Victress Hitchcock is a filmmaker, poet, writer, meditator, teacher, mother and grandmother. She is a recipient of a Colorado Fellowship of the Arts. Her memoir “A Tree With My Name On It: Finding a Way Home” was published by Bold Story Press in October, 2024. It won the Colorado Authors League 2025 Memoir Award. She lives in Boulder, Colorado. You can read more about her creative work at victresshitchcock.com.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it?
Victress Hitchcock: At the turn of the 21st century, my husband and I, both video producers, were living in Denver. Our marriage was on the rocks, and we were soon to be empty nesters. Out of the blue, we came up with the idea of moving to a ranch, as a crazy solution to all our problems. Within weeks the perfect place turned up in the Denver Post classifieds and by the time our daughter headed off to college, we were living on a 160-acre historic ranch in a remote valley of the Wet Mountains of southern Colorado.
Within a year, my husband’s fantasy of ranch living had crashed and burned, and I was left living alone at Lookout Valley Ranch. Emerging from the wreckage I found myself on a radically different path, heartbroken, determined and terrified.
UNDERWRITTEN BY
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It was a raw, exhilarating, and transformative time. I found myself face to face with old demons and lifelong fears and I was able to reach out and create a community with neighbors, ranchers and horse trainers. I began teaching meditation in a nearby federal prison. My horse, Rain, became my companion as I explored the meadows and woods. I was snowed in for days.
And I made a deep and lasting friendship with Berna, a writer who was born on the ranch in the 1930’s. We shared our writings about living at the ranch. Our vow that someday we would put our stories together in a book was at the heart of my wanting to write “A Tree with My Name on It: Finding a Way Home.”
Berna died many years ago. It took me a long time to arrive at the decision to write the memoir which had become more my story but would never have happened without our connection. I wanted to honor this magical place we both loved, and to share my story of emerging from years of keeping my feelings at bay and how being in this wild and unpredictable place had allowed me to feel the depths of my grief. It was only through allowing my heart to break that I began to find my true self. As I described in the memoir: “The world I had entered was so foreign and so welcoming it let me be whoever I wanted to be, to remember who I was deep down and reinvent myself as an embodied, kick-ass, heartbroken cowgirl.”
SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?
Hitchcock: The excerpt I selected is the scene early in the memoir where I first set eyes on Lookout Valley Ranch, the 160-acre historic ranch where the story unfolds. It is the moment when I fell in love with the place and with Rain, the horse who became my sidekick, as hard as I tried to resist them both.
“A Tree with My Name on It”
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SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Hitchcock: The years I spent living on the ranch were the bedrock of experience I needed to write the memoir. My many years as a meditator gave me a perspective on the story, as did years of therapy. My experience as a documentary filmmaker, particularly learning how to weave stories together in the editing room, was invaluable.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Hitchcock: “A Tree with My Name on It” is my first book. That said, all my knowledge of writing came from sitting down and writing a memoir. I worked with a memoir coach who gave me the basics and then sat back and made sure I kept writing. When it came to writing and editing, I relied on what I had learned as a filmmaker – less is best, show as well as tell, let the story be your guide.
As far as the subject matter, through the writing I deepened my understanding of my part in the breakup of my marriage, and I was able to uncover more layers in my healing from sexual trauma. As I wrote, I was also able to process more layers of grief from having had to leave the ranch.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Hitchcock: Fear was my biggest challenge –– that I didn’t know what I was doing, that nobody would care about my story, that I wouldn’t be able to actually do it, that it wouldn’t be any good. Then there were all the logistics of braiding together multiple themes, multiple elements including the journals I kept, the essays I sent to Berna and hers to me, a published book by Berna’s mother about the years they lived at the ranch and other odds and ends. Putting everything into a Scrivenor project helped me sort it out and keep track of it all.
SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book?
Hitchcock: There is wisdom everywhere. If we open our hearts and minds and pay attention to what is arising in our outer and inner worlds, wisdom is always available. If we step out of our comfort zone, it is amazing how much we are able to do, to feel, to understand. That is what I learned living at the ranch. And from writing my memoir. Be open to the unexpected, embrace your fear and keep going, humor is your best friend, let your heart be broken.
SunLit: What part did the meditation group you led in the federal prison play in your book and in your life at the ranch?
Hitchcock: Leading the meditation group each week at the federal prison in a town 25 miles from the ranch was a lifesaver. Driving there opened my world. Being there gave me a way to connect with others who were struggling to understand life and who they were. The men in the group brought fresh minds to the age-old Buddhist teachings on suffering and impermanence.
We taught each other. We shared our sorrows and we laughed at all the ways we get in our own way. The group kept me on my toes. They kept me real. Touching into the interactions of the group throughout the book was also a way to integrate an understanding of the Buddhist teachings into the story.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Hitchcock: I am working on a second memoir. The working title is “Daughter Mothers and Others: An Expedition into the Ancestral Minefield.” I am taking stories from interviews with my mother and grandmother and weaving them together with my own memories of them and of my life to explore the ways we share so many of our obstacles and our strengths.
I am not far into it. I have identified a story line to follow that starts with my mother’s botched brain surgery and have written the first two chapters. I have also been writing vignettes from each of our lives. I have yet to figure out how to braid it all together.
A few more quick items
Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: “The Lost Chapters: Finding Recovery and Renewal One Book at a Time” by Leslie Schwartz
First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: “Wind in the Willows”
Best writing advice you’ve ever received: Don’t over think. Follow the story. Trust your instincts.
Favorite fictional literary character: Eloise
Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): Dorothy Sayers mysteries
Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Print
One book you’ve read multiple times: “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön
Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: A glass of water
Best antidote for writer’s block: Go outside. Look at the trees. Watch the squirrels.