A trad wife influencer wakes up in 1855, forced to live the harsh reality of the 19th-century farm life she’s been glamorizing online.

I read it when it came out in April, posted a review about it on Instagram months ago, and finally, I feel like I can articulate why it keeps begging my attention, and where it fell short for me.

I was hooked by the book’s close-to-home premise of Mormon mommy influencer. I live in Utah, which is a national capital of momfluencing and tradwifery with up to a half of the most viral Momtok and Tradwife content originating in my home state.

I’ve met Ruby Franke and live a short drive to the Ballerina Farm, both of which were sources of inspiration for Caro Claire Burke’s book. I’ve been to many an influencer event, which are such a strange and fascinating microcosm of the instafamous world. Caro interviewed a lot of Mormons for this book, and it’s the religion I was raised in, so I felt compelled to read for its relevance to the world I live in.

We’re always grateful when someone looks at our weird little community and thinks it’s interesting enough to write a book about it, right? We want to see how the world sees us, to feel a part of the conversation.

I wanted to read a book that represented me, that dove into the deep psychology of being raised in a high expectation religion. I wanted to recognize the quirky cultural details like carrots in jello, the way we cosplay our pioneer ancestors through annual “pioneer treks,” and the ghost of polygamy that still hovers in our temple rituals.

Parts of the novel felt relatable, like the all-too-common idol worship of leaders (and influencers), the way religious scrupulosity can make you feel a false sense of safety (if I just perform these rituals and go the extra mile in keeping the religious rules, I’ll be protected from physical and spiritual harm), and the feeling of being chosen and blessed above the rest because of an ingrained message that you’re in the right religion, checking off all the boxes that make you good.

But ultimately, I came away feeling like Yesteryear borrowed the visual and cultural texture of LDS tradwife culture for dramatic effect, but declined to actually examine the theology or lived faith driving it. Like Rebbie Brassfield said in her Salt Lake Tribune piece, Mormonism was set dressing, but not much more than that. “I’d love for these creators to either stop looking at me, or look more closely,” she wrote.

Caro doesn’t owe me or anyone a book about Mormonism. She told the story she wanted to tell, and by God (forgive me), it worked. It’s still living rent-free in my head. It’s an ongoing source of viral content on social media. And what I applaud more than anything? It has started conversations. And it’s shown how hungry we are for representation, for specificity, more than an amalgamation of conservative religions and lifestyles lumped into one.

Yesteryear served its purpose, and I’ll always cheer for any author who has the balls to write a book and then face the polarity of it.

But, I’m still searching for the story that goes deeper, where the character captures the dissonance of being a woman of God and a woman of the world. Where motherhood and womanhood and religion can be beautiful, but also demand impossible standards, ones that can drive a woman to come undone.

Like Lorren Lemons wrote in her piece, “I don’t want an easy character; I just want one that feels real: flawed but nuanced, unflinching in living out both the bright and dark facets of religious womanhood.”

Guess what? I wrote that book. It was my thesis in grad school and I felt compelled to tell the stories, in novel form, that me and so many women around me have lived—where the religion of our youth stops fitting so well as we come into ourselves and leave black-and-white thinking behind. We are still light-seeking, good women and mothers. But all the checkmarks we were told made us good, when not paired with a more expansive and inclusive form of faith, become superficial and problematic. Critical thinking needs to enter the room in order to live a life of alignment with our deepest values of equity, freedom, and inclusion.

My manuscript is with agents right now, and I’m anxiously waiting for the one who recognizes the value of telling a story like Yesteryear, but from someone on the inside. And in reverse—where instead of taking the harmful parts of religious adherence to an extreme like Natalie does (and many characters do in these Mormon-flavored, sensational dramas), my main character, Ash, a tradwife-coded Mormon woman, disentangles herself from the way of operating in religion that oppressed her, and instead of living the lie she thinks she has to uphold, builds a new life of her choosing. Of course, not without messiness and harmed relationships and mistakes, because anyone whose been through a faith deconstruction and reconfiguration knows that’s part of the process. I shared an excerpt from my novel here.

Do I recommend Yesteryear? Absolutely yes. It makes for a fantastic book club discussion. And I hope we start to see more stories from women who have lived, firsthand, the complexities of womanhood inside modern Christianity.

It’s taken me weeks to hit publish on this—even for my small number of paid subscribers who I love fiercely. Seriously: I love you!

While this novel is fiction, it is also not. I drew upon some of my own experiences and many of my observed experiences of close friends, so this story feels vulnerable to tell. Thank you for reading it with an open and gentle heart.

My goal with this book is bridge divides, not deepen them.

Note: After a lot of revision, I’ve actually taken this chapter out of my novel and started it somewhere else, somewhere that doesn’t give quite so much exposition and interiority off the bat. But this is the true start of the story, even if it doesn’t make it on the page exactly like this. And if the vulnerability hangover isn’t too big from putting this out there, maybe I’ll share the next chapter here, too.

Well, here goes. I’m keeping the title to myself for now, but I’ll give you my former working title. Introducing. . . What the Trees Know.

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I’m a fangirl of gothic classic romance—the moody atmospheres, the tactile settings (hello, muddy, treacherous moors), the gritty, complex characters, and dangerous love stories. So, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, written by two of the three Brontë sisters, have long been favorites. When the Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi movie was set to come out, I was champing at the bit. (Yes, champing.)

