Outlaw women are fascinating—not always for their behavior, but because historically women are seen as naturally disruptive and their status is an illegal one from birth if it is not under the rule of men...In Sula I wanted to explore the consequences of what that escape might be, on not only a conventional black society, but on female friendship.   ~Toni Morrison

Some books are only stories. There isn't a degradation meant by the word "only," because any given book can be only a story to one person and a work that changes everything, or changes one small thing in a way that reflects upon everything, to another person. It's not necessarily the work itself (although it also is; I don't, for example, read many bodice rippers but I have a hard time imagining that many of them are more than only stories) but what we bring to it, what our psyches need, what our histories are complicated by, what our presents are demanding. You find a truth about yourself in books that are more than only stories, and you leave something of yourself there, too.

I first read Toni Morrison's novel Sula when I was working on my English degree at BYU. I don't remember, now, exactly what class it was for, but I read it out of my Norton Anthology of American Literature rather than a regular book. What I do remember most vividly: Eva taking care of baby Plum in the outhouse, her finger coated with the last of the lard. I remember reading that and feeling astounded and terrified, because I wasn't sure I could ever do what she did. But other images also stayed with me: Eva and Nel traveling south until there are no more bathrooms for Black people and Eva's humiliation and gradual acceptance of squatting in the fields by the train stations. Eva's one lovely leg in its elegant shoe.  Shadrack in the military hospital and the way he leaves, his circuitous path through the grass, and the way he finds his way back to some version of himself that can at least exist in the world with useful hands. And, most profoundly, I remember the feeling of Nel and Sula's friendship.

Whenever someone asks me about Toni Morrison, I always recommend Sula as a good introduction to her work and as a sort of epistle on friendship. It isn't a syrupy, Hallmark-movie kind of friendship, but a real one, with both difficulties and connections.

What did I bring to this work then, the first time I read it? I was in the middle of my twenties, having gotten married far too young after a traumatic and tumultuous adolescence. I had embedded myself deep in the religion I had earlier rebelled against and I was trying to fit in that mold. I was also aspiring to be the best mother I could. Except, deep down, I knew I did not fit. I loved being a mom, I loved my children as babies and as toddlers, I loved that my life had brought me a husband and a house and these new beings. But always there was a tug, a sadness, a feeling that I had missed something. I couldn't name it then—I can name it now, but only painfully because I cannot get it back. I was propelled, in ways I am only now beginning to understand, by a compulsion to prove I was good after all of those years of rebelling, to my mother, to God, maybe even to myself. My aspirations—to go to college, to get a PhD, to become a writer and a professor—didn't fit in the definition of "good Mormon woman" and so I muted them until the opportunity to follow those dreams ended out of the sheer, relentless pace of time and circumstances and how my life changed, and how my life changed me.

That is what I brought to Sula when I first read it, and so I think I could only allow myself to see the friendship part of it. And it is about friendship, as evidenced partly by Sula's dying realization that she wanted to tell Nel about her own death, and about Nel's realization that she had been missing Sula all along. Despite the damage they did to each other, they still have their connection. That is what I took from the novel, what I kept with me during the twenty-five years that came after I read it: in the end, your real friends always love you, even if the friendship itself is too fractured to be visible as a friendship.

When Toni Morrison died this year, I decided I would reread Sula​, and somehow I thought that my flight to Denver would be a great time to start it. The couple next to me would likely disagree, as while I did manage to do it quietly, this rereading broke something in me that caused a huge lump to swell in my throat and a whole river of tears to fall onto the pages. It was a devastating, painful book to read at this point in my life, where I am striving to see what is real and to not blind myself out of fear. I am bringing an entirely different self to this reading.

Sure: this is a novel about friendship. But what I can relate to now, as a person nearing 50 who feels like she only has one more chance to create a life without that sadness and sense of loss, is entirely different. What hit me most profoundly was Eva's relationship with her son Plum, and how she kills him, and why. This is because what I saw on this reading is the subtle thread of commentary on relationships between mothers and their adult children. It is there in the scene with Eva and Plum, when she has been entirely drained of her ability to offer him refuge and it is there in the explanation for why Jude marries Nel: to have a place for comfort. "He needed some of his appetites filled, some posture of adulthood recognized, but mostly he wanted someone to care about his hurt…And if he were to be a man, that someone could no longer be his mother."  How do mothers and adult sons interact? What do mothers continue to give their adult sons? How do we make a place for them in the world when they are struggling to make it on their own? How do we let go? (Mirrored in the letting-go of Chicken Little's hands by Sula.)

This isn't a major theme in the novel, but it is part of what caused my throat to swell, because it is a part of a larger theme I didn't see (or couldn't) the first time I read it. In a sense, Sula and Nel stand as symbols for two choices women can make: Nel's traditional choice, Sula's "outlaw woman" choice. And while neither character is exactly me (nor do I need them to be), I find pieces of myself in both of them. In a sense, I am Nel, doing the traditional (and, in my religion, the expected) thing of getting married and having and raising children. Like Nel, I have found happiness in these choices. But I also have some of Sula in me. Maybe it is, in fact, the Sula part that has been the kernel of the unhappiness I've also felt. That I didn't choose to be an outlaw woman.

Early in the novel, we read that Nel's mother works hard to strip all of the imagination from her daughter, so that she can neatly conform. When she becomes friends with Sula, though—that choice of becoming friends itself an act of rebellion—she gets back some of her creativity, her wildness, but it doesn't seem that she ever pushes back against following the norm. She just marries Jude and has his children, and it isn't until Nel sleeps with him that she fully sees her life had joy in it. Sula cannot see it; she doesn't really even understand why her having sex with Jude is upsetting to Nel. "The narrower their lives, the wider their hips," she thinks. "Those with husbands had folded themselves into starched coffins, their sides bursting with other people skinned dreams and bony regrets…had had the sweetness sucked from their breath by ovens and steam kettles."

As I read this, I pictured my 25-year-old self, who thought she could have everything she wanted. Who thought she could be both Nel and Sula, traditional and outlaw. As in a photo collage, I also saw myself now, nearing fifty, feeling like I didn't succeed at anything: the outlaw tug kept me from being a good-enough mother (and without a doubt a good-enough Mormon) and the traditional place I put myself kept me forever away from my outlaw self. Has my life been narrow? Has all my sweetness been sucked away?

My outlaw self says yes.

My Nel self remembers and knows there has been joy here.

But like Nel at the end, lamenting—that fine cry that had "no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow," there isn't an answer. There isn't a black-and-white, clear-cut thing I can take from this novel. Nor from my life and where I find myself in it now. I am learning to embrace and comfort my Nel self and I am also feeling a turning toward my Sula self, who I have pretended didn't exist for far too long.

In the edition I purchased, there is a foreword by Toni Morrison, in which she writes that

Hannah, Nel, Eva, Susla were points of a cross, each one a choice for characters bound by gender and race. The nexus of that cross would be a merging of responsibility and liberty difficult to reach, a battle among women who are understood to be least able to win it…and the only possible triumph was that of the imagination.

