Overview of Best Of: 5 Simple Ways to Feel More Grounded Right Now with Kaitlin Curtice
In this conversation from We Can Do Hard Things, Glennon Doyle and her co-hosts revisit a wide-ranging, deeply personal interview with Kaitlin Curtice about embodiment, Indigenous identity, colonization, purity culture, and how to return to ourselves in a world that pressures us to become “machines.” Curtice argues that disconnection is not a personal failure but a learned survival response—and that grounding is a daily practice of remembering our bodies, our ancestors, and our relationship to Mother Earth.
Core Themes
Disconnection is learned, not innate
Curtice frames disembodiment as the result of trauma, capitalism, Christianity-as-assimilation, and cultural systems that reward productivity over humanity. She describes growing up as a sensitive child who found safety in TV and church, but also experienced those spaces as places of erasure and control.
Colonization and purity culture shape bodily shame
She connects purity culture to broader colonial violence: teaching people, especially girls and women, to distrust their bodies and desires mirrors the way land and Indigenous bodies were treated under the “doctrine of discovery.” In her view, shame and domination are intertwined.
Mother Earth is not a metaphor
Curtice emphasizes that the earth is a living relationship, not a resource. She argues that climate grief and the suffering of mothers are linked to the same cultural pattern: we praise resilience while continuing to overburden and harm.
Five Simple Ways to Feel More Grounded
1. Listen to your body’s signals
Curtice says the body is always communicating through pain, tension, anxiety, and fatigue. Grounding begins by slowing down enough to notice those signals instead of overriding them.
2. Reconnect with the living world
She recommends spending time with nature in small, accessible ways:
- go for walks
- look out a window
- birdwatch
- talk to your houseplants
- sit on the ground and touch the earth
Her point: connection is healing, even in tiny doses.
3. Check in with your younger self
Curtice keeps photos of her childhood self nearby because embodiment includes remembering the child inside us. She suggests asking: “What does 10-year-old me need?” The answer is usually not strategy—it’s rest, safety, play, fresh air, or a good cry.
4. Move energy out of your head and into your body
For Curtice, embodied practices include:
- rock climbing
- walking
- playing piano
- writing
- sometimes screaming These help her release anxiety and stop living exclusively in her mind.
5. Rest as resistance
She echoes Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance and argues that rest is not laziness—it is a refusal to become a cog in a machine. Grounding includes giving yourself and your children permission to pause, take breaks, and resist constant productivity.
Notable Insights
- “Disconnection isn’t a personal failure.” It’s a response to systems that train people to abandon their bodies.
- Resilience can be weaponized. Curtice cautions against calling people resilient while continuing to hurt them.
- Embodiment is lifelong work. There is no quick fix; it’s a repeated practice of returning to your body, your story, and your relationships.
- Healing is generational. Curtice describes decolonization and wholeness as work that reaches backward and forward across seven generations.
Practical Takeaways
If you want to feel more grounded right now, start small:
- put your hand on the ground
- drink water slowly and notice thirst
- sit with a childhood photo
- take a walk without a goal
- thank a plant, tree, or body of water
- ask what your body needs before asking what your mind wants
Curtice’s overall message is simple but radical: becoming more grounded means becoming more human—more relational, more tender, and more willing to remember what was never meant to be forgotten.