Speaker 1: Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Schick and I am joined by my co
Speaker 2: host and wife, Ashley shik Jake is.
Speaker 3: A third generation combat Marine and I'm a gold Star granddaughter.
Speaker 3: We work together to serve military veterans, first responders, frontline
Speaker 3: healthcare workers, and their families with mental and emotional wellness
Speaker 3: through traditional and non traditional therapy. At One Tribe Foundation,
Speaker 3: we believe.
Speaker 2: Everyone has a story to tell, not only about the peaks,
Speaker 2: but also the valleys they've been through to get them to.
Speaker 1: Where they are today.
Speaker 3: Each week, we invite a guest to tell us their story,
Speaker 3: to share with us the lessons they've learned that shaped
Speaker 3: who they are and what they're doing to pay it
Speaker 3: forward and give back.
Speaker 2: Are mission with this show is to dig deep into
Speaker 2: our guest journeys so that we can celebrate the hope
Speaker 2: and inspiration or story has to offer.
Speaker 3: We're thrilled you're joining us again.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Good Stuff. Our guest today.
Speaker 2: Is Thompson, an internationally recognized glass artist based in Seattle, Washington.
Speaker 3: Kapi's work deals with the biggest themes we as humans
Speaker 3: try to come to terms with faith, religion, myth, folklore,
Speaker 3: the cosmos and the afterlife.
Speaker 2: Not only has Kapi built a life long, celebrated career
Speaker 2: as a fine artist, she is equally devoted to her
Speaker 2: creative community as a teacher and mentor.
Speaker 3: She's here today to tell us about her life as
Speaker 3: an artist and being a devoted student to religious philosophies
Speaker 3: and spirituality. Kappy's story is also about the life and
Speaker 3: sudden death of her beloved husband, Charlie Williams. Charlie was
Speaker 3: the great love of Kapi's life and a partner in
Speaker 3: her exploration of the spiritual realm. His passing opened Kappy's
Speaker 3: heart to an even greater sense of love, heartbreak, and
Speaker 3: the unknown.
Speaker 2: This episode is about living, dying, and the beauty found
Speaker 2: and grieving. This was a particularly moving conversation and we
Speaker 2: are blessed to be able to.
Speaker 1: Share it with you.
Speaker 3: Miss Kathy Thompson, Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 3: here on the Good Stuff. We are so thrilled that
Speaker 3: you're here joining us today.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Your story is about some of our greatest mysteries of life.
Speaker 3: It's art, love, the meaning of life, and the meaning
Speaker 3: of death. Your life has been so full of creation
Speaker 3: and spiritual inquiry, and so to get us started tell
Speaker 3: us about what it was like growing up in your
Speaker 3: household and how you even became interested in art.
Speaker 4: My mom was a painter, and she actually didn't have
Speaker 4: a career, but she was primarily a homemaker. She had
Speaker 4: four children with my dad, but she had a lifelong
Speaker 4: practice of painting, and there was an art supplies in
Speaker 4: the house. We went to museums, we went to gallery.
Speaker 4: So I had an early awareness that art was something
Speaker 4: that was a value. And I'm wired kind of the
Speaker 4: way my mom is, so it was a pretty natural
Speaker 4: thing to be interested in it as a kid. And
Speaker 4: I started feeling like I was in a zone with
Speaker 4: it probably when I was a teenager, so it was
Speaker 4: kind of natural to head that direction.
Speaker 2: Kevin, do you have any brothers or sisters and did
Speaker 2: you guys go to church.
Speaker 4: I have two sisters. I'm the middle girl or two
Speaker 4: years apart, and a younger brother who's four years younger
Speaker 4: than Mollie, six years younger than me. So my mom's
Speaker 4: was from Iowa. Just a wonderful sort of common sense
Speaker 4: person with a good sense of humor, and she met
Speaker 4: my dad in college. It was after the war. My
Speaker 4: dad was going to school on the GI Bill at
Speaker 4: the University of Washington. My mom was coming to get
Speaker 4: a teaching certificate, so that's how they met. We moved
Speaker 4: a bit because my dad took him a little while
Speaker 4: to settle down into a job that ended up being
Speaker 4: a long term career. The family unit was pretty tight
Speaker 4: and pretty important because we moved not infrequently, but you know,
Speaker 4: every few years. One thing that was formative was when
Speaker 4: I was a teenager. My dad, by then I was
Speaker 4: a Boeing engineer, and that was one of the recessions
Speaker 4: where everybody was leaving. Boeing was laying off people, and
Speaker 4: he basically was transferred to the South. Boeing had facilities
Speaker 4: in Huntsville, Alabama, and so my dad was transferred there.
