Exponent II's Blog, page 283

Thoughts on a Bat Mitzvah

A few months ago, my family was invited to a bat mitzvah. I had gone to a friend’s bar mizvah when I was 14, so I had some idea of how it would go: reading and expounding from the torah, party later. My friend’s bar mitzah’s service was 3 hours long (I was well-prepared as a Mormon kid to sit through 3 hours of a religious service!) and fairly traditional for Reform Judaism. This recent bat mitzvah was a different experience: this synagogue community is neither Orthodox nor Reform, but instead Jewish Renewal.

A couple of years ago we went to temple (this is how our friends refer to their synagogue experience- I don’t know if that’s a general Jewish term, Jewish Renewal term, or a family term) while church-hopping to expose our kids to different faith communities. Our friends described Jewish Renewal as “Hippie Jews” and there was lots of dancing and singing. It was fun. They invited us again for their daughter’s bat mitzvah.

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The bat mitzvah was similar- lots of singing and dancing to traditional Jewish songs and less traditional songs. Some of the songs were in Hebrew, other songs were in English. The family was definitely the highlight of the service. The bat mitzvah’s younger siblings fetched the synagogue’s large Torah from the cabinet for their sister to read from. Her older sister dyed her new prayer shawl as a gift and presented it to her. She read from the Torah and expounded on a passage of her choosing. She chose to speak about the Jewish laws about food, eating, and food preparation and added that she thought if God was giving rules today about food, the rule would be veganism. I overheard a couple of older people tsk at that, but in general it was well-received. The bat mitzvah very much cares for animals and talked about how all creatures come from God.

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Near the end of the ceremony, there is a part where the bat mitzvah is supposed to be granted accountability for her actions and her parents are relieved of that responsibility. That felt like it was similar to our Mormon idea of the age of accountability at 8. However, when it was time for that, her parents stood at the front and spoke, saying that, as with their older daughter for her bat mitzvah, they had a conversation with this daughter and decided that they were willing to still be held accountable for her actions until she is older. Plot twist!

And in the evening- there was a party! And all my years of youth dances prepared me well. We also lifted the parents and siblings and bat mitzvah on chairs. It was really a fabulous party.

 

I came away with a lot of thoughts: Can you imagine Mormon parents choosing to continue being accountable for their child’s actions and sharing that in a baptism talk? I loved that the bat mitzvah (and all bat/bar mitzvahs) was given a chance to expound on the scriptures to her community. I think church would be better with more drums. When the congregation chanted/read together, I really loved the words we were saying. There was looking forward to Zion, but also some Mother Earth imagery and I love religions that include the feminine divine.

I am (insert word here)

[image error]I procrastinated until it was too late. I had printed the email request, added to my to-do list, thought of a few ideas, stalled, and finally just forgot all together. So when I arrived at Sunstone and my friend said quizzically … “your bio?” I assumed it was blank. I shrugged and slapped my palm to my forehead. Oh well, I would present in anonymity.

But my bio wasn’t blank. It spelled out my identity in clear nouns: “Pandora is a quilter, editor, mother and wife.” All true and more than I deserved. It should have read: “Pandora shirks assignments.” But I was unsettled. First, who was this mysterious ghost writer who knew enough detail to summarize my life with some accuracy? I was grateful for the effort. Yet the words lined up in this way suddenly felt strange, as if I caught my blurry reflection in a window and was startled by the tousle of my hair or the shape of my body or the expression on my face. Is this how the world sees me?

We all have lists of words we use to describe ourselves. These labels are attached to us early and we spend a lifetime crossing out and rewriting the original text. My early words – stutterer, new girl, bookworm, foureyes, good daughter – evolved into adolescence words, adding – anxious, Mormon, chaste, emotional, best friend, nerd. As an adult, the list of who I was expanded, spilled, and scattered. I found and kept a few dropped essentials and let the rest gather dust under the bookshelf. Until recently, quilter, editor, mother, wife would have felt familiar and right.

