The women I’ve talked to – every single one thinks of herself as small potatoes, a person of no significance. Some are certainly more visible than others. I’ve interviewed well-known artists and published authors and the founder of an international charity and the historian who researched copious amounts of LDS women’s history for decades. I’ve also interviewed women who aren’t known outside their families and stakes and small towns.

Everyone has something to share about God’s love, and those are the stories I’m looking for. And finding.

Here are my entries for 2023:

Sheila Prins-Knight, “Working Together in Small Branches,” Lelystad, the Netherlands:

“To me, the gospel is a way of living, it’s just who I am. The most important thing of living the gospel is following Christ, and the best way to follow Christ is to share and to help and to smile. I think what characterizes me is that I love to help others. … I love to see that in my children as well. My two older daughters chose not to go to church anymore, but they are such good people. They want to help, they want to serve. I received a phone call from a friend – she needed help with cleaning her house because she is injured. My oldest daughter volunteered to go do it. My other daughter heard about all the Ukrainian refugees and asked what she can do to help. That’s the strength of the Gospel – we can spread the love of Christ. Charity is so important. It’s not only serving in your calling and serving Church members, but serving all the people around you.”

Mandy Green, “Courage and Faith to Follow Through,” Herriman, Utah:

“One of the best gifts I’ve given my two girls and my son is the idea that you can do everything you feel prompted to do. When I grew up, the line was – you can be a professional or a mom, but you can’t do both. I no longer believe that. I am a much better wife, mom, human, and member of the Church, because I’m fulfilled as a person. Because I pursue things that light my soul on fire. Because I am alive as a spirit child of our Heavenly Parents.

“There are a lot of women who 100% feel called to motherhood and have no desire to go beyond that. I absolutely support that. I’m not saying that there’s one template. But that’s just it – there’s not one template. What I was taught was – this is the one template. But I think a reason I felt so empty and spiritually dead was I had not pursued the things that made my soul feel light and fire and love. I want my daughters and other women to know: you are here for a reason and whatever that reason is, you can pursue it tenaciously.” 

Melissa Tshikamba, “Self-love, Beauty, and Divinity in Blackness,” Utah:

“People paint what they know and it’s a reflection of themselves. It’s so funny – we had an assignment in school when we had to paint eyes. I painted my eye, my husband’s eye, and my dad’s eye. They happened to be of a different ethnicity. I didn’t pick doing that, that’s just me, that’s who I am. I painted what I knew. But I had people come up to me and say, “Oh, it’s so interesting that you’re painting a Black eye.” How is that interesting? I don’t go up to any white artists and say, “It’s so interesting that you paint white people, why do you do that? What makes you so interested in that?”

“It was interesting that people automatically thought diversity and painting different ethnicities was not the norm. Diversity is the norm – this whole world is very diverse, and I feel like art should reflect our world.” 

Ashli Carnicelli, “Seeker of the Divine,” Charleston, South Carolina:

“When I prayed as a little Catholic girl, I prayed to Heavenly Father, to Jesus Christ, and to Mary. I wasn’t sure if it was Mary I was connecting with, but I definitely felt something from a loving female. My little six-year-old self had a witness of a Heavenly Mother.

“When I was a new convert, I was in the Sunday School class for investigators and new people, and we sang, “O My Father.” I was sitting with one of the sister missionaries, and pointed to the lyrics and said, “Wait a minute, we have a doctrine that there’s a Heavenly Mother?” And she said, “Oh, yeah. We believe there’s a Heavenly Mother.” All the bells went off, and I practically leaped out of my chair. “I knew it!!!!! I knew it!!!!!”

Monica Packer, “Finding God By Finding Myself,” Salt Lake City, Utah:

“Making room for the human in myself has freed me up to make room for the human in the Church. I believe that the “true church” will be fully realized when Jesus is here, when He is at the head and humans aren’t in charge of anything. The truth to me is that God lets humans make mistakes, and that has freed me to stay in this particular faith. This is the church I want to be in. When I think big picture, there are so many pieces of the puzzle that we have that I don’t see reflected in other Christian faiths. There are pieces we could definitely work on – it would be remarkable to live up to our own doctrine of Heavenly Parents and have that reflected in how we structure the church, giving women more of a visible part.”

