Monsters and Mormons: The Living Wife

As I mentioned here, the new anthology Monsters and Mormons will be publishing my story “The Living Wife.” And since it’s a ghost story, we are posting an excerpt for Halloween. This section takes place after Zina, who can see ghosts, discovers that her new husband is actually a widower, and that she will be [...]

All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day

One family, we dwell in Him; One church above, beneath; Though now divided by the stream, The narrow stream of death. One army of the living God, To His command we bow; Part of the host have crossed the flood And part are crossing now. —Charles Wesley (1701-1778) November 1st, 2007, Munich, Germany. Slowly, aimlessly, [...]

Random thoughts

All month long a variety of pressing blog-post topics have been turning over in my mind. Last month I had an entire post written in my head the very day after I wrote about hair. “Ah, but I don’t post for another month,” I said. Then the end of September suddenly became the end of [...]

Once in a Lifetime

I’ve never had much of a ‘bucket list’, but there is one major accomplishment that has been a goal of mine for as long as I can remember: I wanted to be on the game show Jeopardy! I started reading at a young age and I have loved learning ever since. In high school I [...]

Nectar

Just a few weeks ago, we pulled heavy frames from our hives, sliced away the wax and harvested fifteen bottles of liquid gold. It’s a modest harvest, but miraculous for first-year bee keepers. We’ve been enjoying the fruits of our bees’ labors on our toast, oatmeal and in a few batches of baklava, ever [...]

Unpacking Boxes

“Yeah, G’day, it’s Barry here, the removalist. Look, we won’t be up your way next week after all – we’ll be there Friday afternoon, Saturday morning instead. That’s this week, love. See ya then!” And that’s how my move – initially planned to stretch over three weeks – condensed into four days of madness. I’m [...]

Coming Clean

Over the years I’ve watched my husband try a myriad of diets: the Beach diet, the Fat-Flush diet, low-carb/high-fat diets, low-fat/low-carb diets, a raw vegetarian diet that gave him bad breath for weeks (all that garlic, all those weird spices–ughh), even the infamous lemonade diet (lemon juice mixed with maple syrup and cayenne pepper, consumed [...]

Thoughts on Thirty

Our post today comes from a new staff member, Sandra Jergensen. Sandra recently moved to Texas by way of Baltimore and San Francisco and is adjusting to life in the suburbs. She loves sunlight, bold colors, and exquisitely dark chocolate. She also devours cookbooks like novels and writes a bit at www.section89.com. I am turning thirty this [...]

A Blessing for Mothers’ Day

“Mothers’ Poem” was collectively written by twelve women from the Santa Monica CA Stake on the occasion of Mothers’ Day, 2011. The genesis of the poem occurred at one of the Westdale II Ward’s Friday “Park Days” (moms chat, kids play). On one of these days, the topic of conversation was the article on Mormon [...]

Purring and Praise

Today’s post comes to us from our poetry editor, Lisa G. Lisa lives in the Pacific Northwest with her cat and assorted familial humans. She loves green, God, and puddles of sun. And of course, lots of great poetry flowing into Segullah’s 2011 poetry contest: http://journal.segullah.org/contests/#poetrycontest. Write on! My cat likes to bring [...]

Hallowed E’ens with Chris & Harald

As Angela reminded us with Thursday’s post, Halloween is just around the corner. Here’s a story that starts with entrails and ends up with lots of dead people that is still uplifting. I promise.

Boo Humbug

For many many years, I was ashamed to admit this, ashamed that it would reveal me as a party pooper or (worse) an uptight reactionary or (even worse) a selfish adult who can’t enjoy a holiday that’s mostly geared toward children (except when it’s geared toward grown women wearing “sassy” Minnie Mouse costumes, or, you [...]

Mock me, please

I have a friend named Rick. Rick suffers from severe cerebral palsy, which means he can’t walk, talk, or control most of his limbs most of the time. When you first see him, he’s odd-looking. Like, really odd-looking. He can’t really sit up, having a body that resembles mushy applesauce, so by necessity he is [...]

Walking Barefoot at the Fourth Hole

This post (originally written two years ago) is the last in a series of posts about my grandparents. Thanks for sharing memories with me. We’ve been coming here for four years now, so I guess you could call it a tradition. Each summer my parents, siblings, and their families gather for a three-day weekend at [...]

