Three years ago this week was my wedding shower. For those doing the quick math, yes—it was in the middle of the worst of COVID, before vaccines, before we knew how long the pandemic would last, before I thought I would also get pregnant and deliver my baby with mask requirements and fear of getting sick and putting her in danger.
We didn’t postpone anything. Not the shower, not the wedding, not the baby. Because we couldn’t wait to start our life together. Because the superficialities of limos and big receptions don’t matter. Because even in the darkness, there’s always hope.
If you’re reading this while planning a wedding and you’re feeling overwhelmed, I encourage you to take a deep breath, step back, and ask yourself, “What will I actually miss if I don’t have it at my [shower, bachelorette party, wedding]?” You can lose basically anything other than the groom (and, most likely, some of your guests—we definitely had people who couldn’t come whom we wish could have) and the priest and, when it’s all over, not feel like you’re missing out at all.
What I’ve been working on:
I have a couple reviews out at Catholic Women in Business: one on the Barbie movie and one on a few books about perfectionism and ambition.
My CWIB co-president, Elise Crawford Gallagher, and I have something special in the works. Sign up here to be the first to find out what it is!
Content I Liked This Week:
The FDA just approved a new drug for postpartum depression. As anyone knows who has struggled with a postpartum mental illness, this is a potentially big deal. As always,
has a great piece about it.This Publishers Weekly article is about an interesting new startup that is partnering with social media influencers to launch small book imprints. I’m a little skeptical but interested to see where it goes!
I’m pretty sure I share everything
writes. This article for Hearth & Field was a wonderful historical and contemporary look at homemaking as a vocation.Did you know that maternity leave is correlated with a reduced mortality rate for infants and young children? Why are more pro-lifers not talking about this?
explores this and four additional benefits of parental leave in her latest (free) Substack.Funnily enough, I wasn’t too far into this essay in The Free Press by their intern Abigail Anthony before I started suspecting that she had endometriosis—yet she went through many doctors and started wondering if she was crazy before she finally was diagnosed. I say “funnily,” even though it’s far from funny and, sadly, not actually that surprising.
Books I Enjoyed:
I finally read Ambition Redefined: Why the Corner Office Doesn't Work for Every Woman & What to Do Instead, which has been on my TBR list since I spoke at the same conference as the author, Kathryn Sollmann, in 2018. While I can’t endorse her belief that divorce could “happen to” anyone, the book was full of tips for women for whom the traditional corporate ladder is not appealing.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman, has also been on my list since it came out a couple of years ago. It was a delight! My only complaint is that the Christianity he so easily dismisses in a couple parts of the book could really help him square his ideas about time.
What a beautiful comment about getting married ❤️ we had our reception at a pie place in Brooklyn that was destroyed a little later by Hurricane Sandy ... we lived in downtown nyc at the time and watched as all the lights went out. For days...weeks? I was walking around with a flashlight at night south of 42nd street when I got back from commuting to my job in NYC. Never a dull moment in life