 (I know I am not even discussing here the issues of race, know I am in some sense conscripting a Black story into my white one and that that is objectionable, but what I have written is what I can bring to it today.)

I went back and reread the foreword after I had finished the novel. And I felt my Sula self stir. I am Nel, laughing with her children, in love with her husband in both complicated and simple ways, walking down the busy road to visit Eva. I am the Nel who is troubled and influenced by Sula. But I also want to be Sula. Not the Sula who ruins friendships by failing to understand marriage, but the Sula who tells her mother "I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself."

I want to make myself, too.

Yesterday I stood in a long line at my local bakery, because I was craving sugar cookies and if I just buy a dozen at the bakery, I don't bake three or four dozen myself, spend hours frosting them, and then eat them all.

I didn't mind the wait, as I had enough time before I needed to get to work and besides, I was standing in a line while the scent of baking bread and cinnamon rolls wafted around me. What's the problem? But eventually I was almost to the front, with just one woman in front of me. She was older—in her 70s—and was ordering 10 dozen rolls for an upcoming family party.

Just as she was getting her credit card out of her wallet, an older man banged open the door to the bakery (no small feat as those doors are heavy) and barged past all the women waiting in line. (Seriously odd side note, the line really was made only of women.)

He got to the cash registers and started yelling at his wife.

The other cash register opened up so I walked around him and started my order, all while watching this unfold.

"You shouldn't even come to a place like this that doesn't value your time, Marjorie!" he shouted.

"I need…a dozen…ummmm, oh yeah, a dozen sugar cookies," I told my cashier.

"I've been sitting around waiting in the car for you for FIFTEEN MINUTES," he continued yelling.

"And, ummmmm, a bowl of corn chowder to go," I continued.

"This place is ridiculous! There should be people walking down the line taking orders!" The yelling did not dissipate. Such volume from an old man.

"And a cheese stick," I finished.

I watched that woman. She very calmly took back her card. She said "Gerald, I'll be done in a minute, go wait in the car."

He stormed out, bumping shoulders with several of the women waiting in line.

She sighed and apologized to her cashier, then stopped to admire the shelves of kitchen items for sale (doesn't your bakery also have pretty dishes and holiday tchotchkes to buy?) before pushing open the heavy door and going out.

Everyone left in the line just kind of looked at each other with that look. That thing that all women recognize and have experienced in our lives we had all just witnessed happening to someone else. We all felt it, pity for the woman being stuck with such a man, and anger that he treated her like that, and also some pride at how she reacted.

The cashier handed me my bag o' carbs and I walked out into the parking lot…where Marjorie and Gerald were still fighting. In fact, they were parked right next to me. Gerald was in the driver's seat (OF COURSE HE WAS) and Marjorie was standing by the open passenger door. I stood behind her because I couldn't get into my car and listened to them shout.

Gerald went on and on about how he'd been sitting waiting in this car for so long and Marjorie was trying to explain that there was a line and that's how lines work, but Gerald kept cutting her off because HE HAD TO WAIT and what kind of incompetent business was this, that had A LINE (at noon!) and if HE was in charge it would never be like that.

But then I was getting close to really needing to leave so I could be on time to work instead of witnessing such domestic bliss. So I touched Marjorie on her shoulder in a way that I hope conveyed my "your husband is a jerk and is behaving like a big baby and I got your back, sis, I'd jump in and defend you but that might make it worse" feeling.

She got in the car, but before she closed the door I said "Gerald! You're not the most important person!" and then I got into my own car.

❦ ❦ ❦

I can't stop thinking about this interaction.

It is one example of why, despite all of the women who are complicit in their own undermining who insist we don't need feminism anymore, we still need feminism.

Why the patriarchy is poisonous.

Perhaps the fact that it was all women in the line (and in the bakery) witnessing his temper tantrum illuminates this contrast so starkly. He wasn't only being a jerk. He was illustrating how men in power behave.

Gerald is a person, of course, but he is also a type. An archetype, almost. He is an example of a man who thinks he is the most important person. His time (sitting in the Buick in the parking lot) was far more important than his wife's, which she was spending in a type of work—one of the many little details of planning a family get-together. He, of course, would never see that as work, because it doesn't result in any money in his pocket, and so is, in a sense, invisible.

See the power imbalance there?

And the fact that he had no problem storming the bakery and shouting at her in front of 25 people also speaks to his sense of self-importance. It didn't just impact his wife. It impacted, in some degree or other, everyone who witnessed it. (And now in a smaller way it is impacting whoever reads this blog post I'm writing.) Maybe someone in that line is divorcing an emotionally abusive husband right now and she went home shaken. Maybe one of the bakers frosting cookies revisited the trauma of her step-father shouting at her. Who knows, but he didn't think about anything other than HIS time. That was the most important thing.

Men are in charge of the world because they are powerful and strong, right? Because they are the gender that can handle the work and make the wise decisions or whatever the patriarchy tells itself.

But that display—that was not a display of strength or intelligence. It was a man throwing a temper tantrum because he had to wait.

We need feminism because Gerald's show yesterday at the bakery is not an isolated incident. From my own life I can tell a thousand stories of adult men acting like children. I saw it in the faces of the other women in the bakery—they've all seen this, too. We've all experienced it in some form or another. We can turn on the news and watch politicians and movie stars doing the same thing.

And especially in this Mormon community, where whatever lip service is paid to "admiring women," the basic truth is that women are always second to men—especially here. We still need feminism because there is still a power imbalance.

And if we ever manage something that looks like equality, we will still need feminism to make sure the balance is sustained.

As awkward as it was, I actually feel lucky that I got to witness Marjorie and Gerald's argument. It validated some things I have been pushing against in my own life. It gave me a little bit of courage to keep pushing. I was so proud that Marjorie didn't scurry. She finished her transaction AND she stopped to look at the dishes before pushing once more into the fray.

I only wish I had made sure that Gerald could hear me, because really: He isn't the most important. None of us are, and that is one of the points of equality.

If you know me, you know this: I’m pretty passionate about exercise clothes. That might seem like a weird thing to feel passionate about, but I have a firm belief that comfortable AND functional exercise clothing keeps people exercising. (Cute is also important.) Exercise clothes designed specifically for women are important in the exercise community because really: we aren’t men. Our bodies are different, our curves, our shapes, or musculature, even our height.

And, yes: our weight.

Well-designed exercise clothes don’t chafe. They don’t ride up between your legs. They felt well over breasts and hips; they support and breathe and wick. They flatter a moving body, no matter if that body is running or hiking or biking or swimming or doing yoga or lifting weights. They keep you moving, and if that is weird or silly, if it makes your eyes roll, then you’ve likely never had to work out in clothes that weren’t well designed.

There’s been a little bit of an uproar in the exercise-clothing world this week: Nike had the audacity not only to make plus-size exercise clothes, but put them on a plus-size mannequin. And a writer for The Telegraph definitely did not like it. She saw it as yet another way the clothing industry lies to people in order to sell things. The “fat acceptance movement,” she thinks, is not helpful to women because it gives them freedom to accept who they are right now, instead of working hard to become some better (read: thinner) version of themselves.

