But out there somewhere, or perhaps deep, deep down is the little girl who didn’t think twice about sing-shouting about her crush at the top of her lungs on the swingset, while said crush was on the same playground. Deep, deep down is the girl who was looking forward to her first kiss so much that she was thrilled it happened in a haunted house…that she and her boyfriend were working! Deep, deep down is the girl who knew that to love was to be loved and that as infinitely as she could give, she could be loved, too.

How to get back to her.

There’s going to be a lot of sitting in the uncomfortable muck of not fixing everyone’s problems or perceptions all the time. Just letting people be and not letting that affect me and letting me be me anyway. Woof. Now, when I perceive I'm being misunderstood, I don't immediately launch into a dissertation to make everyone think well of me. My first instinct is still to fix it. To explain myself. To make sure they understand who I really am. The rewiring is letting the misunderstanding exist anyway. If it isn't hurting me or the relationship, I let it be. Then I text my cousin and scream into the void until my nervous system catches up with what I already know: I don't have to earn being understood.

I used to think of healing as a work of should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, which inevitably brought with it guilt. That was scary work. Now I look at it as learning something new, how to be an engineer and rewire my brain. Looking at it this way, it’s not scary or full of guilt, but exciting and life-giving. I get to decide which stories I reinforce.

Just because I was formed in fear by less than ideal authority figures doesn’t mean I have to live in that forever. Just because I was formed in fear when I was vulnerable doesn’t mean that I can’t reshape myself now that I'm strong. Maybe it’s not about getting back to the innocence of the girl I was, but learning to live in the authority of the experiences I’ve had. Maybe I never stopped being unafraid, just the things I stood up to changed.

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I desperately wanted to stay in California.

After I was stable, I lost my job not long after. I started dating Jess soon after that and spent the small savings I had on gas money to go see him every few weeks. One time, I stopped at a rest stop and pulled out my guitar. I sang a sad song into the wind and a few people dropped some money at my feet. Just enough for me to get to Jess and back.

Every transition that’s ever come my way, I’ve found a way through. My family is facing another transition this year and I need your help. We’re facing somewhat of a financial crisis and it is forcing me to take on work outside of the home. This will also put a strain on my writing time. I am asking that, if you are able, you become a paid subscriber for a year to this publication. Today is September 1, 2026. Ride with me from today through August 31, 2027. Paid subscriptions ensure that I can continue to write and feed my family. If you find what I write valuable, and many of you have told me you do, I implore you to give me a year. That’s $8 a month or $90 for the year.

This is a space that I like to think is unique to us. Where we do emo theology and give each other space to breathe and think and love in ways we’ve never been allowed to before. Where we explore faith and doubt, grief, motherhood, spiritual abuse, reconstruction, music, and finding God in everything. And this year, I have an inkling that you’ll see one punk discover God showing up in places she didn’t expect and getting her to go places she didn’t expect, like back to Mass.

This is a community where we edify each other and lift each other to God. Often you have left words for me like, “Truer words have never been spoken,” and that I describe “something in [Muchness] that I connect with very deeply,” and so many other comments that have kept me going through the muck. But they also tell me that we’re in this together. I’m asking you today to lift your soul sister up from the muck when she needs it.

There is still no gatekeeping here. Essays will remain free. Nobody will be locked out because they can’t pay and there will be no guilt for those who genuinely can’t (and who am I to judge?). This community is for all people and will always remain open. However, if you can pay, I am asking you to.

There aren’t a ton of elaborate perks for becoming (or staying) a paid subscriber as I’m going back to work and will have limited time. But here is what I will do for those who pay: I will pray for you by name daily (I pray for all who subscribe as a group daily as it is) and once a quarter, I will do something small and special for paid subscribers as a thank-you, but it will not be elaborate.

I can’t do everything I used to. My life is changing. If we want this community and vision to continue, I need help. So give me one year. September 1, 2026 to August 31, 2027. $8/month or $90/year. Take a chance on me. If you've found something here that made you laugh, cry, think, pray, rage, hope, or feel a little less alone, I'm asking you to help me keep making it. Slam that subscribe button and pass this around to all the emos you know.

I love you. I’m praying for you. I’m never not going to be grateful for your presence, no matter how you show up.

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My eyes haven’t been dry since I got the text: “NOT DOLLY PARTONNNNNNN”. And yet, I’m more convicted than ever. You see, three simple things have happened since Monday that propel me on the path of knowing that my vocation is to love and love big. I gave a friend some money to get through a hard time when I barely had any, I wrote about the communion of saints (you’ll see that post soon), and Dolly died and everyone rallied around her. So now I’m writing this while meditating on and listening to “I Will Always Love You” and wondering: WWDD? (What would Dolly do?). Dolly would read to her kids, uplift them, be proud of where she came from, help those in need around her, and be unapologetically herself. So that’s how I’m honoring her.

I come from a small, rural town in northwestern Pennsylvania called Conneaut Lake. I grew up with the lake (the biggest natural lake in Pennsylvania, bigger than the natural part of the Pennsylvania part of Lake Erie!) in my front yard. I grew up in an area where kids dropped out to work their family farms or because they got pregnant or because drugs had somehow taken over their lives. The Amish lived down the road and invited us “English” kids to their rumspringa parties. The rich kids crashed their mustangs and were instantly bought new ones, while the poor kids who accidentally hit an Amish workhorse had to pay that off by the sweat of their brow.

I was somewhere in the middle. My parents were older and more established when I was born, so I came into the security that they fought for. My dad bought a modest cottage on the lake when it was cheap and before he married my mom. Over the years, they remodeled it and added on to it to make it into a sprawling house (a mansion, some of my friends called it). But we had a hobby garden and canned food and made spaghetti sauce and took simple vacations every year. My dad was a state police officer who fought for women’s rights within domestic violence cases. My mom worked sometimes as a secretary but always ran a small business out of our home, allowing us the income for my sister and I to participate in whatever, and I mean whatever, activities we wanted. I was cultured, well-rounded, and wanted more than could be contained in a small town.

AP classes weren’t even offered in my public high school, so I took every English, every math, and every science class I could, because I was voracious for knowledge. I knew, even as a teen, that knowledge was the ticket out. What I’ve come to learn is that knowledge is the ticket in. Knowledge unlocks the world for all of us and, now that I have it, it’s my job to make it accessible to everyone. That’s part of what I hope to do with this substack. That’s definitely what I hope to do for my children. More, well…TBD.

I was so desperate to get out of my hometown. I wanted bigness. And I found it! I’ve lived in bustling, beautiful Los Angeles, sprawling and historical San Antonio, mountainous and heavenly Colorado Springs. I’ve been to so many places across the country and across the world. And I have more to see! I won’t ever stop looking. But sometimes, I’ve forgotten to look back at where I came from and to be grateful for it. There are painful memories and emotions mixed up in Conneaut Lake, PA. But like Inside Out taught us, sorrow and joy can exist together.

We’ve landed in smaller town Ohio for the time being. And I'm so happy here. It’s healing my heart in ways I didn’t know I needed healing. Where I grew up gave me roots and a vision for the future. Even if I never go back there, even if I move back to California or on to some other big place, I can take what was given to me in rural PA and bring it with me (not just by saying yinz). Dolly Parton affirms that in me.

For a friend’s 17th birthday, I gave him a card in which I signed my full name with a note to keep that for when I became famous. Always with that sense of something bigger. I didn't want fame for fame's sake. I wanted to prove that you could come from a place where people sometimes expected very little of you and still make something of yourself. More importantly, I wanted to eventually have enough to give something back. I’m working on ways to do that now. Well, that’s really what I've always done and now I'm exploring new ways to do that. I don’t know if my friend kept that card, but the sentiment lives on. You’re going to see big things from me, even if they are small but numerous.

There is a phrase I've always hated, “Bloom where you are planted,” attributed to St. Francis de Sales. It has been wielded against me to keep me in abusive places. I know that’s not what Francis meant but it’s not what he said, either. Dolly Parton sang it better: “Just a wild rambling rose seeking mysteries untold/No regret for the path that I chose/When a flower grows wild/It can always survive/Wildflowers don't care where they grow.” I will grow wherever I am because I can and because I choose to, and if I don’t like the soil there, I'll just get up and find better soil! Then I'll go back and do my best to make the poor soil better for the next wildflowers who come along. Like Dolly, like Jesus.

To Dolly, thank you. To all of you, of every walk of life out there, I will always love you and I will always do something about it.

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I have a problem being fully myself sometimes. I’ve been conditioned to make myself smaller whenever I can. The Chud God tells you to be smaller. St. Perpetua never got that memo.

Perpetua was a nobly born woman in Carthage, Africa in the 200s. She was “honorably wedded” and was nursing a son still when she was thrown into prison for being a Christian. Felicity was her companion, also post-partum, also unbroken. Perpetua’s father and other authorities tried to get her to renounce her faith for the sake of her son and her family, but she would not waver. “…and I comforted [my father], saying: That shall be done at this tribunal, whatsoever God shall please; for know that we are not stablished in our own power, but in God’s” (pg. 23).

