Suitcase Series: Kate Blackshear
Kate is one of my oldest friends. We were a part of a new church start together when RJ and I were newlyweds. She and her husband Shane were at our wedding, and us at theirs. They were there for the birth of my first two sons, and the death of my daughter, and they recently hosted us for not one, but two trips to Austin for music and work. Kate is a hospital chaplain and just an amazing presence for people going through hard times. This photo shoot, with Kate in the new Thursday Dress, was taken in her beautiful home, as well as the upcoming undies update. I’m so glad for you to meet her.
Addie: Tell me about the work that you do.
Kate: I am a professional healthcare chaplain, so basically what that means is I provide spiritual support in a healthcare setting for patients and any one who loves them: their visitors their friends, their families, and also our staff at the hospital. And spiritual care is abroad term. Sometimes it means more emotional support if things are hard, sometimes it means exploring bigger existential questions, sometimes it means calling a priest so that someone has a rite or a ritual that's really important to them, but it looks very different every day, and that's one of the things I love about it. I never know what it's going to be like, and it's broad and kind of all encompassing. One of the things that I say to people when I meet them is, "I'm just a person here to care about you while you're here."
Addie: In what ways does your appearance affect your work? What are you going for when you get dressed?
Kate: I work in a professional environment, so I have a dress code to follow, I'm expected to look, I think business casual is the official. We definitely don't wear jeans. It's interesting, I work mainly on the patient floors, so most of the staff around me have scrubs on of some kind, so they think I'm very fashionable. I like to look nice and put together, and a little interesting. Usually with earrings. That's usually my signature piece. Kind of classic. It's this balance for me of wanting to be an individual and kind of have a style that represents who I am, but also not making it about me. Because as a chaplain my goal is to be present with people, and not to draw attention to myself. So sometimes I feel a tension between, is this too much? Because people comment on it, and then it takes away from the experience that I might be having with them, but then sometimes it's a point of connection where they're like, "Hey, I like your tennis shoes. Are those comfortable?" Or I had a patient recently who was in the hospital for a long time, and I sat with his wife many many times when it was really hard, and she always noticed my earrings, and then probably two months after he discharged from the hospital, she sent me a thank you note and she sent me a pair of earrings. She said, "Thank you for being with us during such a difficult time, and I hope that you'll wear these and think of us." So it's again that balance of people are going to connect with me personally, and sometimes what you wear or how you present yourself is a part of that. I always want to connect with people, but I don't want it to be about me being in a fashion show every day. It's more about expressing myself a little bit while being respectful of the environment I'm working in.
Addie: What other contexts do you dress for outside of work?
Kate: I take my kids to the park a lot, and we go to church on Sunday. Our church is very casual, but I really believe in putting yourself together for Sunday worship. Our church has a rhythm where we do church together in a chapel setting with everybody every other Sunday, and then house church. And house church happens to be at my house, so I get dressed and put myself together, but I tend to be more casual at home. I might wear lounge pants, but when I go to church at the chapel I'm dressier, and that's an atmosphere where I can be a little bit more myself. Social functions: My look is not really that different, when I go out with friends. I might be a little bit more bold, when I go out with Shane, or out to drinks with friends. But I'm usually a pretty casual classic vibe, with big earrings.
Addie: I've found that a lot of styling advice assumes that you are dressing really differently for the different contexts of your life, but I'm finding that most of us, even if we do a variety of different things in our lives, we don't have separate wardrobes for the different things. We want our clothes to do all of the jobs.
Kate: No, you dress how you want to feel. I like to feel comfortable, and I like color. I like jewel tones and I like bright colors. I have blue eyes, so I like to wear things that make my eyes stand out. That kind of thing.
Addie: I don't know how people used to just accept that a lot of their clothes were going to be uncomfortable, for work or for evening. It's not hard to look nice and not always be itchy or pulling at things.
Kate: or too tight and tucked in.
Addie: What are like your nevers, if you're going shopping?
Kate: For one thing I tend to shop second hand. Either consignment or thrift or goodwill. Or for basics at Target or Gap. I don't think I have many never. I like change. I like to try new things. I like longer flowier things usually. I try not to dress like a teenager, if I'm 43 years old, but I just kind of go with how I feel when I see something, and if I'm drawn to it, I might try it on.
I tend to be an events shopper. I think part of it is how I grew up. We didn't have a ton of money, so it was like, right before I went to youth camp, we would get three or four new outfits, and that was basically my summer clothes, but it was for camp. And on Easter we usually got a new dress, and at Christmas time we might get something new. So Shane tends to have a wardrobe and just go with it. And I think like, "Ooh it's Easter, and I have a wedding to go to." I'm trying to be aware of that in one sense, like I don't always need something new, but it's still part of me. "This is a special event. I might want something new to wear." Or if I'm going on a trip. Which is funny, I saw a TikTok or something that was like, "Why do we buy new clothes to go on vacation? Nobody there has ever seen our clothes." But it goes back to how clothes make you feel. You want to feel fun and nice on a vacation, so you might want to buy something.
Addie: I had a similar childhood. My mother in law was shocked that I said we always got new dresses for Christmas and Easter, but that was the only time we go new dresses. That was our main church dress for the whole summer or the whole winter.
