A few somewhat catastrophic things have recently happened in my immediate family. My youngest brother is in jail, awaiting sentencing for his crimes, and my parents are likely getting a divorce. I am realizing just how fragile everything is. Relationships. Mental health. How do we take care? How do we really stop and realize that everything can change in a moment? While tiny, small decisions can add up, there are so many factors that go into every decision. Lyrics from various songs have been swirling around in my mind, including Mason Jennings’ line, “Life is something that you can’t control, when you try to hold onto it, it makes you let go.”
These heavy things have happened, and yet, I am still here. This might be the mantra for many of our contributors for this issue. Navigating tension appears to be the heart of this open-themed collection. Even with all the hurt, we remain. We can feel such pain and yet also be so resilient. Hope can grow through those cracks as we breathe into the “knowing” that we are all doing the best we can.
This open-themed issue reveals the things our writers are thinking about, puzzling over, and processing without a specific prompt. Their voices invite us to reflect on what we, too, are going through at this individual yet collective moment in time.
These pages include a dazzling array of poems. We also include artwork by many talented artists, including Morgan Casey and Christine Ricks — Exponent II’s selected winners of the 2024 Certain Women Art Contest. In other pieces, we witness deep spiritual wrestles and the discomforts, epiphanies, or tentative peace that follows. We see important reckonings with tension in Emily Thrasher’s short fictional story, which depicts a man reckoning with God as Heavenly Mother. In “Dear Emily, who is dead,” Linda Hamilton speaks directly to the woman she is doing work for in the temple. Shayla Frandsen lyrically reflects on her child’s potential through the lens of her own upbringing and hopes. In Julia Chiou Knutson’s piece, she learns to let go of old narratives in order to live more fully. In both Hadley Duncan Howard and Sydney Prichett’s essays, we see the narrators come to a spiritual peace of their own making.
This issue also makes space for queer journeys and the various tensions they have faced, which offer testimonies about the power of love over fear and hate. From our book review of The Book of Queer Mormon Joy to Rosalyn Eve’s Sabbath Pastoral, we celebrate all spiritual paths. We see this poignantly in Alma Frances Pellett’s essay on shopping for gender-affirming garments and also in Dani Blatter’s theology piece on how her trans coming out experience resembled scriptural descriptions of being born again. These women’s stories show the Church’s recently passed trans exclusion policy as the fearful, phobic, and cruel policy that it is. We stand firmly against such bigotry and invite you to share these powerful personal witnesses, and other trans stories, with those who need it.
We have also brought back a fan-favorite “Sisters Speak” feature, highlighting responses to the Church’s March Instagram post that went viral after quoting Sister J. Anette Dennis’s claim: “There is no other religious organization in the world, that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women.” This outpouring of replies gives an important snapshot into our current moment. We know these voices — all of our voices — matter. We feature (with permission) just a few of the 17,400+ on the original post.
In my own wrestling amid this onslaught of family tensions, I have been again unlearning my judgments toward others — but also toward myself. For me, this is a time to slow down. Maybe the same is true for you. I’m grateful for those who articulate their truths that help me better see my own. I’m recognizing that I do not need to prove my worth to the point of exhaustion; I am already worthy and loved. I see the same in each and every brave voice, be it written or visual, in this collection.
We welcome our new readers and contributors, and we see you and appreciate those who have been supporting us for a few or many seasons. Whether you are a new subscriber or have been with us for fifty years, we welcome you to this space of trust, deep sharing, and active listening.
(Photo by Gaman Alice on Unsplash)