Perpetua had multiple visions— of her passion, of others— and these things edified her, as did having her nursing son in prison with her. And the other Christian prisoners, her friends, listened to her authoritatively, and looked to her for guidance in the faith and in how they should conduct themselves. Nobody questioned her! Perpetua had a vision that her fight was not an earthly one but one against the devil: “And I awoke; and I understood that I should fight, not with beasts but against the devil; but I knew that mine was the victory” (pg. 27).

For their martyrdom, they were supposed to be dressed as priests and priestesses, but Perpetua said: “For this cause came we willingly unto this, that our liberty might not be obscured. For this cause we have devoted our lives, that we might do no such thing as this; this we agreed with you” (pg. 32). And so they were brought out in no raiment. Perpetua and Felicity were stripped bare and made to put on nets. Two post-partum women. “The people shuddered, seeing one a tender girl, the other her breasts yet dropping from her late childbearing. So they were called back and clothed in loose robes” (pg. 33). Perpetua didn't survive the arena by becoming acceptable. She survived it by being completely, bodily, spiritually herself. That's the tradition I'm claiming. Not the one that calls me disordered. The one that called her holy.

Of course, Perpetua didn’t survive the arena in a bodily way— she was mauled by a cow and then guided an unsteady sword through her own neck— but she survived in her spirit because of this. That’s how I want to survive (although, surviving bodily for a while longer wouldn’t be awful either!) This is reflected beautifully in Perpetua’s final words: “Stand fast in the faith, and love ye all one another; and be not offended because of our passion” (pg. 34).

But the Church doesn’t really teach us these incredible things about Perpetua, just that she and Felicity were martyrs. Some people even assume that they were virgins! This does an obvious disservice to them but it plays right into the Chud God’s hands. Stripped of their bodies, Perpetua and Felicity become malleable bits to the whims of whoever is telling their story, and often, Perpetua’s authority is thrown right out with her body. But that’s not right, we are both body and spirit— this is basic Catholic teaching— and we have to trust both over any institutional authority that tries to tell us differently.

Sara Maitland agrees: “The point here is that in a sense all Christian feminists have to be Montanists in order to survive within Christianity. In particular we must believe that we are authorized ‘in the spirit’, regardless of whether the ‘official’ Church recognizes it; that we have a ‘radical obedience’ to an internally revealed truth, over and above our obedience to orthodoxy” (pg. 7). Montanists believed that Scripture could be added to, that Divine Revelation didn’t end with the books in the Bible, that it’s ongoing. I'm not a Montanist exactly, but I believe personal revelation that aligns with Scripture and Tradition is authoritative—regardless of who it comes from. Including me.

The fact that Perpetua was a woman didn’t even make a splash with her companions. She was and that was a fact and that was it. Nowadays, that’s unheard of. All sides want to make a big deal about women in places of authority, and honestly, we need to until true equality is reached again, like they had in Perpetua’s time. “Christianity can accommodate and incorporate the dissident voices of women; it can come to terms with women’s sexual activity and theological and ministerial competence. It can even treat those things as holy,” Maitland writes in her commentary and I agree with her (pg. 47). The fact that I am a woman—bisexual, married, a mother, someone who has sex and opinions about theology—is kosher. It matters. The Church can deal with me and enfold me and encompass me. That’s what the Church was built for. The Church wasn’t built frailly to keep people out, but robustly to welcome people in. She doesn’t always, but that’s her purpose.

Perpetua’s body was central to her holiness. Her authority was unquestioned. Her internal revelation superseded institutional control. That’s my tradition. Not the one the Chud God sells. This one. I’m not asking the Church’s permission to be fully myself. Perpetua didn’t either. And the Church calls her a saint. I’m just following her example.

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The Kingdom of God. Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven. The Afterlife. Paradise.

Eternity.

It sounds like a destination. A place you end up. A place you go and then nothing ever happens ever again.

But what if I told you that you could have eternity right now? That you don’t have to wait for the end of this mortal coil. That eternity isn’t a place so much as it is a state of being.

Eternity means being outside of time. God is eternal—outside time, present everywhere. He made us in His image and likeness. Therefore, we’re made to be eternal, too. We know this because of grace. Because of how we commune with our beloved dead. Because of the angels. Because our souls aren’t bound by time and space.

We’re made for eternity. Not just after death. Now.

“[Eternity] is a life, moreover, not only without beginning or end but also without succession — tota simul, that is without past or future; a never-changing instant or ‘now’” (*imma cite this at the bottom for you). Even the Catholic Church recognizes this. Why don’t we hear about it more? If we understood that we could live heaven on Earth not only at mass, not only in the Eucharist, but in the mundane moments, in the liminal spaces, how much more glorious would our lives be and how much more faithful would we be?

One description of heaven I’ve always loved was C.S. Lewis’s in The Last Battle: “Further up and further in!” Mr. Tumnus leads Lucy through the New Narnia—at once exactly the same and forever new. Always familiar, always something to discover.

Lewis is describing a place. But what he’s really describing is a feeling. And that feeling? I find it in Say Anything lyrics.

At once the same: familiar, cozy, warm, home.

There’s a Say Anything lyric, from “I Want to Know Your Plans”, that evokes this in me: I want to know your plans/And how involved in them I am. Am I worn in there with you? Am I cozy? Are we warm? Are you my home?

Always new: rushing, bright, flip-floppy stomach feeling.

“Alive With the Glory of Love” (Say Anything): everything about this song screams NOW, NOW, NOW. IT’S WORTH IT, IT’S WORTH IT, IT’S WORTH IT! That rush of newness over and over and over again but never the hangover from it. That love makes every moment worth it, even death, even separation through death.

The kingdom of God…

….is at hand.

Luke 10:11: “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” The disciples say this to towns that reject them—a call to repentance. But repentance IS love. Turning from sin toward God. And if love is eternity, then the kingdom isn't coming later. It's here. At hand. Now.

When I go to sleep for good will I be forgiven? (“I Want to Know Your Plans”). Sleep is liminal—a thin place where earth and heaven nearly touch. Death is the ultimate thin place. But there are others: moments of forgiveness, for instance. Because forgiveness is pure love. And pure love is eternal. So when you experience forgiveness—when you offer it or receive it—you step outside time. You enter eternity. You're in a new state of being.

The more we live in this radical love, the more we live in eternity. Not later. Now. “Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, [Jesus] said in reply, ‘The coming of the kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, “Look, here it is,” or, “There it is.” For behold, the kingdom of God is among you.’” (Luke 17:20-21).

The kingdom of God is among you. We often take this to mean that the kingdom of God is the people around us, and technically that is true. The kingdom of God is every person you encounter. Because an encounter with another human is an encounter with Love itself. And every encounter with Love is an encounter with the eternal.

There’s a through-line, I find, in many Say Anything songs that seems to say the experience of eternity is the experience of love and any time you choose to participate in love, you are experiencing eternity.

For example, “A Walk Through Hell,” he’s literally ready to take on a fight through hell to ensure the safety of his beloved and to get to the beloved. That rushing, gushing feeling. Or in “Push” when he contemplates what evils we do in the name or face we put to God and bringing new life into the world and what love really means. Both terrifyingly new and familiar like your favorite shoes. Or very simply in “Ahhh…Men” where he asks, Can I lie with you in your grave? The coziness of being at the brink of the hereafter with the beloved. These lyrics all show love transcending death. Even when he sings, “the futile, the futile/it outweighs the beautiful,” he still comes around to sing, “Love! I shall not love, yet I’ll still sing about it.” It may not seem like it’s there or worth it but something is calling to you, calling you on, letting you know that it is there and it is worth it. That’s love, that’s eternity.

Eternity is a state of being, not just a place after death, but also that. So Heaven is in eternity. Therefore, eternity IS heaven—being WITH God through love, connection, presence, and glory.

You enter eternity every time you love fully—in connection to God, to others, to yourself. Or every time you experience a liminal space that brings you beauty, transcendence, or meaning, like art, music, a dream, or nature. You can enter eternity when you choose commitment despite the looming threat of death (Alive With the Glory of Love is all about this). And eternity is available to you every time you live in the present, not just looking towards the future or gazing at the past (easier said than done, I know). After death, this state becomes permanent, but it IS available to us now. God wants us to be with Him NOW. Not later, but now.

And it matters that I put all this together listening to a Jewish emo band in my bedroom after dinner, kids placated for the moment. Why? Because deep truths are written on ALL hearts and when we write honestly about love, death, and meaning, truth comes out.

Because death is real. Love makes it glorious. Eternity is now. That’s not just emo songs. That’s the Gospel truth.

*McDonald, W. (1909). Eternity. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05551b.htm

Check out the playlist I made for this essay!

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The first I pray during Mass, during the consecration when the priest raises the cup:

My Lord and my Savior, Let Your Blood inebriate me and run through my veins as my own blood, for it is not I who live but You Who live in me. Amen.

The second I pray over each of my children at bedtime as a blessing as I make the Sign of the Cross on their foreheads:

God bless and keep you. Sleep well and sweet dreams. May your guardian angel be close at hand and Mama Mary wrap you in her mantel. Amen.

