks like beyond the capitalism, beyond how commodified it's become. What are your thoughts?
Kaitlin Curtice:
It's funny. So, when I started therapy, I couldn't afford it so the therapist I started seeing already knocked it down a lot and then one of my followers on Twitter was like, "I'll pay for your first six months of therapy. Just tell me how much it is, just PayPal me an amount and I'll pay for your sessions." And so, that's how I got to go to therapy, otherwise, I never would have been able to afford it. But at the same time, I know the privilege that I have to even have the resources or access to even get to a therapist that's a good one, so that's why I'm saying it's so layered and it's not a straight conversation.
Kaitlin Curtice:
But when you have women, I'm not trying to judge, when you have women who are like, "I had a self-care day. I went to the spa and then I had lunch with my best friend and then I went shopping and then I had dinner with my other best friend and then I went and saw a movie." That's amazing and I love that you get to do that, most of us can't do that and, at the end of the day, I have to ask what self ... For me, getting my nails done doesn't do anything, but for a long time, I felt like that was what I was supposed to do for self-care because I was told that.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Like, "Go get your nails done, that's what women do for self-care." And then I'll be like, "Oh, you're right," and then I'd go do it and then I spent a lot of money and I didn't like it and then they chipped after two days and I was like, "What am I doing?"
Amena Brown:
Same.
Kaitlin Curtice:
"I didn't enjoy this." And so, I've had to be honest about what self-care is for me and it's things like learning my language. It literally is things like smudging and burning sage to cleanse my anxiety, deep breathing, which is free, that's something that I like-
Amena Brown:
Deep breathing, people, which is free. Wow.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Doing breathing exercises has helped so much with my anxiety. And then, self-care for me is learning to break down these systems of people pleasing and saying yes to things that I've had to do, that I have to start being honest about and that's the hard self-care. That's not like the, "I'm going to spend an afternoon with the magazines and just chill out and watch a movie," which is also self-care for me. That hard self-care of I'm going to look at these systems that I've been taught to participate in as a woman and I'm going to choose not to have to smile all the time and I'm going to choose to say no to things and that, for me, has been some real self-care that's hard self-care.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Because self-care isn't always fun either, but I think we've packaged it like it's supposed to be fun, shopping is fun. I definitely walk around Goodwill, well, I used to when it was open, I would walk around Goodwill for self-care. I would just walk around and shop at Goodwill, which is cheap, so-
Amena Brown:
Self-care that is inexpensive, people. A jam. I'm back in therapy now. We celebrate those who are able to access therapy or access those things, whether that can be books or podcasts, whatever you can access that can help you begin to do that healing but I was in a place where I was like, "I need to save up this money and see a professional." So, I had one of my first sessions with her and she was like, "I think you need to do some journaling and I'm going to send you some prompts." And I was like, "Do what now?" She was like, "Every day, I want you to journal on one of these prompts and then I want to talk about it next time we meet." And it was one of those moments where I was like, "Oh, I'm sorry. You want me to work?" We don't think about that as it relates to self-care. I feel like that's a-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Hard.
Amena Brown:
And I remember what you we're saying ... Yes, healing and growing can be hard sometimes, it will not always be relaxing but it will lead us to peace.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah. And these systems are built for us to not get self-care. These systems don't want us, they don't want me to consider my identity, they don't want me to learn about all that I am, they don't want me to write this book. I'm at the number one new release in Christian spiritual growth still and it just makes me laugh because all the other books are just these very evangelical, mostly White books and I'm there, hanging on at the top. And it's so ironic because I speak against so much of the Christian growth, the stuff we talk about right now. I'm saying other things but these are things that I think will actually make us grow is by doing this really hard stuff and it worked.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
It is a form of collective self-care if you want to think of it that way, decolonizing is self-care, too.
Amena Brown:
That is so true. It doesn't feel like the definition we have but I love that. I love that you went to that point in your book and you're giving us a broader definition of that. And I think there's so much of your book that's calling us back, not just to our individual thoughts and feelings, but also how does our individual healing and growth connect to the collective?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
To the community-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
As you are processing, how does that connect to your Potawatomi heritage? That's one of the things that really meant a lot to me reading this, that it's reminding us to be communal.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
And to be indigenous, to honor indigenous people is to be reminded that we are communal people, we are not individualistic people, right?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
So, they haven't kicked us off yet, Kaitlin. I don't know if anybody has any questions. If they have questions, they better be right questions or I'm not asking her.
