Episode 225 (Transcript): Navigating the Fallow Years | A Conversation With Kajsa Berlin-Kaufusi
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener, Tara Larson, for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:
KB: I started to ask myself, rather than being the planter, maybe I am the soil and I'm this dark, moist, fertile soil, but I haven't spent enough time getting my hands dirty in my ownness, right? Like, the very foundational core elements of me, rather than trying to constantly plant and yield and produce. What if I've had everything that God intended for me to have within myself this whole time, but because I've been so obsessed with trying to grow something that I thought needed to grow out of the soil, that I haven't let what really needs to come out, come out?
SH: Hello, I'm Susan Hinckley.
CW: And I'm Cynthia Winward.
SH: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today's episode is “Navigating the Fallow Years, A Conversation with Kajsa Berlin-Kaufusi.” Welcome Kajsa.
KB: Thanks, you guys. I am so happy to be here and I was looking over some of this transcript and I didn't realize I've done this a couple times, so this is a really happy place.
SH: You've done this six times!
KB: Yeah!
SH: I couldn't believe it when I looked it up. I mean, for any of our listeners who are interested, Kajsa was on episode 36, episode 54, episode 84, 89, 125, and 162. And I will link to all of those in our show notes so that people can go back and listen and kinda catch up on more of your story. We are always absolutely delighted to have a conversation with you about anything.
CW: Obviously.
SH: Yeah, we're particularly interested to have a conversation today. We're talking this season about women navigating transitions and change. And you said something to us, I think at a book signing event, you said something to us about being in fallow years and both of our ears perked up immediately. We knew that was a conversation that we wanted to have. So I'm gonna kinda turn it over to Cynthia to start us off with some questions for you and let's get to it.
CW: Perfect. Kajsa, do you wanna catch up our listeners on who you are? Anything that you want them to know? Or you could just say, go back and listen to my old episode–however you want to talk about where you've been 'cause we haven't had you on for like 70–am I doing my math right here–
KB: That's what I was gonna ask, so when was–
CW: 60 or so episodes.
KB: What was the date of the last conversation we had?
CW: Don't ask me the date. I have no idea, but it was, episode 162. Okay. So it's been a couple of years.
SH: A couple of seasons anyway.
KB: That's seems about right. Which is funny since we're talking about fallow years, because that's kind of around the time that I allowed myself to go into kind of that fallow space.
CW: Love it. Love it.
KB: So, this seems fitting. Okay, so for those that don't know me well, and because I have kind of not had so much of an online presence as I previously did at one time. So I was born and raised in the church, very active, went to BYU Provo, served an LDS Mission in New York, Rochester and church historic sites, which I loved. I had a great experience. I was, I consider myself really fortunate to have had a great experience on my mission as well as that church historic component, which definitely led into my future career path.
When I came home from my mission, I realized that I really wanted to study religion more in depth, and I ended up having the opportunity to go to graduate school and that led me into eventually working part-time with BYU as an adjunct instructor in ancient scripture for about five years. And in that five years I really felt like I had landed in a place that I loved, was passionate about, felt confident in, and could see myself for the rest of my life.
It also–I also got married after my mission. So between the time of my mission, graduating with my undergrad, I got married and then of course went to grad school. Then shortly after that, started working for BYU. There was children, I have three kids. And so I had that really awesome opportunity, I think, and rare for a Mormon woman to have the best of both worlds.
And I think I kind of took that for granted, but I felt like that was the Lord's approval right on my life. Like I was raised that ideally a woman should not work, should stay in the home, and that should be her focus. But I really wanted to, I also wanted to continue on and do a PhD, so I was pretty passionate about that. And then when I had the opportunity to start doing some adjunct courses in ancient scripture, I just felt like that was kind of God's approval saying, Hey, this is your gift, this is your talents, I’ll allow a way for you to do both.
Definitely I was looking for some outside approval of those life decisions, and I think that's fairly normal for anyone–
CW: Yes.
KB: Especially for a Mormon [00:05:00] woman. And I will always use that word Mormon. I can't help it. I was raised that way. I am a Gordon B. Hinckley era Mormon, and so I've always dared to be a Mormon and so I'm gonna use that word frequently. I hope it doesn't bother anyone.
During that time that I was teaching, I think being in the classroom with young adults as well as kind of still being a young adult myself–I started in the classroom when I was 28 and I just had my first child. I had a lot of questions about things that were still on my mind. I was fresh out of graduate school. I had done a degree in church history and doctrine, specifically Christian history and early Christianity. So I went into graduate school really hoping that I would quote, find all the answers and really find, stumble upon things that kind of reinforce my identity as a Latter-day Saint woman. Like I'm on the path, I have the truth. This is exactly what I thought it is. And I came out of grad school without those things. I was still on the path. I realized that even those with PhDs in these fields, you know, speaking Greek, Hebrew, studying ancient scripture well versed in these things that they disagree with each other.
And so that pushed me kind of further on my quest to also be more rooted in what do I know for myself? What matters most? What is the gospel of Jesus Christ? Because being, having served a mission really made me passionate about what I thought was the gospel. Specifically serving people, those very basic core elements of Christianity, loving others, service, doing soul work, right? Finding areas in yourself that need forgiveness and perfection. And I love that whole thing. And so bringing that into the classroom was great, but it was a tumultuous time at BYU as well. There were a lot of things going on campus that kind of led to me wanting to be more vocal about some of the things that I was not okay with in regards to church history, sexism in the church, patriarchy, LGBTQ issues.
I mean, really. If you go back in some of my blogs, you can see that I'd written about all of that, which eventually kind of got me in trouble. Oh, I got a little too vocal for the comfort level of my bishop, many of you are aware of that term. Bishop's roulette. I think it's very real.
CW: Yep.
KB: Or leadership roulette where depending on who your ecclesiastical leader is, sometimes they're more comfortable with you being vocal about certain things. Sometimes they're not so comfortable.
CW: Right.
