Episode Four: Primal Creativity

July 28, 2024

Maura Conlon  00:06

Welcome, I’m putting on the tea, just like my grandmother did in County Clare Ireland more than a century ago.

Maura Conlon  00:21

You’re listening to Original Belonging. I am your host Maura Conlon, born and raised in Los Angeles. I’m passionate about the primal nature of our creativity, which allows us to reconnect with ourselves and with a sacred web of life. I hold a doctorate in depth psychology, and I’m the author of FBI Girl, a best selling memoir about my first 14 years a coming of age saga also adapted for stage, whether unfolding upon the page or the stage of your childhood playground. We all have life defining moments from our first 14 years. Stories that often get buried in our adult lives. Yet, these early visceral sometimes mystical experiences remain a treasure trove incubating our original wisdom. When remembered, the stories offered timeless inspiration, and resilience. A through thread, or our lives. 

Maura Conlon  01:46

Original Belonging is a six part narrative podcast series featuring stories and conversations, where we return to and explore the vital landscape of our early years. In each episode, I go back in time to share my story, a hologram if you like depicting the agony and the ecstasy, and the wisdom learned and these poignant coming of age years. Let’s not dismiss the places that made us come alive when we were young. They hold a key as to how we can open our hearts and evolve into our truest potential. Such primal memories are not long ago and far away. No, they live inside of you. They’re right here. Listen, close.

Maura Conlon  02:49

Episode Four. Primal creativity. Today on the episode you will hear about my first encounter with the force field called Creative energy. From the magic of my sewing craft came an enchanted sense of an early feminine sovereignty. You will also hear me in conversation with award winning author and story Alchemist, Kristin Kaye. 

Kristin Kaye  03:19

Stories are like life rafts. They’re like things that can sustain us and buoy us and allow us to rest and allow us to remember hope and inspiration and sharing them sharing stories, sharing poems, sharing visions, sharing experiences. We’re giving each other gifts in ways that we don’t fully understand.

Maura Conlon  03:46

Our first experience with creativity influences how we dream ourselves into the world. Every one of us is born with unique talents. It’s important to honor how our early fascinations do shape us. I can remember coming of age, sensing my body alive, breathing, sweating, feeling the freedom to move. I was figuring out life by instinct, testing the boundaries of my early nonconformist personality. So I came from a pretty athletic family. I was on different ball teams started in seventh grade. I played volleyball, softball and basketball. We had a hoop right on our driveway. 

Maura Conlon  04:39

So we were always playing one sport or another and I loved that world. I loved my athleticism. And I found it to be very exciting and I always resented it. When my mother would come out to the basketball court and asked me to Come in the house and help her with dinner and set the table and everything. My mother felt that she did not do enough chores to help out her mother, my Nana when she was growing up. So I think it was her goal to change that. So she made sure that we had our chores. So on the weekends, I had my chores. And every night I was either doing the dishes or helping Joe get ready for bed. But once I was playing sports, I did not want to be interrupted.

Maura Conlon  05:39

And this is also that coming of age timeframe, approaching my teenage years. That’s more at age 12. It’s also the time when my body is starting to change. So one day, my mother pulls me into her bedroom, she has something to show me. And I was a little suspicious because she normally did not do that. So I walked in and sat on her bed, and she opened up her closet door. And then she pulls out this box and sets it down next to me. And on the box, the big letters, Kotex starter kit. And I’m like, Oh, this is this is not good. So at that time, this is the 1970s we had already seen a film at school, it actually might have been a Walt Disney film from the 1940s on explaining menstruation on

News Recording  06:31

our ever realizing as a woman at work. Mother Nature controls many of our routine bodily processes, through automatic control centers, called glands. The story of menstruation really begins with one particular place. So

Maura Conlon  06:47

my mother wanted me to be prepared for the big event. And she said that when she was growing up in New York, her mother didn’t tell her a thing about starting your period. And that when that happened for her, she was very, very alarmed. And she did not want me to have that experience. So at that moment, as she pulled everything out, showed me the pads, I guess that’s what they were called. She then proceeded to pull down her pants down to her pubic area, which did not happen in my very modest household. And I just freaked out like, Oh my God, what’s going on here, she wanted to show me her sanitary belt, which is this piece of elastic that runs around your hips and keeps the pad in place for when you have your period. I mean, just even the name sanitary belt, it did not look very comfortable. I was overwhelmed with I don’t even know what the emotion was. 

Maura Conlon  07:43

I was just overwhelmed. She was preparing me for womanhood. And this was one way that she was going to do it right. And this is also the time when she was advising me that I should consider starting to shave my legs and tweeze my eyebrows. I had these really long eyebrows same as she and I refused to shave my legs because I did not see any reason to do that. And the same with tweezing my, my eyebrows. It just seemed like I was being asked to conform to something that not quite sure I wanted to conform to. My mother even called up a girlfriend and asked her to try to convince me to start tweezing my eyebrows. The rebel was there from early on. 

Maura Conlon  08:38

I did not tell my mother that I started my period in seventh grade, I did not go to that code tech starter kit. In fact, when she was out of the house, I went to the closet and took one of our white sheets and cut it into squares. Got some Kleenex, put the Kleenex inside one of the sheet squares and got some scotch tape. And I’m embarrassed to share this but I made my own sanitary pads. For months, I had my own little production studio going on in my bedroom when the doors closed. I just knew I could not go down that route that she was trying to get me to follow. There is just some instinctive voice inside that was telling me you are going to do this your own way. Which you know when you’re 12 years old, that’s that’s that voice is starting to come out. 