Kaitlin Curtice:
[laughs]
Amena Brown:
I do want to ask you this, though. The book is out now and there are all these phases to book writing, right? There's the initial moment where you're like, "I think this is the book I need to write." And then there's when you do the actual writing and then, for those of you that have not written books yet, you have written your book and then there's almost like this pause, this calm before the storm experience before the book comes out where, in a way, you're almost able to ignore this and act like these vulnerable things you have written are not about to turn out into the public. And then it's time for your book to come out, this is book release week for you. How does it feel seeing the words be out there? I'm assuming you're already getting responses from people as they're reading. How does this phase of this particular book feel now that it's out there?
Kaitlin Curtice:
I have had so much anxiety about this book because it's a book that a lot of people won't like for a lot of reasons and that's okay. It's a very personal book, it's really digging into a lot of my own stuff. But what I realized this week, when the book came out and people started speaking back to me what I wrote and talking about it, I was able to finally tell people what the books about because I feel like I had interviews in that lull where people would be like, "So, what's your book about?" And I'd be like, "Um," and then it would take me 20 minutes to figure out how to tell people and now I know what to say.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
I know what the book is about because someone read it and they told me. They told me what it's about and that reflected what I hoped it was about and so we're good now.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
It was a weird space in there and I don't know. People on the internet have been really amazing so far, just so supportive and it's so scary to release the book in a pandemic, "What in the world?" There's no way to know how it's going to go. And so, to have this support has been awesome. It's been really beautiful. I'm really surprised by it.
Amena Brown:
I talked to Kaitlin on the phone earlier today, you all, and I told her it was just making me so happy seeing everyone sharing your book and supporting you because your voice is so needed. And for those of you that are new to the conversation, Kaitlin and I put out our last books on the same day, actually.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
So, we were walking together through that whole, oh, my god, what do we do felling. So, I got to have that experience with you with your first book which was also so wonderful, so it just did my heart a lot of good to see how much people are supporting this and the people on here are going to support it. They're going to be buying five of these books at the time, you all can buy one for yourself. The good thing about buying five books, people, is when people are like, "Oh, man, I would love a copy of Kaitlin's book," you can be like, "Boom, I got it." You know? Okay, we do have one question. Oh, it's Jess asked, "How do you respond when someone claims that you aren't a believer because of how they perceive your theology to be something that's unconventional?"
Kaitlin Curtice:
Oh, well. We can just talk about what happened at Baylor a few months ago. That's where they were like, "She's" ... Oh, and they called me a pagan sympathizer which just funny to me because I would rather just be called pagan, I don't really know what your point is. What I'm learning is that the more that I push back on Christianity and what people think Christianity is, the more that I receive this negative pushback and I'm learning to take it as a, not medal of honor, but I'm okay with it.
Kaitlin Curtice:
I think it would be harder to receive it from close friends or from friends that have known me for a long time that are like, "What are you doing?" who just don't understand. Of course, that's harder when you get it from your personal people. But when the Baylor thing happened, it was really hard but then there was this, again, on Twitter, all these people were like, "Go buy Kaitlin's book. This is why her work matters," and I just was so overwhelmed by that.
Kaitlin Curtice:
And so, I just have to look to my ancestors, look to why we have gone through this and then look to the people, whether they're Christian or not, who have always supported me and I know and I know that they will. And there are people who, because my book is with Christian Publishing House, won't buy it because they think I'm writing a book like every other Christian.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Kaitlin Curtice:
And it's one of those things where you just have to read it and see what you think because it's not going to be what you think it is either way. I am in the Christian world but it would bother a lot of Christians, what I've written and so-
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
But I'm okay with that.
Amena Brown:
Look, I'm trying to tell you. And I think even as we've been talking about, which is so present here in your book, as we've been talking about what deconstruction and decolonization look like, I was just talking to my husband about how, as I was growing up, I had a very binary faith and it worked for me for a long time until I was like, "Well, life is getting real."
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
"It's not so binary. What does that mean?" And I think there were so many things I was taught to believe in various, not just my upbringing as a child, but my upbringing in different faith environments that made me feel like, if I start asking more questions, if I start feeling like some definitions I used to have are broadening, that that's the slippery slope.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
I mean, that was the actual term like, "You're going to get down there, it's going to be a slippery slope." My husband and I always joke, there's always this phrase people will say, "Be careful." And I'm like, "Five Es, beeeee careful."
