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)

You are tuned into the Jackson hole, connection, sharing, fascinating stories

of people connected to Jackson Hole.

I am truly grateful for each of you for tuning in today and support

for this podcast comes from:

Today's episode, I'm beginning.

About sharing a few books that I have recently read.

The books are written by the Arbinger Institute, and the titles

of these two books are one, the Anatomy of Peace, and the second one

is leadership and Self Deception.

These books I was introduced to by a a friend, and they explain that we all

have a problem to be solved, and even as we work to solving this problem, we

will still always have this problem.

The content teaches us how to understand the problem we have

and how to reduce the impact.

This problem influences our lives and the people.

Lives who we connect with each day.

So I give these books, a highly must read.

You can find them at your local book.

Seller can find them on audio versions.

However you get your audio books, and I'm sure 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.

Katie was living here in Jackson Hole for a period of time, and now she's returned.

To living here again, right here in the valley, but several years back.

Due to a health crisis, Katie was forced to leave Jackson Hole.

She didn't have a choice and without health insurance, Katie, with this

health crisis figured out a way to receive the treatment she needed to.

And I tell you what folks survive and thrive is what Katie has done.

What Katie has had is a journey with death.

And today, while discussing her journey and her book, Katie wants people to

think about their relationship with..

Well, Katie, welcome to the Jackson Hole connection.

It is delightful to have some time and speak 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?

I do.

I live in moose, currently in Moose.

And so share with folks who are not Jackson natives or maybe have not visited.

Where is moose?

So moose is about 20 minutes north of town.

It's at the entrance to Grand Teton National Park, or depending on

where you live in moose, you may be entirely surrounded by park.

So a lot of the houses here are prior in holdings that were around before

park boundaries were solidified.

and so I'm out in the middle of Antelope Flats, which is where the bison range is,

probably how folks would know it best.

And just in an amazing house for four months while my old friend

Charlie Craighead is down in Arizona to take a break from winter.

Well, good on you for having a great friend like Charlie Craighead who is

loaning you his house while he's in Arizona for the winter, and it is a real,

real special spot and kind of a miracle.

Yeah, I've known Charlie since, at least 2006, maybe 2004, and this

is just an incredible location.

I'm staring at the Grand Town right now.

It's right in front of the house and it's a very wild location.

The wolves haven't come by since I've been here, but apparently Charlie said

they were here right before he left, so I'm hopeful they'll swing back this way.

So not a location where if you have a dog, you let your dog just

outside to go to the bathroom?

Possibly not, no.

Luckily I do not have a dog.

I've been focused on making friends with the mag pies who Okay.

Like to come over, and look in the windows and see, see what's happening here.

Mm.

How cool.

So Katie, where did you grow up and how did you land here in Jackson?

So, I grew up, outside Chicago in a suburb called Arlington Heights.

It's on the northwest side of the 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 malls and really felt as a kid the pain of

watching the wild scraps of woods and wetlands get covered over for big box

parking lots and more subdivisions.

Mm-hmm.

And my parents, started us skiing at a pretty age.

We started in Colorado and we would drive out over spring break and when I

was seven, we crossed Wyoming for the first time, to visit Steamboat Springs.

We sort of went, uh, through the corner of Wyoming on the way down

through the medicine bow, I told my parents I was gonna be a writer

who lived in a cabin in Wyoming.

I was very obsessed with, the open space that we were crossing,

the sort of sage landscape.

And we ended up in Jackson on a trip when I was, going into my freshman year of

college, or not college, uh, high school.

And so I was 14 and had sort of a traditional Grand Teton

Yellowstone family vacation.

And at the time I'd already been rock climbing for a few years at my local

Y M C A and we saw some kids going back into the Tetons to rock climb.

And we ended up asking at skinny skis who, did that, how, how could

I climb as part of these groups?

And now that I know, Jackson, I'm very surprised that we got the answer that

we did, but whoever was there told me to look up a group called Trails

Wilderness School, which no longer exists.

Trails was based, on the old Teton Valley Ranch in Kelly, and they ran

wilderness groups similar to Knowles, but with slightly tighter age groups.

And it was a, family run operation.

The woman in the couple who ran trails with Oren and.

I got really obsessed with this 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 about these courses and, he suggested I do

a 14 day course and I was assisting on the 30 day and he said, well,

you can pay for the difference.

And so, a lot of my high school years were then 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 got bought out by Dick's Sporting Goods,

And By the focus of my life turned to paying for these wilderness trips.

and that first course that I did in the summer of 2000 was, three weeks

backpacking down in the Wyoming range, and then four days whitewater

kayaking on the snake and a few days climbing in the Tetons, culminating

in, in the summit of the grand.