Maybe you will find these useful in your own life. They’ve been edifying in mine.

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I have a house showing to go to (we’re selling our house and looking for a new one). I have other articles to schedule and write (this one was last on the list). I have a press to prepare for. I have phone plans to rearrange and children to take to appointments, meals to make and a dog to walk. So many things. But I just want to hug my mom.

Death sucks. And don’t let me tell you differently! Do I long to be with Jesus? Yes, but none too soon. I want to stick around for as long as possible, getting belligerent and wrinkly. I want to see my kids become grandparents and walk through these stages with them, go through all the stages my mom didn’t get to.

Where the fuck am I going with this? I can barely see what I type as tears stream down my face because I’m jealous of Jesus that He gets to be with Mommabear and I don’t. What an absolute stinker! He couldn’t have waited a little longer? Good Lord! He is impatient! And jealous. But if He’s jealous, I get to be jealous, too. I am made in His image and likeness, after all.

All I want to say is that it is good to rest. And rest is sometimes fitful. My rest right now is very fitful, but I rest in His side wound, because that’s where He has invited me in. And slowly, very slowly, I am becoming one with Him there, and it is very sticky. I know that through His pain and mine, He is melding me into one with Him, so that not only will I never be separated from Him but I will never be separated from Mommabear or my children again.

I am snuggled in the side wound like I used to snuggle next to Mommabear. She was like fly paper to me, I couldn’t let go of her. I wanted to spend my time with her, wanted to go on adventures with her, wanted to be by her side. Truly, a part of me was ripped away when she died and I have not been the same since.

The thing about being in the side wound is that you start to see the world through it, see the world through pain and love, through water and blood. And things look mighty different that way. So little actually matters. Truly, only love remains. The money, it falls away. The fame, it fades. The power, it crumbles. The only sticky thing in this world is love, and that is what you should cling to.

I had love, with Mommabear, and I wouldn’t say entirely that I lost it, but I didn’t get to see it through to completion. Now it is a love that tears my heart open constantly, reminding me to bleed, to love, to leave it all on the floor. Don’t bottle it up waiting for the perfect day or person— those are now. Leave it on the floor because the only love worth living and dying for is love spilt for one another. Sticky.

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Some trauma comes to a head that you can confront. And some trauma leaves visible scars. But some trauma is deep-seated and needs to just be reabsorbed by the body and psyche and cycled through and healed that way. Sometimes there is no way to confront your abuser directly in a productive way (or at all) and you have to do all the work yourself. That sucks and it hurts and it (probably) takes longer, but it can be good, too, even if you have to face disfigurement for longer.

I was spiritually abused. Three times. By a youth minister with good intentions, by a diocesan youth minister who wanted to prove something, and a priest who wanted control. None of it was sexual. All of it was about using me and my desire for God and goodness to get something out of me. Some of it was when I was a teenager and some of it was when I was a vulnerable young adult. That’s a lot of pent up gunk.

For the nebby among you, I shan’t be naming names and I shan’t be recounting details. That’s between me and them, and me and God, and me and my therapist. “But what about justice?” I have no doubts in God’s justice, but I have no desire to play arbitrator. I will only be light and love. Don’t ever forget, God’s greatest attribute is His mercy and that’s justice tempered by love. I’ve done what I can to ensure these men are not in direct positions of influence over people and now we trust God and fortify each other.

Suffice it to say, the result of these abuses was the tying of my worth to my output or my sacrifices. I was only good, only worthy depending on how much I could sacrifice for Him or how much I could endure. The question of martyrdom was a no-brainer for me because I would give up anything for Him. And that was just the big things! I’d give up the small things joyfully, too.

Everything in my life seemed to support this way of thinking, after the abuse. Because abuse hands you trauma-colored glasses. You start to see everything through the lens of your trauma.

At Catholic university, a popular thing to do was to jump off of St. Thérèse’s revelation that her vocation was love and ask each other what our vocation was. Put on the spot one time, I said with conviction that my vocation was to suffer. Another time, I declared Our Lady of Sorrows to be “my Mary”. Even Thérèse’s Little Way seemed to signal small sacrifices as a way of love. And one other of my patrons, St. Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart, would actively seek out ways she could make sacrifices of her day. The household I joined in college was Love of the Lamb— loving the Sacrificial Lamb with the Heart of Mary. I often prayed either the Divine Mercy Chaplet or the Seven Sorrows Chaplet. I would say things like, “I don’t care if I have to live in a cardboard box as long as I get to minister to God’s people.”

This carried over into motherhood, though I had stepped out of the bubble and started to deprogram. This is my body given up for you. You first, then me. I’ll take the beating to make sure you won’t be harmed. Whatever. It’s ingrained in the western (maybe everywhere’s) ideal of motherhood. Mothers sacrifice so their children can thrive.

To be clear, there isn’t anything intrinsically wrong with sacrifice and there is moral good in it, even. The harm comes when we derive our worth from it and diminish ourselves through it, thinking we our worthless. This is what I was doing.

Jesus loves you because you’re you. Not because you can carry the biggest load or give up the most stuff. It’s not a contest, it’s a relationship. There is give and take in relationships but it is not one-sided and it is not about showing off or proving your worth. It is about love. That’s the crucifixion in a nutshell. That’s what spiritual abuse robbed from me.

Spiritual abuse robbed me of the innocence of loving God with abandon and letting Him love me back. It robbed me of the idea that I was worthy without qualification. That I didn’t have to do or have to be anyone special to have a place at the table. I could say all of those words but I couldn’t let them live in my heart. Even when Jesus directly spoke to me, “I am all the family you need,” that was ripped from me and twisted for me and used against me.

“He wants you to do great things.”

“Now you have a duty.”

“If you don’t live for Him, you’re squandering what He gave you.”

“God’s calling you to be a minister, I feel it. Here’s how you tell other people your story and about Jesus.”

“Now you give control of your soul to me.”

All real things that were said to me by (two of) those men. They get a little more nefarious as you go, more nefarious the deeper I got. And I kept pushing it down, down, down.

Now it’s all a painful cyst on the bridge of my nose and my psyche is learning how to reabsorb it all. Therapy. Private prayer. Prayer that doesn’t look like prayer. Medication. Maybe a weed gummy here or there. Talking to my dear friends. Talking to friends I haven’t spoken to since the youth group years. Taking walks. Journaling. Playing games with my kids. Planning vacations. Getting my hair and nails done. Touching fucking grass. These are the things that help me integrate and reshape who I’ve become with who I want to be into who I actually am. My trauma is part of me, but it doesn’t define me. I write my story.

That’s the difference. Love never manages or controls. God set that model for us when He gave us free will. Love guides and is a companion. The love I had was manipulated by spiritual authorities to fill a void in their lives or ministries by managing and controlling my narrative. God doesn’t control my narrative, He lets me write it and asks to be a part of it; because I love Him, I want Him to be part of it and write Him in.

We write God into the narrative anytime we choose love. Love of neighbor, love of the planet, love of self. And we process the trauma every time we do that. Love casts out fear and trauma is fear-based. Love absorbs the gunk of fear and trauma, reintegrating it into the soul to be, not just stronger, but more flexible and empathetic. Trauma didn’t transform me, love did and it would’ve without the trauma. The evil is not necessary for the good to shine, even though it happens anyway.

How do I land this plane? I’m not sure, I’m still absorbing my gunk, still writing my story. And maybe that’s the real ending, that there’s not an ending or a resolution to this but an ongoing adventure, an ongoing healing. There are things I can do to prevent my hormonal acne from popping up as badly each cycle but hormones be hormones (especially in perimenopause) and I can’t prevent everything. Abuse caused trauma in my life and I can’t always prevent that from popping back up from time to time. Ironically, I can only surrender it to God. But that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make with no strings attached.

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I had been crying, curled up on my bed in my aunt’s house in California. It was a Sunday and we were supposed to be getting ready for Mass, and then he was going to leave me to go back to base, six hours away. I was overwhelmed with the feeling of missing people I loved, of being separated.

Being in California, I felt Mommabear so profoundly. It was like a secret she and I shared. The nine years she spent in Los Angeles were something she didn’t share with her husband and children— my dad had never been to California and she had never taken us children. But the first time I went and visited friends, something sparked in my mom that I’d never seen before— a joy, a life, a former Jeanne that she had left behind years ago. She and I shared something that she didn’t share with her other immediate family, and that was sacred to me.

California is where Mommabear lives on for me. I can’t even write this without getting a little choked up and misty-eyed. Where I come from is dead— my parents are gone, my sister nor I live there anymore, my childhood house is sold and remodeled beyond my recognition (it even has a new address).

But California…

Jeanne McGuire, 20-something, secretary at the Los Angeles Times, model, free spirit, searching for permanence, she still lives there. And the part of me that’s a free spirit still searching for permanence and the person who knew me and loved me more purely than anyone else desperately wants to meet Mommabear there. Jeanne McGuire didn’t find home there; she followed her intuition and found home in Pennsylvania and in becoming Jeanne Bey and Mommabear, but that allowed me to find my home in California, even though I’ve been estranged for a while.

