Episode 237 (Transcript): The Invisible Labor of Women | A Conversation with Christine Pagano

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener Anne Law 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:

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CP: I learned to equate motherhood with martyrdom. There was no room to be an individual outside of it, outside of motherhood. And I, motherhood isn’t, it’s not an identity, it’s a relationship. Same thing with being a wife. And if my only divine potential depends on the presence of someone else in my life and I have to self-sacrifice for that to happen- we land in that resignation sooo quickly and it’s painful.

SH: Hello. I’m Susan Hinkley.

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 The Invisible Labor of Women- A Conversation with Christine Pagano. Hi Christine.

CP: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

CW:: Welcome. Glad to have you.

SH: We’re so happy to have you.

CP: Thank you. It has been a wonderful journey to be here through all of the episodes- I’m currently caught up, which is amazing for myself.

SH: Wow.

CP: Yeah. Very excited to be here.

SH: Wow. We can’t pay you enough.

CW: We owe Christina, a cupcake.

SH: Uhhuh. At least a cupcake. Maybe something even better Cynthia. We need to review our gift list and start…

CP: I’m here for cupcakes. I’m here for it.

CW:: A non-existent gift list

SH: Perfect. Oh, Christine, I don’t know hardly anything about you. I know that we have met briefly in passing, but you know, it’s pretty unusual that we have a guest on that I mean- I just really don’t know at all.

So for me, and also for all of our listeners, could you just give us a quick bio, whatever you want people to know about you, and also something that could give context to this conversation. Like why are you the one here having this conversation with us today?

CP: Well, let me start kind of at the very beginning.

I grew up in Mill Creek Holiday, Utah, which is a suburb of Salt Lake. My parents lived in the same house from the age since I was two years. Kind of my claim to fame is I have three of my paternal- three of just my grandparents came, their ancestry came through across the plains, and we did not lose one single ancestor.

Everyone made it, which is almost unheard of.

SH: Wow.

CP: So we’re hearty, stocky, survivor type people. It is in the blood, the Mormonism goes back to Nauvoo and it flows. So the term Mormon is very much an identity. It’s very much how I see the world, how it shows up in just every single daily life is Mormonism.

So that’s kind of the framework of which I approach life, which is really important to our conversation today. So again, going back to the beginning, born and raised, I am the fifth of six children. Growing up from a young age, I did not naturally gravitate towards children the way that I noticed my peers did. And I was kind of like forced to do babysitting because that was really the only job that’s available to, you know, like a 12 to 14-year-old girl. But I didn’t like it and I would do anything I could to get out of it and that we’ll find out why that’s kind of relevant to today’s conversation.