About

Kate Wicker is a mom of five, a perfectionist in recovery, and writer. Back in the heyday of blogging, she wrote a popular mom blog, which led to two nonfiction book deals. Kate is the author of Getting Past Perfect: How to Find Joy & Grace in the Messiness of Motherhood (a 2018 Catholic Press Association Award-Winner for Family Life) and Weightless: Making Peace with Your Body.   She also has a novel in the works and is in the process of applying to low-residency MFA programs.

Kate has her degree in journalism and has been freelance writing for over two decades. She has written for numerous regional and national media, including Woman’s Day, Pregnancy Magazine, Atlanta Parent, Pittsburgh Parent, Family Fun, Catholic Digest, Medical Dealer Magazine, Augusta Magazine, WhattoExpect.com, and others. She is a regular contributor to Living Faith (despite her faith being wobbly at best).

In addition to writing, Kate has spoken at myriad events and media programming including the Edith Stein Conference at the University of Notre Dame and a guest on Huffington Post Live (known as HuffPost Live).

25 Random Facts About Kate:

1. She was born in Illinois but has lived in Georgia for most of her life.
2. Kate is the rarest Meyers-Briggs Personality Type: an INFJ. This means she is the most extroverted introvert, and she is an idealist with rational thoughts.  In other words, she a thinker and a feeler with a judgmental side and she can be really needy. Her therapist says it’s not always easy being an INFJ. Kate loves her therapist.
3. Kate is a total control freak, which led her to have five natural childbirths under the care of midwives. She is an advocate of empowering women to make informed decisions and achieve the birth experiences they desire and deserve (and that includes relying on pain relief if that’s what they want but not allowing fear to force them to into anything). She also breastfed for a total of 15 1/2 years of her 45 years of life (she triple-checked the math).
4. Kate’s first love was books. Her second love was horses. Her all-time love is her husband – a brilliant, kind man who loves her more deeply and unconditionally than anyone else she knows.
5. She briefly lived in L.A. and later auditioned at theatre schools in NYC pursuing a childhood dream of becoming an actress. (She always wanted to be a writer or an actress. One for two isn’t bad.)
6. She gave law school a try as well. (Loved the school part but wasn’t sure about the whole being a lawyer part). She told the dean she wanted to write. He duly quoted Frost’s The Road Not Taken, and Kate became a happy if not slightly sheepish, law school dropout. This all took place in the aftermath of 9-11, when so many people pivoted, realizing life is too short to not be with the people you love and/or to be discontent with your path.
7. The desire to entertain is in her blood. Her dad has eight siblings, one of whom is the trombone player for the band Chicago (James Pankow). Another is an actor in NYC who used to play Cousin Ira on Mad About You (John Pankow). His wife/Kate’s aunt (Kristine Sutherland) played Buffy’s mom on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
8. Four out of five of Katie’s “babies” are teenagers now. (Yes, she answers to Katie as well.)
9. Kate enjoys running (weird, yes) marathons. Due to an interminable struggle with high hamstring tendinopathy. Kate has had to reframe running into a playground, rather than a proving ground. She lifts weights and has recently taken up yoga although she is about as flexible as a lead pipe.
10. Kate started freelance writing in her 20s, and some of the articles she wrote and opinions she expressed make her cringe now. Parents, sorry about some of those articles she wrote about parenting when she was pregnant with her first child. She knew squat. She still knows squat. But with hopefully with age comes a little wisdom and all that (I can hope!).
11. Kate was a vegetarian for years and doesn’t like steak, cheeseburgers, or any red meat.
12. She does love dark chocolate, coffee, and wine.
13. Kate is a natural blonde.
14. She is not a natural optimist despite the bubbly veneer. She has to work hard at seeing the glass half-full and has battled a clinical eating disorder, anxiety as well as postpartum depression and major depressive episodes. It’s in her brokenness that she has found the most light.
15. Kate and her husband met on their high school’s mock trial team, and their team ended up winning a national title in a competition in Denver, CO. None of their high school classmates care(d) about this feat.
16. Kate doesn’t like to talk on the phone except to her family and closest friends. She’s thankful you can now order food online. She has never ordered a pizza over the telephone because it makes her twitch with unexplained anxiety. Her right armpit also starts to sweat profusely when nervous and/or anxious. She talks more when she’s nervous. Go figure.
17. And, yet, Kate enjoys speaking in front of hundreds of strangers. She also enjoys throwing herself and her kids under the bus. Thankfully, the Wicker kids are good sports.
18. Kate can’t do a cartwheel, but she did win an arm wrestling competition in the eighth grade.
19. Kate is working hard on overcoming being a chronic people-pleaser largely because she wants her children to follow their own path, share their unique voices, and set healthy boundaries.
20. Some current influences on Kate’s spiritual life include Nadia Bolz-Weber,  Mark Shea, Shannon K. Evans, Flannery O’Connor, The Little Flower, her deceased Nana, as well as her parents.
21. Kate and her husband backpacked through Europe before there was this thing called a cell phone. This makes them totally kickass because they can’t imagine their children (or frankly themselves) being abroad armed with only a guidebook and sporadic payphones.
22. Despite what one might assume by now, Katie hates talking about herself in the third person. Really.
23. Kate also hates to iron. She hates rudeness and close-mindedness a whole lot more.
24. But she loves to write. (She’s currently working on her first novel and applying to low-residency MFA programs).
25. Kate hasn’t stopped writing since she first learned to form words. Kate snagged her first byline in the second grade when she wrote a story about a periodontal Tarzan who climbed into kids’ mouths and swung from their molars clinging to floss, saving kids from the ills of cavities. Her teacher loved it (said teacher was not married to a dentist to the best of Kate’s knowledge) and entered it in a contest. It somehow won even though Kate used the word “neurotic” completely out of context, and it was published in a children’s literary journal.