On January 13, 2010, I sent out an email to a couple hundred contacts, letting them know that I'd posted 18 lengthy interviews with LDS women at www.mormonwomen.com. I posted another interview the next week, and, with the help of a small army of volunteers who came forward during the year, an interview every week through 2010 (except Christmas). The blessings and opportunities that have come as a result now make my life look very different from the way it did one year ago. I feel like I am making real progress towards my goal of bringing confidence and a cultural pride to Mormon women. It is tremendously fulfilling.
Yesterday, I published our 68th interview, a real groundbreaker: an interview with Bethany whose husband is addicted to pornography. My personal reflections on this interview were published yesterday at By Common Consent. I wrote another personal reflection piece about Lyn Greenwood's interview a couple of months ago, with the help of Shelah, an interview producer, but it never got published on BCC due to scheduling. To honor Lyn and Shelah, I'm posting that intended BCC piece here:
Lyn Greenwood was nervous to be interviewed for the Mormon Women Project.
She felt, as a working mother, she would be vulnerable to judgment and censure for
choosing to work with three children at home. I understand her fear all too well:
Because my own mother had one child and has worked consistently now for 40
years as an opera singer, she often felt the bitter sting of our culture’s quickness
to judge the working women within our community. My mother had to endure the
upturned noses of those who questioned her decision to have “only” one child, when
the truth was that she endured miscarriage after miscarriage during the 1980s in
an effort to grow her family. Instead, she celebrated the Lord through her voice
rather than through her children. She took pride in her opportunity to represent
His church in circles that today – with the miracles of in vitro and other birth-aiding
treatments – would not have known her because she’d be home with multiple
children.
We so rarely understand the motivations that prompt women to choose lifestyles
that run contrary to what is most readily accepted and promoted within our church:
stay-at-home motherhood. The Mormon Women Project has been criticized for
featuring too many women who work, who are accomplished students, who have
pursuits outside the home, but in my mind, featuring these women gives them a
voice in a culture where they too rarely have one. Understanding our doctrinal
emphasis on motherhood and prioritizing motherhood, we must also understand
that the realities of modern life don’t always follow that merry path.
More than any other demographic group, it is stay-at-home mothers that decline our
invitations to be interviewed for the MWP. Perhaps they are fearful of seeming dull,
judging themselves to be uninteresting in their routines. Equally distressing to me
is the fact that some see the MWP as an effort to promote worldly accomplishment
among our women at the price of motherhood. Neither sentiment, in my opinion,
magnifies the counsel given recently by our prophet at the most recent General
Relief Society Meeting:
“My dear sisters, each of you is unique. You are different from each other in many
ways…. Such differences are almost endless. Do these differences tempt us to judge
one another?
In a hundred small ways, all of you wear the mantle of charity. Life is perfect for
none of us. Rather than being judgmental and critical of each other, may we have
the pure love of Christ for our fellow travelers in this journey through life. May we
recognize that each one is doing her best to deal with the challenges which come her
way, and may we strive to do our best to help out.”
From Shelah Miner, interview producer:
“Several years ago, my family was living in Pearland, Texas, in a ward where most
of the families, like ours, had come to the Houston suburbs so the husband could
pursue medical training or graduate school. It was the kind of ward where most of
the women had college degrees, but stayed home with their growing broods of small
children and got together frequently for walks, playgroups, book clubs and Bunco
nights.
Lyn and her husband Virgil moved to Pearland about a year after my family did,
and they were assigned to be our home teachers (well, I guess Virgil was, but Lyn
came along). I was immediately drawn to Lyn-- she's smart and no-nonsense and
wonderfully sarcastic, and I kept thinking, "If I weren't so frumpy, so bogged down
by all of these babies hanging off me, then maybe we could be friends." She worked
at a great job, with real adults, during the day, and never looked like she came to
Enrichment with half a bottle of baby food all over her sweatshirt, so I figured that
she probably didn't need me as a friend.
About a year later, Lyn gave birth to her daughter, Kate, and announced that she
was going to take an indefinite leave of absence from work. I called her about a
week after the baby arrived, to see how things were going, and when she was
wearing jeans instead of suits, we quickly became friends. I watched and listened
as Lyn went through a year of struggling to reconcile the fulfillment she got from
motherhood with the fulfillment she got from her profession and the feelings of
being "different" from the other women in our very homogeneous ward.
For the next year, we talked several times a week and hung out together whenever
we could manage it around naps and preschool. My family left sweltering Houston
a little more than a year ago, and Lyn is what I miss most about Texas. I hope you
appreciate her story. If she were telling it in person, it would undoubtedly be over
a fabulous flourless chocolate cake, and punctuated by her trademark laughs and
eyerolls.”
I just read the full MWP interview. Bethany's conclusions on how we need to converse with our children on the full range of these topics are right on the mark. Kudos to her, and her husband for giving us this insight into their journey. More openness is the key to this complex issue and an important tool in healing, not just for the individual or the family, but for the overall community. And kudos to the MWP for giving voice to so many layers of the contemporary Mormon woman's story.
Posted by: twitter.com/chrysula | January 14, 2011 at 12:08 PM
oh, how did I miss this? I stumbled on your blog and found my own name. This is the first time I've read this post...it makes me a little nostalgic, and definitely homesick for Shelah!! I think we have a connection, too.... my aunt is Judy Billeter.
Posted by: Lyn | September 08, 2011 at 08:57 PM