Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All

In September of 2023, I wrote an essay called “Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All: Discerning “work-life balance” for women who don’t like living in boxes.” In it, I wrote about the trends I see amongst the women I work with, as well as in the online discourse around work, home, career, and having a meaningful life. I shared how it’s not only new mothers who are wrestling with whether or not to “stay home”: plenty of single women I know are unhappy with a 40+ hour/week career. (Men might be unhappy too - but anecdotally, at least, I see it less.)

I suggested that the (largely Boomer) model of starting with one company and moving up over the course of a lifetime, building a ‘successful’ career through devoting a significant portion of (wo)man hours and energy to it, no longer seems appealing to many. Nor does it have to be. Thinking about what you want out of a career, or no career at all, is important. You don’t have to want one. It’s not one of the ten commandments.

I proposed instead thinking about a ‘portfolio’ life, of which paid work is only a part. Most women find that over the course of their lives, they will want to dip in and out of paid work, child-rearing, other forms of care-giving, and just being a person with hobbies and time to volunteer and pray and be in this world.

Life Outside the Box

After seeing how well-received these ideas were, I wanted to do more. I wanted to showcase the lives of women who were actually doing this: opting for a life lived differently. Because even though it’s important to get our ideas right, ideas can feel overwhelming without seeing them in action.

I spent the next year interviewing women who were gracious enough to let us get a peek into their lives “Outside the Box.” (If you haven’t read these interviews, they’re all right here.) There were former academics, mothers, business owners, single women, and even a present-day Beguine. Each of them had lots wisdom to share and I was grateful to be able to soak it in.

Why Elite Women Struggle with Marriage and Motherhood

Recently, I published an opinion piece over at Fairer Disputations: Why Elite Women Struggle with Marriage and Motherhood. In it, I explained another related trend that I’m spotting both in my work and in the online discourse: professional women are finding that pulling back from a successful career and stepping into the world of domesticity is surprisingly difficult.

“Surprisingly” is the key word here. No doubt influenced by Betty Friedan, our culture has held onto a narrative that women’s domestic work is low-value, and therefore easy, work. After all, it’s not a prestigious partnership or tenured position! As a result, many women feel like the problem is with them, rather than with society’s expectations.

But the truth is, domestic life is difficult, even if a different sort of difficult than professional life. And, there is no one-size-fits-all way for every woman, or every family, to figure out how to deal with it all.

There are plenty of women who are choosing to embrace domesticity and professional life. There are women who are opting out of one or the other entirely. There are women who are choosing to do one at a time. There are women who are getting a lot of help: from their spouses, families, friends, or even paid contractors. And there are a lot of women who are trying to figure it out as they go along.

What’s Common in a Life Outside the Box?

In light of these essays published before and after the series, I thought it would be interesting to read back through the Outside the Box interviews and see if I could spot any trends there. What can we learn from women who are choosing more than a one-dimensional-job-title kind of life, even if their own lives are all very different from one another? Are there any clear commonalities?

It turns out, the answer is yes.

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The first thing I noticed was that each of these women had a blend of rootedness and courage which enabled them to step outside the box.

(1) A Rootedness that Leads to Confidence

Each in her own way decided that the societal box of “job-title-at-successful-career” was not the most meaningful box that life had to offer. Each chose to root her identity and self worth in something deeper. As said:

“But I am not a box, and I am not a word on a label stuck on a box. I am a person, a beloved child of God. That's my identity. Not the title on my nametag.”

This kind of rootedness bears the fruit of courage: courage to step aside from blindly embracing societal expectations as normative, and courage to take seriously one’s own gifts, talents, and desires. challenged the idea that productivity is the measure of our self-worth:

“I think a confidence in one’s own hopes and aspirations (tempered with reality checks and practicalities) is important. It can be all too easy to worry about how others see us, and whether we are being productive (I am amazed by how much this word is used, even in response to asking how someone is/how their day was, as though our first thought must be to measure our productivity!).

(2) Honesty, Humility, and Embracing Limitations

This kind of courage also goes hand-in-hand with humility in the discernment process. There’s a temptation for all of us to care too much about what other people think, or even what a previous version of us would have once thought. shared with beautiful honesty how pride was holding her back from letting go of her editing business:

“For several years after my husband took over his family business, I tried to make that the thing I said no to. …It was just another thing to squeeze into a too-full life, and I was resentful of it. It took a silent retreat and a candid conversation with a trusted priest for me to finally recognize how much my pride was coming into play. I didn’t want to work for my husband. I wanted to continue running my own business. I hated the thought of people mistakenly thinking I was his secretary. It was pride and stubbornness at its worst.

“…Editing was the right path for me for a time, but I’m glad I can close the door on that chapter and walk toward whatever is coming next.

It was hard for her to let go, but she had wisdom and humility enough to realize that life is seasonal, and just because something was once a good fit doesn’t mean it’s a good fit forever:

“I genuinely thought that because God had answered my decade-old prayer to make editing work out, and because God had given me the skill of editing, that I had to keep doing it forever. Once I started believing that God cares about me as a person, not just a tool, everything changed.”

God’s care is often manifest in and through circumstances that initially appear limiting, as found out:

“Three years ago I had to stop driving for medical reasons. We were living in an isolated, rural area. We had to move so that we could be close to a church community, get my husband his own home shop, and allow the kids and I freedom to walk to parks, the library, etc….All of this was a huge leap of faith. We did not know if our plan would work out. There have been tight times and there will most likely be more, but we feel so blessed to be living and working together as a family.”

The limitation of not driving led to them choosing a home where the family business could grow, and the family could thrive with walkability. They even ended up next to an orthodox monastery which offers opportunities for growth in faith. They had the courage to ‘lean in’ to the limitation, rather than fight it, with beautifully fruitful results.

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(3) Recognizing Trade-offs in Light of Priorities

Choosing where to live was a serious discernment for and her family, too. Like many of the women I interviewed, Taryn prayed about her life circumstances, but also got really practical. She and her husband considered the shape of their family life: what weight did things like paid work, children, and hospitality carry for them?

“It took a while for my husband and me to discern that I could quit working full time. The discernment process involved a lot of number-crunching and prayer. We make sacrifices financially to make it work (for instance, we bought a lovely house outside of the city, which is sometimes inconvenient but also costs less)....

“It’s important to us that we have a home that has room for our family to grow, if God gives us more children; that has room for us to host family and friends; and that has a room for my husband to work from home, so that he can work near us…If we’d had different priorities (for instance, if my husband couldn’t or preferred not to work from home, or if we prioritized living near city amenities like museums and the symphony over having space to entertain), we may have chosen differently.”

also spoke about the trade-offs she and her husband were making in order to prioritize their family life, which included sacrificing some career goals in order to be near family who could help with their children.

“My husband and I said yes to living closer to our parents for the sake of having their help (and so they can see their grandchildren grow up!). We are now saying no to jobs and opportunities that would disrupt our children’s lives. This is not the ideal of individualistic independence that our secular society has set as the ultimate goal, but it works for us, and it’s made us peaceful. I’m not ashamed to admit that I constantly ask for help looking after my children; I need breaks like every other mother out there.”

(4) Intentionality and Trust

Intentionality in discernment was a consistent theme in every interview. Like many of the others, shared how reflection on her own childhood led to the intentional choices she and her husband are making today.

“I should also mention that my Mom was a workaholic. I don't say this disparagingly, she would have described herself this way. But she was a tenacious, incredibly smart, determined, entrepreneur who ended up being incredibly successful…I don't think anything was wrong about this and in many ways I had a lovely childhood, but I just knew I wanted a different situation for my own children.”

While every woman I interviewed was intentional in her discernment, the need for trust also came to light: being intentional doesn’t mean always being in control of every last thing. As put it,

“Sometimes in life you just pray for a gift, and then you gratefully accept the gift, even if sometimes it doesn't even look like a gift you wanted or imagined.”

Sara Boehk spoke about how needing a “grand plan” had been paralysing to her discernment, but letting go of that need was incredibly freeing. When she asked someone she admired how she got where she had, she was told,

“‘By doing the next thing.’ It’s hard to describe the profound relief that unpretentious phrase gifted me.”

(5) Allowing Life to be Blended

Finally, most of the women I interviewed shared how the various aspects of their life were blended, rather than separated out into rigid boxes.

shared how she allows her days of homeschooling and writing/ editing to be a fruitful co-existence,

“I stopped teaching part-time because it didn't fit well into my life; and, in the hours that opened up thereafter, I gradually noticed a keen urge to write. I responded to that urge with a passion that surprised me, and now am able to do part-time work as a writer and editor, work that gives me immense pleasure and exercises my mind in new ways without preventing me from being the mother and homeschooling teacher that I want to be.”

reflected on the giftedness of being able to live a blended life, in part due to the intentional trade-offs they made to live somewhere affordable.

“Put simply, if I were not married and/or if we did not move somewhere this affordable, I'm not sure we would have been able to pull this off as a family. Homeschooling and spending so much time with my kids while they are little is a beautiful, wonderful luxury. Being able to just freelance and write for joy is a luxury. Yet more gifts to accept with gratitude.”

And spoke about how pursing a PhD was actually a wonderful preparation for motherhood, with its initial period of intensiveness followed by more freedom and relaxed possibilities:

“For me, graduate school was a kind of preparation towards living “life outside the box” in its demand for commitment and self-governance….

“Motherhood follows a kind of similar pattern: you have a number of years in which to raise a human being. At the beginning, you’re on a stricter schedule—babies need to eat quite often! As your child gradually becomes (somewhat) less physically needy, you’re left with a problem of self-governance. Sure, there’s no “taking the day off” entirely anymore, but you can get through parenting with various levels of attentiveness.”

I’m sure there are plenty more commonalities to be found in the lives of women who are living outside the box, but these struck me as foundational for anyone who might want to step off the career-as-the-only-thing track. It’s not easy to have the humility or the courage to buck popular trends, but rooting our identity in being a beloved child of God rather than a productivity robot is a good place to begin. After all, we aren’t machines.

So tell me, if you’re living outside the box, what contributed to you getting there? As you read through these interviews, what struck you?

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And finally, if you’d like some help in discernment - whether it’s exploring how you might step outside the box, or something else - maybe you’d like to schedule a free 30 min chat to see if working together 1:1 is a good fit?

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The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

Today I’m welcoming , who writes Windy Poplars Workshop here on Substack.

I first came across Katherine on Notes, where she was sharing a bit about raising her kids to help in the family business. While something like that used to be common, it seems less and less possible for many families today, so I was curious to learn more about this outside-the-box choice. I know you’ll like learning more, too.

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

My husband runs a small, home based cabinet shop. I homeschool our kids and am involved in the care of our home, garden, and chickens. Periodically, I help my husband with quick tasks in the shop like moving a large, bulky cabinet or talking through client relationships. Our kids are still young, but they help as they around our property and with organization and clean up tasks in the shop. It’s an opportunity for extra cash for them and they take pride in helping out. Sometimes they come along to job sites and help with unloading tools and other small tasks. As they get older they will have the chance to start sanding and staining if they so desire.

Our homeschool days center around reading aloud living books on various subjects and doing some phonics and math. We allow lots of time for family trips, whether it’s heading out to the next town over for a Home Depot run, grocery shopping, and chinese food, going camping, or going to the family beach house that my husband’s grandpa built. Our family schedule is built around the business schedule, which can vary widely based on when projects line up. We don’t have to compete with a school schedule for the kids and a separate work schedule for me.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

We started homeschooling five years ago when my oldest turned five. Three years ago I had to stop driving for medical reasons. We were living in an isolated, rural area. We had to move so that we could be close to a church community, get my husband his own home shop, and allow the kids and I freedom to walk to parks, the library, etc. Our current town is small, but it has our necessities, most importantly an Orthodox Christian Church and, miraculously, an Orthodox monastery where the kids can attend Catechism classes and occasional services with the nuns.