I’m not really sure how she fails to see the irony of her argument. She’s say two opposing things: marketing ploys that try to trick you into believing you have to be super-skinny to be attractive are wrong because the ballerina body is unhealthy, but this marketing ploy—the one that says “if you’re overweight, you still get to have comfortable and functional exercise clothing”—is wrong because fat people can’t be attractive.

Which is it?

She ends her article by asking “where is the body shape between the tiny and the immense, which is where true health lives? Where is the ordinary, medium, contented woman?”

As that is where I think I am—a medium-sized woman, neither small nor large—I’d like to let her know.

I’m here, working out. Moving my body in my favorite ways. I’m doing it in clothing that I love. That fits! That has pockets! That is cute and makes me happy and makes me feel pretty. Some of it is ruffly. Some of it is so perfectly compressive I only want to take it off because I sweat so much in it.  Some of it is pink, some is purple, some is even black.

I wear a size medium, usually. And I can’t be the only one because it’s remarkably easy to find exercise clothes in my size.

I want everyone to have the same thing, even women who are bigger than me. Clothes that fit them well and help them get out and move. It shouldn’t even have to be newsworthy, that an exercise-clothing company makes exercise clothes for large women

Because guess what helps people get healthier?

Exercise.

And if we are really concerned about the health of larger women, as this woman’s article seems to suggest, guess what? We should encourage them to exercise. And if they are exercising, they are going to need exercise clothes.

One of my favorite things about running races is that I get to see athletes of all shapes and sizes. Yes, there are some of those tiny, muscled runners. There are a lot of them, in fact. But there are medium-sized women like me. And there are larger women too. And all of them—even, I’d imagine, the elite runners who regularly win races—all of them have something about their bodies that they feel self-conscious about.

One of my running friends has one of those tiny, elegant, muscled bodies. She has a thigh gap and a strong back and willowy arms, and she is fast. And people criticize her for being too skinny.

Another running friend wears a size 16 but she runs five or six marathons every year. And people criticize her for her weight.

I’m that medium-sized runner. Probably on the bigger size of medium these days, but still, yeah: medium. Medium-fast, middle-of-the-pack runner. And people criticize me, too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been outside running and someone driving past me has shouted something like “keep on running, chunky!” or “hey there, fat ass!”

(And that’s not even mentioning the language I use inside my own head, the way I have to fight to see something other than my chide sunkies (my nickname for my out-of-control-these-days side boobs), my batwing arms, my chubby belly, my thighs that haven’t gapped since I was eleven or twelve. I have to fight not to let those words overwhelm me and to keep reminding myself that what matters is to just keep moving and to draw strength from all of the ways I have already moved.)

I think it’s a rare woman who doesn’t have body issues.

So that woman writer (and I’m not linking or sharing her name, because if you want to read it you can google it), with her critical voice and her surety that no one of that size could run anywhere, that the answer to obesity is to “just stop eating sugar”—that woman is not solving any problems. She is creating more shame. And that is the opposite of what is needed by anyone with a body.

Especially women with bodies.

The point of the fat acceptance movement isn’t to encourage unhealthy weights. It is to help clear away the element of shame that is so wrapped up in weight.

We all feel that shame. (I am 100% certain that clearly, the writer herself feels shame, because otherwise, why bother? Why knock down instead of encouraging overweight women, unless the presence of an overweight woman in her exercise space is threatening to her in some way?)

We are all trying to overcome the shame and to embrace what is positive.

Exercise is positive.

Moving your body is positive.

Wearing something you love while you move your body is positive.

Whatever encourages healthier actions is positive.

Mother's day has always been difficult for me, because it asks us to overlook damage. To see our mothers & ourselves as mothers in a glowing, beautiful light. This year, many friends have said "this will be a hard Mother's Day for you, because it's your first without your mom." I love my friends for seeing and knowing this, and for being supportive. But if I am honest (but not raw, because raw is unbearable right now), this year is only hard in different ways. Mother's Day is about celebrating perfect mothers, and I didn't have a perfect mother. I was not a perfect mother. I wanted to be—I thought I would never damage my children, but despite my best intentions, I did. I know that my mom also had the best of intentions, and I don't really know that perfection is what motherhood asks of us anyway, despite this Hallmark holiday. But that is my truth: my mom couldn't always give me what I needed, I didn't give her what she needed, and it goes the other way, forward, into my children's generation. Logically I know that no one's mother is perfect & no one is a perfect mom. But it seems that other women are able to just see the good parts, the perfect parts, if only on this one day, and I can't. It's my fatal flaw: over thinking, over feeling. I know only this: we cannot bring perfection to motherhood. We can only bring ourselves. And while I didn't bring perfection, in the end all I can hope for, on this day and all the days of mothering, is grace & forgiveness.

This is what I wrote on my Instagram yesterday (I’m @amylsorensen there if you want to follow me). I received a whole bunch of comments about my post, and it also elicited a discussion with Kendell (who doesn’t really understand my use of social media) that devolved into tears as I thought about the ways I have hurt my children and the mistakes I have made.

I think I went into this Mother’s Day—the first one without a mother—thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal because I’ve always struggled with Mother’s Day anyway. That is part of why I wrote what I did, because I was trying to coax myself off the edge, to get myself to believe that it wasn’t a big deal and it wouldn’t hurt more than any other ones. But as I curled into a crumpled, weepy mess on my bed, I had to let myself admit that yes: this one was harder.

I want to set something straight, based on one of the comments on my post: I don’t think I failed as a mother. I think that failure would look like something different; failure would be giving up, would be not continuing to help them in whatever ways I can, would be not admiring or loving them. And that is not what I meant. I love them—so much. I could add one million “so”s to that sentence and it still wouldn’t say how much I love them. I am proud of them and the people they are becoming. I think they are amazing, each and every one of them, in their unique ways. They are all strong and have each overcome obstacles; they are each continuing to push forward and find their way. They make me laugh; I love talking to them, hearing their opinions and ideas.

I love them and it is because I love them that my disappointment in my mistakes hurts so much. But I didn’t fail as a mom. I just wasn’t as good of a mom as I wanted to be.

Motherhood, though, is tied tight between generations; it’s not only that I am a mom, but that I was a daughter. My mom’s influence on how I mothered my children is immense, which means each generation influences all the ones that come after, often in ways we can’t even see. Maybe the mistakes my mom’s mom made influenced mine, I mean. So the painful parts of my relationship with my mom seep into my relationship with my kids. The most painful part of yesterday was seeing other adult daughters with their mothers, saying kind things about them. Celebrating their relationship.

I was able to do this when my mom was still here, however imperfectly, because she was still here. I still thought there would be a way to fix, to repair, to move forward in an easier way. And now she is gone, that hope is also gone.

