Anger, Influencers, and a Book About Intimacy
Weekly Notes
Happy New Years Friends! In our latest episode of Visitation Sessions I talked about how I struggle to set goals for the New Year anymore because God always yanks the rug out from under those goals right quick. I think it’s His way of reminding control freaks like me Who is in charge. This year, He has done that right from the start, keeping me sick and at His mercy since before even January 1. Yay, God. I’m sure it’s all a mercy, but man, I would like to feel well again … and have a bit of routine in my life once more. Which is probably why despite having a bad cold on top of my ongoing bout of pertussis, a cracked rib, and three sick kids (who finally went back to school today), I found a way to write this newsletter—the first of 2025.
Also, thank you, as always, to those of you who support the writing I do here and elsewhere with a full subscription to this newsletter. Most of what I write on Substack is free because I want to you to be able to share these Q&A’s with friends, family, and co-workers who are looking for faithful answers to the questions you send me. But while these newsletters are free to read and share, they are never free to write, and it is the support of full subscribers who keep them coming. I know things are always tight at the beginning of the year, but if these newsletters have been a help to you and you can upgrade your subscription, I hope you will consider doing so.
Question Box
My husband and I have been struggling to conceive, and I am feeling so much anger. Is that wrong?
First, I’m so sorry you are going through this right now. Infertility can be one of the heaviest crosses a woman (and a man) can carry, and I know how the weight of it can start to overwhelm you. And no, it’s not wrong to feel angry about it. Anger is a normal, natural reaction to a truly terrible cross. The Church calls children the “crowning glory” and the “supreme gift” of marriage, which is language that can sting horribly when it seems like you are being denied that gift (CCC 1651, 1652). But it’s also why anger, along with disappointment, confusion, envy and overwhelming sadness, are normal, understandable responses in the face of infertility.
Children are precious. They are a great and beautiful gift. They are what many of us spend our whole young life dreaming about. We take their coming for granted. And when they don’t come—or when they don’t come easily—we can feel betrayed. We can feel like our body is failing us, like it’s not doing the one unique thing a woman’s body is literally designed to do. We also can feel like God is betraying us—like He gave us this great and beautiful desire to be mothers, but then refuses to fulfill that desire. Some of us can even feel like the Church is betraying us. She sings the praises and glories of children, but then teaches that there are limits on how those of us who struggle to conceive can pursue bringing children into the world. God never betrays us. The Church’s teachings don’t betray us either. It’s all a mercy. But in the midst of the pain, grief, and disappointment of infertility, it can be difficult for many of us to see that mercy.
At the height of our struggle with infertility, I remember feeling like I had been duped by God. I had tried so hard, for so many years, to do everything right. I’d been a good Catholic girl. I stayed chaste. I waited for marriage. (I waited a long time for marriage!) I worked hard to serve the Lord and follow His will and obey His commandments. And although I don’t think I could have articulated this at the time, all the while I had been doing that, deep down, I expected to be rewarded. I thought if I was a good girl, then eventually I would get what I wanted: a husband and a baby.
When the baby didn’t come, I absolutely felt betrayed by God. I felt like He had broken a promise to me. He had let me down. And that made me angry. On an even deeper level, I worried that I was being punished or that God didn’t trust me to be a mother—that I wasn’t good enough to raise a child. And that worry also expressed itself as anger. Back then, there were days when I wanted to burn the whole world down.
But I didn’t. As I wrestled with God over our inability to conceive, He reminded me that children are not rewards for good behavior or a right to which I was entitled, but a gift to be received with gratitude. He also helped me see that trusting Him with my life meant trusting Him with my fertility, and that I had to trust Him when babies didn’t come as much as other people had to trust Him when they did come. Most of all, God helped me see that He hadn’t turned His back on me. Every step of the way, whether I realized it or not, He was loving me, caring for me, and suffering with me.
God helping me to recognize all that and learn to temper my anger was a grace and a mercy. Because while it is 100 percent not wrong to feel angry about infertility, it is wrong to direct our anger at people who don’t deserve it, at people who love us and care for us. It is also wrong to let our anger separate us from friends, family, the Church, and God Himself. Which, with infertility, it can all too easily do. Anger, left to fester, can become bitterness. It can become a hard heart, filled with resentment and envy. And that only makes the cross of infertility weigh all the heavier on us.
