About Kate

If I had to label myself, I would say I am a lab rat. At the risk of acronym overload, let’s make that LABRAT: Love and Beauty, Research and Transformation. My happy place is exploration and discovery with brilliant and courageous friends. Especially if they have a sense of cosmic humor. Taking serious things lightly.

How did I get here? I grew up the first of two kids born to a married couple in a suburban neighborhood of Indianapolis in the 1950s. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve known there was more going on than appeared on the surface of everyday life.

At three I could add numbers into the thousands, apparently without being taught. I was tactful about correcting adults when they made mistakes.

I remember writing this, one circle or line at a time, with a sense that it was very, very important. Sunday school felt like another one of the phony things we kids had to do, but the words of Jesus rang true.

Once I heard “subthermonuclear physicist” in a conversation about my uncle Alan at Stanford, the path was clear. There was an aura of magic to the word, and the reaction when I announced my career plans at age seven confirmed it. To discover the secrets of the universe, physics and math were the keys.

Outside of school, I’d been running experiments of my own: self-hypnosis at twelve, spontaneous out-of-body experiences at sixteen, then Robert Monroe’s Journeys Out of the Body, Eckankar, Sufi practices.

And psychedelics. Stories will be told elsewhere– there are plenty of stories! Here I’ll just mention mescaline at sixteen, a few experiences with Orange Sunshine acid after that, picking mushrooms off of cow patties in Florida, and then meeting Rick Doblin when we were both twenty. The following year, we got to know each other while building his house, and I was briefly a guinea pig as he practiced becoming a psychedelic psychotherapist with LSD. It was never a party thing but let’s just say we had a lot to learn about set and setting.

After reading The Tao of Physics in college in 1975, I realized that we, conscious humans, were an integral part of experiments, and I knew very little about us. Consciousness studies was not an option in those days, so I wrote one last paper on Physics and Mysticism and switched to psychology.

From Rick’s house I moved west, taught on the Navajo Nation, and studied Scientology while playing professional blackjack in Las Vegas. I learned a lot, including that I’m not suited to be a cult member. I made sure to have statistics on my side and I didn’t want to fool myself, but some very curious things happened. Winning five of the top six places in a blackjack tournament was one, and that paid for a year at the Advanced Ability Center in California, where characters like Ingo Swann were part of the scene. Losing twenty-six bets in a row was another statistically unlikely event. It had been a good run but I realized I was done.

For the past thirty-five years, much of my laboratory has been trauma healing. “Fun with trauma” may sound odd, but seeing someone come home to themselves as the charge releases, with laughter to the point of tears, is the best high I know. If I had to see client after client through sessions that ended according to their insurance coverage, I would have been burned out long ago, but rather than compassion fatigue, I’ve had decades of compassion exhilaration! The “inner healing intelligence” referred to in psychedelic-assisted therapy is real, and traumas of all kinds resolve under conditions of safety and skill. On the other hand, our bodies know when we are being run through a process that treats us as a diagnostic code rather than a human being.

In a decade of wild optimism, as the first Certified Trauma Specialist in the Southwest, I dove into the professional world and became President and Director of multiple organizations and projects: Arizona Counselors Association, Traumatic Incident Reduction Association, Trauma Relief Services, Native American Trauma Project and more. Throughout the ’90s, I geeked out on techniques, using and teaching what worked without loyalty to anyone’s branded method. I bonded with colleagues who were passionate about developing and sharing their discoveries, organized the Power Therapies Conferences, and founded the International Energy Psychology Conferences in 1999.

After the 2000 conference, with eighty-five presenters, I returned closer to home: our Navajo community, my family, and the Gateway Ranch. In 2001, my husband, Mark, and I started the solar-powered, off-grid STAR School. With our own charter school we could empower children, including our own son, and the community. The original plan included a community trauma healing and training center, which fell off the priority list. Twenty-five years later, I’ll just say the school is still going and the needs are still there.

Exploration continued: three weeks with ayahuasca in the Brazilian Amazon in the winter of 2002, then Burning Man the next summer. The year after, I joined Rick there doing psychedelic harm reduction, work I’ve continued through the recent Telluride Mushroom Festival. Ten years on the MAPS integration list also gave me an inside view of struggles and damage from psychedelics without skilled care and support.

Those years also included accompanying my mother through dementia (Book of Kismet D for Death), and my father through Parkinson's from his 80s until 94. Although it meant a decade of commitment, there was never a question about whether taking care of them was the right thing to do. Both died peacefully and it was a blessing to have seen life through to the end. It also taught me a lot about what I do and do not want for my own final years.

Turning 70 has brought a reality check; I had a fabulous party and was out dancing at the sunrise set with the kids, but these numbers don’t go on forever. The generation ahead of us, now in their 90s, is sparse and slowed down. It’s as if the forest canopy that was always over our head has thinned out, one tree at a time, while we have grown to replace them.

I stopped looking around when people referred to elders; now I know who they are talking about. And I‘m okay with this, even if they add, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say you’re old!”

It’s okay, kids, getting old is a privilege, especially when we have health, friends, resources and purpose. Our culture makes it sound like we’re just here to buy a lot of pills (not the fun ones), but psychedelic elderhood is a chance to change that.

What have we learned?

What do we want to do together?

How do we have big fun in this seriously pivotal time?

Where can our time, money, connections, wisdom, and strategy make a difference?

Now, in Santa Fe, I’m still a LABRAT on the trail of healing and awakening. I’m enjoying chewing on these questions and more with fellow Psychedelic Elders and allies. We have a chance to bring this lifetime of experience into community building, New Mexico’s medical psilocybin work, and research on death, dying, and expanded states of consciousness. At this point we’re brainstorming while officially kicking off this movement.

We don’t know what’s possible but we know we can do more together.

You are invited to the party!