I loved my mom. She was an amazing woman who could do any craft she set her mind to. She was a sewer in every sense of the word; she made clothes and quilts and stuffed fabric rabbits. One season she sewed all of my gymnastics teammates’ sweats. She made excellent meals and I doubt she ever once served a dinner that didn’t include vegetables. She was a protofeminist who taught me many things about resisting the ways society tries to limit women. She sacrificed for me so I could be as involved with gymnastics as I was growing up. She took care of several of my friends in high school. She took me to the library and bought me books for Christmas and books from the book fair; she left me alone to sit on the back patio, reading away entire afternoons. She was beautiful and always dressed well. She was determined not to let expectations or her body’s limitations stop her—I will always remember her at 68, walking uphill in the desert outside of Cabo San Lucas with me, Haley, and Jake, from one zipline to the next, and the astounded look on the faces of the men helping us attach to the lines. Is this old woman really going to ride? their faces said, and she didn’t even answer their unspoken questions, just went.

I loved her.

But as I became an adult, got married, started my life, things got complicated. This was both of our faults, but I think I felt more guilt about it than she did. I married someone she didn’t get along with (partly because I married her; my husband and my mom are so much alike, and you know what happens when two fires try to interact? Someone gets burned, and it has always been me) and I worked within my marriage in different ways than she did in her marriage with my dad. I had a daughter and my mother loved her, but then I started having sons. She loved them, too, but she didn’t know how to interact with them. There was the tuna-noodle-casserole wedge. There was the fact that I didn’t feel like I could ask her to help me because I felt like I was imposing, especially with my kids. She wanted me to be one way and I wanted her to be another way and neither of us could do what the other one needed.

As time went on there were more wedges. I think my mom had unwavering faith in me that I could do anything in my life—that I was, in fact, meant to do something amazing. Isn’t that strange: her belief in my intelligence and abilities became a wedge because of the dissonance between her faith in me and the reality of my life. I was supposed to change the world but all I really did was what most everyone does, got married, had a family. I graduated from college but “only in English.”

But maybe what was most damaging to our relationship was the differences in our communication habits. My mom is the type of person who assumes that everyone wants to talk to her, to include her, to be involved with her. I’m the type of person who assumes no one wants that from me. So she needed me to be assertive when I didn’t know how, and I needed her to be inclusive in ways that were foreign to her. Neither of these traits is wrong or bad; there isn’t a moral judgement here, but just an acknowledgement.

My sister summed this up for me very neatly in the days after my mom’s funeral. “When it comes right down to it, Amy,” she said, “Mom just didn’t understand you.” The tone of voice in that kind of statement is essential, and hers was patient and loving. That sentence helped me to start letting go of my guilt, because it’s not that I am defective, but just baffling. And that is OK.

So here it is: the first Mother’s Day without my mom. And despite my bravado (which I only shared with my own psyche), it was painful. Much more painful than any other Mother’s Day. It was painful because she wasn’t here, of course. But it was painful because it was a reminder that even if she was here, it wouldn’t have been what other people seem to have. (I’m fully aware of how social media only presents us in one light, and usually it’s positive, which is another reason I wrote that post on Instagram, because I refuse to put myself in a false “Amazing Amy” light.) And since she is gone, that will never happen.

I didn’t get to have an uncomplicated, healthy relationship with my mother, and now I never will.

Which is why I wrote that last sentence of my Instagram post: forgiveness, grace. Forgiving not just my mom but myself (although I can’t imagine what either of those would look like). And letting grace work forward, so that while yes, I wasn’t a perfect mom, I was a mom who tried her best but made many mistakes—while that is true, it isn’t the only story. What I have is whatever future I have left with my smart, funny, caring, unique children and my relationship with them. And what I want to accomplish is that, when they eventually have their first Mother’s Day without their mother, they won’t have this snarl of emotions. They will know (I hope, I hope that is what I can give them) that I love them and that I am proud of them and that they didn’t disappoint me, not once, not ever.

Favorite quotes:

“They were connected: the world, her body, her face. Perhaps she should not be asking who she was but, rather, of what she was a part.”

“How do you stop being afraid? You don’t. But love and responsibility don’t give a person the prerogative to be always right. We can’t protect people forever.”

“I demand of you the Great Death. The death of change…the death of your way of life, the death that is not just an ending but a great and terrible new beginning.”

This science fiction novel, Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, made me think about many things, but one of them is the process that brings specific books into a reader’s life. I think that some books must be read at just the right time, and other books can be read whenever. For example, I hated The Grapes of Wrath as a high-school junior, but I loved it as an adult; seeing more of the world, understanding history and politics better, and going through different difficult experiences let me appreciate it as I couldn’t as an angsty, angry teenager.

There’s always a loud clatter I am aware of, of books asking me to read them. This is partly because of my job, of course; it’s part of my responsibilities to know what is new and grabbing attention, and to have a wide knowledge of different genres so I can help readers with many different tastes. If no one wrote any new books for the next decade, and if I had unlimited reading time, I’m not sure I would ever be able to read all the books I want to read.

So how do I pick what to read next? Sometimes it’s a whim, sometimes it’s what comes up on the hold list (although I am much more careful now to manage my hold list so it’s not the boss of me), sometimes it’s a recommendation from a library patron. Searching for book covers for library projects has helped me discover several books I didn’t know about. I belong to a couple of books+reading groups on Facebook. Becky recommends things to me. Sometimes I search out something specific that fits my mood or the season (as with this winter, when I read Spinning Silver and the Winternight trilogy). Sometimes it’s because I’m sitting in the car while Kendell and I drive to yet another doctor appointment in Salt Lake, and I’m bored and I forgot my book, so I do some random searching in Overdrive and read something on my phone.

Sometimes the universe brings a book to me.

This was the case with Ammonite. This isn’t a new release, or a book that everyone is talking about. It was published in 1992. And yet, it kept coming up in different places, websites and bookish emails and random book blogs. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I realized it was written by Nicola Griffith, who also wrote Hild, a book I adored. So the next time I was at work, I grabbed it and started reading it.

It took me awhile to finish this. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because it feels like a book that requires slowness and savoring. I had expected it to be just another science fiction novel; interesting, but nothing unique. And, in a sense, it is classic sci fi: a human arrives on another planet with ideas about what it will be like, influenced by her life on earth and the company she works for, but the planet changes her utterly.

It’s that pronoun that makes the difference: her. The planet the protagonist, Marghe, arrives at, called Jeep by the massively powerful Company that discovered it, is peopled only by women. Centuries ago, when the first humans arrived there, they were hit by a virus that killed 100% of the men and roughly 20% of the women. This virus caused Company to retreat, leaving the (women) scientists on the planet as they did not want to bring the virus back to earth. When Marghe arrives, Company is in the process of reestablishing itself on Jeep, believing that in all those years, the virus will be gone.

However, the women who were left were changed by the virus, and humanity—women only—has changed to adapt. Marghe, an anthropologist, arrives at the planet to figure out those adaptions. How has the community continued without men?

That science-based question is what takes her to Jeep, but her exploration becomes much more than that. Her experiences fully integrate her into the planet and its societies. (The details are why you should read this book, too.) As I got further into the story, I started realizing that no, this isn’t a typical science fiction novel. It does feel very female. All science fiction strives to answer some sort of what-if question, and the basis of Ammonite is: what if there was a world where women could reproduce without men? What would an all-female society look like? How would it function, what would its strife be, what would its social structures look like and how would individuals work within the larger group?

