1

I have a particular need to do something meaningful, or tackle a project that has been forgotten, when I'm grieving a loss. Really any loss, but especially a death.

It's why my house looks oddly clean for someone morning her child.

And why you are likely to find the entire contents of a closet or drawer on the kitchen table while I re-organize spaces that have bugged me for months.

When things are happening that are not in my control, it helps to make my surroundings just a little better.

2

If not apparent from the above, I'm awful at resting.

I'm a slow physical healer and I know the need to rest is a thing for promoting better healing. But I hate it. I hate feeling like my body can't let me live my life.

So I bribe myself....

3

With books!

But not fiction. For some reason I have a decided distaste for most fiction, and it gets bad in grief times. When there is so much to process, and so many things I can never know or understand, I love me some thick history books. 

History is knowable, verifiable, and enlightening for the present. Understanding a little more about something beyond my own grief is what lets me be ok laying in bed when I'm supposed to do so.

4

Tea is amazing.

I still love my coffee, but for some reason Earl Grey tea has been my jam during this time. Hot drinks, even in summer, remains an important tool for reminding myself to pause.

5

Then there's writing.

I do keep a bullet journal and do some writing processing that way, but this time around I haven't been as inclined to write about it on the blog. I know the words might come eventually, but I'm deciding it's also ok to not share everything with the internet (as lovely as y'all are.)

6

Speaking of the blog, Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum wrote about blogging as a side hustle vs. leisure as her 7 Quick Takes today. If you can't tell by the fact that I'm still a proud blogspot.com URL user in 2019, this is not a side hustle blog. 

Growing the blog was never about getting well known, getting my writing out there, making money, or launching a career (which is good because I'd say most of that has not happened.) I've always written this blog hoping to reach just one person who needed to hear it. Just to let one person know they were not the only person on this Earth who shares their struggle, concern, or perspective. Just let one person not feel so alone.

"Grow enough to reach the one" is basically what I do around here.

7

I did have a goal to participate in community better, perhaps via the blog, back when this all started in 2015. Sometimes I forget how successful the internet has been in that regard.

Going through another miscarriage has brought that reminder.

Far away internet friends have sent cards and restaurant gift cards. I've relied on books written by fellow bloggers to help me through this. Priest friends read the update and offered prayers and liturgies for our baby.

Over the years there have been conference meet ups, skill shares, Facebook groups, and messaging friends I only know from the internet when I happen to be traveling through their town to ask them to get coffee. It can sometimes be weird to be so invested in people I've never met in person, but thank you to all the people who have said yes to hanging out with me. 

Thanks to the mighty few who have been readers since the beginning. 

The ones who keep coming back even when I float away from speaking to your specific season of life. Thanks for riding on this journey with me.

**********

New this week:

Why you should care about true stories (and why they're awesome) plus a little life updates and check in on the Cool Historic Catholics of America series.

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In honor of St. Anthony of Padua today - one of my favorite quotes from him: “Do you want to have God always in your mind? Be just as he made you to be. Do not go seeking another “you”. Do not make yourself otherwise than he made you. Then you will always have God in mind.”

A post shared by Kirby Hoberg (@underthyroof) on Jun 13, 2019 at 9:57am PDT

Top 10 Posts of 2018

It's the end of the year and it's time for a recap! 

My Top 10 posts of 2018 are....eclectic. Welcome to how we run things here at Under Thy Roof. :)

10

My Ember Day plans for Fall 2018 came in at #10 for the year! I do it a little differently every time, and that's good - I would like to have different things to work on to shine up my home and soul.

My categories are: physical, spiritual, fasting, and connection.

9

I thought I had said all I had to say about breastfeeding, but I needed to speak a little truth to power for a hot second during World Breastfeeding Week. It's not as cut and dry was the promotional posters make out.

8

https://underthyroof.blogspot.com/2018/08/hosting-your-own-retreat.html

"Something that has bothered me about retreats aimed for women is they are often 1. very expensive, 2. cater to a different demographic from me, or 3. don't have a way to easily remain in contact with women you have just gotten to know more personally.