It’s been seven years since I’ve read that tumultuous classic, and I hadn’t read reviews or seen anything beyond one preview of the movie. My expectations were open. And they were filled with the most sensory experience one could have through a screen: a foreboding and austere landscape in the wild and remote English countryside, lush and colorful costumes, an intricate and luxurious set, actors that masterfully carried the depth of the story, and music that practically lifted me of my seat.

Let me pause with a disclaimer: I’m not and never will be the kind of person who walks into a movie to critique it. I go to be entertained. And reader, I was. And then some. I was also seduced, horrified, mesmerized, surprised, and heartbroken. I walked out of the theater with that buzz that comes from experiencing art that is bold and awakening, where the raw and bizarre overtakes the self-conscious and polite.

Did it follow the book closely? Well, on paper, not really. Because it’s not a book written by a secluded girl who had to hide behind a male pen name in 1847—it’s an adaptation for a 2026 audience, an interpretation taken from 300 words of literary prose into 90 pages of visual screenplay.

Emerald captured the dark, foreboding mood of the impoverished Wuthering Heights and contrasted it expertly to the bright, wealthy, and excessive Thrushcross Grange four miles away.

She made Heathcliff far more redeemable in the movie than in the book, and though still problematic (we can’t veer too far), it’s a relief, in my opinion, to see him portrayed that way.

Also, if you’re inspired to read Wuthering Heights after loving the movie, know there is zero sex in it. Emerald gives us the gift of actually seeing Cathy and Heath together on screen instead of the frustrating, maniacal obsession and longing throughout the pages of the novel.

We are also treated to the breath-hitching moments of Heathcliff shielding Catherine’s eyes in the rain, hoisting her into a tree and leaving her there when she mentions marrying, lifting her by the corset to kiss her (I’m sorry, what?), the disturbing detail of Catherine’s walls fashioned after her skin, the unhinged Isabella, and the kindheartedness of the only sane character, Edgar Linton.

There are so many beautiful pieces of the book that never made a translation on screen (half of the story, after Catherine is gone, isn’t touched at all), but I didn’t mind it. The movie is not the book—we don’t need a replacement. But Emerald gave us an extension of the world Emily created. She offered us one of many adaptations, and I think there’s room for them all.

So, if you’re inclined, grab some popcorn and your tissues (but probably not your mom), and go see this delightful, dark, sexy movie. And if you haven’t yet, read the book.

But it’s been more of a Less Phone Sunday than complete abstinence. Comments of “But my scriptures are on my phone,” from my daughter, “I have to send this text to so-and-so,” from my son, and me needing recipes I’ve pinned for dinner have made completely phone-free Sundays near impossible.

But today? We found a way to make it work.

My husband hid all our phones first thing in the morning, before the kids even woke up, and we were all wi-fi free (including laptops and iPads) all morning, until we got home from church.

I’m not being dramatic when I say it was revolutionary.

As I sipped my favorite protein hot cocoa, and the kids ate breakfast, I gazed out the window and noticed our little lop-eared bunny munching on a pumpkin in the backyard. My daughter and I spent some time playing with her and looking after our chickens, gathering some long-left eggs while reciting each of their names (Waffle, Una, Mocha, Silky, Elvis, Olive, Bruno, and Misty) and noticing how the chicks have grown up and changed colors. Normally, I would’ve been too sucked into my screen to notice and participate in this little moment.

My teenager picked up (and actually read) a newspaper. An actual, physical newspaper! After spending some time reading in her room, she came downstairs, declared she was bored, and asked for the embroidery hoops she’d started on years ago and had left to gather dust.

My teenaged son heckled me all morning (in a mostly good way), wanting to be near me and have my attention. He took a long bath and read, then later asked to watch “All Creatures Great and Small,” a charming, wholesome BBC show we used to watch as a family long before phones and YouTube videos became more enticing.

My littlest, who has often complained of being the only one not glued to a screen, felt like she had her family back. I felt like I had my family back. Like we were revolting against the status quo, the autopilot of letting the little false worlds in our screens steal our time and direct our lives.

This slower pace for the first Sunday of the new year all feels very timely. Just last night, I went to a Japanese listening studio for a friend’s birthday, where we all slipped off our shoes and stepped into the coolest, coziest little sound sanctuary with plush chairs, dark walls, a mashup of vintage rugs, and moody lighting, to listen to a full vinyl album for an hour and a half with mostly strangers, none of us pulling out our phones once. It was like traveling back in time, when phones weren’t a thing and we had to just be in the moment.

I ordered one of those Bricks, the new little device you scan to lock yourself out of certain apps and get back your time and productivity. This feels like the perfect tool for me and my teens to use in order to keep ourselves accountable with my goal to help us all be more present in our lives this year, to focus on creating more than we consume, fostering real-life relationships, and letting our brains get bored instead of hooking them up to a never-ending IV of dopamine.

We experienced a slice of that heavenly family boredom today, and it made for more interactions between us (though yes, we all still bickered), and moments like the kids huddled around the clear top of the washing machine, watching it churn like they did when they were little, because they had nothing else to do. No phone to escape into, just the living, breathing world around them.

Yes, there were murmurs here and there about the forced family time, a couple sneaks when I couldn’t resist checking my calendar and the like, but over all, everyone seemed happy with our new rhythm. It was clear we all craved it, needed it.

