Diamonds for Our Children Katie Jo LaRiviere

And then, then the music in my head stopped and everything went silent. In the rearview, I looked past your little ponytail to see a mini van hurtling over the center line….

Join me this week to hear the rest of the story and celebrate the finale of DOC’s first season. I’ll be wrapping our first season with some thoughts for retreat, some resources for pause, a poetry reading, and a FUN announcement! You don’t want to miss this one!

This week DOC hosts Sr Miriam James Heidland, SOLT, for a conversation full of love and healing. We discuss spiritual motherhood, authentic Catholic femininity, and living a life of tender mercy. This conversation will have you in all of the motherhood feels.

This week I speak with Rebecca Field about radical love, journeying to motherhood through the foster care system, academic motherhood, and carving a third way through tender mercy.

Bec affirms that living a combined vocation as professional AND mother expresses a deeply empowered feminism.

Join us for an amazing conversation that reminds us that motherhood comes in many different forms, and all of them express true love.

This week, we add our voices to raise awareness for Black Maternal Health Week and to honor Black motherhood. DOC is joined in conversation by Cessilye R. Smith, founder and executive director of Abide Women’s Health Services in Dallas, TX. Inspired by Smith’s commitment to “living in the gray,” we discuss what it means to be countercultural and how we must all resist systemic injustice and oppression by rejecting false categories and affirming the deep human dignity of every person. This is a powerful, vulnerable conversation with someone I deeply admire. Don’t miss it!

This week we welcome Carolina Allen of Big Ocean Women to talk about maternal feminism and empowered motherhood. In founding Big Ocean Women, Carolina sought “to gather women and create pockets of light and safety all over the world.” The mission of Big Ocean Women, which we'll talk about together today, sets this vision into motion in the most beautiful, organic, and dignified way. 

One of my favorite saints, Edith Stein, or Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, whose philosophy is settled deep within my heart, once said, "The world does not need what women have, it needs what women are." And I think today's conversation with Carolina Allen affirms this point. Our dignity as women, and our contribution to the success of the world, does not depend on what we can produce, how we can contribute to capital, what we can own. These are all secondary to what we are. And what are we? In all the diverse capacities we choose to live it out, we are life-givers. If you're giving life to your children (biological or not) or to your colleagues, or to your friends, or to the strangers around you, then at least in some small way you are living the power of femininity. And yes, it is power. It is the power of love in a person's life, however you show it, that sticks. I can't wait for you to hear more about this from Carolina Allen, founder of Big Ocean Women.

The systems of the holobiont do not calculate the costs of survival; they simply do the work that is in front of them. Of course these thousands of organisms do not feel they are loving in doing what they do. Nevertheless, they reflect the love with which we are to act, that is, they give of themselves without regard to the worthiness of their beneficiary. The mystic, monk, and scholar Thomas Merton makes a similar argument: "Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can." Indeed, love, in this world, is always a mercy, a gift offered from the self for the sake of the other, and not a reward for good behavior. Still more, this love is a necessity for daily living, like water and food. Feed the hungry, with your love, dear one. Make your life a series of tender mercies.