Hattie Kauffman
Hattie Kauffman encourages others with Falling
into Place: A Memoir of Overcoming
Interviewed and written by Aaron
Robinson
Hattie Kauffman is a four-time Emmy award-winning news
correspondent who has reported for CBS This Morning, The Early Show
and 48 Hours, just to name a few. When her life unexpectedly begins
crashing down, she keeps her faith in God while trying not to relive her
traumatic childhood.
Kauffman is also a proud member of the Nez Perce
Tribe of Idaho,
as well as a speaker and writer who has been the first Native American to ever file a report on a
national network news broadcast. Recently, Kauffman has published a
remarkable and marvelous memoir, Falling into Place: A Memoir of
Overcoming, where she shares vivid and unforgettable real-life stories with
the readers. Here is what she had to share during a recent interview with
Consciousness Magazine.
Aaron Robinson: What was your inspiration to releasing the memoir Falling into Place: A Memoir of Overcoming?
Hattie Kauffman: My
siblings and I went through so much in childhood, that even as a young adult I
realized our escapades might make a book someday. Over the years, I started and
stopped several attempts at telling the Kauffman kids’ adventures. Usually what
interrupted me was my career because as a network news correspondent I was
constantly traveling. It wasn’t until I was over fifty when an unexpected
divorce left me so shaken that it seemed the ground wasn’t stable under my feet.
I realized this ‘shaken’ feeling was familiar --- I had felt it in childhood. That’s
when the book suddenly began to take shape.
Aaron: At a younger age, you escaped abject poverty. How did you
overcome that notion?
Hattie: We escaped poverty by working super hard. When I was
fifteen I claimed I was sixteen so that I could get a job and I’ve basically been
working ever since. When I was seventeen I started reporting a five minute
radio broadcast. It only paid 2 and a half hours a day, that’s how much time
the radio station figured was required to put together five minutes of airtime.
But I did it, happily. Every one of my siblings has worked hard. I think the hungry, ribs-sticking-out, years
of our youth spurred us on.
Aaron: While in your career, coming from a traumatic childhood and living in poverty, did you ever experience a sense of feelings of not belonging
or fitting in with others at the network?
Hattie: Yes, often I felt that I didn’t measure up to my colleagues.
Working in television has glamor to it. Maybe it’s the chance to interview
stars and important political leaders or maybe it’s the possibility of becoming
famous oneself…but for some reason it is a career that attracts people who
don’t even need a job. They’re there for the pleasure of it. I often had co-workers
who didn’t have an economic need to work. They were well off, went to Ivy
League schools, and took fabulous vacations, and so on. During all of my years
on the television, I kept my childhood history of hunger to myself.
Aaron: In regards to your memoir, what would you like to instill in
your readers when they read Falling
into Place: A Memoir of Overcoming?
Hattie: I hope that my readers come away from the book inspired.
It’s more than a rags-to-riches tale about a successful climb out of poverty. My
book examines the poverty of heart that I didn’t even know I was walking around
with. All those years I thought I was making it on my own, and yet, what I was
building wasn’t real. The absolute adventure in Falling Into Place is
the discovery of what was right there before my eyes all the time but that I’d
been too blind to see.
I
think it might help people. In fact, I know that it already has. I am getting
emails, texts, and Facebook posts from readers who tell me the book has given
them encouragement and hope.
Aaron: Over the course of your career, what has been one of your
most memorable moments as a news
correspondent that sticks with you everyday of your life?
Hattie: I describe it in my book. I was working for Good Morning
America and our assignment was to do a story about the thirty-thousand people
who manage to survive by scavenging in the garbage dump of Mexico City. When we got out of our rental
cars in this massive shanty town that surrounds the dump, we were swarmed with
hungry children. Maybe their skinny brown arms reminded me of my own childhood…I
don’t know. But our experience that day has been imprinted in my memory and out
of the thousands of stories I covered in three decades as a network news correspondent
that is the one that I will never forget.
Aaron: What words of encouragement would you share with
individuals who are going through tough times and struggles in life, thinking
they have no way out?
Hattie: Pray. I hope that doesn’t sound flippant. There is no question that life is hard and
often unfair. I know what it’s like to want to give up --- when it seems there’s
no way out and you’re all alone. But what I’ve learned is that we’re never all
alone, even when our best friends desert us…when family, spouses, bosses turn
their backs…when it seems the whole world has cast us out. Even then, we are
not alone. God is there.
Aaron: Would you like to add anything before we close the
interview?
Hattie: Yes, I want to thank you for talking to me.
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