I’ll keep advocating for this little act of Sunday rebellion against the Screen Gods, because it makes me feel like I’m living the life I want instead of being pulled along like I’m tethered to the back of a horse.

I hope you find the little acts of rebellion this year that keep you tethered to your one magnificent, magical life.

I’ve never in my life had a throwaway year, one I’d be entirely happy to move on from and put firmly in the past. Well, 2025 is it for me. Maybe someone can look at my star chart or enneagram or the (censored) list of what went down: unprecedented family challenges and an uprooting of some of the most important friendships of my life, and tell me why this was my year to flounder.

Until then, I’m revisiting my 2025 vision board with mixed emotions. Part of me wants to rip it up, but the optimist in me can’t help but acknowledge the few hopes I wrote down that came true:

•I went to Australia (where I lived) with my family

•I built my writing mentorship business and love what I do

•I got a tattoo (a big deal for me!) and have no regrets

•I finished my third novel and am working on getting it published

But there are a lot of things I fell insanely short of. In fact, even with the best intentions, I achieved the antithesis of them.

There were other things I thought I wanted and got, but they ended up not being good for me.

And others just plain didn’t work out despite my highest hopes and best efforts (buying our dream house and landing a literary agent, for example).

I’ve always been a glutton for New Year’s Resolutions and wrote them from the time I was little. The idea of a clean slate and a chance to reinvent myself is just too hard to resist. I love to fill a list, journal, or vision board with dreams of what the new year can bring.

But this year, looking at the predictions early-2025 me made, I’m feeling a new trepidation. What’s the point of creating an elaborate, color-coded, painfully optimistic poster board of goals when half of them won’t be realized and some of them will turn out exactly opposite to how I hoped?

It seems a little naive, over optimistic, and almost like I’m casting a spell—full of blessings and curses—for my year to come.

Reader, I’m making one anyway.

Because I’m remembering that handful of five things that did make life meaningful, that brought me joy. Even amidst the rubble of the hardships of the year.

This time, maybe I’ll leave some of the spaces on my board empty for the good, unexpected things that come my way.

I think I’ll even leave spaces for the “bad” ones, too. Because that’s what real life is, right? A patchwork of the highs and lows we experience as humans?

There’s no such thing as a perfect year. But I’m putting my optimistic eggs in 2026’s basket and hoping for a good one.

The way he paints is really unique.

He has a gift for seeing people as they really are.

Basically, like painting their souls.

He did that for my daughter and I a long time ago. It was so beautiful.

He reached out recently and asked if I wanted to have another one done.

I said yes because I love Jonny and the work he does, but there was a part of me that felt hesitant because of this past year and I just felt uncomfortable being fully seen and worried about what he would find there.

I felt like the painting would just be chaotic and kind of dark if it was going to reflect the things I’ve been through and how I’ve felt at some points this past year.

It just felt different going into it this time.

But as soon as I opened the gift, I was in tears.

The beautiful colors, the complex mosaic of the lines, all made me feel seen, made me feel like I had permission to be all the parts of me.

There were these pencil marks swirling around the painting that really struck me because it felt like the missteps I’ve made and some darker, sadder moments of my life this year are erasable, that they’re just like part of the process.

Then there is this beautiful blue river flowing along the top of the painting.

My sister and I have talked about a river within us. It’s like a river of peace and groundedness inside us, the place we feel aligned when we can access it.

It’s always there.

We just have to get connected to it.

It’s just kind of cool that that’s there in my painting without Jonny knowing about that.

And all the interesting little pieces of the puzzle that make up the painting.

There’s a part in my novel where I talk about how my main character, after going through some hard things, goes to a famous church, a cathedral, in St. David’s, and she sees this altar that’s called the altar broken pieces (it really exists), and it’s all these different pieces of stone brought together to make a whole, and there’s this moment where she looks at this and sees herself, and she asks,

“How can I be made of so many opposing pieces and be full of so many paradoxes and so many broken pieces, does it really make a whole? Is it enough?”

And that’s what this painting reminds me of.

It’s a refreshing reminder that we contain multitudes, where so many things.

Not just one thing.

We’re so nuanced and complex, are always growing and changing.

And it’s okay.

We can be many things, even when they feel opposing or disconnected.

That’s what makes us beautiful, relatable and human.

Thank you, Jonny.

Jonny does not usually discount his art, but is offering 20% off a custom painting if you reach out to him and mention my name. I promise you, it will be a healing experience. Connect with Jonny here.

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1. At some point, my life became too small.

My biggest dreams unrealized.

My fantasies only in novels.

The kids don’t need me the same way anymore.

My marriage is laced with overfamiliarity.

The faith tradition I bound my identity to is diminishing, and myself along with it.

I looked through hidden doorways

Under stones and rotting logs

Hunting for the life I’d lost.

But I only found heartache and disappointment.

Searching for this new thing—a frantic need to fill my void, assuage my fears of:

“Is this mundanity all that’s left of life, now?”

—I lost myself

Lost love

Lost God

Lost hope

And worst of all—friends.

All I have in this empty, quiet house is a screen to soothe me into thinking I am living.

The days, the scenery, the people, are

the same

same

same.

2. But there’s something faintly humming beneath the surface of all the sameness.

A greater Knowing that says,

It’s all right here.