Instead of waiting for someone to come along and drop the ideal retreat from the sky - you can make what you need! Here are some key things to hosting your own retreat."

7

One of those posts I wrote in the springtime before The Summer of Crisis. I read over it again before posting it here, just to make sure I would still stand by everything I said there knowing what was to come. Yup, still mean it. Phew.

6

Fun fact about my writing style - I come up with most posts while listening to lectures, podcasts, or conferences. What I write may or may not be related to the subject of the talk.

So if you are ever at a conference with me, and see me scribbling like mad in a notebook, this is why.

This post was written at the Well Read Mom conference last year and poured out wholesale between two talks. It's something that I have been wanting to say for years, and suddenly the words poured out.

5

This was the first post in a series of guest posts + giveaways on the 5 Love Languages. Thanks to Hilary from Messy Buns and Latin Chant for writing this post that resonated with so many!

4

Ah, the post that garnered me my first hate mail. It's a milestone.

Like a lot of Catholic bloggers and writers, I wrestled for a while with what to say, if to talk about, the church crisis. Then one day I woke up and this post poured out. Two more posts would do the same by the end of the week.

It cost me a lot a lot of readers, followers, some friendships and working relationships.

Was it a needed truth? Yes. And I would do it again. It would probably be more scary to write now that I know what it would cost me, but it was the right thing to do.

3

"If you've hung around this blog for a while, you know what I do for NFP Awareness Week - share stories! I believe the best way to talk about a way of life is to show that life via storytelling (and that Anthropology degree might only have influenced that a lot).

There's been small years, busy years, and themed years.

This year is a theme year.

Supposed to be a theme year.

This has been a hard year.

This year is all about NFP in the postpartum time - but it's both on the blog and my real life. I've never had more "skin in the game" than I do this year. Merely trying to put together postpartum NFP stories has been an eye opening experience."

2

I was supposed to record a podcast as a guest to talk about the topic of body image. I had done my research, talked to people about what they long to hear on the topic, and outlined my thoughts. 

Then the podcast fell through.

So I wrote all of it up into a post! Can't keep an overdoer down.

1

In just a few days this post became my most popular post of all time. The incident that inspired it happened years ago, but it's something that has been percolating in my mind ever since.

I wrote a follow up post confessing the beautiful things I have personally said no to practicing. 

It helps to realize you are not the only one, and that saying "I choose this" doesn't not mean "all other things are bad choices."

Embrace the freedom of "That's beautiful, but it's not for me"!

***********************

Linking up with Bobbi from Revolution of Love blog for the Top 10 Posts of 2018!

State of the Blog

There are some changes already happening around here, and it seems only fair to clue y'all in!

1 

Monthly evaluation

I do this thing at the end of every month where I think back and decide what worked, what didn't, and what I can change to make all parts of my life better.

It's become more formal lately, and I now have a "What should I be doing?" discernment spread in my bullet journal where I ask myself what has fed me lately and what things have stressed me lately. I use those results to develop a spread called "Make a Change in *x month*"

2 

Results

October was personally a hard month where I had to accept that a lot of things weren't working. The things that were working surprised me. I very much enjoyed doing historical research on the house, getting to craft again, and exploring with the kids.
Things that stressed me included: pursuing opportunities that were not actually open to me, lack of rest, and sacrificing time to write blog content and social media that gets minimal interaction.

3 

The Changes

I ended up with a list of 16 changes to make in November. Many are small tasks to stop procrastinating about that will lessen my stress level, but there are some big decisions.

4 

About Theater

Earlier this week I wrote about the frustrations I've had trying to get established in the theater community here in the Twin Cities. In a sense I feel a bit deceived. Everyone told me how great the theater community was here. How many shows, spaces, companies. That is true - just not for young women.

So I'm taking a break.

A temporary, at least month long, break from the audition circuit heart ache.

A year of throwing myself at that stained brick wall requires a little healing.

