Editor's note: A Place to Belong is the February pick for LDS Living Book Club.
I thought I knew exactly how my life would turn out by the time I was eight years old. My closest sister in age just got married and I had seen the same path play out with four other siblings: you go to college, get married, graduate college, have kids, then move to a small town. You live by nice neighbors who do nice things for you, and that’s all there was to it.
As I started my college career, I saw so many girls follow that same path I was sure I was on. But as time went on and graduation loomed near, I started to realize my life was not turning out like the cookie-cutter copy I had counted on. I officially came to the harsh realization that I would not be getting whisked away to some perfect small town to live by nice neighbors who would wave to me as I tended to the flowers on my front lawn. And I panicked.
My mind raced with questions, “Where will I live? What will I do as a career? What is my place as a woman in the Church, if I don’t fit the only mold I knew growing up?”
I don’t have all the answers to those questions yet, but last week’s A Place to Belong Q&A Event was a helpful pitstop on my path of study and prayer as I've started to realize that there is a place for me.
A Place to Belong is a compilation of essays by modern Latter-day Saint women, and as I looked at the panel of authors I saw women who more or less looked like your average female members of the Church. I didn’t think too much about it—until they started sharing their stories.
As they read portions of their essays, I found parts of myself in their stories. I have never before felt so seen as when Jenny Reeder said she has to “sleep on the laundry room floor during family Thanksgiving holidays because [she’s] the only single one.” That was me last year when our family home was bursting at the seams.
When I didn’t relate directly, my understanding of what a Latter-day Saint woman “looks like” expanded. I listened to stories of surviving cancer, experiencing suicidal ideation, and understanding same-sex attraction. They shared stories of motherhood, of careers, and of education. There were stories by people from New York, Ghana, and France. All of them had something different—majorly different—about them. And they all belonged in the Church.
As we got to crowd-sourced questions, co-editor Hollie Rhees Fluhman explained why they created the book. Her daughter had struggled to find her place in the gospel, and Fluhman knew that “she needed to hear from a lot of brilliant women about how they navigate their faith and women's issues.” As people see others go through similar experiences, they know they are not alone. That knowledge brings strength. I felt strength that night as I realized I wasn’t the only one who didn’t fit “the mold” my culture led me to believe is fact.
Fluhman went on to explain that most of the essays were written specifically for this book, and Alice Faulkner Burch told of how only months before she had felt inspired to write her essay, “Letter to My Black Daughter Never Born.” Co-editor Camille Fronk Olson said they searched for people from all over the world to include essays, “and the Lord blessed us with connections to find them.” These stories needed to be told, and the way was prepared.
“Every essay that I read just reinforces how significant it is for us to try to learn from all sorts of people, that there is no one single way to be a Latter-day Saint. There's no single way to be a Latter-day Saint woman,” said Janeice Johnson who wrote the essay, “I Never Planned to Go to Divinity School.”
“This is a place of belonging, not a place of perfection. It's not a place of cookie-cutter lives,” echoed Jeanette Bennett, author of the essay “I Thought I Would Take the Path More Traveled By.”
And though all of my problems were not solved by attending that event or by reading the essays from the book, I walked away with a calmer and more hopeful outlook about my place in the Church. Even though my life does not look the same as many of the women I admire, I know that I am living a rich life on the path that Heavenly Father has set out for me. My story is not their story. And neither is yours. There is no single way to be a Latter-day Saint woman, but we all can find our place to belong.
In our complex world, it's easy for modern Latter-day Saint women to feel they don't fit the mold, especially in a culture that often focuses on traditional values and picture-perfect families. A Place to Belong is filled with distinctive stories written by thirty-three modern women of faith who show from their own lives that there's more than one way to be a believing and contributing woman in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Available now at Deseret Book stores and at DeseretBook.com.