Speaker 4: So we moved to the Deep South during the Civil
Speaker 4: Rights movement. My mom's father had passed away when she
Speaker 4: was young, and my mom was in her twenties when
Speaker 4: her father died, and when I was twelve and her sister,
Speaker 4: Dory was in her thirties, Dori died of cancer, and
Speaker 4: so that was about the time we moved to Alabama.
Speaker 4: My mom had sought a church. At that point. I
Speaker 4: started to attend the Episcopal Church. My family did, and
Speaker 4: so that was kind of my first religious grounding. But
Speaker 4: when I was about thirty teen, like a lot of
Speaker 4: people do, I kind of decided that the Nicean crete
Speaker 4: didn't make any sense to me that Jesus would be
Speaker 4: the only begotten son of God. I mean, I had
Speaker 4: a naive understanding of it, and I was just like, no,
Speaker 4: I couldn't understand why all religions weren't acceptable or anyway.
Speaker 4: Stopped kind of going to church. And then when I
Speaker 4: was in college, I got attracted to, of course, all
Speaker 4: the religions. I got curious about them, so I looked
Speaker 4: at Buddhism, and Sufi's stories were really interesting to me,
Speaker 4: So I you know, I sort of started getting interested
Speaker 4: in the esoteric areas of most of the of religious cultures.
Speaker 3: I think that's so fascinating that at such a young
Speaker 3: age you started to not necessarily question, but you started
Speaker 3: to just really think on a broader scope about religion.
Speaker 3: Then about okay, does this make sense.
Speaker 4: My family was pretty probably left leaning, I guess I
Speaker 4: would say we had gone from the far North to
Speaker 4: the deep South. My parents had taken on well, they
Speaker 4: definitely were an anti racist mindset, and I think that
Speaker 4: there were a lot you know, there was a lot
Speaker 4: of philosophical and sort of like value oriented discussion in
Speaker 4: my family. So that's probably why it. You know, it
Speaker 4: was okay for me to basically say no, I disagree,
Speaker 4: you know, I don't think this is what I want
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 2: And I think that's extremely important in family units to
Speaker 2: have openness, be able to talk with vulnerability, because we're
Speaker 2: all eat our own person And I think it's a
Speaker 2: beautiful thing that you were able to go educate yourself
Speaker 2: stemming from curiosity, which was often Disguis's courage to look
Speaker 2: in these other into these other religions and to educate
Speaker 2: yourself about what does it all mean? Are they connected?
Speaker 2: Do they have to be separated? And it seems as
Speaker 2: though because of industry and monetary gain, a lot.
Speaker 1: Of it is.
Speaker 2: Separated, and then the hyper focus is implemented in being
Speaker 2: able to okay, this is going to be monetized, Therefore.
Speaker 1: It's going to be protected because we can't lose that.
Speaker 2: I'm with you completely on that, But were you the
Speaker 2: only one that kind of picked up on the art
Speaker 2: out of your siblings?
Speaker 4: Ah, that's interesting. My sister Sarah was bookworm She's the eldest,
Speaker 4: and she was just so smart. She's basically was academically
Speaker 4: really brilliant, and she buried herself in books, and I
Speaker 4: sort of went another direction. So I was like into
Speaker 4: visual art, and my younger sister, Mollie basically went into theater,
Speaker 4: and my brother Peter was good at math and science.
Speaker 4: The eldest and the youngest actually were pretty academically oriented,
Speaker 4: and then Mollie and I were more in the creative side.
Speaker 4: Everybody kind of carved out a different kind of lane,
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 3: So when did you decide to make art your life's path.
Speaker 4: It was in my early twenties when I went to
Speaker 4: school in Bellingham at an alternative school, but there was
Speaker 4: no opportunity to do art. It was connected with a
Speaker 4: college that had art, but you couldn't get into classes
Speaker 4: as a first year student. There's no way you could
Speaker 4: do art, and so I wasn't particularly happy, and I
Speaker 4: after one year, I went back home and there was
Speaker 4: a small art school in Seattle, wasn't really accredited even
Speaker 4: but it was really a fantastic place. It's called the
Speaker 4: Factory of Visual Art, and the classes were great, and
Speaker 4: I basically went to school there with my mom. We
Speaker 4: both took classes and I had never been happier. And
Speaker 4: then the next year the whole family had gotten into therapy.
Speaker 4: My mom had found a therapist and it was sort
Speaker 4: of transactual ANALYSI since we were like a hippie family
Speaker 4: diving deep into So when I went back to school
Speaker 4: a year later, it was like, are you going to
Speaker 4: do psychology or do I want to do art? And
Speaker 4: it was a pretty easy decision because I thought, yeah,
Speaker 4: if I do art, I'll never come to the bottom
Speaker 4: of it. You won't ever come to the end of it.
Speaker 4: So and that's true. I made a really good decision and.
Speaker 3: Never thought about that.