Maura Conlon  09:35

She saw she saw what I had been creating. And she just she saw the the new ones and the used ones. Let’s put it that way. And she was she was quite aghast. She wrote me a letter and she left it on my pillow for when I came home from school the next day. And in the letter basically it was my mother asking like where did she go wrong? And explaining to me that becoming a woman was such a Beautiful thing. And, you know, just wondering how these, you know, evil thoughts had infiltrated my brain. So I realized them that to make my mom happy, I should probably, you know, go down the route that she had prepared for me. Later in seventh grade, she got word that there was sewing being offered in the summer school program at the local public school. So she thought, well, you know, Maura seems to have a bent for creativity. She likes to use those pinking shears. Maybe it’s time for her to deal with fabric, but in a more productive kind of way. 

Maura Conlon  10:44

Every day during that summer, I would ride my bike to the local public high school, and I learned how to sew. I think my mother detected I had a creative streak. I had already written a poem in sixth grade that she had typeset I had written a song that I had played for my fifth grade class in elementary school. So she saw that I had a creative spark inside of me. My dad’s mother had been a seamstress in New York City. And my mother had a sewing machine that her mother My nana, gave to her for her engagement in 1948. So there was definitely the presence of a sewing machine in her house. And her connection to the sewing machine was very fixing hounds and holes and pants and that kind of thing. So there wasn’t really an artistic creative connection to the machine. 

Maura Conlon  11:45

So that seemed to be an invitation that was being offered to me. I’m thinking back to how much I love to get on my bike, and ride miles and miles to the fabric store. I remember as a teenager, going to the house of fabrics, my local fabric store, and just walking past all the bolts of satin, and corduroy, and cotton, and all sorts of fabrics. And I would just my fingers would just feel each bolt one by one by one by one. And there was this delightful connection, just want to touch this fabric. And I started to do that throughout my teenage years throughout my 20s. And my 30s. I mean, actually, whenever I happened to be in a fabric store when I was traveling, what is that? It’s just this embodied sensual connection. 

Maura Conlon  12:50

I just was mesmerized not only by the wardrobe set, somebody could sell. But the depiction of those women in those pattern books, simplicity Butterick, a calls, Vogue. They were living these, these really cosmopolitan, adventurous lives. So there was some sense of my imagination that was already tapping into like, Oh, this is the way into womanhood. They all look like they’re living these really important lives wearing really nice wardrobes. So they kind of became my role models. And this is also around the time that Mary Tyler Moore had hit the airwaves with her show.

Maura Conlon  13:43

So there was something in the air, you know, that feminist way of thinking this is the 1970s here. So when I entered the sewing room, I was there to to learn how to make unisex pants, and halter tops and things that hippies wore. So sewing was obviously going to be a ticket to some sort of liberation. I didn’t start that way. The first piece that I ever did so was a tunic with matching shorts and a very long zipper. And I had to tear that zipper out eight times before I finally got the approval of my teacher. I mean, this was a craft, I was learning and there were there were roles. There was a linear sense of straight lines and like a structure to it that I really liked. It was sort of a blend of the linear and the structural but then what came as a result was this unique piece of clothing. 

Maura Conlon  14:59

That’s fit my body perfectly. Being a teenager and seeing my body change, I mean that comes with all sorts of mystery, and questions. Like shifting identity, who am I going to become? What kind of female am I going to be? I think for me, I just wanted a sense of a unique expression. I think that was that way for everything I was doing from writing poetry, to playing the piano to sewing just my imagination was sparked like, oh, what can I create here that’s never been created before. My father had said that his mother, my grandmother had sown the most beautiful jacket for him. So I was very wistful hearing that. And then my mother said that her mother, my Nana sewed a beautiful yellow jacket skirt for her. And there was just a sense of, I didn’t really know my ancestors, but they sold, they sold these beautiful things. 

Maura Conlon  16:00

So I go from learning about the sanitary belt to being in my sewing classroom. And the sewing teacher takes out a tape measure, and she measures my bust, and then she measures my waist and measures my hips. So there was a sense of a direct connection to my body, like my body was being touched. And for the specific reason of creating a garment that would fit me perfectly. It felt very ancient. It just, it felt that, oh, this is how close are supposed to be made. Like they’re supposed to be connected to our bodies in a way that references the shape of our body for one thing, and the way we move in the world, there was a real excitement about that.

Maura Conlon  16:59

As a teenager, I was still fairly fairly quiet. So my form of self expression came out in my poetry or writing in my journal. And it started to come out of my sewing. It was very thrilling to go on a date or go to the store or go to wherever I was going, knowing that I was wearing something that nobody else in the world more that I created this in my little production studio, which was my bedroom, where I had my cutting board and my pins and my needles and my pinkie shares and threads in the sewing basket and my own sewing machine that an aunt had bought for me when I was about 14 years old. So my parents didn’t see much of me after I came home from school because I was in my room sewing. So in my entire wardrobe, I couldn’t get enough I had piles of fabric and piles of patterns. It was, you know, it was nirvana. Its power. It’s like pointing to the character of who I am without even knowing that that’s my character. 

Maura Conlon  18:17

That was my way of designing my life as a 13 or 14 or 15 year old. Like I didn’t have a lot of freedom, say in a lot of other different areas. So this creative this sensual, this just came out through being able to select fabric and pattern and imagine that on me and make my little alterations and create it as fast as I possibly could. I kept sewing until well into my early 20s When I moved to Berkeley and then ultimately when I moved to New York City, I wore a handmade dress to interview some of my favorite interviewees, like Alice Walker and Ben Scully. And then in New York, I wore a handmade dress to my New Yorker interview. But then when I sold my first magazine story, that was the beginning of the end of my sewing, because I knew I wanted to be a writer. I knew that was my vocation. And so I went down that path and went, went down the road of working as an editor and soon as a manager and becoming more and more ensconced in the business side of things. 