KB: And it eventually led to my termination with BYU, which was really unfortunate at the time. But looking back, I'm grateful because it put my feet on a path that I think was necessary and put me where I am now, which is, I guess, where we can talk, what we can talk about now.
So essentially, I was terminated for my position at BYU. It was very traumatic, led to a summer of, like, the dark night of the soul where I did a lot of soul searching meditation, really asking myself hard questions and if I even wanted to fight that decision and get my position back at BYU. And that led to a no, which then led to kind of me pulling back a little bit.
I had been pretty active on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok talking about these things, engaging in conversation, little publications here and there. Nothing major, but I was definitely like an active voice, I think, in the greater Mormon think community.
SH: Right.
KB: And then I just kind of stopped, because I felt like I had to do some soul work to find out, is this really how I wanna use my voice? Is this where I wanna put my energy for my creative outlets? And if I’m not super comfortable with certain elements of my birth religion, right? What does that mean? And how does that look going forward, raising my children, my marriage. Do you feel like that's a pretty good description from what you ladies know of me to lead into the next conversation?
SH: Absolutely.
CW: Can I add in one thing for people who've maybe never heard anything about your story and, correct me Kajsa, your bishop didn't renew your ecclesiastical endorsement and that's how you found out you had been terminated. Right? Like nobody called you up and said, we need to talk, and then they fired you. Am I right in that?
KB: Correct. Correct. It was very sudden. There had been an issue a few months before I was the gospel doctrine teacher where something was worded along the lines of racism in dealing with the history of the church that the bishop was not comfortable with. And I assumed it dated back to that. But in regards to any of the things that I was saying or any of the things I was writing, being under suspicion, I had no information on. And then the Dean's Office of Academic Relations reached out and let me know that I was terminated. I had, I think, three classes. The semester started in four days.
CW: Oh my gosh.
KB: And I was ready to go and they let me know, sorry, you're terminated, you need to reach out to your bishop. And they couldn't give me additional information. So it was very sudden. The department wasn't aware. Those things can happen pretty quickly, especially if you're adjunct, which I was, so–
SH: Yeah. [00:10:00] What are you doing now for work? If you don't mind sharing with our listeners?
KB: I don't mind, and I'm thrilled to have a solid answer. I started teaching English Language Arts last year full-time, and so I teach eighth grade at a local charter school that is a Spanish immersion academy. So it's a really soft place to have landed for me, loving different cultures and languages and whatnot, but also loving the reading and writing process. I get to be with energetic eighth graders all day, which sometimes I question the sanity of that decision.
CW: [laughs] You should question that.
KB: This will be my second year. I really love it. I genuinely love it and I really enjoyed the classroom experience and seeing students get confident in their ability to think and then write something structured as a result.
SH: Right.
KB: So, I think I see myself there for the long haul, for sure.
SH: Yeah. I love it. I love thinking of you in that classroom.
KB: Thank you. It's a lot of fun.
CW: Well, the reason we were so excited to have you is we kind of wanna talk about those fallow years, those in-between years. And Susan and I talk a lot on the podcast about those kind of between spaces.
Like, for so many people, when they go through a faith shift, it's like they're not orthodox anymore, but they're not ex-Mormon. They don't necessarily want any of those labels–and there are other labels that could go with that. And a lot of times we will call that like the liminal space, or that liminal hallway. Or recently we've started calling it–Parker Palmer calls it the Tragic Gap.
KB: Ooh yeah. I like that.
CW: I know. Isn't that such a good metaphor? But previously you've shared with us and that's why we put it in our title, that at that book event, Susan was mentioning that these had kind of been your fallow years, and so that's really what we wanna talk about.
How did you come up with that? I mean, fallow, of course is referring to, like, farming and it's the years where the soil has to rejuvenate and we leave it alone. We don't plant anything. But say any more about that if you want to.
KB: Yes, I do want to. So this is an idea that I don't recall exactly how I stumbled upon it other than I think one time I was reading something in connection with a woman also kind of on her own journey with identity, which I think we are all on, we are all kind of on whether we realize it or not–
SH: Right.
KB: Actively, right, if we’re actively seeking it or not, it's life is a journey. And that idea of her being in these fallow years, she talked about herself like that, where she allowed herself to just kind of stop putting things out there, in regards to she was also a writer, and really give herself time to rest, to think, to breathe, to be still, and ask herself, am I writing about the things I really want to? Am I putting out the creative work that's really of my soul, and not just because I feel like I have to, or maybe this is the way I've always done it. Is there another way?
Have I asked myself that? Have I done the work to see if there's anything in there? And so I really, I definitely think that was divinely inspired. By divine, I mean, however you wanna take that, right? Traditional deity sense, the universe, the energies that be, destiny, whatever. Because it came at a time where I was dealing with, of course, a lot of pain, a lot of identity issues, wondering where do I go from here? Right?
SH: Right.
KB: My whole identity up to those, I dunno, 34, 35 years was died in the wool, true blue Mormon woman. And I saw myself very much as an evangelist, and I still do, but in a different way. So we'll get to that. An evangelist for things that I was very passionate about, specifically to me, the transformative nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And so, suddenly when that platform was taken from me, what was real, right? Like, was any of that real? Was it only real because a man in authority, which actually was a woman in authority at the time, she, the woman who opened that door for me was the current dean at the time in ancient scripture when I was hired, was a woman. So, go her! And I've always thought that was interesting in that unique journey because it's rare to see female professors in positions of authority in the ancient scripture department down at BYU. So that was kind of neat that I was able to be mentored by her and helped along my journey. So that's, I definitely give her a shout out.
But when, again, when suddenly that was taken from me because a man in authority decided that I wasn't orthodox enough, or didn't understand enough, or wasn't speaking about things in a certain way to the point that– and there were some very hurtful things said, that I was no longer safe to be around quote the youth in Zion, which I can laugh now that, I mean, those things brought me to tears.
SH: Sure, of course they did.
KB: It was devastating to me.
SH: Yeah.