How could my ghost writer know how the last few years have complicated who I thought I was? A different job has allowed less time for sewing and writing, forcing me to question my work/life priorities. My adult children are navigating their own lives and my role of mother is in flux, careening between cheerleader, consultant and hand-wringer. My husband and I have always had topsy turvy gender roles, now even more pronounced by my recent professional commitment. I suppose all of this is normal for middle age, many women tell their own version of this story. But I did not expect it to be as disconcerting as past transitions and thresholds. I did not expect the same questions or the same mixed-up feeling of courage and uncertainty. What words do I give myself? What words are given to me? What words do I carry over from then to now and what words do I leave behind? Did I lose the word “wise” along the way only to pick up “amused” and “this-again?” instead?

This year the Sunstone name badge/lanyard featured a section asking the wearer to declare “I am a (blank space) Mormon” and to fill out a descriptor in the blank space. My favorite responder had scribbled “awesome!” but most tried to share a serious assessment. Post, Progressive, Feminist, Fundamentalist, Believing, Non Believing Mormons all owned their adjectives. I turned this part of my name card around. Not there yet.

Deep in the not-so-unconscious part of my brain, I wonder the obvious. Did I really “forget” to turn in my bio or did I just not want to do it? Did I secretly want a Pandora Bourne moment where I could start over as the star of a new action movie? Be incognito? Or simply not choose – I could be anyone today and someone else tomorrow? It is not lost on me that I have the privilege of possibility. But I also feel the weight, a guilt steeped in years of trying to live up to or sort correctly or assemble the appropriate combination of labels to be … Righteous? Productive? Growing? Nice? Fabulously happy and beautiful in all ways?

This identity business is hard work. The minute we think we have it right it feels too tight or slightly wrong like a dress we have outgrown or is no longer quite in style. Mine keeps hiking up in the front and I keep tugging it down at the hem. Boss? Workaholic? Quirky? Intense? Storyteller? Distracted? Creaky? Geeky? Until then, perhaps Quilter, Editor, Mother, Wife will have to do. I am still procrastinating.

 

Guest Post Book Review: Illuminating Ladies

The Exponent blog is happy to share this guest review of our own colouring book, Illuminating Ladies by Carolina Allen.

 

Carolina Allen is the founder and CEO of the nonprofit organization and movement, Big Ocean Women. She is passionate about global women’s issues as they intersect with faith, family and motherhood. She is grateful to be linked for eternity to her husband Kawika and their 6 children whom they have the honor of homeschooling together. 

 

[image error]As my daughters and I have colored the beautifully rendered art pages together, this thoughtful book has sparked open discussions in our family about faith and testimony anchored in Jesus Christ, even amidst difficult challenges and hardships.

Our favorite pages have been about the pioneering women from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and the unique challenges they have faced and continue to face. In it’s simple format and easy to understand language, the women featured in this book have inspired conversations about how we too can remain committed and faithful throughout our present day challenges.

One of the most special features in this book are the pages found towards the end that encourage the readers to explore and write their own stories. As a family, we are excited to add the stories of our pioneering foremothers and fathers from the Polynesian islands and South America, and how we too can carry their torch of steadfast discipleship into the future!


Copies of the colouring book are still available from the Exponent II Etsy store.  Do you already have the book and are hungry for more? Check out  Exponent books, or go ahead and subscribe to the Exponent magazine. You will be spiritually fed!

We invite you to share your thoughts about this book on Goodreads, and invite you to follow the Exponent Goodreads page for all of our most recent book reviews.

Feminism in the Wesleyan-Holiness Tradition of Evangelical Christianity with Kate Wallace Nunneley

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Kate Wallace Nunneley

In this episode of the Religious Feminism interview series, Kate Wallace Nunnely, co-founder of the Junia Project and Associate Pastor at Wellspring Free Methodist Church in Bakersfield, CA, tells us about feminism within the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition of Christianity, an evangelical faith that supports gender equity and the ordination of women, and yet, still lacks a significant proportion of women in leadership.

You can find the video versions and the episode notes for the Religious Feminism Podcast here at the Exponent website at: http://www.the-exponent.com/tag/religious-feminism-podcast/

Video Version:

Feminism in the Wesleyan-Holiness Tradition of Evangelical Christianity with Kate Wallace Nunneley

Links to Connect and Learn More:

The Junia Project

Kate Wallace Nunneley on Twitter: @KateWallace1313

The Junia Project on Twitter: @thejuniaproject

Kate Wallace Nunneley on Instagram: katewallacenunneley

The Junia Project on Instagram: thejuniaproject

5 Myths of Male Headship

For audio-only podcast, listen and subscribe below:

What if the LDS Church brought polygamy back?

