Episode 31: Kate Adams & Winnie Looby
Kate Adams is an Indigenous Vermont artist with multiple disabilities, and in this episode of the show, she sits down with CDCI Academics Coordinator Winnie Looby. They talk about Kate’s work with her horses on disability and trauma, the messages carried by geese, and Kate’s life as an artist with ADHD.
https://youtu.be/kh-UXBCa2MU
Content notes: this episode contains brief mentions of domestic violence, and adult child death. Please decide how best to approach those topics for yourself. A full transcript of the episode appears below.
Read more: Episode 31: Kate Adams & Winnie Looby [https://cdci.w3.uvm.edu/blog/cdciresources/episode-31-kate-adams-winnie-looby/]
Winnie Looby: Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your relationship with disability?
Kate Adams: My given name at birth was Katherine Mary Adams, and then I grew up being called Kathy as my nickname. But then when I was finally at a point of realizing I needed to get out of an abusive marriage, and I realized that every time I saw in writing or heard someone say Kathy, that I cringed. I realized I need to change my nickname for a new beginning. And so I changed it to Kate. And so that is what I used when I signed my art.
At the time, I didn’t know I was disabled, so to speak. And I became acquainted with Vermont Inclusive Arts Council because I do love the outdoors, and taking photos, and images, and sharing them. And I saw so much awful stuff on Facebook and all this other media that I said, “Well, at least I could share some good things.”
And also that was important to my daughter in the last three years of her battle with three rare aggressive breast cancers. She says, “Mom, send me photos of my boys of the horses, of the sunrises, of the ducks.” And at the time I thought she just needed it as a distraction, a break from her work, or a distraction from the pain.
But I eventually realized that it not only was an expression of my love to her, knowing that though I couldn’t be with her in person through this new technologies, I could send images of her of things that we both loved. And so it was like expressing my mother’s love.
And I wanted to find more ways to share my images. And I have tried in the past to do exhibits and sell photography, and I was privileged to be honored as to do an exhibit for the gallery here in Springfield on the photos of the Lakota and Abenaki peoples. But I find that it’s very hard to sell things that way. Plus, if you don’t have the money to pay for good matting and frames, and I do it thrift store style. Okay?
A large photograph of a stunning sunrise over marshes hangs next to an information window, at which sits a college-aged worker. [https://cdci.w3.uvm.edu/blog/cdciresources/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/11/kate-adams-piece-with-student-worker-1024x768.jpg]
So when I saw this notice in the weekly flyer that came that said, “Still accepting entries for this exhibit,” which was called Masked, I thought, “Here’s another way.” And so I inquired, and of course it said people with disabilities.
And so I contacted Heidi [Swevens, of Inclusive Arts Vermont] and she, I want to say is such a blessing. And for anyone that is listening to this and has some of their own challenges, I want to just encourage you that the folks at Inclusive Arts Council understand, and they’re very wise and kind.
And so we had a number of phone conversations because I qualified on their terms of disability, three ways. PTSD. Well, I have more than simple PTSD. I have complex PTSD, which let me tell you, it is more complex. I have ADH, which I didn’t know till about 15 years ago. And so you could now call me ADH late diagnosis, which I’m learning. From what I’m learning through Zoom stuff, that’s even more complicated, and being indigenous.
And these were all in the category. And I said, okay, first of all, I don’t like the word disabled, because it’s been used and the images, and the stereotypes, it’s been used so much in our culture in a very negative way. And I learned through my horses. My horses are family generation bred. They’re the old type Lippitt Morgans, which really connect with people. They’re very wise. They are healer teachers if you’re willing to be open to learn what they have to share.
And I have two of my horses are ADH. And I learned when I started sharing my horses, horses that there was this thing about me that I knew that I was smart. I’d been told I was smart. I was the first in my family to go to college. I graduated from UVM in education in 1971.