All of this was a huge leap of faith. We did not know if our plan would work out. There have been tight times and there will most likely be more, but we feel so blessed to be living and working together as a family.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

We are saying yes to investing time and energy into our business and children as well as attending church and engaging in our small community. We are saying no to commuting, family schedules that take each member in different directions, new cars, a bigger, newer house; you get the idea!

I decided to start writing on Substack as a way to communicate with others about the things I value. This is a nice outlet for my ideas, but I can fit writing into the margins of my life for right now.

If you’re enjoying this interview, subscribe to get more like it in the future. (It’s completely free.)

(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

I did want to live outside of the box as a young adult. My husband and I met as white water rafting guides, we lived in a converted bus before van life was a thing, we spent time at an art commune, and I worked as a ski instructor. Out of the box looks very different for us now than it did then, but I am very thankful that we made the decision to start a family and business.

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

It is often difficult to accept our limitations. Not driving is not easy, but by accepting that limitation we have been able to receive guidance from God regarding the path our lives are meant to take.

(6) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

My husband has a unique mind. He is able to take an idea, shape it in his mind, and then bring it into reality. He has often thrown out ideas and I’ve said, “But that’s impossible.” I have learned to listen to his thoughts and support the execution of his ideas.

I worked with kids in the outdoors for years before becoming a mom. I learned to handle logistics as well as the constantly changing challenges of being with kids. When I became a mom I knew that I wanted to invest my time and energy into my own kids for a while.

Working in the outdoor recreation field cultivated tenacity, flexibility, problem solving, tolerance for discomfort, and a sense of adventure. We have needed all of these traits in our current life.

(7) Where can people find you online?

I am on Substack at Windy Poplars Workshop where I write about motherhood, liturgical life, and literature with a seasoning of Celtic Saints, Tolkien, and nature writing.

» Myquillin Smith, an interior designer, refers to challenges in home decor as “lovely limitations” and I think sometimes that can be applicable to life, too. I found it fascinating and beautiful that Katherine’s embracing the limitation of not driving has also led to a beautifully local life, (one that sounds quite enviable in lots of ways! Who wouldn’t want to live near a monastery?) It’s a good reminder that life can be complicated and wonderful all at the same time. Also, van life before it was even a thing? Talk about a spirit of adventure!

Now let’s discuss! Did you have a sense of adventure in childhood? Are there ways you’d like to live it now? How do you feel about embracing limitations? Would you ever like to start a family business?

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Did you enjoy this? Find previous interviews here:

• Dixie Dillon Lane on Academia, Identity, Joyful Mothering, and Being a Person

• Katie Marquette on Hobby farms, Workaholism, Changing Worldviews & Trusting Your Gut

• Sara Boehk on Gardening, Monastic Tendencies, and Doing the Next Thing

• Taryn DeLong on Trade-offs, Working in the Margins, and Saying Yes to Help

• on Rediscovering Creativity, Cultivating Community, and Receiving Unexpected Gifts

• on Leaving Dreams Behind, Being Found by Motherhood, and Falling into Writing

• Isabel Errington on Confidence & Courage, Flourishing in the Here & Now, and Prioritising Family as a Single Person

• on Keeping the Intellectual Life Alive, Being on the Same Team in Marriage, and Saying 'No' to Sourdough

• on Walking Away from What Comes Naturally, Looking at God in a Different Light, and Hundreds of Small, Daily Joys

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

Today I’m welcoming , the writer behind Let It Go on Substack.

You may recognise Ashley from last week’s post, Learning from Other’s Discernment. I was so struck by her story that I asked her for an interview, which she kindly agreed to. Here, she’s sharing more about her life and work - wife, mother, Chief Strategy Officer (among other titles!) of a family business, student of spiritual direction, church committee & small group member, knitter and reader. It was a real treat to get to peek behind the curtain to see how she creatively navigates these different elements of her life outside the box!

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

What started as my outside-the-box life has admittedly become more common in recent years. I’m a part-time work-at-home mom to four kids between the ages of ten and three, and I’m also a graduate student studying Christian Spirituality with an emphasis on Spiritual Direction. My current job is working as something of a jack-of-all-trades in my husband’s brick and mortar business. I serve as CSO (chief strategy officer), marketing specialist, bookkeeper, and the HR department. It’s a small company with ten employees, but all those jobs that happen at large corporations still need to get done on a smaller scale to keep things running smoothly.

Every day is a little bit different, but there’s a lot more consistency around here lately now that my youngest is in part-time preschool. My kids have an early bus time that has us up and moving well before the sun is up. My husband leaves for work around the same time the kids walk out the door, so it’s about 45 minutes of chaos while everyone gets what they need for the day. After seeing everyone off to school, I come home and get myself ready and then take about thirty minutes for myself. Some days I make a hearty breakfast, others I’ll take the dog for a walk or spend some time in contemplative prayer.

After that, the morning varies depending on what’s on the docket that day. Twice a week I’ll go to a local strength training class with a delightful group of women, which serves as the best mood booster and built-in community. On the other days, I’ll go into the shop to either get some admin work done or have strategy meetings with my husband and our project manager, or I’ll run errands and get some homework done. My youngest is only in school for half-days, so after picking her up, we’ll grab lunch and transition into afternoon quiet time (a nap for her, homework or household admin/chores for me).

Quiet time is decidedly over when the bus drops off the big kids! I try to have a huge snack ready for them with plenty of protein, as well as calm instrumental music playing. Several of my kids are neurodivergent and highly sensitive—and I am too. There are often some really big emotions to handle right after school. Occasionally I’ll need to take kids to an appointment or support service, but we don’t do any structured after-school activities yet. I know our slow afternoons will come to an end eventually, but I’m holding onto them for as long as I can!

If the weather is nice, the kids will generally find some neighborhood friends outside and disappear until dinnertime. If it’s not, the older ones will help out with dinner. Once a week I also have online class during dinner hour, so I’ll make something ahead that can be baked and my older kids will pop it in the oven at the right time. They’re generally pretty good about entertaining themselves for the first half of my class until my husband gets home and takes over.

After dinner, it’s the usual rush of cleaning up and bedtime routines. Our two older kids stay up a bit later, so I might watch an episode of Gilmore Girls with them after the younger ones go to sleep, or we might work through a read-aloud of a middle-grade novel (our current selection is The Mysterious Benedict Society). Of course, that’s only if we’re all home. I’m on several church committees and am part of a church small group, and my husband serves on a city commission. If one of us has a meeting and the other is solo parenting through bedtime, the kids are much more on their own in getting ready for bed.

My husband and I should theoretically be off-duty from parenting by 8 p.m. or so. We’ll chat and catch up on our days—we try not to talk about work in the evenings, but sometimes it’s difficult when we’re sharing stories about what we did all day! Late evenings are also prime time for my two favorite hobbies, knitting and reading.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

Honestly, if Kerri had asked me to do this “day in the life” two months ago, it would have looked completely different. There would have been almost no downtime. I wouldn’t have been as intentional about tending to my kids’ emotional and sensory needs. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have said yes to writing about all of this!

That’s because up until August, I had a second part-time job as a freelance editor. I wrote more on my own Substack about what it was like having that career, a business I began as soon as I graduated college and got married almost thirteen years ago. The gist is that it started out as a godsend, but as we added more and more kids to our family, it started taking its toll. That career no longer fit our needs.

It's hard to explain exactly how I reached this decision. It took six years of discernment, and I don’t know if I ever would have had the confidence to make this change without being in spiritual direction myself. That was the real impetus to start looking at God in a different light, which led to reevaluating my own life.

I was raised (and still am!) Roman Catholic, but like many Christians in the United States, the flavor of my faith was heavily influenced by Evangelical Protestantism growing up. Although I don’t think I could have put a name to it at the time, I believed all sorts of things about God that I now disagree with: harshness, judgment, that God loves us but doesn’t like us. Embracing the more feminine attributes of God, especially the female personification of Wisdom, has been incredibly helpful in stretching my theological perspective and leading me deeper into the discernment process with a God I can actually trust.

Being in spiritual direction led me to Ignatian spirituality, a contemplative type of prayer that includes specific methods and guidelines for discernment. This is what led me to follow the call to grad school, where I encountered many professors, books, and peers whom God used to speak the truth I needed to hear. Grad school has been transformative for me; it’s probably the biggest intentional choice that led to all the other dominoes falling.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

The thing is, I could have kept editing in a way that was sustainable for my mental health and our family . . . but I would have had to say no to grad school and working in my husband’s business—and in some ways, to our kids. As I said above, grad school has changed everything for me. Saying no to that just wasn’t an option. Obviously you can’t say no to a child once you’ve already said yes to having them (though in a way, that’s what I was trying to do by balancing too many things at once). So that left the family business.

For several years after my husband took over his family business, I tried to make that the thing I said no to. We initially hired someone else to do some of the duties I’m now responsible for. I sort of helped out, but I mostly didn’t have time for it. It was just another thing to squeeze into a too-full life, and I was resentful of it. I was convinced that his business was supposed to be my “no.”

It took a silent retreat and a candid conversation with a trusted priest for me to finally recognize how much my pride was coming into play. I didn’t want to work for my husband. I wanted to continue running my own business. I hated the thought of people mistakenly thinking I was his secretary. It was pride and stubbornness at its worst.

Ignatian discernment means being open to the movement of the Spirit and noticing consolation and desolation in your daily life. These are the signposts that say, “Hey, go this way” or “Nope, road closed, turn around!” Consolation is a feeling of contentment, peace, or joy. It’s deeper than simple happiness; it’s a feeling that can only come from God. Desolation is a negative feeling; there might be despair, pain, or feeling like God just isn’t there. It’s not that consolation always means “go this way” and desolation always says “turn around”—it’s far more nuanced than that—but noticing where these movements are happening in your daily life is important.

Once I started doing that, bringing those moments of consolation and desolation forward and acknowledging them, it was so clear that editing was not bearing any good fruit. There was no joy or enjoyment. It didn’t fill me up. In fact, it was such a drain on my energy that it left almost nothing for myself, my family, or my friends. After many years of using those discernment tools and seeking silence last summer, God finally broke through my pride and showed me that editing needed to become the thing I said no to.

Because of that no, I now get to say yes to being more present for and patient with my kids, meeting friends for midday coffee dates, supporting my husband and working together as team, spending more time out in nature, and hundreds of other small, daily joys.

If you’re enjoying this interview, subscribe to get more like it in the future. (It’s completely free.)

(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

Ironically, freelance editing was my dream job from about age twelve onward! Back then, very few people worked from home. I was a quiet kid with social anxiety and undiagnosed neurodivergence. Nothing sounded better to me than getting to work from my own comfortable home, with no glaring fluorescent lights or loud coworkers, reading books all day. I thought I had discovered the perfect out-of-the-box life for myself.

As an only child, I also knew that I wanted a big family. I thought kids would fit seamlessly into this life I had planned. Wouldn’t it be easy to work while your kids just played in the other room? One of the downsides of being an only child is that I had absolutely no concept of how much work kids are!

When I became a mother in my twenties, I still kept trying to shoehorn the freelance editing together with staying home with kids. It got harder and harder the more kids we had . . . but this was my dream, and I was afraid to deviate from it. I was letting a twelve-year-old dictate my adult life!