So just very like classic Jackson tourist things.

But, I ended up returning to do more courses with Trails and then

becoming an employee with Trails.

I completed their leadership course and just, really fell in love with

the sage landscapes and the style of forests and, what it, what

it felt like to be in this area.

That is a major commitment to come back here.

Kids would not give that dedication just to go spend another 14,

15 days in the wilderness.

it's true.

but there's something, it's so funny.

A guy in a bar just the other night asked 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 and it's really hard to put a finger on.

I am so deeply moved by being in the middle of this many hundreds of

miles long functioning ecosystem.

There's something about, the deep pine forest, the pine Aspen mix,

and being around these big mammals.

you know, I have lived some other places now in my adult life.

I'm sure we'll get there, but I've sort of been cycling in and out of Jackson and.

There's nothing like that.

there's just something internally that fails, deepened, and, made

more alive by this ecosystem.

And you told your parents you were gonna be a writer living in a cabin in Wyoming?

I did.

And tell me about your writing.

yeah.

What took you on the path?

I mean, you were 14 when you said that, correct?

Or some Oh, seven.

Seven.

Yeah.

You knew you were gonna be a writer at the age of seven.

I did.

Yeah.

Some people, it takes them a while to find their life path For me, it takes me longer

to find other things like a partner in housing, but writing in Wyoming have sort

of been the consistent loves of my life.

yeah.

So as a kid I was constantly writing novels, writing songs, writing poems.

And when I went to college, I ended up double majoring in

sociology and fiction writing and actually wrote two of my feces.

On this area, both.

I did a study on how people form sense of place and how that impacts their response

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 about their relationship to Wyoming and the

Upper Green River Valley in particular.

and kind of squaring that against how they related to, the fracking

and, and their sense of place.

and then I, I also wrote a fiction nova that was based here in the valley.

And so when I graduated college in 2007, I knew that the, the long term

was become an author as my career.

And part of why working in this area, Really appealed

to me was because of seasons.

So I could work in outdoor education and put in a ton of hours in the summer

and winter and then have spring and fall to really work on my writing

more intensely and still be having interesting experiences to write about.

And so my first few years that I was here, out of college, I was publishing

some poems and playing with some stories.

And, then one day in 2009 I was practicing with my band.

I also used to play at the Hoot Nanny every Monday night and was in a folk

band that played at the farm market and the art association, art fairs

and the other places that a folk band might expect to play in town.

and so James and I were practicing for the Hoot Nanny that was gonna be on

the stage at Center for the Arts and.

I took a phone call and ran outside his house to, to pick up that call.

And then I passed out.

I went into what may or may not have been cardiac 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, and I started calling James's name.

And then he came out and my younger sister a few years earlier had started going

into cardiac arrest in her dorm room.

And we had discovered we had a genetic or MIA family.

and so as soon as I woke up and sort of understood the situation, it was like,

oh my God, this is happening to me.

And because the year was 2009, the Affordable Care Act had not yet been

passed, and I was uninsured at the time.

which is, you know, idiotic since I was teaching climbing and skiing and,

and should have had, um, some kind of catastrophic plan in case I broke my leg.

But you know what it's like to be 24 and think that you'll be okay

and that you'll land on your feet.

And you know, I also came from a privileged background where I think I

didn't understand how catastrophic it could be to not have health insurance.

And so I woke up in that parking lot and I think I understood right

away that the nature of my ring would 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.

A whole lot.

it's a crazy story.

Yeah.

so I'm very interested to know.

Why don't you share the title of your book?

So the book is called Lightning Flowers and there's a subtitle to that too.

Yeah, yeah.

My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life.

Beautiful.

And we're gonna get into that book, but beforehand, and maybe this is, I'm sure

this is in the book, my apologies for I that this time I have not read it.

I've been swamped, as I was saying before in some other books.

I'm not the fastest reader.

what some people could read in three hours probably takes me 12 hours.

I'm just always happy people are reading at all.

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 much my wife and I read to our kids.

It's like I'm reading it might not be what a lot of device I necessarily wanna

read, but you know, when my youngest comes out and is having breakfast and

is sitting at the table with a book in 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.

And you know, the heart is an electrical organ.

And so when it pumps basically the sinus node in the heart, which is known as

the heart's pacemaker, it sends signals to all these different parts of the

tissue to prepare them for their next beat so that then they electrically

can, go off in a synchronized way.

And it's that synchronization that allows the heart to pump in a way

that sends blood to all of the essential organs all over the body.

So part of what happens in Long QT syndrome is you get a little bit of de

desynchronization, certain parts of the heart are ready to beat in some parts

of the heart are not ready to beat.

And so what you get is e quivering instead of asynchronized pumping.