Kaitlin Curtice:
Five Es.
Amena Brown:
And he'll be like, "I'm just trying to learn a few things. It's not like I'm literal ice sliding down to some ..."
Kaitlin Curtice:
I'm going down on literal ice.
Amena Brown:
"No broken bone here. I was just doing-"
Kaitlin Curtice:
Scary enough, that metaphorical ice.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Watch out.
Amena Brown:
You know?
Kaitlin Curtice:
It is, it's really scary, it's scary and I know we scare people but it's okay. It's okay to be challenged, that's how we grow. You read a thing and you're like, "I don't know if I like that," and then you think about it for five days and you decide more whether it might be something to consider, that's what we do as humans and that's okay.
Amena Brown:
Okay, we got two more questions, Kaitlin. You have time? I know you have other engagements.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah, two more is good and then we'll leave.
Amena Brown:
Okay. So, first question is, what's your favorite coffee that you're drinking right now?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Oh, gosh.
Amena Brown:
Do you have a fave?
Kaitlin Curtice:
We buy our coffee from a local international market here in Atlanta, they roast their beans there. Have you bought their coffee at the Dekalb Farmers Market?
Amena Brown:
Girl-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Do you know-
Amena Brown:
[crosstalk 00:48:55]
Kaitlin Curtice:
... they roast their beans there?
Amena Brown:
I don't know. Let me find out.
Kaitlin Curtice:
They roast their beans there, it's really good. But anyway, we buy a light roast coffee bean bag, bag of coffee beans at the market and then we bring it home and grind it and it's our favorite. I like South American blends if that's the kind of thing you're wanting to know. I don't like African blends as much, they're more acidic for me and they hurt my stomach a little. So, I like South American like Brazil and Colombia.
Amena Brown:
Wow, I just may have learned more about coffee than anticipated, so thank you.
Kaitlin Curtice:
You're welcome.
Amena Brown:
Someone also asked what did you learn about yourself while writing this book?
Kaitlin Curtice:
Oh, gosh, I learned so much. There's this quote by E.E. Cummings, I sent it to Glennon the other night too but it's be courageous enough to grow up and become who you really are. And I think that this book was just that next step for me to grow up and become who I am, to look at my own story. Hi, sis. Oh, my sister's here. To look at my own story from my perspective, just to take it from myself and go through my childhood and just say who was I at these phases of life and what am I learning? What am I learning about myself now? And just to have that conversation with myself and then let everyone listen in on it and I learned so much, so much, yeah.
Amena Brown:
Oh, that's so good. You all, I could talk to Kaitlin all night long and, thankfully, Instagram must have gave us a few extra minutes because Kaitlin's amazing. So, I want to remind you to do this, this book right here, you can get this wherever you like to buy your books. Five of them, that would be the best thing. Kaitlin Curtice, do you have any closing words you want to share with the people? Do you have any upcoming things you want to tell the people? And of course, if the people are not following you, they need to do that, too.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of podcasts that are coming up soon. I did one with The Liturgists yesterday and just a bunch of podcasts. And so, please read the book and review it online and tell people about it because, yeah, I've just been so encouraged by the conversations that are already being started because of it. So, please buy it and read it. I would love that.
Amena Brown:
Kaitlin, thank you for-
Kaitlin Curtice:
Thank you.
Amena Brown:
... letting me be part of your virtual book tour.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Of course.
Amena Brown:
Thank you all for joining us and listening. This will be available on my IG for the next 24 hours and you don't know, Kaitlin and I might get back together and talk about all sorts of things, you don't know.
Amena Brown:
You make sure you do this, you want to get this for yourself. Okay?
Kaitlin Curtice:
[crosstalk 00:51:44]
Amena Brown:
Kaitlin, thank you so much.
Kaitlin Curtice:
Thank you. Bye, guys.
Amena Brown:
I love talking to Kaitlin. I hope you enjoyed listening in on our conversation and I'm hoping to have her back on the podcast very soon. To find out more about Kaitlin, visit kaitlincurtice.com, that's K-I-T-L-I-N-C-U-R-T-I-C-E.com. And don't worry, if you do not get this spelling correct, you can get the correct spelling and other tidbits, links, things from the show in the show notes. You can check out the show notes at amenabrown.com/herwithamena. See you all next week.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network, in partnership with iHeart Radio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.