Our Home Is Not Wisconsin, Montana, or Indiana

By Joy Pullmann

So Mary's homesick. I can identify some, because I also want to live where we'd get free babysitting and the ability to actually participate in our extended family's life rather than catch glimpses by phone or Facebook. I have five semi-grown siblings, half of whose lives I've missed while away at college or, now, married and with kids eight hours away.

Before both sets of my grandparents died, their homes were our community centers. One lived five minutes from my house, and another 45 minutes away. Growing up, we spent countless weekends and holidays and Sundays and weeknights and piano recitals and random hellos together. Until about age 14, I grew up in the company of a boisterous family that, even if they lived in Minnesota and Illinois, frequently congregated at the halfpoint between the two: Grandma's house in Wisconsin. And then people divorced, and others died, and others moved away. Then we were all on our own. College cemented that separation. Then it was off to the East Coast, thankful to have found a good job, let alone any job given my graduation smack in the middle of the Great Recession.

But even when I got a job I can do from anywhere, we didn't move back. Our biggest reason was that we had searched every time I visited my parents, but there simply were no good churches within at least an hour radius.

Waiting for the Morning

By Joy Pullmann

I wanted to post this during Advent, when I was thinking it constantly, but I couldn't. During Advent, I was holding a newborn all day and night, and wishing desperately for some sleep. Any sleep. (I would still like more, but six hours a night broken by nursing is better than four broken by hours of fussing.)

Our second son was born December 5, and quickly revealed he would have the same tummy troubles as his two older siblings. This meant hours and hours a day of fussy sleep, where baby sleeps for five minutes in between squirms while mom and dad can't because he's squirming every five minutes. So I spent hours staring bleary-eyed out our bedroom window, holding a wiggly baby and waiting for dawn. I'd repeatedly check the time not to see how long baby had slept but to see how long it was until it was finally day and I didn't have to pretend I might get some sleep any more.

Advent, like Lent before Easter, is a time of sober reflection and preparation. New year resolutions and post-holiday housecleaning faintly resemble these two religious seasons. They are supposed to remind Christians that our eternal home is not this world, and that we await Christ's final return, when suffering will, at last, end.

Boy, did I feel that in my sleep-bereft state. A severe lack of sleep has always made me very melancholy. In college I used to cry every Friday night simply because I was so exhausted by the end of the week. This seems like a good setup for sober reflection, but it was hard to reflect on anything except how much I wanted to lie down.

This rotten experience did, however, reveal to me more about the reality of what it means to wait for a perfect eternity. I typically like this world. I have a good life. We're not poor, hungry, persecuted, or isolated. So why would I look forward to the end of it? Why bother with change when the present isn't that bad?

But when your newborn child is suffering, and so are you, this world gets a lot less attractive. It made me yearn, once again, for suffering to end. Some day, it will.

Image by Jan de Graaf, with no changes.

50 Shades of Submission

By Christine Dalessio
The Catholic F Word

I have to write about it. Why? Because it's out there, seeping into the culture. Because it is most popular where I live (NY, NJ, PA, FL and MN.) Because women are collectively stating that men need not apply. Because I AM woman - hear me roar.

There is a certain need in every life for fantasy. What would Ignatian spirituality be without imagination, for example? How boring would our humanity be without it? I have been reading fantasy of some sort or another since the first time I walked through a wardrobe into a snowy wood, and the day I vanished by trying on a ring.

I understand that women work hard - at home and in the workplace. That women have been fighting the uphill battles of glass ceilings and loads of laundry for decades if not centuries. I know that fantasy provides an escape to a world of wonder that helps us deal with an uncertain, if not cruel at times, world of reality. And I know that fiction is fiction and fact is fact.

But our appetites for fiction feed our factual world. I don't believe that I am ever going to be able to put my feet in the sand and become a rooted tree. But in considering nature in this way, I perhaps respect trees a little more, embrace their gift, their shade. It makes me consider the specialness of the real world, and acknowledge what is fantastic.

When the appetites of women around the US and the world turn to bondage, sadism, masochism and punishment as a means of escape, the world must be dark indeed. This new affront to the dignity of woman and the value of the body and the well-being of the human person, this novel idea that turns sexuality into something secret and useful and a matter of contract is called 50 Shades of Grey.