And cardiac arrest is just when blood is not making it to the main organs.

And that's why you would pass out because there's not oxygenation.

And so, yeah, my younger sister.

Started going into cardiac arrest in her dorm room.

And the weird thing with long QT syndrome, there are a few different

types, but we are type two and that tends to relate to the startle

response in the body and adrenaline.

So what was happening was her roommate's alarm clock would go

off and it would desynchronized her heart and she would like almost die.

And was just very lucky as a young person that her heart would sort of

restart, um, find its way back to rhythm.

But that's not inevitable at all when you hear about young people

having these random deaths on sports fields or, you know, drowning

sometimes car accident, sometimes it's sudden infant death syndrome.

A lot of these.

That's where it feels like, oh, young people shouldn't just randomly be dying.

It can have to do with these underlying arrhythmias that

just haven't been diagnosed yet.

So I knew that my sister had this and she had a doctor figure out what was going on.

She had a cardiac defibrillator implanted during finals of

her first semester of college.

Bless her.

She's 19.

And then get this, the wire moved in her heart during her recovery and so

she had to have it reimplanted during her second finals of freshman year.

So our family had gone through this and I knew that this was a thing

and my mom had been trying to get me to get an E K G and they said

like, we'll pay for it just into St.

John's.

And it was like, I am, you know, at the time, 22, 23 working as a ski

instructor working at the climbing gym.

Like the last thing on my list is walking into St.

John's to ask for an E K G.

And I think part of it was that I was terrified that if I got diagnosed with

this thing, my life would be over.

So was I surprised when I was the one waking up in the parking lot?

Not really.

but it was also dis stating because it was like, what does it mean to live in

a remote place and to have jobs that go into the back country if, you have a

potentially favor arrhythmia Holy buckets.

I'm not even sure to where to begin with that, but I'm so grateful that with all

of your activities that you were doing that you never had this come on before.

I'm curious to know, you said that your sister'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's actually still a mystery to this day.

I assume it was the cell phone, I assume when, so this is actually a funny story.

a friend had given me, Her contact for this hiking job, you know, just

leading some random contract hikes around the valley and I had shown

up one day to give a hike at a ranch and no one was expecting me.

I went, I had gone to the place.

That I was told to and no one was there.

And so I had to call this boss and be like, what is going on?

Will I still get paid for this day that I drove all the way out, you

know, it was like by slide Lake.

And so when I was in the middle of band practice, it was that boss who

called me and I like to say I was so happy I might get paid that I, I

died, but like, okay, I, the phone rang, I jumped up, I ran outside.

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 it was like, I need to talk to this person.

I need to get paid.

And then, you know, I wake up 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.

You got, you got paid.

Oh.

What's so strange about the whole situation?

you know, I'd had a few symptoms that winter that I dismissed as not symptoms.

Meaning I woke up one night in the middle of the night gasping for air.

Mm.

And that can be one of 'em if you're having an arrhythmia in your sleep.

and I also was on a treadmill at Enclosure.

Sprinting one day, and all of a sudden it, it was almost the way you would

picture it in a cartoon with the heart beating 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 on the treadmill and sat down and

it sort of returned to normal.

And like, what did I try to do?

I went back to sprinting and, and my heart weird.

So I stopped running for that day eventually.

but I just, you know, when we're young, 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 feel means nothing with like, oh,

this is an actual symptom, and.

you know, I can find kind of fast forward and say it has been almost 14 years since

the day I passed out in the parking lot.

I basically ended up having to leave the valley in order to get a

cardiac defibrillator because St.

John's didn't have college services back then.

And because if I did the Surgery anywhere else.

I couldn't get a local discount, right?

There weren't gonna be local programs that applied to me cuz

there just wasn't a hospital where I was local that had cardiology.

and it was estimated a cardiac defibrillator implantation in 2009 was

estimated at $180,000 out of pocket.

So what I ended up doing was moving to Boulder where my younger sister, Jen,

said he could help me if I was local and he said he would donate his fee.

He ended up getting the anesthesiologist to donate his fee

and the I c D company to donate.

And then Boulder Community Hospital had a 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 had a defibrillator now since 2009

and it's watching my heart all the time, and I've never had another

arrhythmia in this whole time.

I'm not even on medication right now.

So it's a toll freak thing where I do have, you know, I've had a genetic

test confirm the result, but we don't know what it was about that day.

I had been up Paintbrush Canyon that morning, like, what was it?

it's a total mystery and obviously I've been startled since then.

You know, an ambulance goes off or, whatever else, and yeah, who knows?

Well, I'm glad that it's still ticking and that defibrillator has not kicked

in in the past 14 years, and that you're, you're still here and you

have this story to share with people.

