The Stories of Women

Posted by Leslie | February 5, 2010 | 12 Comments

Today’s interview is with Neylan McBaine, talking about the newly created Mormon Women Project.

LG: How did get started with The Mormon Women Project? Tell me how your own unique background and personal experience influenced your desire to explore LDS women?

NM: Growing up in New York City as the daughter of a professional opera singer, it never occurred to me that my Mormonism would force me to subdue the passions, talents and interests that made me a unique daughter of God. In fact, as a child and teenager, I participated in firesides in which my mother spoke about balancing it all: work, family, church service. I understood that my own mother — by only having one child and not having a temple marriage — wasn’t stereotypical, but rather than being ostracized for those variances I instead saw was the Church, as an organization, holding my mother up as an example of an accomplished, contributing and faithful representative of our people. And for me, in the environment in which I grew up, there was no one way to be a Mormon women: our Manhattan ward had the family of eight kids living in a three bedroom apartment and I knew a host of large families in the suburbs outside the city, but I also knew the woman who had gone back to business school when her children were in elementary school and had worked her way to being a managing director at Goldman Sachs. I knew the New York City Ballet dancer who had her children after her career was completed. I knew women who worked on Masters degrees at night school after their children were asleep, and mothers who strapped their children to their backs and explored every museum in the city.

Whether they were at home with children, pursuing careers or juggling outside interests with life at home, the role models I had growing up were empowered by the faith in God and the Church organization that brought us all together. To me, they seemed filled with confidence, ambition and an endless willingness to serve which was facilitated by the intimate society we shared at church and the power of the doctrine we studied. As I grew older, however, I realized that not every young woman growing up in the Church has this breadth of role models. Because our wards encompass people who live near us and therefore have similar socio-economic profiles to us, the immediate examples in our lives are women who likely follow similar templates. Of course, this is a wild generalization, but the stories are legion of the young woman who doesn’t quite fit into what she perceives to be the “mold” but doesn’t know where to turn to faithfully explore the unique facets of herself. Instead of feeling empowered by our doctrine of agency and individual worth, she is overwhelmed by the cultural and organizational expectations and determines there is no place for her. After 33 years living in New York, San Francisco and Boston, I have heard this story more times than I care to remember. My heart breaks every time.

What I find particularly interesting is that it is not just the women who make proactive choices to pursue schooling, a particular interest or paid work who feel out of place. It is also women to whom things happen that put them in non-typical familial situations: Women who get divorced, women who suffer from depression, women who can’t have children, women who lose children, etc. For some reason, we’ve come to a place in our church culture where most of our women feel guilty for not being what they think they’re supposed to be. The truth is, most of our women are not living in large suburban homes where Dad brings home plenty of bacon and the Spirit romps with the children in the backyard. At this point in the history of the Church, single women comprise our largest demographic category! More than half of our Church membership lives outside of the United States, many in circumstances that vary drastically from our Utah expectations. And yet many women still suffer from feeling out of place. We need examples of women who choose not to let these cultural pressures get them down but instead become even more committed to applying the Atonement in their lives.

As a writer, I have been focusing for several years about my experience growing up in the Church in New York City and I published a book of personal essays based on that childhood. After I finished that book, I was consumed with the idea of bringing other women’s stories to light. I literally stayed up nights thinking about how I would do it. And then in Spring 2009 a book called Mormon Women: Portraits and Conversations was published by Handcart Books. It featured interviews with fourteen outstanding LDS women (and my mother is slated for a later volume), and I loved every one of them, but I did hear the criticism that those fourteen women were too outstanding: untouchable, intimidating, in a different league from the rest of us who are trying to slog it out with our imperfect children at home. That’s when I determined that my project needed to focus on women’s choices, not their successes. It needed to show how we can be heroes of our own lives, even if we don’t pop up on Google. And so I began by calling a few friends I admire and it ballooned from there.

LG: What do you envision as the purpose and direction for the Mormon Women Project?What makes it unique?

NM:The Mormon Women Project has a very simple goal: Tell the stories of women who are faithful members of the Church and have made choices that are deliberate, confident and empowering. The project is an attempt to create a “virtual Relief Society” where we can broaden of definition of what it means to be a Mormon women. It is a library of templates showing the many ways we can be true to what is taught from the pulpit and yet still be individual, unique daughters of God. My hope is that, by bringing these women’s lives and choices to light, we will give ourselves greater confidence and we will empower the young women who are coming up behind us.

What makes this project unique is that these are stories that have not been told before in a public forum. These aren’t women who are “church celebrities” or who are skilled at telling their stories for fireside crowds. These aren’t even the women who would write their stories for Segullah. They are women who have crafted lives from a series of decisions, personal revelations and self-examinations that have unfolded over many years. The unusually long length of the interviews gives the reader the opportunity to really get a full sense of the subject and why her life has taken the direction it has. I feel that understanding the background and motivations contributes to dampening our tendency to judge. When you learn that a women has a quiver full of children because her own mother was infertile, or that a woman pursued a career because she suffered from post-partum depression, you’re much more likely to see the heroism in her story rather than the deviations.

