For most of my life, my story was dictated to me. God had already planned my days, and if I wanted to honor him, I was supposed to follow my father’s interpretation of the Bible in order to fulfill God’s plan.

I was always a secondary character in this story. One could say the protagonist was God, the controller of the universe, but since he’s invisible, his stand-in was my father, eventually to be replaced by my future husband.

I remember once as a twenty-four-year-old, when I was trying to assert myself, I was told, “You can think whatever you want, but you can’t act on it.” That statement encapsulated the essence of the spiritual abuse I was experiencing…

November Update

When I was little, I used to fold pieces of printer paper, staple them together, and write “nature books” in the pages. I loved watching Reading Rainbow because I could learn about new books to borrow from the library. I couldn’t wait till bedtime when my mom read me stories before I fell asleep. In short, I’ve always been obsessed about reading and writing and stories, so it’s probably no surprise that I now work in publishing and spend much of my spare time reading and writing.

For the past few years, I’ve been working on creative nonfiction essays, threads of my life in the Christian patriarchy movement as a stay-at-home daughter. And now I’m starting to weave these threads together into a memoir. It’s not finished quite yet, but I’m getting close. I can feel it coming together. Finally.

Which brings me to some exciting news . . .

Complexity and the Power of Stories

You never know who will be impacted by your story.

More than ten years ago, I was a stay-at-home daughter, waiting around for a man to marry me and wandering in Borders bookstore looking for something to read in the meantime.

I was about to leave the store when a book with the image of a girl’s face stood out to me. The book was called Paper Towns. I’d never heard of it, but something about it made me know I needed to bring it home . . .