Rewilding Motherhood

Women are often told by their communities that being a mother will complete or define them. But many mothers find themselves depleted and spiritually stagnant amid the everyday demands of being a mom. They long to experience a rich inner life but feel there is rarely enough time, energy, or stillness to connect with God in a meaningful way. This book takes the concept of rewilding and applies it to motherhood. Just as an environmentalist seeks to rewild land by returning it to its natural state, Shannon Evans invites women to rewild motherhood by reclaiming its essence through an expansive feminine spirituality. Drawn from the contemplative Catholic tradition and Evans's own parenting experience, Rewilding Motherhood helps women deepen their connection to God through practices inherent to the life they're living now. Topics include work-life balance, identity, solitude, patience, household work, and mission for the common good. Throughout, Evans encourages women to see motherhood as an opportunity to discover a vibrant feminine spirituality and a deeper knowledge of God and self.

From the external worlds of race and gender to the internal world of family life, taps into what is wild and good in all of us

A joyous portrait of modern femininity and a frolicking celebration of women's camaraderie Over the past ten years, Cass Bird (born 1974) has established herself as one of the foremost portraitists of contemporary America. Her photographs of young women and men casually draw attention to the fluid expression of gender roles and androgyny in today's youth culture, and to what she has described as "the convergence of alternative lifestyles with accepted conceptions of motherhood, nurturing and family." In the summers of 2009 and 2010, Bird traveled to Sassafrass, Tennessee, with a group of young women, a wardrobe of diaphanous dresses and a camera. These women--studio assistants, friends, or women cast from the streets of New York--had been selected by Bird for their ease with their sexual identities, but also for their relative awkwardness in front of the lens. The result was Rewilding, a joyous portrait of modern femininity and a frolicking celebration of women's camaraderie.

Join a respected Jungian analyst for a deep dive into the emotional and symbolic journey of motherhood. Motherhood is the true hero’s journey—which is to say that it can be as harrowing as it is joyful, and enlightening as it is exhausting. For Jungian psychoanalyst Lisa Marchiano, this journey is not just an adventure of diaper bags and parent-teacher conferences, but one of intense self-discovery. In Motherhood, Marchiano draws from a deep well of Jungian analysis and symbolic research to present a collection of fairy tales, myths, and fables that evoke the spiritual arc of raising a child from infancy through adulthood. After all, this kind of storytelling has always been one of the most important conduits of humanity’s collective wisdom—and Marchiano provides each tale alongside keen insights into the timeless archetypes they represent. Balanced with real-life case stories from Lisa’s own practice and in-depth questions for personal reflection, Motherhood explores how events like pregnancy, the calamities of childhood, and the empty-nest experience are invitations to an adventure into the wild frontier of your own soul. Here you will discover: • How the challenges of motherhood send you on journeys into your innermost source • Seeing the value of conflict with your child even while working to solve it • “The dark passage” of confronting and dispelling the energy of childhood wounds • “The thirteenth fairy”—how to recognize when we are resisting inconvenient or uncomfortable truths • Understanding how anger, rage, and aggression arise in parental relationships • Recognizing the ways that you have been taught to ignore your deepest instincts • How to navigate the inevitable periods of grief that accompany your child’s many life changes • Why much of successful mothering requires surrendering your sense of control With Lisa’s gentle but straightforward guidance, you’ll return from this inner journey in possession of the treasured knowledge needed to clarify your values, embrace your disowned parts, and claim the mantle of motherhood in the full bloom of your empowerment.

In this collection, authors transgress and uphold their maternal integrity as they dance at the edge of comfort and take up the challenge of exploring the boundaries of maternal practice– their own, their mothers, and those found in literature, media, or popular culture. These mothers assume a hopeful stance; actively choose courage over comfort; push through what is fun, fast, or easy, and show how they come to mother outside the lines in all its simplicity and complexity. As they bust outdated, tired, and ambiguous boundaries, they find and (re)set new boundaries that restore dignity and self-respect for themselves, their children, their families, and for the matricentric feminist collective, particularly those whose voices may continue to be silenced and marginalized by structures and limits beyond their control. Thirteen stories are threaded together to form a compelling tale showing how and why some mothers, when faced with ambiguous and untenable boundaries, resist the urge to accept the assumed, the unpredictable, even the demanded– whether they be internal or external, visible or invisible, real or imaginary.

Spiritual language is often male-focused, overlooking the uniquely female experience. Author Shannon K. Evans believes our daughters deserve better. Evans wrote Feminist Prayers for My Daughter as a gift to mothers and women everywhere. It offers short prayers that affirm the unique challenges and embrace the natural abilities embodied by our daughters, young and old alike. Categories of prayers include embodiment, relationships, wholeness, justice, equality, and milestones. This book encompasses all of life from birth to death while imagining God in ways that resonate with the feminine experience. For mothers, grandmothers, mentors, and beyond, this prayer book provides a poignant and powerful path to both encounter God personally and seek the well-being of the daughters in our lives. It gives words to a mother's desires for her daughter in the modern world and breathes hope for a church that will give her equal power.

Loving your body is hard to do. Project Body Love is the story of my quest to find acceptance, respect, and maybe even love for my body after spending a lifetime counting calories and drops of sweat. What followed was a two-year series of experiments that had me mining the depths of my past, dismantling the effects of Diet Culture on my self-worth, taking up bellydancing, posing for nude photographs, and other daring feats of self-exploration. Far from being a shiny tale of self-actualization, Project Body Love explores the complexity of being a fat person in a thin-obsessed world, and concludes with an entirely new perspective on the elusive body love - one that was surprising, even to me. This is my story, and so much of it is also the story of millions of other women. And so. I wrote this for every woman who has spent too much time trying to make herself small. I wrote it for every woman who wants to love her body, but can't figure out how. I wrote this for a world that needs its women committed to revolution and sovereignty and joy, not eating more salad.

In this memoir, Maureen O'Brien reflects on the gospel story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes and what she learns about herself, the people around her, and a fragmented but still beautiful world. While she’s sharing her story of finding God’s love, she’s also sharing the stories of so many others, known and cherished by God even when the world leaves them shattered, finding their way through the world and feasting on the fragments of grace that are always in abundance if we learn to look, to see, to accept, to share.