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Susanna Florence, April Fossen and Mark Fossen perform Pilot Program at Plan-B Theatre Company.

It would be awkward, for one thing.

That is one of the takeaways from Pilot Program, a play included in the collection Third Wheel by Melissa Leilani Larson. I saw it live when it premiered at Plan-B Theatre Company in Salt Lake City.

I was nervous to attend, because I knew I’d have to think about polygamy for two straight hours.  Two whole minutes of thinking about polygamy is usually a little much for me. The problem is that I don’t believe in it enough. Also, I believe in it too much. Polygamy disgusts me, angers me, and leads me to question my identity as a Mormon. And it scares me.  What if it really is God’s will? What if it is practiced in the eternities?  What if church leaders brought it back?

Pilot Program explores the answer to that last question.  The premise: church leaders extend a calling to a modern Mormon couple to add another wife to their family as part of a restoration of polygamy.  The first scene opens with the stunned couple, Abby and Jake, coming home from church after meeting with their stake president about the call.

They aren’t religious fanatics.  Abby, in particular, is a liberal-leaning professional woman.  She’s not the stereotypical dupe of a  cult. Neither is Heather, the woman they ask to join them as the second wife. I wanted both of them to say, “No.”  I was sitting on the edge of my seat, trying to will them to go a different direction.

I feel the same way about real women like Eliza R. Snow and Emmeline B. Wells. They were ardent feminists, professionals, women who were ahead of their time.  These real women didn’t fit the stereotypes either. Why would they get involved in polygamy?

In the play, Abby recognizes the patriarchy in this situation.  She feels the insult to womankind, and to her, specifically. This calling, like so many in the church, is all about her husband.

“They don’t want me in this scenario,” she tells Jacob. “I’m the broken one. They want you.”

Heather is insulted, too.  “There’s nothing wrong with being single at thirty-three,” she points out.  

And yet, both of these women are Mormon, like me, like Eliza, like Emmeline.  And they have reasons for the choices they make. Maybe they aren’t rational reasons, but they aren’t irrational either. Even as I tried to will the characters to run away, I simultaneously understood them and empathized with them.  I thought about it much longer than the two-hour duration of the play.

The end of the play was unsatisfying to me. I wanted something more, some closure. But then, historically, the actual end of Mormon polygamy was unsatisfying, too: just a proclamation that we weren’t practicing it anymore because of legal issues (but we were). No one denounced the practice as wrong. They still don’t. Divine threats against women who won’t comply with polygamy are canonized in our scriptures.  Accommodations for polygamy linger in our temple marriage ceremonies and policies. Polygamy could come back. It never went away, really.

You can read the script of Pilot Program within the collection, Third Wheel: Peculiar Stories of Mormon Women in Love by  Melissa Leilani Larson.  The collection also features the play Little Happy Secrets.

 

“Extraordinary Ordinary Mormon Women”: Exponent II’s Coloring Book “Illuminating Ladies”

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I’m attending Sunstone this week and attended a very moving session yesterday. It was titled “Extraordinary Ordinary Mormon Women.” The session description promised to “explore the lives of women, both ordinary and extraordinary, [to] help us better understand our past, give us insights into our own lives, and expand our own possibilities.” It featured a panel of women, including Margaret Toscano, Janice Allred, Vickie Eastman, and Gina Colvin, all of whom spoke about seemingly ordinary women who lived what they considered to be extraordinary lives. Nearly all of the presenters highlighted their own mothers’ lives, from their struggles with depression and surviving traumatic experiences to how well they loved, supported, and championed their children. After their remarks, the moderator made time for attendees to stand and tell the audience about women they considered to be extraordinary. And every woman who stood told a similar story—how their own mothers seemed rather ordinary until they were adults and reflected on the ordinary yet heroic feats their mothers accomplished during their lifetimes.

Margaret Toscano also featured a notable woman from Church history, Jane Manning James, who was a contemporary with one of Toscano’s female ancestors, both of whom lived very long and productive lives raising large families, often alone, while experiencing crushing poverty and significant health challenges. It struck me that we know about these women over a hundred years after their deaths because they chose to record their personal histories before they died. They chose to tell their stories.

