April 5, 2023 • 57 mins
Katherine Standefer is a nature lover, published author, speaker, trauma writing doula, and survivor with a captivating story to tell. Katherine is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life. Originally from suburban Chicago, Katherine always felt a strong connection to nature which eventually drew her away from the suburban landscape to Jackson Hole.
In this episode, Katherine shares her brush with death, having to leave Jackson and how it changed her writing focus. She talks about her heart journey and the origin of the components that make up her cardiac defibrillator. Alongside Stephan, she sheds light on the impact of the healthcare industry on mental wellbeing in America. They also explore the importance of discovering one's true calling, the power of nature, and not settling for a life that lacks joy and fulfillment.
Find out more about Katherine at katherinestandefer.com
Buy a copy of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life at your local bookstore or at Bookshop.org
This week's episode is supported in part by Teton County Solid Waste and Recycling, reminding residents and commercial businesses of Teton County’s food waste programs; the next frontier material in the quest to achieve the County’s goal to reduce, aiming for zero waste. More at TetonCountyWY.gov or at @RoadToZeroWaste.JH on Instagram.
Support also comes from The Jackson Hole Marketplace. The Deli at Jackson Hole Marketplace offers ready-made soups, sandwiches, breakfast burritos, and hot lunch specials. More at JHMarketplace.com
Want to be a guest on The Jackson Hole Connection? Email us at connect@thejacksonholeconnection.com. Marketing and editing support by Michael Moeri (michaelmoeri.com)
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You are tuned into the Jackson hole,connection, sharing, fascinating stories
of people connected to Jackson Hole.
I am truly grateful for each ofyou for tuning in today and support
for this podcast comes from:
Today's episode, I'm beginning.
About sharing a few booksthat I have recently read.
(00:21):
The books are written by theArbinger Institute, and the titles
of these two books are one, theAnatomy of Peace, and the second one
is leadership and Self Deception.
These books I was introduced to by aa friend, and they explain that we all
(00:41):
have a problem to be solved, and evenas we work to solving this problem, we
will still always have this problem.
The content teaches us how tounderstand the problem we have
and how to reduce the impact.
This problem influencesour lives and the people.
Lives who we connect with each day.
So I give these books, a highly must read.
(01:04):
You can find them at your local book.
Seller can find them on audio versions.
However you get your audio books, and I'msure you can find them on the internet.
But go, go visit your local book seller.
And welcome to episode number 236.
My guest today is Katie Standifer.
Katie is an outdoor enthusiast.
She's a published author and a survivor.
(01:27):
Katie was living here in Jackson Hole fora period of time, and now she's returned.
To living here again, right here inthe valley, but several years back.
Due to a health crisis, Katiewas forced to leave Jackson Hole.
She didn't have a choice and withouthealth insurance, Katie, with this
(01:48):
health crisis figured out a way toreceive the treatment she needed to.
And I tell you what folks surviveand thrive is what Katie has done.
What Katie has had isa journey with death.
And today, while discussing her journeyand her book, Katie wants people to
(02:10):
think about their relationship with..
Well, Katie, welcome to theJackson Hole connection.
It is delightful to have some time andspeak with you and get to know you.
Such a pleasure to be here.
Thanks for having me on.
You're welcome.
And you live here in Jackson, correct?
(02:32):
I do.
I live in moose, currently in Moose.
And so share with folks who are notJackson natives or maybe have not visited.
Where is moose?
So moose is about 20minutes north of town.
It's at the entrance to Grand TetonNational Park, or depending on
where you live in moose, you maybe entirely surrounded by park.
(02:54):
So a lot of the houses here are priorin holdings that were around before
park boundaries were solidified.
and so I'm out in the middle of AntelopeFlats, which is where the bison range is,
probably how folks would know it best.
And just in an amazing house forfour months while my old friend
Charlie Craighead is down inArizona to take a break from winter.
(03:17):
Well, good on you for having a greatfriend like Charlie Craighead who is
loaning you his house while he's inArizona for the winter, and it is a real,
real special spot and kind of a miracle.
Yeah, I've known Charlie since, atleast 2006, maybe 2004, and this
(03:39):
is just an incredible location.
I'm staring at the Grand Town right now.
It's right in front of the houseand it's a very wild location.
The wolves haven't come by since I'vebeen here, but apparently Charlie said
they were here right before he left, soI'm hopeful they'll swing back this way.
So not a location where if youhave a dog, you let your dog just
(04:00):
outside to go to the bathroom?
Possibly not, no.
Luckily I do not have a dog.
I've been focused on makingfriends with the mag pies who Okay.
Like to come over, and look in the windowsand see, see what's happening here.
Mm.
How cool.
So Katie, where did you grow up andhow did you land here in Jackson?
(04:21):
So, I grew up, outside Chicago ina suburb called Arlington Heights.
It's on the northwest side ofthe city, and it was a place that
really did not resonate for me.
I had a lot of trouble growing up there.
I was sort of in a tract.
tracked suburb surrounded by strip mallsand really felt as a kid the pain of
(04:43):
watching the wild scraps of woods andwetlands get covered over for big box
parking lots and more subdivisions.
Mm-hmm.
And my parents, startedus skiing at a pretty age.
We started in Colorado and we woulddrive out over spring break and when I
was seven, we crossed Wyoming for thefirst time, to visit Steamboat Springs.
(05:05):
We sort of went, uh, through thecorner of Wyoming on the way down
through the medicine bow, I toldmy parents I was gonna be a writer
who lived in a cabin in Wyoming.
I was very obsessed with, theopen space that we were crossing,
the sort of sage landscape.
And we ended up in Jackson on a trip whenI was, going into my freshman year of
(05:25):
college, or not college, uh, high school.
And so I was 14 and had sortof a traditional Grand Teton
Yellowstone family vacation.
And at the time I'd already been rockclimbing for a few years at my local
Y M C A and we saw some kids goingback into the Tetons to rock climb.
And we ended up asking at skinnyskis who, did that, how, how could
(05:46):
I climb as part of these groups?
And now that I know, Jackson, I'm verysurprised that we got the answer that
we did, but whoever was there toldme to look up a group called Trails
Wilderness School, which no longer exists.
Trails was based, on the old TetonValley Ranch in Kelly, and they ran
(06:07):
wilderness groups similar to Knowles,but with slightly tighter age groups.
And it was a, family run operation.
The woman in the couple whoran trails with Oren and.
I got really obsessed withthis concept and was having a
lot of family drama at home.
It was a really difficult year,freshman year of high school.
And so my dad and I talked aboutthese courses and, he suggested I do
(06:30):
a 14 day course and I was assistingon the 30 day and he said, well,
you can pay for the difference.
And so, a lot of my high school years werethen spent babysitting and mowing lawns.
And initially I got a cleaning lady job.
I worked, uh, selling gear at Gallions.
if anyone remembers that, it gotbought out by Dick's Sporting Goods,
And By the focus of my life turnedto paying for these wilderness trips.
(06:54):
and that first course that I did inthe summer of 2000 was, three weeks
backpacking down in the Wyomingrange, and then four days whitewater
kayaking on the snake and a few daysclimbing in the Tetons, culminating
in, in the summit of the grand.
So just very like classicJackson tourist things.
But, I ended up returning to domore courses with Trails and then
(07:17):
becoming an employee with Trails.
I completed their leadership courseand just, really fell in love with
the sage landscapes and the styleof forests and, what it, what
it felt like to be in this area.
That is a major commitmentto come back here.
Kids would not give that dedicationjust to go spend another 14,
(07:39):
15 days in the wilderness.
it's true.
but there's something, it's so funny.
A guy in a bar just the other nightasked me the same question, like,
why do you like Jackson so much?
He was actually about to move away.
Mm-hmm.
So fine, good on him.
but it, you know, it was like,there's something about me that
becomes more me when I'm here andit's really hard to put a finger on.
(08:02):
I am so deeply moved by being inthe middle of this many hundreds of
miles long functioning ecosystem.
There's something about, the deeppine forest, the pine Aspen mix,
and being around these big mammals.
you know, I have lived some otherplaces now in my adult life.
I'm sure we'll get there, but I've sortof been cycling in and out of Jackson and.
(08:24):
There's nothing like that.
there's just something internallythat fails, deepened, and, made
more alive by this ecosystem.
And you told your parents you were gonnabe a writer living in a cabin in Wyoming?
I did.
And tell me about your writing.
(08:45):
yeah.
What took you on the path?
I mean, you were 14 whenyou said that, correct?
Or some Oh, seven.
Seven.
Yeah.
You knew you were gonna be awriter at the age of seven.
I did.
Yeah.
Some people, it takes them a while to findtheir life path For me, it takes me longer
to find other things like a partner inhousing, but writing in Wyoming have sort
(09:07):
of been the consistent loves of my life.
yeah.
So as a kid I was constantly writingnovels, writing songs, writing poems.
And when I went to college,I ended up double majoring in
sociology and fiction writing andactually wrote two of my feces.
On this area, both.
I did a study on how people form sense ofplace and how that impacts their response
(09:30):
to a massive industrialization event.
And that was focused around Pinedale,which was the largest fracking
site in the country at the time.
So when fracking was new technology.
So I was interviewing people abouttheir relationship to Wyoming and the
Upper Green River Valley in particular.
and kind of squaring that againsthow they related to, the fracking
and, and their sense of place.
(09:52):
and then I, I also wrote a fictionnova that was based here in the valley.
And so when I graduated college in2007, I knew that the, the long term
was become an author as my career.
And part of why working inthis area, Really appealed
to me was because of seasons.
So I could work in outdoor educationand put in a ton of hours in the summer
(10:17):
and winter and then have spring andfall to really work on my writing
more intensely and still be havinginteresting experiences to write about.
And so my first few years that I washere, out of college, I was publishing
some poems and playing with some stories.
And, then one day in 2009 Iwas practicing with my band.
(10:40):
I also used to play at the Hoot Nannyevery Monday night and was in a folk
band that played at the farm marketand the art association, art fairs
and the other places that a folkband might expect to play in town.
and so James and I were practicing forthe Hoot Nanny that was gonna be on
the stage at Center for the Arts and.
I took a phone call and ran outsidehis house to, to pick up that call.
(11:02):
And then I passed out.
I went into what may or may not have beencardiac arrest and woke up in this parking
lot not knowing who I was or where I was.
and it took a while.
I started getting my wits back about me,realizing where I was then, who I was and
couldn't move or speak for a little bit.
And then finally I could, andI started calling James's name.
(11:25):
And then he came out and my younger sistera few years earlier had started going
into cardiac arrest in her dorm room.
And we had discovered wehad a genetic or MIA family.
and so as soon as I woke up and sort ofunderstood the situation, it was like,
oh my God, this is happening to me.
And because the year was 2009, theAffordable Care Act had not yet been
(11:46):
passed, and I was uninsured at the time.
which is, you know, idiotic since Iwas teaching climbing and skiing and,
and should have had, um, some kind ofcatastrophic plan in case I broke my leg.
But you know what it's like to be24 and think that you'll be okay
and that you'll land on your feet.
And you know, I also came from aprivileged background where I think I
(12:08):
didn't understand how catastrophic itcould be to not have health insurance.
And so I woke up in that parkinglot and I think I understood right
away that the nature of my ringwould be changing because I was
having this pretty crazy experience.
and you know, it's a much longer story,but that ended up becoming my first book.
Wow.
That's a lot there, Katie.
(12:30):
A whole lot.
it's a crazy story.
Yeah.
so I'm very interested to know.
Why don't you sharethe title of your book?
So the book is called Lightning Flowersand there's a subtitle to that too.
Yeah, yeah.
My Journey to Uncover theCost of Saving a Life.
Beautiful.
(12:50):
And we're gonna get into that book, butbeforehand, and maybe this is, I'm sure
this is in the book, my apologies forI that this time I have not read it.