Yeah.

Um, well the defibrillator did, it did go off once, spy accident Uhhuh, due to

an error in its settings in 2012, that's where the title of my book comes from.

So the book is called Lightning Flowers.

Some of you might, Recognize that term.

It usually refers to when people are struck by lightning and the electricity

follows the path of water in the body.

And so you get these very beautiful fern like branched rose-colored burns,

and they look like flowers on the body.

And so it's like both very beautiful and very messed up because they're burns.

And when I took three shocks to the heart in 2012, you know,

2000 volts cumulatively, it was this wild experience, where the

lightning came from inside my body.

And I didn't know what was happening at first.

And then once I figured out like, oh my god, my device is shocking me, then

it was like, I shouldn't be awake.

You know, I should be conscious if it's trying to restart my heart.

So why am I awake?

And it's shocking me and is it gonna stop?

And it did stop, eventually started yoga breathing, and that re sort

of brought my heart rate down to where the device stopped getting

triggered in the particular weird way it was getting triggered.

but I lay on this soccer field, looking up at the stars, waiting

for the EMTs to arrive, and I could smell, moan, burn tissues.

Mm.

And I had this totally bizarre thought about like, if this just saved my life.

Like, I don't think it did, but if it did, where did the metal

come from and is it possible?

Someone else's life was adversely impacted.

In order to get this metal into my body, I found myself

thinking about conflict minerals.

And that's such a bizarre thing to say.

I can only report that that's what happened at that moment.

So I'm lying on this field and I'm smelling my own burnt tissues,

and I'm thinking about like, where is the metal in my body from?

Did it cost someone else something?

What is my life worth kind of in this global economy?

And, and is that right?

And how do I feel about that?

And because that moment, Took the defibrillator from a device that

might save my life to a device that actually also might hurt me, which

unfortunately becomes a larger part of my story because I have some

malfunctions and breakages with the technology later on in like 20 16, 20 17.

it really changed me and changed my relationship with the device.

And part of the book is tracing the path of the supply chain of

a defibrillator and asking those questions in a more extended format.

And I just think of those lightning flowers on the inside of my

body like no one else could see.

The way the inside of my body took the hit of that electricity.

But you know, I smelled it.

I, I felt it move through my body in this certain way.

And so both the book and the experiences I ended up having sort of wrestling with

the technology and what it means to be a cyborg and what it means to be in the

American healthcare system and what it means to face death as a young person.

Like those are the lightning flowers that got imprinted on me.

And so you have the lightning flower?

I do, yeah.

Katie, we gotta take a quick break to get a word from one of our sponsors

and we're gonna come back and talk more about your book and your experience.

And before we leave, could you remind me, say it again.

How many volts were you shocked with?

2000.

So it would've 2000 been three separate shocks.

Okay folks, just think about that.

Getting shocked with 2000 volts directly to your heart.

Alright, we'll be right back.

Katie, welcome back.

People were just thinking about as they were listening to a quick

sponsorship commercial, what it would be like to get shocked with

2000 volts directly to your heart.

And you've written this book and what 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 there are 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

be a way that all of us think about our relationships to death more collectively

and the way that that relationship to death show up in the type of healthcare

system we have and the way we use resources, the way our relationship to

death actually shapes the planet as we use resources on certain types of healthcare.

you know, as I already shared, I was sort of a stereotypical

able-bodied young person who felt myself to be, invincible and.

After I passed out in the parking lot for the first time, I started

taking a beta blocker medication to protect me from the arrhythmia.

And because I was in such good shape, ironically, my, my blood pressure

was already so low that the beta blocker dropped it really, really low.

And so I had this terrifying period in the summer of thousand nine

here in Jackson where if I tried to 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 Snow king, I would end up sitting on

the side like, am I gonna pass out because of my heart condition?

Or am I gonna pass out because of this medication?

It just was a very terrifying time, my partner at the time, and

I, he didn't wanna leave me alone.

So it's like very hypervigilant.

So there was this way that like death came 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 present and so real, you kind of have to be

able to settle down in order to enjoy anything or pursue anything long term.

And that is the same quandary that comes up over and over

throughout the book for me.

And I keep thinking, I'm like solving death, right?

I, I get a defibrillator and like, oh, now I can't die.

And then I actually almost die of sepsis instead in this book.

And it's like, oh, there's all these other things I could die of.

Like, what does it mean to be a human given that death is

actually present at every moment?

And that in some ways we live better when we know that death is there.

But also it can render things meaningless pretty quickly.

And when you really viscerally understand that death is inevitable,

what healthcare choices do you then make?

And there's this like very interesting line between a sort of, fatalism of

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, some things are worth it.