What I loved about how the story answers these questions is that it is not all flowers and cookies. The group of scientists and soldiers from Company create a type of contrast: the represent, in the beginning, male structures, wherein everything is precise, ordered, and regimented. Yet, as they stay longer on the planet, some things soften; they decorate their spaces, for example, or paint their doors. And yet, within the native societies, women fill all necessary roles: some are what we might think of as “traditional” female roles, some are more “male.” But without the binary construction of male/female, the people are simply people, able to figure out the responsibilities and talents that fulfill their personalities. There are all sorts of women, not all fine, upstanding paragons of morality or nurturing. There is still conflict. There is love, betrayal, family, complicated politics. There are the sheer necessities of trying to survive. 

But the details of the societies, their culture and myth and traditions and ways of being: these are entirely fascinating.

I’m glad I accepted the universe’s nudges to read Ammonite. And maybe this blog post can be a nudge to someone else to also read it.

One of the complicated experiences I’ve had in connection with my mother’s death has been the process of cleaning out her house. It has brought me sadness, frustration, surprise, happiness, grief, joy. And memories—so many memories. I have found photographs of my ancestors that I have never seen before, and even a postcard written by my great grandma Amy (who I was named for) to her daughter Florence (my grandma) during the weeks after my mother’s birth. I found an amazing black-and-white photo of my dad’s mom, Elsie, riding a horse, and learned later, when I told my uncle about it, that she didn’t only love cats; she loved all animals and was a skilled horsewoman.

I have wondered why we have so many more photos of my grandma Florence’s side of the family than we do of my grandpa Fuzz’s; I would also love more photos of my great grandma Emma.

Sometimes I have felt the presence of my female ancestors gathered around me, sharing something of themselves with me. Like being hugged by a ghost.

I have been reminded that women writing their own life stories is a radical feminist action.

I’ve read ever little scrap of a story written on the back of a photo in Florence’s or Elsie’s handwriting. I’ve had a secret hope that somewhere in my mother’s house I would find a notebook or a journal or even just a few loose pages written by someone, by any one of those hovering ancestors. To read and so to remember and carry with me something they felt, or learned; an opinion about a war or a politician or a neighbor; an impression of a sunrise or a flower or snow falling at midnight.

I didn’t find anything like that. When I told one of my sisters what I had wished for, she said “women didn’t have time to sit around writing their stories back then,” which only made me sadder. Men had time to write their life histories (I know of several in my family line). Many times they were assisted by their wives. It’s not that they didn’t have time. It’s that they weren’t given time, and they didn’t know their lives also held worth and so they should take the time. So their voices are lost, and all I have left are their black-and-white images, their precise cursive on the backs of photographs. Their wavering, ghostly embraces.

What I did find was a catalog of objects. Pretty dishes, statuary, trinkets. Jewelry by the boxful. Clothes, shoes, scarves, coats, jackets. Unfinished porcelain dolls. Almost-finished afghans. Pieces of quilts not yet assembled. Yarn. Old dolls. Old pans, an ancient pressure cooker, a pair of ice skates. Dusty framed pictures. An envelope with my mother’s hair and her baby teeth. Photographs, in no discernible order. A box full of Elsie’s bills from the 1950s and 1960s. Christmas ornaments, Halloween decorations, plastic Easter baskets scrawled with each grandchild’s name.

All of the contents of a person’s house, to sum up. The gathered collection of a life’s worth of accumulating stuff. And, yes: this sorting has been complicated. I can’t keep everything, my sisters or their kids can’t keep everything. But every object we choose not to keep feels like a rejection of her, somehow.

And in this process, one of the most overwhelming categories was Mom’s fabric. She had so much fabric. Like Smaug’s horde, only calico and florals and flannel baby prints instead of gold. (That sounds judgmental, and while her fabric stash made me deeply sad, I’m really not judging her; I understand the impulse of buying stuff you’re going to make something with. I mean…have you seen my scrapbook supplies?) The story of sifting through her fabric horde deserves its own post, but to sum up: everyone we know who likes fabric took some. One of my mom’s friends, me, Becky, Suzette; our nieces; our nieces’ friends, my friends, my friends’ sisters. In the end, we still had five packed-to-bursting boxes full of fabric that we are donating to various charities.

Yesterday, we took a box of brightly-colored flannels to an organization called Days for Girls. They make menstruation packs for girls in developing countries, to help them so that they are still safe and comfortable going to school when they are having their periods. When we dropped it off, they gave us a little tour of their space. There were about fifteen women working there, all volunteers. Sorting fabric, cutting, sewing, serging, assembling the bags. When the bags are taken to the girls, they are given individually, by an actual person, and the girls also receive education about their bodies, pregnancy, consent, and, if appropriate in the country where they live, some self-defense skills.

I held my mother in my heart as I learned about this project.

I had all of those female ancestors whose faces and bits of stories have been with me for the past six weeks, gathered at my shoulder.

And in front of me, an image of the girls and women my mother’s fabric would help.

Those ancestors shaped her, she shaped me, and my little part in helping will shape, in some small way, the lives of women I will never meet.

I think feminism is one of the most misunderstood concepts of our time. Men misunderstand it on purpose because it threatens their power structures. Women who misunderstand it do so, I believe, from a place of fear that is also tangled up with power. To find your own abilities and strength—your own power—you do have to first disconnect yourself from whatever power was controlling you, and that is sometimes a naked feeling, especially at first. I also think there is fear of being too strident, of coming across as a man-hater or as power hungry or, God forbid, as ambitious.

But my experiences this year have reinforced my belief in the power of women. We only need to realize that we are also worth something, independent of other sources of power. Our stories, voices, talents, experiences matter, and not in an oh-you’re-sweet kind of way. There is power in embracing who you are and then sharing it with the world. We each influence each other. I have learned from women writers, teachers, mentors, friends, family members, neighbors. Strangers. Other runners in races whose encouragement has kept me going, our lives so briefly connected for two or five minutes but yet changed for the better despite the briefness.

We have what we have: knowledge, skill, emotion, intelligence. Our interests, our history, our way of doing things. Even our possessions. And when we turn outward to help each other, we are claiming our power.

Suellen, Florence, Amy, Emma, Merle, Annie, Lizzie. Becky and Suzette and Michele. Haley. Cindy, Anna, Kayci, Lyndsay, Jacqui, Brittney, Breann, Madi, McKenzie. Chris, Wendy, Jamie, Julie, Margot, Midge. Reading friends and quilting friends and scrapbooking friends and running friends. You reading this—you reading this. Women making lives better, in small and large ways: There is a richness here that is burbling and growing and will continue to change the world.

Favorite Quote: It’s almost impossible to separate words from the images in a graphic novel, so instead, here is one of my favorite panels:

Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal is a graphic novel that imagines what our world might look like if men disappeared. The premise is that for some unknown reason, the birthrate of male babies starts to plummet. Coupled with some extreme natural disasters, humanity drastically changes. In a few generations, there are no men left.

I went into this graphic novel thinking it would be full of dark commentary on the state of the world. I thought it would explore things like politics, war, and the structures of society and how these would be influenced by the absence of men.