Rebecca Cheney, “Nearer to the Lord Through Music,” Orem, Utah:

“We sing music that by its very nature brings the Spirit because we’re singing about the Atonement, or the peace the Savior can bring into our lives, or faith, things where the Spirit is always there. I have no doubt the Lord is part of this work. We’re a very important missionary function of the Church, and He is part of what we are meant to be doing. The Spirit is what makes some of these songs so powerful.

“Last year in a General Conference, we sang “Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy” – the last verse says, “Trim your feeble lamp, my brother, some poor sailor tempest tossed, trying now to make the harbor, in the darkness may be lost.” Singing that and testifying of the lower lights burning, thinking about the power of being light for somebody else – even our little tiny light makes a difference.”

Esther Hi’ilani Candari, “Connecting Links,” American Fork, Utah:

“The reason I do these things is because of my faith. It’s not about connecting secular practices back to my faith. My faith informs the more secular aspects of my life—the reason I care so much about social justice, about representation in the arts is because I believe to the very roots of my soul that every human is valuable, that every culture is valuable, and everybody benefits from understanding that they are a child of God. They are made in the image of God. They have inherent value, inherent beauty because of that. If I see any lack in that understanding, I feel like it’s my responsibility as a person of faith to help spread that truth. My research and art are missionary work—I am striving to teach the pure doctrine of the eternal plan and help God’s children through what I’m doing. …

“I think there is great significance that one of the first terms used for God is Creator. God is first and foremost a creator. When humans exercise their creative capacities, it is a shadow of the Divine. When we honor that and share with each other, we are honoring and recognizing the divine in each other.”

Marci McPhee, “Go Far, Stay Long, Look Deep,” Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

“It is such a blessing to walk with God, to wake up in the morning and feel like I’m being sent on errands. I love being God’s errand woman. It’s a blessing to learn and grow and help other people learn and grow and heal. I am in a place of unmistakable privilege to have the flexibility and means to do these things, after two financially disastrous divorces. I liquidated everything and live minimally, and have a completely unexpected income that’s portable. My plan is to continue to go wherever God calls me and do whatever I’m called to do until my last breath.”

I haven’t started writing about Scouts for the “do a extreme thing” memoir, because well, I haven’t started my own efforts yet to pass off all the requirements (see: adult leadership unnecessary drama). 2024 will give me a lot of material to work with – I’m registered for Wood Badge.

9: I branched out in my writing with some new publications:

• Healing Powers: an Interview with Charlotte Condie, Wayfare Magazine, November 27, 2023
• Can I Speak Aloud About Menopause?, Exponent II blog, April 4, 2023
• Steps into the Dark: an Interview with J. Kirk Richards, Wayfare Magazine, January 6, 2023

8: Marci McPhee and I tackled Listen, Learn & Love: Building the Good Ship Zion with Richard Ostler – the third installment of the LLL series.

7: I’ve heard enough bits and pieces of Marci’s personal history that I wanted more details. So I interviewed her for the LDS Women Project: Go Far, Stay Long, Look Deep. My other favorite interview of the year was with childhood bestie Rebecca Cheney, and now we know why the Tabernacle Choir sounds amazing. Because it’s REALLY HARD to get in! Nearer to the Lord Through Music.

6: I took a flying leap into the unknown of self-publishing production with Russ Hinckley and his book, Beyond Belief. Learning Adobe InDesign for producing a book has been its own version of hell. I’ve learned a lot and I’m glad I did it, but I don’t know that I’ll be ready to try this again soon.

5: A couple of years ago, I interviewed Celeste Mergens for the LDSWP – she’s the founder of Days For Girls, an international nonprofit that provides reusable fabric menstrual supplies and education to women and girls around the world. She recently released her memoir and was in DC for a book tour presentation, and I made sure to be there. So great to meet her and get my book signed!

4: It was the year for meeting people in person … I went to lunch with Charlotte Condie when she was visiting her sister about an hour from me. I broke an internet rule and invited Jeff Andersen and his family to my HOUSE for dinner just based on Instagram conversations, but all is well, he’s not an axe murderer. He is a strong LGBT ally, podcaster, and writer, and his wife is just as awesome. Instagram friends are real friends!

• Charlotte is an artist on Instagram.
• Jeff is a progressive mover and shaker in the LDS Insta-ward.

3: The LDS Women Project had an in-person event in Washington DC, and for the first time in three years of working together, the editorial board was all in the same place at the same time. Liz gave a great presentation on her dissertation about cultural narratives among LDS women and how they affect our perceptions of ourselves and our place in the world.