And so a lot of my journey has been really teasing out the way that healthcare as a

form of fixing death is just not a useful framework and really neglects, so much

of the human experience of what facing death or needing to go through healing is.

And the book is a lot about what a technology can do and what it can't do.

Unfortunately, my technological, technological story, Ends with the

fact that, the wire that connects my device to my heart broke.

And when we tried to remove it in 2016, it actually snapped off.

And as we tried further to remove it, the insulation got stripped off of it.

So I now have a stripped nest of wire stuck in my right ventricle

and a halt heart valve that has 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, technology spheres and by the healthcare

system that I'm trying to work in.

Whether it's having to quit my life and move 500 miles away just to

access care in a pre Obamacare US or even after, the Affordable Care Act.

Just having to work within the system in these ways where you're trying to

coordinate between insurance and billing and 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.

Like you're trying to fight for lifesaving care, but the act

of fighting for lifesaving care makes 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 these healthcare interactions that were

so frustra frustrating and maddening and just really looking at like,

Given all this, like, what does good healthcare actually look like?

What did it mean to live a good life for any one of us individually?

On a scale of one to 10 for here in the us where's the US with good healthcare?

Oh God.

Oh, what a, what a fascinating frame to put it in.

Obviously, if you can break that down by category, the US has

extraordinary services available for particular conditions.

available to specific people in specific situations.

Right.

Part of my story is that, through that whole healthcare battle, I

did make it to the Mayo Clinic and I 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.

But that's not the standard of care in 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 available to all people at all income

levels in all geographical areas.

So, I don't know, and maybe put it at a five, you know, you, you can be

the luckiest person in the world for being in the US if you get certain

conditions, but I think also, especially as cardiologists read my book, who aren't

based in the US and, and reach out to me for conversations, it becomes very clear

this sort of psychic burden, the hours and human potential we lose, because of

people having to fight these extraordinary bureaucratic battles in order to get

certain types of care that they need.

the paperwork, the calling, and also just this question of like, how

people make choices about their life knowing that their career might be.

Related to what type of healthcare they are then able to receive.

And to me, we often take that for granted in the US that healthcare

is a part of many people's jobs.

I'm sure there's plenty of Jackson listeners who are like, Nope, not

getting healthcare through my employer.

Thank goodness for the Wyoming healthcare marketplace.

but for a lot of people that plays into the choices they make.

And people challenge me on this in book clubs, and I just feel

like this is a place that we have an enormous lost human potential.

If people cannot pursue the things that they are best at, the places that they

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, whatever that looks like, because they

can't get access to healthcare.

They have to take whatever brie job.

and so yeah, when we're thinking about what healthcare means in the

us, we're actually talking about a whole bunch of other things that

aren't healthcare y Yes, you are.

You've.

Distilled it down very well and you're far more fluid and, knowledgeable

in that conversation than, than me.

I, I know for, from experience though, trying to get approval

for something, at times you think it's basic and it gets rejected.

Oh God, why?

you talked one person, what was it coded Right?

Well, what was coded wrong?

Well, we can't tell you that.

Or Yeah, it's, yeah.

You pay for it.

It's, why does it have to be so challenging and and like, who

is making a healthcare patient learn about billing codes?

Mm-hmm.

That's a wild thing to have happen.

I worked, when I lived in Boulder, I worked at a small sexual health clinic so

I did know about billing codes when I was going into my giant healthcare battle.

And so I could at least ask certain questions cause I understood what

was going on behind the scenes.

But it was like, if I hadn't had that job, I would not even know

how to push on those conversations.

And even knowing that I couldn't get this organization to put the

right billing codes down to get them approved by this organization.

Like, y'all just need to talk to each other.

Why am I even involved?

Yeah.

The provider and the insurance company could talk to each other.

It'd be amazing.

Yeah.

But there's no profit incentive for that.

You know, to whatever extent they can minimize their work, in that regard.

I, which I wanna go back to something that you asked yourself when you

had the, defibrillator installed.

Was somebody else's life impacted or sacrificed?

For the materials that went into making the device.

And then what was your life worth?

What did you find out?

Did you go down that, that theory, that question?

It's such a complicated question and I spent years there.

you know, as I mentioned, my initial thought had been conflict minerals,

and that's because in 2012, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was

known as the rape capital of the world.

the DOD Frank Act was just being passed, and that was financial

reform legislation coming out of the big collapse in 2008, 2009.

But it included this weird little writer called Section 1502 that required

companies registered, on the US Stock Exchange to essentially trace and then.

Present whether there was tin, tantalum, tungston, or gold essential to the

functionality of whatever they were manufacturing, in their products, and

whether that was from the Great Lakes region of Africa, which is Congo and

the adjoining nations, um, sorry, Dr.