And when I went to education, I was a little small town girl, the town of Burlington was like. And my roommate had rows and rows of shoes. I had one or maybe two pairs of shoes. And I learned that people there thought that if you were in education, it was only because you weren’t smart enough to be in some other field where you could make more money. All right?
A pale-skinned Indigenous older woman with gray hair pulled back in a bun rests a hand on a large gray wall plaque. Picked out in gold letters on the plaque: David. W. Howe Memorial Library. [https://cdci.w3.uvm.edu/blog/cdciresources/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/11/kate-adams-howe-library-1024x773.jpg]
Well, I was in education because I wanted to be a teacher. I loved learning and I loved sharing learning. And so I learned with kids and people that came to learn from my horse connection program, I knew who was ADH. And I would say to them, “I am ADH, but I won’t use the D for disorder because we are not defective. We are different, but not defective.”
And so I had conversations with Heidi about all of this because then I had to decide, what part of my art do I want to share? It’s going to be photography, it’s going to be having to do with the outdoors. And how do I want to deal with this theme of masked? I could just go with, I could have taken, let me be blunt. It would’ve been the easier route to go with PTSD. All right? And say, “Here is an image of the outdoors of the Canada geese. The goose is brooding on her eggs,” which I have one over there brooding this morning. And I’m over there taking pictures of her this morning.
And I’m learning from God’s creatures what is healthy father mother, male female role, which is not what I’ve been taught in the culture that I was raised in, in education, in family, in church, religious.
So I knew I could just take an image, which is what I’ve done for this particular exhibit. It is simply an image of God’s creative beauty that I saw the morning that was the last day that I would be with my daughter on her earth journey. And the encouragement, the message that it was to me. But for masked, I felt like I was ready after a long journey searching, and be careful and quiet, because of those that would look at me and see my whiter skin and say, “You’re just a wannabe. You don’t know if you’re really Abenaki.” So I don’t know if once the tribes even got recognized, if I was eligible to apply.
But about seven years ago, I did genealogy study. And so I found my native ancestors in Northeast and Northwest Vermont. And so I knew I could proceed with applying, but still I was even scared to.
But I felt I wanted to honor that part of my ancestry as well as my Scottish ancestry, because my MacArthur Scottish ancestry came to Vermont from the clearances in Scotland when the controlling conquering did a clearance. So the MacArthurs came to Vermont in the early 1800s. And they chose Vermont, which I can understand. They love the hills, the mountains, the valleys, the greens.
And so I was getting up to the deadline with her, but they were very gentle, and they said, “Okay, keep working on it. Go ahead, submit it.” And so I submitted what is my photo collage. I wanted the image of the circle, the sacred circle, the healing part of the journey.
And I was learning, and I had to find a way to express who I was and others of us with differences, without using the word disability in the way it’s been perceived by myself. And maybe I’m more affected because I’m in my mid-seventies. So I’ve come up through more decades of the not understanding. I mean, when is it that they finally use the term ADH?
And also with the PTSD. My PTSD was from abuse of the first marriage and domestic violence. So if I saw a state trooper at a gas station where I was getting gas, I would stop and I would go up to him and I would say, “Thank you, because I know one of the most dangerous roles of your work is when you go to deal with a domestic violence case.”
And when I see a Vietnam veteran, I will go up and thank them for their service, but not only because they were so horribly abused, emotionally, physically, etc. when they came back, but because before the Vietnam War, we women and children would’ve been abused within the walls of our own homes were called crazy. And it was after Vietnam, and when men came back, and when there was a car backfire, and the guy dropped to the ground, and there was these men and women, but especially men struggling with the after effects of being in the horrors of war. But now we finally come up with the term, post-trauma stress disorder.
Winnie: Right. Right. Right.
Kate: So my coming to peace about that they’re going to still use the word disability and that I understand. And it’s like, but how could I be a part of bringing a different understanding to the word? Because our words, where they came from, the context, how they’ve been used in our society have meaning and impact.