Jess and I had been dating for a couple months at this point. We had met on a Catholic dating site, emailed for a week, and then met for our first date in a neutral spot— a town neither of us had been to, three hours from both of us. He was in California with the Army and I was in California because of fate, destiny, shenanigans, whatever you want to call it. We talked so long on that first date that we ended up sleeping in his car in a Starbucks parking lot because it was too late to drive home. Something I knew about Jess from the beginning was that he is someone I could take risks with and still be safe. We had many adventures in a short amount of time, seeing each other on the weekends, alternating between Monterey and Los Angeles.

That morning on my bed in Los Angeles, the feeling of separation was thick, as it often was when I was around Jess. Jess’s arms were around me gently, just letting me know I wasn’t alone. He moved a hand away briefly and I heard a faint sniffle. I wiped my eyes and looked up to find him wiping his eyes.

“Why are you crying?” I asked.

“Because you miss her so much and I just feel that and I feel for you.”

Not everyone gets one moment where they know they’re in love. Most get a bunch of little moments that add up to an overwhelming “of course.” But, as is usual for me, God and man usually have to hit me upside the head with something to make sure I understand. I received this beautiful, intense, big moment of “I’m in this with you. I can handle your pain. You’re not too much for me.”

I had always thought I was “too much” for people. Growing up, I had been called things (playfully) like “a handful” or “quite a character”. My sister made sure to tell me all the ways that I was not enough or too much or just generally made wrong. Romantically, in high school, I had been called “too much” or “a little excitable” or other equally disparaging things. And really, people didn’t really want to date me. This was exasperated by my incredible record of going all of college (6 years!) without a relationship under my belt at all. No one had truly walked with me in my muchness before. I played it all off, of course, as just being the cool friend who was undisturbed and not in need of a man, which I wasn’t. But I was in need of love and companionship. That’s what I found in Jess, someone willing to take a risk on me.

Being accepted exactly as I am—that was the moment I fell in love with Jess. But more than that, it was the moment I started falling in love with myself. Because if someone else could handle my muchness, maybe my muchness wasn’t the problem. Maybe I’d been believing a lie my whole life. Maybe “too much” was just what people said when they didn’t have room for all of me. But I wasn’t too much. I was exactly enough.

Jess showed me that. Not by fixing me or managing me or asking me to be smaller. But by crying with me. By being present to my grief without trying to solve it or minimize it. By proving that my intensity—my big emotions, my deep love for my dead mother, my tendency to feel everything all at once—wasn’t a burden to carry. It was just me. And I was worth staying for.

That moment changed everything. Not just my relationship with Jess, but my relationship with myself. I’m not too much, it’s just that sometimes life can be a lot at once. Let me say that again: I’m not too much, it’s just that sometimes life can be a lot at once. That’s no matter who I’m with or how they make me feel. The truth of me never changes, only how people react to me.

Likewise, you’re not too much. Love is there. That Love is with you, can handle your pain, that you’re not too much for Him. And that love radiates through people on earth, too. You’re not too much for me. You’re welcome here. And there is romantic love out there for you, too, even if it doesn’t look like you thought it should. I had imagined declarations of love and songs and flowers and grand gestures. Instead, I received broken-openness, a helpmate in the walk, something very simple and ordinary and decidedly un-flashy, but ridiculously profound.

I had been crying. But when I realized Jess was crying, my tears stopped. Maybe that’s what the Bible means when it says, “And every tear will be wiped from their eyes.” We’ll find that Jesus has been crying with us, holding us the whole time. And suddenly, in total recognition of our pain and our being, our tears stop because they, in their tributaries, have met their source and summit, and they all bleed into one. Not because He erases our pain, not because our pain is gone, but because we’re not alone in it anymore. You are never alone in it. And you are not too much. You never were. The people who told you that? They just didn’t have room. But God does. Love does. And you—beautiful, intense, too-much you—you have room for yourself too.

That’s what Jess taught me that morning in California. Not just that he loved me. But that I was worth loving. Muchness and all.

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Around 10 years old, I formalized it. I would celebrate my birthday in an octave. I went to mass every week and I went to a Catholic school, I came by this vocabulary honestly. Eight days to celebrate my birth and shove everyone I loved and cared about into just over a week, because a day wasn’t enough. Just like Christmas, just like Easter, and just like Hanukkah. Eight crazy days.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m as cool as Jesus, but I do think our liturgy celebrating Him points us to something deeper about celebrating our own lives. And I think liturgy should inform our lives.

When people say “liturgical living”, they mean living according to the Church’s liturgical calendar, and that’s good. But it should also mean making a liturgy of our daily lives. There should be a rhythm to the rising and the doing and the laying down and a rhythm to how our days and weeks flow in and out of each other. If you have kids, school does this naturally for you. If you don’t or they’re not school-age, seasons help. But there’s something about making personal liturgy of your life that brings you closer to God. Acknowledging who you are and what you need and laying that humbly before the God of the Universe is an incredible act. So that’s why I celebrate my birthday for eight days.

My octave, before kids, used to have a lot of structure. One day for my immediate family. One day with my church friends. One with my high school friends. One with my other friends. One to do whatever I wanted. Then college happened and I moved across the country, so it shifted a bit. One day with what family I could gather. One hitting up every 7-11 for as many free Slurpees as possible. One for cake. One for calling my other family. One for a baseball game, etc. Now that I have kids and have moved more times, it’s shifted again. One for a family celebration with cake (always a Dairy Queen ice cream cake, just like Mommabear always got for me growing up). Then the other days I just make sure to treat myself to something each day– a Starbucks drink, lunch out with or without a friend, a plant (the year I got a palm tree was fantastic), whatever. Last year, for my 40th, I threw myself a party with a live emo band and a taco truck.

There are some things that always remain consistent though. On my actual birthday, I always have a DQ cake with my family and I always meditate by myself on “At the Bottom of Everything” by Bright Eyes. The feast and the song. Conor Oberst reminding me: we’re all going down eventually, but right now, we’re here. The party isn’t over yet.

Eight days is significant in the life of the Church because eight symbolizes rebirth or resurrection, new creation, and eternity. Jesus rose on the 8th day or first day of the new week. Circumcision always happened on the 8th day after birth, signifying the child’s entrance into the covenant with God. And eight meant beyond the seven days of creation, meaning beyond time, symbolizing eternity breaking into time. God created this world in seven days, but on the eighth day the new world will rise and we will be brought into eternity with Him. So celebrating something for eight days is a way of saying that God has broken into our life and renewed it, made it more than it is, made it holy. That’s what I’m saying when I celebrate my birthday in an octave. God has restored my life, made it new, made it holy.

And then there’s Mommabear’s birthday. You see, three days after my birthday is hers, so her birthday falls within my octave. 18 years without her this year. 18 years. Almost as much time without her as with her. I don’t know how I’ll feel when I do hit that threshold. I know what I’ll do, though, I’ll celebrate her like I do now. Celebrate her life and mine and remember her and miss her and generally wait for the day when we can be together again. Memento mori, memento vivere. Both/and. Always both/and.

I’m teaching my kids about octaves. They know my birthday is July 10th but over eight days. They know Grandmabear’s birthday falls during my octave. They know we celebrate her even though she’s dead. I’m teaching them that celebration can hold death. Joy can hold grief. You don’t have to choose. I’m teaching them that you can create personal liturgy. You don’t need institutional permission. I’m teaching them to mark time and honor your body aging. Celebrate your existence. Reflect on death so you remember to live. Not everyone gets so long and you’ll be lucky to do so.

One day isn’t enough. Not for life. Not for death. Not for marking another year of being alive when Mommabear isn’t. One day is too small for all of that. Eight days is liturgy. Eight days is enough.

I’m 41. I’m still here. My mom isn’t. I celebrate anyway.

The party isn’t over yet.

We must run, we must run, we must run.

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What if all of this is just one big stunt designed to keep me in a loop I can’t get out of?

Unless I radically let go.

Let everything fall away.

Let that peace Christians are always talking about overtake my heart.

What stays and what stays away.

All of the trappings fall away. Most of the traditions (big and small Ts there). Many of the teachings, too. Not just the ones I disagree with or think are underdeveloped, either, just most things are unessential.

What remains.

No matter how many times I let it go, the Eucharist will not fall away. I don’t know why. I just know that I know in my bones that it is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. That stays. I’ll build something good around that.

Sometimes I wonder if I can build a safe and beautiful place for myself and my family and others like me within the structure of the Catholic Church when I have to fight and tear and yell and develop for it so much. The Church wasn’t meant to be an institution, it was meant to be a people. Meeting the needs of all people at all times, in all circumstances. Those times and circumstances change and the ways must change with them.

The Church changes—development of doctrine is real—but it’s slow. Glacial. How long do I dig in this dirt before I move on? Where is my line?

Anxiety means this question rarely lets me rest.