I've been swamped, as I wassaying before in some other books.
I'm not the fastest reader.
what some people could read in threehours probably takes me 12 hours.
I'm just always happypeople are reading at all.
(13:12):
Yes.
So thank you for being a reader.
And we read a lot to our kids.
So we do a lot of reading with, with kids.
So sometimes I beat myself up, oh,I'm not reading enough, or I'm not.
but then I think about how muchmy wife and I read to our kids.
It's like I'm reading it might not bewhat a lot of device I necessarily wanna
read, but you know, when my youngestcomes out and is having breakfast and
(13:34):
is sitting at the table with a bookin his hands, it's, it's a blessing.
So we'll keep encouraging.
your sister, you said that she was having,going into cardiac failure and there's
a genetic, something genetic there.
What is it that you, you two found?
Sure.
So it's a genetic arrhythmia.
It's called Long QT syndrome.
(13:54):
And you know, the heartis an electrical organ.
And so when it pumps basically the sinusnode in the heart, which is known as
the heart's pacemaker, it sends signalsto all these different parts of the
tissue to prepare them for their nextbeat so that then they electrically
can, go off in a synchronized way.
And it's that synchronization thatallows the heart to pump in a way
(14:16):
that sends blood to all of theessential organs all over the body.
So part of what happens in Long QTsyndrome is you get a little bit of de
desynchronization, certain parts of theheart are ready to beat in some parts
of the heart are not ready to beat.
And so what you get is e quiveringinstead of asynchronized pumping.
And cardiac arrest is just when bloodis not making it to the main organs.
(14:38):
And that's why you would pass outbecause there's not oxygenation.
And so, yeah, my younger sister.
Started going into cardiacarrest in her dorm room.
And the weird thing with long QTsyndrome, there are a few different
types, but we are type two andthat tends to relate to the startle
response in the body and adrenaline.
So what was happening was herroommate's alarm clock would go
(14:59):
off and it would desynchronized herheart and she would like almost die.
And was just very lucky as a youngperson that her heart would sort of
restart, um, find its way back to rhythm.
But that's not inevitable at allwhen you hear about young people
having these random deaths onsports fields or, you know, drowning
(15:20):
sometimes car accident, sometimesit's sudden infant death syndrome.
A lot of these.
That's where it feels like, oh, youngpeople shouldn't just randomly be dying.
It can have to do with theseunderlying arrhythmias that
just haven't been diagnosed yet.
So I knew that my sister had this and shehad a doctor figure out what was going on.
She had a cardiac defibrillatorimplanted during finals of
(15:41):
her first semester of college.
Bless her.
She's 19.
And then get this, the wire moved inher heart during her recovery and so
she had to have it reimplanted duringher second finals of freshman year.
So our family had gone through thisand I knew that this was a thing
and my mom had been trying to getme to get an E K G and they said
(16:01):
like, we'll pay for it just into St.
John's.
And it was like, I am, you know, atthe time, 22, 23 working as a ski
instructor working at the climbing gym.
Like the last thing on mylist is walking into St.
John's to ask for an E K G.
And I think part of it was that I wasterrified that if I got diagnosed with
this thing, my life would be over.
(16:21):
So was I surprised when I was theone waking up in the parking lot?
Not really.
but it was also dis stating because itwas like, what does it mean to live in
a remote place and to have jobs thatgo into the back country if, you have a
potentially favor arrhythmia Holy buckets.
I'm not even sure to where to begin withthat, but I'm so grateful that with all
(16:45):
of your activities that you were doingthat you never had this come on before.
I'm curious to know, you said that yoursister's roommate's alarm clock was
setting her heart off into the arrhythmia.
What is it?
The what set yours off?
Yeah.
It's such a good question and it'sactually still a mystery to this day.
(17:08):
I assume it was the cell phone, I assumewhen, so this is actually a funny story.
a friend had given me, Her contactfor this hiking job, you know, just
leading some random contract hikesaround the valley and I had shown
up one day to give a hike at aranch and no one was expecting me.
I went, I had gone to the place.
(17:29):
That I was told to and no one was there.
And so I had to call this bossand be like, what is going on?
Will I still get paid for this daythat I drove all the way out, you
know, it was like by slide Lake.
And so when I was in the middle ofband practice, it was that boss who
called me and I like to say I wasso happy I might get paid that I, I
died, but like, okay, I, the phonerang, I jumped up, I ran outside.
(17:54):
My, my band mate was not happy with me,sort of glared at me like, you're taking
a call in the middle of just, but itwas like, I need to talk to this person.
I need to get paid.
And then, you know, I wakeup in the parking lot.
Next thing I know.
never did lead hikes for them that summer.
Did you get paid?
I think I did get paid, yeah.
Ok, good.
Alright.
Pointment.
Ok.
(18:15):
You got, you got paid.
Oh.
What's so strange aboutthe whole situation?
you know, I'd had a few symptoms thatwinter that I dismissed as not symptoms.
Meaning I woke up one night in themiddle of the night gasping for air.
Mm.
And that can be one of 'em if you'rehaving an arrhythmia in your sleep.
and I also was on atreadmill at Enclosure.
(18:36):
Sprinting one day, and all of a suddenit, it was almost the way you would
picture it in a cartoon with the heartbeating out of your chest, like a two
feet in front of you, like a bug bunny.
Mm-hmm.
Sort of thing.
That's how it felt.
And it was terrifying.
And I hit the stop button onthe treadmill and sat down and
it sort of returned to normal.
And like, what did I try to do?
I went back to sprintingand, and my heart weird.
(18:56):
So I stopped runningfor that day eventually.
but I just, you know, when we'reyoung, when we think we're invincible,
it's really hard to separate out,like, oh, bodies are sometimes weird.
And a lot of times what you feelmeans nothing with like, oh,
this is an actual symptom, and.
you know, I can find kind of fast forwardand say it has been almost 14 years since
(19:20):
the day I passed out in the parking lot.
I basically ended up having toleave the valley in order to get a
cardiac defibrillator because St.
John's didn't have collegeservices back then.
And because if I did theSurgery anywhere else.
I couldn't get a local discount, right?
There weren't gonna be localprograms that applied to me cuz
there just wasn't a hospital whereI was local that had cardiology.
(19:41):
and it was estimated a cardiacdefibrillator implantation in 2009 was
estimated at $180,000 out of pocket.
So what I ended up doing was moving toBoulder where my younger sister, Jen,
said he could help me if I was localand he said he would donate his fee.
He ended up getting theanesthesiologist to donate his fee
and the I c D company to donate.
(20:03):
And then Boulder Community Hospital hada program that kicked in for a lot of
it because I went in through the er.
But it ended my life in Jackson.
And so the wild thing is I've hada defibrillator now since 2009
and it's watching my heart all thetime, and I've never had another
arrhythmia in this whole time.
(20:23):
I'm not even on medication right now.
So it's a toll freak thing where Ido have, you know, I've had a genetic
test confirm the result, but we don'tknow what it was about that day.
I had been up Paintbrush Canyonthat morning, like, what was it?
it's a total mystery and obviouslyI've been startled since then.
You know, an ambulance goes off or,whatever else, and yeah, who knows?
(20:47):
Well, I'm glad that it's still tickingand that defibrillator has not kicked
in in the past 14 years, and thatyou're, you're still here and you
have this story to share with people.
Yeah.
Um, well the defibrillator did, it didgo off once, spy accident Uhhuh, due to
an error in its settings in 2012, that'swhere the title of my book comes from.
(21:10):
So the book is called Lightning Flowers.
Some of you might, Recognize that term.
It usually refers to when people arestruck by lightning and the electricity
follows the path of water in the body.
And so you get these very beautifulfern like branched rose-colored burns,
and they look like flowers on the body.
And so it's like both very beautiful andvery messed up because they're burns.
(21:34):
And when I took three shocksto the heart in 2012, you know,
2000 volts cumulatively, it wasthis wild experience, where the
lightning came from inside my body.
And I didn't know whatwas happening at first.
And then once I figured out like, ohmy god, my device is shocking me, then
it was like, I shouldn't be awake.
You know, I should be conscious ifit's trying to restart my heart.
(21:57):
So why am I awake?
And it's shocking me and is it gonna stop?
And it did stop, eventually startedyoga breathing, and that re sort
of brought my heart rate down towhere the device stopped getting
triggered in the particular weirdway it was getting triggered.
but I lay on this soccer field,looking up at the stars, waiting
for the EMTs to arrive, and Icould smell, moan, burn tissues.
(22:20):
Mm.
And I had this totally bizarre thoughtabout like, if this just saved my life.
Like, I don't think it did, butif it did, where did the metal
come from and is it possible?
Someone else's lifewas adversely impacted.
In order to get this metalinto my body, I found myself
thinking about conflict minerals.
And that's such a bizarre thing to say.
I can only report that that'swhat happened at that moment.
(22:42):
So I'm lying on this field andI'm smelling my own burnt tissues,
and I'm thinking about like, whereis the metal in my body from?
Did it cost someone else something?
What is my life worth kindof in this global economy?
And, and is that right?
And how do I feel about that?
And because that moment, Took thedefibrillator from a device that
might save my life to a device thatactually also might hurt me, which
(23:05):
unfortunately becomes a larger partof my story because I have some
malfunctions and breakages with thetechnology later on in like 20 16, 20 17.
it really changed me and changedmy relationship with the device.
And part of the book is tracingthe path of the supply chain of
a defibrillator and asking thosequestions in a more extended format.
And I just think of those lightningflowers on the inside of my
(23:28):
body like no one else could see.
The way the inside of my bodytook the hit of that electricity.
But you know, I smelled it.
I, I felt it move throughmy body in this certain way.
And so both the book and the experiencesI ended up having sort of wrestling with
the technology and what it means to bea cyborg and what it means to be in the
American healthcare system and what itmeans to face death as a young person.
(23:51):
Like those are the lightningflowers that got imprinted on me.
And so you have the lightning flower?
I do, yeah.
Katie, we gotta take a quick break toget a word from one of our sponsors
and we're gonna come back and talk moreabout your book and your experience.
And before we leave, couldyou remind me, say it again.
How many volts were you shocked with?
(24:14):
2000.
So it would've 2000 beenthree separate shocks.
Okay folks, just think about that.
Getting shocked with 2000volts directly to your heart.
Alright, we'll be right back.
Katie, welcome back.
People were just thinking aboutas they were listening to a quick
sponsorship commercial, what itwould be like to get shocked with
(24:36):
2000 volts directly to your heart.
And you've written this book andwhat is it that you want people to
take away from reading your book?
What do you want 'em to learn?
Hmm.
That's such a great question and thereare so many things I want them to learn,
but I think at the heart of this book is,My journey with death, which I hope will
(25:00):
be a way that all of us think about ourrelationships to death more collectively
and the way that that relationship todeath show up in the type of healthcare
system we have and the way we useresources, the way our relationship to
death actually shapes the planet as we useresources on certain types of healthcare.
you know, as I already shared,I was sort of a stereotypical
(25:24):
able-bodied young person who feltmyself to be, invincible and.
After I passed out in the parkinglot for the first time, I started
taking a beta blocker medicationto protect me from the arrhythmia.
And because I was in such good shape,ironically, my, my blood pressure
was already so low that the betablocker dropped it really, really low.
(25:44):
And so I had this terrifying periodin the summer of thousand nine
here in Jackson where if I triedto ride my bike to the library, I
would almost like fall off my bike.
I was just spinning.
And if I tried to hike up Snowking, I would end up sitting on
the side like, am I gonna passout because of my heart condition?
Or am I gonna pass outbecause of this medication?
It just was a very terrifyingtime, my partner at the time, and
(26:06):
I, he didn't wanna leave me alone.
So it's like very hypervigilant.
So there was this way that like deathcame into my life and really took things
over and I didn't know what to do with it.
And it was like, how do you possibly live?