KB: Who was I, right? Was any of it real? So I had to kind of do some soul work, some shadow work, and that summer [00:15:00] when I made the decision that I wasn't gonna try and fight for my job and that I was gonna allow myself to go in a different direction, I really felt like I connected to an element of the divine feminine.
Now that's something I'd always been passionate about and curious, but it wasn't my research topic, if that makes sense. I was always looking into feminist interpretation of scripture.
CW: Yeah.
KB: But as far as the divine feminine, it was almost like she had to come along and, like, rock my world a little bit before I woke up to that reality in my life. So how that connects to the fallow years as I've been considering, just even the idea of soil, right? Growth. One of my favorite scriptures comes out of the New Testament, and it's this beautiful connection to the wisdom traditions of Jesus where he's speaking and he's saying, “Consider the lilies.”
That's something that has always been very profound to me because I have always felt the gentle nature of Jesus being one of the most resonating parts of what I saw and knew as the gospel. And I always imagined Jesus speaking to me, saying, consider the lilies, how they grow and they don't toil. And my whole life I have been a toiler consistently, always toiling. What's next? What's my goal? What am I doing this week? What's on my agenda? It drives my husband insane because, well–
SH: I mean, said every Mormon woman ever. I think.
KB: Yes.
SH: I mean, we're bred for it. I swear we are, we're very productive people.
CW: Worker bees.
KB: What you're saying definitely reflects my own thoughts. Yes, that is something I think that is pounded into the Mormon woman psyche at a young age. Stay busy. Busy hands, right? What are you doing? What are your goals? What are you achieving? And then when you achieve it, what next? And those can be beautiful things, but they can also be incredibly exhausting, stressful, draining, traumatic, if they are pushed at the wrong time.
So for me, this idea of rest wasn't something that I actually knew how to do. And I knew enough about world religions. This whole idea of female deities in the Hindu Pantheon is there's thousands of them, right? One of the, one of the more prominent ones, a figure named Kali Ma, and she's the dark mother of destruction, and her images are terrifying because she's usually got a sword in one hand and she's got the heads of those she's slain around her neck like a necklace, and she's triumphantly standing on top of a man who's pleading for his life down below her and also petitioning her to calm down, which is kind of funny, but also there's a lot of symbolism there.
CW: Yes, there is.
KB: Because the idea behind that is that the dark mother, the dark goddess comes into people's lives when they most need her, and she destroys everything that is no longer serving them to allow growth. And because we sometimes can't do it ourselves, it takes an act of God, or the goddess, or the universe to burn everything down. So to speak.
And when I think about the symbolism between the fallow years, you know, farmers sometimes will burn their fields–
CW: Burn their fields. Mmhmm.
KB: Right? In the attempt to allow the soil to rest, to restructure, gain the nutrients it needs, and there's all that symbolism connected to with death comes life, right? And to us perfect things. There's the symbolism between a woman's menstrual cycle–life giving blood, but blood also not being sustaining a life. Also, then when you menstruate, right? You pass that blood and prepare for another fertile cycle. So these things became something that I found myself thinking about a lot once symbolically. I don't really believe it was an actual female deity that came in and destroyed my life at that time.
CW: Right, right.
KB: But it definitely fit the symbolic connections there. And so I do like the ideology that I needed to allow myself to kind of sit amidst the destruction of that was my life at that time, and ask myself, okay, what next?
But who am I really? And what does this mean? And do I want to plant the same seeds that were just destroyed? Or maybe does the universe have another plan for me?
CW: Oh gosh, Yeah.
KB: And Psalms 46:10 “Be still, and know that I'm God” was always another–so this idea of consider the lilies, right? They're beautiful in their own right because they just are. And I think the idea with worthiness sometimes can be so overwhelming and consuming. We feel like until we're something, or a certain point, or until we've checked off the boxes, then we can rest. But until that point, we've gotta go, go, go.
And I think the wisdom teachings of Jesus actually say, no, actually you don't have to go, go, go. You're good. Like, be that lily. I created you in your grandeur and your glory. Just be, and [00:20:00] enjoy just being because I've created you to be who you are. Stop trying so hard and just breathe a little bit. So again, those were the messages that were coming to me and this idea of really being still, when you break down that scripture, you could say, be still and know that I am God. Or you could say, be still and know I am. I am being God. How can you know God unless you calm down and take a moment to be still. And then you start to see the divine in yourself, which is to me how I read that scripture.
KB: So these ideas definitely became crucial. I'd say in the next phases of my life, I kind of deactivated my tiktoks. I've been putting out a lot of commentary, talking about things that triggered me, things that I felt were being handled incorrectly, or just potential theological perspectives that hadn't been considered up until that time.
I decided to just deactivate it, stop writing on my blog, stop engaging in conversation, because I was getting to a point where I didn't feel like that energy that I was putting out served me. In fact it kind of took from me. I would feel drained after those conversations. I felt the constant need to defend my perspective or the perspective of others, and it was as if, like, my soil so to speak, was being zapped of nutrients. I had nothing left.
So trying to get any creative growth out of myself was getting too hard. So hard to the point that it was affecting other aspects of my life, my motherhood, my relationship with my husband, and my other creative endeavors. I just, there wasn't anything there in me. And so during that period of sitting, which has really been, I would say the last four years, I started to glean some wisdom in myself. ‘Cause I think when you sit amidst destruction, you pay attention to what's left over. And then potentially what am I, what have I not been seeing?
And I started, rather than considering myself to be like the farmer, it was like, okay, what if I'm the field? What if I am the soil rather than, so this whole idea of what are you planting? What are you doing? What are you writing? You know, this is the voice in my head. What next Kajsa? What achievement? I think those things are good in certain times, but because I had been doing that so consistently and aggressively my whole life, it suddenly felt wrong to me. And also that energy was masculine.
This whole idea of doing, putting, pushing, planting, doing. This idea, now it doesn't resonate with everyone, but symbolically, feminine energy can be very passive, while masculine energy can be very proactive. And it's not that one is better than the other, but even symbolically, you can start to see the connections with the reproductive systems. Right?
