“… Her body remembered the brutality of grief. She wanted to push it away like a toxin, or an intruder. But driving along the dark Oregon highway, Katie clearly holds her pain close; it textures her sense of self with ragged edges and long furrows of loss. She tells me grief isn’t a tunnel, and the point isn’t to emerge on the other side. You don’t move through it. You learn to carry it with you.”
“… Katie no longer thinks of life as a search for happiness as if it were a destination, a place where you could remain in perpetuity. Pain isn’t what you’re trying to transcend; it’s part of where life happens. So she allows the present moment to hold the residue of all the wreckage. She makes the beast beautiful, and lets the contradictions stand—broken and whole, grateful and robbed, missing and found.”
Responding to Tragedy with Grace and Resilience
“Katie can be soft spoken when it suits her, but also has a firmness and resolve... She is an excellent communicator, an engaged listener and an empathetic figure that isn’t afraid to be vulnerable and accessible.”
– Chad Ford, Conflict Mediator, Professor, Author of Dangerous Love
