This one’s for you.

Given the name of this substack, it’s sort of ironic that I haven’t written a thing about writer’s block. Part of it is, of course, that the topic’s been written to death (possibly because writing about writer’s block is one way to get over it). Still, I thought I’d give it a go. Over the last few years, I’ve learned a few tricks. Maybe they’ll work for you.

Let’s start by analyzing the problem.

What is writer’s block?

For me (and perhaps for most of us) writing as an act is less an exercise of intellect than of character. It takes courage. I sigh and grimace often as I write. My vague idea of what I am doing always seems great in theory. But when I see the stunted syllables crawl across the page, I suddenly understand the truth: I’m stupid, my writing’s stupid, it’s all terrible and awful and very bad.

Oftentimes, what we call a “block” happens at this moment. Perceiving an impossible gulf between the platonic Form of our story and the messy first draft, we give up. We retreat either into the comfort of inaction or anonymity (or both). And so you may find that as you hunt for fellow writers in the wild, many of the dark academia sorts you peg for the real deal have not, in fact, put pen to paper, while those that have done the deathly deed will protest mightily that they are not “real” writers because their writing is no good. Both types rarely complete projects.

Two strategies for beating writer’s block

My recommendations for overcoming writer’s block differ depending on which coping mechanism you use to avoid your work.

For those who tend to mask inactivity behind a writerly aesthetic, I recommend austerity.

Maya Angelou famously wrote in empty hotel rooms with nothing but a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of cards. Darkroom is the modern software equivalent. It’s free and very ugly. Which is kind of the point if you’re worried you’re a poser. Nobody would use this word processor unless you wanted to get down to brass tacks.

In some seasons of my life, I’ve needed Darkroom and yellow legal pads to remove distractions and cut to the essence of what I was doing. It prevents me from hiding in the trappings of tweed, book stacks, and tortoiseshell glasses, and forces me to just do it.

But if you are simply demoralized, I’ve found that building a positive association between the ugly act and a pleasurable experience can help. Which particular association one builds varies. (Hemingway’s was alcohol. I don’t recommend that one, especially since the goal is, after all, to write every day.)

Personally, I brew a mug of strong black tea with a dash of milk and settle down to my desk. If I’m on a kick, the tea is enough to make me happy about writing. I’ll open my Google Doc and go at it. But if I’m feeling sluggish, I take out a notebook and pen.

Most recently, I’ve been using a notebook gifted to me by an artist friend. She just opened an Etsy shop, Eden Press. Her designs tend to feature Christian and mythological motifs.

As for writing implements, I like me a good old-fashioned fountain pen. In this season, I reserve them for working on my novel.

My fanciest is undoubtedly Ellington Pens’ Rosy Flair, gifted in exchange for a feature here. One way you can support me is by using my affiliate link to get a discount on a purchase.

Use coupon code AMELIA for 20% off

Reviewing the “Rosy Flair” fountain pen

The experience of opening an Ellington Pens package is quite luxe. You break into a marbled cardboard outer box, only to discover a pebbled case within, and, finally, within its inner sanctum, lovingly nestled, the pen itself.

The Rosy Flair is a convertible pen, which means you can use pre-filled ink cartridges, or fill it with your own bottled ink. They say, “Writing is easy; just sit at a table and bleed.” Well, I bleed green ink, so that’s what I used for this pen. It fills effortlessly via a screw mechanism at the top, which draws ink through the nib into the reservoir.

The Rosy Flair is my first solid steel pen. I was surprised to find that its weight made the writing process not more but less physically taxing. The top of the cap is heavy, which helps the pen to balance stably on my index knuckle as I write, mimicking the comfortable sensation of a weighted blanket. Because gravity does the work of pulling the nib to the paper, I didn’t need to apply pressure through my fingers as I wrote. The motion was fluid and effortless.

Inkflow is almost immediate, and it’s steady. I haven’t had to blot any big blobs with the Rosy Flair. With my other pens, I usually end up with stains on my fingers and a few spatters on my page. They’re often finicky with pressure and weather changes. So far, the Rosy Flair hasn’t had these issues.

I wish I had some criticisms to boost my credibility as a reviewer. But I don’t, and I’m not going to make any up. It’s the nicest pen I own, and it makes me look forward to writing.

For those of you who’ve never owned a fountain pen, I recommend trying The Rosy Flair, or a similar pen in a different color. It’s beginner friendly—by which I mean that unless you let it go through the wash, it’s unlikely to make a big mess.

Get 20% off a pen with this link

Get real and go analog

There are numerous cheap pens on the market, including disposables, but I think it’s worth it to spend a bit more on something you plan to use frequently. Part of my experience retreating from the internet into the real world has been an increased attention to how my surroundings make their mark on me. Not only in a forest-bathing way, but also in the manmade world of design. How does my body position itself when I’m on a stool, as compared to a chair, or a meditation pillow?

Breaking free of the digital trance, you become newly aware that the image you see on a screen is not as important as the thing itself. A Shein coat might look good in an Instagram post, but that doesn’t matter once you wear it outside and realize the wind cuts right through. When we log off, craftsmanship begins to matter again.

Call me Luddite-adjacent, or dismiss me as a “friction-maxx-er,” but I’m not the only one who’s beginning to think that luxury in this age is found more often away from digital technology than in its embrace.

If you’re going analog, might as well go all the way.

At the very least, if you’re mired in writer’s block, try a momentary disconnect. Leave your phone at home. Then—whether you’re using Darkroom, or a pen and paper—go out somewhere without wifi and get going.

Happy writing!

Amelia

Last week was Slob Week, otherwise known as “I’m-prioritizing-novel-writing-cuz-it’s-important-gosh-darnit!”

This mean my house was a wreck, and we ate for sustenance, not flavor: ploughman’s lunches (I’m never going back to cooked lunch) and basic white girl dinners (think italian seasoning and tossing everything in the oven at 400).

This came after a week of hosting my sisters and throwing a toddler Alice in Wonderland birthday party at the level of extra-ness generally reserved for aspiring momfluencers. I was ready for a change of pace.

But I had also been mulling over a few quotes from famous female novelists.

One from J.K. Rowling:

“People very often say to me, ‘How did you do it, how did you raise a baby and write a book?’ And the answer is - I didn’t do housework for four years. I am not Superwoman.

And um, living in squalor, that was the answer.”

―J.K. Rowling

And this one:

“I’ve seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write… and you know it’s a funny thing about housecleaning… it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

These had been itching at the back of my mind for a while. I’d find myself staring at the grime at the base of our toilet thinking, “This is disgusting.” Then, “I can’t stand squalor.” Then, “I guess I can’t be a writer.”

The rough thing is, I used to quite enjoy squalor. My room at college was littered with dog-eared notebooks, wadded up socks, pencil lead, and used tea bags. Our first house was sort of a muted color inside because everything was covered in a fine layer of dust.

Then we had kids. And now, cleanliness is what keeps us all sane. Without cleanliness, I don’t know if we could manage godliness. The spirit is willing (to be filthy), but the flesh is weak (it needs vacuums and Lysol). I could go on. But I won’t.

Bottom line is: last week I didn’t do housework. I wore the same clothes every day until they smelled stale. I didn’t worry about nutrition. I stepped back from monitoring my child’s behavior, from saying “no” to every request for TV or messy crafts. I planned zero activities or playdates or get-togethers.

I wrote.

And the results were striking. It had taken me about a year to write most of Act I of my novel, what with pregnancy and childbirth etc. But in the last fortnight, I completed Act I of my novel and thoroughly plotted and outlined Acts II and III. I have about 75,000 words left to write, but at this point, it’s a coloring sheet just waiting to be filled in.

Slob Week was a success, and I think I’ll do it again sometime—but not right away. I won’t be able to do this often. And I certainly couldn’t have done it alone. Realistically, my family can’t live in squalor. It’s just not our deal. Like I said, sanity etc. So, my husband took over much of the housekeeping (on top of his 9-5 plus 7-9 plus weekends grind).

And I really am quite uncomfortable neglecting my toddler since she’s a humongous extravert and needs constant interaction. So, friends kept her company on no less than three afternoons. Bear in mind, this is in addition to sending my toddler to morning nursery school four mornings a week.

Takes a village to write a novel and raise a child, I suppose.

If you are a writer and a mother, I recommend gifting yourself the occasional Slob Week. Because I think Rowling and Estés were onto something. The housework never ends. And if art always comes second to housework, it’s doomed never to begin.

What do you think? Must we live in squalor? Is there another way? Let me know in the comments section.

Leave a comment

I’m not.

Not at an individual level, anyway. I’m not educated enough to know whether it poses an existential threat to humanity. But it doesn’t pose a threat to me as a writer, a mother, a human. And the reason for this is that I recognize that much of what we complain about— “eeeww it’s raining, I’ll get wet” or “uggh the baby’s crying again”—are actually homely blessings.

You know that corny sign, “Bless This Mess,” that you see in curly black font on midwestern walls? Or the phrase, “He’s only human?” They both acknowledge that there’s something about the human experience that’s annoyingly, but endearingly flawed.

In those two cases I referenced—the rainy day and the crying baby—I may complain, but I wouldn’t want to actually erase the feeling of walking in the rain, or rocking the crying baby. I may send someone else out to run the rainy errand, or I might pass the baby to a friend. But I wouldn’t do it every time. Even if it were just for the pleasure of being able to complain about it later, I would choose to experience discomfort more often than you might expect.

The problem with AI is that it’s very unlike the help you might normally find to ease your load. Friends have their own lives. They show up occasionally to help, and when they do, it creates a mutual sense of obligation and human bonds. But what if you had a “friend” who you could pass the baby to every time it fussed? A “friend” who had no life of her own? A “friend” you didn’t have to pay? This “friend” would be so willing, available, energetic, and eager that you might find yourself passing the baby more and more often—not only when it fussed, but when it pooped, farted, or even frowned.

Soon, you’d realize you hadn’t seen your baby in days.

I’m not going to let that happen to my baby, obviously. But I’m also not going to let that happen to my writing.

I’ll ‘fess to having used an AI tool to brainstorm headlines and titles in the past. It’s not the biggest deal, I think, but as I think I’ve illustrated with the example of the baby, it could lead to a slippery slope. At the bottom of the slope, you find this scene from Pixar’s Wall-E:

The frightening thing about the humans imagined in Wall-E it is that they’re not all that alien. In many parts of the US, you’ll find chubby toddlers rolling along in their strollers, slurping slushees, transfixed by the shining screens before their moon-blank eyes. In many parts of the US, you’ll find adults doing the same. At least, the inane content they’re consuming is still largely man-made. (How sad it is to even see a silver lining to this cloud!) If creatives don’t stake our territory and cling to our craft, with all its slogs and disciplines, the iPad kids and the iPhone adults—themselves growing less-than-fully-human as they forgo walks in the woods for swims in the simulation—won’t even be in a virtual world of man’s imagining. Instead, they’ll themselves be formed and shaped by the invisible hand of a machine.

At first, we bought machine-made products.

Now, we are the product.

But not I!

With that, allow me to announce my official pledge to the anarchic guild, Writers Against AI:

• I will not use AI in my work as a writer.

• I will not support writers who use AI in their work.

• I will support writers, illustrators, editors and others in related fields whose work is entirely human-made.

And to put an emphatic stomp at the end of this rant: It doesn’t matter a bit whether our writing is any good! The point is that it’s human. Here’s a poem about it.

my notes app

my notes app,

it tells me to buy

one yard of fusible interfacing

for making hats, and a lampshade

and twelve china plates,

and to broil apples on bagels

with sharp cheddar bubbling into

char and breadseed poppies must be

sown in snow and the unicorn tapestries

woven by thin-fingered women long-dead

live 4.5 hrs away by car. I’m supposed to ask Paul what he meant in the next life,

that part about wives and husbands. I’m

probably a heretic but who isn’t, and

I know God loves me anyway.