And so I started to ask myself, rather than being the planter, maybe I am the soil and I'm this dark, moist, fertile soil, but I haven't spent enough time getting my hands dirty in my ownness, right? Like, the very foundational core elements of me, rather than trying to constantly plant and yield and produce.
What if I've had everything that God intended for me to have within myself this whole time? But because I've been so obsessed with trying to grow something that I thought needed to grow out of the soil, that I haven't let what really needs to come out, come out. Does that make sense? Are my words flowing?
CW: A hundred percent.
KB: And that, so kind of this idea of me like, you know, little kids sit and play in dirt and they love it and they get their hands dirty and they squish it and they add water and they make these little treasures. I felt like I was kind of tapping back into my inner child. Now, it's not like a one time thing. This has been years. Where I opened up my journals. I'd sit amongst all my books, I'd look at poems I had written decades ago and ask, where is that person? Like, where did that optimistic perspective go? Is that still in me? Do I still resonate with this at all? And so suddenly I'm asking myself, rather than what am I gonna plant next? Perhaps, is there something inside of me that really wants and needs to grow? And how can I open myself up to that as opposed to reinforcing what I thought I should be doing? Which I think, again, as a Mormon woman, I'd been told my entire life what that was supposed to be.
SH: Right.
KB: And I'd been pretty good at checking those checklists off those boxes on my checklist. I was lucky, like I had done all the things. Well, suddenly when that was uprooted and I knew at the base of my soul that going back to that wasn't, at least in the way that I had before, wasn't an option for me, that left [00:25:00] open doors of possibilities that suddenly, instead of seeming desolate became very–what's the word? The potential there to yield much fruit, so to speak, to use scriptural language, was exponential. So this idea of allowing myself to grow into whatever God had intended me to be without doing so much hard work, without making sure that I have my temple recommend because it got taken from me.
So what am I gonna do, right? Even though I thought I was worthy, well, if I think I'm worthy, but a ecclesiastical leader doesn't, do I go with my inner voice or do I trust his? And I had to make that decision that I'm gonna trust my own inner voice and what does that mean to be worthy? And do I feel like I can communicate with God? And what does that look like if I'm not entering a temple, where do I do these things? How do I do these things? And as I had mentioned before, it suddenly seemed like a shift from a very masculine, patriarchal system way of knowing and way of doing, because I was kind of forced to step out of orthodoxy.
I really started dancing with the feminine. And I was thinking about Mary when she was given that beautiful knowledge that something beautiful was growing inside of her. That was something of the spirit. She sat with that and she trusted that. And from her fertile sense of trust came Jesus, right? Something that the majority of the world sees as a good thing. Somebody that I see as a great spiritual leader and my friend, but we would not have Jesus if Mary hadn't allowed herself to kind of sit in that darkness, sit in that place of fear in that even dark fertile place of her womb if she had not allowed that to grow.
So I started kind of connecting with these feminine ideas of growth and development. It's scary. I found myself writing in my journal over and over again about the reasons why I was scared to step into that place of–
CW: Wow.
KB: –creativity outside of maybe what I had always seen for myself. And I think that's something that I'll probably be doing for the rest of my life. I think everyone has a relationship with fear, and it's not so much about getting rid of it, but learning to kind of take it by the hand and be like, you're not driving. I am.
SH: Right.
KB: Like, I acknowledge you. There may be a reason why you're here. Maybe there's a trigger there. But you are not driving this car. It's me. And I think I know where I'm going, as opposed to allowing it to stop certain growth or stop certain journeys. Acknowledging fear and kind of learning how to interact with it, and not let it stop me, has been part of these fallow years for sure.
CW: Wow.
SH: The thing that I love, one thing that I just love about the idea of using fallow as a metaphor here is that very often, you know, we don't have a lot of control over how we land in the tragic gap, right? We can get just kicked into this space in our life by outside forces. Whether it's a Hindu goddess or someone else.
KB: Yeah.
SH: We, you know, something happens that shakes everything up and we find ourselves in this space. But the thing I love about the idea of fallow is that there is some decision on your part implied in that word. That you had to make the decision that it was okay to let yourself sit and be there, to let yourself be present in the experience that you were having, even though you didn't choose to be necessarily where you were, right? You got put there by outside forces, but then you took some power in the decision to allow yourself to be fallow. And I think that is a really hard thing for women to do. I don't think that comes naturally at all. And I know as a creative person myself who's, you know, had a life in the arts, it's terrifying when you're not producing.
KB: Yes!
SH: That really requires something of you to be able to sit in that dark place and see what comes and just allow yourself to be there.
KB: And we forget that the reality, the very scientific reality, of the time it takes for something good to yield.
SH: Right.
KB: As if somehow we're a part of nature, like how do we forget that? Which is interesting. I think that kind of leads into some additional notes I had taken on this. I've been very interested and drawn to indigenous ways of knowing. I think some of my anger and rage towards quote the system, or the patriarchy, has pushed me into other ways of knowing and doing things. And many of these indigenous perspectives oftentimes are matriarchal.
SH: Right.
KB: And so, in regards to land and this idea that's really stood out to me is kind of replacing what I realized as a colonized mindset of subduing land, or subduing my life.
CW: Yeah.
KB: My passions, my interests, and then turning that, forcing [00:30:00] artificial desires onto my character, my being. And instead maybe take a step back. These indigenous communities have always found better ways of working and living with the land than traditionally western communities.
CW: Mmhmm.
KB: I think because of the idea of economy and profit and whatnot, there's this very connected idea to going in, subduing the land, and yielding something that can make a profit.
This summer there were horrendous wildfires in Palestine and Israel, and as I did some research, one of the reasons was the temperature, but in addition, plants that were not indigenous to that valley had been brought in when Israel was established back in ‘48, ‘49, because Europeans came in there and decided, we miss our trees. Let's bring in our trees.
SH: Right.