This Sunstone session reminded me of a coloring book that my daughters and I enjoy working on together every Sunday during sacrament meeting. It’s called “Illuminating Ladies: A Coloring Book of Mormon Women.” I adore this book. When sacrament meeting begins, I ask my 5-year-old daughter to choose the illustration she’d like us to color during the meeting with me (my 3 year-old is too busy for this part). When the sacrament begins, we snuggle together and I quietly read the biographical sketch that accompanies the illustration she chose. Then we begin the process of coloring the page together, with my 3-year-old daughter occasionally adding her toddler flare to the page with a few scribbles here and there. This is an activity that I look forward to every Sunday, when attending church can often be a challenge for me due to the invisibility of women in almost all aspects of church structure, leadership, decision making, and theology.

Last week, my daughter flipped through the “Illuminating Ladies” coloring book and chose the pages devoted to Eliza Roxcy Snow Smith Young (whose full name I didn’t know!). What struck me about this illustration was the depiction of the God couple, specifically that Heavenly Mother is depicted side by side with Heavenly Father at the top of the page. It filled my heart to imbue the image of Heavenly Mother with color, and to watch my daughter choose a fuscia crayon to bring color to Her face. It was such an ordinary task, to color during sacrament meeting, but having an image of the Feminine Divine provided for us—two marginalized members of the LDS Church—became a sacred, empowering moment.

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Below the illustration of the Heavenly Parents, and next to the image of Eliza, is a portion of the well-known LDS Hymn “Oh My Father” that Eliza penned:

In the heavens are parents single?

No, the thought makes reason stare!

Truth is reason; truth eternal

tells me I’ve a mother there.

Eliza R. Snow was childless. I imagine this fact caused her great pain over her lifetime, and yet the fact that she wasn’t a mother does not make her any less notable. As I read the page describing her life, my daughter and I learned how significant her contributions were. During her lifetime, she wrote more than 500 poems. One of those poems became the lyrics for the song, “Invocation, or the Eternal Father and Mother,” which we now know as “O My Father.” The coloring book goes on to explain that

In this poem Eliza expounded upon doctrines she had discovered as a Latter-day Saint—a premortal existence, an intimate relationship with a personal God, our own godly potential, and the marvelous truth that God is not just a Heavenly Father but also a Heavenly Mother! Eliza had learned these truths from the Prophet Joseph, but she had her own powerful revelation of their realities. Her poem was one of the only declarations of Heavenly Mother in LDS writings. . . . Eliza’s poem about Heavenly Mother helped elevate the discourse concerning women’s divine destiny.

But, we learned, that was not the end of her contributions as a Mormon woman. She worked to reconstitute the Relief Society after it was disassembled by Brigham Young in Nauvoo, and she lead the women of the church as General Relief Society President for over twenty years. Eliza was one of the first women in church history to receive her temple ordinances, and “was eager to continue this worship . . . and frequently performed ordinance work in the Endowment House.” Because of this, many referred to her as a “High Priestess. She devoted her life to expanding knowledge and wisdom through both action and words.” Ultimately, Eliza Snow was “lovingly called by her contemporaries, and is still remembered as, Zion’s Poetess, Priestess, Prophetess, and Presidentess.”

What a legacy of a woman born as ordinary as you and me, who used her life to accomplish the extraordinary. This coloring book reminds me that despite the institutional and structural sexism my daughter and I experience inside and outside of the Church, we can make meaningful contributions to the arc of human experience.

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(You can purchase “Illuminating Ladies: A Coloring Book of Mormon Women” today and tomorrow at the Exponent II booth at Sunstone in Salt Lake City, at the BYU-Provo Bookstore, or online at the Exponent II Etsy shop, once it resumes after a summer hiatus.)

When our youth see a gospel that is small-minded, fearful, and irrelevant

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Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

 

 

A few months ago, a friend of mine who was recently called into a Young Women presidency shared with me a question that has been troubling her. She put it like this:  

Why are we losing so many of our active youth in the ten or so years after they graduate from high school?  

According to my friend, over the last few years only about a third of the active youth in her ward are still regularly attending church by the time their 10 year high school class reunion has rolled around. This, she says, is a sharp decrease in retention rates from years prior (she figures it was a little over half that were still active at that same point 20 years ago). She also told me that she had recently seen this 2016 article (citing Jana Riess’ research) that states that about 64% of Mormon millennials are remaining in the faith as compared to about 90% 30 years ago. While the percentages themselves are different, the steep decline in retention in my friend’s ward is a reflection of what seems to be happening in the church as a whole.