I bought cheap vodka at the liquor store, left two

kids in the car, motor running;

I bought three chairs at the thrift store,

running in and out with the backs tucked under my arms;

I bought a purple tea called butterfly pea and I’ll

plant peas in April after snowdrops

and with mustard greens for chinese beef stew

(sour and tangy, fresh like the smell of

rain on moss).

Yesterday, I drilled through a deck of cards

and the silver corkscrew of the bit sent

flecks of paper flying and that is what

I have just done with words.

Could AI write this? Maybe.

AI is often incoherent, just as I have been.

But my type of incoherence is

distinctly human,

no AI slop,

fragments of a life so vast

it outruns me without moving.

These notes from my phone are all that

my fingernails scraped from life as I

passed through it far too quickly.

These are the curly shavings here, like

rough-edged bits of wax.

So what if this poem is not a poem?

If this writing is not writing?

If it doesn’t meet the code?

The code is a lie,

the lie of the average,

which only exists in mathematicians’ dreams or

in the collective consciousness.

The 1.95 children and the white picket fence

are the lie, not I.

Mine is a strictly human error,

and I’ll make no sense as I sense

the nonsense of a sense that lacks sensation——

and remain, in all my foibles,

obstinately human.

So bite me

(if you can)

More in the same vein…

Hey guys. This is the fourth and final installment of a short story.

Read the previous three chapters here:

1. Clock Time

2. The Hour of Vespers

3. The Hour of Vigil

4. The Hour of Lauds

Yours,

Amelia

THE HOUR OF LAUDS

I gulped air like a beached fish, my lungs pumping uselessly, as my breath refused to catch. But then, the warm fragrance engulfed me, and I was alone and still, once again in the cave.

As my heart’s pounding subsided, I found that although my body insisted on finding relief, I hadn’t really escaped. Though the man’s hands no longer bruised my wrist, I still felt trapped in his grip. I hated myself. Like a half-remembered dream, I recalled my schemes in the garden—my dreams of occult control over the portal—and shuddered.

Then, I heard singing.

“Is somebody there?” I asked.

I walked out to find myself standing, once more, in a garden. The sun hadn’t yet appeared over the horizon, but a low, purple light showed me the outlines of things. A man crouched by a wheelbarrow, picking up fallen fruit from the ground.

And so I barely breathed as I stood in the dark mouth of the cave. I eased myself down to a seat in a nook by the entrance and pulled my knees into my chest and watched the gardener pick up figs, one by one, and plop them into the barrow with such satisfaction I thought he might do it forever without growing bored.

I knew I could watch him forever without growing bored. There was comfort and ease in the lines of his shoulders. And unlike the otherworldly couple with their hair full of stars, his energy was welcoming and familiar, something I had felt on sunny mornings when the light fell through my window and onto my bed in a golden square. Even in the dimness, I could tell he was ugly in an ordinary way. His hair was uncombed and his clothes seemed to have been made for someone shorter and wider. They flapped about his limbs like a scarecrow’s rags.

But I didn’t want to know him. I decided to leave him there, idealized—a faceless figure in a pastoral tableau. If I spoke to him, he would soon shatter the illusion of goodness with a harsh word or an evil look. If I let him be, he would be perfect forever.

He stood up and stretched his body and leaned against the tree, facing towards the east. He opened his palms to the sky in a gesture of thanks, or of welcome, or of prayer. As if it had been waiting for his summon, a sliver of sun peeked up over the mountains.

Quietly, I crept back into the cave. I sat on the stone bench and wept, wiping my eyes on the strips of cloth that I found lying on the ground.

I wanted to go home with that image in my mind of the gardener greeting the new sun. But I didn’t know how to return to The Office of Spirituality & Meaning Making. I sat on the ground.

“Please,” I said, closing my eyes. “I’ve had enough. I want to go back. Take me home.” I tapped my ankles together.

When I lifted my head, nothing had changed. The air was still warm with bittersweet perfume. But now rays of early morning sunlight broke into the interior of the cave, and I wondered if I was somewhere new.

I crept out to find the gardener at his barrow again, humming as he picked up the fallen fruit. It was the same scene, but now the world lay rolled out before me, a clear articulation of grass and trees and sky.

“Who are you looking for?”

The gardener spoke with his back to me.

“No one,” I said.

He had paused his work, and the entire garden seemed to go still with expectation. Nobody spoke for a few moments.

“I am looking for someone good,” I said, slowly, giving in.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked. “What does it mean to be good?”

I thought for a moment. I knew what it meant to be bad, but somehow I’d never taken the step to consider the opposite.

“Someone who is actually vegan and doesn’t cheat,” I said. “Someone who never buys from Amazon, or Apple, or any other company that exploits its workers. Someone who would still want me if they knew my most secret, horrible thoughts. Someone who’s not addicted to alcohol, or porn, or junk food, or their phone. Someone who can enter Heaven without turning it to Hell. That’s who I’m looking for.”

Once I began to speak, I couldn’t stop. It all came pouring out.

“I am looking for life. I am looking for beauty that can’t be touched. I am looking for purity, and I know that in a world like this, purity never can last long. If it isn’t corrupted to look and act just like us, we capture it and kill it with our own grimy hands.

“I am looking for no one. Because what I seek does not exist. But I just keep hoping that somehow, no matter how impermeable my logic seems, it’s absolutely wrong.”

He was listening, and the garden listened with him. Every leaf was still. My words rushed on.

“If perfection does exist, then everything would have to be erased. The bomb in Hiroshima must pull its fire back out of the shadows of the burnt-up people. The bomb must fly back into the plane, and the plane fly back to America. And all the people must reappear in the streets the bomb made empty. All the shadows get their bodies back again.

“And the Japanese and the Germans must never want to conquer and to kill. And all of history must be unraveled and remade because it led us all to this destruction. Suck the evil out of history, and what do you get? Nothing. That is why I am looking for nobody. If good ever existed, we destroyed it long ago.”

Then, I remembered the ginkgo of Hiroshima, its yellow leaves winking in an autumn breeze. One yellow-leafed tree erupted from the gray land. The ginkgo of Hiroshima was more than a tree. It was a possibility, a chink in the armor of fate.

Dr. Bergstrom’s voice echoed in my mind: “All at once, in the twinkling of an eye, an entire world might be transformed.”

The gardener turned. As he did, the sun appeared over the mountains, night vanished away, and the sky flamed orange with fire. He looked at me, and his face was kind and good. As the gardener said my name, I whispered his, for when he knew me, I knew him.

And I saw that the garden was woven from time, and it contained all things that ever were and ever would be. And the garden was on earth, and earth was in the universe, and the universe was the kernel of a fruit, and the fruit was in the palm of the man who stood before me in the garden, scraping away the darkness with one word.

“Mary.”

I woke up with a seed in my hand, a smooth, ridged oval like a closed turtle shell. Quiet reigned in the Office of Spirituality & Meaning Making. The wind had died down. The pounding on the roof had ceased. I gathered my things and walked out the door. I knew I wouldn’t go back.

I trembled as I traversed campus. Finally, I stumbled in the quad, beneath the glowing tapers of the streetlights, and tumbled onto the rain soaked ground. The sky arched above me dizzily, filled with stars, and I felt my soul swell upwards and fly up into the night like a loosed dove. I closed my eyes. In the darkness, I saw light.

Finis

Hey guys. This is the third installment of a short story.

Read the previous two chapters here:

1. Clock Time

2. The Hour of Vespers

3. The Hour of Vigil

4. The Hour of Lauds

I will publish one darkness at a time.

Enjoy!

Yours,

Amelia

THE HOUR OF VIGIL

I ran out of the cavern as soon as I had regained my footing. I wanted to see what had happened, but even more, I felt an intense desire to feel the wind again, the sharp savor of a living life.

But the place outside had changed. The air was still and so black I could not see my hand in front of me, and close by me, someone was weeping. I felt my throat constrict with a sudden urge to join him. The nakedness of the other world was still echoing in my soul. I let the sobs shake my body, sent them into the air to mix with the man’s. He halted mid-cry.

“Is somebody there?” he asked, his voice hoarse and hesitant like he barely remembered how to speak.

“Who are you?” he said. “Some shade of night wandering in search of a body to steal?”

I couldn’t think of an answer. I wanted to leave, but I thought if I tried to sneak off, I would accidentally tumble down a hill or fall off a cliffside.

“Nobody,” I said. “I’ve come here for a walk.”

“Leave me,” he said. “You are certainly a shade trying to deceive me, and when I come near to your voice for comfort, you will steal my body and expel my soul to Sheol.”

“Why are you here?” I asked, still giddy with that naked feeling.

At the question, he began to sob once more. He went on like that for a few minutes, and I hoped that soon whatever had brought me here would allow me to leave. Eden had nearly worn off, and I was beginning to feel the hopelessness of this place suck at me like a leech.

“We were here together in this garden,” he said quietly. “It was the last time I saw him before…”

He struggled to name something and choked, then moved on. “I could have sat with him, strengthened him, been there for him. He knew what was coming. But we wouldn’t listen. We refused to bear reality. And so, while we slept like stupid sheep, he bore the pain alone.”

I did not know what to say. The doors to my heart were closing once more, and all I could do was wish myself far away. I was embarrassed by his tears.

“Lost shade of the night, we are very much alike now, you and I,” he continued. “But back then, I was innocent and stupid like a fattened calf before slaughter. We all were. We thought it was an ordinary night, that beyond the treetops, the stars and moon were rising, and that when they finished their procession through the sky, the sun would return again. We did not know the truth.”

“That night, the sun went down like any night, and we fell asleep. We woke at midnight to the glare of torches and loud shouts. I struck with my knife and saw blood, but at the point of crisis, my courage failed. Our Rabbi was being taken away, not by our oppressors, but by our father, the holiest, the cleanest, the most godly. That’s what stole my spirit. That’s what stayed my hand. In the moment I saw the hard face of the High Priest by torchlight, it began to dawn on me—”

The high priest? The rabbi? He must be Jewish, I thought.

“—it dawned on me that for the first time, there would be no more dawn. From now on, the darkness is infinite. The night is endless.”

My mind latched onto his story here. Yes, I thought. He’s saying it well. I’ve known about this night for some time.

“He alone was good. I thought I was brave, but I am nothing but a loudmouthed coward. The High Priest wears robes and gives to the poor, but he is a corrupt murderer.”

There, he ground his teeth. His voice sputtered and continued in a whisper, like the trail of smoke over a blackened wick.

“I haven’t said it aloud, but I will now. To you, O shade, to the darkness, only because you both will swallow up the truth as if it never was. God sent us his best as a holy gift, and we tortured and killed him. Now, he has rightly burned the ladder between earth and heaven. The sun is dead, and we will never be warmed again.”

Betrayed and betrayer, his very existence had become debatable. Post-explosion, it was a realm of fragment and ruin, he in it, naked amnesiac with no notion of who he was and what he ought next to do. For who can retain any sense of who he is when he has murdered all he loves?

This analysis came later. In the moment, all I felt was fear. He seemed like a man so desperate he would do anything. He thought I was a ghost, and perhaps that had spared me. But I didn’t want to linger any longer. If I was to have a chance at getting home, I needed to find the cave. The problem was, I wasn’t quite sure where it was.

I slowly lowered myself to all fours and began to feel the ground around me. As I let my fingers run over stones and weeds, gathering dust, he continued to speak.

“Now, I’m kneeling. Now, in the dark, awake, with the stones biting into my knees. But now it’s useless, all useless. The longer I sit, the more regret threatens to overwhelm me. It is too late. Nothing I do can help. It’s been Shabbat since the sun went down, and I am profaning God’s holy day. I ought to be at rest. I was supposed to be working on Chamishi and sitting still on

Shabbat. But instead, I slept on Chamishi and now, on Shabbat, I walk and weep and despair, offending God even more. But what does it matter what time I toil or do not toil at anything? It is useless, for the night is endless, and Shabbat and Chamishi and all of time has been swallowed up in Sheol.”