I’m not one to give up but I also have to know when to move on for safety’s sake. I’ve been thinking a lot about survival and knowing when to leave. I read about a friend of Anne Frank’s the other day. She was the only one in her family to survive the Holocaust because she was the only one to take a fake identity and go into hiding. Her parents and sister trusted that the law, the right and legal way of doing things, would win out in the end. It did not. That young woman had a line that saved her life, even when it looked foolish. I should be so foolish.

My line is my children. If they are ever made to feel less than for who they are or what they’ve done or that they are in danger in any way— from another person, from God, from the Church— I’m gone. I will not be complicit in a Church that enslaves others to the Chud God, under the guise of the true God as I experience Him, at the expense of innocence and wonder and dignity.

Is my whole faith experience a bad anxiety trip? Maybe. But maybe it’s just keeping me and my family safe, too. I don’t know. I’m okay not knowing.

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Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I think too much of myself. I’m just a baby bird, after all, who barely knows how to fly. Better to fly on the wings of the eagles than try to fly on my own and fall.

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What does holding the tension of believing in the Eucharist and calling out the Church as Judas actually mean or look like? It’s not “both/and is beautiful” (although it can be). It’s “both/and is excruciating”. I hold multiple impossible contradictions simultaneously: bisexual and married to a man and Catholic; Eucharist is like air and Eucharist tattoo and I can’t receive; I’m deconstructing and raising Catholic kids; I’m actively staying and preparing to leave. I’ve been showing you the easy part, writing about it, the intellectual tension. It’s easy to put on paper that I hold both this and that, but it’s not easy to wake up sweating at 2AM after a nightmare about arguing with a priest over your child’s choice of Confirmation name but he won’t take you seriously because you’re bisexual.

Tension means I’m not allowing myself to ever get comfortable. Tension means I’m living with the thorn in my side that St. Paul wrote about. I’m not just burying my head in the sand and ignoring the hard things. And I’m not leaving because the hard things got the better of me. This is my cross. The Catholic fucking Church of Jesus Christ is my cross to bear. And it’s going to make me bleed and sweat and stumble and even die. It’s going to take everything from me. But I’ll get everything in return.

That’s where faith in God vs. faith in the institution comes in. I have unwavering faith in God. God has never and will never fail me. On that I’m solid. But the Church fails left and right, and we can see that plainly and often. The Eucharist is my anchor, even when I can’t receive it, because it is Christ’s unselfish gift of Himself for all time to us. It is Him in His entirety. I can’t unbelieve that. Faith, when you’re angry at and wounded by the institution that’s supposed to mediate this all to you, means diving ever more deeply into the person of Jesus and finding out how He treated everyone and everything around Him, to see more clearly with His eyes and heart what His vision for the world is, and then enacting that in my own life. Trusting that Divine Providence will take care of the details as long as I get the loving each other part right. Some days I do this spectacularly! And some days I go through the motions because I'm so.fucking.exhausted. But my intention is always love and I think that covers a multitude of ineptitude. At least, I trust it does.

And trust is something I have to rebuild daily. I don’t trust the Church anymore, but I do trust Jesus and I am learning to trust myself. I am learning to trust my discernment, my gut feelings, even when it conflicts with institutional teachings. I trust that staying won’t destroy me or my kids (I assess this constantly). But I trust now that I’ll know when to leave (I’ve written about this a lot— my kids are my line). I trust that God will meet me wherever I am, whether inside the Catholic Church or outside of it. And I trust that I can rebuild some of my trust in the Catholic Church even though it’s broken it time and again (I can’t fully but it is good to rebuild what we can). I do this last bit through getting to know good priests, good parishioners, other good Catholics, getting involved in parish organizations, and going to mass when I can, when I know it won’t burn me out. Because I am burned out, I am fatigued.

Fatigue isn’t a moral failure, no matter what anyone wants to tell you. Even God became tired and rested after making Creation. Fatigue is a natural state that we should honor with rest— even when that means sacrificing other good things to do it. And fatigue is natural after constantly explaining to my children why we stay, from fighting the institution why trying to stay connected to God, from the constant calculation of “is this resistance or complicity?”, from holding the Church as Judas (she betrays me and brings me to Christ). So I rest. Sometimes that looks like staying away from mass and resting from toxic homilies. Sometimes that means going to mass and resting in the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Sometimes it means literal sleep and sometimes it means reading or writing or other life-giving activities. You have to give yourself permission to rest, even though the tension won’t give it to you. God gives you permission, gives me permission, and that’s enough.

Truth be told, you can’t fully make the fatigue go away. It will always come back or it will never totally leave in the first place. It is your new best friend for life. But you do get stronger at carrying it. You know all those manly men conservative Catholics love to idolize? The ones with big muscles and little else? You get to become a muscular person in the virtuous sense by carrying the fatigue. You grow in patience, perseverance, fortitude, knowledge, wisdom, and all sorts of things. Your body will decay one way or another, whether or not you have big muscles right now. But virtues are forever (winnowy emo kids, this is your chance!). That’s the gift holding the tension will give you that will last all of eternity. Shoot for the eternal, it’s a sure bet.

So what does my day-to-day look like in practice? I wake up and say, “Thank you, God, that I woke up again, but why so early?”. I shoot an energy drink, read as much news as I can stomach, and remind myself that I don’t have to decide today what I will do about the Church. I dedicate my day— my work, my thoughts, my words, my actions— to the Lord and get down to it. If my kid comes home and says her teacher told her sin is a black stain on her baptismal gown, I correct the fuck out of that by saying that we don’t believe that. We believe that every failure is an opportunity to rely on God and that He welcomes us with open arms and as long as we’ve been trying, He doesn’t hold our failings against us. Or my favorite, that suicide will send you to hell— we don’t believe that either because suicide is an act of desperation and a desperate cry for love and help beyond what we are getting and God doesn’t hold what we don’t understand against us, nor does He hold our pain against us.

When I wake up at 2AM sweating from the tensions that have invaded my sleep again, I generally say Hail Marys over and over until I fall back asleep because I trust Mary to crush Satan and keep me safe in her mantel. On Sundays, I do sit and calculate out if I can go to mass by thinking on what the readings are for that week and what the homily might touch on. I also think about what current events are going on and what the priest might inject into his homily. If anything is iffy or sensitive, I stay home. If I’m in a particularly bereaved or emotional state where I could take something wrong, I stay home. If I’m feeling especially anxious or panicky, I stay home.

I build community outside of the Church because, first of all, all of my neighbors are my family, but second of all, I need people who are not invested in my staying the Church to be there for me should we decide to leave the Church. This is important because we all need support systems to live and thrive. Many of my outside community are exvangelicals or ex-Catholics— people who understand how hard it is to leave and the magnitude of leaving, so they understand where we are. In this vein, we’ve researched alternative schools for our children, should we leave the Church/should the Church hurt my children. Which is also why I constantly have conversations with my children about the faith, what I believe, and how the faith is being presented to them. Because silence IS complicity and I will not be complicit in their harm.

I do all this by asking myself several questions constantly. Not all of them have clear answers or even the same answers every day. Is my staying today resistance or complicity? Am I staying out of faith or fear? Is this tension teaching me something or destroying me? Are my kids safe? Can I go to mass today or would it harm me? Is today the day I leave? And if not, why? These keep my discernment sharp and my eyes set on Jesus, who is the only person that matters in the end.

Jesus, the be all end all, held a lot of contradictions and tensions, too. The Incarnation is all about holding both divinity and humanity in one. Jesus is both fully God and fully man and doesn’t resolve that. Mary is both virgin and mother, and said both yes to birthing God and watching Him die. The Church is supposed to be for both the holy and the broken; she is both the bride of Christ and the institution of sinners. Holding tension isn’t failure, it’s actually very Christian, very Catholic. But there’s a difference between holy tension (like Jesus and Mary) and staying in abuse (being constantly torn down for who you are as a person). If an institution attacks your personhood, that’s abuse. If the institution does this and won’t change when confronted, get out. I’m still figuring this out (obviously) but I have finally made my line in the sand and plan to stick to it. What it took for me was realizing that I can take a hell of a beating, but I won’t let them beat down my kids. Find your line and stick to it.

Holding the tension— I don’t have a system to handle it, I just have faith, trust and a little bit of pixie dust fatigue. I wake up every day and choose to try this again. Maybe one day I’ll wake up and say I’ve had enough. I don’t know. But right now, this is what I’m choosing. I’m in good company— Jesus, Mary, my kids, my husband. That’s really all I need. I’m still here. This is what I do. That’s all I’ve got. Good luck and, truly, God bless.

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I have a line. I think about it every single week. I rehearse crossing it in my mind the way some people rehearse speeches or arguments. I know exactly what it looks like: my kids hurt, the Church complicit, me staying anyway because I’m too scared or too stubborn or too addicted to the Eucharist to leave.

That’s the nightmare scenario. That’s what keeps me up at night.

Because here’s the thing about staying in the Catholic Church right now, in 2026, post-election, post-everything: it’s not neutral. Staying is a choice. And every choice has a cost—either you pay it, or someone else does.

The question isn’t “should I stay or should I go.” The question is: “Is my staying faithful resistance or comfortable complicity?”

And I don’t always know the answer.

There’s this line progressive Catholics love: “I’m staying to reform from within.”