Maura Conlon  19:31

So my creativity was really taking a backseat for quite a few years. So fast forward to age 28. I’m getting married to my longtime sweetheart. My husband had the kind of career where we moved for his education and training. And so I was accommodating my work to fit into the Local Market essentially. So I basically just lost connection to my inner creative energy, it felt not that valuable anymore, or not that important, was more important to be successful in the business world, and to speak logically. And to be more linear, to be more structured, that seemed to be the path of most reward. I became an adult. I was well into my 40s. And I realized that that early connection I had in my first 14 years to my creative power, to that wildness was, slowly slowly over the years just had disappeared. 

Maura Conlon  20:51

Later on in my life, when I was going through a difficult time in my relationship, and realize that a big transition was about to happen. I signed up for a fashion illustration class. Now, I’ve never drawn anything in my life. stick figures really was was my was my talent. But some voice inside said, sign up for this class. Right now. It was starting the next day. So I didn’t know what was going on. But I knew that my life was about to change. And when your life is about to change, you go to a different place inside. looking for clues desperate for clues, I need to be connected to something inside myself that I don’t really know if it’s there yet, like a hidden resource. What came out on the page just blew me away a drawing of a beautiful three dimensional woman on the paper. And I said, who did that? I don’t know how to draw. But when I looked at this feminine form this feminine figure that I had created, I felt she was breathing. 

Maura Conlon  22:23

It was almost as if what had been silenced inside of me, in terms of a feminine energy or voice was finding itself on the page. But drawing. And sometimes this urge can be connected to a wound inside. Like perhaps there was some wounding within me, I would have loved to have known my Nana I never did. But I draw the feminine form. I would have loved if my mother lived much longer than she did. I draw the feminine form. I did not have children of my own. I draw the feminine form. So there’s some link here between our soul journey and what it is that wants to be expressed from us. Going through a time of difficulty, answers don’t come easy. And the questions are hard. I found myself falling back into my imagination as a place that could potentially save me as it did when I was a girl coming of age. 

Maura Conlon  23:41

The feeling inside when I saw what I had just drawn reminded me of when I was a teenager looking at those pattern books and seeing those women looking as if they had such important places to go as if they were living such adventurous lives. I mean, it was that kind of remembrance inside of my body when I saw these figures of women that that I was drawing. As I was asking myself, Where is this coming from? There’s no drawing talent in my family. I’ve never drawn anything in my life. It was like the future was calling me by what I was doing by risking doing something I had never done before. Growing up I had that innate creativity. I didn’t particularly call it it then. But it was a source of how I formed my identity and how I designed my life. And I realized that oh maybe that never went away. Maybe that just went dormant or it went into the basement because I had to go be an adult for all those years. And, you know, be a good good person, good wife, play my roles, honestly and well. 

Maura Conlon  24:56

But there was something lingering inside like you know You can run, but you cannot hide. And during this time of great loss, therapy is helpful. And then in addition, resourcing that creativity inside, to deliver me to a place of like, it’s going to be okay because even though there’s uncertainty, look at what you can create, even though you don’t know where your life is going, and this is such an incredibly sad time, look at what comes out of your hands. So it was as if my creativity was actually saving me. Or giving me a sense of hope, with a message of just keep trusting your instinctive drive to stay in your imagination and create, create, however, that comes out. I think this goes back to the sense of play that we do as kids, I mean, play is pure creativity.

Maura Conlon  26:14

We’re outside of the zones of structure and, and time, essentially, we’re immersed in in timelessness. So play and creativity are very similar in that regard. So for anyone who’s going through a difficult time, I would invite you to think back upon those earlier times of your life when you did play, and what did you do? Where did you go? Were born creative, we’re born to play. This is how we’re hardwired. We’re hardwired for creativity, however you want to define that. And a lot of us think that oh, yeah, well, when you’re a kid, you’re allowed to play, you’re allowed to be creative. And then you really just put that away to become this adult. I was doing my graduate work, I was conducting a study around sustainability. 

Maura Conlon  27:14

And I was interviewing some people to ask them, what did they feel about the environment and living a more sustainable life? And the answers were very logical, and very, no thought out well, and all of that. But then I changed the question to ask, where did you go as a kid to be creative and to be out in nature and to play like, what was that like for you, all of a sudden, the stories will start coming out. I guess what I’m saying is that the sense of creativity is not long ago, and far away. It’s just, it’s seeking permission from our adult self to come out again. And it’s not about, you know, becoming like an opera star in New York or getting the painting in the mat. I mean, there’s something that comes out that fills you with joy. And that is priceless.

Maura Conlon  28:11

Yeah, sometimes it seems our minds are hijacked by a sense of fear and anxiety in the world in which we live, that there’s just these loops that go around and around in terms of all the things there are to worry about. Because there are so many challenges. But I’m not really sure how many answers alight from that kind of thinking. It’s as if we really do need to jump tracks and get to a different place where we’re accessing the deepest resource inside of us that goes beyond the machinations of our rational brain. And sometimes, the only way we can do that is to surrender to that sense of spontaneity or play, or a creative immersion that really allows us to tap into a more timeless place, which connects us directly to those early years of our life, when that’s how we belong to the world. 