KB: And those trees are not native to that area. And so with the climate being what it is and then the, you know, climate change and whatnot, heat going into higher digits, these trees are burning. Because they're not indigenous to the landscape. And so they're causing cataclysmic problems to the communities. And we kind of do that to our lives sometimes too. I think when we force things on ourselves that perhaps don't really resonate with our best selves. So this kind of ties back into living with the land, being part of the land. We are part of nature, literally, like if you wanna read the Bible literally, or allegorically, God created man out of the dust of the earth.
The name Adam literally means bread, dusty or soil. So why do we think that sometimes we can treat our lives so differently than the circle of life or the cycle of nature? So I kind of wanted to look at my life in a decolonized way and really focus on joy, focus on thriving just for the sake of being.
That ties back into the whole consider the lilies thing that just really has stayed in a dominant place in my mind. And then tying into these matriarchal societies, feminine ways of knowing. I thought it was interesting, I know that I had stumbled upon this before and I think you guys have as well, but it's a quote from Julian of Norwich and she's a 14th century female theologian. She's a mystic. It's so interesting to me that the mystics of all the world's great traditions kind of stumble on the same truth. It's like they get together, imagine, they're like, Hey, did you figure this out? And they're like, yeah, I did. And a Muslim and a Christian and a Buddhist all came to the same conclusions, but she said, “As truly as God is our father, so truly God is our mother.”
And that's profound, and that's coming out of 1300s Europe. A very patriarchal, misogynistic society.
SH: Right.
KB: Then later on in the 20th century, Pope John Paul first echoes Julian when he said, God is our father, even more God is our mother.
CW: Wow.
KB: And that's huge, for someone in that position to say, shows me that he stumbled upon some deeper mystic truth there. This idea that the finding the divine in ourselves takes as much examining of the feminine aspects as it does the masculine. And I, the tradition we were born in was patriarchal. And I feel like for me in these fallow years, again, kind of examining the feminine has really brought fertile growth to my most best self. There was another idea I wanted to share. Distinguished Womanist, biblical interpreter, Reverend William, or sorry, she goes by Wil Gaffney, translates Job 33:4, “As the spirit of God, she has made me and the breath of the nursing God, she gives me life. So the spirit here is a Hebrew word and I was, I knew it 'cause I'd had the training right back in graduate school days.
CW: Yeah.
KB: But I'm like, I'm gonna pull up my blue letter Bible and go into the lexicon and see the Hebrew word and sure enough the word for spirit, the spirit of God here, is feminine and it's a noun and it's ruach.
CW: I knew that!
KB: And that's the same noun that is used. You did. I know. Because I know you guys have talked about it. And that's that same term that can sometimes be a verb in Genesis when it talks about the spirit of God moving upon the waters when creation happens. So this is feminine. So here this woman is bold enough, this biblical interpreter, to bring it back to, I don't wanna say it's original or intentional, meaning I'm really careful about saying things like that, but certainly one of its forgotten meanings, this idea of this life-giving force being connected to feminine energies.
So when did we forget that, right? And as a woman, when did I allow my sense of self and my sense of knowing to be outsourced? By a tradition, or a system, and I've had to sit and think about that. And I could probably list a few instances as a young girl where I didn't feel quite right [00:35:00] about something, didn't necessarily feel comfortable about a way, the way something was taught to me. But I chose to disregard my inner voice because someone, and in these cases it was a man, knew more than I did. Or I was told to trust him because he had some kind of power or authority. And I really think it does real damage to silence your inner voice, especially for our young girls.
CW: Yeah.
KB: Because within Mormonism, it's a system where we are teaching them. To outsource their innermost sense of self. And I think people might wanna debate that, but that has been my lived experience. That at the end of the day, letting God prevail ultimately means within Mormonism, trusting in the priesthood authority that is over your life. And I thought about the instances of my life where that was reinforced. You have life questions, go talk to your bishop. You're confused about the path you're gonna take, go to your quote patriarchal blessing. Now I'm not saying good things can't come from these things–
CW: Right.
KB: But, when you outsource your most inner sense of self or voice to something else, I think that's very dangerous and harmful. And it was for me, I think about when I was married in the temple to my good husband, thank goodness. He jokes sometimes, he wasn't paying attention to the words, I was. So he never took advantage of potential scenarios where maybe he could have put his foot down, quote as the man.
CW: Right.
KB: Where I covenanted to obey a man and not my inner most sense of self. And that continued on throughout my life. So being able to go back and reclaim my voice has been a very important part of this fallow process. The rushing, I mentioned that, I think Mormon women, we rush ourselves. That's our training. We have to be anxiously engaged. We've always been told take a stand, we sing the hymns, “Who's on the Lord's side, Who?”
CW: Mmhmm.
KB: It's crazy to me that I'm just waking up to the reality that if something doesn't serve me, I can say no, and I don't have to give an excuse. I can just say, no that doesn't work for me. And there are so many women in this world that have been doing that since the age of three, but I am not one of them.
I'm just now learning to do this at 40, which by the way, I turned 40 in April and I'm convinced that this is gonna be the best 40 years of my life.
CW: Woohoo.
KB: So if you know–
SH: Fantastic.
KB: Better now than never, right?
SH: Yes.
KB: But truly, like who would've thought that I could take my time in choosing my thoughts, my actions, and refusing to rush when I feel like the world that I'm a part of, demands that I do so.
KB: So those are kind of the things that have connected to this idea of fallow. Also,I thought it was interesting when I did a little word study on the term fallow. There's also a connection to the Latin word fulvus, which is connected to the changing of the seasons, specifically the colors red and yellow as the leaves change. And being someone who's interested in eastern philosophy right away, that stood out to me because the idea, the colors red and yellow connect to enlightenment, power and wisdom, which is why you'll see novitiate monks or fully–
CW: Yes. Yeah.
KB: What's the word titled Monks, right?
SH: Yeah. In red and yellow
KB: Their robes.
SH: Yes.
KB: Yeah. So these sacred colors of the earth are teaching us something. As we, I also read something, this gardener was talking about how frustrated she gets when people are so eager to pick up their leaves. She's like, let them be, let those beautiful colors be. Let them sit, let them break down and become part of the soil.