Everything you need.

All you ever wanted.

Its in the flaming sunrise out your window

The curly tendrils rising from your teacup

Tucked between the laughter of your children

And the steady touch of the man who chooses you, despite it all.

It’s in that line of the book you just so happened to pick up.

In the old stranger’s smile.

In the sound of the rain.

All you have to do is look—

In the way that uses your heart, not your eyes.

You have not lost your life.

It has always been right here, waiting for you.

It’s in the quiet spaces between.

Responses flooded my DMs. I want to share some of them so we can see what a painful process this is for so many people (on both sides of religion) and hopefully hold more compassionate space for ourselves and each other.

P.S. This topic is a big one in my upcoming novel. I’ll be sharing early excerpts with my paid subscribers!

In the meantime, here are the responses!

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The DM came like a gust of wind that takes your breath away, not because it was shocking or inappropriate, but because it’s the question that’s on the forefront of my mind, articulated directly and beautifully.

If you want to read the faith deconstruction email series that message is referring to, you can find it here. I wrote it in 2021 at a retreat for creatives in Vermont, feeling an undeniable urge, almost a command, to share this part of my life’s journey. It’s also where I experienced my first boudoir shoot, which in hindsight, seems so fitting. I was stepping into a season of my life where I would let myself be seen, exposed, even though it brought both solidarity and heartache.

In my email series, written four years ago, I shared how supportive my husband has been as he’s witnessed me wade through the waters of doubt (something condemned in my, and probably most, religious institutions). I shared how he did his best as a “White Mormon male” (his words) to hold space for me as I brought up things that concerned me, that made me question what I was taught and what’s still being taught that makes me sad, angry, and disconnected from it.

That still holds true. My husband has always done his best to show up for me in my pain. He has been a steady and safe witness to my change. And I have tried to offer him that respect in return by honoring the ways he still chooses to practice and believe, the things he holds close and sacred, and always will. I can relate, because many of those things used to be sacred to me, too. The reorganization of my faith wasn’t sparked by deconstruction manuals or anti-Mormon literature—I haven’t even read the CES Letter. It began as something quieter: an inward nudge to look more carefully at the history I’d inherited and the ways power and belonging are shaped within the church today. It was an internal, intuitive unfolding, one I felt led to follow slowly and sincerely.

I don’t think everyone needs to deconstruct their faith to ground zero. In fact, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s an excruciating process. But I do believe it’s important, at some point, to examine it, to look at it under the microscope of a critical eye. Like Teryl Givens said, “If the doctrine can’t withstand our scrutiny, it doesn’t deserve our discipleship.”

Even though there is mutual respect and seeking to understand in my marriage, I can’t ignore the divide I sometimes feel.

My husband’s family is full of some of the best people I know, and they are all devoutly Mormon. They’ve done nothing to make me feel intentionally excluded or less than. They treat me with love and kindness. But there’s an unspoken separation. I’m the one who is questioning, has abandoned, to a degree, the way of life they were raised to believe is the only right way for them to live. I’m straying from the covenants I made in the holy temple to remain faithful to the church and to my husband as the priesthood leader in our home. How could they not be fearful, even judgmental, though they mean well? I know, because I used to be on the other side of the fence, righteously judging, or pitying, the lost sheep. Now, I’m reminded at every family gathering, every sharing of a spiritual message in the group text, that I, at least in one glaring sense, no longer belong.

I’m reminded when I sit in the pew at church with my family, a ritual I re-adopted after taking a break from going and missing the way my kids laid their heads on my lap and let me play with their hair, the rare hour when we were all squished together, freed from our phones. So, I attend this hour by choice. I find hope and redemption in the doctrine of Christ. Sometimes the talks from the pulpit are lovely, others they’re frustrating and exclusionary, and at times they’re neutral. But will my daughter grow up to see me as a spiritual apostate, while her dad is the gold standard? Will my son feel weighed down by the relentless pressure of being sent on a two-year proselyting mission away from home, even if it’s not for him? Will my youngest maintain her pure, non-judgmental love for all people, regardless of their race, religion, or sexual orientation?

Living in the epicenter of Mormonism and being married to a wonderful man who is all-in (though he holds some nuanced views and is generous, accepting, and shame-free about other people’s) and our devout families keep me in the muddy, sometimes isolating water of the in-between, the Land of Not LDS Enough and Not Post-Mormon Enough. But I’m keeping myself there, too.

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Being “Mormon passing” has its benefits. It’s the predominant club here in Utah County, the badge that to many says, “You can trust me!” Sometimes, I want to lean in, hard, if only for the sense of belonging and acceptance that comes with the active Mormon status. I have friends who have left the church and who have lost swaths of friends and family relationships, whose kids have been severely mistreated and ostracized for no longer belonging. How devastating and not-Christlike is that?

Sometimes, I tell myself adhering to Mormon orthodoxy again would make my marriage better, easier, happier. Maybe it would, and I’ll never say never. I’m not one to burn bridges. But I’m working on resisting the urge to yo-yo back and forth, checking my desire to conform in order to make other people more comfortable at the risk of losing myself. I’m trying to live in the “and, both.” I’m constantly trying to give myself permission to take hold of the good and beautiful my faith community has to offer, and not feel shame and guilt over the things that don’t fit anymore. (More on that in this essay.)