Speaker 1: But it's such a profound.
Speaker 3: It's never ending to say you can always create more, and.
Speaker 2: To be honest with a lot of the people we know,
Speaker 2: human psychology feels.
Speaker 1: A lot like well, just you'll never see the end
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: But it's you know, it's it's such a gift to
Speaker 3: be able to create. And artists have always fascinated me.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I'm not an artist. I try to
Speaker 3: draw a dog and it looks like I love to
Speaker 3: paint the hell out of walls. Yes, I do love that.
Speaker 4: I love painting because that's good too.
Speaker 1: It's therapeutic.
Speaker 3: And you brought up therapy, and how forward thinking of
Speaker 3: your parents to have the entire family back then in therapy,
Speaker 3: because you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, it was kind of amazing.
Speaker 3: Actually somewhat taboo. But to me, painting walls is therapy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's proof we can find therapy in
Speaker 1: anything we do.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to be.
Speaker 2: First centered with yourself, and I believe that what you're
Speaker 2: able to create with your own hands is awe inspiring.
Speaker 2: Because as Ash and I were looking at some of
Speaker 2: this art, I was like, there's no way in hell
Speaker 2: I wouldn't break that accidentally, Like I wouldn't mean to, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I would take.
Speaker 1: A very marine approach to it.
Speaker 3: You'd be too careful and then I'd break it. Your
Speaker 3: work is absolutely stunning. We hadn't seen it before, and
Speaker 3: we went and really dug in, and your work is
Speaker 3: absolutely stunning. So you decided to go to college and
Speaker 3: pursue this as your life's path.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I had done mostly I started doing painting
Speaker 4: and printmaking, and then I went to a school that
Speaker 4: had an independent study program so I could do research
Speaker 4: and I had a summer job and stay Glass Studio,
Speaker 4: and the fellows there suggested that I researched glass painting,
Speaker 4: which I did. I basically paint on glass, and that's
Speaker 4: how I the language that I kind of developed my
Speaker 4: work in because I started doing it in my early
Speaker 4: twenties and I'm a painter and I'm a narrative painter,
Speaker 4: and I'm self taught, so I developed kind of a
Speaker 4: focusesthetic and storytelling aspect.
Speaker 3: Your painting is not just painting like with a paintbrush
Speaker 3: on top of glass, and then it's all.
Speaker 2: I was just about to say, you make it sound
Speaker 2: so simple. Yeah, and it's not simple. I understand the explanation.
Speaker 2: Not anybody can do it like you have no idea
Speaker 2: how hard I tried to figure it out. I was like,
Speaker 2: that's incredible, because it is. It's something that imagine that
Speaker 2: you're painting a picture with words to the people listening,
Speaker 2: that they can put themselves in your brain just for
Speaker 2: a moment.
Speaker 4: Well, when I first started working with glass, I was
Speaker 4: working in stained glass, and it is a very brilliant
Speaker 4: material and it's not inexpensive either, So I think it's
Speaker 4: interesting that I actually considered an audience when I started
Speaker 4: working in glass because it's doesn't feel like particularly private medium.
Speaker 4: The technique that I use is from early stained glass,
Speaker 4: and it's called grisaille, and it's gray tonal painting, so
Speaker 4: the colors are in the stained glass, and then the
Speaker 4: drawing is done with a paint that's made out of
Speaker 4: a glass frit and metal oxides, and so it gets
Speaker 4: melted on, it's fired on, and it's fired on in
Speaker 4: several layers, so a line work and then a second
Speaker 4: layer which is applied as in a thin wash, and
Speaker 4: then worked back subtractively with bristle brushes. It looks a
Speaker 4: bit like an etching at that point, and then it
Speaker 4: gets fired. Anyway, you can have a nuanced image with
Speaker 4: painting and the colors of stained glass. That kind of
Speaker 4: informed the whole development of my work, that style of
Speaker 4: drawing of painting.
Speaker 3: What were your initial inspirations.
Speaker 4: I guess I've been inspired by early works from many cultures,
Speaker 4: and this goes back to kind of an interest in
Speaker 4: myth and religious cultures around the world. So when the
Speaker 4: first pieces I did were sort of just straightforward narrative,
Speaker 4: I was like figuring out my voice by making drawings
Speaker 4: of Aesop's fables and to try to integrate the drawing
Speaker 4: into the lead lines. And eventually I worked in stained
Speaker 4: glass for about ten years, and actually at the very
Speaker 4: beginning pieces I made a reproduction of Persian miniatures to
Speaker 4: try to figure out how to work with the paints.
Speaker 4: So I sort of was like changing the scale and
Speaker 4: changing the well. Anyway, we can't talk about all the.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful thing here is that Just from that
Speaker 2: brief explanation, I think, especially for our younger audience or
Speaker 2: even older audience that is listening, has to understand that
Speaker 2: you can't wake up and be excellent at something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it takes years, right, right.
