Last week I discussed the worth of walking down the wrong path. In that piece I focused more on saying a full yes to one vocation, only to ultimately learn that it was not meant for me. That time spent discerning was a gift instead of a waste.

It's relatively easy to accept that taking a risk on discernment will pay off somehow. But what about when the "wrong road" involves losing a child? What if it means losing multiple children? Was it still worth it?

I've shared a bit about our story from this summer. A very complicated miscarriage in June that didn't end until July when we also had to do surgery to remove a cystic tumor on my ovary (unrelated to miscarriage, I'm just lucky like that.) A subsequent miscarriage in September.

I don't think it truly was a "wrong road" to have been open to those pregnancies, but it was a wrong road in the sense that it did not lead to a living baby as one would hope. Roads that lead to heartache are roads most people would rather not travel. It's not wrong to feel that.

However, I wasn't anticipating how strongly my losses would result in me being avoided. Like miscarriage is catching. Like I have a bad luck virus. Even among women who have had miscarriages, my story is odd. This particular road is rare, and, perhaps the scariest of all, unavoidable.
My losses are not due to any underlying problem we have been able to identify. All three are more than likely due to bad luck. There is nothing I could have done to prevent them. There is nothing to do to avoid losing future children.

That terrifies people.

We don't like it, but it's true - being open to life will entail being open to death. Whether we accept that reality or not. A road that you thought was bordered by sunshine and daisies can turn into a nightmare in an instant. But it's still a grace to be on that road. It is better to have been open to grace and cooperating with it, than to have prevented the heartache with sameness.

Heartache is a reminder of the power and size of your yes. When your heart breaks over a sudden turn in the road, it lets you know how deeply you meant your yes. Heartache is a beautiful reminder that you were willing to become more. More open, more loving, more a follower of Christ. This is not the "be more" of Pinterest inspirational quotes. This is the being more that is our invitation to accept God can do anything. We can be more his on this hard path.

God did not intend for your baby to die. Our God is not a cruel God. I think it's important to lay that out there.
The idea that this road has included loss, or losses, that furthers God's grace does not mean that you should not grieve. If anything it means grief will be so much more real.

A pothole in this road is the temptation to what I call the Pain Olympics. Comparing our pain to be greater than or less than the pain of others, and using that comparison to justify harmful behavior. This is not a healing strategy. The Pain Olympics only hands out loser awards. Even if you "win" it just means you are still hurting. We can do that without belittling the pain of others.

What I don't want to become is bitter on this road. Which does not mean I accept that the people who have reacted hurtfully in this process haven't hurt me. It's right to be hurt by hurtful things. It just means that instead of pretending these awful months didn't happen, I can use this experience to push for change. To allow the next woman walking her sudden wrong road to have someone next to her. To do the little things I can do. Cooperating with God's grace does not have to die with my babies. It can be the ultimate sign of their life.

Was this road worth it? 100% yes. Does it hurt? 100% yes.

Yes is a super power if we allow it to be.

What have been some of your unexpected "wrong roads"? How have you cooperated with Grace?

How to Self-Help Without the Self-Loathing

We've all heard it. The how-I-became-a-better-person story in every self-help genre book. It normally starts with a tale of woe about how awful they were, how not enough, how behind, and how horrible the world was for them.
Maybe it's true, maybe some people have to hit their own rock bottom before making a change. But every time I read these stories I wonder how much more encouraging they would be if the self-loathing wasn't such an integral starting point?

Like what would happen if women (because let's be real, that's the typical target audience of these stories) could hear story after story of people making a change in their life out of a place of acceptance?
What if instead of fad dieting, in its many forms, we ate food for nourishment and in connection with other people?
Couldn't there be balance in our activities?
Making a change out of a desire to grow, instead of a desire to run away from our now-selves?

I think what's missing from most of the writing of self-help authors is a knowledge of the goodness and inherent dignity of each person. They're missing God.
Which isn't to say they don't respect the people they are writing for - clearly they think we are capable of becoming more than what we are. They just miss the point where without an understanding of the humanity end game, it's very hard to travel to that destination.

Most self help books fail to answer why we should want become what the author is proposing. Yes, sometimes it's wrapped up in studies showing why we should make this change, but those are often less convincing when investigated. Too often the author is arguing we should remake ourselves in their own image.

I have a favorite quote from St. Anthony of Padua on the subject - yes the guy you pray to to help you find lost stuff.  Many don't know that St. Anthony was a prolific writer, and we still have many of his homilies and talks. He has a beautiful perspective on how to approach becoming our best selves:

"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."

Oh how wonderfully freeing! 

What St. Anthony gets, and most self-help books don't, is in order to become our truest selves we must have a complete understanding of reality. An understanding of truth that leads us to see ourselves completely and fully as who we are. We have to seek ourselves to seek God, and seek God as we seek ourselves.