He was silent then. I began to inch in the most probable direction. I thought I had run in a sort of curve from the left. I crawled slowly, making sure to swipe the ground with my hand before I advanced, so that I wouldn’t run into any obstacles or off any cliffs. I hit something solid and froze. It was unmistakably human. I felt his arm move. His hand grasped my wrist.

“Shade of the night, you come from Sheol, do you not? Take me with you when you return.”

I panicked at the tightness of his grip and began to struggle.

“Stop it, let me go!”

I was going to die here. I was going to die here in Nowhere, in a blank, black canvas, and nobody would know where I had gone. I would leave no bones, no bloody mess. It would be as if I never existed.

“Please, please,” I gasped, as he began to drag me along the rocky ground. “I want to live.”

To be continued…

Hey guys. This is the second installment of a short story. Read Ch. 1 here.

The table of contents:

Clock Time

The Hour of Vespers

The Hour of Vigil

The Hour of Lauds

I will publish one darkness at a time.

Enjoy!

Yours,

Amelia

THE HOUR OF VESPERS

Even in the dark, I knew immediately that I was no longer in The Office of Spirituality & Meaning Making. The air was warm and dry and filled with a dusty woodsiness, creamy and slightly sweet. I stood up and moved towards a dim glow until I found myself at the entrance of a cave. The thick perfume faded as a fresh breeze blew by, ruffling my hair.

I stood in a forest, at the bottom of a mountain, and the trees stretched to the heavens so high that I could see only bark. Their roots reached up to chest level. The dim glow came from my feet where a stream of light—not a beam of light, like you might imagine, but actual water—trickled away from me into the roots of the trees. I followed its twisting path through the tree roots, my feet sinking into moss, until we emerged from the forest, the stream and I, and looked out on a plain.

At the horizon, over a field of darkly swishing grass, the sky seemed to descend, tilting like a bowl and releasing its galaxies, the collected contents of the Milky Way, down to earth, and stardust poured down in a distant thunder of waterfalls, and separated into four rivers that flowed down the sky-mountain and radiated out on their paths to places beyond, and I knew that the spring at my feet drew on those waters.

I blinked as I looked down at the spring. I blinked again, more forcefully, feeling a strange need to open my eyes, despite the fact that they were already open. Here, in this place, I sensed that if I tried, I could open them doubly, that I had mistaken the slide-back of eyelids for sight when all along there was a second layer of film over my eyeballs that would retract, if I could only identify the right muscles.

Sometimes, during a full moon, you might observe a circle of light around the moon, like a rainbow over a lake. It’s an optical illusion that occurs when the moonlight refracts off ice crystals in a thin veil of cirrus clouds in the upper atmosphere. Sometimes, when I look up at the sky during a full moon, I see this circular moonbow, and it seems like every word I utter is a tiny crystal of ice, reflecting the light of the moon. But strain as they might, the crystals are always held tightly down beneath the invisible ceiling of the atmosphere. If ever they escaped into the vacuum of space, each crystal would promptly sublimate, disappearing in a puff of vapor. The nearer my words come to approaching this otherworldly place, the more fragile they become, until at last, they shatter into nothing.

The grasses began to bend in swathes as warm gusts of wind blew in from the west. In the distance, I saw two figures like birds flying low over the field. And then they neared and halted before me, pausing airborne—two enormous dragonflies with eyes like multifaceted mirror orbs, sparking weak beams of starlight in every direction, their wings buzzing in a blur of incandescence. Figures slipped from their backs and lighted among the grasses—a man and a woman, their dark hair woven with lattices of flowers and feathers that reflected starlight like halos over their faces.

The man spoke. “New love, new life, this garden is much vaster than I’d seen. I named these dragonflies, yet never dreamed they’d go so high, or show us miles of cataracts and boiling pools of ice. With so much to explore, what would you like to go see next?”

The woman considered a moment, then her face brightened. “Where is this strange forbidden tree that tells the truth of unknown things?”

“Love, I was taken from the dust, that humble, lowly stuff. But you were taken from my side, raising up fresh life from life. Intimate yet wholly strange, you made all better than before. Bone of bone, life of life. What greater glories will we see if already he made you from me? Put that lowly tree aside. It has no lure for us.”

“But husband if it’s not allowed, can’t you see that I must know, lest I should eat and die?”

“Wife, come with me, and I shall show you where it is. Then we shall fly towards greater things. For mark, it is the cool of day, and soon our Maker comes.”

The woman cupped the man’s chin in her hand and kissed him. Then, she whispered something in his ear and ran laughing into the woods. He let forth a playful yowl and raced after her, legs striding.

I felt no need to follow. I walked through the grasses at the edge of the forest, feeling the whisper against my skin, listening to the frogs and the fireflies and the enormous crocodiles speak to me from the marsh. As I walked in pure sensation of the mud squelching between my toes and the wind tussling my hair, some thoughts crept into my awareness.

How had I arrived here? It seemed the painting was a portal to this world, that somehow I had plummeted into a place that represented the deepest longings of my heart. I wished that I had brought my phone. Maybe I had unwittingly reached nirvana, or enlightenment. Or perhaps I’d inhaled some fumes.

At any rate, this was special. This place changed you. I felt it in my bones. The tension in my shoulders was gone. My body was whole, my mind free.

I turned around and began to hurry back towards the cavern, seeing nothing. I would somehow have to find my way back to The Office of Spirituality & Meaning Making so that I could analyze the portal and figure out how to control its power. I had to learn its secrets. I could be rich. As I mentally flicked through my knowledge of sci-fi stories and occultist tales, I began to worry. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be here too long. Even if it was a dream, or a state of mind, I had to eat and sleep. What if I was spirit-walking and my body was in a coma back home? What would my parents say?

I remembered the couple, then, with a flash of fear. They seemed harmless enough, but I dreaded the thought of meeting them. They would think me strange. Their bodies were so perfect, their faces so open, that in comparison, I felt pale and pinched, like a blind cavefish. Even had I been in perfect shape (I was not), I didn’t want anyone to see me naked, especially not the man. Fear spurred me to an awkward jog. As I entered the woods, I glanced about myself for movements in the foliage. Who knew what lurked in the shadows?

I accelerated to a run, my feet coursing over the moss, the air flowing into my nostrils like ichor, fueling me almost to flight. Soon, the fear was swallowed up in the joy of movement, and for a moment, I forgot where I was going.

Then, the earth heaved beneath me and I fell to the ground. There was a thunderclap and the sky was blocked out in a deafening flapping of wings. I felt myself lifted up and thrown headlong into a black cavern.

To be continued…

This story is a tribute to C.S. Lewis.

The table of contents:

Four Darknesses of Night

1. Clock Time

2. The Hour of Vespers

3. The Hour of Matins

4. The Hour of Lauds

I will publish one darkness at a time.

Enjoy!

Yours,

Amelia

CLOCK TIME

Twilight was just touching the edges of campus. It had spread out from the lengthened shadows of the poplars, creeping from the tips of their upper branches to connect to the shadows of the tall buildings, until everything was submerged in gray, the colors dimmed to nothing. I scurried like a mouse along the wet sidewalks, bag full of books, my panting the only sound besides the ping-ping of water dripping from an unseen drainage pipe onto an unseen metal surface. My breaths appeared in white puffs and vanished like ghosts.

I was turning in a midterm paper. My professor’s office was 14 Johns Hall, in a stone building that smelled of coffee and old books. His name, “Dr. Allan Bergstrom #14,” stood out in thick font on the yellowed letterboard in the atrium, but there was no map, and so I wandered the dim halls, floorboards squeaking to the distant clunking of a tired radiator. The rectangular, motion-activated lights of the ceilings blinked on as I walked, and so the halls lit up before me, rectangle by luminous rectangle, leaving a trail of light.

As I continued to journey through the dark, I grew more and more worried I would never find Bergstrom’s door. Dishearteningly random objects littered the floors—crumpled-up pages torn from books, pencil stubs, broken chairs. I took another step into a new zone of motion-activated lights and stopped. On top of a pile of boxes sat a human skull.

I heard a voice, and a rumpled man with graying brown hair was striding towards me. “Is everything alright?”

“Professor Bergstrom.” I tried to hide the relief in my voice.

“Ah, Jeff’s skull.” He sighed. “I think he keeps it here on purpose to scare students away from office hours. I wish he would move his clutter out of the hall, but what can you say to a man two months away from retirement?”

I set my backpack on the floor and bent down to rummage in it. “I have the paper.”

“Why don’t you come in?” He motioned with a ballpoint pen to his door.

I followed him into an oasis of warm lamplight. I imagined the cross section of the building, a big black box divided into an endless array of smaller compartments, all cold and dark, and then just one little square in the grid lit up cheerily from within, and Dr. Bergstrom sitting in it at his desk, glasses sliding down his nose, oblivious to the interminable maze of empty cubes stretching away on every side.

“Hiroshima,” he said, looking down at the paper on his desk. “How did you pull that out of baroque German literature?”

“I’m not off topic,” I said. “The way Grimmelshausen responded to the chaos brought on by the 100 Years War and the Black Death is similar to how some Japanese artists responded to the atomic bomb. And actually to German Trummerliteratur too. All catastrophes compounding on catastrophes. Humans treating one another like objects, or worse. You know, all the stuff we see everyday on the news. The gunshots, the terrorists, the human trafficking. It’s universal. The hopelessness of the world.”

His unruly eyebrows had sunk into a frown. I got the feeling I would not receive an A.

“Have a good weekend, Dr. Bergstrom.” I stood up.

“Are you doing alright?” he asked. “It’s been a rough few months for many students. There’s so little sunlight this far north. Beginning in the dark can be disheartening.”

I gave him a blank stare, irritated at his intrusion.

“Yes, I’m fine.” I knew how snarky I was being but went for it anyway. “Have you had a rough semester?”

He ignored my tone and opened a drawer in his desk. I stood frozen with my hand on the back of the chair, unsure whether to leave or stay.

“Have you heard of the Hiroshima ginkgos?” he said, at length. I shook my head, and he gestured to me to sit. “Do you have a minute?” He brought a box out of the drawer. “I have Saltines.”

The Saltines dissolved my irritation. It was such a professor’s snack, salty and dry, a meal for those so excited by intellectual excursions that they couldn’t bother to butter a slice of bread. I only touched Saltines when I had the flu, but Dr. Bergstrom appeared to relish them. He began to crunch them as he spoke.

“The ginkgo biloba is one of the oldest and most resilient trees on earth. Some call it a living fossil. At the time of the dinosaurs, there were many ginkgo-like species of tree. But now biloba is the only one of its kind.

“Asteroids smashed into earth’s crust and volcanoes exploded fire and ash into earth’s skies. An entire world gone. Think of all those things that died forever—dragonflies the size of eagles, 11-foot sea scorpions with arm-crunching claws, crocodiles the length of semi-trucks. The ginkgo lived among them.

“After disaster struck, the ginkgo awoke to a burnt-up world, its seedling emerging into an empty plain, struggling to reach its roots deep enough to find water, craning its fan-shaped leaves upward through the ash-thickened air to find the barest glimmer of sun.

“Back in the ginkgo’s youth, the world didn’t even have oceans and continents. Instead, it was a giant ocean, Panthalassa, surrounding one section of land, Pangea. Think about it. Since the ginkgo’s youth, enough time has passed that the Earth has shifted into seven continents, and all of its previous species have been wiped out and been replaced by things that didn’t exist back then. The change this tree has witnessed!”

Then he began to talk about the bomb.

Before I tell you what he said, you’ve got to understand something. I’ve been thinking about Hiroshima since the summer of sixth grade, when I read John Hersey’s book. There were many details in that book, but only one stuck with me. It’s an aside, only a paragraph long.

A priest hears voices in some bushes asking for water and walks over to find a group of men. They’re standing with their faces burnt off, hollow eye sockets, and the fluid from their melted eyes running down their cheeks. One of them says, “I can’t see anything.” The priest replies: “There’s a doctor nearby. He’s busy but he’ll come and fix your eyes soon, I hope.”

