The Power of Indigenous Storytelling with Author Kaitlin Curtice

Hi everyone and welcome back to this week's episode of the Mom's to Create podcast. Today's guest is Caitlyn Curtis. She's an award-winning author, poet-storyteller and a public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Pottawame Nation, caitlyn writes on the intersections of spirituality and identity. She also speaks on these topics to diverse audiences who are interested in truth-telling and healing. Besides her books, caitlyn has written online for sojourners, religion news service on being self-magazine, oprah Daily and more. Her work has been featured on CBS and in USA Today. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her family and, of course, she's a mom. Enjoy today's episode, caitlyn. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here. Your book Winter Gifts I'm holding it up. I read it to my daughters. They loved it. They thought it was beautiful too. It's just everything, from the words, the story to the illustrations. Everything is so beautiful, anyway, but there's more to you than just this book too. So thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Okay, let's just dive into you. Go ahead and introduce yourself to everyone and then just talk about you, your story and your journey.

Bonjour, caitlyn Curtis and Dejna Kas Bodoadmi and Dal. Hello, my name is Caitlyn Curtis, I am a citizen of the Pottawadmi Nation and I am an author and a public speaker. I'm a mom, I'm a pet lover, I have two dogs and my family lives in the Philadelphia area. And yeah, I have been writing since I was little. I have journals back to when I was probably seven or eight years old, and a lot of them are just sort of daily ramblings, of just journaling, but a lot of them were poems that I wrote when I was young, or other little stories or songs that I wrote. I wanted to be a singer-songwriter for a while in there, and so it's really wonderful to go and look back at these words that I have written and you know sort of the inner world that I was cultivating even as a child. I think poetry and words have always been like a safety and a shelter to me, and so I really it makes sense now that I've become a writer and I don't know that I don't think that I really thought I could be a writer until I became one. It was like something that just felt beautiful but a little too far off and so sort of for me. It felt like I was making my way toward this career, but also felt like it kind of just surprised me, which is really beautiful and I'm really grateful for that. So I have published four books. I have three adult nonfiction books and then Winter's Gifts is my first children's book, and Winter's Gifts is actually part of a series of four books on the four seasons that will come out over the next few years. So I am so excited for the end result of having this sort of box set of these four seasons, which is just like such a dream for me. So the children's book writing world is sort of a new world for me, but I absolutely love it and I think it kind of brings me back to my child self and why I've always loved words. And so I began a blog when my first child was born in, let's see, 2011. And so I started a blog called Stories and it was like you know, just things I was learning, processing as a new mom, as someone working through their spirituality and faith, as just a human, trying to understand what our stories mean. So I just like wrote on everything that I could think of or that I was feeling, and I think that that sort of began my steady writing journey. That sort of started teaching me discipline, and I would go to a coffee shop with my little baby in his carrier and I would just set him beside me and I would just write. Even if it was just for like an hour and a half, it was still reading other books and writing and just feeling that energy, and then I would write my blog sometime during the week and it just was a medicine for me. It was just what I needed. I needed it so badly and so I just kept doing that and then eventually, some of those thoughts that were in my journals became my first book, which was called glory happening, and it was these essays and prayers I had written. So so, yeah, it's been a really beautiful journey and you know, learning the publishing world I've now been with three different publishing houses over my career and so learning a lot about that, learning a lot about myself and and what boundaries I set around my work, how much I value myself in my work and my voice and as an indigenous woman trying to navigate Publishing when there aren't a lot of indigenous authors out there and that needs to change and so constantly like, so grateful for this work and also, you know, wondering how I can help make publishing a better place and a safer place for a lot of people. So, yeah, so that's a little bit about how I got here.

I think you're on a great path of opening that up to more indigenous women, because you've been featured on many different platforms and many different things. I even saw like over daily, like, yeah, wow, that's amazing, you're getting out there, you're getting inspiration for other women out there and your own stories, going back to winter's gifts, you know, without giving it away so people can read it to their, their children but I like how she was like this girl, what she knew, this is what she knew, this is how the world is. But then her friends, who were the same as her, you know, we're like that's not, that's not how it is. You know, then, whenever they came over to her house and she's like, like I'm too scared, like what if they, you know, make fun of me or whatever, but I want to tell them, like what I believe. And then, when she tells them, and then some, like they were asking more questions about it, like that is just, I love that, that's beautiful. You know, like Just how you presented it.