2: I spoke in church on Mother’s Day about Heavenly Mother – I’ve never heard a talk or lesson about Her in a church setting, ever. I was requested by the Relief Society president, and I’m still curious (although I’ll probably never know) what she said to get this idea past the bishopric. It was interesting to me that the most feedback I got was from men, who thanked me for bringing up this doctrine because they’d never thought about it before.

1: By far, the top thing of 2023 was publishing Cherish, and being with Ashli and McArthur for a 4-day book tour in Utah. More meeting people in person! Lots of them! In Utah, I had breakfast with podcasters Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward (At Last She Said It), and dinner with Monica Packer (About Progress). I met lots of contributors to Cherish. But most importantly, I met – after working together for a year and a half – Ashli. We had both spent time with McArthur in 2022 when she did a speaking tour on the East Coast, but it was the first time Ashli and I were together. All the way around, creating the book and talking about it has been one of the pivotal experiences of my life.

I’m reviewing plans for 2024 this week, but it definitely includes more Cherish, more LDSWP, more Scouts, and more writing of my own.

Small But Important Things with Rhina Toledo, by Jenny Willmore. Rhina is from the Philippines, then moved to Spain and started learning Spanish online … from a man in Mexico. She eventually went to Mexico and married him, and they now have three children and she is a teacher.

“We all know that we should be followers of Christ. But I think that my personal mission has been to put effort into the small but important things, maybe to overcome the weaknesses that I have, to improve better day by day, and to keep trying even when I make mistakes.”

Turn On Our Light with Alejandra Salas, by Jenny Willmore. Alejandra is in Argentina and started a podcast and website, Refugios Fuertes, to translate LDS faith-based materials (like the LDS Women Project) from English to Spanish. She and her partner have begun translating some of the LDSWP interviews into Spanish with cross-posting on both websites. So we interviewed her AND she’s part of the LDSWP team now!

“I see that a lot of women, like me, feel insignificant when thinking of how to help in such a depraved world with our “tiny” talents. We think maybe we can’t change anything and that makes us delay our small but good initiatives. But what if we decide to think differently about our talents? Each one of us could use her talents to do something small and afterward pray, asking Heavenly Father to consecrate that small effort so that it might be magnified and be of benefit to someone. We have to motivate ourselves to turn on our light, because as small as it may be, it is still brighter than the darkness of the world.”

Celebrating Cultural Differences with Maya Yerman Sanchez, by Allie Brown. Maya is a Mexican-American who spent her teen years bouncing between the US and Mexico, attending the LDS boarding school in Mexico City for high school. (The high school was closed a few years ago, and the campus is now the Mexico City Missionary Training Center.) Her husband is also Latino and they now live in Texas.

“I just want to be sure I share my appreciation for what our multicultural church has taught me. The Church is the same everywhere, and yet it’s also so different, and that is beautiful. The cultural differences are something that should be celebrated – they really bring different layers to spiritual understanding, and spiritual connection. It has influenced who I am and who I will become.”

The Pretend Investigator with Eileen Velasquez, by Darcey Williams. Eileen is a Latina who grew up in the US, and joined the LDS Church as a young adult when she helped her friend prepare for a mission by letting him practice the lessons with her. She served her own mission in the Dominican Republic, and eventually married another missionary who is Dominican, and they now live in Montreal. Covering a lot of territory!

“I think everyone is friendly in the Church wherever you go. It’s really nice when you go to a different country and you can still expect to feel at home. I’ve been lucky because I’ve been able to speak the language everywhere I’ve been, so I’ve never felt out of place. … Here in Canada, it’s really fun because there are people from all over the world. We have members from Nigeria, from Ukraine, from all parts of Latin America, the Philippines, China. Everyone here is friendly and I think it’s exciting because you hear all of these languages spoken at church and it’s really fun.”

I appreciated that she called out this cultural problem Mormons have – we are so kind to people outside our church and faith who are different, but someone INSIDE the church who is unique? Not so much. Mormons do NOT like it when other Mormons do not fit neatly into our stereotype, to the point that the “foreigner” is treated quite poorly and openly told that they are wrong for how they live their life. It’s really pathetic.

“Something I’ve noticed within the Church culture – when we meet somebody who breaks the mold or doesn’t fit in, a lot of times, we just don’t know how to find common ground. Working with someone from another country and another culture is almost easier than meeting someone who is different within our own culture or our own society. In our mind, we have a category to put them in. If they’re from a foreign country, we can dismiss anything that might not align with our personal thoughts and feelings because it’s different, it’s foreign. But when you have somebody who is different within your own ward or social group that may challenge your thoughts and feelings, we haven’t quite figured out how to compute that.