It’s only been a few years since I discovered that spiritual direction even existed. I don’t think I could ever have imagined this ministry path for myself. And I certainly wouldn’t have thought of doing all the high-level business tasks I’m taking on at work. Those are skills I learned early on in my freelance editing career when I was starting and growing my business. Editing was the right path for me for a time, but I’m glad I can close the door on that chapter and walk toward whatever is coming next.

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

First and foremost was my misguided theology. I genuinely thought that because God had answered my decade-old prayer to make editing work out, and because God had given me the skill of editing, that I had to keep doing it forever. Once I started believing that God cares about me as a person, not just a tool, everything changed. God doesn’t want us to be miserable! God wants us to live lives that allow for joy, delight, creativity, and the things we love. If I had known that sooner, I don’t think I would have stuck with editing for as long as I did. This movement toward a broader understanding of God was largely thanks to the perspectives of my professors and peers in grad school. Having classes that completely changed the way I read the Bible, learning alongside Buddhists and agnostics and Catholic priests and sisters . . . I can’t imagine a more beautiful way to expand my understanding of the mystical Divine.

As I touched on earlier, I also think that my skill as an editor hindered me in moving forward. I’m good at editing and had plenty of work from repeat clients. It’s scary to walk toward something unknown, especially when what you’re walking away from is something that comes naturally to you. It almost felt like, “Well if I weren’t supposed to be doing this, then why am I so good at it?” But it’s not just about what you’re good at; it’s also about what you want! That was the missing piece for me.

(6) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

I love learning and novelty, which makes my situation kind of perfect for my brain. I’m in school, my current work challenges me in a way editing never did, and no two days are alike as I stay flexible to meet my family’s changing needs. My love of learning, researching, and reading are ultimately what led me here (or what God used to lead me here).

I first learned about spiritual direction and discernment in books. From there, I was able to deep dive those topics until I had gone as far as I could on my own. That’s when I sought out a spiritual director to work with. The rest of the pieces fell into place with each step I took in the direction that aligned with my values.

(7) Where can people find you online?

I’m actively trying not to be a very online person these days. I usually check in on Instagram on the weekends, and when I’m there I try to contribute to a conversation (usually in Stories) rather than just consuming what shows up on the feed. You can request to follow me @ashleybrookswrites.

Here on Substack, I write Let It Go, which is about my practice of Ignatian spirituality in my daily life (plus a monthly book round-up).

» I so appreciated Ashley’s honesty in admitting what was actually holding her back! When she said, “I was letting a twelve-year-old dictate my adult life!” it made me wonder how many of us are letting stubborn, outdated dreams determine what we choose now. Things that are good and useful for a time may not be good and useful forever: that’s why discernment isn’t a one-and-done thing.

Now let’s discuss! Do you have childhood dreams that are still tugging on you? How are you discerning how much weight to give them? Have you ever found that pride is the thing holding you back from “hundreds of other small, daily joys”? How do you discern career and family changes? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Leave a comment

Did you enjoy this? Find previous interviews here:

• Dixie Dillon Lane on Academia, Identity, Joyful Mothering, and Being a Person

• Katie Marquette on Hobby farms, Workaholism, Changing Worldviews & Trusting Your Gut

• Sara Boehk on Gardening, Monastic Tendencies, and Doing the Next Thing

• Taryn DeLong on Trade-offs, Working in the Margins, and Saying Yes to Help

• on Rediscovering creativity, cultivating community, and receiving unexpected gifts

• on Leaving Dreams Behind, Being Found by Motherhood, and Falling into Writing

• Isabel Errington on Confidence & Courage, Flourishing in the Here & Now, and Prioritising Family as a Single Person

• on Keeping the Intellectual Life Alive, Being on the Same Team in Marriage, and Saying 'No' to Sourdough

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

Today I’m welcoming Melody Grubaugh: wife, mother, homemaker, and Managing Editor at Fairer Disputations.

I met Melody through a reading group on feminist writings, which she not only co-led, but brought her nursing baby to as well. I loved the witness she bore to both the gift and challenge of being a woman who is caring for others and keeping up an intellectual life. As you’ll see, she’s very much embracing a life outside the one-sized-only boxes prescribed by so much of modern culture.1 I know you’ll appreciate her openness about the trade-offs required!

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

When Kerri asked me to participate in this series, my initial impulse was “No! I really don’t have my life figured out enough to be interviewed, especially alongside some of the other women who’ve been featured in the past.” But in the interest of featuring different seasons in life, I humbly set before you my own thoughts on the matter.

I’m a mom and primary caregiver to my two little girls (currently 2 and 8 months), a homemaker, and the managing editor at Fairer Disputations. I also have a Ph.D. in political theory, though right now I’m not “using” it in the way most academics mean when they talk about “using” their degrees. In this season of my life, I’m striving to both be present to my girls and my husband and keep my intellectual life alive (more on this struggle later). 

A day in the life: I wake up around 6 with the baby, and soon after my toddler joins us. Our day-to-day schedule varies, as some mornings we head out around 8:30 to take the girls to childcare, and other mornings we stay home through my baby’s first nap.

If I have childcare that morning, I sit down to work done in a room adjoining where the girls are so I can pop in if I need to feed the baby, etc. These two mornings a week are when the bulk of my “work” gets done. I work on average 12-15 hours a week, and squeeze the rest in one evening a week and during naptimes.  

If I’m not headed to childcare, my morning routine is built around my baby’s naps—in the gaps, I’ll often go meet a friend to allow our bigger girls to play, either at a park, play group, museum, or the botanic garden. Other days I’ll stay home and try to do some cleaning; still others I’ll meal-plan during baby’s nap and make the trek to the grocery store.

Between 12ish to 3ish is my favorite time of day, naptime (it’s never three hours, but always fits in this general range!). My daughters don’t always align their naps perfectly, but I try to get at least an hour of overlap somewhere in there. Most of the time I use this to work, but other days I just need to catch up on sleep.

In the afternoon, I’m most often at home with the girls, or in the courtyard of our apartment complex, trying to read a bit or listen to a podcast while my toddler plays. Now that the weather has finally started to warm up, I’ll sometimes head the nearby playground.

I prepare dinner around 5, and my husband comes home around 6 for a family dinner. The next hour and a half can get a bit hectic, each putting a baby to bed, doing dishes, and restoring the house to order, but most days quiet descends around 7:30.

Evenings are spent relaxing with my husband—watching a movie, chatting, playing cribbage, or reading together or separately. If I’m reading, it’s nearly always a novel—I admire those who can read nonfiction for pleasure but I can never get as excited about it. Recent authors I’ve enjoyed include Dorothy Whipple, Dorothy Baker, Nancy Mitford, Elaine Dundy, Margaret Drabble, and Edith Wharton. Once in a blue moon we’ll go out. I’m hoping we do a bit more of this as the girls get older and we’re not hit with exhaustion as soon as they’re in bed!

We’re in a very busy season where my husband works six days a week, but we try to spend Sunday together as a family—going to church, taking a stroll, visiting a pub, etc.—the time together always resets me for another week.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

Honestly, it’s hard to say how much of my current situation has resulted from intentional choices, and how much has just...happened (and happened in a temporary, ever-shifting way!). Since I’ve been married, we’ve had different stints of who works, who earns more, etc. As we’re on the same team, apportioning responsibilities is a question of what it means to support each other through each stage.

Right now, I’m also very much learning from others about what it means to be a mother and homemaker, while remaining true to my intellectual life. It’s a challenge that struck me more after the birth of my second daughter than my first. I was able to finish my dissertation and defend it in my elder daughter’s first year of life, thanks in large part to my husband jumping in on the caregiving end.

But now we’ve swapped places—he’s working to finish his dissertation and I’m the one supporting him (though he still handles most of the cleaning at home!). And with a toddler and a baby, it’s much harder to give focused attention to anything. With one child, I felt like I had it down and was really able to do it all. But now, I’m forced to be honest with myself about what I can and can’t manage. In some ways, I constantly feel like I’m falling short of what I’d like to be doing, which I largely attribute to “mom brain.” I swear I’ve had the same conversations with the same people, multiple times, without realizing until 10 minutes in.

Often, this is incredibly frustrating: as one friend put it, I sometimes feel I’m being subsumed into motherhood, becoming less “me” and more “mom”. At the same time, I appreciate that this is just a season in life, and that this subordination of my own desires is actually doing the work of making me a less selfish person.

I know I’m far from alone in combining homemaking while striving to maintain some degree of intellectual life, but it’s something that isn’t often talked about. Or—perhaps more accurately—I’m only starting to pay attention now that I’m in this position myself. But lately I’ve been immersing myself in writing from other women, both at similar stages or a bit further along this path than me; including but not limited to my friend , , , , , , , , , and my colleague .

One intentional choice I am making now is to continue to work in some capacity, even if this ends up being a very part-time capacity. Motherhood and homemaking could easily subsume my life and attention, but as they grow, I want to give my girls the gift of not being so wrapped up in their lives that they are afraid of disappointing me merely through gaining their own independence. They are my priority now, but I also want to be sure to retain an identity alongside my relation to them. For me, right now, this takes the form of paid work (and at this point, my income is necessary to our family). Down the road, I could easily see this taking the form of some sort of volunteering, more writing, or teaching in some form.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

Right now, I’m saying “yes” to embracing these last few months living as a family in England—we’re moving to North Carolina in a few months, and I fully expect my life to change in many ways. So I’m trying to appreciate the things I particularly love about living here: getting everywhere on foot (even if that means allowing at least 25 minutes of walking to get anywhere!), spending time with friends here, gaping afresh at the architecture and tromping through the meadows, and participating somewhat in the intellectual life through reading groups at the Canterbury Institute (I co-lead a group on contemporary feminist works, and I participate in a Classics group my husband leads).

Two concrete things I’m saying “no” to are working out and sourdough starter. Both of these things are good, and things I really *wish* I could say yes to them. But right now, I need to do editing work in the time when I could exercise uninterrupted. And trying to do a pilates routine—even in my living room—with two littles in tow makes us all crankier than it should. And while I want to perfect the art of sourdough, at this point it’s just too much to remember to feed the starter, to get through the dozens of dense loaves before I make a really good one, to spend my evenings mixing.

These two “nos” are representative of a bigger truth: my time is limited, and as much as I’d like to, I simply can’t squeeze every good thing in right now! So for now, I’m leaning into those long walks and my bread machine, and I am grateful for the free time they create for me to read and think.

If you’re enjoying this interview, subscribe to get more like it in the future. (It’s completely free.)

(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

Well, in some ways my life looks like my dream from childhood: I always hoped to work in editing in some capacity, since college I dreamed of living for a time in Oxford, and I spent 5 ½ years of my life working towards my Ph.D. But I never expected that the realization of all three of these dreams would occur simultaneously with becoming a mother—I moved to Oxford just a few months before I got pregnant with my first, I defended my dissertation while my 8-month-old slept in the adjoining room, and I started my current role at Fairer Disputations three months pregnant with my second.

Perhaps I didn’t expect this because I never thought too much about what life would look like with my own children. I was never baby-crazy, and while I enjoyed babysitting occasionally, I was always grateful to get away after a couple hours. When I got married, I acknowledged that eventually we’d have children, but being a mother wasn’t something I particularly looked forward to, even throughout my first pregnancy. When my first daughter was born, a whole new world opened up to me, and I realized that this motherhood thing is actually lots of fun!  