Speaker 2: You have to embrace patients and you have to embrace
Speaker 2: the grace that comes with said patients, mostly for yourself
Speaker 2: and your process. And that's a great explanation what you
Speaker 2: just gave of the fact that you have to be
Speaker 2: very patient and very methodical and very self forgiving in
Speaker 2: the process. And I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: that your outcomes are second to none. And so I
Speaker 2: commend you on finding you and finding your path and
Speaker 2: the fact that it's endless. In your words, you know,
Speaker 2: you never find the bottom I think is exhilarating.
Speaker 1: I think that's got to be very exciting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if there have been like these ten year periods
Speaker 4: in my life as an artist where I do an exploration.
Speaker 4: So the first ten years I did these sort of
Speaker 4: narrative fables in stained glass, and then I bumped into
Speaker 4: the studio glass movement, which is actually in full blast
Speaker 4: here in the Seattle area. So I actually was very
Speaker 4: lucky to be working in glass at this period when
Speaker 4: there was a lot of interests being sparked by it.
Speaker 4: For Dale Jihouli is a very well known artist now
Speaker 4: internationally globally because he's just gotten very very famous, and
Speaker 4: he started a school north of Seattle, Pilchat Glass School,
Speaker 4: and so there was a community of people coalescing around
Speaker 4: working with glass as an artistic medium. So I've sort
Speaker 4: of been buoyed and carried along by that. You don't
Speaker 4: get to do very much in isolation, but when there's
Speaker 4: synergy behind a group of people kind of working in
Speaker 4: the same direction, the universe is like giving you a push.
Speaker 4: So I was lucky in that respect too. I was
Speaker 4: a to actually find my way as an artist in
Speaker 4: this material that was finding its voice at this particular
Speaker 4: time and an audience who would buy it.
Speaker 3: So beautiful to have a mentor because you think art
Speaker 3: is such a personal thing, but then to think, no,
Speaker 3: there's actually a large community around and so that's that
Speaker 3: is beautiful. Thank you for painting that picture. Let's switch
Speaker 3: gears over to your love life. When was your heart
Speaker 3: fulfilled and love?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that'll take us back to my husband, Charlie.
Speaker 4: That's the love of my life. I feel like that's
Speaker 4: my karmic relationship person I was supposed to be with.
Speaker 4: And we met when we were thirteen, so that goes
Speaker 4: back to way back to junior high. Yeah, yep, Charlie
Speaker 4: and I went to ASA Mercer Junior High and we
Speaker 4: were friends through high school too. I met him just
Speaker 4: prior to moving to Alabama, so I met him for
Speaker 4: like a month in seventh grade. Then we moved, and
Speaker 4: then we returned to Seattle two years later. So I
Speaker 4: met him for just a short period when I was
Speaker 4: thirteen and then came back when I was fifteen. We
Speaker 4: were good friends in high school as well. We both
Speaker 4: married other people, and we were sort of this brat
Speaker 4: pack of kids who thought we were the clique, who
Speaker 4: thought we weren't a click.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then Charlie and I bumped into each other again
Speaker 4: at a point when I was about to get a
Speaker 4: divorce and he already had one. We met at a
Speaker 4: kind of an esoteric dance performance and had a long
Speaker 4: conversation with each other. And then within the year my
Speaker 4: marriage had come to an end and I was having
Speaker 4: a show and I invited all my friends to come,
Speaker 4: including Charlie, and I had a gathering at my studio
Speaker 4: afterwards to celebrate. He came and I had all these
Speaker 4: prints that I had a lithograph that to copies of
Speaker 4: that I was giving to friends, and I gave one
Speaker 4: to Charlie, and I remember he was leaving and I
Speaker 4: gave him a kiss, and he thinks that I gave
Speaker 4: him quite the kiss. Oh, I just thought I was
Speaker 4: giving him a peck. But anyway, we started going out
Speaker 4: after that, and I must have been a yes, Well,
Speaker 4: it wasn't really much of a kiss. Actually, he told
Speaker 4: everybody for the rest of his life that I was
Speaker 4: really coming on to him.
Speaker 3: Hilarious. What was he like? What was it that drew
Speaker 3: you to him?