It’s not the living in the space between itself that hurts so much, that is so utterly exhausting. Humans and faith are grey, not black and white. Life, and God, are all-encompassing, rich and colorful and inclusive. This world and all of us are beautifully complex and nuanced. We were created that way. Being in the in-between is natural, normal, and human. What hurts about being there, measured against an organization that demands your whole identity while any other choice is labeled lukewarm or lost, is the constant questioning of whether you’re in the right or wrong, the ongoing judgement from self and others.

I was talking with a friend the other day about the somewhat unrealistic standard of marriage in the Mormon faith, where the highest order of relationship is a partnership of two fully-invested members of the church, male and female, striving for and worthy of the celestial kingdom. There’s also another expectation: That marriage is happy and whole as long as you are both centered on Jesus Christ. This holding up of this kind of marriage as the ultimate path to earthly and heavenly happiness and worthiness causes pain and rejection not only to those who don’t have the opportunity to take part in that but to anyone in a marriage who no longer fits the mold. The one who deviates from the standard will always be the lesser one, the straying one, the one who messed up. That’s a pretty painful place to be.

2020 was the first truly trying time in our marriage, largely due to politically charged conversations and no doubt the stir-crazy effects of quarantine and the confrontation of having to slow down and examine our lives. We had some of our first really direct conversations laced with disagreement in those days. Back then, my therapist told me some things can be off the table in a marriage. You don’t have to talk about politics, ever, she said. Now, facing new challenges in our marriage, the question of beliefs among them, I would guess the same could apply to religion, too—you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to rock the boat.

But who I am now demands truth in relationship, craves honest communication and soul-knowing, even, especially, the dark parts of ourselves we try to hide.

I want to create a place where my new wilder, more expansive, surrender-to-mystery approach to God and spirituality can live alongside my husband’s anchored beliefs, tied tightly to the religion of our youth, and see what strange and beautiful alchemy we make.

So, can both kinds of faith exist together without destroying a relationship?

If there’s enough acceptance and openness on both sides, I think so. If the well of love and care for one another is deep enough, important enough to let it come before anything else.

This dance of different faith paths could be a really beautiful dynamic, even: Like the way rigid black notes and lines on a sheet of music produce an untethered, transcendent song. The way the banks of a river allow the water to flow forward, wild and free. The way Kahlil Gibran described in his poem, On Marriage:

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of the lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

There are certainly points of difference in our marriage, like there is in any relationship. Sometimes, the things that were once anthills between us grow to the size of the Himalayas. The once cute and tiny pet dragon under our bed gets too big for the house and must be dealt with. In those moments, I question everything:

Would my husband be better off with someone who thinks more like he does, who doesn’t have all these questions, doubts, and differences? Who is more like the person he married at 22? Who fits better into his family? Would I find more ease, compatibility, and freedom with someone who is further removed from the things that constantly remind me of what I’ve lost? Are we confusing or messing up our kids?

There are times when questions feel unsolvable, the gaps between us feel uncrossable, times when we’ve both wanted to run away.

But in this moment, I return to the beauty of Kahlil’s marriage: One where you come together, but also allow spaces between you. Where you sing and dance and be joyous, yet let yourselves be alone, too. It’s like hoping for the highest heaven of a marriage. You may not be able to see it yet, but you hope it’s there, you work towards it just in case.

Do we have to think the same way about religion and spirituality in order to build the fullest, most fulfilling second half of our lives together?

The answer seems an easy “no” now, plunking away on my laptop in a quiet office as the sun sets, quoting inspirational poems, though I know the challenges of tomorrow might make me question everything all over again.

But right now, I’m choosing hope. Just like I hope there’s some sort of inclusive heaven for us all to live on in after this life instead of eternal nothingness, and just like I hope there is a generous deity looking out for me and deeply loving me, I hope there is more purpose, joy, and happiness to come in this marriage that includes, maybe even depends on, the differing ways we see the world and the unseen realm of spirituality. Something that goes beyond those beliefs.

Because at the end of the day, all we really know is that we are human, and that we are here for an unknown amount of time living in bodies attached to the miracle of consciousness, to love and help each other along the way. Isn’t the rest sort of just fluff?

Maybe choosing each other despite the differences and resistance makes our relationship beautiful.

And maybe the juxtaposition of our beliefs teaches our kids the crucial skill of differentiation, of radical love and acceptance.

I don’t know. I can only hope.

A writing prompt for you:

Write a memory about your childhood home.

Here’s a piece that grew out of that prompt while I was in Wales for a writing intensive. I read it my last night there in a historic pub full of locals, poets, farmers, and other students. I hope it inspires your own reflections on home.

The Hawberry House

I unlock the door and step into the tiny dorm room, a place of my own for the next two weeks of writing in Wales. I’ve always needed a lot of space. I used to think it was because I grew up among the cacophony of 14 siblings in my blended family, that by the time I left the home where at one point seven of us girls shared a loft room and a half bathroom, I said, “Enough!” But I think the reverse is true. Time and space to be alone, to think and discover the world from my vantage point, are as crucial to me as water.