Congo.

And, It ended up being that I couldn't find out for years whether

defibrillator companies were saying, yes, our, our devices have materials

from the Congo in them or no.

but I was very interested in like how that tracking might actually occur.

And for those who aren't as familiar with conflict minerals, the basic

concept there is that when you're talking about pit mining rather than

industrialized mining, people with shovels can just dig up or and sell it.

And so that area was really benefiting from, the electronics boom in the

US sort of consumer electronics.

We tend to not think of medical technology as part of that, but of course it is.

I have a, a motherboard and a battery inside me.

And so, it was very easy for armed 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 as the rape capital of the world was there

were these armed groups who were getting plenty of money to buy weapons, to buy

drugs, to terrorize local communities, through the, electronics boom.

And you know, the more I looked at that scenario, the more it was like, I don't

think I can figure out if the device in my body has materials specifically from

that area, because the companies were talking about don't even know today.

They probably have a slightly better idea than back then.

It's been really interesting to watch the compliance environment sort of evolve.

But this is still something we're talking about in terms of laptops, all the time,

you know, whatever the sort of conflict hotspots are, our mining materials,

making it into the supply chain.

And what ended up becoming really interesting to me was, okay,

so the Great Lakes region of Africa is one potential scenario.

What are the other potential scenarios for 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 would be considered a good mining project?

Does that exist?

Can I wrap my head around that?

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 carved out of endemic jungle.

It was called Tuvi and it was a cobalt and nickel mine.

I have cobalt in my battery and nickel in my micro electronics, and I spent a

lot of time talking to the communities around that site as well as people at the

company about what their programs were.

because I was in Madagascar, I then went down to an older Rio Tinto mine called

Q M M, and it was a titanium sands mine.

And of course, an implanted cardiac defibrillator is in a titanium

box, essentially a titanium can.

And so I learned about how you take titanium out of the sands and how

those communities were impacted and.

it's just an incredibly complex thing to talk about because there's a lot

of good intentions and improved, reporting standards and not regulations

necessarily that are coming from these governments, but more regulations that

come through the funding mechanisms.

You know, Citibank and Wells Fargo and Bank of America, they all sign

on to these sort of standards that they will uphold, projects to.

And a lot of the things that look really good going in don't always play out when

the metals market dips low, don't always play out as one stakeholder sells out

and another comes in and there's just a lot of questions in that part of the

world when things are under develop.

People tend to have a lot of hope that the mining company will be able to

somehow fix these things that you or I might think it is the government's job

to do, you know, depending on politicals.

Mm-hmm.

But like, is it a mining company's job to give people healthcare?

Is it a mining company's job to pave the roads, build schools?

Like what is within that purview and not, and so you end up in this

really like wicked sticky situation where mining companies are actually

suddenly in charge of social programs and biodiversity offsets and things

that are not their expertise and the results are really mixed.

So I came to think of the question that I was asking as.

Okay, this is the work of a writer.

This is the work of a book.

You ask the question that doesn't have another place to necessarily

be asked in this way, and you ask it as deeply as you can.

And even though it seems like there's not an answer, the act of sort of exploring

the insides of the question and finding its contours, not only will some answers

sort of emerge, but it is useful as a society for us to ask and keep asking and

not turn away beautiful and remarkable that you traveled around the globe to go

to those places and see what was going on.

And yes, legislation can get passed and I think it has all

the, the best intentions, but.

In the end, who's gonna track it?

and that's with a lot of stuff with legislation and laws, it's who's

gonna track it, whether it's finance, these types of minerals, whatever.

you gotta have accountability and you gotta have that in in place as well.

And, I'm sure you met some remarkable people along the way, along your

jour, throughout your journey to see of what you were out to search for.

I really did.

I think I think once I understood that there wasn't gonna be just one answer.

Mm-hmm.

Or like one way to have an I c D that only had positive impact.

Right.

Like that's a, that's a pipe dream.

and I think folks are probably thinking in their right to, so like,

oh my God, look around you right now.

Everything, every, every object has a story came from somewhere,

has an organic matter or chemical compounds or things that came

together in the making of that object.

Right.

And how is it more meaningful to ask the question about the I C D than

the computer that we're staring at?

It's, that's where the exercise and the question asking is so important,

but I really wanted to see how my life was linked to other people's.

And I think that is too often.

You know, it's, mm-hmm.

we find ourselves absorbed by the worlds we inhabit.

We find ourselves in kind of entitlement to having access to certain types

of technology or resources, and we forget that they come from communities

and that, an indigenous people might actually be kicked out of their ancestral

forest, not only so that the mining can occur, but so the mining company

can have a biodiversity offset for their mind, which is really complex.