Musings of a Facebook Expat

By Laura Christine
This Felicitous Life

I deactivated my Facebook account two years ago.  At first, the thought of getting off Facebook was terrifying.  How could I stand being so disconnected from everyone?  I hate feeling out of the loop.

But I knew Facebook was feeding too many of my baser instincts to judge, to compare myself to others, to pry into personal details that are none of my business.  Worst of all, I was not fully appreciating my daughters’ sweet, fleeting childhood moments.  Instead I was engrossing myself in the lives of people whom I did not care much about.  How does Facebook do that to us?

I really don't need to know everything going on in the lives of hundreds of people I barely know.  It’s nice that a person I went to school with but haven’t talked to in ten years just had a baby.  I’m misprioritizing, however, if I spend time reading about that instead of loving on my own babies, or instead of bringing a meal to a new mom who lives down the street.

Deactivating my account has been so freeing.  I used to know a lot about people.  Now I focus more on knowing people.  People are my vocation right now—primarily my husband and children but also my extended family and close friends.

Should People Talk to Women Differently?

By Joy Pullmann

I often get offended when I pick up on subliminal messages that have people treating me a certain way because I'm a woman. Now, I don't mind the perks of this—door-opening and seat-offering are awesome, especially when you've been pregnant as frequently as I am and such gestures offer real relief. I also like when men talk more politely or give me deference because I'm a woman. But it's pretty offensive to hear someone assume that I would think a certain way or need a certain tone of voice and approach "just because" I'm a woman.

At the same time, I like women's magazines. Pinterest is, to me, basically a free version of Martha Stewart Living, which I was hooked on at something like age 10. And I like all kids of other stuff deliberately marketed to women. LaraBars? Yes, please.

In short, I've got a lot of cognitive dissonance going on here. (Maybe it's because I'm a woman. Joke!) A bit of it was relieved this week when I read this Forbes.com post by Sabrina Schaeffer. She explains the odd contradiction that liberals proclaim men and women are essentially the same but target women as women aggressively. They're the people who will insist men have nothing to say about abortion and contraception. And conservatives typically will say men and women are different, but are reluctant to target women as a special interest group, or create messaging directly to women that isn't retarded (Mitt Romney, I'm looking at you). Schaeffer writes:

In our brave new world of gender equality, in which women and men are often encouraged to act the same, most conservatives still accept that men and women often view problems and prioritize them differently. As political scientist Steve Rhoads explains so well, sex differences are “hardwired” into our biology, and social rules and customs that the left might want to discard often serve a purpose. But in the political arena this understanding of gender differences seems to vanish, leaving Republicans regularly stumped when they face a question about the wage gap, work-life balance, or health care mandates.

Ok, so this (and the rest of her article—read it) makes sense. But it still feels awkward to me to say to myself, "Talk about this issue differently if you are talking to women." Differently HOW? Like mention chocolate and pink? That sounds demeaning to me. But if I agree with Schaeffer's principles—and I do—that means there are different ways to talk to women without pandering or patronizing. What those are, I don't know. I just talk.  

Are Democrats the Women-Friendly Party?

A group of smart women, several of whom I have met, sat down in January to talk about why the majority of women in recent years vote for big government. "I’m not sure what’s worse, conservatives ignoring women’s issues or conservatives addressing them," said AEI's Christina Hoff Sommers, who used to sit in the office across from mine.

I think part of the reason may be that conservatives aren't as into gender politics as liberals. They, like women like me, think of women as part of the human family. My interests aren't opposed to society's interests. What's good for women is good for children, men, and society at large. At any rate, I think that how Democrats see themselves and present themselves as champions for women is wrong. Democrat policies directly hurt me, my family, and my fellow women. For one, the payroll tax increase the president demanded means an extra $200 out of our pockets each month. For another, making energy more expensive means it's harder for us to pay for our toddlers' doctor visits, which we do out of pocket. As Sommers says, feminist academics "represent only a tiny coterie of radical women, but they effectively present themselves as the voice of American womanhood." To me, it's the same with liberals.

So here these smart ladies talk about women's issues from a conservative perspective, and offer their ideas about why more women vote for Democrats and how conservatives can change that. If you consider yourself a moderate, this should be an extra-interesting discussion.

Watch the video for more.

IWF Women in the WIlderness: Charting a New Path Forward from Independent Women's Forum on Vimeo.