When the threat of death is so presentand so real, you kind of have to be
able to settle down in order to enjoyanything or pursue anything long term.
(26:30):
And that is the same quandarythat comes up over and over
throughout the book for me.
And I keep thinking, I'mlike solving death, right?
I, I get a defibrillator andlike, oh, now I can't die.
And then I actually almost dieof sepsis instead in this book.
And it's like, oh, there's allthese other things I could die of.
Like, what does it mean to bea human given that death is
(26:53):
actually present at every moment?
And that in some ways we live betterwhen we know that death is there.
But also it can render thingsmeaningless pretty quickly.
And when you really viscerallyunderstand that death is inevitable,
what healthcare choices do you then make?
And there's this like very interestingline between a sort of, fatalism of
(27:14):
like, well, nothing is worth it at,but then you like, wake up the next
morning, you're like, but I'm still here.
You know, like, it, somethings are worth it.
And so a lot of my journey has been reallyteasing out the way that healthcare as a
form of fixing death is just not a usefulframework and really neglects, so much
(27:37):
of the human experience of what facingdeath or needing to go through healing is.
And the book is a lot about what atechnology can do and what it can't do.
Unfortunately, my technological,technological story, Ends with the
fact that, the wire that connectsmy device to my heart broke.
And when we tried to remove itin 2016, it actually snapped off.
(27:59):
And as we tried further to remove it,the insulation got stripped off of it.
So I now have a stripped nest ofwire stuck in my right ventricle
and a halt heart valve thathas been deeply impacted by.
These surgeries.
And so when I look at my life,so much more of my life has been
impacted by the technology, technologyspheres and by the healthcare
(28:21):
system that I'm trying to work in.
Whether it's having to quit my lifeand move 500 miles away just to
access care in a pre Obamacare US oreven after, the Affordable Care Act.
Just having to work within the systemin these ways where you're trying to
coordinate between insurance and billingand you're on the phone all the time and
you're calling and you're calling, and,the way that that system impacts a life.
(28:43):
Like you're trying to fight forlifesaving care, but the act
of fighting for lifesaving caremakes you not want to live.
Um, that was my experience.
just the quality of my life seeping away.
The more time I had to spend on thesehealthcare interactions that were
so frustra frustrating and maddeningand just really looking at like,
Given all this, like, what doesgood healthcare actually look like?
(29:08):
What did it mean to live a goodlife for any one of us individually?
On a scale of one to 10 for here in theus where's the US with good healthcare?
Oh God.
Oh, what a, what a fascinatingframe to put it in.
Obviously, if you can break thatdown by category, the US has
(29:32):
extraordinary services availablefor particular conditions.
available to specific peoplein specific situations.
Right.
Part of my story is that, throughthat whole healthcare battle, I
did make it to the Mayo Clinic andI can tell you there's nothing on
the planet like the Mayo Clinic.
It's extraordinary.
It was absolutely my safe place.
I received incredible care there.
(29:53):
But that's not the standard of carein a lot of places, and especially
as someone who likes to live rurally,we really see how that is not.
Not the standard of care availableto all people at all income
levels in all geographical areas.
So, I don't know, and maybe put itat a five, you know, you, you can be
the luckiest person in the world forbeing in the US if you get certain
(30:15):
conditions, but I think also, especiallyas cardiologists read my book, who aren't
based in the US and, and reach out to mefor conversations, it becomes very clear
this sort of psychic burden, the hoursand human potential we lose, because of
people having to fight these extraordinarybureaucratic battles in order to get
(30:37):
certain types of care that they need.
the paperwork, the calling, andalso just this question of like, how
people make choices about their lifeknowing that their career might be.
Related to what type of healthcarethey are then able to receive.
And to me, we often take that forgranted in the US that healthcare
(30:59):
is a part of many people's jobs.
I'm sure there's plenty of Jacksonlisteners who are like, Nope, not
getting healthcare through my employer.
Thank goodness for the Wyominghealthcare marketplace.
but for a lot of people thatplays into the choices they make.
And people challenge me on thisin book clubs, and I just feel
like this is a place that we havean enormous lost human potential.
If people cannot pursue the things thatthey are best at, the places that they
(31:22):
have the highest opportunity to serve.
If they can't do those things,they can't make their art, they
can't be an entrepreneur, whateverthat looks like, because they
can't get access to healthcare.
They have to take whatever brie job.
and so yeah, when we're thinkingabout what healthcare means in the
us, we're actually talking abouta whole bunch of other things that
aren't healthcare y Yes, you are.
(31:43):
You've.
Distilled it down very well and you'refar more fluid and, knowledgeable
in that conversation than, than me.
I, I know for, from experiencethough, trying to get approval
for something, at times you thinkit's basic and it gets rejected.
Oh God, why?
you talked one person,what was it coded Right?
Well, what was coded wrong?
(32:04):
Well, we can't tell you that.
Or Yeah, it's, yeah.
You pay for it.
It's, why does it have to be sochallenging and and like, who
is making a healthcare patientlearn about billing codes?
Mm-hmm.
That's a wild thing to have happen.
I worked, when I lived in Boulder, Iworked at a small sexual health clinic so
I did know about billing codes when I wasgoing into my giant healthcare battle.
(32:28):
And so I could at least ask certainquestions cause I understood what
was going on behind the scenes.
But it was like, if I hadn't hadthat job, I would not even know
how to push on those conversations.
And even knowing that I couldn'tget this organization to put the
right billing codes down to getthem approved by this organization.
(32:48):
Like, y'all just needto talk to each other.
Why am I even involved?
Yeah.
The provider and the insurancecompany could talk to each other.
It'd be amazing.
Yeah.
But there's no profit incentive for that.
You know, to whatever extent they canminimize their work, in that regard.
I, which I wanna go back to somethingthat you asked yourself when you
(33:10):
had the, defibrillator installed.
Was somebody else's lifeimpacted or sacrificed?
For the materials that wentinto making the device.
And then what was your life worth?
What did you find out?
Did you go down that, thattheory, that question?
(33:31):
It's such a complicated questionand I spent years there.
you know, as I mentioned, my initialthought had been conflict minerals,
and that's because in 2012, theDemocratic Republic of the Congo was
known as the rape capital of the world.
the DOD Frank Act was just beingpassed, and that was financial
reform legislation coming out ofthe big collapse in 2008, 2009.
(33:56):
But it included this weird littlewriter called Section 1502 that required
companies registered, on the US StockExchange to essentially trace and then.
Present whether there was tin, tantalum,tungston, or gold essential to the
functionality of whatever they weremanufacturing, in their products, and
(34:18):
whether that was from the Great Lakesregion of Africa, which is Congo and
the adjoining nations, um, sorry, Dr.
Congo.
And, It ended up being that Icouldn't find out for years whether
defibrillator companies were saying,yes, our, our devices have materials
(34:40):
from the Congo in them or no.
but I was very interested in like howthat tracking might actually occur.
And for those who aren't as familiarwith conflict minerals, the basic
concept there is that when you'retalking about pit mining rather than
industrialized mining, people withshovels can just dig up or and sell it.
And so that area was really benefitingfrom, the electronics boom in the
(35:02):
US sort of consumer electronics.
We tend to not think of medical technologyas part of that, but of course it is.
I have a, a motherboardand a battery inside me.
And so, it was very easy forarmed groups to take over a
pit to force people to work.
especially child labor.
There were a lot of sex slave situations.
And so the reason Congo was known asthe rape capital of the world was there
(35:25):
were these armed groups who were gettingplenty of money to buy weapons, to buy
drugs, to terrorize local communities,through the, electronics boom.
And you know, the more I looked at thatscenario, the more it was like, I don't
think I can figure out if the device inmy body has materials specifically from
that area, because the companies weretalking about don't even know today.
(35:48):
They probably have a slightlybetter idea than back then.
It's been really interesting to watch thecompliance environment sort of evolve.
But this is still something we're talkingabout in terms of laptops, all the time,
you know, whatever the sort of conflicthotspots are, our mining materials,
making it into the supply chain.
And what ended up becoming reallyinteresting to me was, okay,
(36:09):
so the Great Lakes region ofAfrica is one potential scenario.
What are the other potential scenariosfor rock coming out of the ground
that could end up in my body and,and how should I feel about that?
Like, are there examples of what wouldbe considered a good mining project?
Does that exist?
Can I wrap my head around that?
(36:30):
And so we really ended up,down the rabbit hole on was
corporate social responsibility.
And I traveled to a mine in,the rainforest of Madagascar.
very new mine being carvedout of endemic jungle.
It was called Tuvi and itwas a cobalt and nickel mine.
I have cobalt in my battery and nickelin my micro electronics, and I spent a
(36:51):
lot of time talking to the communitiesaround that site as well as people at the
company about what their programs were.
because I was in Madagascar, I then wentdown to an older Rio Tinto mine called
Q M M, and it was a titanium sands mine.
And of course, an implanted cardiacdefibrillator is in a titanium
box, essentially a titanium can.
(37:13):
And so I learned about how you taketitanium out of the sands and how
those communities were impacted and.
it's just an incredibly complex thingto talk about because there's a lot
of good intentions and improved,reporting standards and not regulations
necessarily that are coming from thesegovernments, but more regulations that
(37:36):
come through the funding mechanisms.
You know, Citibank and Wells Fargoand Bank of America, they all sign
on to these sort of standards thatthey will uphold, projects to.
And a lot of the things that look reallygood going in don't always play out when
the metals market dips low, don't alwaysplay out as one stakeholder sells out
and another comes in and there's justa lot of questions in that part of the
(37:59):
world when things are under develop.
People tend to have a lot of hope thatthe mining company will be able to
somehow fix these things that you or Imight think it is the government's job
to do, you know, depending on politicals.
Mm-hmm.
But like, is it a mining company'sjob to give people healthcare?
Is it a mining company's job topave the roads, build schools?
(38:21):
Like what is within that purviewand not, and so you end up in this
really like wicked sticky situationwhere mining companies are actually
suddenly in charge of social programsand biodiversity offsets and things
that are not their expertise andthe results are really mixed.
So I came to think of thequestion that I was asking as.
(38:42):
Okay, this is the work of a writer.
This is the work of a book.
You ask the question that doesn'thave another place to necessarily
be asked in this way, and youask it as deeply as you can.
And even though it seems like there's notan answer, the act of sort of exploring
the insides of the question and findingits contours, not only will some answers
(39:04):
sort of emerge, but it is useful as asociety for us to ask and keep asking and
not turn away beautiful and remarkablethat you traveled around the globe to go
to those places and see what was going on.
And yes, legislation can getpassed and I think it has all
(39:27):
the, the best intentions, but.
In the end, who's gonna track it?
and that's with a lot of stuff withlegislation and laws, it's who's
gonna track it, whether it's finance,these types of minerals, whatever.
you gotta have accountability and yougotta have that in in place as well.
And, I'm sure you met some remarkablepeople along the way, along your
(39:49):
jour, throughout your journey to seeof what you were out to search for.
I really did.
I think I think once I understood thatthere wasn't gonna be just one answer.
Mm-hmm.
Or like one way to have an I cD that only had positive impact.
Right.
Like that's a, that's a pipe dream.
and I think folks are probablythinking in their right to, so like,
(40:10):
oh my God, look around you right now.
Everything, every, every objecthas a story came from somewhere,
has an organic matter or chemicalcompounds or things that came
together in the making of that object.
Right.
And how is it more meaningful to askthe question about the I C D than
the computer that we're staring at?
It's, that's where the exercise andthe question asking is so important,
(40:34):
but I really wanted to see how mylife was linked to other people's.
And I think that is too often.
You know, it's, mm-hmm.
we find ourselves absorbedby the worlds we inhabit.