FWIW, how to better reach Mormonism’s young people is a question I feel especially desperate/motivated/responsible to seek solutions for. I’m a millennial, an active Mormon, a feminist mom of two young daughters, and someone who’s held Young Women callings in each of the last three wards I’ve attended (I’m currently a Beehive advisor). Some of the brightest, dearest, most morally-minded people I know have stepped away from the church over the last decade, and renegotiating my own relationship with the church over the last few years hasn’t been a cakewalk.

The friend who called me has also spent a lot of time thinking thinking about this topic (though for some different reasons than I have). And as we shared experiences and insights about the pressing question of why we are losing so many of our youth, we both agreed on two things; 1) that the heart and soul of the gospel is expansive, empowering, and redemptive; and 2) that that’s often not the version of the gospel our young people (or old people!) are hearing or seeing at church.

Some examples that came up during our conversation (we mostly discussed Young Women):

That too often, what we teach at church around the topic of women’s bodies promotes hypersexualization, teaches our young women to self-objectify, and reinforces the dangerous notion that women are responsible for men’s thoughts and actions.
That too often, we continue to justify teaching a sanitized version of Mormon history to our youth despite the serious existence of the internet (making false but “faith-promoting” stories only temporarily the latter) and despite the reality that our youth can handle (and even crave to be trusted with) messiness and authenticity.
That when describing what a worthy and fulfilling life can look like for a Mormon woman, we too often promote a rigid and overly-simplistic narrative that not every girl will be able to achieve or find happiness in–one that can discourage them from having aspirations, limit their willingness to seek for and act on personal revelation, and weaken their ability to respond to life’s challenges with resilience and creativity.
That too often, our YW activities are far more crafting and baking and makeovers and wedding-themed modesty fashion shows (eek) than they are about developing crucial life skills and providing meaningful service and having honest discussions about the complex questions and struggles our youth are facing.

Our shared feeling was that our youth are too often being presented with a version of the gospel that feels small-minded, fearful, and irrelevant to their lives. And if that’s what they see, why would they stay?

This isn’t always the case, obviously. And of course there are many factors here that neither your nor I have have much control over. Different people can come to different conclusions about the same information regardless of how well it is taught or how valuable we might think it is. And there are larger forces at work too, of course; e.g, as societal attitudes towards issues of gender and sexual orientation continue to shift, it seems only logical that the Church’s male-only priesthood and attitudes/policies aimed at LGBTQ individuals will alienate youth in increasingly greater numbers. I don’t think many Mormons would dispute that regardless of personal stances.

Yet despite factors outside our control, we can help our youth experience the gospel in more meaningful and encompassing ways. This should be the goal, in my opinion–not only because we have more control over what we teach than we do over retention numbers, but because I personally find it just as frightening to think that former YW of mine might leave the church because the gospel was never presented to them in ways that encouraged them to be strong and ever-learning and compassionate as it does to think that they might stay because of the same lack of teaching. I want young women to leave my lessons and activities better prepared to face life with greater courage and self-sufficiency and kindness regardless of whether they end up choosing to stay connected to Mormonism.

Having said all of that, I’ll be the first to admit that this is easier said than done. I have two rules for myself as a YW teacher in the Church:

1) that I will never knowingly teach anything that contradicts current, official church teachings or policies, no matter my personal opinions; and

2) that I will never knowingly teach anything that undermines principles of good spiritual and mental health or contradicts my conscience or, no matter what is in the manual or what other people in the Church might be teaching.

Keeping within these parameters is usually easy enough (these resources have been enormously helpful for navigating this balance). And when I see the thoughtfulness and faith and compassion of our young people and glimpse the kind of Mormonism capable of “stretching people’s moral imaginations,” of “[calling us] to a life of faith that is… creative, venturesome, open, and empowering,” I feel a renewed determination to keep at it. But there are other times when it’s morally messy; like when 3rd hour ends and I’m carting two overtired kids and an overflowing diaper bag across the parking lot while holding back hot tears or with my stomach in knots, feeling inadequate to the task and complicit in things that I believe have the potential to inflict serious damage on my young women’s faith or relationships or sense of worth or even their long-term relationship to the Church. For better and for worse, I’m restricted in my ability to encourage honest questioning and seeking, to counter what I feel are the ill-effects of patriarchy, and to convey to them that there are people and conditions commonly labeled as broken or deficient that I believe God sees as whole and good. There are many times when I don’t even know how to do this thing I usually love and sometimes feel called to do with my differing opinions and lack of social capital (I’m an awkward human) and general limitations as a teacher. And at times, juggling all of that starts to feel pointlessly exhausting.