In one of my childhood homes, the Hawberry House, I had my own room. It was in the basement, stark white and smelling of cat urine because Daisy, the kitten I’d written letter after persuasive letter begging my mom and step-dad to let me have, did her business in some unreachable corner there. My room was the most isolated in the home, which felt like a haven and a horror, depending on how 13-year-old me felt when I retreated to it every night. I waited for the sound of Daisy soft-pawing into my room and curling up on the foot of my bed. I sighed at the safety her silent companionship brought when my mind reeled with all the horrible things that could happen in a basement. It happened down the road, to Elizabeth Smart, after all.

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I’d just moved from a year living in Park City with my dad, step-mom, and two younger half siblings in a semi-remodeled, semi-haunted, hundred-year-old miners boarding house. The Hawberry home was the first my parents lived in without the memories of my step-dad’s previous marriage lurking in the corners.

From that room in the basement, my only view was a weed-infested window well, though I knew my friends’ homes were just down the road, a window-escape away.

Here, in Wales, I can only see a lichen-covered roof. I know there’s the view of sheep-fuzzed hills just beyond, but from my room, I can only imagine them. Here, far from home, I find myself consigned to a little room again, but this time, it’s decidedly more haven than horror.

My oldest daughter, thirteen now, calls. Her in her tiny room, me in mine, 4,000 miles away.

“Hi, mama. We miss you. But we’re ok. the chickens—they’re still afraid of strawberries—and bunnies and your plants are still alive too.”

I wonder how she feels in the home I’ve made for her. Thirteen, the age when I moved, of my own accord, from the haunted home to the Hawberry home. Thirteen, when time seems to still stand still. What memories will freeze for my daughter? Must I be more vigilant in my interactions with her, a more compelling teacher, as she’ll likely fix this age in her memory too? Will she see the dent in our wall and remember that I threw an iPad at it in a moment of postpartum rage?

I hope I’ve given her the friendship I crave with my own mother, who is getting older, and no doubt exclaiming “Enough!” after having raised eleven children, including one who was lost to cancer at five and others she didn’t exactly ask for.

I hope, as my daughter sees me carve out places of my own by leaving to Wales to do the thing she knows I love: write, it teaches her to create little rooms of her own too even if she makes a couple dents in the wall.

I went to the Dylan Thomas summer writing school in Wales as part of my master’s program to glean inspiration for my novel, which is set there.

We did the most beautiful hike along the coast, where flower-laden fields stretched above cliffs, and sparkling water below began clear, deepened to turquoise, then became an unknowable blue. For a stretch of our seaside walk, our director had us honor ten minutes of silent contemplation.

At first, it was uncomfortable. The silence, punctured occasionally by lapping waves and shrieking gulls, felt like a punishment. But then, slowly, the quiet encircled me like a blanket, and I felt held in it. Carried by it as I made my way to the rocky outcropping that jutted into the sea where I stood, windswept and surrounded by nothing but ocean. As I looked into the vastness, I felt a phrase deep in my bones. Of course, as a writer, knowings come to me that way. This one said,

“What if you finally let yourself be a writer?”

I thought of all the other things I’d filled my life with to feel worthwhile, to prove my relevance. The Instagram following. The fitness coaching. The stacks of things I’ve piled on top of the identity of writer I’ve felt connected to since I was a little girl, scribbling stories under a dim hallway light while everyone else was asleep.

“What if you finally let yourself be a writer?” The whisper came again, a little more persistently this time.

That was over two years ago, and I feel like I’m finally listening.

I’m letting go of the things I thought I had to make and do and be in order to be accepted, to be credible. I have enough, I know enough, to offer my gifts to the world.

It’s helping people tell their stories.

Because telling mine has healed me, has brought me peace in an unrestful world.

And finally, there’s a place that feels safe to fully step into that role. (Thank you, Substack!) Here, I’ll share my unfiltered writing journey and help others along in theirs.

Maybe you’ve had the writer dream hovering above you, too, like a wispy, not-quite-formed cloud. Hopefully, I can help you grow it into something more actualized, like rain that finally falls and nourishes the ground.

Because that’s what our world desperately needs right now: people who are brave enough to vocalize the things they can’t seem to find the words for, the experiences that unite as all as humans. Thank you, from the bottom of my writer heart, for being here.

It’s been awhile since a book has swept me away. As a serial reader, it’s been a bit of a bummer, honestly. But I picked up “Broken Country” by Clare Leslie Hall (well, used an Audible credit for it), and had all the ingredients of an immersive, addictive story. Since I finished it, I’ve been thinking of how much I wrote that book. There are some parallels, actually, between Clare’s story and mine. They both have a farm setting in the UK—hers in England, mine in Wales, they’re both coming-of-age stories of strong, nuanced women, and both address the complexity of marriage and infidelity. Some of the character names are even the same as the book I’ve been writing for the past 2.5 years. (I’m pitching it to agents this fall!)

What drew me in to this story and left an imprint on me long after it was over is this:

•The setting was so real and rich that I felt transported to another place.

•The characters were unique, believable, and imperfectly human.

•The love stories (both with Gabriel and Frank) were complex, real, and messy, and wildly romantic without being vapid.

•The plot was surprising (I did not see the twist at the end coming!), a little dark, and carried truths that helped me feel less alone in my own shadows.

•The ending was satisfying without being too tidy.

These are elements of a perfect read in my book, things I hope readers say about mine when it comes out. I highly recommend this one. The audio is fantastic! I also bought a hard copy so I can re-read and study it for my own writing. If you read this one, I want to hear your thoughts. Now I need my next good book, so please feel free to leave your recs in the comments!

