At the age of seven, a thoughtful teacher gave Kathleen a tiny memo pad intended to capture her fairie-lidden imagination. And from time to time, she did write poetry, mostly unseen by others. For most of her adult life though, most know her for the books, articles, and papers advocating and analyzing sustainable building and environmentally conscious approaches to development. In 2008, she published The Northwest Green Home Primer with co-author and dear friend Kathleen Smith. In 2011, she was honored by Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire, King County Executive Dow Constantine and others for her lifetime achievement in growing the field of sustainable building. For the decade following, she focused on building leaders to take on the mantle she had helped create with workshops and a book still selling on various outlets: EMERGE: A Strategic Leadership Model for the Sustainable Building Community.

In 2012 she began walking various spiritual routes with her husband John Cunningham, including the French Way, the Spanish Camino, the Portugal Caminho, and the Sukoku Path in Japan. In 2020, she and John were planning to start the Via Francigena when they got news that "something" was happening in Lucca, a stop on the route they were anticipating taking: Covid. 

Like everyone else in the world, she and John hunkered down and changed plans. They decided to take the opportunity to remodel their home on Bainbridge Island, moving into their ADU for a few months while their home's interior was torn apart. But everything changed on February 21st, when John collapsed from internal bleeding. Nine days later, he had died.

Six days after John died Kathleen learned she had published a poem in Kerning: A Space for Words. He would have been so proud, she knows. She has since published a few more, most focusing on the loss of her best friend.  "Novena to Loss" is collection of poems written over the three years since his death. She invites you to get in contact, especially if you are touched by the poems and are grieving yourself.