I’ve said it myself. It sounds noble. It sounds like faithfulness. It sounds like the long game, like patience, like trust that the Church will eventually get it right if we just keep showing up and speaking truth.

But here’s what I’ve learned: the institution doesn’t want to be reformed. It wants to be obeyed. Right or wrong, that’s what my experience has taught me.

The Catholic Church has had literal centuries to address the abuse crisis. Centuries to develop actual theology about LGBTQ+ people beyond “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Centuries to reckon with its complicity in colonialism, slavery, genocide. Centuries to figure out what to do about women.

And what has she done? Protected abusers. Paid settlements. Moved priests around. Called queer orientations “objectively disordered.” Told women their vocation is submission.

So when I say, “I’m reforming from within,” what I really mean is: “I’m hoping that if I stay long enough, yell loud enough, refuse to be quiet enough, something will shift.”

But the institution isn’t shifting. It’s calcifying. And every day I stay, I’m lending my body, my presence, my participation to a system that protects power at the expense of the vulnerable.

That’s complicity.

Unless it’s resistance.

And the difference between the two is so fucking thin I can barely see it some days.

I started asking this question seriously two years ago when it became clear Trump would run again. When the bishops started making their political alignments clear—not all of them, but enough of them and the loudest of them. When “pro-life” became code for “vote Republican” and suddenly the seamless garment got a giant hole torn in it.

When being Catholic started to mean being associated with Christian nationalism, with insurrection, with conspiracy theories, with a version of God I don’t recognize.

The Chud God. The one who demands you be small and scared and obedient and American. The one who blesses flags and guns and borders. The one who looks suspiciously like the worst impulses of empire dressed up in a cassock.

That’s not my God. But it’s the God a lot of Catholics are worshiping right now. And when I show up to Mass, when I send my kids to Catholic school, when I claim this identity—am I resisting that God or enabling Him?

I don’t know.

What I do know: silence is complicity. So I’m not silent. I’m loud about what I believe. I correct bad theology in real time. I tell my kids that some of what they hear at school is wrong, that some of what the Church teaches is incomplete or harmful, that they need to learn discernment.

But is that enough? Or am I just making myself feel better while still participating in a system doing active harm?

I know what would make me leave. I’ve written about it before but it bears repeating because it’s the only thing I’m absolutely certain about:

If the Church harms my children, I’m gone.

Not “I’ll think about it.” Not “I’ll pray on it.” Gone.

If they tell my kids their queerness is sinful. If they impose purity culture on my daughters. If they make any of them feel less than, broken, disordered, wrong. If they put them in danger—from a priest, a teacher, a parishioner, the theology itself.

I’m out.

My children are the Eucharist to me. They are the Body of Christ I’m called to protect above all else. If the Church makes me choose between the Eucharist-in-the-monstrance and the Eucharist-in-my-kids’-bodies, I choose my kids. Every single time.

That’s my line. That’s the only thing I’m sure about.

Everything else is this constant, exhausting calculation: Is today the day staying becomes complicity? Is this the thing that crosses the line? How much can I endure before endurance becomes cowardice?

So what does it mean to stay as resistance instead of complicity?

For me, it means:

I don’t go to Mass every week. When showing up would harm me—when I’d have a panic attack in the parking lot, when the homily would be propaganda, when my presence would signal agreement I don’t have—I stay home. I pray the Liturgy of the Hours. I make a spiritual communion. I practice my faith outside the building because the building isn’t safe.

I correct the theology in real time. My kids come home from school with lessons about gender roles or sexuality or obedience, and we have a conversation. Not “the Church is wrong,” but “the Church’s teaching is incomplete” or “some people in the Church twist this into something harmful” or “here’s what I believe and why.”

I build community outside the institution. Most of my community here is independent of the Catholic Church. On purpose. I’m not waiting to be surprised when I need to leave. I’m preparing. I have backup plans. I have people who will catch us if we jump.

I’m loud about what I believe. I don’t hide my anger. I don’t pretend the Church is fine. I don’t soft-pedal my critiques to make other Catholics comfortable. I write essays like this one. I name the harm. I refuse to be complicit in the cover-up.

I tell my kids they come first. They know—bone deep, without question—that if the Church ever makes them choose between their wholeness and their belonging, I will choose their wholeness. They know I’ll leave for them even if I can’t leave for myself.

That’s what resistance looks like for me. It’s exhausting. It’s precarious. And I’m never entirely sure it’s enough.

Here’s what no one tells you about staying: sometimes leaving is holiness.

The Israelites didn’t reform Egypt from within. They left. Moses didn’t stay in Pharaoh’s court trying to make incremental change. He led the people out.

Exodus is a central story of our faith. And yet we act like leaving is always failure, always weakness, always lack of faith.

But what if staying in a system that harms people is the lack of faith? What if trusting that God will meet you outside the institution is the brave thing?

I’m not there yet. I’m still here. But I’m holding exodus as a live possibility, not a worst-case scenario. I’m holding “maybe God is calling me out” as a legitimate discernment, not a temptation to resist.

Because the Church is not God. The institution is not the faith. And if the institution becomes an obstacle to encountering the God I love, then leaving might be the most faithful thing I can do.

I’m not ready to do it yet. But I’m ready to be ready.

So how do I actually live this way without losing my mind?

Three things: faith, trust, and fatigue.

Faith in God—this remains solid even when everything else is shaky. I believe in the Eucharist. I believe in the Incarnation. I believe God is love and made me in love and calls me to love. That doesn’t waver.

Trust—this is harder. Not trust in God, but trust that I’ll know when to leave. Trust that staying won’t destroy me or my kids. Trust that my discernment is valid even when it conflicts with what the institution tells me. I have to rebuild this daily. Some days I have it. Some days I don’t.

Fatigue—this is the cost. I’m tired all the time. Tired from holding the tension. Tired from fighting. Tired from explaining to my kids why we stay in a Church that doesn’t fully love us back. Tired from wondering if I’m brave or just scared. Tired from the constant calculation of resistance vs. complicity.

The fatigue is real. It’s not a failure. It’s the price of refusing to resolve the tension.

Some days I think: this is faithfulness. I’m staying because I love this Church even in her brokenness. I’m fighting for her to be better. I’m a prophet in the margins.

Other days I think: this is cowardice. I’m staying because leaving is hard and I’m addicted to the Eucharist and I’m scared of what life looks like outside.

Both are probably true.

When does staying become complicity?

I don’t have a neat answer. I have a line (my children). I have practices (building community outside, correcting theology, being loud). I have a promise (I will leave if I need to).

But I don’t have certainty. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the people who are certain—certain they should stay, certain they should go—aren’t actually paying attention to how complicated this is.

I’m paying attention. I’m watching. I’m one hand on the door, ready to walk through it if the Church crosses my line.

And until then? I’m here. Resisting. Complicit. Faithful. Failing. Holding impossible tensions because that’s the only way I know how to be Catholic right now.

Patron saints of people who don’t know if they’re prophets or cowards, pray for us.

We’re doing our best. And some days, that’s all we’ve got.

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Mommabear died less than a year later and Mary showed up for me big. How much more fucking emo can you get.

Before all this, Mary seemed to me quiet, perfect, untouchable, and unknowable. Everything I wasn’t and couldn’t be and, therefore, I couldn’t have a relationship with her. Once I found an access point, I realized how wrong I’d been about her. Once the floodgates opened, Mary became the thing that held me on when everything else in me wanted to let go. There were nights when I was so unsure of everything that I'd stare at the crucifix and repeat, “Mary, just take me to your Son,” willing myself to believe in anything else besides her.

This is how I fell in love with her as Mary, Stella Maris— Star of the Sea, guiding us to safe passage. I didn’t have to see where I was going to know I was going to get to exactly where I needed to safely. That’s the thing about Mary, she’s safe. And not because she’s quiet and placid and untouchable and unknowable. Exactly the opposite. Because she’s audacious and in the muck and there and embracing us and opening herself in every way to us as individuals. Truly friend, truly mother.

Mary stayed, Mary stays. And I desperately need permanence in my life. I know Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit when He said, “I will not leave you orphaned,” (John 14:18) but I think He was also talking about how He would give us His mother, Mary, because she is permanent and has a body and is a body and gave us His Body. When not even Jesus could stay, when my mom just falls down some stairs and dies, Mary stays. Eternity is ever-present in Mary and Mary is ever-present in the world. That’s why she keeps appearing, so that we know her in all times and spaces and cultures and faces. She’s not quiet, she’s really fucking loud. She wants to be heard and seen and known. Just like me.

That’s why I have her tattooed on my arm. Not some traditional art of her or in some standard title or apparition, but one of my own creation. Instead of dressed in blue with a mantel, she’s dressed in purple, the color of royalty, with her hair flowing free. She’s holding a lamb, the Lamb of God in her arms, as she stands barefoot in the ocean, an anchor that looks suspiciously like the cross at her feet. Twelve stars crown her. Though her face is forlorn, she’s also resolute, ready to take on the world and bring me with her. I call her Stella Dolorosa, “Sorrowful Star”. And that’s who Mary is to me.