When I read that sentence, something flew out of me. “He’ll fix your eyes, I hope.” Their eyes were literally running down their cheeks. What was the doctor going to do? Collect the goo in a cup? The priest was selling them false hope, and he knew it.

Like I said, I’ve been thinking about Hiroshima for a long time. But back to Bergstrom.

“After the A-bomb went off in Hiroshima, pulverizing everything around it into fine, black ash, guess what survived?” Bergstrom paused for dramatic effect. “None other than a grove of ginkgo trees. They are still standing. You can go visit them today. They may live another two millennia.”

At this, I erupted. “How’s that supposed to fix anything? They’re fucking trees.”

He was quiet for a moment, and I felt my cheeks go red.

“I suppose it doesn’t fix anything at all,” Bergstrom said at last. “But it’s not quite fair to dwell on unexpected catastrophe without also acknowledging the unexpected victories. We may be unable to predict and halt evil. But we are just as often unable to predict and halt the good. It springs up in the most unlikely places, and all at once, in the twinkling of an eye, an entire world might be transformed. It’s possible.”

“Possible, but unlikely,” I said, and I turned to go.

“One cell of yeast in a vat of dough,” he said. “What could one cell do overnight in 32 million molecules of water and flour? One would think nothing. Yet this transformation is commonplace with the right ingredients at the right time. Have you ever tried sourdough bread?”

This was just the sort of metaphor I abhorred. But suddenly, I saw the gaping mouth of the shocked priest in Hiroshima, heard his momentary silence, then watched him look away from the burnt-out eyesockets of the injured men to stare at the skeletal remnants of a tree. The words came out of his mouth as ordinarily as if he were speaking to a sneezing parishioner. But his cheeks were pale and his lip trembled as he spoke. “The doctor will come and fix your eyes soon, I hope.”

“I hope.” It was an independent clause, a complete sentence in two syllables. As a thoughtless add-on, it made the priest sound weak and apologetic. But when you gave it the main emphasis in the sentence, it changed the meaning. Before the ginkgo tree showed signs of life, had the priest somehow sensed its tremors deep in the scorched earth, the sluggish sucking of nutrients up into roots?

“Bye, Professor,” I said. “Thank you.”

He called after me as I left, something vague and polite, and I nodded and gave him a tight smile. I left the building in a hurry via the same tortuous route by which I’d come. As I opened the front doorway, the last light blinked out. I was halfway across the shadowy campus when it began to rain.

I ran through the haze of the downpour down a path of evergreens to the nearest building. It stood white against the evening sky, the roof sloped at an angle so that the front of the building resembled a triangle.

The angles were all just barely wrong, almost otherworldly. Standing in the halo of light about the entrance, alone, with the raindrops pattering down on the pavingstones, I had an awful vision of being snatched away to a different planet this night, my disappearance growing cold as the world moved on without me. But the raindrops began to patter harder and faster, and I was growing cold. I pushed open the door.

It was dim inside and smelled like mold. I scanned a table covered in pamphlets beneath an archway of words: “The Office of Spirituality & Meaning Making.” One pamphlet, orange, had line-art of a smiling Confucius; the red one had a five-pointed star. Each was typed in font that short-haired, turtle-necked church ladies think “fun.” And there she was—I laughed to myself. A table-top sign holder introduced Dr. Ann Brickel as a queer Unitarian Universalist humanist Buddhist atheist. Even funnier was the pink-faced rector with the clerical collar. He looked so staid with his wire-rimmed glasses, and so utterly traditional, that I could not fathom the possibility of a working relationship between the two.

I wandered towards the pair of double doors to the sanctuary and pushed them silently open. A weak, green light shone through the rain-bleared windows, illuminating a wide, low-ceilinged room lined with pews.

On the altar sat a three-paneled altarpiece. Thinking a shadow had obscured its content, I padded down the aisle to take a closer look. But as I neared, I realized I had not been mistaken. Each panel was painted pitch black. Below, an inscription read, “To The Unknown God.”

Thunder crashed outside. It was a long walk back to my dorm, and I didn’t want my papers to get wet, but this might be a long wait. As I sat down, I reached into my back pocket for my phone. Its black, rectangular screen eerily resembled the black rectangles of the altarpiece. And it was dead. I was about to groan when I heard a nearby flutter, like the rustling of wings.

“Hello?” I said. “Is someone there?”

I waited. I heard nothing but the rain’s ceaseless pounding. But as I looked into the black painting, my gaze traveling from the center to the left, back through the center panel, and to the right, it seemed to steadily increase in size. Before I knew it, it had filled the entire room. I felt myself pulled forward into the paint until I was very small and the darkness was a towering wave.

The motion-activated lights blinked out, and everything went black.

To be continued…

and Substack readers. I enjoyed so much reading Susannah and Alastair Roberts’ blog post about their year that I decided to copy them and write one myself. I haven’t written much recently, and this strikes me as fun and possibly instructive.

Read more

January is cold and wet in Vancouver, always drizzling. I stand in Halmoni’s kitchen, seven months pregnant, and pour myself a tenth cup of jujube-sweetened tea.

“What was it like growing up in Korea?” I ask, trying to sound casual, like I haven’t been wondering for years.

She laughs and waves at the air, pushing the words away.

“I ate too much sugar. It was considered high-class to eat sugar, so my parents gave me a lot. That’s why I have health problems now.”

She pads out of the kitchen in the slippers she keeps in a basket by the front door.

I think about somewhere once, when I was small, when I woke and slid off the satin bedspread in the room where I was napping. The room was white and empty with no toys. In my boredom I crawled around the perimeter testing everything with my tongue.

Pebbly eggshell walls. Lick. Fuzzy antimacassar. Lick. UFO-shaped drawer-pull on a maple chiffonier. Lick.

I spotted a softly beveled rectangle on the wall, so smooth and cool and gray and just at the level of my mouth. I pressed my tongue against the tiny holes.

WHAM!

I fell back like a shoe-squished bug.

Halmoni’s answer, so softly delivered, is clear: Don’t lick the outlet. Korea is off-limits. I daren’t ask any more. But the more I learn about her country, the more I learn to listen to her silences.

When I started this Substack, I gritted my teeth and committed to transparency. So, in case you think I’m a girlboss making six figures from the occasional essay, allow me to burst your bubble. I make less than 2K a year. If I were in it for the money, I would not be in this particular game.1

But since I do use money as one metric to evaluate my progress, I took a look at my pitching spreadsheet the other day and ran some numbers. In 2023, I submitted 40 pitches and published 9. In 2024, I pitched 26 and published 13. In 2025, I’ve pitched 7 and published 4. I made about the same amount each year, but what’s notable is that my pay per pitch went up a lot.

How should I interpret these findings?

Basically, in the beginning, I didn’t know what I was doing.

When I started out, I knew I was a writer. But I didn’t know what kind of writer. Was I a science writer? A personal essayist? A chatty advice columnist? A political commentator? (Ok, definitely not that one.)

So, I threw spaghetti at the wall. I hunted down and cold pitched whichever editors were foolish enough to put their emails in their Twitter bios. Looking back, I cringe at the clumsiness of my early emails. But, inevitably, a few editors took a chance on me. That’s how I ended up doing science journalism for Medicinal Media and an essay about intergenerational friendship for Business Insider.

I would’ve happily carried on this way. In fact, I got so addicted to cold pitching that I found it boring to write twice for the same publication (too much like work, too little like roulette). But my already extremely part-time writing hours have shrunk with the advent of a newborn and the growing freneticism of my toddler. I’ve been pitching warm, not cold, this year.

Pitching warm (and with a list of prior publications) has given me the ability to write the things I want to write.2 And now, I actually know what that is. But I wouldn’t have had the luxury of pickiness without cranking out the cold pitches that first year. Because I put in the time at the beginning to familiarize myself with the magazine landscape, to network, and to sign up for professional development opps, I now have a few “ins,” so to speak.

Do I wish I’d gotten the cold pitching out of the way in college? Yes (but I was too insecure). Do I wish I’d minored in journalism and gotten an internship with the WSJ in college? Yes (but I thought I’d be a German professor). I 100% recommend these steps to those of you who are lucky enough to be professionally focused at a young age. It’ll make things much easier for you, and you’ll improve much more quickly.

But for those of us who’ve come to writing in less convenient life stages, I’ll testify to the fact that cold pitching does, in fact, work. All you need is a tough stomach for rejection and a love for the game.

Current & Future Projects

I’m working on my speculative novel (very slowly and sporadically) with the encouragement of fellow-traveler Rachel S. (who is very fast and consistent).

Pursuant to this, I’m in a local genre fiction critique group. But I’m not sure it’s for me. I think what I really want is something less professional and more friendly and also not on Zoom. Remember when I gathered local Christian creatives to do a thing?

Since we first convened, two of us have moved out-of-state, one of us got a demanding job, and three of us have had new babies. We aren’t exactly active anymore. However, I’ll be prayerfully on the lookout for opportunities to restart the engine.

Thanks for coming along on this freelancing journey. Are you a magazine writer? Any tips, questions, or commiserations? Please comment below :)

Leave a comment

Come along. Let’s plunder grandma’s attic.

The Book of Common Prayer

Last winter, I recommended nightly “candle time” Advent readings.

Now, our family does candle time every night. And, although I did genuinely enjoy Justin Whitmel Earley’s recommendations in Habits of The Household, it turns out we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. The Book of Common Prayer has been around since 1549. It distills a couple millennia of Christian practice into a beautifully phrased English liturgy. Morning and evening prayer also incorporate a “Bible in a year”-style reading plan, which I’ve been doing on-and-off for the last six years with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel, the English Anglican priest who pioneered the Alpha course. I highly recommend the Gumbels’ version on the Bible app. But although I’ve always loved to meditate on God’s word, I must admit I’ve always been “bad” at praying. This practice has been teaching me how, and for the first time in my life, when I promise my friends to pray for them, I regularly do.

Eastern Orthodox demonology

What I love about Orthodox theology is its emphasis on storyline. Rather than extracting abstract doctrines from the Bible, Orthodox theologians seem to take a more organic approach to unpacking Scripture through what most of us might call literary criticism. They tie together the narratives of the Bible by analyzing patterns and tropes and literary devices. The resulting picture is…well, just that: a picture. A unified whole. This is quite different from the Western theological method, which seems more to chop up than to bind together Biblical narrative.

I’ve particularly enjoyed Orthodox Theology by Vladimir Lossky for its overview of the Bible in its chapter “Original Sin” and for its beautiful reflections on the person of Christ:

“Shedding His royal prerogatives, He hides His glory more and more, in suffering and death. For He must discover in His own flesh how far the man whom He created in His supremely beautiful image was made ugly by corruption … And by the infinite respect that He witnesses towards human liberty, to the point of showing men only the sorrowful brotherly face of the slave and the sorrowful brotherly flesh of the cross, He awakens faith in man as a response to love: for only the eyes of faith recognize the form of God beneath the form of the slave and, deciphering beneath the human face the presence of a divine person, learn to unveil in each face the mystery of the person created in the image of God.”

From “Christological Dogma” in Orthodox Theology by Vladimir Lossky

Anywho. This is technically for novel research. I needed to understand the “mythology” of Christianity better in order to ground my book’s speculative universe in something near truth. Ever since reading Genesis in Eastern Orthodox professor Dr. Justin Jackson’s class at Hillsdale, I knew that the eastern church had a richly developed understanding of Jewish mythology. Naturally, I ended up discovering Jonathan Pageau and Fr. Stephen DeYoung, both great resources if you’re interested in that kind of thing.

Native American gardening

I didn’t grow pole beans on corn this year. Instead, I grew them on a teepee so my toddler could play under the canopy. But next year, I want to grow everything vertically. Pole beans on everything! On sweet corn! On giant sunflower stalks! Zinnias everywhere, not just confined to one corner. And squashes squished in the spaces in between.

Catholic feminism

Aka reactionary feminism, sex-realist feminism, embodied feminism, etc. The terms abound. But I find it easiest to describe my interest as “Catholic feminism” because it conveys the integration of traditional beliefs with a concern for women’s wellbeing. That said, many of the thinkers in this new movement would describe themselves as neither “Catholic” nor “feminist.”