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

For me, graduate school was a kind of preparation towards living “life outside the box” in its demand for commitment and self-governance. When you enter a Ph.D. program, you’re given a number of years, at the end of which you’re supposed to present a dissertation ready for defense. There’s structure at the beginning—course work, teaching obligations, comprehensive exams—but at a certain point you’re left to yourself to see if you can self-motivate enough to actually finish. Sure, you have an advisor to check in with, but in many cases that will only happen if you initiate. Each day is a blank canvas, which you can either use to get some meaningful work done, begin to work and then end up down a research rabbit hole serving your own interests rather than your project, or even decide to take the day off. There’s a kind of benign neglect that allows you the time needed to frame the project in your head, and see how pieces fit together—and then there’s total neglect, and most grad students know the difference.

Motherhood follows a kind of similar pattern: you have a number of years in which to raise a human being. At the beginning, you’re on a stricter schedule—babies need to eat quite often! As your child gradually becomes (somewhat) less physically needy, you’re left with a problem of self-governance. Sure, there’s no “taking the day off” entirely anymore, but you can get through parenting with various levels of attentiveness. Will you attend to your child, your home, your work? Or will you sit back down on your couch and read yet another Substack essay? Here, too, there’s the “benign neglect” that teaches your children to play by themselves without your constant interference, and there’s the point at which you’re just wasting time and ignoring the people in front of you.

(6) Where can people find you online?

I don’t do a lot of my own writing at this point in time and I am for the most part off of social media (though I do spend a fair bit of time on Substack, mostly as a reader!). But readers should be sure to subscribe to Fairer Disputations.

» I so appreciated Melody’s honesty about needing to be on the same team in marriage, with shifting responsibilities, depending on the season of life. Life outside the box can’t be lived in a vacuum! And how about the idea that a Ph.D. program can be a great preparation for homemaking and motherhood? It struck me as a great way to think about the various paths we pursue: underneath the particulars lie common threads of virtue and habits required for them all. (Including the discipline of saying ‘no’ to things that we’d like someday, but just aren’t realistic for now - anyone else on the ‘no’ to sourdough train?)

Now let’s discuss! When you envision life outside the box for yourself, does it have a particular structure or are you open to seeing where it’s going? What do you think about the relationship between motherhood and the intellectual life? And how are you finding freedom in saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to all the good things that *could* be done? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Leave a comment

And if you’re discerning your own move outside the box, Cultivating Clarity might be just the thing for you. Join us in a paid subscription for a weekly mix of essays on discernment, (prayer) journaling prompts, practical exercises to help in decision-making, and quarterly “office hours” for Q&A on all things discernment and decisions.

Subscribe now

Did you enjoy this? Find previous interviews here:

• Dixie Dillon Lane on Academia, Identity, Joyful Mothering, and Being a Person

• Katie Marquette on Hobby farms, Workaholism, Changing Worldviews & Trusting Your Gut

• Sara Boehk on Gardening, Monastic Tendencies, and Doing the Next Thing

• Taryn DeLong on Trade-offs, Working in the Margins, and Saying Yes to Help

• on Rediscovering creativity, cultivating community, and receiving unexpected gifts

• on Leaving Dreams Behind, Being Found by Motherhood, and Falling into Writing

• Isabel Errington on Confidence & Courage, Flourishing in the Here & Now, and Prioritising Family as a Single Person

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

Today I’m welcoming Isabel Errington, from Oxford, England.

When I learned about all the wonderful things Isabel was doing, I knew I needed to interview her. No forty-hours-a-week-in-a-cubicle for her! Teaching fertility awareness, caring for children in the community, collecting and selling good children’s books - I loved hearing about Isabel’s confidence in doing a variety of work that she finds meaningful, in a way that fits into her overall vision for life. I think you will, too!

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

I think at the heart of my ‘life outside the box’ is my choice of employment, and the part-time and flexible work schedule it affords. I have 2 main jobs: I am a self-employed qualified Fertility Care Practitioner, and I also work as a childminder; I help couples to have babies, and then I also help take care of babies! I trained as a Fertility Care Practitioner because I wanted to share with women and couples a natural, holistic and liberating approach to fertility. I teach them to track and understand the woman’s menstrual cycle, giving them knowledge of the times in the cycle when they are naturally fertile, and when infertile. Some of my clients are trying to conceive, while others wish to avoid pregnancy naturally for a time, and I also teach single women who want to learn how to track their cycles not for family planning purposes, but simply so as to better understand their bodies and monitor their health. It’s an immensely rewarding job to work so closely with women and couples in a field which is both rigorously scientific and richly pastoral.

I have worked in childcare for many years; the choice sprang naturally from a love for and affinity with children. I have worked in formal and informal childcare settings, and worked as a teaching assistant in schools. At present my childcare routine involves working part-time for a small creche at an educational institute, and also privately for families.

I also have another little project on the side, an Instagram page bookshop called Bluebell Books, (Bluebell being a nickname given to me by twins I used to look after!), born simply from my enthusiasm for beautiful and wholesome children’s books! I find it very difficult to resist swiping up lovely children’s books when I find them, either for my own collection, or as gifts, to the point where I realised I had such a surplus that I could even try selling some!

One reason why I see my particular work roles and schedule as central to my life outside the box, is that they allow me time for many other things which are extremely important to me: a strong involvement with my parish community, a lot of time with friends, creative projects (such as weekly choir and improvisational theatre sessions), a good amount of time for ‘life admin’ (housework, errands, emails), and some restful down-time. I am a people-person, I have many interests, and I love to be involved in a variety of projects, (especially with friends, church community, and creatively) and I have found that my work choices give me time to pursue these things, which help me to flourish and to give of myself in many different ways.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

I have tried to make decisions which first and foremost help me to flourish in the here and now, rather than being guided primarily by more practical concerns (though naturally they do have their place!). I think a pivotal example of this was choosing to study Theology for my undergraduate degree at Cambridge. Many people have said to me over the years: ‘But what can one do with a Theology degree? Where can that take you career-wise?’ I continue to be surprised by the question, as for me, the priority was to choose to study a subject that I loved (and saw as extremely important), to try and enjoy every moment of those 3 years, and then to take the next step when it came. For me that was a 2-year voluntary programme run by a Catholic lay movement that took me to the United States where I lived with other volunteers and worked with children, particularly through catechesis in a school setting. And after that, the next step, and so on.

I am a big believer in trying different things when in comes to the working world. Of course, some careers involve prolonged focused study and preparation, but having personally never felt particularly drawn to any of the careers that fall more within these bounds, I have worked in a variety of fields including education (both child and adult), childcare, charities, administration and freelance PA work.

I have always tried to find work which I enjoy (at least to some degree!) and which is suited to my talents and who I am at a very deep level. I was drawn to my work in natural fertility awareness because it means a lot to me; I want people to have more ready access to this liberating knowledge and vision. I am naturally suited to working with children. My love for children’s books spilled out into Bluebell Books, almost by accident!

I want my working life to be part of who I am, but to not be all-consuming, and to allow time for many other integral parts.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

I am trying to say “yes” to my need for a slower pace, and the space to cultivate many things in my life (health, my spiritual life, friendships, volunteering in the community), which many kinds of work would make it very difficult for me to manage. My natural circadian rhythm means I am more industrious at certain times of the day, including evenings (whereas early mornings are not my best time). I had always felt somewhat frustrated and even embarrassed by this, until I came to understand the science of it, and now, as I am fortunate to be able to work flexible hours, I simply take into account this important dimension of my nature. So I usually say “no” to early starts!

If you’re enjoying this interview, subscribe to get more like it in the future. (It’s completely free.)

(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

From an early age, I noticed I didn’t have any very specific longstanding career aspirations. What appealed to me most was the model of marriage and motherhood – of trying to love God and others in a simple way, in the world, and raising new little ones to love him too. Though I am not yet married, the work balance I have reached leaves me lots of time to be part of the lives of other families, many of them just starting out, which I am so grateful for. I learn a lot from the husbands, wives, mothers and fathers that I spend time with, and it is a real gift to be welcomed into their homes, families and lives.

In some ways I was drawn to a simple model of family life, which didn’t strike me as unconventional, and yet over time I have come to realise that it can be surprising to others, especially for a single person. However, for me community and family life remain at the heart of how I try and live, and the work decisions I make.

The career paths that have attracted me over the years, (first and foremost teaching natural fertility awareness and management), have also been very focused on personal interaction with others (and indeed their family life), and happily work well as part-time employment.

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

I think a confidence in one’s own hopes and aspirations (tempered with reality checks and practicalities) is important. It can be all too easy to worry about how others see us, and whether we are being productive (I am amazed by how much this word is used, even in response to asking how someone is/how their day was, as though our first thought must be to measure our productivity!).

So I think it’s vital to not be afraid to ask, not only how will I save for a house/pension, but also – does this make me happy? Do I want to try something different? Can I adapt my work schedule to something that feels more manageable? Am I taking care of myself - my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health? How are my relationships? Is there something missing that I need to try and incorporate?

In summary: having a willingness to question things and to be open to new possibilities, and the courage and confidence to try them!

(6) Where can people find you online?

I have Instagram pages for my work as a Fertility Care Practitioner and as a children’s books seller. @fertilitycareisabel and @bluebell_books_

» “…yet over time I have come to realise that it can be surprising to others, especially for a single person. However, for me community and family life remain at the heart of how I try and live, and the work decisions I make.”

I loved reading about how clearly Isabel has identified her priorities in life, and shaped her choices about work around them, even if it looks a little unconventional to others! Here’s to courage and confidence in doing the same, no matter our state in life.

Now let’s discuss! Have you ever made a choice that was a little surprising to others, but served the priorities you’ve discerned? What might you do differently in life if you stepped back from cultural pressure and instead just made some decisions from a place of courage and confidence? And, are you tempted to start working with your own circadian rhythm?

Leave a comment

And if you’re discerning your own move outside the box, Cultivating Clarity might be just the thing for you. Join us in a paid subscription for a weekly mix of essays on discernment, (prayer) journaling prompts, practical exercises to help in decision-making, and quarterly “office hours” for Q&A on all things discernment and decisions. (Currently only £5/ month!)

Subscribe now

Did you enjoy this? Find previous interviews here:

• Dixie Dillon Lane on Academia, Identity, Joyful Mothering, and Being a Person

• Katie Marquette on Hobby farms, Workaholism, Changing Worldviews & Trusting Your Gut

• Sara Boehk on Gardening, Monastic Tendencies, and Doing the Next Thing

• Taryn DeLong on Trade-offs, Working in the Margins, and Saying Yes to Help

• on Rediscovering creativity, cultivating community, and receiving unexpected gifts

• on Leaving Dreams Behind, Being Found by Motherhood, and Falling into Writing

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

Today I’m welcoming Beatrice Scudeler: wife, mother of two, and writer from Oxford, England.

I first met Beatrice at a local reading group, and then stumbled upon her account of leaving her highly competitive, dream PhD program after a year. Her witness to such a bold, outside-the-box move was striking! I’m delighted to get to share a peek into her life here.

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

With a two-year-old and a six-month-old, my life looks different every day, no matter how much structure I try to impose on it. After becoming a mother two years ago, I quickly figured out that strict schedules are inherently incompatible with caring for children, more so the younger they are!

Having said that, here’s what our family routine roughly looks like. My husband works full time Monday to Friday, though fortunately he’s able to do so from home around 2-3 days a week. On Mondays and Tuesdays, I have both kids all day, and we end up going to playgroups and organising playdates whenever possible. We live in a small place, so I’m always trying to find activities to do outside the house (though not always succeeding, I must add!). My toddler just started nursery part-time after turning two, so now he’s at school 9am-3pm Wednesday to Friday, and I’m at home with just my baby girl. While she naps, I use those few precious hours to clean the house, get ahead on cooking, rest (especially if the baby slept badly the night before), and write. I don’t normally get big chunks of work done during the week, but I do manage to respond to emails, edit articles, and do bits of reading here and there. I’m also very fortunate in that my mother and my mother-in-law come and help whenever they can. On a week when they are able to visit, I definitely get a lot more writing done.