5 

About this Blog

I realized in the past few months that I was spending a lot of time thinking and writing about topics that were getting seen by fewer and fewer people. There was one day with a total of 6 views. 6. Site wide.
Frankly that isn't worth my time.

So for the month of November I'm only writing when I want to - not to meet a pre-defined posting schedule.

I don't write this blog for the sole exercise of writing. There are bloggers like that, but that's not me. I write for connection. I write to create a jumping off point for discussions and engagement. That's the point for me. I don't want to be shouting into the wind.

6 

The Things I Will Be Doing

When I do write it will be because something needs to pour out of my heart and mind. Those pieces seem to resonate well with people, and they get written soooooo much faster than pieces I try and force out. Seems like a win-win.

I love responding to questions or requests! That's part of why I love speaking on panels and doing Q&As. Thinking on my feet is my jam, and probably when you're going to get the most concise answer before this over-thinker over-thinks it.

I will be using the time I would have spent preparing auditions, hunting for opportunities, and writing for prayer instead. I don't just want to release lots of free time, I want to make space for good and for God. Using prayer to fill those holes keeps me from letting busy work seep into that space.

I forgot how much I enjoyed taking my kids places and exploring together. Field trips are planned to be a bigger part of our month (as counter-intuitive as that sounds with a fresh layer of snow and ice out there.) It's something that feeds all of us.

7 

I'm Still Open

This is not a Lenten fast from blogging! I'm more than happy to continue to respond to messages and  requests. I'll happily write up a post that you would like to have (there's one coming up this month already!). I want to make sure I'm helping you, not adding to your noise.

If by some amazing miracle a theater show or company comes along with an offer for me, I'll probably jump on that opportunity. It's hard not to be pessimistic about the possibility after a year of No, but it could theoretically happen.

While I'll be home a lot more, I also want to be very open for hospitality. Reach out to all those people that have been on my "You're cool and I don't see you enough" list. It's a long list, y'all. Minnesotans are cool people.

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes.

I hope you'll stick around! 

What kind of things would you like to see me write about? Is there a topic that would feed you right now? Are you making any changes in your life right now?

Where I've Been Lately

This has been one of my longest writing breaks in a good while. I think it's time to level with y'all and let you know where I've been lately.

Talking Off-line

In the Diocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul, the young adults have been leading discussions about the church crisis, developing concrete steps for moving forward, and submitting a letter to the Bishop. I attended the first large discussion with over a hundred other young adults. While I felt like it was a productive conversation at my table, the equal representation of men and women in the room was not reflected in who stood up to address the larger group.

I emailed the organizers about it. Which turned into an invitation to their next planning meeting.
Which turned into getting involved in next steps.
Which turned into being listed as an organizer by the time the letter was released.
All within just a few days.

That meant that more people have been coming up to me wanting to talk about the crisis and what is being done about it in the diocese. I love having those conversations in person! Human connection is so very important for having these hard discussions, and I believe very strongly that we need to feed our community connections now more than ever.
Not every conversation is positive, but I think it is harder for most people to see the subject of their frustration as an object when they are a flesh and bone person standing in front of them.

Writing Online

All of those in person conversations have been enlightening. Plenty of young parents have told me that changes are unnecessary, that the "past should be in the past", or just straight up that the crisis does not concern them.

I wrote a piece for YA Respond, the collection of people who are behind the young adult response in the diocese, addressing that reaction.

Beyond that, I've been on the quiet side online because of....

The Fallout

I knew there would be push back, but I never anticipated how much I would be torn down by other WOMEN. I've gotten hateful emails, messages, comments. One women told me, to my face, that I should "Go home and love your babies instead of talking like this."

It's been a lesson in internalized misogyny, I tell you what.

I appreciate that it's easier for women to be angry at another woman, and to take out their frustrations on someone like me who is sticking her neck out. But just because something is easy does not make it ok. I'm not actually an endless pit that can take all the evil of the world. I'm a human being who isn't always being seen as one right now.

Let's be very clear here - if you have issues with how things are being handled right now, you are invited to get your butt in gear and do something too. I will not allow anyone to continue on harming their own souls by venting their hatred.