And she’s a little different for everyone because everyone has a little different needs. She’s this Mary for me but she’s also Mary for the queers, the wounded, the “too much”.

Mary is not quiet or submissive, she’s radical! The Magnificat is a protest song and she sings it loudly. “He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” She’s not just singing about herself; she’s singing about every person to ever be born. This is why it’s important that she later came as Our Lady of Guadalupe to a poor indigenous man in colonized Mexico. Mary scoops us up in her arms and crushes the head of the snake by being a body that brought The Body into the world that can scatter the proud and cast down the mighty. She’s dangerous, if you listen to her. She isn’t just sitting in the corner, she’s active…and God listens to her.

Prosperity gospel melts in front of the indomitable Mary. Perhaps this is part of why she's been sidelined in some traditions - she's too dangerous, too radical. She came to destroy earthly power and prominence so that the lowly and meek might have absolute prominence. And God chose her for this because she was this. Not just because she was “pure”. She was an unwed teenager (scandalous), then a refugee (the flight to Egypt), then the mother of an executed criminal (standing at the foot of the cross), and yet she is still there and still here and still shows up. She knows what it is to be the marginalized, the wounded and what it takes to stand in the face of power and spit in it. Mary is active, not passive.

She’s always been active. From the moment the angel Gabriel came to her, Mary has been active in her own salvation and story. The angel told her what could happen, she asked how, he told her and then asked for her consent. Mary gave her consent. Mary said yes. God waited for her yes to act. This changes everything about how we understand obedience - it's not submission, it's agency. And this matters deeply for sexual ethics and bodily autonomy. If God Himself waited for Mary's consent before entering her body, how dare anyone claim we owe our bodies to another person? The “marital debt” concept that incels and theology bros wield— whether online or in bedrooms— crumbles before Mary's free “yes.” We are not owed each other. God gave us our bodies as a full gift of Himself for ourselves and we have the full right and agency to give our bodies as a gift to another person of our choosing when we want, only when we want and never at another time. It’s not a gift otherwise and everything about life is a gift. That’s what Mary so deeply understood. It’s about joy.

Mary may not have had sex, hard to know and not really the point. The point is, Mary wasn’t about deprivation, but about abundance and joy. The abundance of the God of the universe growing in her body, growing a body related to her body. The abundance of more wine at a wedding feast. The abundance of two prophets meeting in the womb and leaping for joy of the other. The Church likes to emphasize her submission and purity as modes of deprivation, but the Church fails to emphasize that submission and purity are actually modes of abundance, when done correctly and for the right reasons. The Chud God tells us we’re “too much” or that we don’t fit. Mary knows all about not being the right kind of person or in the right position at the right time. But she also knows that those things make us exactly right for the redemptive work that the real God, the God of Love has in store. Love that will save the world.

Love will save the world. No matter what form it comes in. A large family. A straight but abstinent couple. A single man who’s forgone marriage and family life to serve God. A queer couple who images the Trinity anyway because all love images the inner life of the Trinity. Mary is mother for the shes, the hes, the theys, the gays, and everyone in between. She’s steady and has room for all. It’s our hardness of heart that excludes. We should be more like Mary.

Mary knows what it's like to be dissected for the most minute of details. People still argue about whether her hymen was intact after giving birth, as if reducing the Mother of God to a gynecological specimen is somehow reverent. They miss the point entirely: Mary's body doesn't exist to satisfy your theological curiosity. She knows all about bodies that don't fit. But she loves anyway. We should love anyway. Because it’s about abundance.

Mary is still here. When I can’t receive the Eucharist, Mary still brings Him to me and me to Him. Mary never wounds me, only wraps me in her mantle. When the Church wounded me, when I couldn't stomach Mass, when I was stripping away everything to see what remained— Mary stayed. She didn't demand I fit into a box. She didn't ask me to shrink or submit or be less angry. She just held me. While the institutional Church told me I was too much and not enough, Mary said, “You're exactly enough. Come as you are.” That's the difference between the Church and Mary— the Church often serves the Chud God who demands perfection; Mary serves the real God who offers abundance.

I treasure this relationship I have now with her. I am so grateful that she showed up for me when I didn’t know where else to go, that she showed up when I needed to save face and then didn’t stop. I’m so glad she shows up for my kids. My kids are consecrated to her (my oldest to Our Lady of Sorrows, my middle to Mother of the Lamb, and my youngest to Stella Maris) and while I let them handle their own relationships with Mary, I bless them every night, asking Mary to wrap them in her mantle. I have different images of Mary hanging around the house and talk about her often. She’s not just another person in our family, but she is a regular member. I hope my kids look to her and find in her what I have.

Everyone needs Mary in their life and she’s there in whatever way you need. Because Mary lived with the eternal in her body constantly for nine straight months and then lives eternally while still appearing temporally, she can be absolutely whoever we need whenever we need. If you’re leaving, if you’ve left, you can still have her. My uncle’s second wife was Protestant but loved Mary so much that she’d pray the Hail Mary multiple times a day. Mary was Mother to her and Mary loved that. Mary wants to be there for you. Like most things in my life, I kind of stumbled into my relationship with Mary, but there are some practical things you can do and questions you can ask to cultivate your own relationship with Mary and see who she takes form for you.

Does the Rosary make her come alive for you or does it make her more nebulous? Are there other prayers that make her more alive? What Scriptures or apparitions or images resonate with you? When you picture the perfect, powerful woman, what do you picture? Is it a woman at all? What do you need in a mother? What does mother mean to you? How can you get closer to that mother? What’s keeping you from her? And what can Mary do for your relationship with Jesus or God/higher power?

I don’t want to say that this will be easy and roses and sunshine. Because it won’t be. Mary challenges. Mary said yes to carrying and raising a child she didn’t know she wanted until that moment, a child she didn’t plan for. Then she suffered at the foot of the cross watching him die when he was innocent. Then she consented to taking on all of his followers, more outcasts, as her new children. And she had to look after those suckers and correct them and tell them how to go! And we’re not much easier. But she loves us so much. Remember, she is abundance in human form. That’s what makes her so special. That’s what she wants to give and help us live in. That’s what I want to live in. Maybe you do, too.

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Going to mass has been the de facto measuring stick for a practicing Catholic since forever. That’s what all of the polls use to measure “practicing” vs. “non-practicing” and what casual conversation will, too. It’s a practical tool, very easy to place into boxes. But being Catholic has never really been about being in a box, it’s always been about breaking molds and tearing down walls. That’s why I think mass attendance is an insufficient measuring stick for “practicing” vs. “non-practicing”.

A better measuring stick of practicing the faith than butts in pews is the Works of Mercy, both Corporal and Spiritual. Anyone can sit in a pew and let the grace hit their stony heart and bounce right off. But actually encountering people? That’s like a power drill straight to the atriums.

I practice burying the dead a lot; that’s a corporal work of mercy as taught by Jesus Himself (Matthew 25). The first funeral and grave-side service I remember going to was Grandpap’s when I was 4.5. It was a weirdly sunny day in Northwestern PA (east of Pittsburgh, if you want to get technical) in February. There wasn’t even snow on the ground. I remember everything being bright and green. I wanted it to be cloudy and snowy, like I felt inside. But the weather was confused, just like I was. I remember the casket being lowered into the ground and receiving a sense of peace. While it was torturous to know I would never see Grandpap again, there was peace in knowing he was safe in the ground, that nothing could hurt him anymore, and that we were doing right by him. I was only four, I couldn’t understand resurrection theology or the weight of death very well, but I wanted to follow Grandpap to heaven right then. It sounded like a beautiful place and then we could be together forever, listening to his records and telling stories. I may have had peace that he was safe and cared for, but I also had a sense of urgency that I needed to be with him. I now understand that urgency as a stepping into eternity, as a form of communion, a grace to be with those we love in a different way.

I’ve attended so many funerals since then, for family members and friends, young and old, and I get the same sense of peace at the graveside each time that I did in February 1990. It has morphed and deepened and taken on new meanings, but the feeling, the grace remains the same. Maybe it’s weird (it shouldn’t be) but I like going to funerals. I like remembering people, I like giving them honor and love and respect as the final thing I can do for them. I like comforting families and loved ones. I like hearing stories. I like community. I like bringing dignity where maybe there was little. Funerals are hard for many people and I like being a steady pillar in the midst of a storm. I know I can do this only because I receive the grace of Christ to do so. Eternity is now and funerals are a way to participate in that while still earthside.

The most recent funeral I went to was for another cousin, this time on the Illinois/Iowa border. She was twenty years older than me, so we didn’t grow up together, but my mom was her godmother, so she’d come to visit us frequently. Kathleen was devastated when my mom died. I was so afraid to tell her; I didn’t know how. But we got through Mommabear’s death together. So when Kathleen died, I knew I had to go to her funeral, to her sisters and mother and extended family. It was a beautiful service and it was good to say goodbye and surround Kathleen with love from members of her family who adored her, if from a distance. Kathleen’s niece later told me that her mom was just so stunned and happy that I made the trip, that I honored her so highly and brought her so much peace. That’s why we bury the dead together. It’s not a burden that one of us bears alone, but all of us together. This corporeal work of mercy is about being the Simon of Cyrene to our loved one’s Jesus during our personal passions. Communion. It always comes back to communion. The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life but it is not the only way to receive it or live it. The Eucharist enjoins us to each other, meaning we then have a duty to each other. If you aren’t taking care of your brothers and sisters outside of mass, then what you did inside of mass means nothing.