When he isn’t working, my husband is incredibly helpful. He wakes up earlier to take our son to nursery so I can get extra rest in the morning, he helps with bathtime and kitchen cleanup after dinner, and get all kinds of tasks done in the house that I don’t have time for while looking after both kids. Most importantly, he gives me his weekends. Once my daughter hit the four-month-mark and started nursing less often, he made a habit of kicking me out of the house for the best part of every Saturday so that I can sit down in a café and focus on reading and writing. I can do what I do because he values my creative and intellectual life, and that’s a wonderful gift.

Of course, our week looks like this during the school term-time, and if none of us are sick. If the kids have a cold, if they start to sleep badly, or when my husband occasionally has to be away for a day or in the evening, we shift everything around. Staying flexible is kind of a requirement when you’re a parent of very small children. It’s chaotic, but it’s just a season in life, and we’re trying to enjoy it in all of its unpredictability.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

I was speaking to another writerly mother recently who described her journey as ‘falling into writing’. That rang very true for me, too. I’ve described my experience here, but the short version of the story is that, just under a year ago, I left my doctoral studies. I wasn’t sure if I would ever go back to academia, and now I can say that I most likely won’t. I agonised over the decision and was frankly heartbroken about it for months. I was pregnant with my second at the time, and could only see my life in terms of two options: either I was going to be the celebrated literary scholar, or I was going to take the plunge and become a stay-at-home mother.

The first option became increasingly unsustainable, as my husband and I struggled to tag-team parent our son. ‘Academia gives you so much flexibility to look after children’, I thought at first. I was sorely mistaken! In practice, both myself and my husband following our respective ‘academic dreams’ meant two transatlantic moves in under two years, all while starting a family. It meant being very far from anyone who could help us with childcare, and all of this for a career that offers little financial security, and requires so much commitment and devotion! It was painful, but I knew that, for the sake of my health and the good of our family, I had to step away.

But something else happened in the middle of all of this. Close to the end of my one year as a PhD student, I wrote an article recounting my son’s birth. I had no prior experience of public-facing writing whatsoever, but to my surprise, it was published. In the following weeks two amazing women, who have acted as mentors to me, asked me to write for them: I worked with Erika Bachiochi on a piece about Jane Austen for Fairer Disputations, and with Nadya Williams at Current for and essay on Dorothy Sayers. After that, I knew I felt called to devote myself to writing.

Now, a year later, I call myself a stay-at-home-mum-turned-part-time-writer. My husband and I have intentionally moved back to Oxford, close to family on both sides, and he is focusing on taking jobs that, while they may not be his ‘dream’ job, are allowing us to plan to settle and raise our kids here. We’ve both made compromises and left some dreams behind. It’s a part of growing up. But, while having children did influence my decision to leave an academic career, it also opened the door for a more unconventional life, one that I’ve come to be profoundly grateful for. I get to write about so many things that I’m passionate about, from literature to my faith, motherhood, and even recipes for the wonderful Hearth & Field.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

Yes to asking for help. No to making career choices that hurt my family. In fact, no to thinking in terms of ‘careers’ to begin with, and yes to speaking about vocations instead.

My husband and I said yes to living closer to our parents for the sake of having their help (and so they can see their grandchildren grow up!). We are now saying no to jobs and opportunities that would disrupt our children’s lives. This is not the ideal of individualistic independence that our secular society has set as the ultimate goal, but it works for us, and it’s made us peaceful. I’m not ashamed to admit that I constantly ask for help looking after my children; I need breaks like every other mother out there. But, on the other hand, I’m also not ashamed to admit that I don’t want to be an exhausted, stressed-out mum and spend most of my time working when my kids are so small. I feel that motherhood is my vocation, but that being a witness to the Christian faith through my writing is a vocation, too. I’ve come to see this dual calling as a blessing.

On a smaller scale, no to pretentiousness. I used to spend so much time reading books that I thought would make me seem impressive – that’s a waste of intellectual energy! With the limited time I do now have as a parent, I read a lot less, but I’m very selective, and intentionally read slowly. I appreciate the books I do get to read a lot more than I used to.

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(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

As a child, I always had this internal struggle between the creative and the hyper-conscientious/practical parts of me. I remember alternately wanting to become an artist and a human rights lawyer, a novelist and a forensic anthropologist. In all these changes, my love of literature, which I’ve had for as long as I can remember, was the constant. My greatest ambition, probably since I was around six, was to be a writer of some kind or another. I switched to the idea of becoming a professor in secondary school, which I thought was the more sensible, more attainable option. Essentially, I lacked the courage to use the gifts God gave me in the way He wanted me to use them, and more or less abandoned the writing dream.

Funnily enough, it was motherhood that gave me the courage I lacked. Being a mother was never my ‘dream’ as it is for other people. I knew I wanted a family, but I didn’t envision myself finding a spouse and having kids until a little later in life, partly because no-one I knew did these things until their 30s. Rather, the motherhood dream found me. I met my husband when I was twenty-two, got married and got pregnant at twenty-three, and had my kids at twenty-four and twenty-six respectively. My son and daughter turned my ‘life plan’ upside-down, rearranged all my goals, and radically changed my priorities. But it is thanks to them that I rediscovered the older dream of writing and went back to it full force. It’s really providential that I have since met so many wonderful writerly mums. As Jennifer Banks talks about in her recent book Natality, giving birth has a way of fostering creativity in the new mother. That was definitely the case for me.

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills do you feel like held you back from stepping outside the box sooner, if you wish you had? 

I’ve always been such an agreeable person. I’m an only child, and I think I’ve spent my entire life wanting to please my parents and achieve goals that would make them proud of me. That also means that I sometimes go for what feels like the safe option, rather than where I feel a calling from God. I’m trying to change these habits.

For example, I wish I’d given myself permission to acknowledge that something wasn’t working much sooner. I held onto the academic dream for so long, in part because I worried that admitting defeat meant disappointing myself and those I love. I honestly thought my intellectual life would be over once I left academia (I can happily report I could not have been more wrong!). I’m also working on becoming a more hopeful person. I think I could have pursued better dreams earlier if I hadn’t been so terrified of failure and had been more trusting in God’s plan for my life.

(6) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

I cannot overemphasise the importance of letting others help you. I learned this the hard way, after spending years trying to control everything and do everything by myself – which, as you can imagine, doesn’t work out particularly well after you have kids. We live in a society that values independence very highly, and sees asking for help as a weakness. But we’re made to be interdependent beings. My children are dependent on me, just as I depend on my husband, my parents, and my friends to help me be their mother. One day, no doubt, I will depend on my children to look after me in my old age.

I also think practising gratitude helps us grow in virtue. The reason I can write freelance and spend time with my children is that my husband works full time and takes on the majority of the financial burden. Instead of feeling guilty about that (which doesn’t help anyone!) I’m trying to be grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given, and to work hard every day. I also remind myself that it’s normal to go through seasons of life when one is more vulnerable and needs to accept more practical and emotional support. Early motherhood is one of those seasons; I am fully immersed in it for the foreseeable future, and have accepted its joys and challenges alike.

(7) Where can people find you online?

I have a weekly substack newsletter at Literary Convert, and have also written, among others, for The Critic, The Catholic Herald, and Public Discourse about literature, religion, motherhood, and bioethics. I’ve compiled a list of my published work here.

» I appreciate Beatrice’s candour about the realities of life: sometimes you just need someone else to send you to a coffee shop on Saturdays! And isn’t it wonderful to realize that what you thought was an either / or situation is actually both /and?

Now let’s discuss! Have you ever walked away from what you thought was your dream, only to “fall into” something amazing? What kinds of compromises have allowed you to cultivate a life outside the box? How do you practice interdependence instead of just independence?

Leave a comment

And if you’re discerning your own move outside the box, Cultivating Clarity might be just the thing for you. Join us in a paid subscription for a weekly mix of essays on discernment, (prayer) journaling prompts, practical exercises to help in decision-making, and quarterly “office hours” for Q&A on all things discernment and decisions.

Subscribe now

Did you enjoy this? Find previous interviews here:

• Dixie Dillon Lane on Academia, Identity, Joyful Mothering, and Being a Person

• Katie Marquette on Hobby farms, Workaholism, Changing Worldviews & Trusting Your Gut

• Sara Boehk on Gardening, Monastic Tendencies, and Doing the Next Thing

• Taryn DeLong on Trade-offs, Working in the Margins, and Saying Yes to Help

• on Rediscovering creativity, cultivating community, and receiving unexpected gifts

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

Nadya Williams joins us for this interview, sharing her wisdom and experience of home(un)schooling, leaving a tenured position in favour of more creative pursuits, and reflecting on the crucial nature of having community.

I hope you’ll be as encouraged by her story as I was!

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

It is funny to think about my life now as "outside the box," but I suppose this does describe it well! Although perhaps it's time to redefine the box--or just trash it altogether. Build your own box from what's available in your life. But that is scary! Rules, boundaries, boxes feel oddly comforting, protective.

As of summer 2023, I am a full-time homeschooling mom and a writer. I walked away from academia after fifteen years (wrote about it here). So now, we are in full homeschooling-unschooling mode, where each day a variety of educational things happen, but aside from math and Greek, which require a structured curriculum, it is rather unpredictable. On the free admission days at the local botanical gardens, we are always there with bells on. We have an annual pass to the zoo, so we try to get there at least once a month. If it's a nice day (nice = good snowfall and/or sunny), we're playing outside--a lot! And there is always a read-aloud book in progress, to which we turn multiple times throughout the day, whenever it seems good to have a "downtime" kind of activity. We do not own a television and generally live a low-tech kind of life, so the kids find creative ways to entertain themselves.

Alongside these more important things, my first book came out in November 2023, my second book (on redeeming the priceless value of children and mothers in a world that doesn't value them) is forthcoming this October from IVP Academic, and my third book (a guide for Christians on reading Greco-Roman Classics) is now under contract, due to the publisher on August 1 of this year. Classical ed friends, this one is for you! Anyway, it seems that walking away from a highly toxic academic job freed me up to think and write more--and faster. I also freelance, writing essays regularly for a variety of venues.

Last but not least, I am Book Review Editor at Current, a really wonderful and welcoming online magazine of culture, religion, and politics. I run a group blog, The Arena, at Current as well. This means that in any given week, I'm communicating with possible reviewers/bloggers, keeping track of interesting books that I'd like us to review, editing one or two review essays for publication, and editing and scheduling blog posts.

The writing and editing happens in the evenings. After dinner, my husband spends time with the kids, while I take a couple of hours to work. Later at night, especially if ideas are flowing, I might keep writing after everyone in the house is asleep.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

The truth is, I didn't realize that this is where I would end up right now, and so many factors were decidedly external, but I am very happy to be in this phase. For fifteen years, I was a full-time college professor, but I was also a homeschooling mom all along. What got sacrificed was all creative activity, and I didn't even realize just how much I missed it until the Spring 2020 shutdown. Remember that March, when we all thought we were going to die, Bubonic plague style?

Anyway, that spring, for the first time ever, I asked my husband to take the kids for one hour each afternoon and give me quiet time to think, because otherwise, I was worried I might go insane. So, from 4pm to 5pm each day that spring and summer, I sat at the kitchen island with my laptop, and I wrote two very academic articles--one of them about a very deadly plague in the Roman Empire (I guess we all had plagues on the brain that year). And then, as I kept up the habit of writing for one hour a day, almost a year later I started writing short essays and sending them to various places. Finally, I wrote my first book. I realized that while I like research, I really love the creative sort of writing that bridges the academic and the popular. I love trying to bring the ancient world alive for non-expert readers, and I especially love writing for the church.

