Some Kinda Woman! Stories of Us
71 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsStoryteller Caitlin Hicks, (playwright, performer, author, actor) describes the stories in these podcasts that explore the grief of life as well as the meaning, the humour, the redemption.
The series features a variety of first-person character stories in a number of episodes from her international theatrical touring shows: Mother Love, Next of Kin, The Trouble of Christmas, The Life We Lived.
Hicks will also share chapters from her novel," A Theory of Expanded Love". But here, she shares a short story from The Trouble of Christmas episodes, called Read Island Santa.
The introduction to the series itself begins this podcast, so please listen, even if it's summer outside!
The voices of Sunshine Coast residents and old timers, Cynthia Culbard Jones and Diana Culbard Peters are combined in this short about their first Christmas in the 30s at Read Island – so far away that Santa would never find them. And yet, a man named Mr. Green visits their school house on Christmas Eve and surprises everyone, ‘even the old bachelors'. It’s a charming story about the blissfully gullible time of being children.
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Episodes
A childhood like mine
February 22, 2023 01:27 - 27 minutes - 62.2 MB"Maybe my story can be a tiny beam of light in a large, dark cave," says Anneke Lucas in the podcast that begins to tell her story, from her book QUEST FOR LOVE. "Elite pedophilia is the world’s best protected secret.
MeetingSebastian Unexplained Vertigo
January 17, 2023 00:02 - 15 minutes - 28.8 MBYour eyes cannot help but see what is here: the sight of someone like yourself And then you think: How can this be? Is that really all the time there is left? A chance encounter in the dark winter days of December 2022. A benevolent energy in a hospital room with snaking tubes and mystery signs, the face of a newborn and a lifetime of important people. All gathering for Sebastian. Except for the visitor, who is missing the opportunity to connect.
AlwaysPackACandle
November 24, 2022 22:48 - 26 minutes - 62.4 MBNaïve but adventurous, twenty-two years young and fresh out of university, Public Health Nurse Marion McKinnon accepts an assignment for a four day, multi stop, two-hundred mile trip from Williams Lake to Anahim Lake into the vast Cariboo-Chilcotin country of British Columbia. It’s December and the first snow has fallen across the land. The year is 1963. The weather forecast: twenty-two degrees below freezing. The view is breathtaking and the roads treacherous. And what if she gets lost?...
The Night Shift
September 21, 2022 22:07 - 14 minutes - 35.6 MBA flight attendant with 25 years seniority works through the early pandemic. An essential worker with close family ties and lots of friends. Suddenly, her life is upended.
The Face of My Grandparents Killer
August 15, 2022 01:55 - 20 minutes - 46.2 MBBC author Claudia Cornwall’s discovered almost 30 years ago that she was descended from family murdered in the Holocaust by a Waffen SS Sargent named Arlt. The remaining details were shrouded in the mystery of her grandparents’ last moments, one historical May day in a forest in Minsk. 80 years after their death, Cornwall received their executioner’s first name, his photograph. And many unanswered questions.
31 days in 2022
July 14, 2022 22:33 - 16 minutes - 39.1 MBWhat happens to a robust 49-year old with Omicron in a BC hospital in 31 days? A Mother's account of her son's care in a British Columbia hospital between November 2021, and a few days before Christmas.
Nievelina, Mother of Twins
June 07, 2022 19:22 - 35 minutes - 82.1 MBAt 19 weeks pregnant, a young Indigenous woman must make an excruciating decision - within hours - to save the lives of her unborn twins. "I remember being so afraid." This story has it all: fear, love, pain and alienation. Courage, community, and resilience. A generous, joyful storyteller.
I have been pregnant twice
May 18, 2022 19:59 - 18 minutes - 43.1 MBForever changed by her two pregnancies, Amanda Snelson tells of the unpredictable and complicated process of 2 births. As part of the discussion around Women's Choice and Roe v Wade, Amanda's story introduces new considerations to the complex picture of individual soverignty over our bodies.
My Mothers Story
April 26, 2022 19:53 - 21 minutes - 29.9 MBMy Mother's Story is a project that encourages everyone to write the facts of their mothers’ lives. It's a series of anthologies begun by Marilyn Norry. This is the story of DORIS, told by her daughter, Colleen Winton. My Mother's Story: Gone Too Soon is the latest anthology in the series and is now available.