CW: Yes.
KB: Obviously there's times and places we can't, but it's interesting how, again, going back to the natural lay of the land, the natural process of things, sometimes we are so eager to force what we think needs to happen on a body, or our own bodies, or the land around us that we perhaps miss out on a beauty that was even greater and the original intent.
CW: Mmhmm.
KB: I think it's possible that we're missing out by refusing to be still. So those are my thoughts on the fallow idea.
CW: I think it's really interesting when you were talking about consider the lilies and how that scripture really just kept coming back to you when you're going through this transition. The same thing happened to me with that scripture. I don't know, 15 years ago motherhood started getting really, really hard for me and I felt like I was saying, Marjorie Hinckley I think had just done like a fireside or a women's conference at BYU, and it was called something like, is this what I was born to do? Or she kept repeating that line throughout it because her husband, Gordon Hinckley had planted like 82 tomato plants and she was like, are you kidding me? I have to can all these tomatoes now? And anyway–
KB: I like that.
CW: She just kept saying that line, is this what I was born to do was to like pick tomatoes and this and that. [00:40:00] Anyway, that just really resonated with me as I was in the deep years of young motherhood and crying a lot. And I just remember that scripture coming to mind.
Consider the lilies, and the Mormon Tabernacle choir had just come out with that cd. That's how long ago this was. And I remember rushing to the University mall to Deseret book and buying that cd, getting out to my car, not driving home, because I didn't have any kids with me. So it was sacred alone time.
KB: Yes.
CW: I just put that time in the car, CD in.
KB: Yeah.
CW: And I played “Consider the Lilies” over and over and cried and cried and cried. And I just kept thinking, okay, lilies don't grow year round, right? They grow in the spring and then they die. And it, and it was just kind of this like, look like you've been talking about Kajsa, like look at nature. There is a life cycle to it, and you are part of that life cycle as well. And you don't have to be everything all at once.
KB: It's so hard to, it's so hard to really, you know it, but do you believe it, right, for yourself?
CW: Yes. Knowing and believing.
KB: I mean, I still struggle. I still struggle, but that is the truth that I am holding nearest and dearest to my heart right now. Especially as a creative and someone that, as I've been doing this work, getting to know myself again, it's like I have dates with myself. And you talked about nature. I take a lot of solace from nature. And if you live around me, you've probably seen me sitting out on my back porch, just staring, staring at the clouds, staring at the mountains. That stuff really feeds my soul and grounds me and reminds me I'm part of something bigger.
CW: Yeah.
SH: You asked a question a minute ago that I haven't stopped thinking of. You asked when did we forget this? And I feel like as a Latter-day Saint woman, a whole lot of my life has been a process of being asked to cede my own knowledge, my own inner knowing. I have been asked to give that back again and again in favor of what someone else has been teaching me. Right?
KB: Yes.
SH: And as you've described some of the experiences that you've had with priesthood leaders and you know, with others in your life, in the church, it sounds to me like it's been the same for you.
I'm not sure that I ever did necessarily forget some of the deep knowing that I'm coming back to in my life now. But I feel like I turned it off. I had been asked to give that away and to privilege other voices over my own knowing. And so, part of the value of allowing yourself to go fallow, I feel like is to let the things that are already in there speak to you.
KB: Yeah.
SH: You know? To let your own deep knowing speak to you again. And that is as hard as anything else I think for Latter-day Saint women, if I have learned one thing from the At Last She Said It project and being in conversation with hundreds of women, it's that they don't know how to access the things that I believe they really already know.
KB: I had mentioned, you know, I was raised to be, and I was a really good evangelist. That was a sad thing for me to think that I was giving up. And I realized that's actually a part of my nature. I don't have to give up.
SH: Right.
KB: When I rethink what is it that I'm evangelizing? And I guess that can tie into the next or last part of this quick conversation. The reason I was a good missionary, I think the reason I was and am a good teacher, is because I'm really passionate about people finding their best selves. It gets me really excited, like I genuinely get amped up, seeing people discover their strengths and then bringing those out and developing them. It's a joy to me to like, it gives me vitality to be part of that process. It's quite sacred too, and I think at, you know, its core, that's what teachers do and so perhaps just being a teacher all along or being in a place of being a teacher, life is like a classroom. So what am I evangelizing? I think really trying to live my life in a way that gives others permission.
Well, if I give myself permission to be my best self, just in doing that, it somehow gives, I don't know if you've ever been around someone who has a really good sense of self, but it kind of allows you to be more of who you are.
CW: Yes.
KB: The more I stay true to myself, that's it. Like, I came to this earth to be the best me. And in doing that, I serve my purpose because I reflect to others and others are reflecting to me their best selves. And it's like we're resonating this frequency of, ah, this is who we are. You are you and I am [00:45:00] me, and we are all part of this great, beautiful, divine thing. And our differences are beautiful and they're okay. And maybe your path as a Lutheran, or your path as a Latter-day Saint, or your path as a Catholic, or an Atheist, or the plethora of ways of knowing out there. It's not so much about what that looks like, but it's just about being engaged in that self-discovery process. And I think in that way I can kind of still be an evangelist. Right?
SH: Right.
KB: Like Jesus came to minister to people and help them love themselves and love others. And that really hasn't changed in my life. And I hope that as I continue to write and speak and create that, the things that I say and do can reflect that. And I feel good about that.
CW: I feel like we were all raised to be evangelists. To evangelize, to proselytize, to be, I mean, we sing about being missionaries in primary, right? We sing actual primary songs about, you know, missionary work. And I think you can take, like you can take the girl out of Mormonism, but you're not gonna take the girl, so–
KB: Right? It's like, you raised me to do this. And also, one of the radically different things that I do wanna point out though is I think I'm in a place in my life now where I'm so eager to learn from others.
CW: Yes.