As I was experiencing this creative flourishing in my writing, the secular state university where I was teaching experienced horrific leadership shakedown and mismanagement. The result: student enrollment crashed, faculty started leaving in droves, but there were also layoffs, and everyone's teaching load went up overnight. Make a lot more bricks AND bring your own straw too! My job as a tenured full professor would have been safe for a while longer, but I handed in my resignation last spring, realizing that I just could not work at a place like this. My husband, who taught there as well, got another job, so this past summer, we moved half-way across the country.

So, overall, it felt like while I did make some intentional choices of my own--blocking off some daily time for writing, starting four years ago--a lot of what happened felt very much outside of my control, but in really beautiful God-given ways. Sometimes in life you just pray for a gift, and then you gratefully accept the gift, even if sometimes it doesn't even look like a gift you wanted or imagined.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

For the first time ever, lately I have been receiving invitations for speaking engagements. This is exciting and energizing--it's an opportunity to teach and say something helpful and useful (I hope) based on all the research and thinking I have done over the years. On the other hand, traveling overnight away from family is tricky, and I do not want to do it too often. I have a few trips planned this spring and fall, so we'll test this out and see what is realistic.

It really is a gift to be in a situation where you can say "no" to some things. Ironically, I am getting so many more invitations to write, speak, etc. now that I'm not in academia than when I was an academic! It makes no sense, but it is a gift. But I'm getting to a point where I have to turn some things down. For instance, after writing for the Anxious Bench blog on Patheos for two years, I finally stepped off that commitment. I also said "no" to adjuncting this spring at a college nearby, and it seemed like an obvious and easy "no." It made no sense economically, and it would have inconvenienced the family.

(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

I'm really fascinated with the psychology of birth order. In a nutshell, I'm such a typical firstborn--hard-working, rule-following, eager to please. I'm also very creative and definitely a "dreamer." This combination means that I dream of doing experimental and creative things much more than carrying through with such dreams.

All of this said, my family also had an unusual and very "outside the box" journey, immigrating from the Soviet Union to Israel and then to the US. So it seems like we have a hereditary pattern of waiting things out until it looks like a disaster is looming, and then finding a creative solution to exit the disaster zone. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing the parallel between my wait-and-see approach to leaving academia, finally jumping off what felt like a burning train, and my parents' decision to leave the USSR just months before it collapsed.

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

It's not nearly as much about skills, I'm convinced. It's more about the people in our lives. The only reason that I was able to leave academia and become a freelance writer with a very much part-time income is because I have a wonderfully supportive husband who enjoys his work and is happy to be the main provider. But it's also about location, location, location. We moved from a reasonably affordable town in GA to a super affordable small town in OH. Not enough people pay attention to cost of living, but it makes a huge difference for the life we are able to live. Put simply, if I were not married and/or if we did not move somewhere this affordable, I'm not sure we would have been able to pull this off as a family. Homeschooling and spending so much time with my kids while they are little is a beautiful, wonderful luxury. Being able to just freelance and write for joy is a luxury. Yet more gifts to accept with gratitude.

Sure, we each have skills and attitudes--staying organized with my time and various tasks is essential! But someone else with all of my skills and dispositions--and even more--might not be able to replicate my life, if not given the same support structure. It is an important reminder that none of us are islands unto ourselves. We have been created for community, and whether we are married or single, parenting or not, we need to cultivate our community, and allow our community to cultivate us too.

(6) Where can people find you online?

I write a weekly newsletter, so this is probably the best place to learn more about my work. In addition, I cannot say enough good things about Current!

I love Nadya’s honesty about how her family makes it work, and her idea of “trashing the box altogether” or “building your own box from what’s available in your life.”

Let’s discuss! Have you ever walked away from something significant only to find new and surprising paths opening up in ways that don’t make sense? Is there anything you’d like to try doing for an hour a day? What does / could creating community look like for you?

Leave a comment

And if you’re discerning your own move outside the box, Cultivating Clarity might be just the thing for you. Join us in a paid subscription for a weekly mix of essays on discernment, (prayer) journaling prompts, practical exercises to help in decision-making, and quarterly “office hours” for Q&A on all things discernment and decisions.

Subscribe now

Did you enjoy this? Find previous interviews here:

• on Academia, Identity, Joyful Mothering, and Being a Person

• on Hobby farms, Workaholism, Changing Worldviews & Trusting Your Gut

• Sara Boehk on Gardening, Monastic Tendencies, and Doing the Next Thing

• on Trade-offs, Working in the Margins, and Saying Yes to Help

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

Today I’m welcoming Taryn DeLong, wife, mother, and Co-President and Editor-in-Chief of Catholic Women in Business.

I loved reading about Taryn’s discernment process regarding her decision to leave full time work and weighing up the trade-offs of investing in a home that was a good fit for their family. She’s got some wise words about saying “yes” to help, too!

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

Ever since our daughter was born in 2021, I’ve been her full-time caregiver (though my husband works mostly from home as well!). Our routine changes as she does, but most days, we spend the mornings playing at home, running errands, going to storytime at our local library, and having playdates with friends.

I also host a weekly “Bible study playgroup,” in which other “stay-at-home mom” friends come over for Bible study while our toddlers and babies play together. We have lunch with my husband, and then my daughter has an afternoon nap.

During her nap is when I do most of my work—writing, editing, and running Catholic Women in Business with my co-president. In the evenings, I try to relax with my husband—reading, watching something on TV, or playing a game together. Some evenings, I host a virtual event for Catholic Women in Business or have a podcast interview or other work to do. I also do a Holy Hour one evening a week at our parish. And, of course, in between all of that is keeping up with the housework with my husband and cooking for our family.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

It took a while for my husband and me to discern that I could quit working full time. The discernment process involved a lot of number-crunching and prayer. We make sacrifices financially to make it work (for instance, we bought a lovely house outside of the city, which is sometimes inconvenient but also costs less). For us, at least now, it’s been exactly what was right for our family.

Regarding both of those decisions, honestly, the answers came after a lot of prayer, and they came suddenly. I felt a lot of anguish and anxiety and then literally woke up one morning with peace. That kind of sudden, divine clarity has only happened a few times in my life, and it’s been an enormous gift each time!

In addition to prayer, they were also the fruit of a lot of conversation about our priorities. It’s important to us that we have a home that has room for our family to grow, if God gives us more children; that has room for us to host family and friends; and that has a room for my husband to work from home, so that he can work near us. With those priorities, we knew we’d need to leave the city, because homes of that size in Raleigh were just too expensive for a single income. (To be frank, they would probably have been out of our reach even if I’d been working full time, because over half of my salary would have been going to child care.) If we’d had different priorities (for instance, if my husband couldn’t or preferred not to work from home, or if we prioritized living near city amenities like museums and the symphony over having space to entertain), we may have chosen differently.

When it comes to leaving the full-time workforce, I’m in an interesting place where I find myself wanting to defend both full-time working moms and “stay-at-home” moms frequently! I firmly believe that there are many ways to be a loving mother—and not everyone can afford to make the choice that they’d prefer, anyway. As I said, my salary would have covered child care but not left a whole lot left over, so once we realized we could meet that gap, it was a financial no-brainer. I also came from the type of career (editing and writing) where I can work in the margins (usually around 10-15 hours per week) and still get a substantial amount of work done. It was important to my husband that we not rely on my income at all, in order to free me up to do work that I felt called to do, rather than work that we needed me to do—which is a blessing. So, I’m able to devote non-childcare and non-housework time to work that I find life-giving and that I feel called to do. My business partner works in a different job full time and also has children, so we both run the business in the time and space that we can. It means it’s growing very slowly, but it also means that we don’t overcommit ourselves and respect each other’s priorities.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

I’m intentionally saying “yes” to help. I’m having my second endometriosis surgery at the end of November, and I asked some friends to come over the following week to help take care of my daughter while I recover. I also said “yes” when a friend asked if she could make a meal train. It’s easy to think that not asking for or accepting help is just being self-sufficient—but sometimes, it’s being prideful (at least, it is for me). Having the humility to ask for help helps break down self-reliance and build up relationships.

I’m intentionally saying “no” to always having my phone on me. I say that my husband and our daughter are the most important people in my life, and they are—but I don’t always act as if they are my priority. Of course, multitasking is sometimes necessary—but I’ve found that too often, I make excuses for not being fully mentally present to these people I love so much.

(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

When I was a child, I liked to imagine my future self as being like the mom in A Wrinkle in Time—working in some capacity, but from the home and with lots of time for homemaking and parenting. I always loved the image of Mrs. Murray cooking dinner on her Bunsen burner. She was intelligent, ambitious, and successful, and she still prioritized her family. I dreamed of being a writer (and, for a long time, a doctor as well) but doing so in my own little office at home, where I was always available to my children.

Sometimes, I pinch myself and say a prayer of gratitude, because that dream has come true (albeit minus the Bunsen burner).

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

Prayer—It’s when I haven’t been praying that this life starts feeling like it doesn’t work! Staying close to Christ helps me hear his voice and receive his help.

Communication—My husband and I are not perfect communicators (I’m not sure anyone is!), but when we’re communicating well, we are much better partners, and managing our home and family goes much more smoothly. The grace of sacramental marriage is very real and tangible!

Humility—Pride is the sin I struggle with the most, and cultivating humility enables me to know that I will never be a perfect wife, mother, or business leader—but that I don’t have to be. It also helps me to apologize when I have done something wrong and take the steps (and the help) I need to do better.

(6) Where can people find you online?

My personal website is https://everydayroses.blog, and my Substack is https://everydayroses.substack.com. You can follow me on Instagram @tarynmdelong and on LinkedIn. My company’s website is https://catholicwomeninbusiness.com.

Are you trying to navigate a transition towards more balance of work and home life? Or would you like to do so someday? What’s factoring into your discernment? What struck you most from Taryn’s interview? Share your thoughts in the comments.

And if you’re discerning your own move outside the box, Cultivating Clarity might be just the thing for you. Join us in a paid subscription for a weekly mix of essays on discernment, (prayer) journaling prompts, practical exercises to help in decision-making, and quarterly “office hours” for Q&A on all things discernment and decisions.

Subscribe now

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

It’s a privilege to welcome Sara Boehk here today. I met Sara more than a decade ago, when she offered to help me - a total stranger on the other side of the Atlantic - get settled into Roman grad student life. She not only found me an apartment and mailed me an Italian cell phone, but she completed the Herculean task of getting all the right stamps on all the right papers. (If you’ve never dealt with Italian paperwork, just imagine the DMV on multiple steroids, open only for 2 random hours every day, run by mythical creatures taken to riddles and whims. Needless to say, it takes grit!)

Sara has a lot of wisdom to share about how to do the difficult things that a life outside the box requires. Enjoy!

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

In the last six months, circumstances have overthrown my routines and schedules, but the basics, which currently get shuffled about, remain. My days are a blend of academic work, prayer, odd jobs, gardening, and everyday tasks.

A few details add color. I’ve lived in Rome, Italy, for nearly two decades. I share a wall with an eleventh-century church, situated on a property in the care of one of Rome’s old noble families and home to diverse realities, e.g., a residence for seniors and a hostel.

When I moved into this living space, I agreed to assist in managing the sacristy (scheduling celebrants for masses, ironing linens, occasionally organizing funerals, etc.) and to cultivate a garden. Running alongside the church was a marvelous quantity of dirt overrun by weeds. Gardening, which wasn’t something I’d done much of previously, has turned out to be an excellent complement to intellectual work.