And so I equate it now to a horse race. In the thoroughbred horse race, if you’ve got a really winning thoroughbred and you’ve got a younger horse that’s coming along and they want to put the two together, but to make it a little more equal and fair to that younger, less experienced horse, they will give the other horse a handicap. They call it handicap, but not in a negative way. It’s giving that jockey more weight to carry, which means a horse has more weight to carry. And we have movies recently that share about this kind of story.
And so I said, okay, I guess it’s more, I have this handicap, but it’s not handicapped in the cultural use of the word. Person that’s called handicapped is considered, let’s just not go there.
When I was doing my horse program and getting certification, there was a group called Riding for the Handicapped. And so I knew I needed to get certification and credentials at fro. So for a while, I went through their protocols and I finally just came to a point of saying, “I am not going to get my certification with a group that is going to use these words.” And I know they’re good intentioned because they’re finally getting some of these people connected with horses in wonderful, wonderful ways, but I don’t want to be associated with that word. So I’m kind of more independent on my own. And so that’s how, I guess that’s more than you needed for an answer to your first question.
Winnie: I think you touched on a lot of the ones that were coming up actually.
Kate: Yeah, stories interweave.
Winnie: Yeah, they do, right? It’s kind of hard not to. For it to be an authentic representation of yourself, you have to include everything.
Kate: And those of us now, I call myself ADH brilliant. And then I used to say with differences. But now what I say is data, delivery, dilemma, because it’s real. It’s real. Thank God for my new to me, three years with me, wonderful healthy husband. And he’s good with that kind of stuff so he can make sure my checkbook is in order.
So we have a partnership where we each could bring the skills and gifts that we give, so I could chuckle about my dilemmas. And we call to find, where did I lay down the cell phone? What piles of papers is it underneath? Or was I cleaning the horse stalled, and it fell out in the dirt? And that is why we have this little gold thing because you don’t know how many cell phones I found years later out in the dirt of the horse barn.
So it’s like learning what strategies I need to supplement the things that just don’t come automatically to my brain. And now, the new word is neurodivergent. I’m like, okay. So at least progress is being made in people’s awareness. Grateful, grateful, grateful.
And so to become a part of this counts this inclusive… See, even remembering the words I have to stop at the inclusive arts… No, it’s Inclusive Arts Vermont [http://inclusiveartsvermont.org]. It’s been such a blessing for me, but not only for being able to share my art and my story, but meeting other people and coming to understand some of their struggles, and how they’ve been impacted on the limits in the culture around us who aren’t aware at these exhibits, that you put the names down at the level where someone that’s in a wheelchair can read them. People that aren’t aware don’t think of these things.
And then Heidi needs visual. And I have to remember, if I send her an image, she’s going to have to put it on a special screen to be able to see more of it. And so I’m more careful what I send to share with her, like a sunrise in my saying a brief description that she can enjoy that.
And for others, I met at the exhibit, I’d met her through art groups, Inclusive Arts Council, but she has worked there. It’s beautiful, stunning piece of work. And she has Lyme disease effects. So the lack of physical strength, the limits of what she could do physically, and that she has to ask people to come and help her move the couch in her house. Or that she can’t drive down to the exhibit, she has to get a ride.
And then someone with cerebral palsy who is an artist. There’s this amazing creative brain. Someone will take him out, and then his eye sees things and has the adaptive camera stuff so that he could take images that share them.
And the most important part is community. Caring, compassionate, community, where we’re willing to see and listen to each other, and celebrate our strengths so that we don’t feel like we’re always just seen through this lens of limited, which is the disabilities word and all of its connotations.
Winnie: Right, right, right. Nice. Yeah. Well, I teach about disability culture, and I’ve always hoped that we could kind of speak more about disabled identity and what does that mean. And how we use our language, how each person has a choice as to what they want to call themselves or not. Or even that, you don’t have to necessarily have a label to get what you need. Right? I have students-
Kate: That’s an interesting thought.