So yes, don’t beat yourself up for feeling angry. Don’t try to bury the anger either. Instead, take it to Jesus. Lay it before Him. Tell Him every feeling you’re feeling. Don’t hold back. But also keep looking at His beautiful face. Look at His body, hanging on the cross, sacrificed for you. Look at His Body in the Eucharist, too. Look at Him offering Himself perpetually for you and giving Himself daily to you, and know that He doesn’t stand apart from you in your pain. He feels it, too. He feels every bit of it. And He would not permit it if He didn’t know that He could use it to bring about a greater good than you can imagine.
So, keep your eyes on Jesus, and as you do, beg Him for the grace to trust. Beg Him for the grace to trust Him and beg for the grace to keep praying the words, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” If you’re struggling with the Church’s teachings on IVF, beg for the grace of understanding on those teachings, too.
One more thing: don’t let the anger you feel separate yourself from those who love you. I know it can be incredibly painful to see others welcoming new life, raising families, and seemingly getting everything you most want. I know the temptation can be to pull back, to avoid, to stay away. But don’t. Fight that temptation. Treat the people you love and their children as you want them to treat you and your children, should children ever come, whether through your body or through adoption. Celebrate with expecting friends and family when new life is announced. Make a meal for them or take a gift to them when a new baby comes. Love their children and be a part of their life. You don’t have to go to every single baby shower. But do rejoice in every single baby. The love and joy those children will bring into your life is the best antidote for anger there is. They will keep your heart from growing hard. They will remind you that children are always an unmerited, undeserved gift. And they will show you how much God loves you in ways more beautiful than you ever expect.
Do you know of any books about sex for married couples that are actually faithful?
Yes! At long last, a practical book about sex that I can recommend actually exists. It’s called Lovemaking: How to Talk About Sex With Your Spouse, and it is so good: funny, real, honest, and totally faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church. The authors, Renzo and Monica Ortega, reached out to me last spring and asked if I would be open to writing the forward. Even though I enjoy Monica and Renzo’s podcast (Two Become Family) and said yes, trusting the book would be faithful, I still was a bit nervous about it. I’ve just been burned by reading too many bad (or weird) Catholic books about sex over the years. Fortunately, I had no reason to be nervous. Lovemaking really is solid, and I think it will help so many couples. I have already persuaded the Ortegas to make a weekend trip to Steubenville with their five kids so we can do an episode of Visitation Sessions on the book. That will happen mid-March, but you can pre-order the book now before its release in early February.
Do you think there is a code of ethics by which Catholic influencers should abide?
Absolutely. And for the most part, it’s the same code of ethics by which everyone— influencer or not, Catholic or not—should abide.
No matter what your job is you should always strive to do it with honesty and integrity—putting people before profit, never using anyone or exploiting anyone, and seeking to serve rather than be served. You shouldn’t compromise your faith or values or what you believe to be right and good in order to make a dollar or land a deal or grow your business. You should represent yourself truthfully. You shouldn’t feign knowledge or expertise or excellence where you have none. You should exercise prudence as you go about your work, not acting rashly or hastily without wisdom and forethought. You should also be kind to others. You should see everyone, even people you disagree with or who disagree with you, as the image of God and treat them as such. You should not seek to advance your own interests by harming others, including by gossip and detraction. You should cultivate humility and meekness, recognizing how much you don’t know and seeking to be taught and mentored by those who know more than you. You should take correction well. You should admit when you’ve been in the wrong or made mistakes and seek to repair any damage you’ve caused.
There’s probably more, but you get the picture. Hard work, honesty, charity, justice, prudence, fortitude, and humility will always serve you well, no matter what sort of job you do.