We find ourselves in kind of entitlementto having access to certain types
of technology or resources, and weforget that they come from communities
(40:58):
and that, an indigenous people mightactually be kicked out of their ancestral
forest, not only so that the miningcan occur, but so the mining company
can have a biodiversity offset fortheir mind, which is really complex.
I never thought that biodiversity offsetswere sort of morally complicated, but
when we identify indigenous people asa threat to the forest, and the mining
(41:23):
company is tasked with improving forest tooffset their, their mining project, then
yeah, people get removed from ancestrallands, and so there's just all snarly
snarly pieces and so it felt important to.
Look people in the eyes, and reallygain a sense of this object in my
body is actually really sacred.
(41:46):
It took a lot to make it.
And what does it mean to live in away where we look at the things around
us and we understand what they take.
Perhaps we have gratitude for what theyare, and we also then make more conscious
choices about when we say yes to things.
And this is where we get looped back tothe way that death shapes the planet.
(42:07):
Our cultural relationshipshapes the planet.
Because I am a young person, at leastfor a few more years, you know, I'm,
I'm now about to turn 38, which isan A, never thought I would get to b.
so for a lot of people, it's morallyuncomplicated to give me healthcare
resources because certainly ayoung person should get more years.
But it's when we start asking about,Stages of life where maybe there's not
(42:31):
a, a lot of years remaining, how doyou make decisions from that place?
And I'm not here to say that I haveone, one right answer, but American
Healthcare does spend extraordinaryamount of resources right at the
end of life for a lot of peoplewhen that life is on its end anyway.
And so recognizing again, that theseresources come from somewhere, they
(42:56):
impact people's lives, they are sacred.
it really changes the way we movethrough the world to hold that in mind.
And for me in particular, I actually,throughout my journey have discovered
that I probably never needed adefibrillator to begin with, which is a
particularly bitter pill for me, given.
I now have this brokentechnology stranded inside me.
(43:18):
My medications were perhaps notvery well managed when I was a young
person, and there may have beenanother way to keep me safe through
a less invasive means medication.
Mm-hmm.
without having to implant the technology.
And, you know, I'm now on my third device.
The resources required in myparticular case have been very high
considering that the device hasnever actually saved my life has only
(43:41):
caused negative impacts to my life.
My sister's life hasbeen saved by her device.
So that's more complicated.
Right?
Yeah.
So I'm not here to that.
No one, no one gets to have one,but I actually am on the path
now to, ex planting my entiresystem and becoming an exor.
I'm hoping that thathappens by the time I'm 42.
you're, repeat that You're working onex planting to become an ex what again?
(44:05):
Ex cyborg.
Ex cyborg.
Ok.
Ok.
Thank you.
I did not catch that.
I appreciate you repeating it.
Thank, it's a, it's a charming term.
So, Katie, you're working on, being ableto live life without an implant, you're
trying to, you know, figure that out.
What about for you and your writing?
(44:30):
you've written a book.
It is, getting a ton of tractionand I am so amped to read it now.
And thank you.
I, I have a friend to introduce you towho has gone through the ringer with her.
Issues.
Oh, is it Jenny N No, boots 19.
(44:51):
Suzanne.
I know her as Suzanne Knight.
I know Boots.
You know Suzanne?
I know Boots.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Everybody.
She's now Boots Knight.
I've known Suzanne for so long.
I just, I, I mean, when you knowsomebody with, when they use
the first name and now she theirmiddle, I just have to talk hard.
Hard.
Yeah.
I cannot, so, you know, Suzanne beautiful.
I'm so, yes.
(45:11):
She found her way to me when mybook came out because so many people
were like, oh my God, you were bothski instructors at the same time.
You both have a hard thing.
So yeah, we got connected.
That's, that's beautiful.
I'm, I'm so happy to hear.
So tell, tell us what, as you'reworking through all of this other stuff,
are you now a skiing structor again?
(45:32):
Are you hiking and biking, or is lifeat a different mellow activity playing.
And there's a lot more timefor writing and thinking.
Well, you, you tell me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's such an, an interesting,uh, spot I find myself in.
(45:56):
So, I tried to move back to the Valley in2019 and I failed and I ended up, uh, I
just couldn't find anything and, and atthe time I'd been writing fairly well in
New Mexico working on lightning flowers,and so I ended up outside Santa Fe by
about 20 miles on the side of a mesafor two and a half years, which was a
magical spot in terms of house and land.
(46:19):
But it was, really not good for mylife and it just made me done with
living places that weren't Jackson.
I mean, this has felt like home inmy heart for so long, and I was so
resentful that I ever had to leave.
And I did understand for a few yearsthat, you know, it made sense too.
I went to grad school, I didsome of the things that people
have to leave the valley to do.
(46:41):
but it was like, no, I needto find a way to go home.
So I've been so grateful tostep into Charlie's house.
but our timing was a little off, soI didn't, I didn't pick up a side
job for the winter or anything.
I think I would've liked to ski,instruct half for the fun of it
and, and half for the past benefits.
but most of my time is spent, doingpromotions still for lightning
(47:02):
flowers, you know, a a few bookclubs, speaking engagements.
And, you know, pitches for bookfestivals, sex stuff, and then also
working on my next book and doing thingsto try to line up funding for that.
I have a patronage accountthat I put to and, and work on.
and I'm working on the bookproposal so that hopefully I can
(47:25):
have an agent sell that book.
within the next period here.
There's always a weirdpressure in a writing career.
Some people come right out of theirfirst book into their second book
really fast, and I've been on theslower side cuz I needed some emotional
transition time and Covid was wacky.
and then I work with clients, so alot of my work, I do occasionally read
book manuscripts for people, or I teachclasses regularly, but a lot of my
(47:49):
work is specifically on trauma writing.
I work as a trauma writing Do.
Helping people birth these reallydifficult stories, and that requires
an attention to physiologicallywhere they are with their trauma.
Socially.
What kind of messages have they taken inabout their experience and the stories
they are or aren't allowed to tell?
Crack wise?
What does it look like to confront thingslike fragmented memory on the page?
(48:13):
you know, how do you incorporate.
Good storytelling when someoneis having to go to a bunch of
doctor's appointments, which canactually be very boring on the page.
So really working on those craft aspects.
And then ultimately what all ofthat lines up to, for a lot of my
clients is a spiritual invitation.
So people are through the act oftelling their story, really having
(48:36):
to confront certain things, rise tocertain challenges, maybe somatically
process, emotions or other traumaenergy that is stored in their body.
Like move it through and through thatprocess they become someone else.
They sort of rise to it.
and so that is a lot of my work and Ihave had kind of a disrupted winter.
(48:58):
I've had some medical appointments.
I've just had a, I justwas sick for a week.
You could hear it in my voice.
So it hasn't been a greatwinter for adventuring.
I don't have a lot ofmy own gear right now.
I'm just sort of confronting like,okay, Jackson Life requires, like you
invest in these types of clothing, you,you invest in these types of gear, or
(49:19):
you just are so sad because the wholepoint of all this snow is to play in it.
Right.
and so I feel like I'm kind ofin between worlds right now.
Like, I need more time on this landto, come into alignment with all
the things I love to do and havethe resources I need to do them.
And, but I will say Charlie CraigHead's house, you have to park
on Antelope Plats Road and then,snowshoe Cross-Country Ski Inn.
(49:42):
And so I do that almost every day and it'sreally good, sort of like tethered to the
earth of like having to be outside mm-hmm.
Before you get into your car.
I really, it's been kind ofan ass kicker, but I love it.
That's, that's beautiful.
And this year for, just so peoplehave an understanding, we've had
(50:04):
a banner snow year this year.
So when you're saying that you have tosnowshoe or cross-country ski in, it's
not as though you're on this packed,maybe you are at a packed road, but it's
challenged because you don't know what theconditions are gonna be and it has been
either super cold or just snowing a lotand where you are, you get a lot more snow
(50:27):
than what we get at here in town cuz youare at a higher elevation and it's just
notorious to get a lot more snow out therethan with the wind that can accumulate.
So, talk about the re fortitude andresilience for you to have that commitment
to get in and outta the house and tomake it to all your appointments and.
Kudos to you, Katie.
(50:47):
Kudos.
Thank you.
Um, yeah, the wind is really drivingout here and it drifts heavily.
Someone asked the othernight why I haven't sung at
the Hoot Nanny this season.
And it was like, cuz there was absurdevery Monday and getting from out here
into town was not gonna happen rightNow, wrapping things up, how can people
reach out to you and, and find you?
(51:08):
What's, what are those methods?
And especially to keep followingyou for your next book, how
exciting that you're working on.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Lightning Flowers is availableat both Valley Bookstore and
Jackson Hole book Trader.
They've been amazing partners.
I try to keep the, some of thelittle free libraries stocked
so you can check there too.
(51:29):
Oh, it's at Town County Library as well.
And, on Twitter and Instagram,I'm at Girl Makes Fire.
my website is catherine standifer.com.
And yeah, there's justa lot going on there.
Different, classes that I'mteaching or services that I offer.
and I'll also be at JacksonHole Writers Conference.
(51:51):
I'm joining the faculty of that, whichwas a real bucket, bucket list moment.
Oh, what a wonderful, what anamazing event that we have here.
That right conference.
Yeah.
It's really a special one.
Mm-hmm.
Well, thank you for joining thatfaculty and, you know, not to dismiss.
I mean, we, we only have so much timeand today, but not to dismiss what
(52:12):
you're doing, you know, trauma writingas a, a doula trauma writer to help
other people share their stories.
Not everybody's a writer.
I mean, you start off as a writer,but for you to help and it's gotta
be quite emotional for you to travelthat path with somebody and help them.
Extract that experience, the details,the memories, the feelings, the
(52:37):
emotions, and put it in a, in aform that you can publish it, that
somebody else is gonna read it.
It is quite a process.
Yeah.
I wish I had had one.
you know, writing LightningFlowers changed me.
I had to spend a lot oftime alone in the process.
I had a period, I was doing a lot oftrauma processing related to the story
(52:58):
on the Mesa in New Mexico, just in ashort term rental in, in early 2019.
And then I also rented a cabinout here in Kelly in fall 2019,
where I was doing a lot more of it.
And it can be a really lonelyand underworld experience.
And one of the things I've beenreally interested in always is,
Sort of what it means to be both amodern human and a spiritual human.
(53:20):
Mm-hmm.
When I was a Mary Center intern backin 2006, all these amazing minds would
come through that ranch, and so many ofthem were concerned with this question
of regaining spirituality or beingspiritual through the land, despite.
All of us being in modernity andtrauma writing doula work strikes me as
actually very like old and archetypal.
(53:41):
It sort of crosses over withthese old storyteller archetypes
and sort of medicine people.
Like what does it mean to have gonethrough an experience that is extremely
difficult and come out the other sideas someone with something to share.
And so I like to say that a lot of ourexperiences are the first half of an
initiation, but we can't really accessthe wisdom of them until we go through
(54:02):
that process of reflecting, making theart from them, alchemizing them really.
And people are sort ofcompleting an initiation with me.
And that is, um, really deep workand it's really special work.
And it's not for everyone, butthere are some of us who are just
called that these difficult storiesaren't supposed to be things we
just went through and try to ignore.
(54:24):
You know, they're supposed to beof service to other people and
make us into who we need to be.
And I think we will leave it at that.
Katie, thank you so much.
You're very, for having me on.
You're very eloquent with your, yourthoughts and your, your messaging far
better than me, so I am so happy thatyou're the one who was, who's been
(54:46):
speaking this entire time and not me.
Oh, well this podcast is so important.
This is such a special community.
It is a lovely community, and we have somany fascinating people to have them share
their stories and their experiences justto lift us all up, and an opportunity
for us to learn from other people and toconnect, to just get to know somebody a
(55:09):
little bit more who you would've neverknown, was right out your back door.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Well, thank you Katie.
I, I wish you a.
Very fruitful and productive andengaging life as you travel your
path in many, many more years, oflife here with us all let it be.