In part, it does delve into these topics.

But mostly, Woman World is an exploration of how women communicate. Without men to worry about, conversations open up. As most of the women in the book have never interacted with men, they are oblivious to how funny and apt their observations are. The book also explores relationships—romantic, friendly, family-based, society-based. My favorite is the relationship between an older woman, who is looked at as a source of wisdom because she remembers the world with men in it, and her young granddaughter Emiko. It is a sweet, funny, and tender relationship that made me sniff several times. Also, many of our anxieties vanish—but many of them remain, except since they are stripped of their usual context (in relation to men), they seem almost pointless. 

One of the characters in the story, Gaia, is the leader of the village, and she is always naked. At first this is a little bit startling, but as the story progresses her nakedness started to make me think about my own body and my relationship with clothes. In the absence of a sexual binary, the meaning of the female body shifted. It wasn't about being sexy or attractive or appealing; instead Gaia's body becomes a manifestation, an outward expression, of who she is. In our culture, we make our identity partly on what we wear. What would it feel like if our bodies themselves could be the basis of our identity? Our scars, stretch marks, moles, and other "imperfections" could be stories about our past that others could know about us. This point is reinforced by another character, the doctor who is sent from the capitol. She wears her doctor coat but no shirt underneath it, so you can see the scars from a mastectomy. This part of her story is never told in actual words, but it influences the people around her simply because the scars are visible.

I’m generally unable to read graphic novels very easily (and manga is almost impossible for me), as drawing the story from the images is hard for my brain to do. (I feel a deep sense of shame for this, but it is also just how my brain works. I connect it with my dislike of picture-only picture books for kids. I never enjoyed “reading” those with my kids, and I think it’s for the same reason.) This was a great one for a reader like me to read, because while there is an underlying story that weaves through the whole text, each two-page panel can also stand on its own.

This book made me laugh, cry, nod, and think. I am so glad I read it!

I’m not sure I can write about this book without giving any spoilers. I mean, I could say this: The Power is a science fiction novel in which, because of unknown side effects of a chemical used during WWII, women develop a new organ in their bodies, a skein under their collarbone that gives them the power of electricity. The novel explores, through the stories of several women and one man, the way this power helps women be physically equal to men in strength, and thus irrevocably alters the power structures of the world. It forced me to look at my own relationships with men, most closely with my husband, in a new light, as well as to wonder how I would be as a person, both within society and within my relationships, were I equally as powerful as men.

Or I could say: this novel is batshit crazy and I loved every second of it.

Or: I listened to half of it on audio, and read the second half because my Overdrive checkout expired before I could finish. I really liked the reader for the audio edition. She did a great job at changing her voice to represent each of the different characters, and her pacing was perfect. But I also think that listening to the audio without also looking at the book lessens the story, because it is interspersed with images representing art from the time of the story, and seeing those pieces adds to the overall experience. I’m actually really glad I “read” it both ways.

Or I could also say: The Cosmopolitan review that says the novel is “The Hunger Games crossed with The Handmaid’s Tale” makes me doubt that the reviewer has read any of these books. Yes, I know The Hunger Games and The Handmaid’s Tale are books/movies/TV shows that people recognize right now. They’re cool. But The Power is not a blend of those two stories. Aside from the fact that they are all three about women, and science fiction, and I guess there is a scene in The Power that is similar to a scene in The Handmaid’s Tale wherein women wreak havoc upon men…but, no. Reviewers who compare the reviewed book to what is popular without actually making any connection make me absolutely annoyed. (I almost wrote “infuriated” instead of “annoyed” but, come on. It’s a book review. There are many other things to spend my infuriation upon.)

But what I really want to write about is how the book influenced me, and to do that I have to write about many of the plot points, which would ruin the novel for you. So! If you haven’t read The Power by Naomi Alderman, but you want to, then stop reading right now. Well, stop reading my blog (momentarily), go get a copy of the book, and start reading it!

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OK! I’m writing now with the assumption that you have read the novel, so I can just refer to plot points and characters instead of describing them.

I have always, at my heart’s core, been a feminist. I have been interested in women’s stories for as long as I can remember loving stories; I have found the patriarchal structure of my religion inhibiting since I could just begin to see and understand it. Luckily, my mother also has a feminist streak, and she taught me (and my three other sisters) that our woman-ness should never stop us from doing something, even if society made it harder.

But I married a white Mormon boy who grew up in Idaho, with very conservative parents. With—and I think this is the key, honestly—a mother who was kind and loving and intelligent, but who never stood up against her husband. I remember her telling me once that she had always wanted a down comforter for her bed, but she had never had one because her husband didn’t like them. And that seemed to me one of the saddest things about her life, that her opinions and desires were always second, because that’s the natural order of things, right? The man has the power and the choice the woman has is to accept the way he uses his power or to push back. And where is pushing back going to get you? Divorced.

(That seems critical of my in-laws, and I suppose it is, in a sense. But I also acknowledge that we are all products of our environment, to some extent. So my father-in-law, who was a good man, would likely never realize “huh, I could treat my wife differently” unless someone told him that. And his wife, who was kind and also good, would never tell him because maybe she couldn’t even see it herself.)

It has taken me a long time. Lots of talking, discussing, arguing, yelling, epithets, slammed doors and long, furious, solitary drives just to get the hell away. It has been work. But I think I can say that my husband is a feminist. Of a sort, of course. He understands women’s issues, the way that we are treated as less-than in society, the discrimination, the threat of violence. He can speak the language. But, like Offred realizes in The Handmaid’s Tale, even the good men are easily corrupted. Take away the pressure I am always putting on him and maybe he’d be happy to slide into his father’s role and keep me in his mother’s. In fact, it comes up over and over and over again, still, in the way he talks and thinks. It is ingrained: men have more power in relationships. They often make more money, for example. Their aging bodies are not considered as repulsive and shameful as women’s are, so if there is a divorce, men know they can always find someone else to love them, probably even someone younger and prettier and definitely with bigger, firmer boobs, fewer wrinkles, no elephant skin on their knees. “Women’s work” still is a trope in our society, and even though my husband is actually really good at helping with cleaning the house, I always feel like I should have to thank him for it. (And not in a friendly, thanks-for-helping-me way, but in that uncomfortable-gratitude sort of way, like him vacuuming or unloading the dishwasher is a gift he has deigned to give me, the person who really should be doing it because, you know: woman.)

I continue with this work. I won’t ever not be who I am, a woman who believes I should be treated equally and who will continue pushing her husband to see that. Also, and this is important, trying to teach my sons to see and understand this, too.

But what if, like the women in the novel, I didn’t have to? What if there were equal power, as in the story?

Because the women in this society have a power that makes them physically equal with men (and perhaps even stronger in some ways), they are able to fight back against all of the ways women have been lesser than men. My favorite scene in the book is after Margot has had the test to see if she has the power or not, and she successfully beats the test. In a conference room with the governor and another men, discussing how they will move forward, she realizes she could kill them both.

“That is the profound truth of it…Nothing that either of these men says is really of any great significance, because she could kill them in three moves before they stirred in their comfortably padded chairs…It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.”