I never thought that biodiversity offsets were sort of morally complicated, but

when we identify indigenous people as a threat to the forest, and the mining

company is tasked with improving forest to offset their, their mining project, then

yeah, people get removed from ancestral lands, and so there's just all snarly

snarly pieces and so it felt important to.

Look people in the eyes, and really gain a sense of this object in my

body is actually really sacred.

It took a lot to make it.

And what does it mean to live in a way where we look at the things around

us and we understand what they take.

Perhaps we have gratitude for what they are, and we also then make more conscious

choices about when we say yes to things.

And this is where we get looped back to the way that death shapes the planet.

Our cultural relationship shapes the planet.

Because I am a young person, at least for a few more years, you know, I'm,

I'm now about to turn 38, which is an A, never thought I would get to b.

so for a lot of people, it's morally uncomplicated to give me healthcare

resources because certainly a young person should get more years.

But it's when we start asking about, Stages of life where maybe there's not

a, a lot of years remaining, how do you make decisions from that place?

And I'm not here to say that I have one, one right answer, but American

Healthcare does spend extraordinary amount of resources right at the

end of life for a lot of people when that life is on its end anyway.

And so recognizing again, that these resources come from somewhere, they

impact people's lives, they are sacred.

it really changes the way we move through the world to hold that in mind.

And for me in particular, I actually, throughout my journey have discovered

that I probably never needed a defibrillator to begin with, which is a

particularly bitter pill for me, given.

I now have this broken technology stranded inside me.

My medications were perhaps not very well managed when I was a young

person, and there may have been another 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 my particular case have been very high

considering that the device has never actually saved my life has only

caused negative impacts to my life.

My sister's life has been 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 entire system and becoming an exor.

I'm hoping that that happens by the time I'm 42.

you're, repeat that You're working on ex planting to become an ex what again?

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 able to live life without an implant, you're

trying to, you know, figure that out.

What about for you and your writing?

you've written a book.

It is, getting a ton of traction and I am so amped to read it now.

And thank you.

I, I have a friend to introduce you to who has gone through the ringer with her.

Issues.

Oh, is it Jenny N No, boots 19.

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 know somebody with, when they use

the first name and now she their middle, I just have to talk hard.

Hard.

Yeah.

I cannot, so, you know, Suzanne beautiful.

I'm so, yes.

She found her way to me when my book came out because so many people

were like, oh my God, you were both ski 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're working through all of this other stuff,

are you now a skiing structor again?

Are you hiking and biking, or is life at a different mellow activity playing.

And there's a lot more time for writing and thinking.

Well, you, you tell me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's such an, an interesting, uh, spot I find myself in.

So, I tried to move back to the Valley in 2019 and I failed and I ended up, uh, I

just couldn't find anything and, and at the 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 mesa for two and a half years, which was a

magical spot in terms of house and land.

But it was, really not good for my life and it just made me done with

living places that weren't Jackson.

I mean, this has felt like home in my heart for so long, and I was so

resentful that I ever had to leave.

And I did understand for a few years that, you know, it made sense too.

I went to grad school, I did some of the things that people

have to leave the valley to do.

but it was like, no, I need to find a way to go home.

So I've been so grateful to step into Charlie's house.

but our timing was a little off, so I 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, doing promotions still for lightning

flowers, you know, a a few book clubs, speaking engagements.

And, you know, pitches for book festivals, sex stuff, and then also

working on my next book and doing things to try to line up funding for that.

I have a patronage account that I put to and, and work on.

and I'm working on the book proposal so that hopefully I can

have an agent sell that book.

within the next period here.

There's always a weird pressure in a writing career.

Some people come right out of their first book into their second book

really fast, and I've been on the slower side cuz I needed some emotional

transition time and Covid was wacky.

and then I work with clients, so a lot of my work, I do occasionally read

book manuscripts for people, or I teach classes regularly, but a lot of my

work is specifically on trauma writing.

I work as a trauma writing Do.

Helping people birth these really difficult stories, and that requires

an attention to physiologically where they are with their trauma.

Socially.

What kind of messages have they taken in about their experience and the stories

they are or aren't allowed to tell?

Crack wise?

What does it look like to confront things like fragmented memory on the page?

you know, how do you incorporate.

Good storytelling when someone is having to go to a bunch of

doctor's appointments, which can actually be very boring on the page.

So really working on those craft aspects.

And then ultimately what all of that lines up to, for a lot of my

clients is a spiritual invitation.

So people are through the act of telling their story, really having

to confront certain things, rise to certain challenges, maybe somatically

process, emotions or other trauma energy that is stored in their body.