Winter's gifts was kind of like a melding of my, my story, my experiences, and I was young and watching my kids grow up and you know times when they may do something or say something and other kids sort of laugh at them or they're like, no, we don't do that. And I've seen that with my own children and and I know that there are kids, yeah, all around the world who have these certain experiences, and especially indigenous Children all around the world who have, who try to express sort of a relationship with Mother Earth, and they're also non native kids who express this, who still get made fun of in our society because we just don't See value in that relationship. And so I I hoped that it would be sort of a universal story of how Even adults, how we, can read a book like this and think, oh, how could I like celebrate my relationship with Mother Earth again? And I think Donnie and her heart, the pain she feels to and the healing and her dreams, all of these beautiful, like sacred moments with her family and With her dog, sam, and just with the trees in her yard, like this sort of safety bubble that she has to process who she is and how she views the world around her Allows her to have that courage to share with her friends, and I hope that that gives other kiddos courage to, you know, to share what they see in the world and to share it in a way that, like, builds community and brings people together, and I think a lot of kids have that inside of them.

And it's exciting to know that this is gonna be a four book series of each of the seasons. Now I'm excited for the other ones to come out and we'll obviously collect them, put them on our bookshelf, just to have all of the different ones and to see how you like describe the like nature in all these different seasons. It's gonna be exciting to see. So congratulations on your books and all of your Successes and everything to come to. I feel like you're just like in the deep part of it right now. There's so much more that's still gonna come out.

I, I'm just one of those people who, like I, decorate my home for the seasons. I, you know, I have different different containers in my basement, I pull them out and and I just love, you know, those little, just little things around home that sort of Help us shift with the seasons, like that. I think that that's just a really it's natural for us as humans to follow the seasons of Mother Earth, even though we don't, we don't always value that or think through it. But it really makes sense that, like every few months, we would say, okay, let's sort of evaluate what to shift and change in our life. Like that's a, it's such a natural, wonderful response, you know, and and I think that those of us that love to sort of decorate our homes and change things in our homes, that's such a natural thing. And part of that for me is books, children's books. So you know, in the tubs in my basement I have, like winter, winter books and I have, you know, a few spring books or Books that just sort of celebrate the different times there. I read fiction in the mornings for part of my like daily routine and I read based on the season that's coming. You know, like if, if I can find books that sort of match that and I think that that's just A part of who I am, and I mean a lot of indigenous cultures who follow the seasons right and around the world, and that's just a natural part of it, and I am really excited to Invite other families into that practice through these books and I think that that's going to be Feel really fun. So I'm really excited to see how people incorporate All of the books into their, into their home or into their lives with their kids.

Tell me how you find that balance of your writing life while also being present as a mom, mm-hmm, when I wrote my.