The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.

And that really is the crux of it, isn’t it? The crux of the power imbalance, whether we’re thinking of physical strength, the threat of divorce, the pay gap. Every women’s issue I can think of comes back to that: the power to hurt is a kind of wealth.

I have been both energized and infuriated while reading this book. (There. That’s the proper place for fury.) Energized because it has made me think: what would happen if we could just, somehow, have equality? But infuriated because the story made me see on deeper levels the way women are still impoverished. And the way that quite often, women themselves enable the poverty. That pat on the head from someone more powerful is a strong source of internal validation, isn’t it? And how, perhaps Naomi Alderman is exactly right: the only way we will ever have equality is if we are first as physically strong as men.

Except, women having power doesn’t lead, in the novel, to equality. It leads to further violence. Violence of a particular feminine sort, violence based on all of the millennia we have endured under men’s power. I want the women in the novel to use their power for good, but I don’t think they do. Maybe Roxy, but only because she loses it. (Roxy losing her skein: I wept at that part. Sorrow and fury.) Don’t we get to learn something from the many years of victimhood? Does society only work if one side is in charge and the other side held under? Are there only patterns that the side in power repeats, no matter who is actually in charge? And aren’t women entitled, a bit, to some revenge?

What really would happen if women ran the world?

Of course, this is not really what feminism is about. Feminism is about equality, not dominance. “Women in charge of the world” is the fear of conservative hearts everywhere, so I really hope many of our elected officials never read this novel or they’d be terrified, their worst fears confirmed. But it is also my worst fear: that if we never can achieve equality, if one side always must have the power, and if power always corrupts, then my faith in women being (I confess) more apt to do good in the world is faulty. And Alderman tells me exactly that, that it is, by the framing structure of the story.

Besides. I don’t have physical power to equal men’s. I don’t know how to change the whole world, like Eve/Allie does.

What I have is what I have to come back to: my relationships with men. Especially my relationship with my husband. And likely he’s baffled by my recent fury, by my proclivity to spark against the smallest provocation. Because deep down, I know that while he listens to me, he tries to understand, he even points out the male/female balance problems he sees in the world, while he is a good man, he still has more power than I do. Than I will ever have. Because he could beat me if he wanted to. (He doesn’t want to, or, he never would choose to, but still. Like Margot knows, he could, and that makes the difference.) Because he makes far more money than I do. Because the thought of divorce is painful for me of course because of the splitting of two lives…but also, if I am honest, because I would crumble away in the reality of whatever woman he chose after me, who would be the opposite of me in all the best ways. Because while I am not afraid of solitude and have grown used to loneliness, the thought of facing a world in which I am alone because I am a used-up, wrinkled, grey-haired woman who of course no one else would want to be with, is utterly terrifying. Is worse than the understanding of my powerlessness.

And because those thoughts are so shameful to me because they illustrate my weaknesses.

But mostly because he does, like all other men, have a wealth. A huge store of ways to inflict pain.

So this novel? This novel made me angry. At my husband, at my sons, at the way the world is. At myself. It made me want, so badly, some kind of power that I don’t have. Something that could level off the possibility for inflicting pain. Or even something that would give me an edge. Just a small one. What would that feel like? To know I could inflict some pain, too, and so to be distanced from the threat of my own pain?

It made me angry. It didn’t give me any answers, but I don’t think it tried to. It just said: what if women controlled the world? Would it be different? Would women still be good? Or is it also true that “goodness” (whatever that really is) can only be found, really, in the side with less power? And what does that say about goodness itself?

In another review, Cory Doctorow says that The Power is “easy to read, hard to put down, difficult to forget.” I think for me, the last point is the truest. I don’t think I will forget this reading experience. I think I will be changed by it. It made me question:

am I good?

Am I controlling?

Do I have any power, and if not, how can I get some?

Every once in a while, when I’m deciding what to read next, I realize that I have gotten stuck in a habit of always reaching for what is newest, what is being talked about, what is influencing thinkers right now. But there are so many great books in the world, written five or eight or twenty years ago, still to be read. (This is why I used to joke with my kids, when they were all still young teenagers, that I needed about, oh…a year in jail. Just to sit on a cot and read until I was finally caught up with everything I want to read. They could bring me books every day! Perfect, yes?) (“Never go to jail” is one of my life mottos, by the way!)

The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper is a book I read about during my work at the library, when I was putting together a new science fiction list. It was published in 1988. Science fiction has always been interesting to me, and I have made many such lists at work—but somehow, I never knew about this novel until now. I think the summary from the Foreword by Adam Roberts sums the story up well:

What separates women’s country from the rest of the world? A wall with a gate in it, of course: the title of the novel alone tells us that. But it’s more than than that. In this richly imagined post-nuclear, women live in walled communities with names such as “Marthatown,” “Tabithatown” and the like. Most men live outside the walls in military camps, and spend their lives training for, and fighting, wars. The flavor of this world is neo-Hellenic: the warriors train and fight like Spartans with spear and shield; technology in the “post-convulsion” cities is, by modern standards, rudimentary. Marthatown has been deliberately modelled upon the prototype of a fifth-century BC Greek polis, right down to the collective performance of tragic drama—Tepper interleaves her chapters with scenes from this latter, a play called “Iphigenia at Ilium,” modelled in part on Euripides’ Trojan Woman.

OK, if you know me at all, you know how much of this summary would grab my attention: post-apocalyptic communities controlled by women? And a thread of classic Greek narrative running through it? I’m not sure there could be a more perfect book for me. It explores so many of my defining issues: motherhood, the work of women, the difference in relationships between mothers and daughters, mothers and sons; how we might solve society’s ills. Feminist thought made into story: these are my favorite novels.

It takes the fear of all feminist-hating men and turns it into a story: what if women ran the world?

Well, what if? Would it be a better or worse world?

In the story, it is as if men are given everything they seem to want. So, fear not, feminist-haters and misunderstanders of the world! If women did control everything, look how great it would be for you. In essence, the story works with men in stereotypes: unfettered access to sex, not much responsibility to babies, the freedom to prepare for and fight in battle. They don’t have to worry about jobs, finding or raising food, making clothing, or anything else that the women do. They only have to protect the women. In this way, women are also presented as stereotypes.

If that was all the story did, however, it would be highly unsatisfying. Instead, it sets up this society, but then shows us how real characters (not stereotypes) move within it. Some characters—both men and women—resist, some fulfill the fullness of the role their society gives them, in all its negatives and positives.

And that underlying thread of narrative about Iphigenia (remember, she was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon after he tricked her with the promise of marriage to Achilles; he needed the winds to change so he could sail his fleet to Troy and start the war to get Helen back) is the perfect one to weave. It serves the same purpose that a black outline does in a tapestry with figures: sets them apart from the background and underlines what is implied but never said.

In case I haven’t made it clear: I loved this novel.