“Finding common ground and creating understanding – I think that’s what has really helped me speak with people who are outside my own culture. I’ll be honest, I don’t think I even have a culture – I live in both the military culture and the LDS culture. My feet are in two different cultures and I bounce back and forth. Common ground and understanding are how you find a way to communicate your feelings effectively, because while different, I’m a sister just like you.“

In all of the social justice unrest of 2020, Alexandria looked for resources to teach her small children about antiracism but couldn’t find any, so she made one herself. Her own educational background is in nonprofits and education, so here we go!

“Every kid wants to be loved, wants to learn, wants to play, wants to feel and know that they’re special. We want kids to learn that when they meet people who they might not think they have much in common with, to remember that actually, “ditto,” they do! We can embrace our similarities, celebrate our differences, and care for and support each other and advocate for each other’s fair treatment.”

The main thing that stood out is she believes in angels. She believes that people from the Other Side have helped her throughout her life. She believes that we can be angels to each other.

From the interview:

“I’ve taught them to fast at critical moments in their lives – we call it two out of three. For example, if you’re considering marrying Susie, you need to think about it logically. You might write down everything you like about Susie, everything you don’t like about Susie. Look at the things you don’t like and think – can I live with those personality traits for an eternity? I’m not ever going to change Susie – this is what she is, can I live with these traits? Then do a fast three times, maybe a month apart, and ask, “God, is this the right decision? If this is right, please bless me with peace of mind.”

“That’s how I taught them. To use fasting, prayer, and listening. I think the answers come but we get up too quickly from our prayers. We need to stay on our knees a bit longer and think more, listen, and just see what our feelings are. Sometimes in our busy, busy lives, we say a prayer and jump up and go. We’re busy. Sometimes the answers are coming, we’re just not listening.”

She lives in Washington, so the virus got to her first. And she got sick from it pretty early also, but fortunately recovered well and was back to work. We got into the weeds of what changed in her hospital work when the pandemic was announced, and she gave me some pretty graphic descriptions of what exactly it means to put someone on a ventilator.

If you needed a reminder, this virus isn’t a game. I know there’s fatigue. I KNOW. This is one of the challenges of our generation, and let’s come out the other side as better people.

The name change is because of Church rebranding a couple of years ago to decrease the use of “Mormon” and focus more on the Savior Jesus Christ. We certainly are not decreasing our use of the actual Book of Mormon, just not identifying ourselves with that moniker. The people of this particular church are the “Latter-day Saints” – LDS – part of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” so we went with that in finalizing the name change. We belong to the Church of Jesus Christ, and we are Latter-day Saints.

The website has gotten a total overhaul, but the Project is the same. We will continue focus on Interviews and gospel Essays in Discipleship as our primary publication. We also have special series and other resources for women, and men working with women, within this specific faith structure. We hope to be more consistent with podcast episodes going forward, and begin to provide online seminar events.

Way before any of that, I knew Melodie when she was 13 – we went to the same church. My most distinct memory was shortly after I moved to Mississippi, I was recruited as a last-minute adult leader for the Young Women camp. Melodie was in my group. She had recently been baptized so I was caught off guard when there was some kind of trivia game about the scriptures, and she knew every. single. answer. All of them. She took down the entire camp. I asked one of the other leaders, “I thought you said she barely got baptized.” She had. But she’d been going to church for a long time with her grandmother, and her mother had just recently given permission for her baptism. She had an amazing level of faith and commitment to the Lord, well beyond what I observed in her peers.

I observed her BYU activism over social media and was so happy when she agreed to an interview for MWP – I wanted her to be included and to record a small portion of her personal story. She did a lot of good work in Provo, and I’m excited to support her as a friend in her future activism.

I immediately sent her a DM on Instagram and asked for an interview for the Mormon Women Project and was so happy when she said Yes! I called the phone number she gave me to set up a time, and she had some time so we just did the interview right then. You can read it here:

THROUGH THE EYES OF A MOTHER

“What I’ve come to find is that being a mother has completely informed my art.”

I love that she said this, and I’ve found the same thing. My art is writing and editing nonfiction memoir memory type of things, not painting, but I am also compelled to make motherhood a centerpiece of my work. I produce these interviews and research women’s history to find strong role models for my daughters. I am delighted to add Rose to that roster.