Cynthia Jones & The Union Steamship
March 13, 2022 21:45 - 19 minutes - 18.6 MBHow would your life be different if you couldn't drive a car? If once a week, a steamship arrived at the dock with supplies to keep you going for the next week? If your husband and the father of your children came home on "The Daddy Boat" once a week? Cynthia Jones Meets The Union Steamship at 1 AM tells of a much simpler time on the Sunshine Coast - when anyone could go out in a sabot and grab a fish with her bare hands, when hospitals were miles from each other, when most lived in float ...
Wilderness Mother
February 16, 2022 05:45 - 16 minutes - 18.1 MBIt’s 1980, two days from the summer solstice in the wild landscape of Northwestern British Columbia. Deanna and her husband, Jay Kawatski, tend their food garden carved out of the wilderness in the Ningunsaw Valley when Deanna realizes that their first child will be born very soon. The couple must hike difficult mountain & bog terrain through clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitoes for more than two hours to their cabin on Desire Lake. Deanna’s water breaks and she instantly goes into labour. This...
We Got One!
January 28, 2022 20:34 - 24 minutes - 24.9 MBWe Got One! celebrates moments that, whatever else happens in life afterwards, we have, as artists, in those moments, all the meaning we will ever need. It marks the Cinderella achievement of having been chosen, of having hit the bulls-eye on the dartboard of current social and artistic reality. We can now stand on the world stage and beam our happiness that we matter.
CORNUCOPIA DEC 21
December 20, 2021 21:12 - 14 minutes - 13.7 MBA magical story of friendship & creativity in a beautiful small town that inspired the creation of all Christmas songs & carols ever written. Two girls, a friendship over the years revisited on a dangerous frozen lake Christmas Eve. With musical backdrop of a jazz vocal quartet from The Sunshine Coast of BC - After Hours. A limited time broadcast / podcast celebrating the light at the Winter Solstice.
INTRO Xmas in Cornucopia 2021 515 PM
December 11, 2021 19:48 - 6 minutes - 5.67 MBCHRISTMAS IN CORNUCOPIA, the popular winter story about a town so beautiful it inspired songs and stories since 'time immemorial' will be made available as a podcast beginning on The Winter Solstice -- December 21st 2021 through Christmas Day, to celebrate the Winter Solstice and to bring light into our lives at the end of this Year of the Pandemic. The story toured British Columbia and Washington state to excellent reviews, and was broadcast on CBC national and regional radio numerous ti...
Six Palm Trees
October 10, 2021 00:18 - 14 minutes - 27.2 MBSix Palm Trees is the journey of a family through the emotional landscape of their shared past. Annie Shea, the family clown, provides stand-up entertainment.Annie Shea, the family clown, provides stand-up entertainment. Annie Shea, the family clown, provides stand-up entertainment at a family reunion, where everyone has gathered to celebrate 24 years of life together. “Funny and sad, powerful and whimsical, with mercurial mood changes and punchy humour. . . Six Palm Trees is more than a...
The Procedure
September 16, 2021 16:59 - 18 minutes - 34 MBHigh school graduate Teresa Feeney becomes pregnant from one encounter with a trusted priest Father Sully, who is leading a choir of students in a showcase of songs from the radical hippie production of HAIR. Annie Shea, herself from an enormous Catholic family where abortion is unthinkable, reluctantly becomes Teresa’s confidante. When Annie realizes Teresa is going to do what she desperately needs to do, she has to make a decision: Will she stand by her schoolmate and offer support during ...
Magdas Odyssey
August 06, 2021 17:04 - 26 minutes - 30.3 MBWhat if you suddenly discovered that you had a twin? A person who grew beside you in your mother’s womb, whose heart beat right next to your own for nine months. A person identical to yourself, born on the same day to the same mother. Suddenly, your questions are endless: Who are you? Where is she?
Mad Hatter
July 16, 2021 20:36 - 22 minutes - 21 MBYour father - a threat to national security? Imagine when men in heavy boots came to your home, your garden, to claim him. An introduction to the story of a family, during World War II, living with the abrupt loss and the mystery of their father.
GOING CRAZY
July 07, 2021 20:33 - 13 minutes - 12.6 MB"This morning, Lisa gave way to an anxiety she'd been stifling the past several weeks. She was afraid if she got behind the wheel of her red Toyota Tercel wagon, and drove onto the highway, she was going to give into the temptation she'd had lately to steer herself into a telephone pole."