Maura Conlon  29:19

We were creative beings that belonged to a dynamic unfolding world. That’s our first knowing. So how we get there is not by thinking about it. It’s by immersing oneself in it. When we do that, it’s easier to connect to a sense that anything is possible. And I think a part of it too, is this desire for intimacy. A lot of us including myself, feel that desire now for a girl Your sense of intimacy with with life, as screens take over and so much information out there. So much is accessible through machines. But it’s so different to use one’s hands and feel and touch and smell, and connect. There’s like a ritual sense about it, to slow down to go so deep that it’s almost as if the universe is coming to us as we come to it. I mean, that is really the joy of being in this kind of space. And so I think I tapped into that at a really early age without being able to name it. But it became a thread that became fortified inside of me. And although there were times I forgot about it, it never goes away. And there’s something ancient about threads. 

Maura Conlon  30:56

I mean, it goes back to the Greeks. And our literature is full of stories of fabric, and, you know, the social fabric, the thread of life. I mean, it is a major archetypal theme, just as a species. So it’s powerful to pay attention to these, these ancient origins. Sometimes objects are important to us. And we don’t particularly know why. Like I loved looking at that sewing machine from my Nana 1948, black, metal, heavy, oily, I just love looking at it, I felt a connection. And I think we all have objects like that. That gives us a sense of meaning, even though we don’t understand it. And I also have my baptismal dress, my first totally convenient dress from second grade, my prom dress, I sewed my wedding dress that my mother also wore. So there’s something about a connection to these, these garments that start when we’re born and take us all the way to the time that we we die. When someone dies, there’s a cloth that goes over the body. So it really is timeless.

Maura Conlon  32:21

It can be a startling discovery to realize we are all born creative. Perhaps there was a moment during your childhood, in your home, or maybe in nature, where you felt that sense of delight, maybe smelling pine in the air, or climbing trees and hearing them whisper to you. My guest today discovered this creative spark early on. award winning author, meditation teacher and founder of story alchemy. Kristin Kaye felt nature’s aliveness as a girl coming of age. She had the curiosity to listen, to follow her muse, and become a conduit for this deep wisdom. I met Kristen more than 20 years ago, when we discovered we had the same New York literary agent. We began a conversation about what sparks creativity. And that conversation continues here.

Kristin Kaye  33:25

I grew up in many places. So I was born in Madison, Wisconsin. But my parents, my dad was getting his PhD there at the university. And I left when I was, I think five or six months old. So I have no memory of Wisconsin. We moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, because my dad was teaching at Carnegie Mellon. And we stayed there until I was four. And so I have only snippets of memory from that time, but they do exist, but they’re definitely in more in the kind of recesses of my memory. And then we moved to Rockville, Maryland, because my dad got a job working for the government. He was working at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. So we lived in Rockville, Maryland, from when I was for until I was 12. And so this is really where the bulk of my memories come from. And so Rockville, Maryland at the time, and still is it’s a suburb of Washington, DC. 

Kristin Kaye  34:23

We were living in a suburban development. I essentially grew up in suburban sprawl. And I went to Barnsley elementary school and I walked to school. It was a relatively peaceful suburb at the time, for the most part. I don’t remember wilderness. I don’t really remember why it opened places, but across the street, behind the houses across the street, there was a creek. And so somehow at the back yard of those houses, there was some kind of wilderness It was what was available in the suburbs, and we used to spend a lot of time there, I’m sure They were probably, you know, 10 to 20 trees and like a little trickle of a creek, it was a really rich place. Nonetheless, both parents worked. 

Kristin Kaye  35:11

And so coming home from school or on the weekends, or in the summer, a lot of unorganized time playing in the backyard and long summer days, you know, popping tar bubbles in the street or wandering into someone’s house and digging into their food cabinet to get Doritos or you know, whatever was not allowed at my house, playing hide and seek until dusk, hearing somebody call your name and knowing that it was time to go home. But there was an incredible sense of freedom. And there was incredible richness and joy and exploration and wonder, just being free to play. I

Maura Conlon  35:54

was going to ask you that because in your adult years, you would end up writing the beautiful book tree dreams, which I would love to talk about later. So I was curious if there was that touchstone in nature, where you had some sort of fascination and how that made you feel in terms of that sense of wonder?

Kristin Kaye  36:13

Well, it’s really interesting, because as I said, you know, this was suburbia. So being able to dig in the dirt, or being able to walk across a cool Creek in the middle of summer and have to learn about balance, because the rocks were unstable or falling in and getting totally soaked, and then having to figure out what to do and being soaked until you dry it off in the sun. The feeling of rolling in the grass at night and your skin becoming sweaty and itchy. And there just was a sense of freedom. 

Kristin Kaye  36:45

That was probably the most important part of it. In years later, when I let’s say return to the woods, probably in my late 20s and early 30s, after having lived in New York City after having been in you know, many major cities in the US. It was such a bomb. And it again, it was really instinctual. It wasn’t something that I thought to myself, Oh, I need nature. But when I went into it, it was like I was found again.

Maura Conlon  37:15

That connection back to your your early years, perhaps that sense of embodied freedom. Yeah, I’d

Kristin Kaye  37:21

say that it was in my body. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, there was just it was something that I knew it was something that felt peaceful. It was something that gave me a sense of freedom. There was another aspect to this. My mom’s stepdad so my step grandfather, his family had a cabin in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. And this was a community that had been created for the workers of the Lackawanna railroad. And so these were cabins that were around a lake called Loomis lake and the town nearby was called hop bottom. And there was kind of nothing else around it was farmland basically. So we would go to this cabin that had been in his family, and was really a summer cabin. 