But in the religion I was raised in, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I learned that sex outside of marriage was one of the most grievous sins you could commit. The For The Strength of Youth pamphlet, 90s edition, was presented as my handbook for the right way to be a teenager. I kept a pocket-sized version in my wallet at all times, hoping the visual reminder would protect me from temptation. One of the passages said:

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Because I choose Christ and the unconditional love and hope He represents. I love the story of His life and miracles and sacrifice and what it inspires me to be, the way it encourages me to interact with others.

Let's use my gym as a weirdly fitting comparison. I show up every day because of my personal goals even though I don't align with all the aspects of the facility or the way everyone else chooses to participate. In full-length jeans and a cowboy hat, for example. How can that be comfortable or productive? (Yet somehow, the dude is jacked.) Or the guy in his skin-tight shortsie. I simultaneously wish he wouldn't expose us all to it but at the same time, power to him for doing the gym his way. I'm never going to be the ripped girl who can do fifteen pull-ups and is always ready for a fitness competition. We're all on different paths in the same place.

My gym building is beautiful and most of the equipment is state-of-the-art, yet most of the mats look like a shark took a bite out of them and smell faintly of three hundred people's B.O. Even though the gym's marketing posters promise I'll be one of the smiling faces in a heavenly state of fitness for a small monthly fee, sometimes I don't want to be there, and the work is not glamorous. It can be repetitive and frustrating. Sometimes I get injured and have to take a break. Going there and getting the results I want means I have to let go of other things, like sleep and indulging in every one of my sweet tooth cravings. It's a discipline.

I've had my share of embarrassing moments with strange sweat marks, using a machine the completely wrong way, or getting stuck under a barbell. Sometimes, from my view on the stair stepper, I balk at the absurdity of us all running like hamsters on machines that simulate real life, and think there has the be a less ridiculous, contrived way to achieve physical health. But still, I find myself wanting to show up, do the work, and be part of the community, because there is power in people coming together with a common goal. Yes, there are strange people and exercises they invent that make me cock my head to the side, but in its purest essence, exercise is inherently good. It gets me one step closer to my goals. Keeps me accountable. When I walk out to my car, there are Trump flags flying on a few trucks in the parking lot and no doubt many people on all sides of the political spectrum. I smile, because we're really just a jumble of vastly different people trying to be our best together.

The church isn't for everyone. It's not the only place to find God and truth. But it's my place and my people, and there's a seat for me there if I want it. (Though I recognize belonging is sadly far easier for me to find as a white cis woman than a gay woman, for example.) I'm going to encounter things I don't agree with because that's what happens when you put a bunch of humans in a room. I'm going to receive judgement for being “too in” or “too out,” because people aren't Jesus. I'm going to keep answering my daughters when they ask why only men and boys are on the stand and if they have more access to God than they do. I'm going to have to find my own corner of the gym, pull out a stinky mat, and do the work. And at the end of the day, hopefully I'll be one step closer to my goal of being my best self, trying to connect with God in a way that helps me better see and understand other people and serve alongside them (even the guy in the shortsie).

My sisters and I grew up pointing out this magic number and scrambling to make a silent wish before the minutes turned to 12.

We never missed a chance to hold our breath under a bridge, wish on a star, or blow out birthday candles.

But when I learned something of mysticism as an adult, I discovered wish-granting superstitions are not reserved only for children. For example, repeating number sequences on a clock, a receipt, an email inbox, and the like are referred to among some as “Angel Numbers.”

Google any number sequence and “Angel Number” and you’ll find the translation of what your angels are trying to tell you at that particular time in life. Spoiler alert: they all more or less say your angels want you to know they’re watching over you and you’re headed in the right direction—a lot like astrology, psychic readings, and Tarot cards.

There’s also manifestation: a new-age mentality that if you think it, in the right way of course, it will come true. It involves repeating affirmations to yourself, journaling about your dream come true in the present tense as if it’s already yours.

I’m not discounting these forms of spirituality. In fact, I participate in some of them. I just find it interesting that they all point to the thing we desperately want: a reassurance that our life has a purpose, our choices matter, and that someone (or something) is looking out for us. We’ll do almost anything to find proof of it.

According to psychic medium Laura Lynne Jackson, author of Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe, number sequences are just one of many ways our angels (people on the other side who we don’t know as well, as loved ones who have passed) try to communicate with us. I love the idea of receiving guidance, messages, and protection from ancestors, loved ones, and guardian angels who exist in a dimension beyond the tangible earth and believe it’s a reality.

What becomes difficult is distinguishing between a supernatural message and our intricate brains just doing what they scientifically do—build stories based on our experiences and desires, and constantly look for and create evidence for what we want to believe.

Faith in supreme beings who have my back is far more comforting than nihilism, even if it sometimes seems naïve or oversimplified (even to myself). One of the wonders of our minds is that we get to choose what we believe when it comes to the unexplainable. Often, it’s less a matter of what is true and not true and more “how does it cause you to feel, to act, to function in life?”

Scottish author, poet, and theologian George McDonald said, “Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not.”

When it comes to the life’s mysteries, stories are all we have, and I’d rather believe one that brings me peace, one that requires imagination and hope. There’s also the placebo effect phenomenon, where positive psychology researchers are finding that placebos physiologically change us and can often be as powerful, and often even more powerful, than the real thing. So, what we believe about something and how well it works is even more important than if it actually does.