(55:32):
So, yes, thank you.
Thank you, Katie.
To learn more about KatieStandifer and her book, lightning
Flowers, visit the jackson holeconnection.com, episode number 236.
Thank you, Michael, for keeping thispodcast going through the marketing
and the editing and production.
(55:53):
Folks, if you want to do apodcast, have your own podcast.
Reach out to Michael.
He can help you.
And thank you to my wife Laura,and my boys Lewis and William.
I appreciate you all listening, all of youfans who listen, share this podcast with
your friends and families or somebody thatyou haven't connected with in a while.
I do appreciate you sharing yourtime with me today and cheers till
(56:15):
next week for the next episodeof the Jackson Hole Connection.
You are tuned into the Jackson hole,connection, sharing, fascinating stories
of people connected to Jackson Hole.
I am truly grateful for each ofyou for tuning in today and support
for this podcast comes from:
Today's episode, I'm beginning.
About sharing a few booksthat I have recently read.
(00:21):
The books are written by theArbinger Institute, and the titles
of these two books are one, theAnatomy of Peace, and the second one
is leadership and Self Deception.
These books I was introduced to by aa friend, and they explain that we all
(00:41):
have a problem to be solved, and evenas we work to solving this problem, we
will still always have this problem.
The content teaches us how tounderstand the problem we have
and how to reduce the impact.
This problem influencesour lives and the people.
Lives who we connect with each day.
So I give these books, a highly must read.
(01:04):
You can find them at your local book.
Seller can find them on audio versions.
However you get your audio books, and I'msure you can find them on the internet.
But go, go visit your local book seller.
And welcome to episode number 236.
My guest today is Katie Standifer.
Katie is an outdoor enthusiast.
She's a published author and a survivor.
(01:27):
Katie was living here in Jackson Hole fora period of time, and now she's returned.
To living here again, right here inthe valley, but several years back.
Due to a health crisis, Katiewas forced to leave Jackson Hole.
She didn't have a choice and withouthealth insurance, Katie, with this
(01:48):
health crisis figured out a way toreceive the treatment she needed to.
And I tell you what folks surviveand thrive is what Katie has done.
What Katie has had isa journey with death.
And today, while discussing her journeyand her book, Katie wants people to
(02:10):
think about their relationship with..
Well, Katie, welcome to theJackson Hole connection.
It is delightful to have some time andspeak with you and get to know you.
Such a pleasure to be here.
Thanks for having me on.
You're welcome.
And you live here in Jackson, correct?
(02:32):
I do.
I live in moose, currently in Moose.
And so share with folks who are notJackson natives or maybe have not visited.
Where is moose?
So moose is about 20minutes north of town.
It's at the entrance to Grand TetonNational Park, or depending on
where you live in moose, you maybe entirely surrounded by park.
(02:54):
So a lot of the houses here are priorin holdings that were around before
park boundaries were solidified.
and so I'm out in the middle of AntelopeFlats, which is where the bison range is,
probably how folks would know it best.
And just in an amazing house forfour months while my old friend
Charlie Craighead is down inArizona to take a break from winter.
(03:17):
Well, good on you for having a greatfriend like Charlie Craighead who is
loaning you his house while he's inArizona for the winter, and it is a real,
real special spot and kind of a miracle.
Yeah, I've known Charlie since, atleast 2006, maybe 2004, and this
(03:39):
is just an incredible location.
I'm staring at the Grand Town right now.
It's right in front of the houseand it's a very wild location.
The wolves haven't come by since I'vebeen here, but apparently Charlie said
they were here right before he left, soI'm hopeful they'll swing back this way.
So not a location where if youhave a dog, you let your dog just
(04:00):
outside to go to the bathroom?
Possibly not, no.
Luckily I do not have a dog.
I've been focused on makingfriends with the mag pies who Okay.
Like to come over, and look in the windowsand see, see what's happening here.
Mm.
How cool.
So Katie, where did you grow up andhow did you land here in Jackson?
(04:21):
So, I grew up, outside Chicago ina suburb called Arlington Heights.
It's on the northwest side ofthe city, and it was a place that
really did not resonate for me.
I had a lot of trouble growing up there.
I was sort of in a tract.
tracked suburb surrounded by strip mallsand really felt as a kid the pain of
(04:43):
watching the wild scraps of woods andwetlands get covered over for big box
parking lots and more subdivisions.
Mm-hmm.
And my parents, startedus skiing at a pretty age.
We started in Colorado and we woulddrive out over spring break and when I
was seven, we crossed Wyoming for thefirst time, to visit Steamboat Springs.
(05:05):
We sort of went, uh, through thecorner of Wyoming on the way down
through the medicine bow, I toldmy parents I was gonna be a writer
who lived in a cabin in Wyoming.
I was very obsessed with, theopen space that we were crossing,
the sort of sage landscape.
And we ended up in Jackson on a trip whenI was, going into my freshman year of
(05:25):
college, or not college, uh, high school.
And so I was 14 and had sortof a traditional Grand Teton
Yellowstone family vacation.
And at the time I'd already been rockclimbing for a few years at my local
Y M C A and we saw some kids goingback into the Tetons to rock climb.
And we ended up asking at skinnyskis who, did that, how, how could
(05:46):
I climb as part of these groups?
And now that I know, Jackson, I'm verysurprised that we got the answer that
we did, but whoever was there toldme to look up a group called Trails
Wilderness School, which no longer exists.
Trails was based, on the old TetonValley Ranch in Kelly, and they ran
(06:07):
wilderness groups similar to Knowles,but with slightly tighter age groups.
And it was a, family run operation.
The woman in the couple whoran trails with Oren and.
I got really obsessed withthis concept and was having a
lot of family drama at home.
It was a really difficult year,freshman year of high school.
And so my dad and I talked aboutthese courses and, he suggested I do
(06:30):
a 14 day course and I was assistingon the 30 day and he said, well,
you can pay for the difference.
And so, a lot of my high school years werethen spent babysitting and mowing lawns.
And initially I got a cleaning lady job.
I worked, uh, selling gear at Gallions.
if anyone remembers that, it gotbought out by Dick's Sporting Goods,
And By the focus of my life turnedto paying for these wilderness trips.
(06:54):
and that first course that I did inthe summer of 2000 was, three weeks
backpacking down in the Wyomingrange, and then four days whitewater
kayaking on the snake and a few daysclimbing in the Tetons, culminating
in, in the summit of the grand.
So just very like classicJackson tourist things.
But, I ended up returning to domore courses with Trails and then
(07:17):
becoming an employee with Trails.
I completed their leadership courseand just, really fell in love with
the sage landscapes and the styleof forests and, what it, what
it felt like to be in this area.
That is a major commitmentto come back here.
Kids would not give that dedicationjust to go spend another 14,
(07:39):
15 days in the wilderness.
it's true.
but there's something, it's so funny.
A guy in a bar just the other nightasked me the same question, like,
why do you like Jackson so much?
He was actually about to move away.
Mm-hmm.
So fine, good on him.
but it, you know, it was like,there's something about me that
becomes more me when I'm here andit's really hard to put a finger on.
(08:02):
I am so deeply moved by being inthe middle of this many hundreds of
miles long functioning ecosystem.
There's something about, the deeppine forest, the pine Aspen mix,
and being around these big mammals.
you know, I have lived some otherplaces now in my adult life.
I'm sure we'll get there, but I've sortof been cycling in and out of Jackson and.
(08:24):
There's nothing like that.
there's just something internallythat fails, deepened, and, made
more alive by this ecosystem.
And you told your parents you were gonnabe a writer living in a cabin in Wyoming?
I did.
And tell me about your writing.
(08:45):
yeah.
What took you on the path?
I mean, you were 14 whenyou said that, correct?
Or some Oh, seven.
Seven.
Yeah.
You knew you were gonna be awriter at the age of seven.
I did.
Yeah.
Some people, it takes them a while to findtheir life path For me, it takes me longer
to find other things like a partner inhousing, but writing in Wyoming have sort
(09:07):
of been the consistent loves of my life.
yeah.
So as a kid I was constantly writingnovels, writing songs, writing poems.
And when I went to college,I ended up double majoring in
sociology and fiction writing andactually wrote two of my feces.
On this area, both.
I did a study on how people form sense ofplace and how that impacts their response
(09:30):
to a massive industrialization event.
And that was focused around Pinedale,which was the largest fracking
site in the country at the time.
So when fracking was new technology.
So I was interviewing people abouttheir relationship to Wyoming and the
Upper Green River Valley in particular.
and kind of squaring that againsthow they related to, the fracking
and, and their sense of place.
(09:52):
and then I, I also wrote a fictionnova that was based here in the valley.
And so when I graduated college in2007, I knew that the, the long term
was become an author as my career.
And part of why working inthis area, Really appealed
to me was because of seasons.
So I could work in outdoor educationand put in a ton of hours in the summer
(10:17):
and winter and then have spring andfall to really work on my writing
more intensely and still be havinginteresting experiences to write about.
And so my first few years that I washere, out of college, I was publishing
some poems and playing with some stories.
And, then one day in 2009 Iwas practicing with my band.
(10:40):
I also used to play at the Hoot Nannyevery Monday night and was in a folk
band that played at the farm marketand the art association, art fairs
and the other places that a folkband might expect to play in town.
and so James and I were practicing forthe Hoot Nanny that was gonna be on
the stage at Center for the Arts and.
I took a phone call and ran outsidehis house to, to pick up that call.
(11:02):
And then I passed out.
I went into what may or may not have beencardiac arrest and woke up in this parking
lot not knowing who I was or where I was.
and it took a while.
I started getting my wits back about me,realizing where I was then, who I was and
couldn't move or speak for a little bit.
And then finally I could, andI started calling James's name.
(11:25):
And then he came out and my younger sistera few years earlier had started going
into cardiac arrest in her dorm room.
And we had discovered wehad a genetic or MIA family.
and so as soon as I woke up and sort ofunderstood the situation, it was like,
oh my God, this is happening to me.
And because the year was 2009, theAffordable Care Act had not yet been
(11:46):
passed, and I was uninsured at the time.
which is, you know, idiotic since Iwas teaching climbing and skiing and,
and should have had, um, some kind ofcatastrophic plan in case I broke my leg.
But you know what it's like to be24 and think that you'll be okay
and that you'll land on your feet.
And you know, I also came from aprivileged background where I think I
(12:08):
didn't understand how catastrophic itcould be to not have health insurance.
And so I woke up in that parkinglot and I think I understood right
away that the nature of my ringwould be changing because I was
having this pretty crazy experience.
and you know, it's a much longer story,but that ended up becoming my first book.
Wow.
That's a lot there, Katie.
(12:30):
A whole lot.
it's a crazy story.
Yeah.
so I'm very interested to know.
Why don't you sharethe title of your book?
So the book is called Lightning Flowersand there's a subtitle to that too.
Yeah, yeah.
My Journey to Uncover theCost of Saving a Life.
Beautiful.
(12:50):
And we're gonna get into that book, butbeforehand, and maybe this is, I'm sure
this is in the book, my apologies forI that this time I have not read it.
I've been swamped, as I wassaying before in some other books.
I'm not the fastest reader.
what some people could read in threehours probably takes me 12 hours.
I'm just always happypeople are reading at all.
(13:12):
Yes.
So thank you for being a reader.
And we read a lot to our kids.
So we do a lot of reading with, with kids.
So sometimes I beat myself up, oh,I'm not reading enough, or I'm not.
but then I think about how muchmy wife and I read to our kids.
It's like I'm reading it might not bewhat a lot of device I necessarily wanna
read, but you know, when my youngestcomes out and is having breakfast and
(13:34):
is sitting at the table with a bookin his hands, it's, it's a blessing.
So we'll keep encouraging.
your sister, you said that she was having,going into cardiac failure and there's
a genetic, something genetic there.