Winnie: Yeah.
Kate: Say more.
Winnie: Making things universally accessible to folks. If you thought ahead about challenges folks might have accessing something, thinking about that ahead of time and making that, it’s not even accommodation. It’s just building it into what you want to do, so then someone can just come in and feel welcomed and included, and not have to ask accommodations or this or that, because that’s all loaded with a lot of internalized ableism. I think if we can move past, I think… Well, I talk about disability more as our environment is disabling. It’s not us as people. If the environment was for everybody, then we wouldn’t have that challenge. Right?
Kate: But the exhibits and what work they’ve done, and bringing them to different galleries. and I’ve tried to go to several of the receptions because I could best represent myself in person rather than just what’s on the wall or just what I’ve written. And lots of times, people don’t even bother to read the stuff you’ve written.
But at one of the galleries, it helped them realize we don’t have an accessibility parking spot out in front of the gallery. So if someone’s coming with a wheelchair, with wheels to roll with, but they have to park way down there. So that brought awareness to those gallery folks.
And when I was at the State House, the man was… And see, I don’t remember names. That’s part of my blah, blah, blah. I am brilliant. But the detailed data, I don’t remember names, dates. I’m more like visual.
But he spoke and he felt it was eye-opening for him too, because at the State House, they have school groups. Other groups come. And with all the art, they say, “Don’t touch, don’t touch, don’t touch.” And as curators, we know we don’t want salty sweat on the oil painting. But to be able to have pieces there that people could touch was like, well.
And that was one of the reactions last year at the Davis Center. The students at the student offices said, “Wow, we could, think we’re supposed to tell people don’t touch.” Well, no, no, you can touch. We want you to touch.
But I worked in corrections. When I got out of the first marriage, I was for a job. I’d gotten my degree in education. I got my master’s in curriculum development. I love teaching. But it was hard to find a job.
So I have my daughter who I’m trying to protect. That’s another whole long story. And I did. I want to say finally, I did succeed in achieving that her visitations with him were only supervised. And I got her through therapy by going to therapy with her, and me being like the mother mare that went through the thickets with her checking out, “Well mom, are you really safe? Are you going to continue to protect me?”
So after a year of that, then she said, “Okay mom, I don’t need you here anymore. I’m continuing this therapist on my own. Okay. So she did eventually hold him to account in her own way. Okay? So she healed, and she and I, and those who helped us helped break that chain of the generational cycle.
And it’s a huge, huge loss to me to lose her presence here. But I got to go to a celebration of her life that was given by the people that worked with her at a mental health agency who wanted to honor her. And I got to hear as a mother, because she worked with families with children with differences, and she advocated. And so I got to hear those stories that I never heard about how she used what she’d been given to help so many others.
And so I’m very grateful. And so I hope that whatever I continue to do will be continuing to honor her and others with differences, but who have a desire, who have within them a wonderful soul, wonderful spirit. And our mental, and thinking, and physical may look different than the traditional, but we’re alive. There’s too much that’s still wondrous about us.
And I had a young man whose grandfather brought him to my horse program a number of years ago, and I knew he was ADH. They didn’t have to tell me. And he told me how difficult it been for him in school and family moving. And it was, I just did my horse connection with him with Jem. And then they asked to come back again later. And this time the parents were going to be with him.
And the grandmother when she called to make the appointment said, “That’s the first time I’ve seen that boy smile was when he came back from your farm.” And so he came again. So he has a chance to be with my grandmother Mary Jem, whose now 32-year-old daughter, my wonderful stallion I’m speaking of.