Looking into the future, the goal of the Mormon Women Project will remain focused on highlighting women’s choices, but I will be branching out into a variety of media: photo essays, podcasts, video shorts. Establishing the project as a non-profit organization will, I hope, help us raise the funds to make these creative goals possible. Since the site went live several weeks ago, I have already received dozens of nominations of women we should interview, and thankfully, through a form on the site, I have thirteen amazing women who have volunteered to help me move the project forward from here.

LG: What have been the most interesting and rewarding aspects of this project? What have you gained from your interactions with various women?

NM:I have grown to love each one of the women profiled on the site. They probably don’t feel the same way about me — after all, I have been pestering and prodding them for photos, biographical details, edits, etc.! — but there have been numerous nights when I have laid in bed awake and in total awe of my latest interview subject. The hurdles women overcome to join the Church, the way women put the Atonement into practice, the unheralded but fulfilling ways in which women use their time, the commitment of our mothers…. It has all been immensely humbling and made me so proud of my people. We are so much stronger than the media or even we ourselves give us credit for! I feel like I’ve created for myself the best job on earth: Talk to interesting women all day long and then share their stories with the goal of strengthening the church I love so much. What could be better?

One thing that has touched me profoundly but that I did not anticipate was how being included in this project affects the interview subject’s sense of self-worth. Because many of the women on the site have not been profiled in other forums, they are flattered to know that what they’ve gone through will mean something to someone else. But it even goes beyond flattery: It’s a real sense of pride that they are contributing. That what they’ve gone through is worth something, that it counts.

This project, in the few weeks it has been available to the public, has taken on a life of its own. It’s not just something I do to keep my brain from melting when my kids are asleep. It is a movement that started with my being crazy enough to call up a few friends, but it is now touching a chord in our women across the Church. It has been immensely fulfilling for me spiritually and emotionally to have a part in it.

Neylan attended Yale University. She currently lives with her husband and three young daughters.

Neylan has been published in Newsweek, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Meridian Magazine, Segullah, and BustedHalo.com, among others. She is the Personal Voices editor of Dialogue. Her collection of personal essays, How To Be A Twenty-first Century Pioneer Woman, was published in 2008. She blogs regularly at www.neylanmcbaine.com.

Note: The Mormon Women Project is a separate endeavor from Mormon Women: Who We Are?(found at mormonwoman.org). These organizations have different objectives despite their similar titles.

Category: Daily Special

Comments

12 Responses to “The Stories of Women”

Sharlee
February 5th, 2010 @ 8:48 am

What a magnificent and important undertaking, Neylan! Bless you.
Dovie
February 5th, 2010 @ 9:19 am

I stumbled upon the site you talked about inadvertently linking from some other page and was transfixed. Over the course of a couple of days read every single interview. It is an important thing you are doing.
Kathryn Soper
February 5th, 2010 @ 10:15 am

Also: Neylan recently posted an awesome interview with Leslie on the MWP site. The quickness of this post is a quid pro quo measure.
Melissa M.
February 5th, 2010 @ 10:23 am

I just discovered the Mormon Women Project two weeks ago and was so impressed! Thank you, Neylan for launching this amazing site.
Sue
February 5th, 2010 @ 12:36 pm

I accidentally ran across the Mormon Women Project, too, and read several of the interviews. I liked the concept and intend to return.

I’m on my way right now to visit mormonwoman.org, not for the first time, I might add. What an uplifting and informative site for members and non-members alike.

Such abundance!

=)
jendoop
February 5th, 2010 @ 2:24 pm

Thank you for explaining Kathryn and Leslie. This virtual world can be confusing to navigate.
Michelle L.
February 5th, 2010 @ 2:39 pm

I’m so excited about your project Neylan! I too, visited your site a few weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I know so many fantastic women that it’s hard to know who to nominate first…
Selwyn
February 5th, 2010 @ 3:10 pm

I haven’t met a woman yet that isn’t amazing in several ways – and usually is oblivious to the fact. What a great project!
Whitney Johnson
February 5th, 2010 @ 7:34 pm

Terrific stuff Neylan. I love this point — this project has taken on a life of its own… how thrilling!
Johnna
February 5th, 2010 @ 8:12 pm

I found http://www.mormonwomen.com/ a couple weeks ago too. Fabulous. It’s cool to read some background on it.
m&m
February 6th, 2010 @ 1:38 am

There are some amazing stories there, Neylan. It’s great to get to know more of our sisters from many walks of life, from many nations, with many different life experiences. Thank you for bringing these stories together…and for all your hard work to make it happen!
Cissy
February 7th, 2010 @ 11:03 pm

Love this. I simply love this idea. One of my very favorite things about my ward is that there is such a diversity of ages and experiences…and I live in Utah Valley! I love learning from the women ahead of me; I love listening to their stories and finding out the “whys” of their lives. Thanks for finding another way for women to connect to and appreciate each other. We all just want to be understood.