What is it that you, you two found?
Sure.
So it's a genetic arrhythmia.
It's called Long QT syndrome.
(13:54):
And you know, the heartis an electrical organ.
And so when it pumps basically the sinusnode in the heart, which is known as
the heart's pacemaker, it sends signalsto all these different parts of the
tissue to prepare them for their nextbeat so that then they electrically
can, go off in a synchronized way.
And it's that synchronization thatallows the heart to pump in a way
(14:16):
that sends blood to all of theessential organs all over the body.
So part of what happens in Long QTsyndrome is you get a little bit of de
desynchronization, certain parts of theheart are ready to beat in some parts
of the heart are not ready to beat.
And so what you get is e quiveringinstead of asynchronized pumping.
And cardiac arrest is just when bloodis not making it to the main organs.
(14:38):
And that's why you would pass outbecause there's not oxygenation.
And so, yeah, my younger sister.
Started going into cardiacarrest in her dorm room.
And the weird thing with long QTsyndrome, there are a few different
types, but we are type two andthat tends to relate to the startle
response in the body and adrenaline.
So what was happening was herroommate's alarm clock would go
(14:59):
off and it would desynchronized herheart and she would like almost die.
And was just very lucky as a youngperson that her heart would sort of
restart, um, find its way back to rhythm.
But that's not inevitable at allwhen you hear about young people
having these random deaths onsports fields or, you know, drowning
(15:20):
sometimes car accident, sometimesit's sudden infant death syndrome.
A lot of these.
That's where it feels like, oh, youngpeople shouldn't just randomly be dying.
It can have to do with theseunderlying arrhythmias that
just haven't been diagnosed yet.
So I knew that my sister had this and shehad a doctor figure out what was going on.
She had a cardiac defibrillatorimplanted during finals of
(15:41):
her first semester of college.
Bless her.
She's 19.
And then get this, the wire moved inher heart during her recovery and so
she had to have it reimplanted duringher second finals of freshman year.
So our family had gone through thisand I knew that this was a thing
and my mom had been trying to getme to get an E K G and they said
(16:01):
like, we'll pay for it just into St.
John's.
And it was like, I am, you know, atthe time, 22, 23 working as a ski
instructor working at the climbing gym.
Like the last thing on mylist is walking into St.
John's to ask for an E K G.
And I think part of it was that I wasterrified that if I got diagnosed with
this thing, my life would be over.
(16:21):
So was I surprised when I was theone waking up in the parking lot?
Not really.
but it was also dis stating because itwas like, what does it mean to live in
a remote place and to have jobs thatgo into the back country if, you have a
potentially favor arrhythmia Holy buckets.
I'm not even sure to where to begin withthat, but I'm so grateful that with all
(16:45):
of your activities that you were doingthat you never had this come on before.
I'm curious to know, you said that yoursister's roommate's alarm clock was
setting her heart off into the arrhythmia.
What is it?
The what set yours off?
Yeah.
It's such a good question and it'sactually still a mystery to this day.
(17:08):
I assume it was the cell phone, I assumewhen, so this is actually a funny story.
a friend had given me, Her contactfor this hiking job, you know, just
leading some random contract hikesaround the valley and I had shown
up one day to give a hike at aranch and no one was expecting me.
I went, I had gone to the place.
(17:29):
That I was told to and no one was there.
And so I had to call this bossand be like, what is going on?
Will I still get paid for this daythat I drove all the way out, you
know, it was like by slide Lake.
And so when I was in the middle ofband practice, it was that boss who
called me and I like to say I wasso happy I might get paid that I, I
died, but like, okay, I, the phonerang, I jumped up, I ran outside.
(17:54):
My, my band mate was not happy with me,sort of glared at me like, you're taking
a call in the middle of just, but itwas like, I need to talk to this person.
I need to get paid.
And then, you know, I wakeup in the parking lot.
Next thing I know.
never did lead hikes for them that summer.
Did you get paid?
I think I did get paid, yeah.
Ok, good.
Alright.
Pointment.
Ok.
(18:15):
You got, you got paid.
Oh.
What's so strange aboutthe whole situation?
you know, I'd had a few symptoms thatwinter that I dismissed as not symptoms.
Meaning I woke up one night in themiddle of the night gasping for air.
Mm.
And that can be one of 'em if you'rehaving an arrhythmia in your sleep.
and I also was on atreadmill at Enclosure.
(18:36):
Sprinting one day, and all of a suddenit, it was almost the way you would
picture it in a cartoon with the heartbeating out of your chest, like a two
feet in front of you, like a bug bunny.
Mm-hmm.
Sort of thing.
That's how it felt.
And it was terrifying.
And I hit the stop button onthe treadmill and sat down and
it sort of returned to normal.
And like, what did I try to do?
I went back to sprintingand, and my heart weird.
(18:56):
So I stopped runningfor that day eventually.
but I just, you know, when we'reyoung, when we think we're invincible,
it's really hard to separate out,like, oh, bodies are sometimes weird.
And a lot of times what you feelmeans nothing with like, oh,
this is an actual symptom, and.
you know, I can find kind of fast forwardand say it has been almost 14 years since
(19:20):
the day I passed out in the parking lot.
I basically ended up having toleave the valley in order to get a
cardiac defibrillator because St.
John's didn't have collegeservices back then.
And because if I did theSurgery anywhere else.
I couldn't get a local discount, right?
There weren't gonna be localprograms that applied to me cuz
there just wasn't a hospital whereI was local that had cardiology.
(19:41):
and it was estimated a cardiacdefibrillator implantation in 2009 was
estimated at $180,000 out of pocket.
So what I ended up doing was moving toBoulder where my younger sister, Jen,
said he could help me if I was localand he said he would donate his fee.
He ended up getting theanesthesiologist to donate his fee
and the I c D company to donate.
(20:03):
And then Boulder Community Hospital hada program that kicked in for a lot of
it because I went in through the er.
But it ended my life in Jackson.
And so the wild thing is I've hada defibrillator now since 2009
and it's watching my heart all thetime, and I've never had another
arrhythmia in this whole time.
(20:23):
I'm not even on medication right now.
So it's a toll freak thing where Ido have, you know, I've had a genetic
test confirm the result, but we don'tknow what it was about that day.
I had been up Paintbrush Canyonthat morning, like, what was it?
it's a total mystery and obviouslyI've been startled since then.
You know, an ambulance goes off or,whatever else, and yeah, who knows?
(20:47):
Well, I'm glad that it's still tickingand that defibrillator has not kicked
in in the past 14 years, and thatyou're, you're still here and you
have this story to share with people.
Yeah.
Um, well the defibrillator did, it didgo off once, spy accident Uhhuh, due to
an error in its settings in 2012, that'swhere the title of my book comes from.
(21:10):
So the book is called Lightning Flowers.
Some of you might, Recognize that term.
It usually refers to when people arestruck by lightning and the electricity
follows the path of water in the body.
And so you get these very beautifulfern like branched rose-colored burns,
and they look like flowers on the body.
And so it's like both very beautiful andvery messed up because they're burns.
(21:34):
And when I took three shocksto the heart in 2012, you know,
2000 volts cumulatively, it wasthis wild experience, where the
lightning came from inside my body.
And I didn't know whatwas happening at first.
And then once I figured out like, ohmy god, my device is shocking me, then
it was like, I shouldn't be awake.
You know, I should be conscious ifit's trying to restart my heart.
(21:57):
So why am I awake?
And it's shocking me and is it gonna stop?
And it did stop, eventually startedyoga breathing, and that re sort
of brought my heart rate down towhere the device stopped getting
triggered in the particular weirdway it was getting triggered.
but I lay on this soccer field,looking up at the stars, waiting
for the EMTs to arrive, and Icould smell, moan, burn tissues.
(22:20):
Mm.
And I had this totally bizarre thoughtabout like, if this just saved my life.
Like, I don't think it did, butif it did, where did the metal
come from and is it possible?
Someone else's lifewas adversely impacted.
In order to get this metalinto my body, I found myself
thinking about conflict minerals.
And that's such a bizarre thing to say.
I can only report that that'swhat happened at that moment.
(22:42):
So I'm lying on this field andI'm smelling my own burnt tissues,
and I'm thinking about like, whereis the metal in my body from?
Did it cost someone else something?
What is my life worth kindof in this global economy?
And, and is that right?
And how do I feel about that?
And because that moment, Took thedefibrillator from a device that
might save my life to a device thatactually also might hurt me, which
(23:05):
unfortunately becomes a larger partof my story because I have some
malfunctions and breakages with thetechnology later on in like 20 16, 20 17.
it really changed me and changedmy relationship with the device.
And part of the book is tracingthe path of the supply chain of
a defibrillator and asking thosequestions in a more extended format.
And I just think of those lightningflowers on the inside of my
(23:28):
body like no one else could see.
The way the inside of my bodytook the hit of that electricity.
But you know, I smelled it.
I, I felt it move throughmy body in this certain way.
And so both the book and the experiencesI ended up having sort of wrestling with
the technology and what it means to bea cyborg and what it means to be in the
American healthcare system and what itmeans to face death as a young person.
(23:51):
Like those are the lightningflowers that got imprinted on me.
And so you have the lightning flower?
I do, yeah.
Katie, we gotta take a quick break toget a word from one of our sponsors
and we're gonna come back and talk moreabout your book and your experience.
And before we leave, couldyou remind me, say it again.
How many volts were you shocked with?
(24:14):
2000.
So it would've 2000 beenthree separate shocks.
Okay folks, just think about that.
Getting shocked with 2000volts directly to your heart.
Alright, we'll be right back.
Katie, welcome back.
People were just thinking aboutas they were listening to a quick
sponsorship commercial, what itwould be like to get shocked with
(24:36):
2000 volts directly to your heart.
And you've written this book andwhat is it that you want people to
take away from reading your book?
What do you want 'em to learn?
Hmm.
That's such a great question and thereare so many things I want them to learn,
but I think at the heart of this book is,My journey with death, which I hope will
(25:00):
be a way that all of us think about ourrelationships to death more collectively
and the way that that relationship todeath show up in the type of healthcare
system we have and the way we useresources, the way our relationship to
death actually shapes the planet as we useresources on certain types of healthcare.
you know, as I already shared,I was sort of a stereotypical
(25:24):
able-bodied young person who feltmyself to be, invincible and.
After I passed out in the parkinglot for the first time, I started
taking a beta blocker medicationto protect me from the arrhythmia.
And because I was in such good shape,ironically, my, my blood pressure
was already so low that the betablocker dropped it really, really low.
(25:44):
And so I had this terrifying periodin the summer of thousand nine
here in Jackson where if I triedto ride my bike to the library, I
would almost like fall off my bike.
I was just spinning.
And if I tried to hike up Snowking, I would end up sitting on
the side like, am I gonna passout because of my heart condition?
Or am I gonna pass outbecause of this medication?
It just was a very terrifyingtime, my partner at the time, and
(26:06):
I, he didn't wanna leave me alone.
So it's like very hypervigilant.
So there was this way that like deathcame into my life and really took things
over and I didn't know what to do with it.
And it was like, how do you possibly live?
When the threat of death is so presentand so real, you kind of have to be
able to settle down in order to enjoyanything or pursue anything long term.
(26:30):
And that is the same quandarythat comes up over and over
throughout the book for me.
And I keep thinking, I'mlike solving death, right?
I, I get a defibrillator andlike, oh, now I can't die.
And then I actually almost dieof sepsis instead in this book.
And it's like, oh, there's allthese other things I could die of.
Like, what does it mean to bea human given that death is
(26:53):
actually present at every moment?
And that in some ways we live betterwhen we know that death is there.
But also it can render thingsmeaningless pretty quickly.
And when you really viscerallyunderstand that death is inevitable,
what healthcare choices do you then make?