Some of my favorites with their flavors: Leah Libresco Sargeant (lucid Catholic who looks at women’s issues through practical and concrete specifics; policy oriented), Mary Harrington (overly-online social commentator who knows all the slang and memes and speaks in a salty British accent), Erika Bachiochi (Catholic legal scholar), Abigail Favale (PhD in gender studies; also Catholic), Louise Perry (conservative doomer journo focused on male-female sexual dynamics), Lane Scott (Catholic matriarch, rancher, and social commentator). You can find basically everyone in this space at Fairer Disputations (including, very humbly, me. I wrote one piece for them on the sex war.)

Another note on calling it “Catholic.” I just don’t see as many Protestants in this space. From what I’ve seen, Protestants tend to either conform to mainstream secular pop feminism or to veer into glorifying female doormattery. A philosopher/theologian at my church suggested the Catholics have the advantage of drawing from a long, rich tradition of social teaching, which informs this movement.

Sourdough

A friend passed me a starter, so I’ve been baking sourdough again for the first time since having kids. Bread is the most miraculous food to make. It goes from being tasteless powder and water to a glossy, brown boule of soft and crunchy deliciousness that fills your entire house with its aroma. Not surprised Scripture references bread so often as a metaphor for God and his kingdom.

I use this recipe.

Made it the other day for a dinner party alongside kale and kielbasa soup.

Technoskepticism

If you’re suspicious of technologies like iPhones and ChatGPT, I have some recommendations of where to find like-minded thinkers. This magazine is worth a subscription:

I also am quite fond of Paul Kingsnorth’s writing:

The Abbey of Misrule

Do not be conformed to this world

By Paul Kingsnorth

Thrifted CD’s

I don’t want my daughter accessing phones, iPads, etc. for a long while yet. But I want her to have some level of control over her own entertainment. Enter a staple of my own childhood: the CD player. My two-year-old’s learned to carefully load and unload the discs she wants and to press “play.” Right now, her favorite tunes are “Duck in New York City,” “Frog Song,” and “Do To Song” (“Do to others as you would have them do to you”). I’m expecting the CDs to get a bit scratched in the process, but hey, they only cost about 20 cents each, so I’ll take the risk.

Cardigans & claw clips

My hair is nearly long enough to sit on. As a mom of littles, my go-to styles are crown braids, French braids, and English braids wrapped up and fastened in a jumbo claw clip. The last style is the quickest, so I’ve been resorting to it more often.

I’m trying to grow my collection of traditional five-button cardigans. They work layered over pregnancy tanks with just the top button fastened, and they’ll also be a convenient and stylish option for nursing postpartum.

Okay. Now it’s time for the confession. The real reason I spent all this time compiling these links and photos for you is that I’ve been procrastinating novel writing. I am proud of myself for joining a local critique group that meets twice a month for a three-hour session. But a critique group’s no good unless I’ve got material.

Although I promised myself I’d use my four free mornings a week to write until the baby comes, I haven’t been sticking to it. Instead, I end up writing this or reading all y’all’s Substack essays.

So—I’m taking a Substack break. I will be back here at some point this winter. In the meantime, I’ve got a novel to write and a baby to birth.

Super grateful to you for reading and writing and commenting. Your kindness, wisdom, and life-loving spirits are why I like this platform. Speaking of which, before I go, please do leave me any of your own recommendations in the comments.

Leave a comment

“How are you feeling?”

Like a three-masted galleon at full sail riding low in the water, sides groaning from an overfilled hold.

I’m in line at the grocery store and though I’m not moving a muscle, my belly writhes of its own accord. A lump appears on the left side and slides over to the right and disappears. I glance around to see if anyone has noticed. Blank faces all. I conclude that if anyone has, their brains have refused to register it. It’s too weird.

I bend down to grab the milk from under the cart and immediately regret it as my hip twinges and my thigh cramps and I let out a loud “oof.” My toddler asks, “What’s wrong?” and then, “Can I have a balloon?”

Dear, I am the balloon. I also make a great floaty for you when we go swimming in the creek.

Baby, you and I have always loved attention. But I am self-conscious these days. You see, our oddness is outside of my control. It’s not an aesthetic I crafted to ride the line of the avant-garde. No, sweet girl, your cloud of baby hair surrounds you like a halo in the afternoon sun, and you blow a raspberry at an old lady, who retorts, “Did you just spit on me?” And that is the kind of weird we are.

No, I did not craft you, girl. You came in a blaze of light from outer space. So did my body, your spacecraft, which now carries a new life. In six months, my body has added a third of itself to itself again—an addition equipped with plumbing and a kitchen for the new tenant.

I readied new shirts and pants and dresses to accommodate the belly, which I knew would need to grow. But did I really need bigger feet? Two months ago, I failed to squeeze into the size 8 sandals I had bought and thought, “Ah, this is the reason they were brand-new in the thrift store. They’re a non-standard size. Way too small. Maybe children’s?” But I shouldn’t have blamed the sandals. It was me. My normal 7.5 had turned into a 9.

I felt betrayed. How could my own feet grow without permission? Also, why is my ribcage two inches bigger? My pelvis creaks as it expands outward. Add to the shopping list: replace all shoes, all underwear. I am a new person.

It’s hard growing up and growing out. It hurts me that people are so impressed at the peculiarity of my shape that they raise their eyebrows and say things like, “Wow, you must be about ready to pop.” I experience the same infuriating vulnerability as I did in my old body, the maiden one, a decade ago when I got hips.

Everything screams at me, “You don’t fit!”

Baby—you and me and your unborn baby brother—we don’t fit. Our growth, our expansion, our too-muchness joins with the songs of screeching hawks and germinating seeds. We bust out like vines from the masts when Bacchus “sat with a smile in his dark eyes” making pirates into dolphins.

Lord God, when we fail to fit in the man-made world, we enter into yours. My children, my body, they know this, and sometimes I do too. With my two-year-old singing “Holy, holy, holy” at the top of her lungs in the cart, and my own recently elongated feet slapping along the pavement like a clown’s, and my unborn baby sliding along my interior walls, I find we are strange and lovely indeed. We are a cherub with too many faces, wings, and wheels. We are supernatural and altogether yours.

Moms of Substack—What experiences have you had with your pregnant body and your children feeling conspicuous and out-of-control? Has it changed from pregnancy to pregnancy?

Leave a comment

So, here ‘tis.

First off—it was one of these books:

I’ll expand more on this later in my critique.

But to begin on a more positive note, if you are an:

upper-middle-class (and probably but not necessarily white) woman
with an elite university education
who grew up with one or no siblings
and did not regularly babysit or volunteer at kids’ camp, church, or the YMCA

And/or if you:

began motherhood in your 30’s
pausing or leaving behind a promising career—

I am willing to bet this book will make you feel seen.3 And that is good. It pierces through the fake-happy consumerist vision of motherhood we often meet with in pop culture. It shows how you can love your kid fiercely and simultaneously feel ambivalent about being a parent. How motherhood can be tough without cultural traditions that prepare women to face it.

But back to the point raised by that Goodreads reviewer: I hated everyone in this book.

This is entirely the fault of the protagonist. “The mother,” as she’s called, is in the middle of a big stewing ‘tude at the story’s beginning. It’s hinted this is the inevitable consequence of motherhood. Due to sleep-deprivation, postpartum depression, loneliness, and grief over the loss of a child-free life, she is miserable, neurotic, and nasty. Because she hates everyone in the story (including herself), and she is the POV character, we end up basking in hate for a good 200 pages.

The reader did need to experience the interior monologue of someone in a really bad place in order to understand the protagonist’s character arc. Which—okay. I guess that has artistic integrity. But it needed comic relief. I would have been fine with the snark had it been funny, ironic, or quirky. But it lacked those tempering traits.

The relentless negativity also seemed targeted to counter the stereotype of the cutesy mommy who eats bonbons and watches TV all day, replacing it with the vision of Mother As Monster. But I didn’t find this vision superior. Leave the pigeonholing to the political propagandists. Literature is supposed to show how people inhabit contradictions.

I skipped and skimmed a lot in the first two-thirds because I couldn’t handle more cud-chewing on how the protagonist’s husband’s an oblivious jerk and all the other moms are fake. It was like the author’s goal was to dredge up every single toxic cope moms fall into and feed it to the reader through a hose on blast.

… Although. Um. That probably was the goal.

Ha, I should have read the title. But, in all seriousness, while I knew the title referred to a woman being a female dog (in more ways than one), I didn’t think the whole narrative would comprise of bitching.

Moving onto the theme…

A Cultural Critique of WASP Placidity

The reason I mentioned this might be more relevant to a white mom is not because I’m racist, or anti-racist, or care much about race at all. I was concerned with the cultural flavors that often accompany race.

The core of the protagonist’s struggle is her inability to express negative feelings. She has a crisis of conscience each time she loses her temper, or lets her baby cry. She tries desperately to “keep it all together” because she’s convinced she’s a horrible person for having emotions.

The thing is—I don’t think this type of story is specific to motherhood. It seems more a product of a certain culture—maybe the WASP (white-anglo-saxon-protestant) one.

I had a happy childhood that happened to involve much crying and witnessing of crying—often a combination, when all five of us kids would join together in one polyphonic wail. Now, my daughter is two, and she likes to practice her fake crying in the mirror, and to egg herself on to some truly Olympic feats of lugubrious endurance. Overwhelmed by her emotional displays, I sometimes begin to cry as well, and when she says, “Mommy, what’s wrong?” I tell her I’m frustrated but crying made me feel better. Then, I wipe my eyes, and we carry on with our day. We are an emotional bunch and unashamed of it. In that way, despite my Norwegian-German dad, I’m not very WASP.

The way I see it, family life always involves strong emotions. Crying is what babies turn to whenever they are remotely inconvenienced. And don’t get me started on the teen years. In most cultures around the world, people are prepared for this aspect of family life. They feel freer to scream, rant, laugh, and weep as the spirit moves. But the Northern European style—though it’s ranged from children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard to “gentle parenting”—idealizes placidity.

Placidity is easy enough to maintain without kids. But within the family, it’s nearly impossible. Hence the protagonist’s crisis. She cannot reconcile her WASP expectations with the realities of motherhood. As she stuffs her feelings down, they begin to manifest in her nightly transformation into a dog—not just any dog, but a wolf-like creature that relishes snapping the necks of small creatures and mangling their soft bodies. This transformation and the animal killings that go with it create dramatic tension, warning us that if the mother can’t find some way to express her bottled-up emotions, they will end up exploding and hurting everyone she loves.

Motherhood as Catalyst

When you read it like this, the book isn’t really about motherhood as much as it’s about emotional repression. The way motherhood figures into the story is as the catalyst for personal transformation.

Though I don’t relate much to the emotional repression thing, I can relate to motherhood as catalyst. The plotline of: Girl goes about normal life, slightly bored. Then, motherhood. Then, aah my whole life has been ripped out from under me. And aah I have issues and immaturities I didn’t know existed.

When my daughter was three months old, we moved from Montana to New York. I left my community and my jobs as a German teacher and a university admin/publications designer and plunged into stay-at-home motherhood with no friends or family nearby. I’ve always been a can-do adventurer, and I fully expected to effortlessly create what an acquaintance calls “the Peppa Pig world” from scratch. Nope. That was a delusion. Building a community takes a lot of work. Initially, I was lonely; I was new to everything in my life; I faced a minor identity crisis.

These were challenges (and Nightbitch does touch on the difficulty of community building for stay-at-home moms). But they weren’t inherent to childbearing. It was more that, due to a confluence of factors that included having a child, I’d entered a new world and didn’t know where I fit in. A similar story could be told by any expat in a new land. I’d already experienced it once, moving to Montana after college. Both times—first, as a young professional, and then as a new mom—culture shock shattered certain notions of mine (namely, that I was AWESOME because I’d gotten good grades my whole life) and forced me to consciously re-establish my identity in Christ.4 As with the mother in Nightbitch, once my sense of self reintegrated around a solid core, I found myself better equipped to be authentic and form relationships with those around me.