Speaker 4: He was super smart and a serious guy, but also
Speaker 4: he had a good sense of humor. We grew up
Speaker 4: in the same place. You know, we knew the same people,
Speaker 4: we had, grew up with the same music in the
Speaker 4: same times. We couldn't have had a relationship if we'd
Speaker 4: started earlyer. We both needed to grow up. He had
Speaker 4: a complicated relationship with his dad. His dad was ex
Speaker 4: military and just didn't live at home until Charlie was
Speaker 4: about five or six. He's a biracial family, so his
Speaker 4: mom's Japanese and his dad was Texas middleweight boxing oh wow,
Speaker 4: from when he was young before the military. But his
Speaker 4: dad was a disciplinarian, so Charlie had some hard stuff
Speaker 4: in his family. He stayed with us when we were
Speaker 4: My parents had left us for summer jobs and they
Speaker 4: had a beach place. This was like in the like
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy. Charlie lived with us just before he went
Speaker 4: to college. He was selling encyclopedias and we were, you know,
Speaker 4: had whatever summer jobs we had, and he came to
Speaker 4: live with us because he'd gotten kicked out. He'd had
Speaker 4: a fight, finally, a fight with his dad and that
Speaker 4: was the end of that. So anyway, he went to
Speaker 4: University of Chicago for a couple of years, and we
Speaker 4: talked every so often on the phone. We were good friends,
Speaker 4: but we weren't a love interest until much later.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful how your paths crossed right when they were
Speaker 3: supposed to.
Speaker 4: And then it was wonderful to be married to him,
Speaker 4: and we had the esoteric interest in common too. He
Speaker 4: was intellectually curious period. Charlie read really broadly, and he
Speaker 4: had a good, solid kind of basic education from Chicago,
Speaker 4: so he had read a lot of Greek philosophy, and
Speaker 4: then he continued to study his whole life. And anyway,
Speaker 4: but when we were both interested, had friends who were
Speaker 4: doing Gurdjief Gerjeef was an esoteric teacher in the twenties.
Speaker 4: But we were reading books and had a little study group,
Speaker 4: and then after we were married, we were just looking
Speaker 4: at enlightenment. What's that you start getting interested in your
Speaker 4: you know, what is a human being? And if you
Speaker 4: start meditating, what you know? What is your mind? What
Speaker 4: is stillness? You know? Where do you go when you
Speaker 4: go to sleep? These things, I think everybody kind of
Speaker 4: comes up against them or ponders them. But Charlie and
Speaker 4: I both had a deep curiosity about these things, and
Speaker 4: so we were in a school called the Ridwan School
Speaker 4: for nine years where we worked with a teacher and
Speaker 4: went on retreats and basically it was an inquiry into
Speaker 4: presence basically and into the aspects of being, and the
Speaker 4: head of the school was Hamid Ali, but there were
Speaker 4: a lot of teachers in the program. So anyway, there
Speaker 4: was an aspect of psychology in it too, so kind
Speaker 4: of a spiritual psychology of going into the things that
Speaker 4: separate you from presence, which usually are our family of
Speaker 4: origin issues. But you got really a sense of what
Speaker 4: being present and being quiet and if you can connect
Speaker 4: with that. But in the end then Charlie was too
Speaker 4: expensive to stay in so Charlie was ready to He
Speaker 4: ran for a judicial office, and so we needed our
Speaker 4: money to actually put into a political campaign, which was
Speaker 4: a wonderful ego reduction exercise. Basically, anyway, the things you
Speaker 4: do that you work for that are hard, and then
Speaker 4: you lose, and then you pick yourself up the next day.
Speaker 4: It's amazing you lose and then you grow and then
Speaker 4: you go, oh wow, that was awful. Well, it wasn't
Speaker 4: all awful. Anyway. We also got interested in basically the
Speaker 4: wisdom traditions and theosophy, you know. Anyway, so Charlie and
Speaker 4: I just it was wonderful to study with him. Charlie
Speaker 4: got sick. I don't know if it was just a
Speaker 4: segue for that, but we were married for twenty two
Speaker 4: and a half years, and five years ago he had
Speaker 4: got sick quickly and we didn't even know he was ill.
Speaker 4: He wasn't feeling well and then for a couple weeks
Speaker 4: and then I said, you just get to get into
Speaker 4: the doctors, and you just have to go in. And
Speaker 4: what happened was he went for some imaging and they
Speaker 4: thought he might have leukemia, but then it turned out
Speaker 4: to be something much more virulent. So in the end,
Speaker 4: a week after the initial imaging, he was in pain
Speaker 4: and we went back to the doctors for the follow
Speaker 4: up and they put him in the hospital and then
Speaker 4: he died four days later. So it was really fast. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So the thing about death, well it's a shock. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's terrible to not be prepared for. It is hard.