Esters Wedding
June 17, 2021 05:51 - 26 minutes - 24.4 MBGramma Ester flies from Wisconsin to California to help with a big family wedding in 1976. Flowers, frozen turkey, chocolate groom's cake. Guests fill the church with summer: pastels and hats, ties and shiny shoes. The congregation murmuring, waits. And waits. If the music would just start to play, if the bride would just walk up the aisle on Daddy's arm, everything else would be vanquished into fairy tale. Finally, our mother: we can feel her slow step as she lifts each foot with all her...
My Big, Fat American Family @ Dinner '63
May 24, 2021 04:38 - 33 minutes - 31 MBA THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE = a big Catholic family 1963 in Pasadena. Chapter 7 is set on a warm California night at an enormous event: dinner. Clashing are the noisy and urgent desires of each child in a sprawling group of sixteen. Everyone is famished. And then, there’s the guest. Who represents everything. God, Church, Community, Family. Everyone vying for his attention and approval. Pre-dinner hunger permeating the visceral experience of more than fifteen bodies, a baby with a dirty dia...
Grammas 1st romance
May 05, 2021 17:11 - 14 minutes - 13.9 MBBefore Gramma Ester was Gramma, when she was just a little six- year-old girl, in first grade, she had a crush on a family friend named Walter Gaulke (who was 13 years older). She carried this secret hope in her heart for almost two decades before she could have the moment with her sweetheart that she wished for all her life. And yet that moment quickly passed, and their story was lived and told, as you’ll hear in today’s podcast.
Grandpa On Transport
April 21, 2021 04:25 - 18 minutes - 17.8 MBI ached for them, and for the nearby ultimate loss I anticipated feeling when they died. But I brushed it aside, because it wasn’t my issue right then. Far from it: we were on opposite trajectories and I was so excited about mine: getting ready to go into the world!
A Womans Body
April 01, 2021 03:30 - 15 minutes - 14.7 MBWhat is it about this story? The benign nature of the tanning salon? The casual event of some man walking in the front door? The front-desk training, Be friendly, smile at the customers? What was so haunting?The kindness on her beautiful face? Or was it the closeness of his face right up against the cash machine? It was 1995. It happened in our suburban backyard. We had just met Melanie Carpenter on the worst day of her life. Images and stories of her were all over the news. She was ...
Sharky: Freakish Ordinary
March 15, 2021 19:21 - 16 minutes - 15.1 MBSharky died on the same day the pope died, and two days after Terri Schaivo was finally allowed to. Even though, as the Dalai Lama says, we all suffer and are going to die someday, there never seems to be a good day to die. As we slid him out of a shoe box into a hastily-dug hole out in the daisy garden under a dark sky and a pelting spring rain, I imagined that runty bag of cat bones drifting along in Bardo-land with the souls of Pope John Paul II and Terri Shaivo. How evolved were tho...
George Goes 4 a Walk
February 24, 2021 06:15 - 23 minutes - 22.5 MBAnd out of his comfortable life. It happens in an instant. A deafening clap assaults his ears. It takes a second, but George rallies. He can see he's the only one who has stepped into the intersection, so he must be the one. He puts his other foot forward.
Me & Ted Hughes
February 14, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour - 76.9 MBIn 1983, I left my husband, my home, my friends, my family and my country to live with my lover, an artist from Toronto. In the months while waiting for his divorce to come through, we produced a show there, the first Canadian production of LETTERS HOME, by Rose Leiman Goldemberg. It was the story of Sylvia Plath's life from 1950 to 1963, when she committed suicide. In this production, I performed the role of Sylvia, who was 31 when she died. A week after the show closed at The Adelaide C...
Niagara Daredevil2
February 08, 2021 04:45 - 18 minutes - 16.8 MBThis story features Zoe, a 'spark plug' who works with her father at a used car dealership near Niagara Falls. On this fateful day, Lenny comes to the lot to buy a jalopy. Lenny and Zoe are on the same hockey team -- both dream of following in the wake of other daredevils, who made history trying to outwit the roaring strength of Niagara Falls. Who goes over? Who lives to tell the tale?
Niagara Falls Daredevil
January 28, 2021 20:16 - 18 minutes - 17.2 MB"Tourists at the edge of the falls saw the car floating down river and watched in amazement as Lenny casually waved to them before disappearing over the edge." This story features Zoe, a 'spark plug' who works with her father at a dealership near the Falls. Zoe dreams of following in the wake of other daredevils, who made history trying to outwit the roaring strength and magnificence of Niagara Falls.