Even if the protagonist’s journey isn’t, in my opinion, motherhood-specific, I’ve got to give it to Rachel Yoder for recognizing the particular dramatic potential of motherhood. Another book on my gender-critical feminist reading list, Matrescence by Lucy Jones, compares the scale of the physiological and emotional changes of motherhood to those of puberty, confirming Nightbitch’s intuitive sense that being a first-time mom is, indeed, life-exploding. My highest praise for the book is that by recognizing this dramatic potential and garnering mainstream acclaim, it’s opened the gates for more authors to write highbrow fiction in the context of toddler tantrums and breastfeeding.

A good review doesn’t contain spoilers. So, I’ll end with this. Whether we become beetles, bitches, or butterflies, metamorphosis can lead either to tragedy or redemption. Nightbitch, unlike Kafka’s fable, ends on a hopeful, if rather preachy, note. My recommendation: If you can’t handle the nastiness of the first part, skim to Part III. The book is too long and too depressing, but it’s worth reading with a critical eye—and perhaps, dear reader, it will inspire you to write the next great mama novel!

Have you read Nightbitch? Loved it, hated it? I’d love to hear your take.

If you’re a mom, what personal challenges did you deal with as a new mom when your life changed?

Also, I have a silly question for you. Has any life event ever transformed you into an animal? If so, which event—and which animal?

There exists a little curmudgeon inside all of us, a pinched and humorless nose that exists only to sniff out examples of others’ unrighteousness.

As I walk by the courthouse, using a rare moment of solitude to read an essay on my phone, a tingling at the back of my neck tells me I am being watched. The watcher, in this case, I am certain, is about five foot four inches, female, maternal, with brown hair and eyes. I glance furtively over my shoulder to find that she is, in fact, me. And she (my very own self) is thinking, “Look at that woman walking down the street with her nose buried in her phone. How degenerate. People these days!”

This sense of double-consciousness—being both the see-er and the seen—is peculiar but by no means uncommon. There exists a little curmudgeon inside all of us, a pinched and humorless nose that exists only to sniff out examples of others’ unrighteousness and, by adorning itself with these, to make itself look righteous by comparison. Unfortunately for us, in solitary moments on deserted streets with no other targets in sight, it can never resist firing its harshest judgments on its owner. Thus, in humoring the curmudgeon, we end up hating not only other people but ourselves.

Maternal Convictions on Overdrive

Because each little decision that goes into childrearing is an expression of love, the stakes are blown up to love-level stakes and big, big emotions.

This realization—that the voice of condemnation attacks in both directions—has given me, in equal measure, more compassion and understanding for a stock character in today’s society: the judgey mom.

Since giving birth, I’ve witnessed more mom-on-mom cruelty than I believed possible. Despite having much in common, we sort ourselves into tribes—Crunchy Tribe, Scientific Studies Tribe, Trad Tribe, Working Tribe, Scandi Tribe—and battle to the death either passive-aggressively through gossip, or openly online.1 The catalysts of these battles? Not major moral subjects like abortion but lifestyle choices like buying organic/non-organic, freebirth/hospital birth, breastfeeding/bottle-feeding, dressing cute/dressing for messy play—all utterly divorced from the actual context of individual lives and propped up as universal rules. Why are these hills to die on? Where’s the sense of proportion? The sense of discernment? Why so much legalism, so much unadulterated hate?

I blame it now on exceptionally well-fed inner curmudgeons. It’s a very real occupational hazard for mothers. Let me explain.

The first part of it is, I think, that we mothers are never campaigning for ourselves but always for our kids (“just think of the children”-style). Because of this, we never feel that our attacks on others are self-serving. We’re engaged in a holy war for “the least of these.” If we don’t protect our kids’ interests, who will?

Second, our level of attachment to our kids far exceeds the attachments of other social justice advocates. It’s so high it makes the bones ache. During pregnancy, a mother’s identity expands with her ribcage to include another person. Even when the child is not physically with the mother, an engine in the back of her mind puffs out a steady stream of child-related thoughts: “Yes, the baby has her water bottle … her cheeks are cute … I need to boil eggs for her lunch … if she were here, she would pick that dandelion head and blow on it and give me one too.” It’s hard for her even to distinguish her own wants and desires from her child’s. As studies on fetal microchimerism show, the baby’s cells linger in the mother’s body for years, so that no matter how far a mother travels from her child in space, the child, in a very real sense, travels with her.

Combined, these two factors make it so that the maternal internet warrior is not merely campaigning for cloth diapers. She is justifying her love. Her children are everything to her, and her choices surrounding their upbringing are each the result of painstaking thought and care. When she sees another deviate from these choices, she sees more than a simple difference of opinion. She sees her adequacy as a mother either affirmed or denied. Those are the stakes. If she is proven wrong (or less right), she feels she has failed to love her child. If she is proven right (or less wrong), she feels the other has failed to love her child. Because each little decision that goes into childrearing is an expression of love, the stakes are blown up to love-level stakes and BIG emotions.

The Curmudgeon’s Raison d’Etre

We collect the failures of others so we can minimize our own sins without lowering our impossible standards.

The inner curmudgeon loves this stuff. The bipolar extremes of guilt and gloat are its seasonal crop rotation. The one preps the soil for the other.

First, comes the guilt. When a mom’s inner curmudgeon turns on her, she has trouble silencing it. Caught in the act of buying fruit roll-ups, the granola mom is less likely to laugh at her curmudgeon’s shrill accusations than to set the box back on the shelf, shame welling in her chest. This prepares the soil for gloat. In desperation to quell her shame, the caught-in-the-act mother sets the little curmudgeon in the watchtower to gather more egregious examples of failure in others. As she collects samples of others’ sins, she is able to minimize her own by comparison, without lowering her impossible standards.

Think of the Pharisee focusing his scorn on the socially outcast tax collector (“thank you, God, that I am not like him”). Think of the fire-and-brimstone preachers who aim their ire at the sluts and the gays. Think of crunchy moms complaining about the listen-to-the-science moms.

They are all trying to divert their sense of shame to a scapegoat.

That’s why moms are so mean.

Silencing The Curmudgeon

God doesn’t have an inner curmudgeon.

The Gospel offers a way out of this vicious cycle of condemnation. In the Bible, we learn there’s perfect law out there (though not necessarily the one given by mommy bloggers) and that we’re all going to fail to keep it. Our inner curmudgeon wants to hide this by coming to God adorned in examples of everyone else’s failure. It hopes that these, like Adam’s fig leaves, will serve to distract from the naked truth. But of course, when we hear God approaching, we feel the leaves slipping and flee into the bushes.

God, however, is different from us. He doesn’t have an inner curmudgeon. He has no guilt-generated need to collect the failures of others and sew them into self-vindication. So, when he sees us exposed, instead of gloating and perpetuating the cycle, he kills a Lamb and clothes us in its sturdy skin. That way, the next time our curmudgeon comes out with its pinched nose and pointing finger, we’re able to laugh at it and say, “I don’t need you to dress me in others’ failings. I am forgiven, so I can forgive myself. When God looks at me, he sees his own Child.”

Moms need this Gospel message more than anyone else. Any mother knows that even the thought of failing to protect and love her kids makes her want to die. She doesn’t need the Law to send her to the gallows. After enough inadequate scapegoats have been sacrificed, her inner curmudgeon will eventually convince her to send herself.2 The world’s advice for avoiding this is to have no standards, to stay unflappably nonchalant. But that’s exactly the attitude no mom will ever be able to maintain.

The Gospel offers a more realistic way forward. We can continue to judge what is right or wrong in parenting—even claim to know some universal truths—as long as those judgments don’t rule us. The Law (self-written or otherwise) is a harsh master. When we let ourselves be ruled by the God of grace instead, the Law assumes its proper place as an advisor and friend.

You tell me: What have I missed about judgy moms? Feel free to use the comments section either philosophically or therapeutically (though, as always, please stay civil).

Leave a comment

A Facetime conversation with my toddler over the weekend:

“Baby, look! Mama’s living in a castle. Does that make me a princess?”

—*Decisive nod* “Yes. Have a necklace.”

“Oh, yes, I do have a necklace! Do you?”

—“Yes. Daddy too.”

“Does he?”

—“Yay!” *frame jiggles as she jumps* “We all princesses!”

Jews and Jailbirds

A couple weeks ago, I attended a weekend conference for young writers hosted by the Bruderhof, the international Anabaptist commune that runs the magazine Plough (or “Pluff” as one friend calls it).

To get there, I drove four hours across New York state. The sky was blue. In the last hour or so, I noticed diner letter boards switching from “Friday night fish fry” to “Thursday night bingo.” I wondered what it meant, this change of day. Then, I drove through Kiryas Joel, and it clicked.

I was suddenly trundling through the most Jewish town in America. Swarms of black-coated, long-bearded men crowded the streets like Abe Lincoln impersonators.

Coming from the small-town Midwest, and then Montana, I’ve met my share of Amish buggies and Mormon missionaries. Hasidic Jews, though, are new to me. The doorframe of our apartment has a small, Hebrew-inscribed box instead of a doorbell. “Me-zu-zah.” The word buzzes on my lips like a kazoo. The only Jews I ever knew were Messianic or secular, so it’s delightful to find some holy weird ones (for an expansion on the topic of holy weirdness, check out this post).

I made it through Kiryas Joel without getting out of my car, which was a good thing because I didn’t see one woman on the street and couldn’t have possibly stayed gender-separated (per the welcome sign pictured above). Perhaps the Hasidic Jews really do abide by Tevye’s dictum from Fiddler on The Roof: “Men study! Women in the kitchen.” (I prefer the punctuationally abridged— “Men study women in the kitchen.”)

Soon after, over the treetops, I caught a glimpse of a massive dome and wondered what eccentric billionaire had built a fortress on the Hudson. Turns out it’s a maximum security prison, originally called the "Eastern New York Reformatory.” I suppose the prisoners didn’t end up reforming because it’s now called, much more modestly, the “Eastern Correctional Facility.”

Anabaptists and Roman Catholics

I knew Mount Academy in Esopus was my destination, but I had imagined the typical bricky, prison-like high school. I made a sharp left into gated grounds and crept timidly down a curved drive to find myself facing… Pemberley? Downton Abbey? Something, at any rate, that looked oddly kin to the castles I’d just seen in France.

A fantastical place, huh. Not the type of place you’d expect German Anabaptists to build.

Turns out they didn’t. Redemptorist priests hired a European architect to design it in the early 1900’s. They spared no expense.

The Bruderhof community bought and renovated it in its twilight years, converting the former seminary into a high school. The ecumenical character of their community shows in how painstakingly they’ve preserved all the Roman Catholic art, installing dehumidifiers to protect paint and plaster from decay. There is kinship there. As a community that believes in holding all things in common, the Bruderhof almost resembles a monastic order. In fact, I’ve heard a member describe their lifestyle as “monasticism but with families.” (The building even has a brewery!)

I’m not going to describe the weekend further (I’m tired etc.), except to say that it was lovely, and if you are under 35, you should apply next year. I will, however, share some notes for those of you interested in writing for pubs like Plough.

Do’s and Don’ts

First, for those of you who’ve never heard of it, Plough’s an ecumenical and refreshingly nonpartisan publication that focuses on Life’s Big Questions. Recent issue themes include “Freedom” and “Health.”

On the way home, I found myself comparing Plough’s advice with last year’s WORLD Magazine bootcamp. The two publications have different focuses, and they taught me two completely different writing philosophies. WORLD was definitely committed to traditional newspaper journalism. They taught us to carefully scrub all traces of ourselves from our work like cat burglars in soft, black gloves and balaclavas. The week’s litany was “Don’t editorialize!” Plough, on the other hand, seems to have accepted the death of traditional, “objective and unbiased” reporting. Its style is closer nonfic fiction, what people might call literary nonfiction or New Journalism (perhaps even veering on autofiction). This style is less wary of the writerly “I” and allows more poetic description. It’s a step away from sparse, facts-only stuff.