So he gets to do the connecting, the grooming, the understanding about safety, horse communication, connection. And he’s in front of the barn, and he gets up on Jem, and I say, and I’m thinking, “I’m using this as a teaching moment for the other adults that are around me.” I said, “You’re on one of my ADH horses.” He started lowering his head, and in shame, he whispered, “I’m one of those.” And I said, “Yeah, give me a high five.” That startled him. And he put his head up, “High five, because I’m one of those too. And I want to tell you what I know about you, because I’ve learned it about me and this horse. We are brilliant. We are brilliant, and we’re curious, and we have a lot of energy which other people, and even we don’t always know what to do with. You’re also very intuitive because look how good. You listened so well to me when I told you about watching Jem’s communication to you and how you treated her so respectfully. And so you’re intuitive. And yeah, you get bored easily, and you could get frustrated when people keep telling you to do something a certain way, and you either can’t do it, or it’s that you’ve already learned it, and would you stop boring me by repeating the same old thing?”
And I said, “But you do get distracted, and it is a dilemma, especially for those around you.” I said, “But when there’s something that’s very important to you, you will focus and you’ll persist long after other folks would’ve quit.” There’s a quote that says, “A mighty oak grew from a nut who held her ground.”
And that’s why I still do what I’m doing, even when it may not make sense to other folks around me. And there’s people that say, “Why don’t you go out and get a job where you could really make some money? Why do you do it this way?” And I’m like, I’ve had to… My beginning reaction is to listen to them. Oh God, have I messed up again? And sometimes there’s a struggle in the journey, and my own thought process is to say, wait a minute, unstyle this, sort it out. No, this is my choice. This is what I want to be doing. This is what I’m gifted at.
And what a joy it is when that young man to go for a trail ride with me. Because I say, “Oh, don’t worry. We’re not going to go around in circles in a ring. I’m going to be leading you through the woods,” because Jem doesn’t want to go around and around circles in a ring either.
So I feel my art is storytelling. My images, my words, it’s telling stories of my story, my family, my horses, my birds, my dog, other people’s stories. And if telling my and sharing my story helps them, like I said, I like what the original readings of words. And they wanted a visual description for my piece. And then they want you to write if you want to, they’re great about giving you permission. Yes, you can do it. Or no, you don’t have to do it, about what this has to do with the word cycles. And so I looked up the word cycles and I actually ended up writing a poem about it. So that was my expression that goes with the art.
But that’s why for me, images, it’s words, pictures, stories. And sometimes they can help us learn or connect in a way that we just, either the way we are created we don’t get, or trauma can twang some part of our being that we’re in numbness or whichever. My primary reaction was fear, hiding, compliance.
And so for me now, learning that when I’m angry, there may be just causes for anger, but how do I speak the truth in love? And in a way that could bring goodness. And I still have to ask John sometimes. “Okay, you better read this, John, before I send it.” So you’ve been on some of this journey yourself then, huh? Whatever the way we’re created, whatever our difference is.
Winnie: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I asked if I could do the interviews for CYCLES, because I have done art first for all of this with CDCI. I went to art school for a bit. I still do some art on my own. And the way you talk about your life and your stories being intertwined with that expression, but then also wanting it to speak to other people, I still identify with all of that. You talk about it that way. It’s really nice. I thought, my tangent was-
Kate: Do you have those sometimes too?
Winnie: My students get really frustrated with me I’m sure.
Kate: Well, it’s good for them to learn to adapt. And I want to say I’m grateful that there’s more awareness of teaching at UVM than when I went to school there. Okay? There was not much of any of this then.
Winnie:
I teach in the education department. And so I think students have told us that we’re the most open-minded department in a lot of ways, the way we understand people a little better than other departments might. But in my dissertation, I did a little bit of research about, I found these philosophers. What do they call them? Deleuze and Guattari, French philosophers that wrote this cool thing. And I didn’t read the whole thing. I just kind of read it like poetry. And they talked about rhizomes, like how there’s plants that grow in these tangles and things. So you might not understand why it’s so tangled up and what’s going on there. But for the plant, it makes sense. And I thought, “Yeah, that’s what it is. That’s what it is.” So my brain’s going here and going there, and it’s making all those connections. To me, it makes perfect sense.