There’s another detail that’s essential to what my life currently looks like: I’ve chosen to remain unmarried “for the sake of the kingdom.”1 I’ve encountered members of a plethora of ecclesial entities in Rome, and inevitably they ask me, “What are you?” (In other words, to which community do you belong?) In my early years here, I’d often reply, “I’m a laywoman with monastic tendencies.” Now, I’m more likely to say that I’m a beguine, or something like it.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

How did I get here? By doing the next thing. I didn’t arrive at this insight on my own, but to give credit where it’s due, I have to provide a bit of background.

In my mid-20s, a priest who was a spiritual father to me envisioned founding a religious community, and I was ready to do whatever such an endeavor might entail. He connected me with another young woman and encouraged us both to study theology. She had already begun making plans to study at a pontifical university2 in Rome, and I decided to join her, thinking I’d be back in the States after a year or two. We relocated to Italy, and within a short time, the priest’s trajectory changed. My principal motivation for theological studies vanished.

On a deeper level, though, there’d been other interior movements, underlying the immediate cause of my Roman sojourn — and not bound to it — which persisted. I felt pulled towards celibacy, towards sacrificing my natural desires in order to be devoted to Christ. So, I made the choice to remain in Rome. What followed was a span of time I might cryptically call my “French years” (involving four or five French communities founded in the twentieth century, at least two French mystics, and a couple trips to France), which, along with a number of theological upsets and the obliteration of some cherished notions (I’m looking at you, Cadaver Synod), had brought me to a state of vocational anxiety.

Enter “the next thing.”

The woman I mentioned earlier — the one who pitched the study-theology-in-Italian idea to me — she’d also made the decision to stay in Rome, and we eventually became friends. About five years into our studies, we were introduced to a woman who’d been one of the first women to receive a doctorate from a pontifical university. Her life was intriguing; she defied definition. We wanted to know how she’d gotten there, and she replied simply: “By doing the next thing.” It’s hard to describe the profound relief that unpretentious phrase gifted me. Freed from the particular anxieties of my French years, I confidently kept watch for the next thing(s).

Around the same time — a little earlier, actually — a professor of medieval church history wanted to know “what we were,” and the friend with whom I’d been studying (and who’d shared in some of those French experiences) gave our standard answer: “laywomen with monastic tendencies.” With excitement he exclaimed, “You’re beguines!” It took me a while to embrace that idea, not least because I had no idea who beguines were.3 (That kindly professor later created a course for the two of us called Mulieres in Ecclesia, which looked at the beguinal movement south of the Alps.)

Doing the next thing moved me from my French years into my “Roman years” (involving the Diocese of Rome’s major seminary, Ordo Virginum, cloistered Augustinians, and German Benedictines) and then on to my “Jesuit years” (involving Jesuits, Roman nobles, and professional church ladies). It was a 30-day silent retreat4 in the latter period that brought me round to the beguines and to recognizing that their history might contain traces of a way forward for my own story.

(3) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

The earliest thing I remember is that, as a child, I wanted to be an astronaut, because my father liked astronomy and aviation. Space exploration would have been out of this world, if not outside the box. As I grew older, I moved on to other ideas: historical interpreter, archivist, teacher. I think, throughout my childhood and adolescence, I took it for granted that I’d marry and have children. I even wrote letters to my future husband.

In my early 20s, I was diagnosed with stage 3B Hodgkin lymphoma and received chemo and radiation therapy. I’d been so relieved to finally have a name for my illness, and my oncologist and nurses had been so positive, that I didn’t really consider death until I was nearing the end of treatment. It struck me that if I’d been born earlier — say, the early twentieth century — I’d likely be dead. That was a catalyst. From that moment onward, I wanted to do something different, something radical, though I wasn’t sure what.

(4) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills do you feel like held you back from stepping outside the box sooner, if you wish you had? 

I don’t think the process, or the journey, could have happened any faster for me.

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

I’d say resilience, patience, and perseverance.

(6) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

I’ve been saying “no” to Substack at breakfast. Opening the app warps time. I look up and I’ve been at the table for an hour, sipping my tea in far too leisurely a manner. Social media and the news are also off limits at breakfast — or the whole morning, if I can manage it.

(7) Where can people find you online?

If you’d like to write to me, contact Kerri, who will share my email address with you. [Editor’s note: you can just reply to this email and I’ll put you in touch.]

I think it’s safe to say that Sara’s life is far outside the boxes that most of us are surrounded by! I loved that she found freedom in the simple notion of doing the next thing: no grand plan needed. Have you ever encountered an idea like that, which has changed your whole trajectory? What have the difficulties of life inspired you to do? Share your thoughts in the comments!

And if you’re discerning your own move outside the box, Cultivating Clarity might be just the thing for you. Join us in a paid subscription for a weekly mix of essays on discernment, (prayer) journaling prompts, practical exercises to help in decision-making, and quarterly “office hours” for Q&A on all things discernment and decisions.

Subscribe now

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here.

Today we’re welcoming Katie Marquette of Born of Wonder. She’s cultivating a life that prioritises motherhood but includes room for her passions too. I think we can all learn from her reflections on taking a slightly different path than that of a workaholic family and the peace that comes from trusting gut instinct.

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

It's hard to tell you about a typical day because with two little kids (2 and a half and 9 months, currently) my best-laid plans often go awry. We do have a general rhythm to our days, but as soon as I get used to that, the baby drops a nap or cuts a tooth or someone gets sick, so even though I'm naturally very controlling (I would love some more predictability) I'm slowly learning to be okay with the barely contained chaos. I can give you an idea of how things generally go, though.

We live on a hobby farm. By hobby farm I mean that we have a little bit of land and a lot of animals that serve essentially no purpose. It's a 'hobby.' I grew up on a horse farm where we also took in strays and bought bunnies at silent auctions on a whim, so I guess it was in my DNA to pursue a life like this.

Sometimes in the midst of so much of the business of small children I wonder why we also crammed our life full of the needs of animals and gardens as well, but my toddler is already learning so much responsibility and care in her daily work down at the barn with me, and I think there are so many joys and rewards to this lifestyle that outweigh the frequent inconveniences. So my day starts with the baby up and nursed and handed off to my husband while I go down to the barn.

After I feed the animals I usually take 10 minutes to sip my coffee and text friends or listen to a podcast. I'm usually also down there right before or as the sun is coming up which is always beautiful. Then I'll head back inside and this is usually about the time my toddler is waking up.

My toddler goes to nature school - a wonderful place that draws inspiration from Scandinavian forest schools - three mornings a week. That leaves me a little bit of time while the baby has her morning nap to cook breakfast, do laundry, catch up on writing, reading, and so on. I usually try to do most of my chores when the kids are awake (one of my toddler's favorite games is "tidying and organizing!" - she does not get that from me!) because I truly need the quiet/nap times to have a little time to myself. So I'll make some tea or a cup of coffee and try to do something productive that is also something I enjoy (i.e. if I need to fold laundry, I'll listen to a podcast while I do that, or I'll write a post for Substack, or write a letter to a friend. These are all 'productive' things that help me feel accomplished in some way, but are also mentally restorative and restful).

My husband and I have a shared calendar that we are constantly updating with appointments, family events, etc. and I'm also planning ahead for things like podcast interviews, audio editing work, etc. for weekend afternoons or any days he's able to be home. But truly most of my time is caring for the children - which usually involves lots of walks, exploring the fields, reading board books, listening to music, nursing, and trying to get them to sleep.

The two hours or so after bedtime is when I get most of my 'work' done - whether that's editing/mixing/recording a podcast, following up on emails, editing audio for a project, reading for an essay I'm working on or for pleasure, and so on.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make?

I didn't always think I'd be a "stay-at-home mom" (a phrase I don't really like because of its associations with a stagnant life). In fact I didn't really think about children much. I assumed I'd have some at some point but I never really considered radically altering my life to accommodate for this fact. I have a masters degree in Conflict Resolution and there's a long winding story I could tell about my career trajectory but suffice to say I ended up working in audio engineering and radio. That's what I was pursuing as my career (and still am, in some ways).

But then in my mid-twenties both my husband and I converted to Catholicism and with this change in worldview came a huge change in the way I viewed family life. Instead of seeing it as an accessory to equally or even more important things (career, traveling, and so on) I came to see it as the most important thing I could possibly pursue. So when we were hoping for a family, I left my full-time radio producer job (a job I enjoyed in many ways but I was completely creatively destroyed by cubicle life). This was perplexing to a lot of people because I was doing very well at the station and being featured in magazines and other 'important' panels, etc., but I truly had no doubts about leaving to devote myself more fully to a family life.

I should also mention that my Mom was a workaholic. I don't say this disparagingly, she would have described herself this way. But she was a tenacious, incredibly smart, determined, entrepreneur who ended up being incredibly successful. I admire so much of what she accomplished and she did it all with grace and dignity. Yet there were many sacrifices that had to be made when it came to us all being together as a family and it was incredibly hard for my sister and I to have a mother who we rarely saw during the week. My father also worked a high-powered job and so family life often felt frantic and like we had to fit everything into small moments when both my parents were home. I don't think anything was wrong about this and in many ways I had a lovely childhood, but I just knew I wanted a different situation for my own children.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

I'm saying 'yes' to my kids and any future kids we may have. This season of little children is incredibly physically and emotionally demanding, but I've truly never felt more peace or joy than in my role as a mother. Don't get me wrong - I frequently get burned out, overstimulated, and even resentful over not having enough 'me time' to pursue my passions or my work. But I've never felt any doubt about the importance of what I'm doing - even if that's spending an entire afternoon stacking blocks. I'll never get this time back and I want to be here for it!

That being said, I am equally saying yes to my passions and my work - I don't think you have to say 'no' to everything when you're a mother. My husband and I are always discerning and having conversations about how we can make things better for either of us - I know I'm a better mom when I have time to read, write, and create. The work I do with Born of Wonder is incredibly life-giving. It stimulates my mind and has connected me to people I have developed genuine friendships with. So we know it's important to find time for me to do this. I also am pursuing more professional work as an audio editor and producer - but because of my primary job as caretaker of the kids, I may opt to only take on one project at a time or to only pursue contracts that allow me work flexible hours and so on.

I'm saying 'no' to a lot of horse related things. I'm an equestrian, I grew up riding, and horses have always been an important physical and emotional part of my life. But I rarely have time or energy to ride. I'm okay with that. I enjoy the work at the barn and I'm leasing out my riding horse so others can enjoy him. I'm still involved in the local equestrian community - I took my toddler to see the opening Hunt for example - but I know there are seasons for everything (and there are certainly plenty of people out hunting in their 60s and 70s - God willing that will be me!). Someday maybe I'll be able to enjoy this unique passion of mine more fully, but that's not right now, and that's okay.

(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

I've already alluded to this a bit but I never pictured myself as a stay at home mother. But I did assume I'd be married, have a lot of animals, and be doing some sort of creative work, whether professionally or as a passion. All of this has turned out pretty close to how I envisioned it! In my more existential moments I wonder if my Mom was still alive if I would have been okay with leaving more traditional career routes (with the clear markers they offer of success) behind - I really craved her approval. So who knows how or why - no I didn't expect this, but I'm thrilled it's worked out there way. I never miss that cubicle for one moment.

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

For better or worse I'm a 'gut instinct' type person. My husband is too. This has sometimes led us down incredibly impractical paths that we only realized much later made absolutely no sense. So there are some downsides to this, but in many ways I think this 'trusting my gut' attitude has allowed me to pursue less 'conventional' paths (i.e. not "using" my degree, leaving a good job, and so on) without much angst. I knew when something felt wrong - I knew when it felt right. And I still trust that initial 'feeling' I have about things to lead me where I need to go. So that has certainly helped!