That’s what being a “practicing” Catholic means to me. Not pious devotions and internet tropes and battlecries and accoutrements and the like. But digging in and doing the work. You could pray a Rosary every day and not engage your fellow man at all (even by praying for your fellow man) and your prayers would be ash in your mouth. You could donate every last cent to remodel your parish and still vote to keep homeless people without shelter and your money would be blood money. You could partake of the Eucharist every Sunday and cut funding to healthcare and SNAP benefits and bring judgment down upon yourself. Faith is weak if it is not put into action.

“If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him? Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:17-18). Everything must come from love. Your whole being must be comprised of love and you must act out of love.

I pray for the dead everyday. I pray that the souls in purgatory might find peace sooner rather than later and that we all might be together in heaven one day. I pray for the living, that we might find God in all things and be totally united with Him in heaven together. That’s what this is all leading up to.

Much to the chagrin of many Christians (and to be fair, many people of all faiths and backgrounds!) Jesus came to bring everyone, no matter their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or whatever, to Him. Remember in the Gospel of John how the disciples caught 153 types of fish? That is symbolic to mean one of every kind, that all people are to come together in Jesus. We are meant to be Christ to one another in a very intimate way. That’s what the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy lead us in and what the Beatitudes speak of. So when I say I derive peace from going to funerals and praying for the dead, I mean that I find communion with the people there mourning and with the dead. I mean that I become one with them through the shared experience and through the grace God bestows on us to get us through those moments. I mean that I continue to walk the road of grief with people long after the grass has grown over the dirt of the grave.

So how do I practice the faith without going to Mass? I do the practical spiritual things like making spiritual communions and praying and the like. But evenmoreso, I let my words, thoughts, actions, and body be made of and convey love, compassion, and truth in literally everything. I try to be love embodied. Of course, I fail, but I surrender myself to God’s mercy and grace and try again. He believes in me much more than I believe in Him. And that’s worth getting up for.

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Better question: When will I leave? Because I will. I have a line. And I think about crossing it every week.

My line is my children.

I know what the agents of the Church do to children. Not the Church herself—the people who claim to speak for her. The priests, the teachers, the retreat leaders who take good theology and weaponize it into shame. I know because they did it to me. Purity culture. The teaching that my body was dangerous, that my sexuality was shameful, that I couldn’t trust my own judgment. The spiritual abuse. The control. The fear. The constant message: you are too much and not enough, all at once. They made me second-guess myself. My body. My desires. My worth. My abilities, especially my ability to tell my own story.

I spent years unlearning all this they taught me. Years reclaiming my body as mine, not theirs. Years learning to trust myself again. I will be damned if I let them do that to my daughters and son.

Here’s what would cross my line:

If they tell my children their queerness is sinful. If they teach them that their sexuality or sexual expression is shameful. If they impose purity culture—the lie that their bodies are dangerous, that they’re responsible for others’ sin, that their worth is tied to their virginity. If they make my children feel less than. If they put them in danger—physical, emotional, spiritual. From a priest, a teacher, a parishioner, the institution itself. If they try to enslave my children to Chud God at the expense of their innocence, their wonder, their dignity.

I’m gone.

Not “I’ll think about it.” Not “I’ll pray on it.”

Gone.

I started asking, “When does staying become being complicit?” about two years ago, when it became clear Trump would run again. When the political and the pastoral became impossible to separate. Now I ask it constantly.

Bad homilies. News stories about the Church protecting abusers. Bishops choosing politics over people. Retreat experiences where I see the agents of the Church doing to other kids what they did to me.

Every week, I think about leaving. Fully. Moving away from all the family that pressures us. Just not going back to Mass ever. Jess and I talk about it. We’re on the same page.

I have the Eucharist tattooed on my arm. It’s my anchor. The thing I can’t leave. But here’s what I’ve realized: the Eucharist is supposed to anchor me so I can guide my children to their safe harbor. Their safe harbor may not be mine. And their safety always outweighs my anchor.

There’s a theological truth I can’t escape: the Eucharist is the Body of Christ. But we are also the Body of Christ. Therefore, my children are the Eucharist to me. My children are my anchor. Not also my anchor. Not in addition to the Eucharist.

They ARE the Eucharist. They ARE the Body of Christ I’m called to protect, to cherish, to receive with reverence. If the Church makes me choose between the Eucharist-in-the-monstrance and the Eucharist-in-my-children’s bodies— I choose my children. Every time.

This isn’t hypothetical. I’m preparing.

I’m always watching. Always planning. I have a backup plan in case we need to leave our Catholic school and community.

We’d go back to public school. We’d lean into the community I’ve been building outside the Church—and I’ve been building that community intentionally, for exactly this reason. Most of my community here is independent of the Catholic Church. On purpose. I’m not waiting to be surprised. I’m not hoping it won’t happen. I’m ready.

I teach my children to trust themselves. I teach them to discern which spaces let them be themselves—and which spaces require them to shrink. I teach them that they come first. Not the institution. Not the tradition. Not even the Eucharist. Them.

They know this. They know that if anyone, anyone, hurts them, makes them feel less than, tells them they’re wrong for who they are— we’re leaving. They know I mean it. Because this is not a line in the sand.

A line in the sand is temporary. It blows away. It shifts. It’s a threat you might not follow through on. This is stone. This is permanent. I’m not testing the Church to see how far she’ll push. I’m not hoping she’ll change before we get there.

I’m telling you: I have a line. My children are that line. And when—not if, when—the agents of the Church cross it, I’m gone. To be clear: I’m not leaving over doctrine. I’m leaving if the people who represent the Church twist that doctrine into a weapon against my children. That’s my line.

The Eucharist is my anchor. But my children are the Eucharist to me. And I will follow them wherever they need to go—even if it’s away from everything I’ve ever known.

I don’t want to leave. I love this faith. I believe in the Eucharist. I’m fighting to stay. But I’m fighting with one hand on the door. Because my children’s safety matters more than my comfort. Their wholeness matters more than my belonging. Their dignity matters more than my anchor.

I should be so foolish as to stay when staying means harm. I won’t be. When the Church crosses my line, I’ll leave.

And I mean it.

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When I was 12, Nickelodeon’s All That was touring across the USA and holding auditions. I desperately wanted to be on the show and I begged my mom to take me to an audition. I had been in some community plays at the point and was also a dancer. I loved performing. My mom, having lived in Los Angeles and being somewhat entangled with the modeling and acting businesses in various ways, did not think acting was a suitable profession for an empathic kid like myself. But I was persistent. Finally, she just said, “You don’t want to be an actor. I wish you would just be safe, be a writer.” I felt so shut down. The breath and passion was literally curb-stomped out of me. I was in a few other plays and performances throughout high school (and one in college) but I never again gave it my attention or love like I had before. What was the point?

So in some ways, I've always felt like I cheated myself out of a possible pathway in acting. That my mom was somehow to blame for me not taking chances and being crippled in this way. Even living in L.A., I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even audition to be an extra. That’s how deep that moment had cut.

I listened to an interview recently where a musician talked about his parents putting him in piano lessons solidified his interest in being a full-time musician, though he had expressed some interest before. And suddenly I was twelve again, hearing, “Be a writer.”

What if my mom wasn’t crushing my dream? What if she was doing what that musician’s parents did— redirecting me toward something I’d already shown her I loved? I’d been telling her stories since I could talk. Writing was my first passion. Acting was just... shiny. New. A distraction.

She wasn’t shutting me down. She was pointing me back home. To vocation.

Catholics talk about vocation— not just jobs, but calling. The thing God made you to do. The thing that makes you most fully yourself and most fully His. I knew my vocation at four. That’s not normal. That’s grace. And when I got distracted by another path at twelve, Mommabear— whether she knew it or not —pointed me back. “Be a writer.” Not just career advice. A reminder of my calling. Maybe that’s what mothers do. Point us back to who we are when we’ve forgotten.

I don’t know if I’ll ever write movies, per se, but I know I have to write and tell stories. Right now that means telling my stories through this substack. What that evolves to…well, I listen to the wind of my soul. I think that’s what Mommabear was trying to get me to do, listen to the wind of my soul. What does my soul want? What is it calling me toward? Not auditions or applause, but words. Stories. The thing I knew at four.

Maybe I should’ve gone on the audition anyway, maybe she should’ve phrased her guidance differently, but maybe I just needed a reminder of who I am.

I’m a writer. I knew it at four. Mommabear reminded me at twelve. And I’m living it now. Thanks for reading. Thanks for being part of my calling.

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You’re here for the emo, but maybe you know someone who loves princesses. Maybe it’s you (I’ll never tell). Check out this book I wrote!