Kate: I tend to compare myself to Shane, because he's my partner, and he's who I live with. He tends to have a capsule wardrobe, where he picks good pieces and rotates them, and I tend to be more like, "I'm in the mood for this, and I'm kind of tired of this, so I'll pass it on." That's partly why I do more thrifting, because I just like change. I don't really keep the same pair of jeans for like ten years, or whatever.
Addie: What are some rituals in your life that you come back to for support?
Kate: One of my rituals in the last two or three years has been walking. I find a lot of soothing in walking. It really helps me to reset mentally and emotionally. So, for instance, this morning I went walking for about 30 minutes, and I wasn't walking at a fast pace, or trying to burn calories or whatever. I was just walking, and listening to an audio book, so it's become one of my me time rituals, but also, lately, my daughter has wanted to come walking with me. I feel like that's kind of rare for a ten year old to just want to walk, but we talk, and I try to go to the parks in Austin, and walk on trails, and stop and see beautiful things, so that's been really a big one for me lately. At work, I'm fortunate to work at a hospital that's in a nice area, and between the grocery store and the hospital there's a little park and a pond and turtles. So one of my rituals at work, when things get heavy, if it's not 115 degrees, I go outside and take a walk around the path, and it just kind of reset things mentally and spiritually and gives me a minute to process.
Addie: Is there anyone whose work is making you excited lately?
Kate: There's this woman that I've started following in Instagram. I follow a lot of artists that I like to watch them create, also recipes and beautiful food videos. I kind of paint sometimes, but I kind of want to try this last's style. Her name is @sarahmartinezart, and one of my best friends is Sarah Martin, so I always see it and think of her too. She's doing a series right now where she's doing color theory, and she's watercoloring beautiful colors together and some where she's doing faces. I could just sit and watch her paint those faces all day long. She does like a dab of watercolor, and then like scrapes it, and makes like a basic face shape and then paints the eyes and the nose, and it's all kind of loose and very pretty. So, she's who I've been noticing lately.
Addie: Is there a creative project you've been thinking of, or someone you'd like to collaborate with?
Kate: Honestly, I've been feeling so uncreative in my job lately. And there's so many ways that chaplains can be creative in the work that they do. I have some basic art supplies in my office, that in theory I could take and use with a patient and let them do whatever, while we talk, or just because they get bored and antsy in the hospital. I do that sometimes, but really, my go to at work is just being present with people, and listening to people. To be totally transparent, I'm discouraged in the part of my job that's staff care, because that's where I could be really creative. I've tried a couple of things like a self-care resource fair , and people just don't show up. People are dealing with stuff, in hospital work, they come and go and there's a lot of stress, but if they're not at work, they don't want to come to work for an extra thing, and if they are at work, they don't have built in time when they could like, do an event. So anyway, I've been in kind of a creative rut with my profession, but I don't know. I really enjoy grief work, just being with people when they are really struggling with fresh and new grief, and just validating what people are going through. And I really enjoy helping people plan memorial services or funerals, so sometimes that's a way to be more creative. My friend, Trina, and I are always talking about being basically funeral planners instead of wedding planners. We help people come up with really unique and special ways to celebrate someone's life and things like that. So we talk about it sometimes, and maybe it's kind of a far off dream, and now she is a counselor. So maybe one day if I'm able to sort of freelance, that would be something that I'd be interested in doing. The creative part of, how can we honor this person, and what would they want you to do when you get together, what music and what poems, and maybe a collaborative art project. So that's maybe a more far off creative dream.
Addie: I always think of you when I see grief resources. I think you did a lot of research when you started doing it more professionally, and shared that a little. I saw a movie a while back that made me think of you called Ms. White Light. She's not at all licensed or professional, but a woman who gets hired to come and talk with people who are suffering, but don't want to let go. Their families hire her to help them feel peace.
Kate: I feel like so much of grief work is just validating what people are going through, because there's so much out there that invalidates and makes you feel like you don't have the right or the space to grieve the way you need to. This is really personal, but remembering when my brother died, and my mom's very visceral response to finding out and then not really remembering too. There's a Maya Angelou quote, "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." I don't really remember those few weeks or months, but I remember there were people who showed up for me, people who sat with me. That validation of what someone is going through. I had a friend come visit the other day at work. He works in the OR and they don't have people that die down there very often, and he was so baffled that it was affecting him, and I was like yes. Just sitting there and hearing him and hearing how that was hard for him, and he said, "Everyone else who was there that day looks as if they're just going on with their lives." And he just needed, in that moment someone to see and hear him.
Addie: I feel like you have a special gift in the balance, of being calm and supporting, but also honest. You're not calming people down by telling them not to think about hard things.
Kate: Right, like, "Your going to fine. It's okay." I think people are shocked sometimes when I cry with them. Like they think, "Aren't you supposed to make me feel better?" And I'm like, "No, this sucks. This is really really hard and really sad."
Addie: I always feel like we are tied together, because Jordan and Lucy died so close together. You were a little bit further down the road and able to give me permission to feel whatever I was feeling and do whatever I needed to do one day at a time.
Kate: Yeah, my grandmother died and then my brother and then my papa died, and then Lucy died, all in the same few months, and we were heading back home when we heard about Lucy, and I remember that as a time when I thought, "What the heck are we going to do?" And we just drove there, because that's all we knew.