But don’t think they’ve lost integrity or surrendered to becoming just another super-partisan Internet echochamber. To the contrary, Plough painted the ideal magazine as a sort of safe haven from the internet’s theories-of-everything, pandering punditry, and hot takes. While WORLD emphasized letting the sources speak for themselves, Plough emphasized letting the stories speak for themselves. Instead of telling us not to editorialize, Plough told us not to pontificate. While the two publications differ in focus, they’re both committed to writing that opens a window into the world.

K, here are my notes:

1. DON’T: Pitch magazines rapidly and wildly. // DO: Take time to get to know magazines before pitching them.

2. DON’T: Be a pundit with a pet issue/soapbox // DO: Let your essays be a voyage of discovery.

3. DON’T: Try to write “objective” or narrator-free journalism. Times have changed. // DO: Start off writing scene reports instead of personal essays (because, let’s face it, you’re not that interesting).

4. DON’T: Waste people’s time // DO: Use rigorous data, facts, and fact-checking

5. DON’T: Worry about potential haters // DO: Let your weird side out

6. DON’T: Be on social media (because of its propensity to lead to #6) // DO: Keep an observation notebook.

7. DON’T: Discourse about the discourse. (Litmus test: Could your essay be cut-and-pasted from the comments section of another piece of writing?) // DO: Center your essay in stories about concrete, real things from real life.

8. DON’T: Worry about what other people are writing // DO: Use essays you like as models

9. DON’T: End with a “takeaway” // DO: End with an emotionally forceful image or event

I’m embarrassed at how familiar the “don’ts” seem. They explain many of the rejections I’ve gotten from magazines over the last two years. But I also wonder whether hearing these rules beforehand would’ve prevented me from making the same mistakes. Some of us just have to learn the hard way.

I really am grateful for the chance freelancing has given me to fail my way into success. There’s nothing so freeing as to realize that you can fall down and get up again. Classroom-style learning is helpful and can prevent you from making dumb mistakes, but I’ve always been a classroom-educated person. It’s only been recently that I’ve discovered entrepreneurial learning and how fun it is to try to make it on your own with real stakes in the real world. Exhilarating.

Well,

Cheers to new adventures.

Thanks be to God for beautiful buildings and faithful Christians.

And thanks for reading this blog.

Let me know if you read Plough, or write for them, and please recommend your favorite magazines in the comments.

Leave a comment

I have a confession to make.

I haven’t been writing two hours a day. In fact, recently I’m lucky to get in two hours a week.

While I still believe in a deep-rooted compatibility between mothering and making art, this pregnancy just ain’t it. I’m happy for Lauryn Hill and her pregnancy-induced creativity (see: “Be Weird. Be a holy (m)other”). Meanwhile, here I am, lying on the couch with one eye open, buried in clothing my toddler has made into “a blanket, mommy, tuck, tuck, tuck.” The energy bunny has become a somnolent toad.

A toad can’t move as fast as a bunny. A toad, in fact, does very little, at least if it’s the kind of toad I am. I have a long list of housekeeping tasks I’ve been creeping through. But list is the wrong word. It’s actually an endless cycle. Not only a cycle, but one that is moving too fast for me to make progress. Not only too fast to make progress but fast enough that I’m actually going backwards, actively spreading dirt and disorganization.

Due to these circumstances, your friendly resident somnolent toad is finding its main spiritual task these days is to accept its temporary weakness and not be a downer.

One thing that’s helped me is to remember pregnancy fatigue is an affliction many women would give their right arm to have.1 Until recently, I wasn’t particularly aware of the emotional impacts of infertility struggles. Then, I read The Baby Business, an old book (2005) on surrogacy, adoption, and IVF. One anecdote told of a couple who spent a total of $100,000 (more like $150k today) on treatments, undergoing a third-trimester twin loss among other miscarriages, before finally giving up and adopting a Russian orphan. Wow. What is a child worth in dollar terms? To some, a lot.

Some of these women have also popped up in my life. A matron at a wedding with a fourteen year age gap between her second and third children. A friend whose sex life has become burdensome through repeated disappointment. A woman who gritted her teeth through every variety of miscarriage because God had sent her a dream about a golden-haired child.

Hearing about these couples refreshes my gratitude for being pregnant. Even though my body is not cooperating exactly how I would want it to, it is doing a great job making a baby. Praise God!

As for writing—although I haven’t been doing that much, I’m participating in two professional development things this month: a World Journalism Institute webinar on freelancing and a weekend magazine writer’s retreat with Plough. This has, at least, reduced the irrational panic that if I stop writing for a few months, I’m never going to write again.

But for now—I write this lying on the living room couch. And realistically, this is where I will be for a while.

God bless you, God be with you, and may he send you enough humor and humility to tackle whatever you’re dealing with right now.

Yours,

Amelia

P.S. Ironically, the evening after I wrote this, my husband came home and told me to head out to Barnes & Noble for an evening writing sesh where I successfully pounded out some work. I guess it just goes to show that when one is discouraged, it’s spiffing to have a supportive spouse.

But, then, I’m not the one who needs to hear their message. I’m faintly macabre myself, having lived in death’s shadow since age 10 when three family members died in a crash. My seven-year-old brother and I survived. So here are two young Americans, at least, who aren’t in death denial. To us, the susurrations of dried leaves underfoot form words, each Fall, again and again: “Memento mori”—”Remember you will die.”

Until recently, however, I’ve been deaf to another song Americans have trouble hearing—the song of the redbuds each Spring. “Memento nati,” they hum. “Remember you were born.” I didn’t begin to hear it until I became a mother. And, in many ways, it’s saved me.

Motherhood taught me to hope.

When your own body is preaching the Gospel, it’s hard not to believe it.

I often tease my husband about his pessimism. He never expects anything good to happen. This makes sense. He grew up in an emotional war zone where skyscrapers could never be built. I on the other hand, never expect good things to stay. Growing up was more like living post-9/11. The World Trade Centers had soared upward, but one blue and sunny day, they came crashing down. If this could happen, was anything secure? It seemed everything was destined for the grave.

Because of this, as a child, I was poker faced in public, cried a lot in secret, and rarely smiled. I felt like everyone around me was like a bioluminescent algae colony, floating on the ocean, unaware of the darkness and the bonechilling waves. I, on the other hand, was a solitary swimmer, an outsider, an observer, struggling to keep my head above the water as my teeth chattered from the cold. Death was just around the corner.

This sentiment continued into adulthood. When my husband proposed to me, for example, I was convinced one of us would die before the wedding. (Spoiler, neither of us did.) Fast forward three years later to pregnancy—I braced myself for a miscarriage. “Lord, if it’s your will to take this baby, I can bear it.”

How shocking, then, to discover one morning that my body had successfully produced a new life.

During pregnancy, I had waited and waited. I ached. I lumbered. For 24 hours, I quaked with excruciating pain. Again, I thought I would die. Then, exactly when death should have come, instead came life—and life multiplied! The story of pain ended with jubilation.

Perhaps Paul says women are saved through childbirth because when your own body is preaching the Gospel, it’s hard not to believe it. When the baby came, I knew everything would be okay. What this meant, for me, was that Everything—the universe, the cosmos, all of time and space—would be okay. In other words, Jesus was right. Death would be swallowed up by life. My body pantomimed the story of the world and convinced my heart it was true.

To crown it all, I gave birth to a daughter. I didn’t see the significance of this until a mentor exclaimed, “How good God is! You lost your little sister, and he’s given you a little girl.” In this way, my daughter was a small foreshadowing of God’s plan restore all things.

Joy comes from understanding both death and birth.

When I hear of a particularly horrible atrocity, I sometimes still wish God had destroyed everything in the Biblical flood. But then I imagine Noah stepping out of the ark into the ruined world. I think he must have questioned whether he had the courage to start over. And then I think he must have looked at his kids. That’s what keeps me going, too.

My child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I bow before her child-ness, her mochi-soft cheeks, the memory of her yelling face wrinkled from the womb. This is life, and through her, I am born anew each day. Now, awareness of death, instead of deadening me, focuses my life into a keen and brilliant point.

Of course, motherhood brings a host of challenges. I’ve never done something so strenuous. But it’s a fresh kind of strenuous, like pulverizing rosemary in a mortar or pulling weeds. I understand why people complain about colick, sleepless nights, the 24/7 work. But perhaps we exaggerate those struggles because we’ve forgotten about death.

Memento mori, though unhealthy on its own, heightens our sense of the miracle of birth. Only when we’ve seen how precarious life is can we appreciate our task as parents. We are able to witness the infinite “Yes!” of life lifted, as e.e. cummings writes, “from the no of all nothing.”1

Then, like the one newly born, we become all “tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing.”

e.e. cummings concludes his poem:
”(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”

All I can say is that motherhood did that for me. It restored my innocence without robbing me of wisdom. It reminded me that although I will die, I also was born. And my favorite season is now not Fall, but Spring.

Readers, I’m fed up with the negativity around motherhood because it seems so obvious that (a) mothering is tough work and (b) it’s the best work! The two do not have to be in conflict. Running marathons, for example, is tough and awesome at the same time. No one seems to have a hard time understanding that. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

This essay/testimony was inspired by:

1. A conversation with my friend Sarah A. about how a certain celebrity recently said: “All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I actually don’t know anyone who’s like happy and has children at this age [20’s].” Like. Dude. What?

2. Emily Hancock’s “I Quit Heroin So I Could Breastfeed.” Another in the genre of motherhood’s saving power.

4. This comment from Lane Scott. It gave me a clue about Paul’s cryptic saying that women are saved through childbearing. Here it is in part:

   “Christianity is about dying for another and giving your life for another. Women are biologically hardwired to do this. As such, they have a leg up when it comes to religion. They can of course decide not to serve, but for most women having a child instantly gives them the motivation to die for another person. They will willingly give up their lives and their interests without thought for the sake of their child.”

Perhaps your identity crisis is not the result of any man-made thing.

Perhaps it’s the denial of what your body has been patiently explaining to you for years—that being a woman is not what you once thought.

The Furies of Your Body

The furies of your body have stalked you for years, yet, with a fearful glance backward, you’ve always outwalked them. Now, hunched on the floor, hot with sweat and blood and groaning as the child drops, you can’t escape. Now, at last, they’re closing in, reminding you of—

The blood you hid from your mind as you crumpled pads in your fist.
The place you shaved to disguise your sex in a bland expanse of belly.
The climaxes you faked, too frightened to discover the shape of your desire.

From the corner of the birth room, they tell you—

Your femininity is not what your mother said:
Hair shampooed. Legs crossed. Face scrubbed.

Your femininity is not what your roommate said:
Good grades, short skirts, small waist.

Your femininity is not what your manager said:
Self care, meal kits, boundaries.

Your femininity is not what the minister said:
Cover your mouth, cover your head, cover it all.

Beneath the red nail polish and tidy resumé you thought your sex sits a depth unplumbable. You could drop a stone into its well and never hear it fall.

Beneath The Manmade Things

Your femininity is:

You,

a naked world of pain and creation, with a delta marking the passage from sleep to wakefulness. Wherever you walk, sleeping crocuses break through the cracks in the sidewalk and bare their faces to the frost. The child in you rocks your hips wider, itching to emerge, hungering for your touch.

Men call you a witch, not because you cast dark spells, but because you know the Earth too well. In these years of swelling and shrinking, she is your closest kin. Your bones shift like tectonic plates. You carry oceans in your belly. Your arms are branches, your legs like tree trunks, strong and sturdy for bearing new life. And when you open your mouth, blood-streaked fangs threaten the intruder. You are a biosphere of life and gore and unearned gentleness. Every enclave of your being seeks to harbor and protect what’s yours.

In these times of swelling and expelling, you are not woman man-made—very polite, your hair shiny as your smile, and your buttons all done up. You are woman deep down sillion—soft earth plowed and turned up glistening.