KB: Whereas perhaps in the past I felt like I had something to teach. It's not so much that I have anything to teach, it's more that I feel like we can learn so much from each other and I'm excited about that. Things have shifted for me that way. I don't feel like I know much of anything other than the process can be incredibly painful and beautiful and all the things, but the process is worth, it's worth digging in that soil.
CW: Right.
KB: It's a joy. Do it.
CW: Right, right.
KB: Do it. Sit in the darkness, do the shadow work, get to know yourself, because I think who we see in the end will surprise us and delight us because there's something beautiful and divine there.
CW: Well, and that's exactly what I mean. Like, I'm, I am like you, Susan and I are not out here evangelizing like very specific things like we were taught to do, but now we're, now we are evangelizing. Is that even a word? What you're saying, Kajsa, listen to yourself, your inner voice, the kingdom of God is within you. You can trust yourself. You're good. And so that's what I meant was that, well, I was taught to preach the good word and I feel like–
KB: Yes!
CW: I'm preaching the good word–
SH: Right. Right.
CW: You know, in a maybe in a different message than the church taught me, but I'm like, you gave me the tools and I'm gonna keep using those tools.
KB: Certainly. Yeah, absolutely. I had, as I've been going through, I've been writing since I was little, like six, five. I have journals from–it's like chicken scratch. I wasn't really writing. And then you can start to see that I can form my letters–
SH: Amazing.
KB: And then form my words. I have dozens of journals on my bookshelf and I, it's a great gift to myself to be able to go back and look through them. But I found a poem that I had written in 2023. And it's funny, I was going through what I'm doing now. Like I was engaged in that fallow period where I'm looking at the dirt around me deciding what needs to grow, what do I need to let go and not try and plant again and ever engage. And so if you, if we have time, I would love to share that poem.
CW: Sure, yeah.
KB: And then maybe we can kind of wrap up however you would like to do that. But I think it's applicable to this conversation that we've been having.
CW: Okay.
KB: So in my journal, I had titled this Meditations.
“I finally made the time to sit and just be still. I've been keeping busy mentally, physically, filling my days with tasks that take time, but don't really matter, because I haven't been able to approach that place. That place that matters. That stills you, forces you to look right at yourself at all the jumbled parts, and then reflect light back on what your life is, what it looks like, the things that fill your days and occupy your time. And then you are asked by that ever gentle, sometimes terrifyingly honest, but always persistent universe.
Does this resonate? Is this you? Does your time spent reflect the truths of your most honest self? Do you see you? If not, dear child, what needs to be arranged, cut out, added, tended to, so that the imprints your actions make reflect the truth in your soul? And so I sit, I breathe deeply of the freshly lit sage clearing the unnecessary, and leaving the clear message that I've been neglecting what is true and that I must get to it.
Enter the dark mother and her primordial dance, reaching for my hand as she cast her powerful eyes angrily and meaningfully around my chaos, [00:50:00] ready to destroy and ready to give life. “It's time,” she says, looking into my eyes, communicating wisdom and frankness. It's been time. It's always time. Ah, but I've forgotten, neglected my temple of stillness that forever holds the message.
I am. Om. Be still and know. “Now,” she says, my attention at her command, “Be daughter,” her eyes told me all of this with one look. My breath quiets. My gaze focuses inward as I take in the musky sweet scent of the incense rising, always rising.”
KB: So again, as I've been going through my journals, I have dozens of these. I thought that's, that is something that I love to do. I love to write and I think out of fear of not conforming to a specific ideology or of creating something completely unique to myself just because I like it. I stopped sharing for a time, but I'm definitely back in a space where I want to engage more and put my art out there, my writing out there because it just feels good. And then whatever happens as a result happens. But it's a very natural process to me. And when I find dozens of these in my journals over the years, I think that's a reflection for me that I need to keep doing it.
So when you ask, you know, where am I now? I'm teaching eighth grade English language arts and I'm writing again. One of the things that is not as arduous, I've actually had a lot of fun doing it, it feels light to my soul, is I'm creating a graphic novel of my mission journals. So I have four whole, like well sized journals. And so I joke that my mission was over journaled. And in fact, I got in a heated conversation once with my, one of my companions because I was technically breaking the rules because I was spending too much time journaling.
SH: Oh, okay.
KB: Only supposed to write for like 10 minutes a night. And that's part of my graphic novel. These funny little things that, you know, occurred on my mission.
CW: Ugh.
KB: And I doodled all through my mission journals and I thought, I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna put this out there and I'm gonna create a graphic novel of my mission journals because half of it's already done, anyway. That's how I wrote them. So I'm really enjoying that. It's been a lot of fun and I think it actually might be a great launching point for people to have conversations. Good and bad, hard, about the mission experience.
SH: Yeah.
KB: Especially as a woman, because as I've shared on some of our–
CW: Especially as a woman.
KB: Yeah, other conversations. I had some very interesting experiences that were enlightening in regards to the patriarchal structure of the church and stumbling upon truth that were uncomfortable, historical truth, things like that, as well as just coming of age, which I think anyone can do.
CW: coming of age.
SH: Right, right.
CW: Who doesn't love a good coming of age book?
CW: Kajsa, I know your words are gonna resonate with so many women. We're not in the advice business, Susan and I like to say, but would you have any advice or pointers or things that you would say to women who find themselves coming into a place where maybe it is gonna be their fallow years. Years, right?
KB: Yeah. Yeah, I feel like mine are, they're coming to an end, at least this phase of fallow, and that might not be the same for everyone, right? Like, it may be six months. For some people, it may be 10 years, who knows. But in my, I can only speak from experience, but I can genuinely say that this process has been something that has delighted me.
I have really enjoyed coming to know myself better, and I think that can be expected by any woman who kind of goes at it with the determination to not be afraid to do the shadow work. And by the shadow work, look at your triggers. Look at the things that exhaust you. Look at the things that stress you out, that make you weepy.
How do you feel? How does your body feel? So, you're gonna ask me the question, what do you know? So let's jump into it. I'll just tell you.
SH: [Laughs]
CW: Okay.