It’s often easy for me to feel uncertainty and worry and apathy when I consider the future of the church and its young people. But I’m an idealist, too; and stories like this one inspire me and remind me that there are teachers in the church who feel motivated to find ways to make the gospel more meaningful and relevant for our youth.  While teachers in the church don’t have control over everything when it comes to better reaching and retaining Mormon youth in the church, I think that wrestling with the question can at least invite revelation as to how to better reach the kids we teach every Sunday. There’s a lot I can’t fix or change, but I can at least work to better connect my young women with a gospel and a God big enough to hold each of them through the spectrum of life’s painful and perplexing things and animate the best and most beautiful within them.

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* With all of this in mind, I’m planning to at least occasionally post ideas for activities I’ve done [or want to do] with my young women that at least make an honest attempt at addressing timely topics in open, meaningful, and empowering ways while honoring the rules I’ve made for myself as a teacher in the Church. There’s several topics I’d like to cover that regular church lessons might not touch on or naturally make much space for: from bringing in more stories that celebrate diversity and encourage positive, faithful discussion around tough moments in Mormonism’s past to covering things like consent and characteristics of healthy (and unhealthy) relationships and objectification of women in the media. A lot of these things have already been covered on various Mormon blogs, of course, and when that is the case, I’ll do my best to link to good resources. Mostly, I’ll be asking for input to make my teaching better and offer comprehensive materials to other teachers who may sometimes feel stuck or discouraged like I have. Hooray!

 

Friends

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Camille Pissaro, Two Young Peasant Women

“I’m so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

Joseph Smith said, “Friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism.” Jesus had quite a lot to say about friends, including telling them that he was going to lay down his life for them.

If it’s so important, why aren’t we Mormons better at it? Why isn’t friendship one of the young women values that are chanted every Sunday all over the world? As far as I can tell, our knowledge and our relationships are the only things we take into the eternities, so it is puzzling that we get very little training in relationships. Many studies verify that friends are essential for happiness throughout our lives, and are as beneficial to our physical health as regular exercise and quitting smoking.

Why so many “family” (which Jesus really didn’t say too much about…) talks in general conference, and very few talks about “friends?” Think of the old hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus.” Being a friend is actually being Christ-like in the best possible way.

Shouldn’t a grand fundamental principle get a merit badge and a personal progress goal? Or a temple recommend question?

Friendship fulfills the second great commandment to love one another.

Aren’t there many people, especially women, in our wards and neighborhoods that are hungry for friendship? Each of us has something amazing to offer others–our friendship.

I know, you are busy. I am busy. I have even been so busy at different times in my life that friends seemed like a luxury, or a guilty pleasure, only indulged in at the expense of something or someone else. Friends fell to the very bottom of my never-ending “to do” list. Thankfully, I learned to prioritize my friendships enough to see the amazing blessing that they are in my life. My friends, my monthly book group, and my annual sisters weekends have been so important to me.

Surely something that is a grand fundamental principle that makes us healthier in both mind and body AND is of eternal worth AND does good for others AND can be offered by anyone and everyone AND is a truly Christ-like behavior is deserving of some of our time and attention. I know those are scarce resources in our lives, but the return on that investment far outweighs the sacrifice.

Do you have enough friends? How do you make time for friendship in your crazy busy lives? Do Mormons have a reputation for friendliness where you live?

18 Returned Missionaries Give You Their Best Mission Advice

[image error]…including Exponent blogger April Young Bennett.

 

18 Returned Missionaries Give You Their Best Mission Advice 

Congratulations to Exponent blogger Rachel Hunt Steenblik on the release of her new book, Mother’s Milk: Poems in Search of Heavenly Mother

You can buy the book, and access a discount code, at By Common Consent.

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