In the popular podcast series, Flightless Bird, journalist David Farrier interviews Mike McHargue, a Baptist-turned-atheist-turned-mystic-Christian. Mike is also a science advisor and story consultant for Marvel. He shares about the experiments in the 50s and 60s where in order to treat severe epilepsy, neurosurgeons conducted experiments to separate the two sides of the brain to see how autonomous they are. Only the left brain can speak, so the right brain used a pointer to communicate. They asked a patient if he was a Christian. His left brain said “yes,” but his right brain said “no.” Half of the brain was a believer and the other wasn’t.

Mike says, “The different structures in our brain compete and get into conflict every moment of our lives about what we’re going to do and what we’re going to believe. Parts of my brain are Christian, and parts of my brain are atheistic. Maybe I need to stop trying to brow beat one of my brain into submission and let them do what they do and be honest about the fact that I’m not a rational machine. I’m an evolved biological organism who has competing impulses designed to help me survive.”

Surrendering in the battle between what’s true and what’s not is a relieving thought, though easier said than done given the obsession our egos have with knowing in black-and-white terms and being right about what we’ve come to “know,” even in cases where there is no provable right or wrong.

A classic example of the subjectivity of meaningfulness lies in the realm of dreams. For the most part, dreams are our subconscious processing emotion and experiences. But I suspect there’s another element to them—something we can neither pinpoint nor explain away—in which they connect us to other people.

Jung proposed the Collective Unconscious: the theory that our deepest unconscious beliefs are formed not by genetics or personal experience, but by inherent knowledge and imagery we’re born with because of our shared ancestry. He believed dreams are an important portal into the collective unconscious—a place where our subconsciousness connects with the subconscious of others. That may include people we don’t know personally and people who are no longer alive in their physical bodies.

I’ve had many dreams in which the true, subconscious state of a friend or family member’s emotional well-being is revealed. It’s helped me be more forgiving, or nudged me to reach out to them when it turns out they were sending out a silent cry for help.

I agree with Jung in that there’s a subconscious dimension accessed through dreams that we’re all connected to, but I think the fruitfulness lies less in our shared primal beginnings and more about using them to better connect with ourselves and each other in the present.

Our dreams can help us make connections and become better aware of our psychological state. In The Jung Podcast, Jungian analyst John Betts says dreams don’t tell us what to do, but give us insight into the conscious attitude we hold. It is the relationship between your dream material and your ego, he says, that really counts. So our dreams can help us become more self-aware and loosen our grip on mindsets and assumptions that may not be true, or don’t serve us or the people around us. It’s like a therapy session from our brain while we sleep.

Rather than disregarding dreams, maybe there’s more we can learn from them, if we want to. Do we receive messages from the dead, the divine, or the subconscious minds of living persons through dreams? No one can prove it. But no one can disprove it, either.

Sometimes, it’s easier to ignore the things we can’t explain and back up with proof, only focusing on the here and now, what we can see. Believing something intangible requires effort. The word doubt comes from “duo” or “double.” A doubter is of two minds: a believer and a skeptic. But what is faith without doubt? Knowledge. And with knowledge, you don’t need faith.

We cannot escape the burden of faith, whether within or outside the parameters of religious conviction. Everyone has to believe in something. But we keep ending up in this place where the head and heart, the logical and the ineffable, are at war.

Research shows that far more neural signals are sent from the heart to the brain than the other way around. While we often assign the heart as emotional and the mind as objective, they’re actually a unified intelligence, connected by the vagus nerve. The neural net around our heart is crucial to our thinking and reasoning, and the heart thinks for itself and sends signals to the body rather than passively waiting for instruction from the brain. The vagus nerve is also connected to the gut, which is directly connected to our thinking patterns and brain health.

Maybe we’re free to put as much trust in our heart-based and intuitive “gut” feelings as our science-backed brain-thinking. Maybe lack of tangible proof doesn’t make something less real or possible than what we can explain.

Still, these supernatural experiences we have will always be highly subjective, rarely striking someone other than ourselves with the significance we feel. Who, for example, can feel the wonder I did when I saw a bright green comet shoot across the sky my first night in Ireland? Who else but me can understand that when a hummingbird hovered in front of me at the very moment I told a friend I was looking for signs of God, I knew it was Them? Only I can experience the surety I feel that a dream where a loved one was dying was a message to reach out, or that a certain line in a book, podcast, or words from a stranger were more than coincidence, something beyond myself bringing comfort and clarity when I needed it most.

Anton Chekhov said, “I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.” Having something to hold onto, finding ground beneath your feet, feels better than being tossed among never-ending waves of nonsense.

There will always be things we can’t explain. Life would be unmotivating and homogenous if we had all the answers. Mysterious megaliths would lose their allure, a million conversations of theory would come to an abrupt end, and religious institutions would flounder.

Harmony lies in accepting both ambiguity and knowledge. Life is meaningful and it is absurd. Moments can be coincidental and deeply meaningful. Dreams are a connection to the portal of collective unconscious and arbitrary brain chatter. God, or the universe, can be a caring, external overseer, and something that is already within us.

I think I’ll take my skeptical, believing brain and keep making wishes on 11:11, just in case they come true.

This essay was originally published in The Elephant Journal.