Kristin Kaye  38:08

And everybody kind of joked that it was put together with chicken wire and spit. He was a really odd guy. He was somebody who fought in World War Two, he was a tank commander, the Battle of the Bulge, and he drank bourbon and his coffee in the mornings. He clearly had a lot of things that he carried with him from that time, but he was a crazy wilderness man. And he would do things like take the bark off of white birch trees, and he would take some of those peelings. 

Kristin Kaye  38:36

And then he would write poetry to my grandmother and leave it around this cabin that was put together with chicken wire and spit or he would take the fungus off the sides of trees, but he would write poems on that and, and there was one I remember my grandmother had in her bedroom, kind of like her dressing area was built into the corner of their bedroom. And next to her, you know, makeup, mirror and lamp was this tree year with the poem. I don’t know now what poem was on there, but he would make them up himself. I would spend a lot of time there and wandering the woods and rolling across the lake and collecting frogs.

Maura Conlon  39:13

I love that image. I mean, that’s so profound that this link between if we want to call it creativity, or creative expression and nature, just fused like that. It’s a great pivot to how you discovered your own creativity. As a young girl,

Kristin Kaye  39:31

I always had a very active imagination. I loved to sing. I loved to perform is probably too strong a word because when I was little, I certainly didn’t know what that was. But Saturdays in our house was the cleaning day. And we all had our jobs and so my job was to clean my bedroom, the living room and the downstairs bathroom. And during the cleaning time, my dad would turn on the stereo, he had a turntable, he would turn on the stereo and he would blast, Helen ready. Bread, The Beatles, John Denver. And so I would sing at the top of my lungs and clean the living room. 

Kristin Kaye  40:18

And here’s the thing. I was Ringo Starr’s girlfriend. And I was also the daughter of the blonde guy on that TV show that cops TV show called chips, California Highway Patrol, whatever was all the guys from chips would be in the living room. And I was often a backup dancer and singer. And I wanted to be on stage as what I was really determined to be. And it really came more out of play, it really came more out of exploration. I took voice lessons, I took theater classes, nobody was especially encouraging me. But nobody was saying don’t do that it was kind of neutral was like, okay, you know, you’re interested in that. Why don’t you give it a try. But there was a natural inclination and curiosity about these things. And I loved it. I loved exploring it. I loved writing and just creativity in a lot of different forms.

Maura Conlon  41:22

What I love about hearing, what you’re saying is that it’s something that you came in with, it

Kristin Kaye  41:27

seems, it wasn’t necessarily inclined, for example, to science or to math, but definitely singing on definitely writing and definitely theater were things that I was really passionate about.

Maura Conlon  41:44

That story you shared of your step grandfather writing poetry and the bark of a white birch tree. Wow, that really stays with me. It’s so so poignant. Are there other stories of creativity in your family of origin or your your ancestry that hinted towards the importance of creative expression, or, or being a storyteller?

Kristin Kaye  42:08

You know, my family has a lot of alcoholism. And so the first things that come to mind are the ways in which, you know, lives were really arrested by advanced alcoholism and tragic stories of the way in which that really just kind of put the kibosh on so much. It affected every one of my grandparents, let note three of my four grandparents, I will say that my father’s father was not an alcoholic. He was a Polish Jewish immigrant who came over when he was 14. And so I grew up with him. He probably died when I was about 10. And when he first came over from Poland, or early on, he owned a bakery chain in Washington DC called Piddles. Bakery. And apparently the jingle was piddly DS, it’s Piddles for me, because pillow is my maiden name. 

Kristin Kaye  43:09

By the time I was growing up, though, he no longer had that chain, but his brother in law had a bakery at that point. So he would bring day old baked goods to the house, and he would knock on the door and he would whistle he would go. And then we knew it was him and we would all come down. And he is to love to tell stories. He was a tall man as I remember. And he would pull me into his lap. And he would always want to tell me stories about where he came from and coming over. And one particular experience in which I remember feeling a little impatient because I think I’d heard the stories, the same ones multiple times. I wasn’t really interested. 

Kristin Kaye  43:46

But I remember there was a way in which he kind of held me like he wouldn’t let me get off his lap because he really wanted me to, to get this name, there is something in that in which I felt like looking back as a child I didn’t understand. But I can see now as an adult that he really wanted me to hear this. He really wanted to make sure it was implanted in me. And so I did learn a love story from him. And I did learn a warmth of bringing people together and a sense of connection through that.

Maura Conlon  44:17

Was there a particular story that you remember him telling you?

Kristin Kaye  44:21

You know, the sad thing is there isn’t. The stories that I know of him really come now from my parents, and the things that they told me about his journey over having to escape the Russians, who were you know, rounding up young Jewish poles at the time, how he had to hide in his chimney a few times when the Russians were in his village. I don’t remember any of his stories, which is sad, but I do remember the kind of felt sense of him. I can feel his old world being you know, I can feel his love. I can hear his accent. I can see the warmth in his eyes. So in that way Those are the things that really were passed on. The imprint of him is still with me. It’s

Maura Conlon  45:06

like he was giving you a transmission seen a light and you perhaps that you could accept what he was giving? Well,

Kristin Kaye  45:13

I could never say if that’s what was going on, but I certainly know how I felt when I was in his presence. And, you know, I could say the same is true from my step grandfather, there’s a lot more stories that I remember of him, I was older, when he passed. So I had a lot more interaction with him. You know, this was somebody who was an alcoholic, but very functioning and very generous and very kind hearted. I think of him like kind of a Hemingway kind of character, he was definitely larger than life, definitely into all kinds of outdoor experiences and adventures. He was big and solid and muscular. And he would pat you on the back and you kind of go flying across the room, and you wanted to show me the woods, you know, I did seem to absorb it in a way that he recognized. And so that was definitely more of a sense of connection and a sense of him definitely wanting to impart something to me.

