QUESTIONS OF CALLING
unearthing beauty, mining meaning, and seeking truth
This is a place for anyone who wants more, who is not content to be comfortable, who seeks a life of truth and meaning, not just happiness.
Here, we ask hard questions, tell true stories, and turn life inside out to unearth the ragged beauty within.
I’m honored to have you to join me.
What the Selfie Doesn’t Show: The Hidden Reality of Postpartum Recovery
Ten days after the birth of my third child, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I walked by with my little nugget on my shoulder and admired my relatively flat belly. “Look at me!” I thought, “I’m bouncing back so fast!” I snapped this photo to post on Instagram later with a witty caption to show everyone how un-pregnant I was looking.
But thankfully, before I had time to post it, I realized that this photo was a lie.
8 Damaging Myths for Moms and Liberating Truths to Dispel Them (Part II)
(Myths 5-8)
Gretchen Rubin has shared Niels Bohr’s famous quote, “The opposite of a great truth is also true.” I think we can apply this in a slightly different way to say that the opposite of a great myth is also a myth. You cannot spend every waking moment caring for your children and also take care of yourself. You cannot simultaneously be the mom who gives up her career to stay home with her kids full-time and be the mom who follows her dreams while making a six-figure (or even five-figure) income.
If we allow ourselves to be caught between the opposing expectations of the Good Mom, we’ll always feel like we’re failing, no matter how great we’re actually doing. So it’s essential that we call these ideas what they are and shrug off their impossible burden, for only then can we be free to step into our own version of motherhood, to be the unique, imperfect, but deeply good mother that we were designed to be.
8 Damaging Myths for (New) Moms and Liberating Truths to Dispel Them (Part I)
(Myths 1-4)
We all pick up ideas about what it means to be a good mother either implicitly through culture and casual comments or explicitly through taught expectations, both well-meaning and less benevolent. And when our experience doesn’t match these expectations—either our own or those of others—we assume that the problem lies with us. We are not doing it right. We are defective in some way. We are not cut out for the task—the task that, by the way, all real women are naturally born to do effortlessly. Ergo, we must not be a good/real/godly woman.
Even if we don’t articulate these conclusions in words, they can swirl around in our hearts and poison our souls. . .
Maggie Shackelford: No Going Back
A question for myself and other postpartum people: Why are we so determined to convince the world that we never had a baby? Why do we need to bounce back? Why do we need to erase any sign or hint on our bodies that we just grew and birthed life into the world?
Our culture is obsessed with how quickly birthing people return from this cataclysmic experience and back to “real” life. You get patted on the back for leaving your house with the infant days after giving birth, for fitting into your pre pregnancy clothes as soon as possible, for being “productive” again (because keeping an infant alive isn’t productive). . .