Conversations on A More Beautiful Way

View Details

What does it look like to hold the nuances of resistance, decolonization, storytelling, and everyday flourishing in today’s world?

This A More Beautiful Way Conversation with Kaitlin Curtice is a thoughtful, shared reflection on what it looks like to slow down, to tend to our wounds, to build connection through storytelling and to continue on the journey of healing and decolonization.

Kaitlin and I discuss:

the daily habits that ground the morning and orient our days
the need for grief and ritual as we move through life’s endings
how the wisdom of children is vital in our creation of a more beautiful future and world
the meaning of decolonization, both personally and collectively
the complexity of indigeneity and the importance of learning from indigenous peoples around the world
rooting in gratitude as a spiritual practice
writing and creativity as a pathway home

This conversation is delightful and my hope is that you find nourishment for you inner and outer journey through listening.

About Kaitlin

Kaitlin Curtice is an award-winning author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation, Kaitlin writes on the intersections of spirituality and identity and how that shifts throughout our lives. She also speaks on these topics to diverse audiences who are interested in truth-telling and healing.

As an inter-spiritual advocate, Kaitlin participates in conversations on topics such as colonialism in faith communities, and she has spoken at many conferences on the importance of inter-faith relationships.

Her new book, Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day, examines the journey of resisting the status quo of hate by caring for ourselves, one another, and Mother Earth.

Besides her books, Kaitlin has written online for Sojourners, Religion News Service, Apartment Therapy, On Being, SELF Magazine, Oprah Daily, and more. Her work has been featured on CBS and in USA Today. She also writes at The Liminality Journal. Kaitlin lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Subscribe to Kaitlin’s Substack - The Liminality Journal

Learn more about Kaitlin’s Work - Kaitlin’s Website

Buy Kaitlin’s Newest Book - Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Everyday

Get full access to A More Beautiful Way at www.amorebeautifulway.co/subscribe

View Details

What is self-cultivation? How do we become the kinds of people who heal fractures, restore connection, and respond with care in an aching world?

This month’s A More Beautiful Way Conversation with Nina Simons weaves powerful themes of deep listening, heart-centered leadership, balancing masculine and feminine archetypes, and building generative coalitions to address the various crises of relationships in our time.

Nina and I discuss:

the historical fracture between feminine and masculine archetypes and the necessary process of coming back into alignment
the importance of recovering your own sense of cultural heritage and lineage
deepening our awareness of the invisible world, including our ancestors
navigating the various collective crises we’re facing as a species
dancing with and learning from Mother Life
reclaiming our shadow sides as a natural part of growth
the ongoing need for heart-centered leadership

This conversation is simply beautiful, encapsulating so much of what A More Beautiful Way is all about. I hope you listen and enjoy!

About Nina

Learn about Nina and her newest book here: https://bioneers.org/ncs/

Nina Simons is co-founder of Bioneers and serves as its Chief Relationship Strategist. She is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about the power of women to transform the world, reaching racial and gender justice, indigeneity and rekindling a sacred relationship to nature, while co-creating a just transition that’s regenerative, loving and peaceful.

She speaks internationally and co-facilitates transformative leadership offerings that integrate Relational Mindfulness, Restoring the Deep Feminine and The Work That Reconnects.

Nina co-edited Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and recently wrote the award-winning book Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. She was named a recipient of the Goi Peace Award in recognition of her pioneering work through Bioneers to promote nature-inspired innovations for restoring (reciprocal relationships among) the Earth and our human community.

The transcript is available here.

Get full access to A More Beautiful Way at www.amorebeautifulway.co/subscribe

View Details

What do you do when a slower life begins to call? You answer, of course.

In today’s conversation, we get to hear Hillarie’s story of moving out of the city to a one-acre homestead in the Pacific Northwest. Hillarie Maddox is a writer, homesteader, and the brilliant soul behind Black Girl Country Living Magazine, available here on Substack! In our conversation, we explore what rewilding and slow living mean to us as Black women from rural communities, reclaiming a relationship with the land, and building community along the way.

We talk about:

Coming home to the inherent beauty of Black racial identity
Journeying from a small rural place to big cities in search of meaning, only to find our way back to a lifestyle of country living
The grief and loss felt when choosing to leave one version of your life in cultivating another
Waking up to the costs of the conveniences of modern life
Receiving nourishment and healing from connection with the land
Remembering that we are all indigenous to some place

You can listen to the podcast here or on Apple Podcasts.