Maura Conlon  46:19

I see these two strands of Kristen in the woods, and then Kristen with a vacuum cleaner singing at the top of her lungs, and both very powerful this way from the past two, to the present, the sense of freedom that you felt and imagination and connection to the ancestors and your own voice. How did that help you as you came of age, you know, so many girls lose that sense of connection to voice? And was that the case for you?

Kristin Kaye  46:50

One of the things I didn’t mention about being in the living room when I was you know, seven, or eight or whatever singing is, whenever I heard someone walked by the living room, I immediately would stop. It was like I wanted to be on stage. But I didn’t want anybody to see me. So I had a sense of also being shy really shy about this, could I really do this. So there was a tension, my parents had both grown up and really rocky homes and experienced a lot of personal, emotional devastation. And so my home was a home that needed to have everything kind of be copacetic. 

Kristin Kaye  47:32

And everything needed to be emotionally just so. And somehow, I was not born to live that way. And so there was there were some challenges between a sense of freedom and a sense of needing to live a life that felt safe. And I’m just not wired that way. So in my early 20s, one of the first ways that this expressed itself was that I wanted to go to college for theater. And I was told no, that was not a sound future path, and that I should really get a practical degree and then to fall back on and, you know, I could do theater on the side or something. I tried that for my first two years of college and I was completely depressed. 

Kristin Kaye  48:18

I was taking a lot of the other kind of one on one to one classes, you know, when you’re in a hall with 500 people and given a lot of information and then be able to regurgitate it back. And I somehow felt this desperate need to create something, I wanted to be able to take something and process it and need to learn the process of creating something for myself. I took my first writing class. And there was something in that when I took that writing class, that was the first time that I really felt capacity. And there was something in that where I was like, yes, like I needed to go inside, I needed to see what was in there. I needed to shape it. And I needed to put it out onto the page in a way that made sense. And I had to learn how to make it make sense. And that turned the light on.

Maura Conlon  49:11

Like I am a creative person. And I’m a conduit for this creativity to come through me. Absolutely.

Kristin Kaye  49:16

So I really wrestled, I’d say for a number of years with, you know what it would really mean to be able to really give myself over to this creative life because I think that there was essentially self made fortress that I’d created, you know, in response to my upbringing, a way of being safe in the world in a way of what was safe emotionally, what was safe to talk about who it was safe to be. And in my early 20s that really had to come down. 

Kristin Kaye  49:53

And so there was definitely a transitional process where that needed to all break away and And in that process, then I had to get to a place in which I needed to really rely on and look for the place that that creativity came from. And devote myself to that. It was a really conscious choice. Because I felt like the possibility of depression, the possibility of substance abuse, you know, just kind of like working it out in the wrong ways was really high. And if I didn’t want to head down that path, then I needed to choose a different one.

Maura Conlon  50:36

Well, thank you for sharing that. And it’s something I can relate to in my family as well. You know, we, in our culture, think of creative people as like all those people over there, those are the creative people. And we’re all the, you know, the practical people, however, that differentiation is made, but I really hear you speaking to that link between creative expression and facing suffering. And I wonder if there’s anything more you can say about that, in terms of your journey to accept yourself as a creative person?

Kristin Kaye  51:07

Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, I would say that it’s basically been an evolutionary process ever since my early 20s, ever deepening understanding of what that means ever deepening relationship to vulnerability, ever, deepening willingness to explore what Surrender means. I think that would be a big part of it. You know, I really was struggling with this sense of Was it okay to say the things that I wanted to say, I was struggling with a sense of confidence, a sense of identity. And at the time, I was, therapists had said, Oh, do you want to try Prozac? 

Kristin Kaye  51:51

You know, I’d been struggling, I’d say for probably a couple years. And so I, you know, at that point, I thought, sure, that would be really helpful. I was looking for relief. And, and apparently, there’s about 1% of people, I don’t know what the percentage is. But there is a percentage of people who have a really adverse reaction to Prozac. And it actually takes their experience of their depression or confusion and amplifies it greatly. And that was my experience. So it was suggested, did I want to go into a hospital to take me off the Prozac and then figure out the next step? And I did. And so I found myself at the age of 20, in a psychological institution. And I really had to ask myself how I got there. But when I really look at it, there was something I remember, I was sitting on the smoking porch one day, and I was having a cigarette. 

Kristin Kaye  52:45

And I remember this feeling of like, Oh, here you are, you’re on the smoking porch, smoking a cigarette? Where do you go from here. And there was something really specific that arose in me, which was a sense that this was a culmination of a lot of choices, generational choices, they weren’t all mine. Some of them were, a lot of them were. And it was a moment in which I had to say, if I want to choose a different path, then I’m going to have to really rely on my sense of direction, and my sense of inner knowing and really trust in the creative process, because that’s the thing that most spoke to me. 

Kristin Kaye  53:31

There was something that happened on that porch, there was a shift that took place. And it’s kind of like I went in, and it was like the end of one road. And when I came back out, there was a greater world, there was a greater sense of knowing there was a greater unfolding, that I needed to give myself to. And that’s how I would discover my own choices and my own voice and my own path.