And there's this like very interestingline between a sort of, fatalism of
(27:14):
like, well, nothing is worth it at,but then you like, wake up the next
morning, you're like, but I'm still here.
You know, like, it, somethings are worth it.
And so a lot of my journey has been reallyteasing out the way that healthcare as a
form of fixing death is just not a usefulframework and really neglects, so much
(27:37):
of the human experience of what facingdeath or needing to go through healing is.
And the book is a lot about what atechnology can do and what it can't do.
Unfortunately, my technological,technological story, Ends with the
fact that, the wire that connectsmy device to my heart broke.
And when we tried to remove itin 2016, it actually snapped off.
(27:59):
And as we tried further to remove it,the insulation got stripped off of it.
So I now have a stripped nest ofwire stuck in my right ventricle
and a halt heart valve thathas been deeply impacted by.
These surgeries.
And so when I look at my life,so much more of my life has been
impacted by the technology, technologyspheres and by the healthcare
(28:21):
system that I'm trying to work in.
Whether it's having to quit my lifeand move 500 miles away just to
access care in a pre Obamacare US oreven after, the Affordable Care Act.
Just having to work within the systemin these ways where you're trying to
coordinate between insurance and billingand you're on the phone all the time and
you're calling and you're calling, and,the way that that system impacts a life.
(28:43):
Like you're trying to fight forlifesaving care, but the act
of fighting for lifesaving caremakes you not want to live.
Um, that was my experience.
just the quality of my life seeping away.
The more time I had to spend on thesehealthcare interactions that were
so frustra frustrating and maddeningand just really looking at like,
Given all this, like, what doesgood healthcare actually look like?
(29:08):
What did it mean to live a goodlife for any one of us individually?
On a scale of one to 10 for here in theus where's the US with good healthcare?
Oh God.
Oh, what a, what a fascinatingframe to put it in.
Obviously, if you can break thatdown by category, the US has
(29:32):
extraordinary services availablefor particular conditions.
available to specific peoplein specific situations.
Right.
Part of my story is that, throughthat whole healthcare battle, I
did make it to the Mayo Clinic andI can tell you there's nothing on
the planet like the Mayo Clinic.
It's extraordinary.
It was absolutely my safe place.
I received incredible care there.
(29:53):
But that's not the standard of carein a lot of places, and especially
as someone who likes to live rurally,we really see how that is not.
Not the standard of care availableto all people at all income
levels in all geographical areas.
So, I don't know, and maybe put itat a five, you know, you, you can be
the luckiest person in the world forbeing in the US if you get certain
(30:15):
conditions, but I think also, especiallyas cardiologists read my book, who aren't
based in the US and, and reach out to mefor conversations, it becomes very clear
this sort of psychic burden, the hoursand human potential we lose, because of
people having to fight these extraordinarybureaucratic battles in order to get
(30:37):
certain types of care that they need.
the paperwork, the calling, andalso just this question of like, how
people make choices about their lifeknowing that their career might be.
Related to what type of healthcarethey are then able to receive.
And to me, we often take that forgranted in the US that healthcare
(30:59):
is a part of many people's jobs.
I'm sure there's plenty of Jacksonlisteners who are like, Nope, not
getting healthcare through my employer.
Thank goodness for the Wyominghealthcare marketplace.
but for a lot of people thatplays into the choices they make.
And people challenge me on thisin book clubs, and I just feel
like this is a place that we havean enormous lost human potential.
If people cannot pursue the things thatthey are best at, the places that they
(31:22):
have the highest opportunity to serve.
If they can't do those things,they can't make their art, they
can't be an entrepreneur, whateverthat looks like, because they
can't get access to healthcare.
They have to take whatever brie job.
and so yeah, when we're thinkingabout what healthcare means in the
us, we're actually talking abouta whole bunch of other things that
aren't healthcare y Yes, you are.
(31:43):
You've.
Distilled it down very well and you'refar more fluid and, knowledgeable
in that conversation than, than me.
I, I know for, from experiencethough, trying to get approval
for something, at times you thinkit's basic and it gets rejected.
Oh God, why?
you talked one person,what was it coded Right?
Well, what was coded wrong?
(32:04):
Well, we can't tell you that.
Or Yeah, it's, yeah.
You pay for it.
It's, why does it have to be sochallenging and and like, who
is making a healthcare patientlearn about billing codes?
Mm-hmm.
That's a wild thing to have happen.
I worked, when I lived in Boulder, Iworked at a small sexual health clinic so
I did know about billing codes when I wasgoing into my giant healthcare battle.
(32:28):
And so I could at least ask certainquestions cause I understood what
was going on behind the scenes.
But it was like, if I hadn't hadthat job, I would not even know
how to push on those conversations.
And even knowing that I couldn'tget this organization to put the
right billing codes down to getthem approved by this organization.
(32:48):
Like, y'all just needto talk to each other.
Why am I even involved?
Yeah.
The provider and the insurancecompany could talk to each other.
It'd be amazing.
Yeah.
But there's no profit incentive for that.
You know, to whatever extent they canminimize their work, in that regard.
I, which I wanna go back to somethingthat you asked yourself when you
(33:10):
had the, defibrillator installed.
Was somebody else's lifeimpacted or sacrificed?
For the materials that wentinto making the device.
And then what was your life worth?
What did you find out?
Did you go down that, thattheory, that question?
(33:31):
It's such a complicated questionand I spent years there.
you know, as I mentioned, my initialthought had been conflict minerals,
and that's because in 2012, theDemocratic Republic of the Congo was
known as the rape capital of the world.
the DOD Frank Act was just beingpassed, and that was financial
reform legislation coming out ofthe big collapse in 2008, 2009.
(33:56):
But it included this weird littlewriter called Section 1502 that required
companies registered, on the US StockExchange to essentially trace and then.
Present whether there was tin, tantalum,tungston, or gold essential to the
functionality of whatever they weremanufacturing, in their products, and
(34:18):
whether that was from the Great Lakesregion of Africa, which is Congo and
the adjoining nations, um, sorry, Dr.
Congo.
And, It ended up being that Icouldn't find out for years whether
defibrillator companies were saying,yes, our, our devices have materials
(34:40):
from the Congo in them or no.
but I was very interested in like howthat tracking might actually occur.
And for those who aren't as familiarwith conflict minerals, the basic
concept there is that when you'retalking about pit mining rather than
industrialized mining, people withshovels can just dig up or and sell it.
And so that area was really benefitingfrom, the electronics boom in the
(35:02):
US sort of consumer electronics.
We tend to not think of medical technologyas part of that, but of course it is.
I have a, a motherboardand a battery inside me.
And so, it was very easy forarmed groups to take over a
pit to force people to work.
especially child labor.
There were a lot of sex slave situations.
And so the reason Congo was known asthe rape capital of the world was there
(35:25):
were these armed groups who were gettingplenty of money to buy weapons, to buy
drugs, to terrorize local communities,through the, electronics boom.
And you know, the more I looked at thatscenario, the more it was like, I don't
think I can figure out if the device inmy body has materials specifically from
that area, because the companies weretalking about don't even know today.
(35:48):
They probably have a slightlybetter idea than back then.
It's been really interesting to watch thecompliance environment sort of evolve.
But this is still something we're talkingabout in terms of laptops, all the time,
you know, whatever the sort of conflicthotspots are, our mining materials,
making it into the supply chain.
And what ended up becoming reallyinteresting to me was, okay,
(36:09):
so the Great Lakes region ofAfrica is one potential scenario.
What are the other potential scenariosfor rock coming out of the ground
that could end up in my body and,and how should I feel about that?
Like, are there examples of what wouldbe considered a good mining project?
Does that exist?
Can I wrap my head around that?
(36:30):
And so we really ended up,down the rabbit hole on was
corporate social responsibility.
And I traveled to a mine in,the rainforest of Madagascar.
very new mine being carvedout of endemic jungle.
It was called Tuvi and itwas a cobalt and nickel mine.
I have cobalt in my battery and nickelin my micro electronics, and I spent a
(36:51):
lot of time talking to the communitiesaround that site as well as people at the
company about what their programs were.
because I was in Madagascar, I then wentdown to an older Rio Tinto mine called
Q M M, and it was a titanium sands mine.
And of course, an implanted cardiacdefibrillator is in a titanium
box, essentially a titanium can.
(37:13):
And so I learned about how you taketitanium out of the sands and how
those communities were impacted and.
it's just an incredibly complex thingto talk about because there's a lot
of good intentions and improved,reporting standards and not regulations
necessarily that are coming from thesegovernments, but more regulations that
(37:36):
come through the funding mechanisms.
You know, Citibank and Wells Fargoand Bank of America, they all sign
on to these sort of standards thatthey will uphold, projects to.
And a lot of the things that look reallygood going in don't always play out when
the metals market dips low, don't alwaysplay out as one stakeholder sells out
and another comes in and there's justa lot of questions in that part of the
(37:59):
world when things are under develop.
People tend to have a lot of hope thatthe mining company will be able to
somehow fix these things that you or Imight think it is the government's job
to do, you know, depending on politicals.
Mm-hmm.
But like, is it a mining company'sjob to give people healthcare?
Is it a mining company's job topave the roads, build schools?
(38:21):
Like what is within that purviewand not, and so you end up in this
really like wicked sticky situationwhere mining companies are actually
suddenly in charge of social programsand biodiversity offsets and things
that are not their expertise andthe results are really mixed.
So I came to think of thequestion that I was asking as.
(38:42):
Okay, this is the work of a writer.
This is the work of a book.
You ask the question that doesn'thave another place to necessarily
be asked in this way, and youask it as deeply as you can.
And even though it seems like there's notan answer, the act of sort of exploring
the insides of the question and findingits contours, not only will some answers
(39:04):
sort of emerge, but it is useful as asociety for us to ask and keep asking and
not turn away beautiful and remarkablethat you traveled around the globe to go
to those places and see what was going on.
And yes, legislation can getpassed and I think it has all
(39:27):
the, the best intentions, but.
In the end, who's gonna track it?
and that's with a lot of stuff withlegislation and laws, it's who's
gonna track it, whether it's finance,these types of minerals, whatever.
you gotta have accountability and yougotta have that in in place as well.
And, I'm sure you met some remarkablepeople along the way, along your
(39:49):
jour, throughout your journey to seeof what you were out to search for.
I really did.
I think I think once I understood thatthere wasn't gonna be just one answer.
Mm-hmm.
Or like one way to have an I cD that only had positive impact.
Right.
Like that's a, that's a pipe dream.
and I think folks are probablythinking in their right to, so like,
(40:10):
oh my God, look around you right now.
Everything, every, every objecthas a story came from somewhere,
has an organic matter or chemicalcompounds or things that came
together in the making of that object.
Right.
And how is it more meaningful to askthe question about the I C D than
the computer that we're staring at?
It's, that's where the exercise andthe question asking is so important,
(40:34):
but I really wanted to see how mylife was linked to other people's.
And I think that is too often.
You know, it's, mm-hmm.
we find ourselves absorbedby the worlds we inhabit.
We find ourselves in kind of entitlementto having access to certain types
of technology or resources, and weforget that they come from communities
(40:58):
and that, an indigenous people mightactually be kicked out of their ancestral
forest, not only so that the miningcan occur, but so the mining company
can have a biodiversity offset fortheir mind, which is really complex.
I never thought that biodiversity offsetswere sort of morally complicated, but
when we identify indigenous people asa threat to the forest, and the mining
(41:23):
company is tasked with improving forest tooffset their, their mining project, then
yeah, people get removed from ancestrallands, and so there's just all snarly
snarly pieces and so it felt important to.
Look people in the eyes, and reallygain a sense of this object in my
body is actually really sacred.
(41:46):
It took a lot to make it.
And what does it mean to live in away where we look at the things around
us and we understand what they take.
Perhaps we have gratitude for what theyare, and we also then make more conscious
choices about when we say yes to things.