So it kind of shifted from I had this blog and my first son was, was really little so I could write at like a coffee shop, and then, you know, he keeps getting bigger. And then we had our second child about two years later, so in 2013, and Um glory happening didn't come out until 2017. So that was a few years of just continuing to Journal and write. I mean, I remember we lived in Atlanta. My, my husband was in grad school and we just lived in this tiny two bedroom apartment in Atlanta and the kids would just you know, they were like, oh my gosh, like one and three, two and four, just like running around, rolling around this apartment with our Husky. We had our Husky Sam, who, sam in the book is inspired by him. And so the kids are everywhere, the dog hairs everywhere, and I think again, it was like I just needed words to ground me, and so I would like, while they're just playing, I would sit and read and write, and while they're napping, I would sit and journal and I just would find it where I could. And then eventually, as I needed to actually start writing my book and working on that, I would go to a coffee shop on Saturdays and my husband travels, they would do a pancake morning and they would just have really special moments. But I think that one thing for me that I've been really grateful for is I have a really present husband who made room for me and we made sure that I followed my dreams as he followed his, and I think that that's not always the case in our culture, in our society, and so I have a really supportive family, like they all just cheer me on and celebrate me, even when I forget to celebrate myself, and I am just really grateful to have that. And but I think that also I just need words, and so my writing practice has obviously become much more disciplined. I wake up in the morning, I get the kids to school, come home, I sit and journal, read fiction, have coffee for about an hour and then I get started on my day and work until my, take breaks and work and do all those things until my kids are out of school and then, once they're home, I can't really go back into work mode. I do work quickly, though, like I'm kind of one of those people who burns hard and bright and then I totally crash. So I have to. I like work hard, take breaks, then when the day's done I'm good and I'm not a night owl, I'm a morning person. So I can't like go back to work at night, you know, at nine o'clock when the kids are. I can't do it. I've never been able to do it. So I think it's important for moms and women who want to be writers, who have families, to trust, like trust how your body works, trust what you need, because we're all different. You know, I've Googled so many times like daily writing schedule for writers and it brings up like Hemingway and all these people who, like this person wakes up at 4 am and they write for four hours, and I'm like, well, I'm never gonna do that, so across that off my list, like that doesn't work for me, you know. Or like this person just goes, they escaped to the woods and right, and I'm like, well, that's not realistic for me Then you know like, so you have to again, and it comes back to this seasonal living. We have to look around our environment, we have to look at our life and ask what can work. Where can we fit in 30 minutes, when can we fit in an hour, two hours, to get present with ourselves and with our words? Where can we? And you may need like a ritual, you may need to light a candle and, like, settle yourself into it, because my writing is so spiritual and it's so mental, it's everything, it's an embodiment, and so how can we? You know, is there a corner of your home, Do you have an office? Is there a place where you can settle in, where you can say to the kids go do something else? I'm gonna be right here for 30 minutes and I love you and I'll see you in 30 minutes. You know like, but like, mark that time off and allow that for yourself, Cause I think a lot of us feel bad, or we and I had to come to it, especially when I started traveling for public speaking as well. I had to come to the realization that that I want my kids to see me succeeding in the world, Like. I want them to see me as more than just a mom. Like I want them to see me as a writer, I want them to see me as this public speaker who does these things in the world so they can like as a model for them. Like follow your dreams in the world, like be a multifaceted person. Now you know like I can be a mom, I can be a writer, I can be a rock climber. I can be. You know, I can be all these different things? And I think that's important for us to allow ourselves to be that as women, as parents. I will always struggle with this world of publishing. I mean it's a capitalist, consumerist like system. You know it's not meant to be warm and fuzzy, and so that can be really hard when we want to be people who want to connect and feel, you know, like it's all, like it's all really safe and good. It's not always like it's still an industry that is unjust in a lot of ways, but for our kids to see that those things are possible, or even to see our struggles in it too, and to see us struggling and fighting for our voices and fighting for what we love and care about in the world, and fighting for something like educating through books and sharing our heart, like that's such a gift to our kids. And so I hope that people hearing these words and listening will keep going and keep working toward those goals, because you're not the only one noticing. Other people are noticing that.

Caitlin, thank you so much for talking to me today. Can you tell everybody listening where they can find you online? Buy your books and just look at everything you've done. Where can they go online and find you?

My website, katelinkurtiscom, has all the things on it, but my books are everywhere. You can buy them from your local bookstore. You can get it on Amazon. It's on in all of those places. I also write. I have a sub-stat called the Liminality Journal and it's a community where we share a lot of poetry. I do different writing series and it's just like a wonderful little community. So you're welcome to join that and subscribe to that. But I'm on Instagram a lot, so you can find me there probably.

I'll put all the links to everything in the show notes too, so everybody can go there and find all your stuff. Awesome, awesome. Caitlin, again, thank you so much for joining me today, sharing your story, sharing your words. Winter's Gifts is so beautiful, and I know I have a lot of moms, a lot of moms. I would say 99.9% of my listeners are moms, so I would encourage them to get Winter's Gifts. It's such a beautiful book and it's good. Winter's about to start, so it's good to add to your bookshelves. Yeah so, caitlin, thank you, you're amazing. Thank you so much.