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Author Q&As

Q&A with Karen Edmisten, author of "after miscarriage"

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Thanks, Karen Edmisten, for being so open and willing to answer all my rambling questions.  You can read my review of After Miscarriage: A Catholic Woman’s Companion to Healing & Hope in this weekend’s print Catholic Post or here on the blog.
 
Q. First, can you tell us little more about yourself, your family and your writing?
I’m a former atheist (I was baptized at the age of 30 and came into the Catholic Church at age 35), a wife (my husband came into the Church five years after I did), and a  homeschooling mom of three girls. Our oldest daughter will graduate this year and my other daughters are 15 and 9. I’ve always written in one form or another, but I began writing for publication about five years after I became a Catholic. I started blogging (at Karen Edmisten) in late 2005, and my first book (The Rosary: Keeping Company With Jesus and Mary) was published in 2009. My second book (Through the Year With Mary) came out in 2010.
Q.  Why a book about miscarriage?
I’ve had five miscarriages myself, so it’s something I’ve lived, something I’ve thought a lot about. I wanted to share the things that were helpful and healing to me over the years, and I wanted to offer a specifically Catholic resource to address some of the questions and misunderstandings that I hear about the Church and miscarriage.
And, the grief I experienced through my miscarriages, while devastating at the time, ultimately helped me to grow closer to God, so I also wanted to share some of that hope and encouragement.
I also wanted to reassure others that they are not alone if they feel the grief of miscarriage deeply and for a long time. We’re often expected to “get over it” fairly quickly, and while it’s important to heal and keep moving forward, I think we are often surprised by how shaken we are by the loss.
Q.  You are very candid in the book about your own struggles through multiple miscarriages, and even share journal entries.  What gave you the courage to share this, and were you at all concerned about sharing “too much”?
I don’t really think of myself as courageous – maybe I should be concerned about sharing too much, but that doesn’t usually occur to me! It’s more a matter of thinking, “If this is helpful to someone else, then it’s worth saying.” Maybe because I was, at one time in my own life, such a questioner of all things religious, and I deeply appreciated people who were willing to share their spiritual journeys with me, that I want to do the same for others if I can.
Q.  Having lost a baby through miscarriage or stillbirth is kind of a “sisterhood” in a way.   Do you find women more willing in the age of the Internet/blogs, to share about membership in “the sisterhood” and talk about these kinds of details about their lives?  Is that a good thing or not?
I think we’ve always been willing to share and to support each other in that “sisterhood” – it just seems a natural reaction among women. But I think the age of the internet makes it much easier to find help, support, understanding – and I think that’s a great thing.
Q.  I’m not sure if this is a question or an invitation to discussion about this.  When I interviewed Amy Welborn about her book Wish You Were Here, I was thinking of, but never got to a post about, good books for kids who might be going through grieving.  So many of the books “specifically for or about grieving” left us cold when my own kids were going through the loss of both sets of grandparents in just a few short years.   
Amy had a great response that it isn’t necessarily a book about grieving that helps when you experience a loss, but everyone finds different types of books (perhaps something completely different-mysteries, for instance) /coping mechanisms that are helpful.    It may not be the right time or healing balm to read about death and dying.
And yet the experience of miscarriage/stillbirth is so intimate and unique, I think reading After Miscarriage is helpful for most women who have experienced it, whether recently or long ago.  The resources you provide to places like Elizabeth Ministry and the like are also very helpful and pertinent.  Your thoughts?
Thanks, and yes, I do hope that After Miscarriage ishelpful to women (and men) at any stage of that journey. But I agree with Amy that there are a lot of things that can be helpful that aren’t specifically about grief. Sometimes the tiniest thing was a healing gesture for me – bringing fresh-cut irises from the garden into the house.
One of my miscarriages occurred when my oldest daughter was six years old. She was devastated. I didn’t find that books about grief were all that helpful to her – what helped her the most was just my presence. She simply needed to know that I was there, that we could play Candyland, or go out for ice cream.
When I did read books about grief, they weren’t about the specific kind I was experiencing, but they were what I needed. For example, in After Miscarriage,  I quote A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, and Two-Part Invention, by Madeleine L’Engle. Both of those books deal with the loss of a spouse, and yet both were extremely helpful and meaningful to me after miscarriages, simply because they so accurately captured the state of grief itself.
Karen and I corresponded about some of the resources that are available to families undergoing a pregnancy loss.  
 
Karen Edmisten and the owner of one resource, Heaven’s Gain, will be on an “After Miscarriage” show on the Catholic Answers Live radio show on May 28th.
 
In addition, Elizabeth Ministry International has a very helpful FAQ page for families undergoing miscarriage or stillbirth.

