Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Lienemann.
Hi Katie, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I always wanted to be a Writer when I was younger. By 10 years old, I was a voracious reader and had decided that I wanted to write when I grew up I thought that there was nothing more magical someone could be than a Writer. Someone who could create new worlds with their minds and invite others into them. Little did I know back then just how much writing would end up saving me.
Only a few years later, I started noticing that my single parent wasn’t like the other parents. My parent would stay up for days at a time and then sleep for days at a time. I thought this was normal ‘adult behavior’. Until I started having sleepovers and saw other parents going to bed at the same time as us. It started to hit my 13-year old self that something was different with my parent. This was the beginning of an addiction that started to take over my parent and our lives. I was the oldest of my three siblings. And I started to put it together young, what was happening. That staying up for days at a time actually wasn’t normal. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it or I was scared to talk to people about it. For fear of what could happen if other adults were to find out how bad the addiction was getting in my house.
I could still talk about without talking about it though. Through my writing. I wrote everyday in my journal. It was the only outlet I had where I could be honest. Where I could explore my emotional experience of watching a parent turn into an addict slowly and then faster and faster. My pen felt like it was eating up the blank pages with all I needed to get out. I wrote about the grief I didn’t know how to name, the feelings of my parent disappearing before my eyes, of stepping up to take care of my younger siblings while my mother slept or disappeared for days at a time. My voice felt locked in a cage. Who could I tell without the repercussions of my parent being taken away? Only my journal, I decided, I would only write about it. Writing became my closest confidant, my release valve, my lifeboat, the only place where I could tell the truth. My journal was always in my backpack, I turned to it for everything.
I didn’t know back then just how much this relationship was saving me. The one I was cultivating with every journal entry I showed up for. For the daily practice of devotion to expressing myself. For the deeply profound prayer I was engaging in by pouring my heart out to something that could hold me. For the container I was constantly in conversation with that let me be who I am. Let me discover who I am. Let me say every single thing I needed to say and never judged me for it. This beautiful gift that is – writing. While I watched my parent lose themselves in this thing called – addiction – I was striving to not lose myself in the grief, the chaos, the storm I was forced to live in. For many younger years of my life, I struggled with my own mental health. I struggled with wanting to stay alive in a world that was so ugly. In my own internal battle to not take my own life, I turned to writing. To writing about all of it. All that I wanted to say but could not say, out loud.
I couldn’t share how bad it was at home. How we wouldn’t see our parent for days at a time. How I would never know when they were coming back home or how long they would be gone this time. How by the age of 16, I was caring for my three younger siblings; my brother, who was a year younger than me, a 5 year old and newborn. While still trying to graduate high school. I ended up having to move over to online high school so that I could stay home with the kids when my parent disappeared regularly. I was determined to graduate, to not let this situation I was born into take away the opportunity for me to go to college. Writing became my everything. It helped me excavate an internal cave of safety inside my own ribcage. It held every tantrum I threw at it. It soaked up the tears that were never-ending. It became the emotional ground I built myself on.
Writing gave me the space to not hold everything inside of me. I don’t know if I would have made it out of what I was born into if it weren’t for writing. For the parachute it offered me during the years I lived in a free fall. I continue to write. It is the most meaningful relationship I have ever cultivated. Because of the depth that lives here for me. I published my first collected book of poetry last year: Where My Armor Ends. I never thought I would put these poems out to the world. But when I was 21 years old, I discovered Open Mic nights and I was hooked. You mean, people are allowed to just have feelings in public? In front of other people? Wow. I became obsessed. I was thoroughly hungry for this, for seeing people get up to the microphone and tell the truth about themselves, about their lives. It was a healing balm for my own wounds.
Throughout this journey of sharing my writing at Open Mic nights, I started having people ask where they could find my work. ‘What do you mean?’ I would say, ‘These only live in my notebooks.’
It is only through the repeated requests for my writing that I decided to publish them. I recorded spoken word albums you can find on Spotify under ‘Katie Jae’; Un-Learning and Revolution of Softness. Publishing my poetry book, Where My Armor Ends has brought many beautiful and surprising conversations to the surface. My hope is for more people to turn towards writing as a refuge. As shelter for the wounds that feel too big to live anywhere else.
I am currently writing my next book of collected poetry. While also teaching Writing Classes on Patreon and supporting and empowering creatives to recenter their creativity, vision and rebellion. I owe so much to my rebellious nature. To my refusal to not let this life circumstance take even more from me than it already had.
Writing, art, expression – these things saved me. They saved me so thoroughly that I will spend the rest of my life walking people to their doorstep, in hopes they will find the safety they deeply desire. In places that are actually safe for them.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely not. There have been so many obstacles. Where do I even start? Some of the big struggles were: witnessing firsthand a parent that chooses drugs and addiction over being a parent. The knowing that I could not tell my friends at school what was happening at home or how bad it was. Growing up in constant fear of being found out. That somehow this secret would get out and I would be separated from my siblings.
Being parentified at such a young age and going through years of therapy to help heal the damage my upbringing caused.
Money and having enough support were constant sources of struggle and pain for us.
Living in such wildly huge secrets.
The struggles were plentiful and in some ways, I am still working through them. Still writing. Still excavating. Still uncovering.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I write and teach writing classes. I have written and recorded a Writing Course called; A Court of Pen and Power. It is for any and all level of writer, you don’t even need to be a writer at all. I share many of my personal practices in this course.
I also paint and draw, turning towards visual art has been a sweet balm. To explore the territory of speaking without words. I have drawn all manner of logo, label, business designs for folks. I have a print shop, also on my Patreon; The Creative Rebel Court.
I am a multi-passionate human that is creatively inclined. I can pick up many creative pursuits and thrive in them. Which has led me to teaching what I can, where I can. I am most proud of sticking with art and writing. Honestly, I feel it’s my story that sets me and what I have to offer, apart. It’s the straight up GRIT and PERSEVERANCE I had to cultivate that give me the fire and steel to keep going when others give up.
My art and my writing, that is what continues to set me apart. My voice and how I share it. The ways that I want to help others find their own way back to their voices. I know how powerful, how potent, how necessary it is to reclaim your voice.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
Amanda Palmer. I turned to her albums with The Dresden Dolls as a prayer to rebellion and punk rock. Girl Anachronism was my theme song for many young years. Thank god for that song.
Poe. Another artist that breathed life into me.
Andrea Gibson, who I discovered around the time I discovered Open Mic’s. Andrea changed my life and is the reason that I got the courage to start performing my own poetry at the microphone.
System of a Down, Linkin Park, Slipknot, Rise Against, bands that screamed for me when I couldn’t but needed to.
I turned to artists, poets and musicians. They were the beacons of light for me. A reminder that somewhere out in the world, people were giving beauty and art and music back to the people.
Earl Goodfellow, my high school boyfriend, who helped me live through the hardest young years of my life. He was a force of good in my life. He was also a teacher in punk rock for me. Lessons I took in deeply and still carry to this day.
Ashley Yingling, one of my young girl friends who introduced me to Andrea’s work but also became a safe haven for sharing my poetry and voice with.
Carolyn Stevens, a female business owner and friend that taught me I could stand up and become a woman in business. If only through her example and devotion to her own business, Alpenglow Mobile Massage, which I worked at for many years.
Pricing:
- $22 – Where My Armor Ends
- $33 – Writing Classes
- FREE – Spotify Albums
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.creativerebelcourt.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creative.rebel.court
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katie.jae.2025/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-lienemann-56a8a7234/
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/katie-jae-454727606
- Other: https://substack.com/@thecreativerebelcourt?
