Katherine Wolf
12 min read ⭑
“The more I’ve personally experienced the deep pains of the world, the more I’ve been able to experience the deep possibility of hope. And the more stories of incredible suffering I’ve encountered, the more I’ve become comfortable with mystery.”
Overcoming obstacles and embracing a fierce hope are two qualities that Katherine Wolf embodies. Having experienced a devastating health event at an early age, Katherine has learned hope, resilience, and strength on a deep level. Her experiences have shaped the ministry and mission of her family. She and her husband run a non-profit aimed at creating spaces for families experiencing disabilities to find hope “through an inter-ability community.” They’ve just opened a coffee shop called Mend Coffee as an extension of their mission through Hope Heals non-profit.
In this interview, Katherine describes the heart behind her life’s mission. She shares parts of her journey of healing, how hand-written letters are a powerful form of love, and how a certain television series is bringing life and laughter to her family in this season. Read on to be infused with hope and reminded that joy is in the journey.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to a meal than palate and preference. How does your go-to order at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
I've always loved to eat. My husband, Jay, and I literally met in our college cafeteria in Birmingham, AL, where I had taken full advantage of the daily buffet-style dining. He said he had never seen a woman with a plate piled so high! We married a few year later and approached life with the same hunger for adventure as we moved to Los Angeles.
A few years into that dreamy season, I suffered a massive brainstem stroke out of the blue that should have killed me. Miraculously, I survived but am left to this day with tremendous deficits and disabilities, including a very impaired swallow. I didn't eat orally for the first year after my stroke. It was the most deeply de-humanizing part of the whole tragic ordeal. I felt like a spectator in my life. The same measure of joy "life around the table" had once brought was now replaced with deep despair. I prayed that I would happily never walk again if God would just let me eat again.
Gratefully, with hundreds of hours of speech therapy, over so many months, I was able to regain some semblance of a swallow and was approved to eat again! To this day, every time I sit at a table, it feels like a sacred space.
Full circle, my husband and I are opening a coffee shop in Atlanta, where we live now, called Mend Coffee, which will offer dignifying employment for people with disabilities and an accessibility-first interior design for customers of all abilities. It's a seat at the table for all who feel like the world isn't made for them—which I guess is really all of us.
Brandi Redd; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests, but we tend to hide them. What do you love doing that might surprise (or shock) people?
Some women like shoes or jewelry, but I've always been obsessed with paper—stationery and note writing to be more precise. And I don't discriminate—I've got hoards of custom letterpress paper right alongside piles of hilarious $2 cards from the checkout line at Trader Joe's. One of the most jaw-dropping gifts I recently received was from a precious friend who spent a whole year buying cards for me that she knew I would love from everywhere she went. It felt like she had given me a treasure chest full of gold!
Growing up as a woman in the South, writing thank you notes was ingrained as good manners. I'm also an Enneagram 3, first-born people pleaser, so there may have been some other motivations for always sending a card. That said, especially in the digital age, tangible communications feel even more like love. After my stroke, my right side was paralyzed, and I lost all fine motor control in my right hand. Unfortunately, I'm right-handed, so feeling like I couldn't do the note writing that had always given me such joy was yet another deep loss.
After years of re-training my brain to write with my left hand, that's what I do to this day. It looks way different than my old handwriting, but I'll take it! I once overheard a rather crusty aquaintance of ours tell someone how brave he thought I was for sharing my chicken-scratch letters. I agreed. I was brave and also strong because the amount of effort to write notes now is exponential to what it once was. It would be way easier to never do it again. But I love it, and what's also now exponential compared to before is the sense of love made tangible through my unique scrawl to those who get a note from me. And you better believe I'm going to keep writing to the very end.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
I'm truly a recovering people pleaser. I've been privileged to work through a lot of the trauma of nearly dying with some wonderful therapists, but what we talk about a lot is how to release expectations for myself in relation to people in my life and also how to release expectations I have for them. And it's been tough! I care about people. And I also care what they think about me.
Now, as a woman with disabilities who doesn't drive or walk well, I am pretty dependent on people—mostly my husband, Jay, who is my caregiver (not to mention my ministry partner, human cane, and best friend). This kind of dependency can skew toward codependency, especially as a first-born daughter who feels deeply and loves people and likes to help fix things for them. Yet I am trying to be intentional about swinging that dependency pendulum from codependency to interdependency which is deep and beautiful and freeing.