Protecting my own mental health has been important because, imagine that, I still have other things going on in my life.

Homeschooling

Like homeschooling. This has been a rocky year.
This year I am schooling 1st grade and preschool. 1st grade seems to be a turning point on when it's ok to be different from your peers. Suddenly I'm getting a lot of push back about learning to read (still on that struggle bus) and doing pretty much anything I ask during the day.
It's very hard when the number of young homeschooling families seems to be plummeting, and all his little friends are in the parish school together or at various other schools.

The preschooler would prefer to do school everyday. She does not believe in this concept of "the weekend". If she could start kindergarten right now, that would be swell by her.

Preschooler has been allowed to start phonics because I just can't keep her from starting any longer. Open to suggestions for a struggling to blend, not even beginning, reader. I've tried most of what I've found online and it's not doing the trick here on week 5.

Bleaching E V E R Y T H I N G

The drama could not stop with the big kids! I brought the baby into the doctor with, what I thought, was a bad yeast diaper rash. It was that, but also Staph. STAPH. Eeeeeeeek!!!

This has been a lesson in how little can actually be done against bacteria, but I am fighting this battle with so. much. bleach.

ALLLLLLL THE BLEACHHHHHH!!

Modern medicine is a marvel, y'all.
Somehow this baby is still pretty cheerful, despite the infection with the awful creatures.

Auditioning

It's been a few weeks of hard, and frankly I needed a win. I did an audition that I *think* went really well!
I'm the kind of Type A actor who keeps an audition log. That way I can record exactly how many times I've thrown myself against this brick wall. (I jest...sort of...) This was my 15th audition. In my "mood coming out" column for this audition I put "nailed it". We'll see what ends up in the "outcome" column.

Amelia Hill House reno

We are attempting to tackle two big areas before the winter sets in: the nursery and the library.

Upon removing the wallpaper in the nursery, and letting it sit, it became apparent that the vintage wallpaper was just not in good enough condition to preserve. The plaster behind it was flaking off the wall, and I called it as a DIY project. For a room intended for a baby the various issues were getting beyond my pay grade.

It's been a few weeks of occasionally having workers here scraping the wall and re-plastering. I don't love parenting and homeschooling with strange men coming in and out all day (who don't speak to me. It's weird.) I keep reminding myself how nice it will be to finally have all the rooms upstairs in usable condition!

We finally won the battle of the rusty nails (...by bringing in a handy man who tackled it in 10 minutes...) so we are now picking colors for the library! We found a local carpenter to build shelves that will be stained to match the dark walnut inlays we have in the floor. I'm going for a 1920's study feel to it, that won't feel too dark in the dead of winter. Ideas welcome!

It does get s t r o n g light in the late afternoon, so I'm thinking red would be a little intense. I like the idea of a dark green, but we have used a lot of green in the house so far.

Linking this little life update with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes!

Summer is Rocking and Rolling!

It's officially summer, and things are moving fast here! So here's an update on the week, and what to look forward to coming up.

1

First off, wow, thanks for the love on "That's Beautiful, But It's Not for Me" post!

I did not anticipate that piece resonating with so many people, and it's been beautiful to see your responses!

2

I did manage to write a short follow up post to give some examples of where this phrase has made space in my own life. I've had some requests for deeper follow up posts, and I would love to but....

3

...We're about to leave on a 14 hour road trip! With three kids, including a baby!

So I'm going to be a little tied up for a bit.

I'll still be checking social media and email during our trip, and documenting it when I can (because *I* need to look back on these posts to remember!)

We're going to Texas, so if you're in the Dallas area, say hi!

4

Thanks to everyone who shared their road trip with kids/babies tips and tricks with me on Facebook and Instagram! I'll try them out over this two day trip (and the two days back), and let you know what the winners were for our family.

The kids and I are working on making busy bags out of things we already have around the house, and organizing the car, today. We cleaned out the car the other day and I think it's the travel equivalent of clean sheets.

So pretty!
And it's about to get so filled and messy!
But that's the point.