Maura Conlon  54:00

Wow, that is so powerful. I just, you know, it feels like this call to being a creative person, is a many level journey. It’s like a trip to the underworld, started in the shallow end, and then go to the deep end. And then whoever thought that the deep end could be 100 feet down, and to go there and to feel that voice bestowing the power to say you have a choice. And for something to come up inside of you that yes, I belong to the world as a creatively expressed person. And the courage that’s required to take a step forward into a world of your own unfolding is is huge.

Kristin Kaye  54:43

It’s huge. And yet, that is what our life is asking of us, is to go to that place to discover that seed of truth or that nugget of gold or that gem, you know, that’s ours to share with the world. old stories are based on our sense of discovery and having to go to places that are hard to get to where we’ll face challenges where we’re going to be asked to go beyond who we think we are, and what we think we’re capable of, in order to become who we are. This is something that we’ve traded willingness to watch a lot of other stories and watch tons of series on Netflix and movies, and, you know, kind of allow that living out to happen outside of us and think that oh, that happens on the screen. And we’ve forgotten that that actually happens within our own lives.

Maura Conlon  55:37

I’m swimming in everything that you’re saying. Because you’re speaking to a biological imperative right now, an inner knowing that’s our birthright. But people are fearful, and facing that internal knowing. And that’s one reason why I love talking about these formative landscapes, because we can sense into your connection to what sustained you early on. It was yesterday, when I been embraced by an ancestor or seeing the poetry on the bark. And like, somehow, these images are images of resilience, they serve a

Kristin Kaye  56:15

purpose, you can see resilience, and you can see the beauty of the Spirit. And you can see the way in which stories are like life rafts. They’re like things that can sustain us and buoy us and allow us to rest and allow us to remember hope and inspiration and sharing them sharing stories, sharing poems, sharing visions, sharing experiences, we’re giving each other gifts in ways that we don’t fully understand. I

Maura Conlon  56:47

would love it if we could go to parties. And instead of just asking, how are you to ask questions? What was a highlight of your first 14 years? Or who did you think you were back then? I mean, it’s such an invitation. I love that.

Kristin Kaye  57:04

And I think you should start these parties. And I think you should invite your friends to have these parties, I think it’s a great idea, because I had certainly forgotten about a lot of this. And unless someone asks you, it kind of stays in the attic of disregarded or forgotten memories. And you know, meanwhile, it’s like when you pull them up again, it’s like, they’re still full of gifts,

Maura Conlon  57:26

you’re showing that relationship between suffering or stifling. And then like this creative force that just needs to come out of us, and how there is this tension of those two opposites. For me, I mean, I grew up very shy, but very creative. And now as an adult, going through a difficult some difficult times, it was my creativity that really saved me. I was like, oh, yeah, that’s what I came into the world with. 

Maura Conlon  57:52

So this thing that comes with us into the world is the thing that can actually be part of our capacity to move forward. I would love to just turn a little bit because you and I met when you had published your first book, Iron Maidens, and we found out that we had the same agent. Then after that you wrote the award winning tree dreams, so beautiful. And I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the storyline of that book, because it feels so resonant.

Kristin Kaye  58:25

I’m jumping through time to when tree dreams really started to come to be and I think I could say that much of my 20s was my really trying to find confidence in my voice, find confidence in the process, feel comfort with creating in the world now I was doing a lot of that but doing a lot of things in the 20s you know, still trying to figure out how to make a living, how you know how to, you know, where was I going to live, meeting my, you know, who would then become my husband and all that. So there was a lot of that stuff. And so, when my husband and I moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2002, you know, I’d grown up on the East Coast. 

Kristin Kaye  59:08

And so when I moved to Oregon, there was a two lane highway they connected Portland to Seaside, Oregon highway 26 and I met you in Portland, so I know that you know, highway 26 and highway 26 was this incredible, beautiful road and on either side of highway 26 was forest for as far as the eye could see. And I remember just driving through and there was such a quiet, the trees stood so tall, there was beautiful shade. It was nice and cool. You could just kind of put your head back on the headrest and just allow yourself to just your eyes to scan the forest for like an hour and a half. And over the years that I lived there you started to see clear cuts in square patches high up on the hillsides and then in a very short period of time more clear cuts started to Take over the hillside until they were right up next to the road. 

Kristin Kaye  1:00:03

And there was something in that that was violent and aggressive and terrifying, because you had the experience of this beautiful pristine forest, and that the spaciousness, and again, the quiet and the sense of peace that just was natural. And then you would see the clear cuts, and they were bald, and everything was gone. And it was only dirt that was now dry and hard, because there was nothing to kind of break the sun from baking it. I was trying to find a good response to this, like, how do you respond to this? I took urban forestry one to one in Portland is so great that you can take a course like that. And I became a neighborhood tree steward, which meant that I was part of a group of people that, you know, checked on all the neighborhood trees in nature, they were cared for and offered tree education. And I discovered that there was a guy down the street from me who he was part of an organization called ascending the Giants. 

Kristin Kaye  1:01:05

And they climbed and measured the biggest tree of each species for the National big tree registry. And so I tagged along with them and went out into that now we’re talking wilderness, clumping through ferns that are up to your hips that wrap around your legs as you try to walk. And so my job and following him around was to ask what is a forest look like? What does a healthy forest look like? What are our choices? In creating a healthy forest? What’s the difference between a clear cut and selective forestry? And so I created Duff dinners, so much like farm to table dinners. This was like What would this be farm to table it would be like tree to pay, you know? 