Kate: And I’m learning so much more. My minor was biology because I was just wanting to learn, and animal science. And I took any UVM horse course. As a matter of fact, I want to say my roommate and I actually started the UVM Horse Club back in however many years ago that was, so that we could bring our horses to the dairy farm over on Spear Street because they had these box stalls for the UVM horse management course, and they only used them one month out of two years. So we said, “We’ll start a UVM Horse Club and we’ll make a proposal that we could bring horses.” And so she and I used to gallop our horses on the corn fields there, and now look what it’s grown to in UVM intercollegiate team, but beyond. So we don’t even know sometimes the seeds we plant, and we may not see them or see the fruit of it. Maybe for a long time, we may not even ever see the fruit of it in this earth life. But it is encouragement to me when I realized, “Wow, look what’s come from that. Wow.”
I like your tangent to the rhizomes because we’re finally realizing that trees and other plants do, they have all these interconnections. And when one tree is cut down, the other trees near it will still reach out. And you’ll notice that I have them out here because this was 10 acres. This is carved out of a piece of land that was logged and left in trash. Okay? But there’s big stumps. And sometimes, well right outside my cabin, I finally had to cut down the oak tree, even though I’d been trying to protect it, because my horses are like Vermont range horses. They will eat. They don’t even want to just be in pastures that are just the plain old green grass.
So we finally, it had died. The tree part had died, so we cut it down. But there’s all kinds of saplings still coming up from those roots. And so now I’m protecting them. I said, “Okay, we got to put a rail over here so hawk can’t reach over and eat those.” But see, I feel that’s more of how we’re intended to be for each other too. Roots reaching out to support each other.
Winnie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you never know what connections, you were saying what the after effect might be. So in the doing, it’s very healing and nourishing. But also, there’s these great outcomes that you might never see. But it’s lovely to know that they could be there, I suppose.
Kate: Yeah. So I just keep saying let me learn. And the Canada geese have been very special to me because as I was trying to find my journey from what I’d been raised in, in church community, I finally found more my home with the early Celtic Christians. And that whole group of people had to go into hiding because when the Roman Catholic church and whoever was the king at the time decided they were the ones they were going to yield to that, the Celtic Christians went into hiding or disappeared.
And there were a few people that went to Scotland, and researched, and tried to regain, because what I found resonating for me was very much nature creation. Their prayers are so beautiful. They have prayers for each thing, for someone coming, for someone leaving, for lighting, the fire in the evening. The whole interrelated connectedness and a spiritual dimension that for me felt more authentic.
And then when I learned more, I was always interested of indigenous ways, and especially the Plains Indians, because of course, the horse connection. So I was from a large family, my dad a mechanic. So not a huge amount of money, but wanted a horse. I did succeed eventually after showing that I could be responsible to care for my five younger brothers, sisters, kittens. Rooster chicks with curvy, earning money wherever I could, [inaudible 00:36:38], babysit. I was able to buy my horse when I was 14 years old. And two of the horses I have out here are her grandchildren.
The geese taught me this is the mothering part of God creator, and you are important as a woman, and you are also created in God’s image. And you have seen these geese and how they interact each with their role, and how they help each other with their role, and how they teach the young ones.
So a year ago on this pond, so now I’m back to my land in Ascutney at the base of Mount Ascutney, on a pond that’s next to me, next door to me, base of the mountain. I noticed last year a goose was sitting on the rock in the pond and made her nest. And I realized that she was the first generation that the geese females stay with their parents. The males go off. They’re looking for a mate. And so they’re kind of learning from their parents. And then the next season is when they start brooding.
And so I got to witness her first year of building a nest and brooding. And let me tell you, those parents didn’t always do it very well. And they lost some goslings. But they learned, and they had their whole family around it because they had that family and then aunts and uncles. On my small pond out here in the back of my cabin, I ended up with four pairs of Canada geese with their goslings all coming to visit, and brood, and eat in my pastures. And she is over there now. She’s on five eggs.