And this is where we get looped back tothe way that death shapes the planet.
(42:07):
Our cultural relationshipshapes the planet.
Because I am a young person, at leastfor a few more years, you know, I'm,
I'm now about to turn 38, which isan A, never thought I would get to b.
so for a lot of people, it's morallyuncomplicated to give me healthcare
resources because certainly ayoung person should get more years.
But it's when we start asking about,Stages of life where maybe there's not
(42:31):
a, a lot of years remaining, how doyou make decisions from that place?
And I'm not here to say that I haveone, one right answer, but American
Healthcare does spend extraordinaryamount of resources right at the
end of life for a lot of peoplewhen that life is on its end anyway.
And so recognizing again, that theseresources come from somewhere, they
(42:56):
impact people's lives, they are sacred.
it really changes the way we movethrough the world to hold that in mind.
And for me in particular, I actually,throughout my journey have discovered
that I probably never needed adefibrillator to begin with, which is a
particularly bitter pill for me, given.
I now have this brokentechnology stranded inside me.
(43:18):
My medications were perhaps notvery well managed when I was a young
person, and there may have beenanother way to keep me safe through
a less invasive means medication.
Mm-hmm.
without having to implant the technology.
And, you know, I'm now on my third device.
The resources required in myparticular case have been very high
considering that the device hasnever actually saved my life has only
(43:41):
caused negative impacts to my life.
My sister's life hasbeen saved by her device.
So that's more complicated.
Right?
Yeah.
So I'm not here to that.
No one, no one gets to have one,but I actually am on the path
now to, ex planting my entiresystem and becoming an exor.
I'm hoping that thathappens by the time I'm 42.
you're, repeat that You're working onex planting to become an ex what again?
(44:05):
Ex cyborg.
Ex cyborg.
Ok.
Ok.
Thank you.
I did not catch that.
I appreciate you repeating it.
Thank, it's a, it's a charming term.
So, Katie, you're working on, being ableto live life without an implant, you're
trying to, you know, figure that out.
What about for you and your writing?
(44:30):
you've written a book.
It is, getting a ton of tractionand I am so amped to read it now.
And thank you.
I, I have a friend to introduce you towho has gone through the ringer with her.
Issues.
Oh, is it Jenny N No, boots 19.
(44:51):
Suzanne.
I know her as Suzanne Knight.
I know Boots.
You know Suzanne?
I know Boots.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Everybody.
She's now Boots Knight.
I've known Suzanne for so long.
I just, I, I mean, when you knowsomebody with, when they use
the first name and now she theirmiddle, I just have to talk hard.
Hard.
Yeah.
I cannot, so, you know, Suzanne beautiful.
I'm so, yes.
(45:11):
She found her way to me when mybook came out because so many people
were like, oh my God, you were bothski instructors at the same time.
You both have a hard thing.
So yeah, we got connected.
That's, that's beautiful.
I'm, I'm so happy to hear.
So tell, tell us what, as you'reworking through all of this other stuff,
are you now a skiing structor again?
(45:32):
Are you hiking and biking, or is lifeat a different mellow activity playing.
And there's a lot more timefor writing and thinking.
Well, you, you tell me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's such an, an interesting,uh, spot I find myself in.
(45:56):
So, I tried to move back to the Valley in2019 and I failed and I ended up, uh, I
just couldn't find anything and, and atthe time I'd been writing fairly well in
New Mexico working on lightning flowers,and so I ended up outside Santa Fe by
about 20 miles on the side of a mesafor two and a half years, which was a
magical spot in terms of house and land.
(46:19):
But it was, really not good for mylife and it just made me done with
living places that weren't Jackson.
I mean, this has felt like home inmy heart for so long, and I was so
resentful that I ever had to leave.
And I did understand for a few yearsthat, you know, it made sense too.
I went to grad school, I didsome of the things that people
have to leave the valley to do.
(46:41):
but it was like, no, I needto find a way to go home.
So I've been so grateful tostep into Charlie's house.
but our timing was a little off, soI didn't, I didn't pick up a side
job for the winter or anything.
I think I would've liked to ski,instruct half for the fun of it
and, and half for the past benefits.
but most of my time is spent, doingpromotions still for lightning
(47:02):
flowers, you know, a a few bookclubs, speaking engagements.
And, you know, pitches for bookfestivals, sex stuff, and then also
working on my next book and doing thingsto try to line up funding for that.
I have a patronage accountthat I put to and, and work on.
and I'm working on the bookproposal so that hopefully I can
(47:25):
have an agent sell that book.
within the next period here.
There's always a weirdpressure in a writing career.
Some people come right out of theirfirst book into their second book
really fast, and I've been on theslower side cuz I needed some emotional
transition time and Covid was wacky.
and then I work with clients, so alot of my work, I do occasionally read
book manuscripts for people, or I teachclasses regularly, but a lot of my
(47:49):
work is specifically on trauma writing.
I work as a trauma writing Do.
Helping people birth these reallydifficult stories, and that requires
an attention to physiologicallywhere they are with their trauma.
Socially.
What kind of messages have they taken inabout their experience and the stories
they are or aren't allowed to tell?
Crack wise?
What does it look like to confront thingslike fragmented memory on the page?
(48:13):
you know, how do you incorporate.
Good storytelling when someoneis having to go to a bunch of
doctor's appointments, which canactually be very boring on the page.
So really working on those craft aspects.
And then ultimately what all ofthat lines up to, for a lot of my
clients is a spiritual invitation.
So people are through the act oftelling their story, really having
(48:36):
to confront certain things, rise tocertain challenges, maybe somatically
process, emotions or other traumaenergy that is stored in their body.
Like move it through and through thatprocess they become someone else.
They sort of rise to it.
and so that is a lot of my work and Ihave had kind of a disrupted winter.
(48:58):
I've had some medical appointments.
I've just had a, I justwas sick for a week.
You could hear it in my voice.
So it hasn't been a greatwinter for adventuring.
I don't have a lot ofmy own gear right now.
I'm just sort of confronting like,okay, Jackson Life requires, like you
invest in these types of clothing, you,you invest in these types of gear, or
(49:19):
you just are so sad because the wholepoint of all this snow is to play in it.
Right.
and so I feel like I'm kind ofin between worlds right now.
Like, I need more time on this landto, come into alignment with all
the things I love to do and havethe resources I need to do them.
And, but I will say Charlie CraigHead's house, you have to park
on Antelope Plats Road and then,snowshoe Cross-Country Ski Inn.
(49:42):
And so I do that almost every day and it'sreally good, sort of like tethered to the
earth of like having to be outside mm-hmm.
Before you get into your car.
I really, it's been kind ofan ass kicker, but I love it.
That's, that's beautiful.
And this year for, just so peoplehave an understanding, we've had
(50:04):
a banner snow year this year.
So when you're saying that you have tosnowshoe or cross-country ski in, it's
not as though you're on this packed,maybe you are at a packed road, but it's
challenged because you don't know what theconditions are gonna be and it has been
either super cold or just snowing a lotand where you are, you get a lot more snow
(50:27):
than what we get at here in town cuz youare at a higher elevation and it's just
notorious to get a lot more snow out therethan with the wind that can accumulate.
So, talk about the re fortitude andresilience for you to have that commitment
to get in and outta the house and tomake it to all your appointments and.
Kudos to you, Katie.
(50:47):
Kudos.
Thank you.
Um, yeah, the wind is really drivingout here and it drifts heavily.
Someone asked the othernight why I haven't sung at
the Hoot Nanny this season.
And it was like, cuz there was absurdevery Monday and getting from out here
into town was not gonna happen rightNow, wrapping things up, how can people
reach out to you and, and find you?
(51:08):
What's, what are those methods?
And especially to keep followingyou for your next book, how
exciting that you're working on.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Lightning Flowers is availableat both Valley Bookstore and
Jackson Hole book Trader.
They've been amazing partners.
I try to keep the, some of thelittle free libraries stocked
so you can check there too.
(51:29):
Oh, it's at Town County Library as well.
And, on Twitter and Instagram,I'm at Girl Makes Fire.
my website is catherine standifer.com.
And yeah, there's justa lot going on there.
Different, classes that I'mteaching or services that I offer.
and I'll also be at JacksonHole Writers Conference.
(51:51):
I'm joining the faculty of that, whichwas a real bucket, bucket list moment.
Oh, what a wonderful, what anamazing event that we have here.
That right conference.
Yeah.
It's really a special one.
Mm-hmm.
Well, thank you for joining thatfaculty and, you know, not to dismiss.
I mean, we, we only have so much timeand today, but not to dismiss what
(52:12):
you're doing, you know, trauma writingas a, a doula trauma writer to help
other people share their stories.
Not everybody's a writer.
I mean, you start off as a writer,but for you to help and it's gotta
be quite emotional for you to travelthat path with somebody and help them.
Extract that experience, the details,the memories, the feelings, the
(52:37):
emotions, and put it in a, in aform that you can publish it, that
somebody else is gonna read it.
It is quite a process.
Yeah.
I wish I had had one.
you know, writing LightningFlowers changed me.
I had to spend a lot oftime alone in the process.
I had a period, I was doing a lot oftrauma processing related to the story
(52:58):
on the Mesa in New Mexico, just in ashort term rental in, in early 2019.
And then I also rented a cabinout here in Kelly in fall 2019,
where I was doing a lot more of it.
And it can be a really lonelyand underworld experience.
And one of the things I've beenreally interested in always is,
Sort of what it means to be both amodern human and a spiritual human.
(53:20):
Mm-hmm.
When I was a Mary Center intern backin 2006, all these amazing minds would
come through that ranch, and so many ofthem were concerned with this question
of regaining spirituality or beingspiritual through the land, despite.
All of us being in modernity andtrauma writing doula work strikes me as
actually very like old and archetypal.
(53:41):
It sort of crosses over withthese old storyteller archetypes
and sort of medicine people.
Like what does it mean to have gonethrough an experience that is extremely
difficult and come out the other sideas someone with something to share.
And so I like to say that a lot of ourexperiences are the first half of an
initiation, but we can't really accessthe wisdom of them until we go through
(54:02):
that process of reflecting, making theart from them, alchemizing them really.
And people are sort ofcompleting an initiation with me.
And that is, um, really deep workand it's really special work.
And it's not for everyone, butthere are some of us who are just
called that these difficult storiesaren't supposed to be things we
just went through and try to ignore.
(54:24):
You know, they're supposed to beof service to other people and
make us into who we need to be.
And I think we will leave it at that.
Katie, thank you so much.
You're very, for having me on.
You're very eloquent with your, yourthoughts and your, your messaging far
better than me, so I am so happy thatyou're the one who was, who's been
(54:46):
speaking this entire time and not me.
Oh, well this podcast is so important.
This is such a special community.
It is a lovely community, and we have somany fascinating people to have them share
their stories and their experiences justto lift us all up, and an opportunity
for us to learn from other people and toconnect, to just get to know somebody a
(55:09):
little bit more who you would've neverknown, was right out your back door.
Amazing.
Yeah.
Well, thank you Katie.
I, I wish you a.
Very fruitful and productive andengaging life as you travel your
path in many, many more years, oflife here with us all let it be.
(55:32):
So, yes, thank you.
Thank you, Katie.
To learn more about KatieStandifer and her book, lightning
Flowers, visit the jackson holeconnection.com, episode number 236.
Thank you, Michael, for keeping thispodcast going through the marketing
and the editing and production.
(55:53):
Folks, if you want to do apodcast, have your own podcast.
Reach out to Michael.
He can help you.
And thank you to my wife Laura,and my boys Lewis and William.
I appreciate you all listening, all of youfans who listen, share this podcast with
your friends and families or somebody thatyou haven't connected with in a while.
I do appreciate you sharing yourtime with me today and cheers till
(56:15):
next week for the next episodeof the Jackson Hole Connection.
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