Hi, hello! January was a long year, wasn’t it? Lol. Whew. Before I get into the post, I wanted to share that I was a guest on a Substack podcast recently talking with who is a lovely + interesting human. I shared the experiences that led me away from identifying with mainstream feminism and in the second half about my draw to Catholicism (she’s a cradle Catholic turned New Age turned nondenominational Christian who isn’t sure where she fits). The first part is free and the second is behind her paywall. I plan to share the second half transcript with paid subscribers soon.
Welcome to the second “small stirrings” post, where I share about stuff that’s been inspiring or moving me lately without linking to a million things. Like we’re just two people catching up at the local coffeeshop about what we’ve been learning and thinking about lately!
(Find the first one here.)
Let’s go!
I’ve been thinking a lot about female physiology lately. In mid-January, I helped host a workshop in our local community called The Cycle Show1, all about the beauty and power of the menstrual cycle. It’s been in the works for a while, and though we had a smaller turnout than we hoped, the women who came were impacted and I think it planted a seed of goodness that will bloom beautifully at some point in the future. I literally can’t believe how many years I lived being mostly ignorant of my female physiology. Even as I sit here writing these words, I have an aching, and it’s been less than a year since I realized what it is. It’s mittelschmerz, a fancy German word for pain with ovulation. Before learning this, I’m sure I felt annoyed that I “randomly” don’t feel good, or maybe went down a Google rabbit hole about what might be fatally wrong with me. Now, I’m like, ope, must be ovulation day! Knowledge is power and I really want to change things in this area for future generations.
I saw a meme that said “Sorry for acting weird. I am weird and it will happen again” and I was like I can’t relate more. What I’ve learned is that we should all be embracing our weird and stop feeling like we can’t be who we are. This doesn’t mean we can’t take feedback or adjust our ways; it just means that we can stop overthinking and just talk and act in ways that flow naturally from our being. We can apologize when we get it wrong. We can be okay with being misunderstood. Oof, it’s just a whole other way to live than the way I lived for a very long time.
“I didn’t know this was a fight.” / “That’s why you’re losing.” This is a line from a movie we watched recently. One of our priests has a particular expertise in spiritual warfare and has been giving a series of talks on it which I’ve been attending. Then a friend randomly told me about the movie Nefarious, which came out last year and which I had heard nothing about (because I live under a rock and that rock is called parenting small children). The movie draws from a book, and the book was inspired by The Screwtape Letters.2 Wow. Apart from a little heavy-handedness, it was well-done and quite powerful. I used to scoff at people who talked about “evil” and “the devil.” I understand why (because that talk came alongside other attitudes and beliefs I didn’t align with), but I definitely see now that if the spiritual good is real, then the spiritual bad is, too. Highly recommend and let me know if you watch it and want to discuss! Also, despite the heavy topic it isn’t “scary”—we hate scary movies. That’s not to say it isn’t hard to watch sometimes, but it isn’t like that (despite the creepy cover art and the genre of “horror”).
Surrender is probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned in motherhood: to stop fighting the realities of what is being asked of me and instead—to borrow from the mainstream feminists—to lean into it. Hopefully this isn’t TMI but here we go anyway… one way I’ve been surrendering to motherhood lately is taking showers with Rosie. Previously I’d lament that I’ve “barely had time to shower” (a real thing; IYKYK) and be annoyed about it: in addition to feeling gross, I saw showers as time to myself to think and be alone, and I couldn’t (wouldn’t) see it any other way. Recently I thought, I’m gonna just try to bring Rosie (my 2.5yo) in with me… and turns out that she loves it. We both do. I get clean, we laugh and hang out together, and I don’t feel annoyed. It’s been great! Do I miss my alone showers? Sure. Am I happy to be showering more often and having fun with my little gal at the same time? Yep. Showers alone will return. For now, this works. Surrender to the season, baby.
Inspired by a post by my friend Emily3, I now have a post-it with the word SUBVERT next to my whiteboard grocery list on my fridge. It helps remind me of the power and importance of what I’m doing every day by tending to my home and connecting with my children and baking my own bread and praying and doing all the other seemingly-small-but actually-not things.
“Men’s healing is our healing as well.” My last post was the most liked and commented-on thing I’ve written here thus far. It felt great to say something I’ve been feeling for years. There’s also an interesting thing that happens when you question something—people then assume you’re ANTI that thing. And I think often people do swing to an extreme, sort of like a “Well I know I don’t like that, so let me get as far away from it as possible.” As I’ve started to write and share more straightforwardly my criticisms of mainstream feminism, this is something I’m thinking about. Someone said this to me via Instagram DM and I’m so encouraged by it: “I started following you because your writing has helped me gather my thoughts around faith and feminism when I’m seeing so many people going from one extreme to another when converting. I really appreciate your faith-based nuanced take vs. the really simplistic anti-feminism I often see.”
I’ve shared about Raffi before, but if you have littles and you don’t know him, you should change that! My big girls sang “Everything Grows” at my grandma’s birthday party a few weeks ago, and it was a hit. Some of the older people were like, “I can’t stop singing that song! It’s so catchy!” It really is. Rosie loves it too and requests it on the regular. Yay for people who respect children and see them for the sacred beings they are.
Motherhood and work. It’s been an ongoing interest of mine to consider how paid work can/should/does intersect with the work of motherhood. Lately it’s been very top-of-mind in very practical ways. I’m considering whether or not my ESL teaching job is something to continue into next year. I’m exploring some paid writing opportunities in places outside this publication. I’m considering getting trained as an instructor for The Cycle Show. Friends of mine are starting businesses and adding to businesses and working meaningful part-time jobs and leaving full-time corporate jobs for healing and all the things. It’s so amazing to embody this “middle way” of approaching motherhood and work and see so many other women do it, too. I think the point here is this: paid work outside of motherhood doesn’t have to be all or nothing if you don’t want it to be.4
This quote I saw the other day: “I want to die as a matriarch: surrounded by children and grandchildren, who are grateful for the role I played in their lives and who see and value the purpose I had there.”5
Would love to hear something you connected to or something that stirred something in you recently. Happy February!
One of these days I’ll get my #*$( together and publish here with some sort of consistency. Until then, I’m showing up as I can and having fun and hopefully adding value for you, too.
As I’ve mentioned this online, so many people have wanted to know more! It doesn’t have a robust online presence yet, as it’s just beginning to be something offered in the United States. (When you Google it, a bunch of stuff about bicycles comes up lol.) The workshop came out of a German woman’s dissertation work and is the main sex education program in use in Germany today (with growing demand—faster than they can get instructors trained!). I’ll share more about it soon!
A great C.S. Lewis read. Letters back and forth between an elder demon mentoring a younger one. Powerful stuff, as all Lewis is.
She writes a fantastic Substack called
—if you like the things I have to say about womanhood and motherhood I think you’ll like her gorgeous essays.I want to shout this from the rooftops. The dichotomy of “working mom” and “SAHM” is one of the most garbage-y constructs of American culture there is.
An excerpt from an article on Fairer Disputations. Thanks to my Internet friend
for telling me about this amazing site!
#9 really hit for me! Thanks for sharing that quote! Really reminds me of my late beloved grandma, she definitely was our matriarch and I only hope to be a little like her one day ❤️
I'm here as a Raffi fangirl to say YESSSSSSSS