By Kendahl Millecam Sexual abuse changes everything. It changes the way you relate to your parents. It changes the way you think about yourself. It changes the way you think about God. It changes the way you relate with those to whom you were previously attracted. It changes the way you experience people in positions …
Category: Issue 166
Being the Stepmom
By Karen Pellett Most teenage girls have a dream of the man they’ll one day marry. My personal dream was six foot tall with blonde hair and blue eyes. He would be brilliant, ambitious, and absolutely and madly in love with me. Those were just the basics, the stuff that wasn’t too much to ask. …
Toward a Feminist Mormon Midrash: Mormon Women and the Imaginative Reading of Scripture
By Robert A. Rees In the Jewish mind, . . . reverence for God’s word requires more creative attention. It requires an active, imaginative engagement with language. This is what imaginative reading ultimately requires: a willingness to step completely out of the boat and dive into the waters with a God who has declared …
Poem: Remembrance
By Melanny Eva Henson Remember when all us neighbors gathered in your driveway, for food and drinks and bonfire, And our families were whole, but we were broken? There was comfort in the ritual, the damp air embracing us and the children screaming in circles about the house. It almost didn’t matter that …
Poem: Innocence
By Richard Dinges, Jr Sad to say knowledge drips from poisoned fruit, original sin was disobedience, linked to trees that span death and eternity, roots forever digging into our past, beneath our soles, always looking for what we do not know to finish what we began.
Choice and Accountability
By Dana Haight Cattani Children are an heritage of the Lord . . . Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. —Psalms 127:3, 5 My friend Leah1 recently turned 30 and a few weeks later gave birth to her fourth child—an unexpected bundle of joy. Her eldest is six. The children …
Poem: Mitosis
By Noelle Carter To be a woman is to be heavy, to know the elements, one by one, to return to the earth which first gave life, to feel its weight, and to come forth again. A naiad is light and air in elusive flame. Her heart is bound to nothing and flies free. But …
An Almost Invisible Tragedy
By Jenni Brighton Just for today I hate everyone I know who is pregnant. And everyone who has gotten pregnant on the first month they tried, or who got pregnant without trying, or who didn’t want to get pregnant but did anyway. Just for today I hate everyone who has ever taken conception or pregnancy …
The One Who Never Left Us
By Janice Allred To what shall we attribute the silence surrounding the Mother in Heaven? Is it the silence of holiness? Is it the silence of fear? Are we awed by the weight of eternity, or do we take sacred things lightly? Do we listen for revelation, or do we disregard it? Can the silence …
Rediscovering the Legacy of Mormon Midwives
By Jenne Erigero Alderks Midwifery possesses a special role in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The significance of the work can be seen in the description of midwives as “high priestesses in the chamber of birth” in a 1915 article in the Relief Society Magazine on the heritage and …