Missing Motherhood

In high school, I was often frustrated with the standard gender narrative for women (get married in the temple, have babies, become a noble mother in Zion, ad nauseum). I was passionate about education, and even in high school, I imagined myself going to graduate school. I resented being told over and over in YW that my only purpose in life was to be a mother. I wasn’t anti-motherhood, but I had other goals and dreams that I wanted everyone (including God) to recognize. Read More

The Grace of Community and Friendship

Last week I began to ponder how the Atonement might apply currently to the struggles I’m facing. We’re taught that the Atonement is not only there for sinners, but for everyone who needs healing and reconciliation. I began to wonder how it might be possible to use the Atonement to reconcile myself to a God from whom I am distant and with whom I am very upset.

This was in the back of my mind as I went to church on Sunday.  Read More

Finding Myself

Recently, as I’ve sat pondering the mess that’s been my life for the past year, I noticed a common thread. For awhile now, I’ve been allowing other people to invade my boundaries, to dictate how I will act, to affect my life in negative ways without directly standing up for myself and my needs. Instead, I’ve been withdrawing further and further into myself, hoping the barrage from the world around me would stop. Read More

Going Nowhere, Fast: Two Decades of Religious Crisis, and Counting

It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another; it’s one damn thing over and over.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Late this afternoon I sat down to feed my seven-month-old daughter dinner. She quickly tires of solid food; she’ll accept a few spoonfuls, but then she wants to bang her fists on her tray and throw Cheerios on the floor, so I keep my laptop on the table to entertain myself in between offering bites of cereal or strained peas. In my browsing I came across a presentation on Mormonism and feminism I gave sixteen years ago, the summer I was twenty-one. I clicked on the file with trepidation, sure I’d be dismayed at how young and naïve and foolish I sounded. But what I found was far worse: I was dismayed at how familiar I sounded. Sixteen years ago I was dealing with almost exactly the same issues in Mormonism that I am now. Read More

A God of the Future

I’m pretty gloomy when it comes to questions of human nature.  I very much believe in original sin.  I don’t buy the optimistic notion that humans aren’t really all that bad, and just need a bit of education to be persuaded to do the right thing.  No, I resonate much more with Alma on this one: we’re carnal, sensual, and devilish.  It’s not just that without grace, we can’t quite make it to the finish line on our own; we’re wandering off in the wrong direction altogether.  It’s why I like Augustine, who would have no patience with the positive self-talk of 20th and 21st century pop psychology.  We’re pretty messed up, we human beings.  We hurt each other, both inadvertently and intentionally.  We hurt ourselves.  We set out to do good, but our motives are mixed, and our efforts prone to self-sabotage.  We plan to repent–but not yet. Read More

Riding the California Zephyr

6:30 am

My alarm goes off. I’m in a deep sleep, dreaming about my sister Melyngoch coming back from her mission and wanting to go on a crazy hike involving a lot of waterfall crossings. I get up, and pack my last few things. I have a large suitcase, a small one, a backpack and a small bag. Also, two other train necessities: a pillow and blanket. Since I’ll be flying later, I’ve been careful not to bring too much—one of the advantages of train travel is that the luggage limits are rather more generous (not to mention that they don’t come with extra fees), and it’s tempting to over-pack.

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How Do I Change Who I Am for Myself?

When your life is tightly entwined with the lives of others, you adjust who you are to meet their needs and expectations.  For example, spouses make small, daily adjustments so that they don’t push their partners’ buttons.  Parents postpone their desires in order to tend to those of their children.  When not taken to an extreme, this is a good thing.

The past couple years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about to what extent we should bend who we are to make our relationships with others work.  While I still have a lot of unanswered questions about the outer limits of sacrifice, I’ve learned to embrace the ways that relationships can refine us and transform us into better versions of ourselves.  But now my life circumstances have changed, and because I want to continue a process of transformation, now I’m wondering: how do I change who I am for myself? Read More

Self-Motivation

Like all of my family, and most people I know, I get easily addicted to computer games (currently it’s various word games on facebook, but it changes). I can also get very into TV shows, a few video games, and all sorts of books. All of this combines, at times, to make me incredibly unproductive. And then I have to think of creative ways to get myself to do something other than play stupid computer games. I’m kind of like a little kid that way. Here are some of the things I do (or have done): Read More

Demoted to Mrs.

Marriage is at once the most public and the most private of institutions. On the private side, although we can both be incredibly stubborn, my husband has never treated me with the slightest hint of condescension or domineering. Even in the early days of our marriage when he was still a believer, it would never have so much as crossed his mind to pull priesthood rank, which is of course one of the reasons I married him. But as ECS’s excellent post about the cultural blind spots in which women reside recently reminded me, whatever private arrangements husband and wife make, for women, marriage can mean social invisibility. Read More

The Joy of Being “Not Pregnant”*

Last August I started a post entitled “Enjoyment and Productivity, or, The Adventures of Supermom.” I was celebrating the fact that I was writing quite a bit, and loving it. But not only was a writing a lot, I was doing better about keeping up with all of the other things I was supposed to be doing as well. My house was cleaner than ever, I cooked more dinners, I was more pleasant with my kids and I played with them more. Life was great. I posited that perhaps I was so productive overall because I was doing something I loved and was enjoying myself, and that made me happier and better able to deal with all of the other things as well.

The reason I never finished that post is that a few days after I started it I found out I was pregnant. Read More

My Trouble with Spectator Sports

On April 29th, the San Antonio Spurs beat the Phoenix Suns and dismissed them from the NBA playoffs. I’ve been a passionate fan of the Suns for several years, and I was hugely disappointed that they hardly put up a fight, losing this first round series, 4-1. I watched parts of the series, but not all of it. It wasn’t for lack of interest that I didn’t watch it all, though. It was that I couldn’t bear to watch my team play badly or see the Spurs or their fans rejoicing. In the deciding game of the series, for example, I turned the TV off when, with under a minute to play and the Suns down one point, Boris Diaw got the ball in the low post and then turned and threw a cross-court pass to . . . nobody, and the ball went out of bounds. The fans in San Antonio went crazy and I felt sick. So I turned the game off. I was happy to miss the agonizing final seconds.

But what if the Suns had won? Would I have kicked myself for giving up too early? Read More

To Some It Is Given: Knowledge, Doubt, Mercy

Today’s thread over at BCC arguing that the loss of faith is ultimately a choice included a comment that wrenched my heart.

Subsequent discussion made reference to a passage in D&C 46 that has haunted me for most of my life, particularly these strange words:

To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world.
To others it is given to believe on their words, that they might also have eternal life if they continue faithful. Read More

Some New Year’s Thoughts

Usually sometime in January, I write down a list of the things I’d like to try and accomplish during the upcoming year. It’s usually not a long list, and I’m not very intense about it, and I usually only accomplish one or two things on the list (and this is often based on the fact that one to two things on my list are things that I think I will likely accomplish). However, I enjoy doing some thinking about how my life has gone for the past year and what I’m trying to envision for the upcoming year.

Except this year I’m not sure if I want to write up a list. Read More

Changing Course in Life

I haven’t been around as much the past little while because I’ve been on the job market, moving, and preparing for a new job. No, I haven’t finished my dissertation. I’m currently rethinking my life plans, and I have found a job as a secondary school English teacher, which I will start in a couple weeks (which means I probably continue to be scarce for the next month or two as I adjust to the new job).

It’s all kind of strange because I’ve wanted to be an English professor since high school. But the past year or so, that dream has been slowly fading, though I didn’t recognize it until I had a sudden moment of realization a couple months ago. Read More