The Magical Power of Deadlines

The deadline for Segullah‘s annual writing contest is December 31. I confess, I love a good deadline. Occasionally I’ve had enough discipline to write, revise, polish, and submit something without a deadline. Mostly not, though. Case in point: my story “The Living Wife” will appear in the upcoming Monsters and Mormons anthology. I had an [...]

Discovering Jane

Today’s guest post comes from Charise Hansen. Chariese has been trying to adjust for the past four years to the arctic climate in Minnesota, and is still failing miserably. She is also the mother to 5 children, the latest of which came from China; he is quickly becoming the world’s most spoiled little boy with [...]

Not Your Mother’s Salon

A “salon” is defined as a gathering of eminent people, held to increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation. The Mormon Women Project is holding their second annual salon event entitled, “Crafting a Deliberate Life: Making Choices That Are Purposeful, Personal, and Powerful” on Saturday November 5th, 2011 in the Joseph Smith Building in [...]

Prepare to be upLIFTed

Announcing another fabulous women’s event! The LIFT conference for women will be held on Saturday, October 29th, 2011 at the Orem High School Auditorium. Topics include improving spouse communication, letting go of anxiety and regret, and having hope when life brings its challenges. Liz Edmunds (star of the popular TV show, The Food Nanny) will [...]

A Call for Essays from BYU Women’s Services

Is beauty truth? Is truth beauty? In the eye of the beholder? Skin deep? A horse? BYU Women’s Services is calling for essays by women of all backgrounds exploring your idea of beauty. They are looking for your voices of truth about beauty for their campaign called, “Recapturing Beauty,” whose aim is to reshape our [...]

Teaching Your Child to Fail

It’s a beautiful fall afternoon: the sun is shining in an impossibly blue sky, the wind is whipping through the trees, and out on the field, six five-year-olds are chasing after a soccer ball. There’s my son, with the black “3” emblazoned on the back of his white jersey. You can tell which player he [...]

Taking Counsel

You just had a baby and your mom came to “help you out.” The baby won’t nurse, and your mom keeps offering earnest suggestions– hold the baby’s head like this, drink more water, try to get him started while he’s sleepy, make eye contact with him. When you’re not scouring the internet for suggestions, she’s [...]

Answering the Call to Nurture and Heal

Today’s guest post comes from Karen D. Austin, who lives in Wichita, Kansas with her husband Michael and their two children. After three decades working with younger adults, she’s pursuing a degree in gerontology so that she better understand the growth and development of older adults. As a recovering Type A personality, she must use any available free time to practice yoga, write haiku and read devotional literature [...]

You Are Invited…

You are invited to an evening of book talk with the authors of WOMEN OF CHARACTER: Profiles of 100 Prominent LDS Women (published by Covenant Communications, May 2011) Susan Easton Black and Mary Jane Woodger Saturday, October 22, 2011 7:30 p.m. Sons of Utah Pioneers Building 3301 East Louise Avenue (2920 South), Salt Lake City [...]

Looking in the eyes, looking on the heart

So far in my short journey into parenthood, I have struggled in particular with one of my children. Although this child is extremely bright and cheerful, I don’t understand many of his/her (used to protect anonymity!) choices, I don’t “get” his/her motivations or reactions. Because of this, I’m often frustrated with this child. It seems [...]

Pictures of the Dead

Even though I feel comfortable blogging about almost anything, there is one thing I have never written about: I had a stillborn baby. It was many years ago and it was very sad and really, what is there to say? One day I was happily six months pregnant and the next day I was having [...]

You don’t need a pillow to be happy

It was a simple place, this provincial Cambodian town near the border of Vietnam—a collection of stilted houses, animals, and some small businesses. No grocery stores or anything like that, just a market consisting of wooden stalls and stands and piles of food spread out on tarps. Fish flopped in metal tubs; slabs of meat [...]

Best Conference Ever

It’s a good thing I watch General Conference at home. For one thing, you can’t eat strawberry/Nutella/whipcream crepes at church and I might get some funny looks at the stake center or downtown when I exclaim, “Yes!” and pump my fist in the air whenever a speaker says something I particularly like. My children and [...]

Feasting on the…

Is it just me, or does everyone think long and hard about what special foods they’ll eat during General Conference? As a child, my food association with conference was a special treat bag assembled by my mother, the contents revealed to us only after we were settled into the church pews. In college, watching conference [...]