SHEA FAMILY MOTORS
January 15, 2021 06:12 - 21 minutes - 25.4 MBIt's June 15th, 1963 in Pasadena, California. Yesterday, school let out for the summer. Two weeks ago Pope John XXIII died; today, a Soviet astronaut was launched into space. But for the enormous Shea family, it's the Grand Opening of SHEA FAMILY MOTORS and everyone is there. From pimply John-the-Blimp to Baby Jude to a statue of the Blessed Mother. The twins look green & uncomfortable, their hands smeared with the sugar of doughnuts meant for the customers. Paul & John discover the switch...
Lost at Disneyland
January 10, 2021 01:38 - 15 minutes - 19.7 MB"Can you imagine how many kids get left behind at Disneyland every year? There have to be a few of them. Among all those hundreds of cars in the parking lot, there's probably enough to form a club. Maybe the club could be called "The Left Behinds" or "Disney Orphans". How many of the stories could possibly have a happy ending? "The weird part is, when we lost Dominic, it was hours before we even realized he was gone." - From the novel/audiobook, A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE, by Caitlin H...
Two Questions
December 31, 2020 18:11 - 16 minutes - 37.6 MBOnce we understand the astounding lottery of our own existence, how can we acknowledge our infinite disappearance? A story of two lives lived, the music between, and the sound of a mother's voice.
CORNUCOPIA 2020
December 20, 2020 02:14 - 20 minutes - 37.6 MBCORNUCOPIA begins with "In everyone's life, there are magic times!" and traces a child's love for ice skating back to a moonlit moment on a dangerous frozen lake on Christmas Eve. An ode to creativity, in a town that was so beautiful that Christmas carols and stories were inspired by its magnificence 'since time immemorial', the story reaches back into the hologram of childhood, where best friend Marnie loved drumming, but was not encouraged by her family to play. Both girls become women as ...
SOLSTICE Invitation *
December 08, 2020 03:35 - 4 minutes - 4.53 MBPreview of our special broadcast of Christmas in Cornucopia, on Monday December 21st, all day. This story which has toured British Columbia and Washington state, and celebrated on CBC national radio, will be available for download for 24 hours at caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/podcast and wherever you find your podcasts. An ode to creativity & the distant hologram of childhood.
JOE NOV 25
November 26, 2020 07:36 - 16 minutes - 14.8 MBAn everyday interaction with profound reverberations. An almost-missed opportunity. Life, circumstance, death. How do we find our meaning?
THEORY Chapter 20 LILY
November 06, 2020 02:22 - 19 minutes - 17.8 MBAnnie Shea, 12 yrs old trapped in an enormous Catholic family in Pasadena, California in 1963. In this excerpt, Annie & her sisters Madcap & Clara visit Bee Bee. Just yesterday, Bee Bee gave birth to a baby girl, and was pressured to sign adoption papers. Now she desperately wants to see her newborn. Annie is sent to scout the nursery and meets a couple who meet their child for the first time.
audiobook Theory chapter 1
October 24, 2020 04:34 - 17 minutes - 16.5 MBChapter One of A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE, the award-winning debut novel written by Caitlin Hicks. Reviews here: https://www.caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/reviews-for-a-theory-of-expanded-love/
EXIT Stage Left
October 10, 2020 21:03 - 16 minutes - 15.8 MBA parent disinherits his beloved child. Or so the child believes she is beloved. Where does it begin, the decision to punish someone irrevocably? How forms this secret betrayal of forever with lasting, public consequences? Where does it begin, the chain of events that bring about a reversal of fortune? A denial of love? In this podcast, "Exit, Stage Left", a daughter looks back to understand why her father cut her out of his will -- and finds instead, the person she has become.
THE EULOGY
September 28, 2020 00:30 - 14 minutes - 27.1 MBHow can you capture the life of a man? Especially the patriarch of a family with 14 children and 42 grandchildren. It's in the DNA, it in the details!
Love at last
September 14, 2020 22:06 - 22 minutes - 21.3 MBWhat a relief, my father is still alive! Of course, I forgive him everything.
Arrivederci
August 29, 2020 02:00 - 29 minutes - 47.7 MBMy enormous family. My ailing father. In the midst of a trip to France & Italy and an opportunity of a lifetime for my artist husband — with news coming in via email daily from my siblings — "he’s going to die" "he’s better!" "he’s had a setback" — I struggle to decide: Should I cut our trip short to be present for my father’s final moments? Or follow our destiny to fulfill the invitation to exhibit at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games — and hope he lives through the night? On trains, buses, ...