That means we can't buy someone else's prepackaged wellness religion. We can't shut off whole parts of ourselves. It often means leading a very different life from our friends and loved ones.

But we get something so much better.

We get to love others without the comparison, envy, and eventually hatred that comes from loathing ourselves. 

We get to take perfection out of its oppressive, perverted, usage and reclaim it for it's truth - that seeking perfection is seeking God who is perfect. 

We can take all of the anxiety and worry and pressures we have heaped on our shoulders, and notice that it's never been our burden. That was never meant to be there.

We are meant for love, we are meant for God, and we are meant to be who were created to be.

Thankfully, God is patient. He lets it be a process. I have all the leeway in the world to get frustrated, angry, and just done with trying. He lets me be sorry. He lets me stand up and try again. He's infinitely patient, infinitely good.

Seeking his path and truth is the image I want to discover in myself. It does take work. It does take effort. It sometimes looks like getting my butt to the gym and eating well. It does mean making time to read and continuing to nurture my mind. But that only stays helpful if I am seeking the me God sees. Because I am already who he loves - this isn't about making myself good enough for God. It's about learning to see myself in God's truth.

That's real self-help.

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Perhaps I've Been "Mama"ed Out

It's an odd world I inhabit. A world suspended between that of adults and children, workforce and home front, religious and secular. Sometimes it seems like a parallel universe - population 1.
But I can't be alone in straddling these social lines. The idea of being an engaged community member, worker, and friend, while also being a parent and spouse, is not a rare one.

So why does it feel so lonely? Why are so many of us convinced that we are alone in our experience and struggles?

I think it comes down to this: the language we use to speak to, and of, other women, and the simplistic way we think of ourselves and others.

We have "mama"ed ourselves into a hole

There's a right way to be a mother. Or at least there is a little scrap of rules for what a good mother should look like and do in many minds. It normally reads something along the lines of "makes the same choices I have made" irregardless if that is a reasonable expectation.

I saw this in what could only be called "pearl clutching" by some mothers over the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
I assumed the hoopla would be over the language and sexual jokes.
But no, that would be your run of the mill pearl clutching, this was a new level.
They were upset that the lead character agrees to go on tour without a pre-laid plan for her children. In fact, every night she spent out pursing comedy as a career might as well have been a personal affront to mothers everywhere. They interpreted another woman's choices, a fictional character mind you, as a method to "make fun of people who value raising children."

No matter that this was an entirely different time and place, or, ya know, fiction. There are rules and standards for what it means to be a good mother, and they just so happen to line up with my own choices, huzzah!

Because we are mama tribe! Mamas unite! Mamas-who-look-and-think-and-do-like-me-because-we-are-the-saviors-of-all!

Y'all, we can't do this and then turn around and complain about burnout and isolation. 

I can't even count how many times I have seen women exclude other women or persist in continuing unhealthy situations. I then watch those same women post sunshine and rainbows, of said situation, on social media. #blessed

This is perhaps one of the few times I think the academic phrase "complicit in their own oppression" is an accurate descriptor.
Women are the ones who have hurled  the most vitriol at me - a stranger on the internet. Women are the ones who have refused to cast me because I'm a mother. Women have made cliques and iced me out of groups I started. Yes, there are bigger factors in all of this, but I don't think they would have as much control if women would stop consenting to be weapons against other women. If women would stop weaponizing against themselves.

The truth is for every possibility automatically eliminated as a potential for another woman leaves another possibility eliminated for herself. Not out of necessity, but out of an oversimplified idea of who she is and who she can be.

There a flatness to this "mama" world. Where we call strangers on the internet "mama" as some form of false unearned intimacy. Where talk of "my mama heart" takes the place of having normal human empathy.
We miss the multi-dimensional whole person that is so desperately desired when discussing children. Children are whole persons. They get to have hopes, dreams, and aspirations. They can to be living, growing, people. Why can't their mothers?

Time to take up some space!

This isn't about being abrasive or confrontational.
It's about not apologizing for being a human being with gifts and wholeness and possibilities!
It's about seeing yourself as a person of worth that is not defined by how well your parenting choices line up with the current fads.

Don't be afraid to wear multiple hats. Sometimes I'm a mom of three at home and up to my eyeballs in constant laundry, books, and cooking. Sometimes I'm a young woman out with friends or attending a talk or performance. I can discuss books, current events, and ideas just as well as I can cooking and parenting.

I'm not doing this to check all the boxes so I can claim "not just a mom". I'm doing this because this is what it means to be honest about who I am: body, heart, mind, and soul.

I long to see more honesty from other women. I long to be more honest myself.

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Related Posts

Authenticity and the Curation of "Real"

Women We Won't See

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What are your thoughts on "mama"isms? How we encourage more multi-dimensional living among parents of young children? What did I leave out here?