And even just watching how she builds the nest, it’s like I said to John, it’s like the image of the top of a volcano. She has drawn in the weeds. She’s drawn in green grass. She’s drawn in and built it up so there’s a base of warmth underneath, and there’s a wall to protect, to keep her warmth in. And that when they start to hatch, they don’t just crawl out and swim away or whatever they would do. And this morning she was adding her down, her fluff to them. And so there’s always more to learn and enjoy if we’re willing to look, and be aware, and listen, and be open.
Winnie: In the last year, I’m a city kid originally. So last summer I decided I was going to learn the names of plants, like trees and flowers and the different birds, maps that would kind of record the song.
Kate: Oh, yeah. Good for you. So have you learned some new plants?
Winnie: I’m not so great with the plants, the birds.
Kate: Oh, great.
Winnie: I remember now what they sound like if I don’t have my phone out right away. That’s really cool. I feel very… Yeah, it’s really a nice part of the day. I had a dog also with a very, what do you call it? We were very connected, I think very [inaudible 00:40:03] relationship. The kids would go, “That’s your dog mom.”
And he passed away last month, but part of my favorite part of the day was to take him for an early morning walk, and listen for birds, and take pictures of plants. And he would pose for pictures if he saw me. So I have a bunch of him posing in front of plants and things like that.
Kate: So do you have some of those images?
Winnie: I do, yeah. I’ve saved a bunch on my phone.
Kate: I find that even with the images of Valerie, it just does, it can. Maybe doesn’t always, but it does. It brings back that memory, that closeness. And I realized eventually, I didn’t realize it I don’t think until after she left her earth life, that there was a spiritual connection too that I didn’t realize. It was like the creator was saying, “Thank you that you are stopping to see me in this image of this goose. I want to acknowledge you for what you did as a mother to protect your gosling.” And when you send her these images, it’s like you’re sending her a reminder of me, but she may not understand all of what, I don’t understand all of what she was enduring. Had to endure.
But there are blessings when we make the effort for connections, and for me to realize that the images. And it’s also been true in the cancer right group that I’ve been in, the poems we write, and we’re sharing with each other how we’re seeing many of these, in this case, mostly women, but some men too. We’re dealing with the illnesses and the medical and the chemo.
But when we’re together as the right group, we have a wonderful facilitator. And the share the prompts, and then we have time to write, and then we share with each other. It’s like we’re coming up out of the mud mire. We know we’re not just seen as somebody stuck down there in the mud mire. We’re seeing in our beauty, and our creativity, and the words, and expressions, and stories that people share. They’re very precious. So maybe next year you’ll be exhibiting one of these exhibits.
Winnie: Yeah. A few years ago I did one, what was it called? The Flourish show that was at the Flynn. I made, what was it? It was kind of like a shadow box with medicine bottles and stuff like that in it. Yeah, it was fun.
Kate: That’s intriguing too. Yeah, taking a variety of things. And were they of significance to you, or was it just your curiosity on putting the different types of objects together?
Winnie: Both of those things, actually. Yeah. Because I like to make tinctures for my health stuff. And so I was learning about doing that at the time. And so I’d saved all this pretty little brown bottles, and [inaudible 00:43:35] up with string, and just made them pretty into a little box together. I put different smelling teas in little boxes inside of it and all that. I don’t know why I even made it, but it’s one of my favorite things that I’ve made before. Definitely.
Kate: Have you seen my piece? It’s in the exhibit. If you haven’t, I would encourage you to do what I’m still learning how to do, to be able to access them so I can hear. Someone reads what we wrote to be with it, because it does explain about how this piece of art connects me with my daughter and the creator. And I told you about the geese. Ironically, that morning, so I’m waiting to go to be with her, and I’ve been told this is probably… I’ve been staying with her for six weeks. She kept defying and living past all the expectations. So she was just a loving, determined woman that was going to be sure she left things as prepared as best she could for her family, her children, and me I’m sure too. She gave me these earrings. And I was told, she’d worn them for decades because they’d been given to her by my youngest sister. And so there’s different things that could be remembrances.