My only problem with it is that since it’s not new and shiny, there’s no one else to talk to about it. So I’ve read reviews and recommended it to my friends (and now I am recommending it whole-heartedly to you, my friendly blog reader!) and I continue to want to discuss it. Its weaknesses (the way it deals with homosexuality would cause quite a stir in today’s society, for example, and I can see many points upon which I might have some delicious arguments over). Its characters. The absolutely unexpected turn the plot took, and how right this turn is to the underlying wisdom of the story.

It is not a feminist utopia, as some reviewers have suggested. It is also not a dystopia. It is a science fiction story in the truest sense: it asks “what if?” and then it answers. It is blunt in its realizations about war, and about how men are deeply entwined with all the wars in history. It explores how technology leaves ripples in time, and how having power changes individuals, and how individual choices change society at large. It asks: what is the true nature of men, and of women? Or is there one at all? What are our weaknesses and our strengths? Can we work together?

However I learned about The Gate to Women’s Country (and I’m not sure I can even pinpoint it), I am glad I discovered it. Like The Handmaid’s Tale and The Mists of Avalon and A Wrinkle in Time (and many, many others) it changed how I think about and perceive the world, as well as my ability to influence some part of it. And I hope someone out there has also read it, and that you’ll tell me what you thought. (Even if you hated it!)

In my life, I tend to figure out things by writing about them. I know this doesn’t work for everyone, but for me, writing is a thinking process (as well as a form of therapy sometimes): I start with a concept that is troubling me, and if I write about it enough I can eventually understand how I feel about it. It is much harder for me to do this with spoken words.

One of the concepts that I write about quite a bit in my personal journal is my relationship with my faith. I am a Mormon person, and this relationship shapes quite a bit of my life. I cannot say it is an easy relationship, and sometimes I’m not sure it is a good relationship. But not always, and there are things I love about my faith. It helps me be a better, kinder, more Christ-like person.

I don’t blog about my faith very much, however (even though this is my second religion-based post this week!), because my relationship is so complicated. I think the non-Mormon part of society sees LDS people in two lights: weirdos or saints. I barely have the emotional energy to work out my own issues, let alone explaining how we fall somewhere in between that spectrum (as all faiths do; as all people do).

But I woke up this morning thinking a strange thought: not my church. In the same tone as the hashtag “not my president.” This is because of the Rob Porter issue happening in Washington right now, not because there is yet another example of trump-era squalor, but because Porter is also LDS. It really isn’t the White House I am upset with. Like draws to like; I am no longer surprised by the corruptness driving our nation’s leadership. Of course trump would hire a man who beat his wife, because trump is a man who sees women as objects, not as people; he would likewise be drawn to men who see women in the same light.

No, who I am upset with in this issue is the LDS church. My faith. Because both of Porters’ wives went to their bishops (which is the ecclesiastical leader we are closest with) and asked for help…but neither of them received it. The details of these conversations aren’t shared anywhere that I know of, but as an LDS woman I can surmise what the “advice” was. “Work harder at your marriage.” “Be forgiving.” “Pray more.” Even, I would imagine, “you might be overreacting.”

This, friends, is not help. This is abuse. This is shaming. This is prioritizing appearance—LDS churches are full of happy, perfect families!—over reality. This is saying that keeping a marriage together is more important than safety, calm, kindness, or love.

This is making a golden calf out of marriage.

These sorts of things happen because in the LDS church, the leadership is made up of lay clergy: everyday members who are chosen as leaders. There is wisdom in this practice—sometimes. But there is also the possibility for great folly here. Being called to be the bishop doesn’t impart all of the world’s wisdom. A bishop is still just a man with his usual knowledge. And unless that bishop also happens to be a trained therapist or psychiatrist, he doesn’t have the knowledge or skills to help an abused woman. He can offer to pray for her. He could give her a blessing of comfort. But if his first piece of advice isn’t either “here is a list of therapists who might be able to help” or “what can I do to help you get to a safe place?” then he is perpetuating the abuse.

In my life, I have asked a bishop for help exactly one time. This was when I was a teenager, and my bishop also happened to be the principal of my high school. When I was deep inside my darkest and hardest years, I went to him and asked for advice. His answer? “You used to be a gymnast. Why don’t you join the cheerleading squad? You would be comfortable in those short skirts they wear.” No effort was made to explore why I was behaving the way I was. It was just assumed that I was a bad person, and that could be redeemed by…what? Encouraging the football team to win via flashing them my lovely legs? Those aren’t the words of a loving, religious leader. Those are the words of a man who has no clue how to help someone with mental health issues, and also a man who has no clue as to how damaging words can be.

That conversation was a form of spiritual abuse.

Nor was it, I have learned, an isolated incident.

Abuse isn’t a thing that can be “fixed.” The abuser’s actions aren’t caused by the abused person’s behaviors; they are the responsibility of the abuser, not the abused. Praying for it to end won’t make it end. Working harder to be a “good” wife won’t make it end.

Ending the relationship makes the abuse end.

I’m obviously not a trained psychologist. I’m no more equipped to help a woman who is being abused than my bishop is. Except for the fact that I am a woman. And I have friends who have been physically abused by their husbands. And also because I am not sure I have ever met a man who isn’t capable, in some form or another, of emotional abuse (not even my own husband). Except, the first thing I read this morning was Colby Holderness’s essay in The Washington Post. Even without that photo of her black eye, even with just her words, there is no doubt that Rob Porter is lying when he denies these accusations. The voice she writes with is the voice of a woman who has experienced abuse. You learn those intimate details only one way: by experiencing it.

And when she did experience it, her religious leaders didn’t help her get out.

Leaders of my faith tell us often that they value women. But this sort of story makes me ask: what are we valued for? As living, breathing human beings with purpose, ambition, goals, with the burning desire to live all of this life we’ve been given? Or as wombs?

If it is as wombs, then the church is no better than the president: it sees women as objects (albeit in a different light).

If it is as human beings, it is time for the church to act instead of just offer words. It is time for the church to listen to women and then to help them in functional, productive, healthy ways. I have no doubt that the Mormon church can do this. There are probably instances when it does. But Colby Holderness’s experience is the reality, not the exception.

And I know: I know some of my very closest friends might be cringing at this little post of mine. They might be thinking I am apostate, or I lack faith, or who are you to criticize the church? Who I am is a person with a conscious and a brain that God gave me, and a faith that is centered in Christ who said “do unto others.” I am a woman who believes with every ounce of my being that women matter as much as men. And I will not be quiet. I will not hush my voice or squelch my knowledge. And my knowledge is this:

The church must do a better job. It must stop being afraid to acknowledge the fact that abuse, both emotional and physical, happens. Even in the very “best” of LDS families it happens. Prayer isn’t action; faith without works is dead. When a woman opens up to a religious leader about abuse, that religious leader has a moral obligation to assist rather than to shame. To act, to serve, to do something.

Sometimes I write about my faith in order to figure out how to make sense of it. But I will not twist this into something sensible. It is something wrong. It is a symptom of a deeper problem: the belief that holding the priesthood makes a man into a good man. It doesn’t, just like becoming a bishop doesn’t make a man into a professional capable of helping people with emotional trauma. But it is also easily fixed; bishops and other leaders should receive better training, and a large part of that training should be the skill of listening and then acting.

If the church truly values women as people, it must change.