5

While I'm not going to be posting here while we're traveling (I think), I will be guest posting over on Not So Formulaic, and I have a piece on Everyday Ediths this week.

So if you ever wanted to read about my take on femininity for Catholic women, or why homeschooling is a gift to our family (goes live on Tuesday) , check those out!

6

This past week included Father's Day AND my husband's birthday.
That always means fun fancy cooking!

For his birthday I created a dinner out of what I had in the kitchen or from the farm box. The result was cheese grits topped with poached egg and prosciutto wrapped asparagus.

The kid's reactions:

John (6) - *takes a little bite* "Hmm, this is actually quite good."
Therese (3) - *mouth stuffed* "Um, it's DE-WISH-OUS!"

This encapsulates their eating styles well.

7

This week began a 54 week rosary novena! If you have any prayer intentions, the first 27 days is in petition and the remaining 27 are in thanksgiving, send them my way! I love to remember your intentions, I write them all down in my bullet journal, and it makes me so happy to hear about the fruits of prayer in your lives!

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes.

This is a "catch up" kind of post for me, so what is new in your life? What are your plans in the upcoming weeks? Is there something you are particularly proud of from the last few weeks? 

What I'm Doing Here

This is part of the CWBN Blog Hop. Visit here each month for a new topic with Catholic women bloggers.

"What am I even doing here?"

I would be lying if I said that thought has never crossed my mind - in fact, it has happened in just about every situation. I question what I'm really working towards in ballet, in parish work, in auditions, even at the park. I wonder what I have to offer that is any different from everyone else or if I am making any forward movement at all.

Blogging might be one of the biggest areas of that last wondering. The blog world isn't exactly lacking the voice of a Catholic mom, but here I am talking anyway on the tiniest off chance I might be your brand of weird.

In case you're new here, I want to take the chance to let you get to know me a little better!

Intro time!

I'm a Texas girl living in the SF Bay Area. I'm home with my 4 and 2 year old during the day, and I dance, act, and sing by night. More on the About Me page

Why I Started Blogging

My first post was in July of 2015. I started writing my own blog because I had noticed that no one asked me any questions that did not relate to my kids. Ever. I figured that if no one thought I had anything to say than I had better start talking!

How This Blog Got Its Name

My husband suggested the name Under Thy Roof after my first few choices for blog names were taken. I wanted something to  simultaneously reference the little domestic church and the big Catholic Church.

Under Thy Roof references the words of the Roman Centurion in Matthew 8, which are also the last words we speak in preparation to receive the Eucharist at mass, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." I like to think of my home, and my personhood, as being God's first and foremost. Hence it's all his roof. I just live and work here.

What I Do Here

You might have noticed that I write a lot about Catholicism, Parenting, Homeschool, Performing (mostly about Ballet but I throw some theater in there too), and I have a penchant for writing strong articles when something makes me mad.

I honestly think there are other people on the internet who can cover the first three better than I, in fact I know they do (maybe with the exception of this particular issue), but I feel like I'm speaking in an echo chamber when it comes to performing. I know it is not because there are not moms working in the performing arts, because I work with some of them and I am one, but their voices are hard to find outside the theater.

Performing is a big part of who I am, and that did not die with that first positive pregnancy test. Continuing to take my opportunities to perform, even with little kids, takes some creativity and gumption but has been well worth it. I am proud to show my kids that they enhance my life, and that it is possible, even desirable, to grow your passions at the same time. We've found a beautiful balance in our lives that allows both my husband and I to pursue what we love. 

I don't think I'm the only person like me out there, so I am writing this for her. 

For the mom who is currently walking through the intense loneliness and isolation of that first year with baby.

For the Catholic woman who feels called to veiling.

For the young adult who feels like they are a social pariah for wanting to be fully Catholic.

For the new homeschool parents who worries their kid is missing out.

For everyone who wonders what might have happened if they had stuck with ballet a little longer.

For anyone scared of going for something new and failing.

If I might be your flavor of weird, stick around and introduce yourself! If you just think I'm weird, stick around too. Lord knows you're in good company.