Speaker 4: So you're in a state of shock for a while.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's like but what helped was he had
Speaker 4: been actually he didn't think he was going to live
Speaker 4: long anyway. He talked about that frequently. His father died
Speaker 4: at like age sixty two, and Charlie had some underlying
Speaker 4: health issues. He had Type two diabetes and had a stint,
Speaker 4: so he contemplated when he would die. And he had
Speaker 4: been studying also the work of Rudel Steiner, who founded anthroposophy,
Speaker 4: which is another of these sort of esoteric branches. It's
Speaker 4: an esoteric Christian philosophy. But there's a lot of writing
Speaker 4: that Steiner did about reincarnation. And he was a clairvoyant,
Speaker 4: so he basically could see into the spiritual world, and
Speaker 4: he did a lot of lecturing. The lectures were all written,
Speaker 4: so there's a ton of material, and he spoke a
Speaker 4: lot about the period between death and rebirth. And Charlie
Speaker 4: had been reading about this for a long time and studying,
Speaker 4: and I had been as well, but he had gone
Speaker 4: much more deeply into it. So actually, right now we're
Speaker 4: in Charlie's office and I'm just finally now going through
Speaker 4: some through the books he has, like there's like five
Speaker 4: thousand volumes in here, wow, on esoteric traditions of everything
Speaker 4: from Tibetan Buddhism to Avida Vedanta to the Greeks to
Speaker 4: theosophy and anthroposophy and Alice Bailey and you know, anyway,
Speaker 4: it's like Gurgieff and all the people who basically secondary
Speaker 4: students of all these movements. It was a defense attorney,
Speaker 4: so if he wasn't actually defending somebody who had been
Speaker 4: accused of there's a lot of dui work mostly and
Speaker 4: some other more serious stuff. He was a wonderful lawyer,
Speaker 4: but he was a lifelong learner. So I was comforted
Speaker 4: by the fact that Charlie had he had studied how
Speaker 4: you know, death, and so when he actually died, he
Speaker 4: died quite easily, you know, when we found out that
Speaker 4: he was on a ventilator, and when it turned out
Speaker 4: that he was really was going, I said, no, then
Speaker 4: we'd just let him go. And I think he just
Speaker 4: relaxed into it dying. What it does it reveals to you.
Speaker 4: To me anyway, my experience was that I could see
Speaker 4: how much I loved him. Everything that was bullshit was
Speaker 4: just disappeared and what didn't even exist. So I saw
Speaker 4: how much I loved him, and that really carried me
Speaker 4: for quite a while. It also pushed me into presence
Speaker 4: the shock of the death. Like I was like in
Speaker 4: the silence of it, and it was so true. Those
Speaker 4: aspects of it were so profound, the depth and the
Speaker 4: truth of it, and then how much I loved him,
Speaker 4: and all these things that like they're they're very profound.
Speaker 4: It was kind of ecstatic, almost strangely, because I was
Speaker 4: also in love with myself because I could see how
Speaker 4: much I loved him, and I was like, oh, y,
Speaker 4: that was like proof of it, because you never know
Speaker 4: because you get mad at people and you're like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, are you kidding, why did you do that?
Speaker 4: Or you've got your sticking points, you know. But I
Speaker 4: appreciated so much about him too. Charlie wouldn't pull his punches.
Speaker 4: He would tell the truth, and he told me the
Speaker 4: truth when he thought I was out of line or whatever,
Speaker 4: and it doesn't and that's not fun. But on the
Speaker 4: other hand, I came to really appreciate who actually has
Speaker 4: the courage to tell you what they see, even if
Speaker 4: it's not what you want to hear.
Speaker 1: Very few butswer.
Speaker 4: But he made me a better person and I probably
Speaker 4: made him a better person. But anyway, so the death
Speaker 4: that was hard, and then eventually I got some grief counseling,
Speaker 4: some therapy that helped. But you know, after the first year,
Speaker 4: you realize, oh, this isn't going away, You're just in it,
Speaker 4: and then you think, oh, you're going to get through it.
Speaker 4: And then eventually you realize, oh, this is now part
Speaker 4: of who you are. This grief, this loss, this person
Speaker 4: is still part of who you are. And now the
Speaker 4: fact that you lost them, that's part of who you are.
Speaker 4: Also just trying to stay connected because I'm now seventy one.
Speaker 4: Charlie died five years ago, five plus, and some people
Speaker 4: want to partner up again and I don't. I had my.
Speaker 1: Person actually emotional, so I'll jump in like that.
Speaker 2: I probably don't look at like it, but I'm a
Speaker 2: very deep human being, and.
Speaker 4: I think everybody is, really but you're more aware of
Speaker 4: it than most people.
Speaker 2: You said it, not me, and your description like that
Speaker 2: should be unsigned. It was such a beautiful and eloquently
Speaker 2: put description that I feel like just the explanation alone
Speaker 2: would help people start to heal. And I learned a
Speaker 2: long time ago that I don't believe, I truly believe
Speaker 2: that we don't ever get over traumatic experiences or things
Speaker 2: that have made a big impression on our mind in
Speaker 2: our soul. But I believe we learn to deal with
Speaker 2: them in a healthier manner that in turn makes us
Speaker 2: better human beings, not worse human beings. That's the way
Speaker 2: I view those things. And it's clear to me by
Speaker 2: your emotion that I feel, I truly feel it. I
Speaker 2: hope we have.
