I have concepts of a plan

45, Mormon Wives, and ideas coming to life

September is a great month for television and let me tell you, I blew through Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. All you need to know is that the producers and editors of Selling Sunset and Real Housewives SLC made a baby that Hulu had the gall to bring to life. It. Is. Glorious. The analyzing on the internet has me in a chokehold and my obsession with religious cult docs makes me want to get a PhD just so I can study them full time. (I am especially intrigued by cult-adjacent communities who possess a form of subtle control that tends to ruin people’s lives long-term.) Along the same lines, the Trad Wife trend has long fascinated me—enjoy this podcast with Trevor Noah, Christiana, and Culture Study queen

Anne Helen Petersen

—and Nara Smith making bubble gum will forever be in my top ten.

Of course religious cults and their adjacent counterparts is a nice shoehorn into the Presidential debate. The group chat was lit last night and what pissed us off the most was Trump’s refusal to look at Vice President Harris. He did not look at her one time, a common tactic of serial sexual abusers: ignore, dismiss, demean. I wish someone in charge at the Republican party would get a clue that the religious nuts inside of MAGA and the GOP should not preside over anybody’s federal government.

Trump met his match in Harris, and not because there is any comparison in their leadership capacity, but because she did not placate Trump; he could not rattle her; he did not throw her off course. She treated him as he is — not a superhero, not a savior, not a competent politician; she talked to him like he deserved to be talked to and focused on the policies and people. As Black and Indian woman, and a gun owner, former prosecutor who is pro-choice and pro-Israel, she confounds the boxes on the right and the left. Whether we agree with all her ideas or not, that mixture of identities and ideologies is the future of America.

People are a little bit of everything and less willing to be diluted and controlled. We will not fold neatly into the expectations and boxes of others. We want to be fully ourselves. We want to own who we are — our history and heritage, convictions and values, communities and neighbors.

I’m exploring this in grad school but I suspect this is one of the reasons the American church is in an eighty-year decline. The white evangelical church cannot hold the fullness of who people are becoming. Women do not want to check their leadership and ambition at the door. People do not want to be disrespected because their politics do not line up with Ronald Reagan. Non-white folks do not want to wash their skin under the blood and pretend that no one can see it. As the prophet Bob Dylan sang, “The times, they are a’ changing.”

Maybe that’s why I fell out when 45 said, “I have concepts of a plan.” Not only does that sum up plenty of leadership strategies but it represents the leadership of his era when powerful men could loosely declare an idea and the masses would follow. But with sectors of society changing, particularly the higher education system and the workforce, there is more ability to chart your own path, and with so much access to information (and for better or worse) psychological understanding, people want more clarity. They want to align themselves with people and organizations that share their values and unless your internet footprint is zero, we are living in a time when your actual values are easy to find.

On a more personal note, “concepts of a plan” made me hem and haw because it is sort of how I’m running my passion projects — the things I desire to do. Desire is a taboo thing in culture for women and for people in Christian communities because in highly-controlled environments — be it a marriage, family, church, or organization — desire is dangerous. But some women find a way to be wildly successful inside of those constraints.

Look at Zac and Jen on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, or any pastor’s wife building a women’s ministry larger than the church she can’t lead, or the trad wives bringing home the bacon on the internet even though she’s not allowed to work, or the women in those institutions who suppress their desires and needs to stay in the good graces of the leaders and constituents.

And some of us, labeled difficult women, can’t keep our integrity and make it inside that system, so we have to rebuild our lives outside of it.

In 2021, I blew my life up. Maybe it will turn out to be perimenopause the whole time, who knows, but we birthed our third baby, I changed careers, we moved 3000 miles to live on a river, and I am constantly wrestling with wanting to delete every platform online and wanting to showing up consistently.

I do not want to be watched; I want to be seen.

In all of this, the truth is, change is harder than I hoped, lonelier than I hoped. But I’ve been around long enough to know that the juice is worth the squeeze. Don’t ask me how, but all this leads me to a brave thing.

At long last, I am hosting a retreat in 2025.

I want to sit with people at my long dinner table, walk along the river, and foster meaningful discussions about taboo topics and desires without judgment. The date is up in the air because I want to invite a dream guest and if she says yes, her availability will determine the weekend, but I laid out the time, accommodations, and meals. I’m excited to bring this idea to life. The ethos of the retreat is Coming Home. So much of my life experience is exactly that: coming home to the truth, to myself, to others. I believe that is the journey of life, of being human, and I want to open my home to people in the process.

So, here we are, a concept becoming a plan. Please reply and let me know if that interests you. It would be a joy to host you and see you in my home.

Okay, finally, some shareables I’m enjoying lately:

I already told you about Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Nara Smith making bubble gum, and My So Called #tradewife Life. Loved this take on “Apocalyptic politics, white identitarian voters and the undecided lie” We are also loving Master Chef Generations (gen z vs. millennials vs. gen x vs. baby boomers) and Only Murderers in the Building (although sometimes it is boring).

We took a trip to NYC for the first time together since we moved and loved making new memories in Chelsea. If you’re going, the High Line Hotel is a fab stay, walking distance to the High Line, Pier 57 which has incredible views of the city, and the Glades for walking. We waited two hours to eat at Rubirosa pizza (worth it) and walked 30,000 steps almost every day. We arrived on a Thursday and said WE ARE MOVING BACK IN OUR 50s and we left on Sunday like NEVERMIND. Still, NY or Nowhere is real because there’s nowhere in the world like it.

Just picked up a copy of Black Cake and loved this discussion on the Presidential debate. Three friends are releasing books this month that are worthy of your bookshelves: Being a Sanctuary: The Radical Way for the Body of Christ to Be Sacred, Soft, and Safe by Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez; The Women We've Been Waiting For: A 40-Day Devotional for Self-Care, Resilience, and Communal Flourishing by Tiffany Bluhm; The Mystics Would Like a Word: Six Women Who Met God and Found a Spirituality for Today by Shannon K. Evans.

On my face, I’m enjoying buccal massage for bruxism, SeoulCeuticals Korean Skin Care Vitamin C, Kosas BB Cream; on my hands the ocean healed my eczema; on my lips Westman Atelier in le rouge; on my body this dress from amazon. Here I am, in NYC with my fave, wearing them all.

Okay, that’s all she wrote, folks. Sending you lots of love. If you’re going through hell, keep going.