If you’d prefer to read this conversation instead of listening to it, you can do so here. Enjoy!

Get full access to A More Beautiful Way at www.amorebeautifulway.co/subscribe

View Details

What does it look like to keep engaging with local politics when everything feels like it’s falling apart?

It looks like maintaining the boundaries that keep you grounded, tending to your grief when it comes, and finding your reason to show up to the polls anyway.

In this Conversations episode, I chat with Melody Bray who is a realtor in Atlanta, a recovering lawyer, and someone who is passionate about her city. She is also someone who ran for a state office earlier this year. We talk about the importance of paying attention to the needs of your neighbors, recovering from heartbreak when an election doesn’t go the way you hope, and longing for justice in trying times.

Episode transcript available here.

Get full access to A More Beautiful Way at www.amorebeautifulway.co/subscribe

View Details

Are you familiar with the voice of your body? What would it look like to follow your body’s wisdom for an entire day? How might you, your art, and your relationship to others and yourself transform?

In this conversation, I had the joy of sitting down with author and writing coach Tiffany Clarke Harrison from Rochelle Writers Studio. She tells the story of how grappling with a chronic illness set her life, her body, and her creative work on an entirely new trajectory. She shares insights into how writers and creatives can come home to their bodies as an anchor for expression, and she offers insight to how those of us who feel unsafe in our bodies can begin finding our way back to ourselves.

Tiffany Clarke Harrison is an author, speaker, Author Mentor, and founder of Rochelle Writers Studio, a collective for authors of fiction & memoir. She leads with a feelings first, logic later approach to writing and life, and helps authors write their best damn books using intuition and psychology. With a mix of unconventional practices and traditional writing tools, writers find the clarity and strength needed to write the draft worth fighting for. Tiffany is represented by Dystel, Goderich & Bourret, and her novel BLUE HOUR will be released in April 2023 by Soft Skull Press.

Learn about Rochelle Writers Studio

https://www.rochellewritersstudio.com

Sign-Up for Written on the Body

https://www.rochellewritersstudio.com/writing-group

Transcript

Access transcript here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TPxPioIwar-GRiUar3_2Rbw2DWVBYIH_/view?usp=sharing

Get full access to A More Beautiful Way at www.amorebeautifulway.co/subscribe

View Details

This is a re-release of a podcast episode I recorded with Lisa Sharon Harper, Author of Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World—and How to Repair It All.

Listen at the embed link below.

Episode show notes and transcript are accessible below as well. Enjoy.

Thanks for reading A More Beautiful Way !

Show Notes

In this conversation, host Bethaney Wilkinson and guest Lisa Sharon Harper follow the threads of Lisa's history as an act of re-membering our collective racial and social history in the United States.

Lisa's storytelling is soul-stirring, rich, and inviting. She reminds us that our families' histories are present. As we go backwards, deep into the lived experiences of those who came before us, we are better prepared to face our todays and tomorrows with courage and hope. This conversation also touches on themes of forgiveness and repair as we grapple with the weight of what we find when we seek to re-member the past.

Lisa Sharon Harper (LSMA, Columbia University; MFA, University of Southern California) is the founder of Freedom Road, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap. A sought-after speaker, trainer, and consultant, Harper has written several books, including Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World—and How to Repair It All and the critically acclaimed The Very Good Gospel. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, Relevant, Essence, HuffPost, The National Civic Review, and CNN, and she has appeared on PBS's Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, TV One, Fox News, NPR, and Al Jazeera America. Harper previously served as chief church engagement officer at Sojourners, where she mobilized the church to engage campaigns on immigration reform and racial justice. She has researched her family's origins for three decades and presented on her ancestors' achievements at the African American Civil War Museum. Harper lives in the same Philadelphia neighborhood where three generations of her ancestors lived.

Get to Know and Follow Lisa:

https://lisasharonharper.com/

https://www.instagram.com/lisasharper/

https://www.facebook.com/lisasharonharper.page/

https://twitter.com/lisasharper

Learn from Freedom Road

https://freedomroad.us/

https://www.instagram.com/freedomroad.us/

https://www.facebook.com/FreedomRoad.us/

https://twitter.com/FreedomRoadus

Access the Transcript Here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kkVtH6PtQhx5LprLGMIixcwfK28BBOyr/view?usp=sharing

Get full access to A More Beautiful Way at www.amorebeautifulway.co/subscribe

View Details

This is a re-release of a podcast episode I recorded with Joy Hoffman, lead curator of the One-of-One Collective.

