Hi! I'm Katie.

i believe in truth telling

no matter what it costs or how hard it seems

and that liars 

are cowards.  

i believe in lending a listening ear

as though your very life depends on what you'll hear

because 

it really might.   

i believe in letting your gut and your passion and your heartbeat 

decide what colors should go on your walls 

and what blankets should adorn your beds.

[decorating is nothing more than listening to your insides tell you exactly who you are on the outside.]

i believe in oversharing over many campfires 

with one too many s'mores and a good old fashioned record playing. 

i believe in doing what scares you most, 

like writing THE book, reinventing yourself, taking up a new trade 

and always taking the leap to learn or try something new.

i believe in fearlessly writing everything down, in letting the details spill out onto the page, 

and in telling about love and life, just like it really is. 

i believe in binge reading books, and writing quotes on mirrors with red lipstick.

i believe in loving so hard that it consumes you from the inside out, 

and have done so with the wrong person more than once

and that's perfectly okay, 

because it means i am still naive and that i haven't stopped trusting yet.

i believe old things are almost always better than new.

I believe that the love of money is a cheap replacement for living life honestly, 

and that hard work is the antidote for a sad heart.

i believe that everything we do matters, that the only afterlife is where we are right now in this moment, and that treating someone poorly in the name of religion is the worst kind of purgatory.

i believe that all it takes for evil to triumph is for a good woman to do nothing.

i believe that good food and travel are two of the most important reasons to stay alive.

and most of all, 

i believe that cowboy kisses and tiny hands cure everything.

hi friends.

i am a writer by incident, an artist by default, a designer by instinct, an aspiring master gardener, a makeshift food connoisseur, an audio book junkie, a photographer by passion, and a travel enthusiast.

most of all, i'm a mom to my incredible children - jenna marie, jonah walker, ada belle, charles avery, jack wilde, and birdie mae. and that is my entire world wrapped up in twelve words!

a few years ago i got married. 

i read this poem, my favorite of all time, at our wedding. 

a few years later, i realized that while promising these words to myself, i had somehow pretended that he had claimed them, too. 

this was an important lesson that what truly matters to us, must matter to the person we love as well. if your inner values don't align, your outer actions won't either.

i'm here now, claiming them again, for me - for my children. 

i no longer need them to be true for anyone else in order to be true for me.

it's a reminder that who we are in the dark is who we will truly be in the light.

if these words mean as much to you as they do to me, please reach out...

maybe we are kindred spirits after all!

now, i'm working on my first book, a memoir, and i would be delighted to hear from you...

about, well, anything. 

let's chat!

forever standing at the edge of the lake,

kate

_________________________

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. 

I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, 

without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
 

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.
 

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
 

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
 

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’
 

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. 

I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
 

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
 

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

| oriah mountain dreamer

_________________________