How Are We Teaching Our Girls to Live as Catholic Women?

There's something off about how we speak to girls about their futures in the Church.

We say "The world needs what women are" but it is women themselves who shoot down other women.

We say "Women need to be part of the decision making process in the Church" but the questions about which decisions, exactly, go quietly unanswered.

We say "Women play a vital role in the life and hands of the Church" but are we treating the formation of our future Catholic women as vital or is it more of an afterthought?

I see this in many parishes manifesting as a lack of strong formation, or even social, programs specifically for girls. Vocations discernment programs largely being aimed at future priests, not future nuns or sisters.
Girls get the message - I am on my own here.

But we try and catch them later! We see adult women struggling to find their place in the Church, to fulfill their vocation, to understand their faith heritage. We try to offer studies, groups, lectures, events.
Yet we do it poorly so much of the time.

I don't know about my fellow women, but I am so weary of a Catholic women's spirituality that desires to do Theology Lite. A spirituality that says "We will have the work of your hands, just don't ask questions of your mind." These groups are meant for encouragement so you can "keep on keeping on", but are not really a launching point for change and difference.
This is a pressure within the Church, from women to other women. We give this to ourselves, and this is the world we are showing our daughters in faith.

When I look around at what my 4 year old daughter can age into through parish life, I don't see many opportunities to grow her connections with other Catholic girls. That's a shame. Girls will be asked many more hard, pressing, questions, and at a younger age, than their male peers. She will need those connections. She will need that knowledge base, and the experience of growing with other faithful girls.

I am a faithful Catholic woman, and I will remain so, but to do that well I need to be Church. This needs to be a community that pushes each other to be better. To know Jesus better and to love each other better.

The Church is in crisis right now. Frankly, it's probably going to be in crisis for a while. A long while. This isn't going to go away.
Now, more than ever, we need to see and identify those places where the Catholic community is weak and lax. Those places that have been left for later. Ignored and even belittled.

My fellow Catholic women, let's learn! Let's tackle learning those parts of the faith that we have never ironed out in our minds. Let's make space for our daughters to grow. Let us be a community of faith AND works. A community that sees that women are not just the fuel for the parish machine, but a beautiful, vital, distinct, and visible part of the Church.

How do you see places the Catholic Church could better serve girls? What places do you see needing to be addressed in the wider Church? In your own specific area?

On Being a Catholic Feminist

I am a Catholic Feminist. But that last word is really redundant.

I am a Catholic Feminist because I cannot be Catholic without being Feminist. If by Feminist it is meant that one believes in the dignity and worth of women as equal to men, than of course I am a Feminist. To be otherwise would make me a bad Catholic. Really.

The Catholic Church is the first institution that believed I am worthwhile purely because I am a human being.
In every other instance my personal worth is based on what I can offer or how I can be used.

Every. Other. Instance.

I have been asked to choose between my fertility or a career.
My health or my finances.
My intellect or my integrity.
The Catholic Church teaches that "the person represents the ultimate end of society" (CCC 1929) and that "the equality of men rests essentially on their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it" (CCC 1935). To demand these impossible choices within our own personhood, especially as broadly as our society does, is immoral and demeaning. These demands, still, fall disproportionately on women. When it comes to calling a spade a spade, I'm still going to bet on the Catholic Church before government or society.

But there are those who say "the Church hates women" and that I cannot possibly be a woman in the Church without being "complicit in your own oppression". This assertion normally centers around just three issues: abortion, contraception, and women priests. Abortion and contraception I believe fall under the false choices (typically fertility vs. career) listed above. So let's talk about women priests for a second.

I wrote an outline of my thoughts on this matter a while ago, but here is the gist of why I think the issue of female ordination should not determine whether or not the Church respects women. I think to say that women are not respected unless any of them can be priests is about the most disrespectful thing one can say about the lay state.

Think about it. By that same token, married people are not respected in the Church. Men over 40 are not respected. The mentally ill and the uneducated are not respected. Children are not respected
The list becomes quite lengthy.

To make ordination the basis of respect means that we would have to erase all the different states present within the Church, and within life. It is true that the life of laity has not always been best cared for or nurtured, but only a fool would argue that the lay state is not important to the Church! It is from the laity that our children are born, nurtured, and educated. The laity who carry out so many corporeal and spiritual works of mercy. Who are absolutely essential to the very breath of the Church.

Women in particular make up a disproportionate number of the laity that are so necessary to the life of the Church. If you have never read JPII's Letter to Women you are missing out on some of the most beautiful writing of praise for the state of womanhood.

"Thank you, every woman, for the simple fact of being a woman! Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood you enrich the world's understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic." (Letter to Women)

I am at home within the Catholic Church.

I am empowered.

I am free.

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This month we are talking about women in the Church on the CWBN Blog Hop. Head over to read more takes on it!