KB: Motion is lotion. So this might sound a little, this might sound a little woo woo. So take it ladies as you want. But, so I have had some severe upper back and lower back problems in the last like six or seven years.
As I have been doing a lot of stretching, yoga, Pilates, I have found that there's a lot of emotions tied into some of the parts of my body that hurt.
CW: Yep.
KB: And so, expect the pain. With the joys of self-discovery, I think it comes hand in hand, as you are striving to really look at yourself and see what–who am I supposed to be?
Like, [00:55:00] I'm in this dirt, I'm in this burnt out space. What next? You do have to sit with that and you have to work through it, and it can hurt. It can be very painful, but I do believe that's part of the process and not all pain is bad. So lean in a little bit. I think that would be my advice.
Lean into the things that, again, you feel trigger you that involve pain. Is it a memory? Is it an experience? Is it a kind of stress? And then go deeper and find the roots of those things so that you can overcome it, or at least know how to handle it. Like have the toolbox. There's been some triggers in my life that I realized were kind of rooted in childhood trauma and insecurities that as I have learned to recognize them, it's not so much that the triggers go away, it's like, oh, I have my little metaphorical toolbox here. And I can handle it because I know what it is. I know what's happening to myself and why my body reacts that way, and why I hold that stress in this shoulder, why my hip locks up. All the things.
There can be pain in the process, but it is okay. Like you can push through that, lean into it. It's like a good stretch, you know? And there have been times, take it for what it's worth, but it might be a little woo woo. And you guys know what I mean by that, right?
CW: Yes, we do.
KB: Have you heard that expression? Okay.
CW: Oh, we say it all the time.
SH: We use it all the time.
KB: Okay, good. Alright. And for those of you that don't know, woo woo is like this idea of things that are kind of spiritual or cultish or maybe outside the tradition–
CW: New age.
KB: New age, yes. Thank you. There have been times where I've been in meditation or reading over something in a journal and asking myself why did I react that way? And I'm also stretching. I find my body stretching naturally as I go through these memories.
SH: Interesting.
KB: But as I'm down there stretching, I, yeah, I just kind of, I'll be out there, you know, on my floor stretching out my hips as I'm reading this part of my journal and I'll start crying. There's a lot of tears, and it's cleansing though, so don't be afraid to lean into those emotions and give them safety because I think that can turn into a strength and a place where you can then maybe guide others, to encourage others, perhaps is the better word, to lean into their pain a little bit.
CW: Like you are now.
KB: Yeah.
CW: Yeah. Beautiful.
SH: Well, Kajsa, I feel like we could have you on and we could just ask you at the beginning of an episode, what do you know, Kajsa, and then we'd have the whole conversation because you know a lot. You are an extraordinary woman and you know, and just someone that teaches me and teaches me. So thank you so much.
KB: I feel the same with you two and all of you gals that I've met. I've been to a couple ALSSI activities and the book launch and every time it's like a treasure. I feel like I meet friends that I feel like I've known forever, and you're just my people. So thank you guys for inviting me on.
Voicemail 1: Hi, my name is Ainsley and I'm 16 years old. I just thought I'd share my experience about being set apart in the young woman presidency this year. I've always had an issue with the idea of having men surround me to put their hands on my head. Physically, it's always been uncomfortable.
In February, I was set apart as a secretary of the oldest class, and it was almost too much to bear, so I promised myself one thing that got me to the chair. Before he asked me my full name, I asked my bishop if he could do me a favor. He agreed and said he would do anything. I asked if he could instead of saying Heavenly Father, if he could say Heavenly Parents. He refused. I didn't see it, but my dad said the bishop looked surprised by my question. After crying through the whole setting apart and running outta the room, after thoroughly embarrassing myself, I thought of leaving the church. My parents so kindly reached out to my bishop and his first counselor and asked why they couldn't say Heavenly Parents, even just in the blessing portion. After searching through every resource they could find, there was nothing that was against it.
We were all surprised, but I knew that they wouldn't do anything with this new knowledge. My ward recently split, so they called the new presidency where I was called as president. When I walked into the bishop office, I told him this, I will be president if you say Heavenly Parents in the blessing for setting apart.
I'm allowed to back out at any moment and we have one lesson or activity on Heavenly Mother. They agreed to the first two stipulations pretty quickly. They agreed to the third, as long as we only use a single article provided in the gospel library app. The day came from my setting apart and I was the first one. As I sat there very uncomfortable as normal, he started the blessing. Not only did he say Heavenly Parents, but he also said Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. I was overjoyed, but I'm sad to say he did not do it for any of the other blessings, but we're getting there one step at a time.
Voicemail 2: Hello, Cynthia and Susan. My name is David. Love, love, love the podcast. I am leaving this message in response to something a listener named Christine shared. When as the compassionate ward leader, she pushed back against the idea of women being the little helper. If a man requested meals for his family, she would ask his ministering brother to do [01:00:00] the meals. And I love that idea.
I am the Stake Executive Secretary where I live. And one of the things that I changed was we no longer ask the Stake Relief Society presidency to bring meals to the Stake Presidency. We are fully capable of taking care of that self. Sometimes that just means I go to the store and pick up a ring of sandwiches and bring that with me. No biggie.
But I really wanna share an experience that happened recently. There was a regional training being held at my stake center. There was an Apostle, 4 [members of the] Seventy, and I put myself in charge of making a meal for them and a bunch of stake presidents and spouses, and 30 plus people.
It was a lot of work. I was exhausted, and afterwards I'm in the kitchen along with the rest of the Stake Presidency, minus the president because he was in the luncheon. We were cleaning up, and the Apostle comes in to thank us and he is surprised and says, “I've never walked in to find that everyone on the cleaning crew is a man. Usually there isn't a man doing any of these things. It's all sisters.” And I popped right up with, well, the handbook doesn't list cleaning or cooking under the duties of any of the sister's callings, as if he doesn't know the handbook better than me. Anyway, love the book. Love all you do. Thank you so much.
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