Like move it through and through that process they become someone else.

They sort of rise to it.

and so that is a lot of my work and I have had kind of a disrupted winter.

I've had some medical appointments.

I've just had a, I just was sick for a week.

You could hear it in my voice.

So it hasn't been a great winter for adventuring.

I don't have a lot of my 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

you just are so sad because the whole point of all this snow is to play in it.

Right.

and so I feel like I'm kind of in between worlds right now.

Like, I need more time on this land to, come into alignment with all

the things I love to do and have the resources I need to do them.

And, but I will say Charlie Craig Head's house, you have to park

on Antelope Plats Road and then, snowshoe Cross-Country Ski Inn.

And so I do that almost every day and it's really 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 of an ass kicker, but I love it.

That's, that's beautiful.

And this year for, just so people have an understanding, we've had

a banner snow year this year.

So when you're saying that you have to snowshoe 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 the conditions are gonna be and it has been

either super cold or just snowing a lot and where you are, you get a lot more snow

than what we get at here in town cuz you are at a higher elevation and it's just

notorious to get a lot more snow out there than with the wind that can accumulate.

So, talk about the re fortitude and resilience for you to have that commitment

to get in and outta the house and to make it to all your appointments and.

Kudos to you, Katie.

Kudos.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, the wind is really driving out here and it drifts heavily.

Someone asked the other night why I haven't sung at

the Hoot Nanny this season.

And it was like, cuz there was absurd every Monday and getting from out here

into town was not gonna happen right Now, wrapping things up, how can people

reach out to you and, and find you?

What's, what are those methods?

And especially to keep following you for your next book, how

exciting that you're working on.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Lightning Flowers is available at both Valley Bookstore and

Jackson Hole book Trader.

They've been amazing partners.

I try to keep the, some of the little free libraries stocked

so you can check there too.

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 just a lot going on there.

Different, classes that I'm teaching or services that I offer.

and I'll also be at Jackson Hole Writers Conference.

I'm joining the faculty of that, which was a real bucket, bucket list moment.

Oh, what a wonderful, what an amazing event that we have here.

That right conference.

Yeah.

It's really a special one.

Mm-hmm.

Well, thank you for joining that faculty and, you know, not to dismiss.

I mean, we, we only have so much time and today, but not to dismiss what

you're doing, you know, trauma writing as 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 travel that path with somebody and help them.

Extract that experience, the details, the memories, the feelings, the

emotions, and put it in a, in a form 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 Lightning Flowers changed me.

I had to spend a lot of time alone in the process.

I had a period, I was doing a lot of trauma processing related to the story

on the Mesa in New Mexico, just in a short term rental in, in early 2019.

And then I also rented a cabin out here in Kelly in fall 2019,

where I was doing a lot more of it.

And it can be a really lonely and underworld experience.

And one of the things I've been really interested in always is,

Sort of what it means to be both a modern human and a spiritual human.

Mm-hmm.

When I was a Mary Center intern back in 2006, all these amazing minds would

come through that ranch, and so many of them were concerned with this question

of regaining spirituality or being spiritual through the land, despite.

All of us being in modernity and trauma writing doula work strikes me as

actually very like old and archetypal.

It sort of crosses over with these old storyteller archetypes

and sort of medicine people.

Like what does it mean to have gone through an experience that is extremely

difficult and come out the other side as someone with something to share.

And so I like to say that a lot of our experiences are the first half of an

initiation, but we can't really access the wisdom of them until we go through

that process of reflecting, making the art from them, alchemizing them really.

And people are sort of completing an initiation with me.

And that is, um, really deep work and it's really special work.

And it's not for everyone, but there are some of us who are just

called that these difficult stories aren't supposed to be things we

just went through and try to ignore.

You know, they're supposed to be of 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, your thoughts and your, your messaging far

better than me, so I am so happy that you're the one who was, who's been

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 so many fascinating people to have them share

their stories and their experiences just to lift us all up, and an opportunity

for us to learn from other people and to connect, to just get to know somebody a

little bit more who you would've never known, was right out your back door.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Well, thank you Katie.

I, I wish you a.

Very fruitful and productive and engaging life as you travel your

path in many, many more years, of life here with us all let it be.

So, yes, thank you.

Thank you, Katie.

To learn more about Katie Standifer and her book, lightning

Flowers, visit the jackson hole connection.com, episode number 236.

Thank you, Michael, for keeping this podcast going through the marketing

and the editing and production.

Folks, if you want to do a podcast, 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 you fans who listen, share this podcast with

your friends and families or somebody that you haven't connected with in a while.

I do appreciate you sharing your time with me today and cheers till

next week for the next episode of the Jackson Hole Connection.