For the past 11 years, my husband and I have run a non-profit ministry, which we founded, called Hope Heals. It has evolved into space-making for families experiencing disabilities to find the hope of Christ through an inter-ability community. This work has transformed our heads and hearts, our marriage and family. It's given us a transcendent calling and allowed us to experience the kingdom in ways we never have before. Yet our people have all been through some of the worst life has to offer. The stories of suffering could send me spiraling. But I'm also learning how to empathize but not internalize all of this loss. My broken heart has been opened wide with compassion, but I can't fix my friends or fully change their painful circumstances. Only Jesus can do that, but what I can do is keep making space for us all to find Him together.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
Three years ago, my husband and I began dreaming about opening a coffee shop in Atlanta that would be a place of belonging and belovedness for us to share with our friends experiencing disabiliites. We love food and hospitality and coffee, so this passion project just sucked us right in and will officially open for business in April 2024!
Our non-profit, Hope Heals, has run a summer camp for families with someone who has a disability called Hope Heals Camp. Over all these years, that camp community has formed us deeply. One of the main deeply felt needs of that community is finding a place to be able to accessibly go in the world—doing meaningful work for a dignifying wage. Aging parents who have young adult kids with disabilities wonder, "Will anyone know and love my child when I'm gone? Will they get to offer their unique gifts to the world?"
This new extension of the heart of Hope Heals is Mend Coffee—a tangible answer to these heart-breaking questions. It feels like a drop in the bucket of this need, but it's our drop! We decided to name it Mend because sociologists pinpoint when humans actually became a civilization. Not when they built tools or roads or villages, but when they found ancient broken bones that had been mended back together. This work required the whole community to come alongside the one who had been hurt and help them come to a place of healing together.
One of our core values is a mutuality of ministry, so whether at Camp or Mend the ethos is always that we are doing this work with each other, not for each other. We believe that the world is missing something vital about what it means to be human if the story of disability is not at the table of our communities, businesses, churches, and relationships.
With Mend we want to show a proof of concept for what is possible in an integrated-employment, sustainable business model that is also beautiful and innovative. All of this work and detail is to offer a welcome to everyone who walks or rolls through the door to say, "We've been waiting for you!"
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
The more I've personally experienced the deep pains of the world, the more I've been able to experience the deep possibility of hope. And the more stories of incredible suffering I've encountered, the more I've become comfortable with mystery. Both that good/hard hope and the mystery have worn through into a thin place through which I experience the Holy Spirit and the transcendent gifts of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—all the more obviously attributed to God's influence when the surrounding circumstances demand the opposite of these spiritual fruits.
For me, the Holy Spirit's most powerful work is illuminating how I remember.
Particularly in the season after my stroke, there were incredibly miraculous moments when God's presence felt overwhelmingly close. There were insanely clear answers to prayer. Yet as time passed and the ordinary reality that life had turned out very differently than I thought it would sunk in, all those profoundly clear moments faded, as everything does.
Yet the act of remembrance continues to wire new pathways leading from my past toward God's presence in my present, which ultimately paves this mysteriously hopeful way toward God in my future.
The whole idea of “ebenezers” is that they enable us to tangibly remember the goodness of God having brought us thus far, so I set up reminders everywhere of just how far I've come. And the opportunity to tell my story to an empathetic listener has changed how I think about my story and how I remember it.
I once heard that the word remember appears in the Bible doubly more than trust or believe. We already know the end of the story, but we forget, which is why we have to intentionally partner with the Holy Spirit to remember what God has done and what He's going to continue to do in our lives.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Some people divide things sacred and things secular. But you know, God can surprise us in unlikely places. How do you find spiritual renewal in so-called “nonspiritual” activities?
Spiritual practices have been so powerful for me. Truly, the practice of hope sustained me when the feeling of hope failed me. I have double vision, and reading is challenging, so I love listening to scripture and meditating on it in the mornings as well as praying before the day begins.
As a family, our morning commute has always been a unique space with all four of us. Since I don't drive (Jay does and I ride along), we've tried to make the most of it (with varying degrees of success) by sharing our gratitude. With two boys, ages sixteen and eight, the answers are as diverse as their moods, but this simple practice of naming and speaking aloud the things that have encouraged our hearts has been so poignant for our family.
The natural bent for all of us is to thank God for the good day we had or the good things we did. We have intentionally tried to bend our gratitude toward the spiritual practice of non-conditional gratitude. This means helping our kids re-narrate the gratitude through the lens of a good and hard life. We can be incredibly grateful for easy times but can we also find gratitude for how God showed up in the hard times, too? It's so counterintuitive, but it changes our kids' natural bent toward expecting more of the world and less of God. It flips it to a more realistic and hopeful view that our lives will likely turn out very differently than we thought, yet we can still be grateful for the gifts that we've been given in the midst—namely each other and God himself with us.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources—lots of things that have truly impacted our faith. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are three of your favorite resources?