Speaker 1: What they had, is all I'm gonna say. I.
Speaker 2: And I said that to Ashley for the listeners, like
Speaker 2: that to me is ultimate relationship goal. And it's beautiful,
Speaker 2: like your description and your emotion is absolutely raw and beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge that.
Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing it with us, because your love
Speaker 3: is now being spread to others because we can feel
Speaker 3: it just to you talking about it, And so thank
Speaker 3: you for sharing that. And I think back to when
Speaker 3: you told us about the two of you really digging
Speaker 3: in and what is presence and what is humanality and
Speaker 3: what are all of these things? How much deeper was
Speaker 3: your relationship because you took the time, you took the energy,
Speaker 3: you took the effort to go study all of these things.
Speaker 1: Think that is such a great point.
Speaker 2: Think about how instant gratification obsessed we are in this country.
Speaker 2: It's everything we want, need, is that our fingertips or
Speaker 2: you know, on a keyboard, and the fact that you
Speaker 2: guys took time and dug in it's not common especially now.
Speaker 4: Just want to say one thing about doing that work together.
Speaker 4: You're doing that work together, but a part for sure,
Speaker 4: because like Charlie's issues were really different from my issues,
Speaker 4: and so it isn't like you go into this thing
Speaker 4: and you're sharing the beauty of all that. No, your
Speaker 4: each of you is in your your shit and then
Speaker 4: you're you're working it out, you're you're Yeah, there was
Speaker 4: just one piece of it. I wanted to like not
Speaker 4: make it too romantic, the part of like doing the
Speaker 4: inner work of like looking at your stuff. It's very
Speaker 4: individual and it's when you know that.
Speaker 3: Everybody knows that there's absolutely nothing romantic about that part
Speaker 3: at all. But to have two people that are in
Speaker 3: a union together, that have committed their lives to each other.
Speaker 4: I was really lucky to have a partner who was
Speaker 4: interested in that the same.
Speaker 2: As me, and he it was really lucky to have
Speaker 2: you too, because it takes two. You absolutely exude love
Speaker 2: and greece An acceptance, capy. I mean, I feel it
Speaker 2: hardcore off of you You're a beautiful person, and so.
Speaker 1: This has been an amazing thank you revolution.
Speaker 3: How are you doing now?
Speaker 4: You mean, in my life in general or in this minute.
Speaker 3: In your life in general? How are you doing now?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So now I'm actually I'm struggling. I started up
Speaker 4: to talk to my grief therapist again. My mom died recently.
Speaker 4: My mom died in January. The last few years, the
Speaker 4: pandemic's been tough. But my mom that's different. She was
Speaker 4: ninety nine and a half and I had a wonderful
Speaker 4: time she was still in her home. We were caregivers.
Speaker 4: I was one of like five caregivers for the last
Speaker 4: four years with my mom, and so that's a different thing.
Speaker 4: But I miss her. Death is a subject for me.
Speaker 4: Death is a you know, right now, it's a big subject.
Speaker 4: I'm contemplating tidying up. It's weird. I want to live.
Speaker 4: So I'm actually I'm trying to figure out how to
Speaker 4: live with the loss and with the ongoing relationship that
Speaker 4: you have with your loved ones who are gone. So
Speaker 4: how am I doing now? I have a show that
Speaker 4: I am preparing for that's next winter, and I so
Speaker 4: I'm my art practice, which is I know that's always
Speaker 4: been the bottom line. It was after Charlie died, because
Speaker 4: the question is what do I do now? It's a
Speaker 4: huge question, what do I want to do now? But
Speaker 4: I fortunately I've always been able to answer it, which
Speaker 4: goes back to the first thing I said was that
Speaker 4: art is a deep study and you never come to
Speaker 4: the bottom of it. Because really, I have become a
Speaker 4: subject of my work in the narrative I did, probably
Speaker 4: thirty years ago, start to pop in as a character
Speaker 4: in the work. And now it's not necessarily that I'm
Speaker 4: drawing myself in the work, although sometimes I am. It's
Speaker 4: how I understand unconscious material comes up through art, and
Speaker 4: so it's how I read myself. It's how I see
Speaker 4: how I am, And so I can tell you I'm
Speaker 4: good and I'm struggling.
Speaker 1: And that's all okay, Yeah, that's all okay.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to see your next pieces that you produce.
Speaker 3: I truly can't. We have a question that we've asked
Speaker 3: all of our guests, and I just cannot wait to
Speaker 3: hear your answer to this. But what feeds your soul?