One Mans Family
August 08, 2020 21:23 - 25 minutes - 46.5 MBThe patriarch of an enormous Catholic family turns 88 with children & grandchildren celebrating him. Details of a family still intact just prior to the family's demise are captured through the lens of one child, returning after years of absence. "Here, as long as the rules were obeyed, the world was kept at bay. 'Say grace, stack the dishes, don't forget to say 'Eternal Rest''.' As if we were still children, as if we, too, were safe from life's inevitability, and the universe still in its ri...
Carousel
July 25, 2020 18:42 - 20 minutes - 19.2 MBIn 1961, an enormous family crowds into their VW bus to go to Disneyland. In the midst of the magic and chaos, the sixth child attracts a moment of attention from her mother, a moment that lasts the distance of galaxies. SEASON#5: A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE
The Resilience of Karissa Williams
June 25, 2020 22:48 - 34 minutes - 31.2 MBMeet Karissa Williams, a resilient woman who loses a baby at 13, and gives birth at 15 while trapped in an abusive relationship with an addict & drug dealer. When she tries to escape through suicide she is literally saved by her child. She marries a ‘great guy - he doesn’t beat me’ - and gains more than a hundred pounds. Soon she loses her self-respect and her mother to cancer. Finding a way through it all, Karissa discovers her own strength and in the process empowers women to live thei...
A couple of criminals
June 12, 2020 21:51 - 18 minutes - 17.3 MBA journey towards an awareness of racism in 1968: On the night of the assassination of RFK, and through the eyes of 17-year-old Annie Shea, a Catholic high school white girl from a conservative family, (a volunteer for Robert Kennedy's campaign for presidency), she awakens to the racism all around her, invisible to her until this fateful trip in the back of a police car. The excerpt from KENNEDY GIRL, a new novel by Caitlin Hicks.
Change Gonna Come
June 05, 2020 23:49 - 16 minutes - 15.6 MBOn the day Martin Luther King, Jr. is murdered, at the Wilshire Blvd. offices of KENNEDY FOR PRESIDENT, white, Catholic high school senior Annie Shea, and volunteer for Robert Kennedy for President, begins her awakening to the powerful racist forces that drive white society in 1968.
A Grape Drink in Phoenix
May 21, 2020 22:47 - 12 minutes - 11.8 MBThe year is 1983. Meet Karen, a successful commodities trader at The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the mistress of Sam, a high-stakes market maker and billionaire trader in the S & P 500 pit. Meet Dorothy, Sam's wife, and the mother of their twin daughters. These two women are the last guests at a lavish, decadent party at Dorothy and Sam's home. They play a cat-and-mouse game of discovery and betrayal until Dorothy must place her trust in Karen - and rely on her - in a life and death situ...
Outrageous Gertie
May 14, 2020 21:22 - 9 minutes - 8.29 MBHere is Gertie!, the the most 'outrageous' character I have written and performed, other than the pivotal moment in Six Palm Trees, when Annie Shea accuses her father in front of the entire family. Gertie is outrageous because she speaks the unspeakable. And she's good with it. Gertie! is not for everyone. Listen at your own risk. You may choose to be offended. You may laugh. It's not always easy to have your thinking challenged by someone else's life experience.
Nicht meine kinder
May 06, 2020 04:30 - 12 minutes - 23.7 MBThis podcast tells the story of the last moments of a mother’s life and how she saved her child in an unexpected moment of kismet and courage. It’s the sorrow and hope in the hearts of thousands of people one day, at the end of World War II, when they were asked ‘give us the best you have – give us your children’. This monologue is part of Singing the Bones, the international, touring theatrical play and feature film of the same name. http://fatsalmon.ca/themovie/about/meg.html In reme...
Gladys The Pig Man
April 29, 2020 22:08 - 14 minutes - 27.2 MBThese are the words of Pixie Daly, a lovely woman who lived her life here on the Sunshine Cost and had many friends until she died in her nineties in 2011. Her stories touch on the early days: one road, no cars, being a nurse at St. Mary's Hospital, fishermen lost at sea, frozen lakes, the perils of long distances between logging camps, hazards of fog when everyday you travelled by boat. A "marvellous regatta", a nurse lost for 24 hours, and -- an unforgettable character named Gladys -- an...