Writing to Find Ourselves & Each Other
She helped with my first book and then we lost touch. She thought we were no longer friends since when she did see me, I seemed distant and disengaged. Years later, she read a draft of my new manuscript and realized what happened.
Such began a journey of writing that revealed both secrets and truths and birthed a book called Brain Dance.
So often we can make assumptions about what people are feeling or thinking but our assumptions may be wrong. This is especially true when that person has gone through a life-altering experience like brain trauma, an invisible injury.
This is an episode about friendship, invisible injury, assumptions, art, creating, co-creating, and meeting life on life's terms. This conversation is the first in a two-part interview for the Genius Podcast series. This one focuses on:
Katherine Foran, aka Kay, is a rather extraordinary person. She was a key midwife of Brain Dance, especially in its early stages. During that same time, she was also involved in advocating for treatment and caring for her soulmate and husband for many years. He suffered from a rare form of cancer and died just at the start of the pandemic in February 2020.
Kay is currently an editor at the University of Missouri. A former journalist who worked in Tulsa, Kansas City, and New York City newsrooms, she moved to the more predictable schedule of the “other side” when her children were young. Since then, she has served in public relations and communication roles for public organizations and nonprofits in the Chicago area and Detroit before moving to Missouri in 2015.
She and her spouse Mark Hinojosa were married for 32 years; he lived seven and a half years fighting multiple myeloma. A beloved professor in the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he taught until just days before his death. They have three grown children whom they raised in Oak Park, Illinois. That’s where Kay first encountered me, her across-the-street neighbor and what she has called "the gifts of our warm friendship — and always actionable and inspiring writing."
I am so grateful for our friendship and all her gifts. I am excited about the next steps in her own life. Be sure to also tune in for the second of this two-part series, it will focus on life grieving during the pandemic.