Since I was a small child, I was obsessed with stories of struggle and resilience. Despite being a privileged white girl, I would preach to my dolls in my closet about civil rights and justice. I would read everything I could about the Holocaust. It seemed that all of that was paving the way for a future life of preaching to crowds about folks on the margins and about the kingdom of God particularly blessing those for whom the systems of the world don't work.
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. This true story of a woman who hid Jews from the Nazis then was herself thrown into a concentration camp has been a companion since I was young. Her resilience through suffering has been a lens through which I've put on my own story of pain. Now I've gotten to share her story of grit and grace with my own children.
Conversations album by Sara Groves (plus everything else she's written). This album was a gift from Dad in college, and it was on repeat through those incredibly formative years. Sara's folksy style and profound theological insights were like nothing I had encountered in Christian music. Her Christmas album is a perennial favorite, and her song "Open My Hands" offered a vision for redefining the good life that changed everything for me. I'm also incredibly grateful to now call Sara a real-life friend. She was the first musical guest at our camp.
Anatomy of the Soul by Dr. Curt Thompson (plus everything else he's written, his podcast, etc.). Curt's work on interpersonal neurobiology came into my life as my own broken brain was yearning to make new neural pathways. His work lives at the intersection of story, shame, community, and Christ's presence in our suffering. The notion that we get to decide what we pay attention to and that forms memories which influence how we think about and lean into our unknown future has seismically shaped my post-stroke resilience. Curt has also become a personal friend and pastor at our camp.
We all have things we cling to in order to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season—and tell us what it’s done for you.
This is a very serious theological answer: the TV series Young Sheldon. Hear me out. I have a 16-year-old and an 8-year-old, so finding a family show we can all watch is a challenge. This show has pleasantly surprised us.
First off, it makes us all giggle—a gift that I am finding to be a joyful spiritual practice the older I get and the harder life gets. Watching a family full of characters putting the "fun" in "dysfunction" is deeply satisfying and puts some of our own idiosyncracies in perspective.
Secondly, the through-line of faith and Southern culture is surprisingly poignant and thoughtfully characterized. In a particularly powerful episode, the genius and agnostic 10-year-old lead character seeks to comfort his religious mom who is going through a crisis of faith. His compassion for her struggle opens up a new perspective in his theoretical astrophysicist mind on the possibility of a Creator and the reality of how miraculous life really is. It's a reminder of just how mysterious and big the universe and faith can be but also how small and personal the stories are that bind us to it.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
As I enter my early 40s, I continue to be utterly grateful for the second-chance life God has given me. I live with many significant medical unknowns, including a rare neuro-vascular disorder that means the story ahead of me likely won't be much easier than the one behind me. Whatever it looks like, I want to live it well, allowing the Holy Spirit to illuminate the way and, in so doing, allowing my life to blaze a trail for those who come behind me. This notion of space-making for those on the margins continues to fuel and motivate me to persevere into the next season of my life and work. Creating sacred spaces where we can encounter the hope of Christ together at the same table is the picture that continues to burn brightly in my heart. Luke 14 shows a picture of a feast ultimately for those who have never been invited. That's the kind of table I want to be part of setting and the kind of table I want to sit at myself with all kinds of people I never imagined might be there with me. I want to be part of building the kingdom of God like the Beatitudes describe where blessing comes in upside-down ways to those for whom the systems of the world have not worked. I don't know what final shapes this might take, but I've seen the healing and hopeful power of having a seat at the table. As Galatians 6 says, I want to take responsibility to do the creative best I have within the good boundary lines of what God's given me.
The strength, resilience, and hope that Katherine lives out and shares with those around her is remarkable. Sharing about the difficulties in her journey, she says, “The practice of hope sustained me when the feeling of hope failed me.” Take a moment to reflect on this statement. What is the practice of hope? How does it differ from the feeling of hope? When our feelings do not line up with what God says is true about us and our circumstances, how can we practice hope in our lives? Ask God to reveal new ways of practicing hope in your life today.
Katherine Wolf is a communicator and advocate. She leverages her redemptive story to encourage those with broken bodies, broken brains, and broken hearts. Engaging both faith-based and secular communities, she seeks to bridge the gap between those disabled on the outside and those disabled on the inside with the hope that Jesus brings healing to the deepest pains we all carry. She currently resides in Atlanta with her husband Jay and their two sons, James and John. She and Jay are the founders and visionaries behind Hope Heals Camp and Mend Coffee (More info at www.hopeheals.com)