Speaker 4: Oh, the study that I'm doing, the esoteric study, it
Speaker 4: feeds my soul and my friends do, my relationships with
Speaker 4: friends do, and art does. I actually realizing recently that
Speaker 4: I'm hungry for good art. So, I mean, there's an
Speaker 4: incredible show up at the Fry cast from Bradford. There's
Speaker 4: a wonderful art museum in Seattle that has an incredible
Speaker 4: show of Brooklyn, a New York painter, casts from Bradford.
Speaker 4: Incredible sh she's eighty and it's a retrospective and it's
Speaker 4: just incredible. Those are the things that are feeding my
Speaker 4: soul right now.
Speaker 3: And where can people find your art?
Speaker 4: Oh, I have a website Kathie Thompson dot com, c
Speaker 4: A P Y T h O N ps O N
Speaker 4: dot com.
Speaker 3: Truly beautiful works of art.
Speaker 1: How do you find yourself recharging?
Speaker 4: Walking is extremely important practice, And actually I learned that
Speaker 4: after Charlie died, because really nothing was I mean, I
Speaker 4: was just in a state of numbness in a way,
Speaker 4: but walking I could feel my legs, just the feeling
Speaker 4: of feeling my legs, and I was like, oh, this
Speaker 4: feels good. So actually I still now I need to
Speaker 4: be in nature. I don't have to be forest bathing
Speaker 4: because that's pretty hard to do, but just to be
Speaker 4: seeing some trees and the sky and hear the birds.
Speaker 4: And so there's a park not too are from me
Speaker 4: that just has a good walking loop. So anyway, so
Speaker 4: that I walk, yeah, and I need to see friends,
Speaker 4: and I need a good night's sleep. Those are my
Speaker 4: go to recharging.
Speaker 1: Kathy Thompson.
Speaker 3: Kathy Thompson, thank you so much. Thank you for your
Speaker 3: vulnerability and telling us your story. I mean, we could
Speaker 3: do five hours with you, Katy.
Speaker 2: Like I said, this is not the last time we've
Speaker 2: talked so much. Right now, I just want to hug you.
Speaker 2: I just want to do right.
Speaker 3: Now doing a zoom hug. Oh. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: We truly appreciate your insight and your vulnerability and you
Speaker 3: speaking your truth. It's your love of art, your love
Speaker 3: of Charlie, your love of your mom, Virginia, and and
Speaker 3: all things in this life. It's true that you see
Speaker 3: the beauty in life, but you're also a forever student
Speaker 3: and want to know more. We have so much to
Speaker 3: gain from you, and we truly appreciate you being on
Speaker 3: the good stuff much like.
Speaker 1: You exude.
Speaker 2: Everything that I aspire to be and I mean in
Speaker 2: the emotional sense as a human being, and so.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being you and giving us.
Speaker 2: Your time and enlightening not only myself but everyone that
Speaker 2: took the time to listen to this.
Speaker 1: We were indebted to you.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: That is the purest.
Speaker 3: Soul, so beautiful, and not only the work that she's done,
Speaker 3: not only the art that she's created in her story,
Speaker 3: but she's was so raw and authentic and telling her
Speaker 3: story and you can tell she's ever searching for more.
Speaker 3: That fascinates me. So many of us get stuck and
Speaker 3: just what we know and then we move forward. She
Speaker 3: wants to know more and that's beautiful to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, I'm asked a lot, Jake, how do we
Speaker 1: stop war? Now? I have an even more simple answer.
Speaker 1: Be more like Kappy Thompson.
Speaker 3: She is an incredible woman. To me, this episode was
Speaker 3: a gift because there was so much enlightenment coming across
Speaker 3: from her microphone to us. Right, Yeah, we get to
Speaker 3: share it with others.
Speaker 2: Beautiful soul, beautiful human, the most genuine version of herself
Speaker 2: every day seemingly and it's just you know, I've never
Speaker 2: wanted to hug someone so much and like just immediately
Speaker 2: feel uber protective of this amazing human being. That brings
Speaker 2: so much light in so many different ways and just
Speaker 2: commands the grit to be better tomorrow than we were today.
Speaker 3: That's what it is.
Speaker 1: She's light.
Speaker 3: She is light.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's beautiful.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening. If this episode touched
Speaker 3: you today, please share it and be part of making
Speaker 3: someone else's day better.
Speaker 1: Put on your bad ass case and go be great today.
Speaker 2: And remember you can't do epic stuff without epic people.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the good Stuff.
Speaker 2: The Good Stuff is executive produced by Ashley Schick, Jacob Schick,
Speaker 2: Leah Pictures and.
Speaker 1: Q Code Media.
Speaker 2: Hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick, Produced by Nick
Speaker 2: Cassolini and Ryan Counts. House post production supervisor Will Tindi.
Speaker 2: Music editing by Will heywood Smith, Edited by Mike Robinson.