But I actually was sleeping in the front of my pickup that night, because I value everything about how many bales of hay does it cost. And a room was like $150. Well, that feeds Jem for a month, so we ain’t doing that.
So I’m sleeping in my truck. It starts to get cold. I said, “Okay, I’m going to drive back up closer to Val’s house.” And I drove by her house and I’m like, “Okay, I’m not going to go. It’s just been there with her and I’m not going to disturb them.” I’m going to go to Belvidere Pond. It’s just half a mile from her house.
And so as I approach it, and because I always am looking for sunrises, a lot of my sunrises I pick at the edge of my farm are through the woods. I could see the sun coming up. So that’s my morning walk is out there, and taking images, and sending them to Val or to others.
So I see the sun coming up over. So I head for the pond. And then the sun’s just coming over, and there’s the mist of the valleys in the hills around the pond, and they’re glowing these different colors of pink, and purple, and blue. And then it’s reflected on the water.
And then I drive up further to the pull-off, and I get out and I have my native flute and I have Psalm 91. Of course I’m going to speak about, “She will hold you.” Because I know she knows she was very much loved by me. So it was like, “You’re going to be entering a new birth canal and giving birth to you was very difficult.” And she was born with a broken collarbone, so it was traumatic birth. But I said, “And you’re entering a new birth tunnel now and just know God is with you and my love is with you.” And so I played on my native flute, and I did some wailing, which echoed from the hills.
But guess who came? A pair of Canada geese came, and flew across, and landed over there long ways from me because they don’t know me, so they’re still wary. So there’s this lady singing and making lots of noises. We as a family of us two-leggeds and us four-leggeds, the dog four-leggeds, the horse four-leggeds, the bird two-winged. We’re all a part of the life journey and the last day journey.
So I hold to those memories and treasure them. And some of the things I read about those of us grieving, that there’s no linear or rules, regulations that work. Forget the things people that don’t understand better tell you. And the depth of which you’ve loved means the grieving can be very intense at times. And it’s like you learn to grow and move through it, even though you feel like there’s this big hole in your heart. It’s not like this. I’m seeing it right now as we talk. It doesn’t stay an empty hole. Because the others, there will be twines that will come in and mend, and make a beautiful tapestry. And it’s like with tapestries, you get to usually see the finished side. But if you look at the backside, it just looks like a lot of mess and snarls.
So I’m still on this earth life where a lot of it looks like a lot of mess and snarls. But I hope that by sharing what I’ve been learning and healing, growing from, can be a way that gives, I’d like to use the word encourage. We use the word sometimes to a point the words no longer have significance. We want to say, I want to encourage someone. Well, now I take it apart, encourage.
So I want to encourage them to find the courage that is in them. I love the John Wayne statement that courage is being afraid and doing it anyway because you don’t even have to, or something like that. That’s a paraphrase.
But sometimes in our journeys, we need to find that courage, create is placed within us. Often the best ways to find it and to help those seeds to grow is from a caring community around us that encourages us to rise up, to grow like a seed to the dark, cold, winter earth, and come up, and bloom. Thank you that you’re holding it kindly and with gentleness.
Winnie: Yeah. Yeah. I think so much of what you’re talking about resonates with me on lots of different levels, so appreciate it.
Kate: Thank you.
Winnie: Yeah.
A pale-skinned Indigenous older woman with gray hair pulled back in a low ponytail stands wearing a sequined medical mask next to a circular piece of art on a wall. The art features horses, a child, a man in Indigenous dress, and a bearskin rug. [https://cdci.w3.uvm.edu/blog/cdciresources/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/11/kate_adams_podcast_photo-922x1024.jpg]
