Vol. 41 No. 1 – Summer 2021
At a time when physical touch has been restricted and limited due to social distancing, what have we learned about the significance of touch as embodied souls?
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At a time when physical touch has been restricted and limited due to social distancing, what have we learned about the significance of touch as embodied souls?
In March of 2021, I received a message that my grandpa — who’d been mowing his own lawn the day before — had experienced a
Forgive yourself now and each morning for your 9-5 job, teleworking instead of homeschooling. You do what you can, checking in every few hours, stroking their soft hair, less teacher and more reminder that you’re there, a waiting hug if they need one.Drink water. Go for a walk. Get plenty of rest.Wear the elephant necklace your sister sent last year for your birthday. Wear the elephant leggings your mom sent early for your birthday.Forgive yourself for deleting the teachers’ copious emails and trust your children, for the most part, to take charge of their own learning. Your gentle steerage is […]
Watching a live performance…that intangible feeling becomes tangible for a brief time.
They pulled you from me When your body Could not find its way. A rescue. I cried. Knowing you’d be spared The pain your brother was not. Your journey was quick: Hands like nets brought you Out of the waters Into breath. Emily Feuz Jensen is a writer, mother, cat-lady, and creative writing instructor based in Tremonton, Utah. Twitter: @EFeuzJensen (Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash)
I work in customer service. After hanging up on a rude customer, I scream obscenities, burst into tears, and rush outside to sit on our back porch, body curled over my knees. My dad — visiting from out-of-state, a calculated risk in August 2020, before vaccines and at the height of anti-mask sentiment — rushes to ask if I’m okay while my husband tries to calm our six-month-old. I don’t know what’s wrong. I feel unmoored. Numb. I fantasize about being dead. An abrupt disconnect. A cessation. An absence of feeling. My husband is a therapist, and I’ve been in enough therapy […]
Another mandate to shelter in place. I will have to call Mom, un-invite her to come to the Thanksgiving feast we’d planned. No key lime for Kim, no sleepover, no hotel pool. How could I forgive myself, Lady of Lonely Holidays, if I were the cause of her falling ill? Her cancer-battled body, her oxygen tanks and inhalers. O Lady, give me guilt. Give me guts. I texted her weeks ago about the 20-something friends — Nerem and Norem — their 36-hour hug that broke the Guinness World Record. Let’s do this, I said. Okay, she said. We were going […]
Hotel Utah, completed in 1911, was a Beaux-Arts terra cotta architectural masterpiece on the corner of Main Street and South Temple in Salt Lake City. Topped with a beehive feature that spoke to Mormon ideals of industriousness, the building embodied the city’s early 20th-century impulse to exhibit its “coming of age” as an American metropolis. The hotel hosted VIP guests, including President John F. Kennedy and entertainers like Ella Fitzgerald. A crowning jewel in the city’s landscape second only to the temple, the hotel became known as Salt Lake City’s “Elegant Lady.” In 1978, it was added to the National […]
On October 21, 2020, I watched the most important thing in my life burn to the ground — via a live internet stream. The Troublesome Fire — the second largest fire in Colorado history — took my family ranch, the Bar DM, at the headwaters of the Colorado River. I cannot even calculate the value of what was lost: fifty years of family history, the 200,000 acres of forest surrounding our ranch, the herds of elk and moose I had grown up with that inhabit Rocky Mountain National Park. But most devastatingly, the fire took the lives of my second […]
Q: Why hasn’t the Mormon guy I’m dating held my hand yet?A:(a) He knows you just came home from your mission and doesn’t want to pressure you(b) The Mormon physical intimacy runway before marriage is short and he’s trying to stretch it out(c) He is secretly gay(d) These aren’t dates! You thought these were dates? How embarrassing! He’s just being nice to you, and he actually has a girlfriend in another ward who he suspiciously has never mentioned. So weird that you misread the situation so badly.This is what I was puzzling as I got ready for my eighth date […]
Exponent II provides feminist forums for women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum to share their diverse life experiences in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. Through these exchanges, we strive to create a community to better understand and support each other.