(6) Where can people find you online?

I'm on substack -https://bornofwonder.substack.com. I also have a website - www.bornofwonder.com.

I host a podcast where I explore "anything and everything that inspires wonder and awe in the world" which you can find wherever you download podcasts. Just look up 'Born of Wonder'.

Also feel free to email me at marquettekatie@gmail.com.

Wasn’t that a wonderful peek into a beautiful and interesting life? I’d love to hear: what struck you most? Leave a comment below.

And if you’re discerning your own move outside the box, Cultivating Clarity might be just the thing for you. Join us in a paid subscription for a weekly mix of essays on discernment, (prayer) journaling prompts, practical exercises to help in decision-making, and quarterly “office hours” for Q&A on all things discernment and decisions.

Subscribe now

The overwhelmingly positive response to my essay, Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All, suggested to me that there are a lot of women (and men) who are keen to set aside the societal pressure to hustle hard and put all their energies and decades of life exclusively into one single career box.

This series offers interviews with those who have chosen a life outside the box, in a variety of ways. It’s my hope that in getting to peek into the lives of others, we’ll all be inspired to step outside the pressure chambers we may feel stuck in - even if our lives are very different in practice from those shared here. 

Encouragement, permission, examples - I hope whatever it is you need to step outside the box, you’ll find it here. 

I am so very delighted to kick off this series with Dr. Dixie Dillon Lane, mother, teacher, writer, historian, and - I think you’ll agree after reading her interview - font of wisdom for those who want to live with more freedom and joy.

Grab a cup of coffee and settle in for this insightful peek into her life.

(1) What does your life outside the box currently look like? Tell us about a day/ week in your life.

My life outside the box? Well, let's talk first about boxes. There are some boxes in which I appear to squarely sit: wife, mother, homeschooling parent, homemaker, etc.

But I am not a box, and I am not a word on a label stuck on a box. I am a person, a beloved child of God. That's my identity. Not the title on my nametag.

Years ago, however, when I first moved to my current town in Virginia, I got really confused about some of these boxes. My husband and I had moved very suddenly from Indiana, where we were both in the dissertation stage of our Ph.D.'s in history at the University of Notre Dame, only a month or so after he was offered a one-year position at Christendom College, a small Catholic liberal arts school in the Shenandoah Valley. We had one little baby at the time, an eleven-month-old who was just starting to walk and was the cutest, baldest little cherub I ever did see, if I do say so myself.

This transition was an enormous one, in part because I was still supposed to be working on my dissertation full-time, and now most decidedly was not even working on in part-time. In fact, since our daughter's birth I had already quietly slowed my academic work down considerably; but now, with Chris working 60+ hours a week while trying to turn this one-year position into a permanent one (which he did, God bless him and Christendom College!), I had exactly zero hours per day to work on my dissertation, and I had even less than zero energy.

So there I was, in an unusually conservative and faithful parish in a sweet little small town, and wondering to myself whether most of the women at my new parish wore skirts to Mass because this was some sort of social requirement here, or whether they just liked to do so and nobody cared if I wore slacks. Was it okay for me to nurse my baby in the pew there? And what exactly was I now -- a full-time graduate student, or a stay-at-home mom? And what did that mean? Where there certain things that I was now just supposed to do? And would I ever meet any friends? What would my friends be like -- what would they expect of me?

Over time, I learned a lot about these boxes: the Academic Box, the SAHM Box, and others. And what I learned was that some people will try to box you in with these words, and in fact, if you are like me, you may even try to box yourself up for a while! The internal pressure to "get it right" is just as real as the external kind. But in fact, when rightly-ordered, in my opinion, these titles, these labels, are states of being that are actually designed to be freeing, not limiting. They are not boxes at all, but open pages on which you can write the story of your life.

My actual day-in-the-life is always changing. For a while, last year, I did this, but I'm being more relaxed about the homeschooling this year. Lots of days are just laundry, writing, and maybe taking a cookie ramble. And we get sick, and we get cranky, and I have days when my anxiety is very high or I am not feeling well. Stuff gets dirty, and we have to clean it. Nothing is perfect. But perfection is not the goal.

(2) How did you get there? What intentional choices did you make? 

Well, here is what happened to me. For a long time, I felt very pinned in. I was a SAHM, right? Then why was I playing at being a graduate student? Was I lying to everyone, including myself? Or was I, once I got a babysitter twice a week so that I could work on my dissertation, actually a heroic scholar, fighting against expectations to write in spite of having a baby and a highly stressful life? Or was I just fooling myself, being a pathetic graduate student and also not a very good mom because I dared to step away from my baby for 5 measly hours a week?

As you may observe from the tone of these questions, this whole situation was pretty emotionally fraught. Two questions plagued me, in particular: was I who I wanted to be, who I felt I could be on the inside -- or was I who I appeared to be, instead?

Over time, I found myself observing the way that different aspects of my life and character were interpreted by the people I met. After I finished my dissertation, was I a disappointment to my mentors because I only taught part-time afterwards? Or was I, instead, a traitor to homemaking for teaching part-time? In teaching part-time, did I somehow imply to others that a mother of (by then several) young children was inherently doing something wrong if she worked full-time?

It was exhausting, giving so much unnecessary meaning to my choices, when I could have in fact just accepted that I was me -- a person. Just me.

At some point, though, I grew stronger in this area. The biggest change happened to me only three or four years ago, after a very difficult pregnancy and postpartum with my fourth child. I realized when at my personal rock bottom (in terms, mostly, of my physical health), that I had to take responsibility for taking care of myself. My husband loved me and would do all he could to support me -- and he always, always has -- but I had to do my part and stop behaving as if I had no power over my own well-being. 

And as I focused in on that -- on homeschooling more joyfully, on feeding myself better, and on making prudential choices based on preference rather than guilt -- I was able to detach myself gradually from appearances and begin to think about what I wanted and what suited me and my family best. I stopped teaching part-time because it didn't fit well into my life; and, in the hours that opened up thereafter, I gradually noticed a keen urge to write. I responded to that urge with a passion that surprised me, and now am able to do part-time work as a writer and editor, work that gives me immense pleasure and exercises my mind in new ways without preventing me from being the mother and homeschooling teacher that I want to be. This work has also given me wonderful new colleagues with which to share my writerly life, which has been a huge blessing. It's not perfect, and I am still tweaking it, but it is work that is working, and that is bringing greater health and joy and excitement and discernment to my entire life and the life of my family. 

I'm hopeful that my book, tentatively entitled The Homeschool Boom: Finding the Roots of Modern Homeschooling in the American Past, will be coming out late next year, which will be another adventure. You can hear more about both my research and my life as a homeschooling mom in this recent podcast, if you'd like.

(3) What are you intentionally choosing to say “yes” and (maybe more importantly!) “no” to in this season of your life?

No to boxes. Yes to honesty. No to despair. Yes to service. No to fear. Yes to prudence. No to hiding pain. Yes to sharing it.

So many aspects of a homeschooling mother's day are focused in on serving her family. Parents have a duty to educate their children, to form their characters, and to provide for them physically and emotionally. This is non-negotiable. Duty is not a dirty word.

This is a tremendous task, however, and it is made all the greater when a parent does not have a school to depend on for help. Homeschooling four children is confusing, demanding, and exhausting.

And yet, the homeschooling mother is free. She decides how and what to teach, how to organize the day, and what to prioritize for herself and for each child. She is free to adjust the pattern of each day according to her intuition, experience, and God-given smarts. She can actually act upon what she believes to be true, but maybe once was afraid to actually put into practice -- that the hours tramping in the bracken on a cold winter day a hugely educational, that her children need to see her exuding joy, and that being with her children is an incredible gift.

It is all such a gift. It is a gift from God, and it is a gift from my husband, who works just as hard as I do in his work outside of our home and in his hands-on, self-sacrificing work within our family context, too. Life is not a box; it's a gift given to us to open.

And it is always, always a work in progress.

(4) When you were a child/ younger, what vision did you have for your life? Did you always want to live outside the box, or did it come later? Was it a surprise to you?

As a kid, I was hugely imaginative and full of spunk and determination. There have been times in my adulthood when I have felt these characteristics starting to wane under the weight of hardship, illness, or exhaustion. But they have always resurfaced. I am grateful to my parents for nurturing these things within me and giving me opportunities to learn resilience and practice self-confidence.

When I was a kid, I first planned to be a dentist. Later, I adjusted to teacher, and then, right after college, to professor. One of the reasons I thought being a professor was such a good idea was that I thought I would be able to arrange my classes so that I could still be at home with my kids most of the day, and I had visions of myself popping a baby on my back to take along with me to do my archival research or teach a class.

Ha. That is NOT how it worked out.

In some ways, I really did have to let go of my professional ambitions for a decade or so. I did so freely, knowing that what I truly believed, deep down, was that my children needed me with them and that I needed to be with my children. But it was not until I really let go of it -- stopping even trying to teach on the side -- that the door opened to what I think will actually be my longer-term and deeper professional work of writing and editing. I was tremendously surprised to feel this bubbling out of me once I finally decided to not try to do anything professional. Perhaps God was, over time, in fact leading me to this professional path that works in sync with my homemaking, homeschooling, and mothering, rather than in addition to it.

(5) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills do you feel like held you back from stepping outside the box sooner, if you wish you had? 

I don't think it could have happened sooner. I think my babies needed me just as I gave myself to them, and I don't think I had the energy to write in my first ten years of parenting (except for finishing my dissertation, I guess, which was about as hard as it sounds -- very hard). But what I did get to do during those years, in terms of the blend of professional and personal life that I eventually came to, was think. I thought all the time, and talked with my children, my husband, and my friends. And that helped the ideas to be ready for later.

One thing I do wish I had done differently in those years was to allow myself to be happy not fitting exactly into the SAHM mold. Being a homemaker creates opportunities; it does not hem you in according to a certain set of rules established by goodness-knows-whom. I made many outside-the-box decisions as a young homemaker, such as unschooling for certain seasons, refusing to travel in spite of family expectations, and other things; but I wish I had done it with more joy and confidence in my heart.

(6) What dispositions/ attitudes/ skills helped you cultivate the life you have now?

I have grown in acceptance of my freedom and my joy. I have, as I'm sure my friends and family can attest, a considerable backbone. If I make up my mind morally about something, I will not back down (unless I find I am wrong, of course!). And nothing galvanizes me like encountering a bully. But for the longest time, I made hard choices and defended myself and others against bullies with sadness, anxiety, and pain in my heart, always worried that I was doing the wrong thing, and even trying to get the bullies to like me.

Now, as I approach my fortieth birthday, I find that I am no longer trying to be friends with people who aren't good for me or to engage in practices that are not good for anyone. I try to reach out, to be honest and friendly and encouraging, but I am now better at investing my energies in people and things who are good for me. 

And I make a greater effort than I used to to pray for those who would box me up. But I no longer hand them the packaging tape!

(7) Where can people find you online?

Come visit me at my free substack newsletter, TheHollow, and also at Hearth & Field (where I am an associate editor) and at the Arena blog at Current, where I am a frequent contributor.

Didn’t I tell you this was a great interview? I’d love to hear: what struck you most? Leave a comment below.

And if you’re discerning your own move outside the box, Cultivating Clarity might be just the thing for you. Join us in a paid subscription for a weekly mix of essays on discernment, (prayer) journaling prompts, practical exercises to help in decision-making, and quarterly “office hours” for Q&A on all things discernment and decisions.

Subscribe now