Kristin Kaye  1:01:56

Yeah, we were going into the woods. And he was telling diners about or telling participants about healthy forests and how that works. I was reading from tree dreams, I had a chef who was harvesting things from the forest and creating this incredible meal. And we also had a local publisher, who was talking about publishing and the realities, the economic realities of publishing. So this was duck dinner. So all of this went into the experience, I needed to learn enough. And I also was vetted by Earth first to join a tree set and lived with Earth. First, I lived in a redwood tree 100 feet high for about four days at a tree said, in order to research the book, tell

Maura Conlon  1:02:42

us about that the sensation of living in a tree, a redwood tree for four days, I think

Kristin Kaye  1:02:49

it goes down as one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had definitely starting with how I even you know, made contact to be considered and then vetted, and then the training I had to go through and just the whole process. But when I ultimately arrived at the tree, after what was probably a two month process to be allowed to participate, I had to climb 100 feet up the rope. And you know, this is a climbing rope that they have rigged, it’s similar to rock climbing. And it’s a similar kind of climbing rope. 

Kristin Kaye  1:03:22

But you really aren’t encouraged not to touch the tree because you don’t want to do any damage. You have a harness on and you have kind of a stirrup and I can’t explain the rigging except to say that there was a way in which I had to step up and kind of hoist my body up the rope. I felt like an inch worm, you know, and then kind of like slide something up again, and then step into the stirrup again, and I had to inch worm my way up

Maura Conlon  1:03:45

this rope. Were you full of competence, or were you scared?

Kristin Kaye  1:03:49

Oh, goodness, I was not full of confidence. I was full of adrenaline and enough so that I don’t know, fear was held at bay enough. I think that I felt like I don’t know, there’s a certain point in which you step into a situation like that. And you’re giving yourself to the dynamics of that situation. And so I was giving myself to this. I mean, there was always the possibility that there could be loggers or federal agents that would come to you know, try to disrupt the tree said, situations like this, or trees can be cut down. You know, it’s it’s very dangerous for the tree sitters who were there. So I didn’t know. You also don’t know if there’ll be extreme weather. When I arrived at the top, I was so exhausted my body. I mean, you know, I was always I’ve always been an athlete but not at the level required to be able to climb something like that. 

Kristin Kaye  1:04:47

And also inch warming up a rope uses muscles that you don’t know that you have. And when you arrive at the top there kind of like two or three things that you see. There was a platform a wooden platform made of ply would very small, you know enough for maybe two people to sit on, that kind of rested on branches. And on top of that they call up any kind of camping equipment. So there’s a gas stove and buckets of food and water. And so that’s where you cook their tarps over that. And then in between two branches, they have taken P cord. And they weave what’s called a dream catcher. 

Kristin Kaye  1:05:23

And so you sleep on this net, between two branches, and there’s a sleeping bend, so you’re suspended. And the tree because you’re, you know, you’re 10 stories up, or more, depending on, you know, where you are, from down below, you think a redwood is super stable. But as you go up higher, you know, the tree kind of goes from side to side very slowly, or sometimes more dramatically, depending on the weather. And also, the branches kind of like go up and down a little bit like a wave. So you realize that the world is in constant motion. And you feel that when you’re when you’re up there? What

Maura Conlon  1:06:04

was one of the great wisdoms that you received from sitting with the tree? Huh?

Kristin Kaye  1:06:10

You know, it’s a great question. And I have to think a little bit because I spent a lot of time with different trees than I don’t know, I think in general, that the natural world is infinitely generous and abundant. When you spend time deep time when you really take time. And allow yourself to be with the natural world, whether you’re camping, or whether you have enhanced the great benefit of living in a redwood tree for four days, there is a way in which you can allow yourself to commune or, or fall back into, or I called it being on tree time, you can get a very different sensibility of time and place. And that’s a gift.

Maura Conlon  1:07:03

You know, I’m seeing Kristen as this kid by the creek and the woods, and then the adult Kristen and on top of that tree and this holding of the power and nature is this through thread. What a gift that is that you offer not only yourself but the world in your writing and your work. Is there anything you’d like to say about what you’re up to now with so many wonderful things that you do in the world?

Kristin Kaye  1:07:30

Well, I don’t know if I could really improve on what you just said, I that’s really a beautiful image. And it’s kind of a beautiful gift to me really to hear what you just articulated. So thank you, it was really beautiful to reflect back on my life and that way and connect the dots. It’s an aspect of our life that you know maybe is a place we haven’t visited in a while. So whether it’s going to those places in our own past or own life or in the lives of others or going to places in nature and really giving ourselves to the place and giving ourselves to the memory is so rich, and I really do believe have has something to offer

Maura Conlon  1:08:17

that was award winning author Kristin Kaye. Kristen’s books include tree dreams, a novel, and her memoir, Iron Maiden is the celebration of the most awesome female muscles in the world. Kristen is also a book coach and founder of story alchemy, an online writing lab.

Maura Conlon  1:08:51

Thank you so much for listening to Original Belonging. I’m your host, Maura Conlon. Please subscribe rate and recommend with love wherever you listen to podcasts. And to find out more about each episode, please delve into the show notes. To learn more about how you can engage with the world of stories within you. Please find me online at originalbelonging.com and on Instagram @originalbelonging. This production was co created by award winning media midwife, Ahri Golden. You can find a link to her work in the show notes and on her website, ahrigolden.com That’s ahrigoldn.com. 

Maura Conlon  1:09:54

Join us next time as Original Belonging continues.