Listen at the embed link below.

Episode show notes and transcript are accessible below as well. Enjoy.

In this episode of A More Beautiful Way, you get to know my dear and inspiring friend Joy Hoffman. Joy is an artist and designer who has studied flourishing for over 15 years. In this conversation, Joy and I follow many meaningful threads related to the creative process. We talk about slowing down enough to create from a place of intention, we discuss the process of creative flow and recovery, and Joy shares the incredible vision of her newest venture, the One of One Collective. If you’ve ever wondered what the embodiment of a new and beautiful way might look like, Joy’s stories and wisdom are certain to nourish those dreams within you.

Widely acknowledged and respected for her aesthetic sensibilities, judgment, and leadership, Joy’s knowledge and understanding draw from an unusual depth and breadth of experiences including:

creative directing a new town being built for creatives designing destination weddings for clients on the Forbes List partnering as the creative director to build one of the most respected & influential wedding websites in the world coaching professional creatives, writing courses, & teaching workshops internationally designing interiors in the residential & hospitality sectors selling art as a photographer, painter, stylist, & sculptor launching businesses in the digital education space co-founding a micro-school contributing to humanitarian aid work in South America & the Middle East

Joy’s work has been published in Vogue, Elle Decor, and countless wedding publications (under her past married name, Joy Thigpen).

She completed her undergrad studies in Art and Anthropology, studied art in Italy, lived with a tribe in the Amazon, has taken course work at Harvard, and along the way is raising four delightful children.

She delivers an informed and refined point of view to her client’s needs and challenges. Her voice can ignite a conversation, liberate a vision, and incite meaningful and beautiful movement for good.

About Joy:

In her own words: “I am becoming the flavor of love I'm meant to be in the world. Which currently includes raising four kids & a nonprofit to design and build places made for systemic flourishing.”

Get to Know Joy:

https://www.joy-hoffman.com

Get to know the One of One Collective:

www.oneofonecollective.org

Episode Transcript:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_UhLqgwSWzganfsa_PmzWUif9fi81t09/view?usp=sharing

Get full access to A More Beautiful Way at www.amorebeautifulway.co/subscribe

View Details

Show Notes

In this beautiful conversation, Leah and I discuss the importance of learning to be one another’s story-keepers. We talk about working with art and floral design to help a community remember and heal from the tragic Greenwood Massacre (also known as the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.) We reflect on how working with plants and created-things sustains us. And Leah shares a gracious invitation for us to partner with her and The Wild Mother to raise awareness about missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Leah Palmer (she/her) is an 8th generation Afro-Indigenous artist and anti-racism educator located in Oklahoma City. With her two sisters, she is a founder of The Wild Mother, a floral design studio based in the Arts District of Oklahoma city, on Kickapoo, Osage, Wichita and Comanche lands, which should be returned back to these sovereign nations. In her work as Storyteller at The Wild Mother, Leah spearheads projects that marry art and activism, while engaging with fellow artists to help them discover a unique position in a world that requires art as medicine to educate, reflect truth, and issue healing for broken communities.

She draws inspiration from Black and Brown women and femme voices, such as bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Zora Neal Hurston, Phillis Wheatley, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, and others whose wisdom and life experiences act both as guidance and a mirror. She is grateful to stand on and continue the work of her ancestors, E.W. Perry, Peter and Martha Holloway, Gladys Perry, Flordia Palmer, C.L. Stove, Sonny Hawkeye, Marthann, James and Elnora Boykin, and so many others whose lives taught her the ways of healing forwards and backwards through storytelling, truth telling, singing, advocacy, home cooking, and communal love.

Leah’s recent work includes a floral installation called SendFlowersToGreenwood, which paid homage to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre; she is the production manager of Juneteenth on the East (2021-present); she is a founder and educator of Lay of the Land, an antiracism workshop for creative small businesses; she is a founder and facilitator of The Conversation Workshops, an antiracism workshop that teaches how to navigate interpersonal racism; she created the main logo for the Justice for Julius campaign and remains an advocate for abolition movements. Leah received a Bachelors of Arts in English from Oklahoma Baptist University (2013) and a Master of Arts in English from Oklahoma State University (2015).

Conversations on A More Beautiful Way: Recent Episodes

Bethaney Wilkinson