Arms Made to Cradle

As the Furies leave their corner and advance into the light, you blink. No snaky hair, no glowing eyes. Who are these figures, once so frightening? You realize that in your fear, you never turned around to look.

Mother Mary, her face worn, but gentle.

Hannah, once barren, carrying the mantle she wove each year for the child she gave away to God.

Monica, eyes still red from the tears she shed for her prodigal son.

Women mill around you in a luminous cloud, number upon number, young and old.

“How many generations of love did it take for you to be born?” they ask. “Now, you understand. Raise your daughters well.”

This is not you losing yourself. This is you finding out the Truth. Do not shield your eyes, or blind yourself with golden pins. Look her in the mirror (do you hear the ocean shifting?). Love, be free.

I hope to make this the first in a series of women’s life stories. Many voices nowadays boil down male and female into adjectives and abstractions like “Women are gentle” or “Men are ambitious.” But real life is complex. Nobody fits the archetypes to a tee. One of the reasons this story is being published here (and not at a magazine) is that Carla’s life doesn’t push one narrative. Instead, it’s the honest recounting of some remarkable experiences from someone who doesn’t think she has all the answers. I’m hoping that if I can continue with these stories, instead of pushing one pre-approved narrative, they’ll form a starscape in which (if we pay attention!) we may discover constellations. Enjoy!

Yours,

Amelia

At 5 ‘o clock a.m., the Sea of Galilee lay beneath the stars, its waters dark and still. The city of Tiberias was still sleeping, its streets silent, when Carla awoke to a loud banging at her door.

“Christ is risen!” a voice called out.

“And truly we with him,” she replied.

The banging stopped. Footsteps pattered away. Then, she heard the noise resume, more faintly, at the next door: “Christ is risen!”

Carla slipped out of bed. She set a small picture of Christ before her on her tiny desk, opened her heavy Bible, and began to speak in a weary monotone: “Grazie Signore per questo nuovo giorno…”

Other voices rang out around her, the noise traveling through the thin walls—singing, speaking, reading—punctuated by the occasional “beep” from their prayer timers, which signaled them to move from worship to gratitude to contrition.

Carla had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience at the age of 19 and left her home in Guadalajara, Mexico to join a convent-parish compound in the Holy Land. The community was a tiny, mixed group of celibates—three priests, one brother, and five sisters—and tightly controlled.

Life as a nun was not what she had expected.

Each morning, she rose at 5:00. She would not return to her room until 10:00 at night, when she would end her day the same way she had begun it—exhausted, standing in her cramped room speaking mechanically to the picture on her desk.

She spent most of the fifteen hours of her day doing laundry for the convent-run hostel. The hostel was cheap, staffed as it was by unpaid nuns, and the visitors constantly streaming in and out its doors gave Carla piles and piles of bedding to wash.

When she first took her vows, she had imagined herself evangelizing to the lost, perhaps working charismatic miracles in the far-off corners of the world. Now, after six years in this environment, she could hardly remember who she had once been. She spent her days in the laundry room, scrubbing stains from sheets and clothes. Every day, as she worked, it seemed to her that she was scrubbing at herself, washing away, through sheer effort, every trace of her former life. Her femininity, her Mexican culture, her longings for beauty and love. She was scrubbing and scrubbing until everything was gone—until Carla was gone. This, she had come to realize, was the real work of a nun: to have one’s spirit broken.

Carla finished her morning prayer. “Santi Giuseppe e Giovanni Batista, pregate per noi Che ricorriamo a voi.”

St. Joseph and John the Baptist, pray for us.

A rim of orange traced the eastern horizon, promising sunrise.

First Vision: Nun

Today, Carla is no longer a nun.

This spring, she will graduate with her bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering and begin her professional career in the United States. But the journey to the present took many years and spanned many miles, from Guadalajara to Jerusalem.

Carla was 17 when she joined a choir run by an alcoholic law school drop-out. In a living room piled with hangover-relief electrolytes, a group of Mexican Catholic teenagers gathered once a week to sing pop songs much more exciting than the ones at church. This program was Carla’s first touchpoint with the organization Koinonia Giovanni Battista.

Koinonia Giovanni Battista was founded in the late ‘70’s as part of the New Evangelization, a charismatic movement within the Catholic Church. Unlike official religious orders, like the Benedictines or Dominicans, the Koinonia is canonically recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as a “private association of the faithful.” Private associations operate with very little oversight, basing decisions on private agreements within the group. Had Carla been older and less naive, this might have warned her to stay away.

But its founding values of kerygma (proclamation), karisma (signs and wonders), and koinonia (community) attracted Carla—especially the community part, which, in its most extreme expression, took the form of monastic life. From a young age, Carla had felt the sting of having a strict curfew while her male cousins roamed the streets of Guadalajara well past midnight. Monastic life had seemed to her a chance at independence.

Inspired, Carla took five of the Koinonia's Bible courses in one year. After her final “Paul” course, Carla went on a retreat in the countryside where she listened to nuns testify about their callings. At the end, the leaders told the students to write their dreams and aspirations on slips of paper. Carla thought about what dream she cherished most and wrote down “become an engineer.” The slips were collected and burned. Total commitment to God meant total sacrifice.

By the age of 19, she had decided she was willing to go all the way. She sat before a mirror surrounded by a small group of nuns, her severed locks lying limp on the floor.

For female members of the community, celibacy meant not only giving up their family and possessions, but also their sex. The consecrated sisters of the Koinonia cut their hair in a mannish style, close-cropped around their ears. They wore formless, ankle-length skirts and button-down shirts.

After chopping Carla’s hair off, the nuns handed Carla her new outfit, gleaned from the community donation bin. Carla held up a long skirt in military green and a black button-up three sizes too large. It was ugly. But, she repeated to herself, she must die to her femininity to be free.

Second Vision: Wife

When Carla left the convent, she was debilitated for a year. The harsh lifestyle had taken its toll on her body, and she struggled with chronic illness. But after many doctor’s visits and many months of rest, she began to recover her strength.

As she reentered the world, Carla resisted her old school friends' matchmaking efforts. She didn’t like their lifestyles, which were heavily influenced by Mexican machismo culture. In most ways, they were the polar opposite of the nuns, but their lifestyles were eerily parallel. Instead of getting up early to pray and work, they would get up two hours early to don a full face of makeup and curl their flowing hair. They would use yet more time each afternoon to change into fresh outfits before their husbands returned from work.

“Everything they did was to please the man,” Carla said.

The women’s quasi-religious devotion to their femininity was a stark contrast to the nuns’ devotion to God. It reminded her of an encounter she had in the Holy Land shortly before she left—one that had inspired her to second-guess her vows.

One day, a short, caramel-complexioned woman had turned up crying on the Koinonia’s doorstep. The pastor of the convent told Carla, the only Spanish-speaker, to minister to her needs. The woman was distraught over her twin sister, who had left Colombia for Israel and converted to Judaism. She returned many times to ask Carla for prayer and advice as she tried to convince her twin to come back home.

Months later, Carla was riding the bus back from Hebrew lessons when she saw the Jewish twin. There was no mistaking her. They were identical, except that this woman had wrapped her hair in a colorful tichel scarf. Carla introduced herself in Spanish.

“You are the nun,” the Jewish twin said, immediately identifying her. “Do you know the three things that God will ask us when we die?”

Carla was too surprised by the question to think of an answer.

“First,” the Jewish twin said, holding up a finger. “Did you marry? The second thing—Did you have kids? And the third and last and most important thing—Did you send your kids to Torah school?”

When Carla returned home to the convent and described the encounter to her community, her pastor accused her of making up stories. Months later, when she announced she wanted to leave, he told her it was the Jewish twin’s fault. She had cursed Carla by planting a seed of doubt in her heart. The twin, by his logic, had been trying to tempt Carla away from celibacy by arguing that a woman’s value came from marriage and childbirth. This went against all the teachings of the Koinonia, which emphasized the “higher,” more spiritual calling of celibacy.

But for Carla, the woman’s belief was one lie that exposed another—the lie she’d been living. The Koinonia constantly implied that celibacy was the higher calling, that renouncing marriage made you holier and more valuable in the eyes of God. How was that any better than placing all your self-worth in marriage?

Carla had encountered two visions of womanhood in her life so far. Carla’s married friends found their value and purpose in their female beauty. The nuns snuffed out their sexuality and severed family ties to find self-worth in the rejection of their womanhood. The choice was clear: to be a proper woman, you had to either fit your femininity into a narrow box, or renounce it completely.

Carla felt trapped.

Third Vision: Engineer

But she would soon discover a third vision of womanhood.

When her cousin invited her to visit him in New York City, Carla eagerly accepted. He told her to stay as long as she liked and to fill her time however she liked. After six years of living under the strictures of monastic life, Carla struggled to do what he had asked.

Koinonia life was so heavily regulated that the nuns had to publicly request personal supplies from the male prior in a weekly meeting, including the size and number of menstrual pads they needed that month. It was hard to escape that subservient mindset. At first, Carla found herself asking her cousin’s permission for everything—to walk, to shop, to eat. But slowly, she began to assert herself through small acts of defiance, like taking herself out for ice cream in the middle of the day.

After Carla picked up a gig altering clothing for one of her cousin’s friends, the friend, a New York City PR executive, invited her to take a tour of her office in downtown Manhattan. Carla felt a sense of peace standing in the glass building overlooking the world. A new vision of womanhood began to form before her eyes—the self-made woman, defined not by her marital status but by her agency.

Nearly a decade earlier, before encountering the Koinonia, she had dreamed of one day becoming an engineer. Was it possible to start trying now?

In contrast to the other visions of womanhood Carla had encountered, the American one was not a monolith. For Carla, American women were defined primarily by their ability to find their own paths—to live the American Dream. The female executive with her $400 trousers was one instance of this. But even the “trad wife” played into this independent spirit by defying mainstream cultural expectations in pursuit of self-determination.

From Carla’s perspective, the women she’d encountered in America proved the American Dream was still alive. With her cousin’s help, she applied to engineering school.

Carla has had to fight to maintain this newfound belief in her own efficacy. As a female Latina engineer, she joined a number of professional development initiatives for minorities, including The Society of Women Engineers and conferences for people of color. While she enjoys the networking, she cringes when people, noticing the pigmentation of her skin, or the melodic lilt of her English, assume she’s oppressed. They don’t know how much she’s overcome.

Today, Carla bases her identity neither in celibacy nor marriage, but in her ability to take responsibility for her own choices. And perhaps it is this universal virtue that undergirds any healthy vision of womanhood—that we recognize our agency in whatever situation we are in and use it well.

For Discussion

What do you think of these three visions of femininity? Which one, if any, do you believe is true? Can each contain a portion of the truth, even when they are mutually exclusive (like nun and wife)?1

For discussion: Amelia here. The narrator of this satirical poem uses Scripture to justify staying silent. What are some Scriptures you might use to rebut these arguments, Jesus-in-the-wilderness style?

Did a phrase in this poem strike a chord? Please use the text version below to re-stack it.

Evangelical
I’ll stay inside the safety of the mouth¬
no need for the body or the brain
to expend the effort of making
the little, soft, warm tongue
into the sharp shape of a truth
or a nimble word of hope,
and don’t try to undermine my decision
by writing it down for later!

As a reminder:
All pearls will stay safely
locked up in their jewel cases
[ as a precaution against trampling ]. ?
Never mind that they were a costly
donation meant for giving away,
and the nearest livestock
are miles, miles away.

‘Ration your heart’ say the stoics,
‘and control your tongue,’ says James,
‘and watch your mouth!’ says Mom.

But here is an ear ¬
battered
by the hurricane of media,
an ear to hear,
with a brother on a heading
toward the indifference of the stoics,
a childlike ear repeatedly shushed by James
and left sunburnt to peel under Mom’s
impatience – ‘Will you just hurry up?!’
No, I’m just trampling this
lost little ear real quick,
helping it suffocate quietly under
my heel so I can get back to counting my
hoard of pearls.
(Alone,
in silence.)

– C. Evans Erickson