A readership survey we issued way back in January 2018 showed that alums wish to read more about the lives and achievements of fellow alums in Europe. Below is our ninth feature interview, focusing on Kristin Duncombe ’91.
Please get in touch if you feel your story would be of interest, or would like to recommend a fellow alum!
Spotlight on… Kristin Duncombe Class of ’91
Name: Kristin Duncombe
Class Year: 1991
1) Can you tell us a few words about yourself?
I am proudly a middle-aged woman! I state it as such because I know so many women who literally say “don’t use that term!” (middle-aged) or who are coy about how old they are, but I find enormous cause for celebration in having made it this far (to age 55). Like most of us in our fifties, I now have a handful of friends who died young in accidents or to illness, and I am deeply grateful to have my health. I have two children – a daughter who is 26 and a son who is 20 – and they are the most important people in my life. I also have a great community of friends and my professional life as a therapist and author is full and fulfilling.
By passport, I am American, but have lived outside of the USA most of my life. My father was a Foreign Service officer and I grew up in the Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, India, and Indonesia. After MHC, I went to grad school in New Orleans, where I met my (now ex) husband, an Argentinian doctor with Medecins Sans Frontieres. I followed him on a medical mission to Kenya when I was 27 and have been back living outside of the USA since then. We spent five years in East Africa (Kenya and Uganda) and then in 2001 moved to Paris, in 2011 to Lyon, and in 2015 to Geneva. I recently moved back to Paris after 8 years in Geneva and am here now to stay. Paris is the home of my heart, and the place I feel most comfortable as a “chronic expat” and Third Culture Kid.
2) What inspired you to write, and how did you find your voice?
My mother is a librarian, and I learned the joy of a good book at a very early age. At some moment when I was a child, I started thinking like a writer; i.e., noticing what it was that made me love the books I loved, and coming up with my own stories. Some of these stories made it onto the page, most stayed in my head. One of the biggest struggles (for me) as a writer is getting organized, and I have had to learn over the years that if I scribble notes here, there, and everywhere, and can’t keep track of all those pieces of paper and napkins and notebooks, chances are I am not going to complete the piece.
I finally got organized enough to write my first book after having a cancer scare when my daughter was seven and my son only one and a half. I was terrified that I would not see them grow up (even though the cancer was caught early) and that became the motor behind writing my first book, TRAILING, which is a memoir about surviving death, literally and metaphorically. Literally, in that the book starts with a violent carjacking in Nairobi, in which I spent the longest fifteen minutes of my life with a gun to my head watching my husband being beaten up by armed thugs. Metaphorically, the book is about the death of identity, when I abandoned my own plans to become a “trailing spouse” and had to find my way back to a life of meaning and purpose (while fighting PTSD and many other difficulties that arose in the context of being young, naive, and the only “non-essential” person living on the frontlines of disaster and disease with the MSF team).
3) What books have been the most inspiring or influential to you and why?
Oh! This is a hard question because the list is long. I will start by saying that my literary role model is the novelist Hilma Wolitzer. I absolutely love her voice; she is able to take the most mundane stuff of daily life and make it interesting. To me, that is the mark of great storytelling and something I aspire to in my own work. Hilma Wolitzer did not publish her first novel until she was forty three, which I also find very inspirational. I was in my mid thirties when I discovered Hilma Wolitzer’s books, and her story made me believe that it was not too late to have a literary career.
As for the books that have most inspired me: I am a memoirist because more than anything, I love true stories. I admire fiction and people that can tell a good fiction story (such as Hilma Wolitzer, Judy Blume, Wally Lamb, Rufi Thorpe, and so many others) but I am most attracted to the recounting of real life plights and how the author made it through. I call myself a bibliotherapist because I assign memoir all the time; a true story well told is one of the greatest healers and role models for anyone struggling to understand their own life.
4) What is your perspective on the role of storytelling in today’s world?
I think storytelling in today’s world is no different than storytelling at any other time in history, in that people have always needed story to make sense of what is happening, or to escape, to protest, to collude… Every story starts with the point of view of the narrator and, as has always been the case, there are competing viewpoints. I understand the question in the context of today’s times, which feel particularly bleak, but in spite of that, I don’t actually think the role of storytelling is any different to what it has always been.
5) What is one lesson you have learned in your journey of healing and self-discovery, and how does that resonate in your writing?
So many things that I can’t bear to only mention one! So here are a few: 1) The hardest things to admit are the most universally interesting to other people. Sugarcoating denies the reader the chance to learn from the story the writer “needs” to tell. “Needs” is in quotes because if you are bothering to invest the time and energy it takes to tell a story, hopefully that investment is driven by need: the need to share, to teach, to open up, to grow, to let go of the story that has been kept inside you. 2.) You can’t please everyone. As Taylor Swift sings, “the haters gonna hate” and you gotta just “shake it off.” I read all reviews, including the bad ones and though it can be painful, it also fortifies yet another important lesson, which is 3.) I am allowed to tell my story, even if others don’t like it.
6) What stories or themes are you hoping to explore next?
I am working on a book called ADIEU BEAUTE, which is about self-acceptance and self-love, after facing a series of physical crises. It is a natural sequel to my last book which is all about breaking out of objectification and self-objectification.
7) How did your MHC experience contribute to your life aspirations?
Directly, by introducing me to the concept of the patriarchy. I am assuming I would have eventually learned about the politics of patriarchy and how they shape our lives, but it was very useful to have these concepts explained to me in user friendly terms, in the handful of women’s studies classes I took.
But if I could turn back time, I would re-do my MHC years to take advantage fully of everything the school had to offer and that I missed out on because I was such a wreck – without self awareness – in the years I was there. As I write about in my most recent book, OBJECT, I arrived at Mount Holyoke just six years after the major crisis of my childhood: A senior diplomat with USAID in the Cote d’Ivoire sexually abused me for the better part of two years, and when the truth came out, the State Department protected him, and that was that. The whole ordeal was swept under the rug and basically never talked about again.
In the six years in between the revelation of the abuse and arriving at Mount Holyoke, I plunged into alcohol abuse, bulimia, and overall untethered acting-out. I was in a lot of emotional pain and invested heavily in myself as an object, versus as the subject of my own life. Had I been in subject-of-my-own life mode, I would have majored in women’s studies and creative writing, I would have taken self defense and many other physical fitness activities offered in that beautiful sports complex, and I would have taken art classes.
When I was at MHC, I was inordinately invested in finding a boyfriend at Amherst College, and unfortunately did find one: the biggest narcissist on the Amherst campus who seriously broke my heart. That was year one, and I did a lot of repeat moves in subsequent years until, miraculously, I graduated! I am being a bit glib because I learned a lot and made dear friends that I am in regular contact with today, and my feminist spirit was solidified at MHC.
I will conclude by saying that indirectly, MHC protected me, because the all- women’s environment was a haven for someone like myself who, at that time in life, made very poor choices!
Read more about Kristin and her work at http://www.kristinduncombe.com
Interview conducted Spring 2025 by Zeynep Kurmus Hurbas ’96