If you are going to do work that puts you in the public eye, though, it’s probably good to work even harder at cultivating an extra dose of humility and self-awareness. Know who you are—what you want, what you struggle with, what motivates you—and always give your motives, behavior, and decisions an extra layer of scrutiny. Likewise, surround yourself with people who know you well and who can tell you when you don’t need to listen to your critics and when you do. Don’t block people who kindly ask questions of you, think differently from you, or challenge you gently and charitably. Be sober about the trust people have placed in you, and seek always to be worthy of that trust. Don’t abuse it thoughtlessly, carelessly, or selfishly. Never present mere opinion or personal preference as doctrine or established fact. Recognize the complications and uniqueness of every life and make room for that in how you talk about what you believe. Recognize that you don’t know what you don’t know.
Last of all, if you are seeking to influence people in some way, make sure you’re seeking to influence them to do something that truly does serve them and the Lord—something that will make their lives and the world more fruitful, more joyful, more peaceful, more full of health, order, truth, and love—and not just something that that serves you, whether it’s your ego or your pocketbook.
Five Fast Things
If you have five extra minutes today, I suggest using it to read “It’s Good to Be Here,” a beautiful essay in Dappled Things written by a woman conceived through IVF. The author does a fantastic job of affirming her dignity and the dignity of everyone conceived through IVF, while also underlining how her rights as a human being were violated by her parents, both through how they had her conceived and how they hid the truth from her in the years that followed.
John Kuhner is the owner of our local bookshop, Bookmarx. He also is a fine writer and thinker. For those of you interested in the state of Steubenville’s revitalization, this essay is a great read. My only quibble is that in addition to more small businesses and restaurants, I believe we desperately need the return of some kind of large scale industry, if this town is ever going to truly recover. It needs to be a both/and kind of thing (just with way more environmental protections put into new plants so that the Steubenville stench never returns!). Anyhow, if you’re looking for a great small town in which to open a factory, I know a place!
Visitation Sessions will turn one-year-old next month, and we are fast approaching 100,000 downloads, which is amazing. As the podcast continues to grow, however, and take up more of our time, we’re looking for advertising partners and sponsors, who can help us make this more sustainable. If you are interested in seeing our available packages, reach out to Kate.
I’ve had lots of questions about the future of Beautycounter, but I have no answers for you. We have been promised a relaunch of the company later in 2025, but for now, I know absolutely nothing about when that will be or what comes after January 13, when the website will once again go dark. Until then, however, you can save 30-65 percent sitewide on all remaining products. If you haven’t shopped yet or want to make sure you have everything you need (and maybe one or two backups), you have just four days left to place an order. (And a big thank you to everyone who places those orders using my affiliate link!)
I shared this recipe for Brussels Sprouts Gratin on Instagram, but I’m sharing it again here because it was truly one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten in my life, and you need this in your winter life.
Let’s Meet in Person This Spring!
After a nearly five-year, baby-induced hiatus from public speaking, I am once again taking on a limited number of speaking engagements. If you’re near one of my upcoming talks this spring, I would love to meet you in person. And if you’re interested in bringing me in to speak to your group, feel free to email me with the date, size, theme, and location of the event, and I can send you information.
May 3, Buffalo Catholic Women’s Conference, Buffalo, NY
May 8, The Canadian March for Life Rose Dinner, Ontario, Canada
In Case You Missed It
Astrology, Politics, and Parenting, Oh My! (Free to All Subscribers)
Circling the Drain: On Feminism, the Patriarchy, and What Marriages Really Need (Full Subscribers Only)
The Sources of Our Discontent: On Happiness, Feminism, and Grandmothers (Full Subscribers Only)
Buy My Newest Book
As we get ready for First Communions and First Confessions this Spring, you can help the little ones in your life prepare for their big day with my newest book, co-authored with Scott Hahn, Lord, Have Mercy. Written for children from ages 5 to 11, it tells the story of God’s mercy down through salvation history and helps children better know the limitless love of the Father.
The only thing I would add to your words on infertility are to share with others that you are struggling, so they can pray. My perspective on mothering changed so much when I learned to take hard moments and turn them into a prayer (specific, naming names) for those struggling with infertility. I feel honored to be able to pray, because, like you already said this is one of the hardest crosses to carry. Many of us would love to help carry even the tiniest splinter, through prayer, with those struggling.
In addition to the Ortega’s book, I’d also highly suggest the podcast Charting Toward Intimacy and the online material Ellen offers.