Father Leo’s Fusion Fajitas: Why I Am a Book Blogger and Not a Food Blogger Will be Evident Here

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All month long, I’ve been promising to myself make the fusion fajitas that Father Leo Patalinghug beat Food TV Chef Bobby Flay on the “Throwdown” show.  We have watched the episode plenty of times at our house, especially after Father Leo appeared at our parish in May.  What an exciting time we had meeting him in person.

The fusion fajitas appear in Father Leo’s new edition of Grace Before Meals, his cookbook that encourages families to eat and talk together.  Here’s my review from The Catholic Post of Father Leo’s book Grace Before Meals.
The fajitas are thinly sliced flank steak along with sautéed onions & peppers, and served with “Holy Guacamole” and “Screamin’ Sour Cream” dip, and tortillas.
But it’s been a busy month, and I kept making “the usuals.”  Finally, last week I bought the ingredients (many perishable) so I would be sure to make them.  Flank steak was the hardest to obtain; I finally had to settle for skirt steak from a local specialty grocery store, Lindy’s,  in a nearby town.  The helpful staff assured me it would substitute nicely.
So finally, last Wednesday I decided was “the day.”
I assembled the ingredients on the kitchen table.  I thought that would be easier than taking things out one by one, and also I am prone to sometimes famously forget a critical ingredient when I cook (oops!  That hummus doesn’t have any lemon juice! Not so great, trust me).
Next, I mixed up the marinade for the steak and poured it over the steak, reserving some of the marinade to cook the onions & peppers in.
My youngest helped “tenderize” the meat with a fork.  He is saying here, a direct and favorite quote from Father Leo from the “Throwdown” episode, “I don’t want to make it too holy–that’s God’s job.”
Now the steak gets to sit in the marinade while I make the rest of the items.  I was surprised at how much brown sugar (1 cup) was in the marinade, but I don’t often marinade so what would I know?

Next, onto the “Holy Guacamole.”  I started by juicing one lime:
Next, I chopped up two avocados (I’m not sure if I’m spelling the word right, but adding an “e” triggered spellcheck), and immediately poured the lime juice over them to prevent browning:
Next, finely chopped red onion:

Now, some parsley, cilantro and salt is added to the mix and it is all smashed together.
Now it’s time to make the Screaming Sour Cream:  basically sour cream mixed with hot sauce, garlic and a few other ingredients.  Here it is before mixing:
Now, the reason I am a book blogger and not a food blogger should be evident by the fact that I lost steam around here and needed to get “dinner on the table,” and so did not take photos of lighting the charcoal for the grill, grilling the steak and letting it rest, sautéing the vegetables (though the chopped ones are visible in the last photo), etc., etc.
But I did finish the fusion fajitas, and we did have them for dinner.  They were very yummy:

Not everyone tried all of the fajitas as prepared, as I might have predicted.  The skirt steak was a big hit, as were some of the other items.  I filled out the table with refried beans (popular at our house scooped up with tortilla chips), a couple of cheese quesadillas, and some tortilla chips.  Everyone ate well and we had a relatively placid dinner and fun talking about Father Leo.
What I have to confess here is that I ended up making the “fusion fajitas” was towards the end of a day I felt convinced I am a failure as a wife and mother.  Ever have a day like that?  Last Wednesday was one of those for me.  Everyone, just everyone, in our house, yelled and was in tears for goodly portions of that day.  The only reason my husband escaped this fate is he had the great good fortune to go to work, but since he still was available via phone and email he did learn about our exploits at various points.
It was one of those truly horrible days that instead of loving the lifestyle of educating our children at home and being with my children all.the.time, I start researching boarding schools in New Zealand.  That is my big, laughing joke when chatting about homeschooling, “Yes, I love it, except on days when I want to send my children to a boarding school in New Zealand!”   And yet, there are days when that is not a joke.
Anyway, I wish I could say that making the fusion fajitas and eating them together as a family made everything terrific for the ending of that day, but it didn’t exactly do that.
However, it did make it a little bit better.  I didn’t feel quite so much of a complete failure because I tried a new recipe, had fun taking photos of it (until I ran out of time and needed to get dinner finished), and had more of a fun story to tell my husband at the table than a re-hash of the horrible day.
Maybe that’s what family meals together are supposed to do:  make things a little better, make us connect just a little bit more so we don’t despair about the inevitable bad days and bickering that goes on in families.
I think I might try to try one new complete meal recipe, along the lines of Father Leo’s Fusion Fajitas, once a month or so.  But next time, I’m going to do it on a good day.
Do you have any full-meal recipes I should try?  Or, better yet, any good New Zealand boarding schools to recommend?

Interview with Mary Eberstadt, author of "The Loser Letters"

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I had the opportunity to e-interview Mary Eberstadt, the author of The Loser Letters.  I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and it will inspire you to read the book even more.

Thanks, Mary, for your willingness to take the time and answer my questions.

First of all, well done!  I consider The Loser Letters an instant classic, no easy feat.  How did The Screwtape Letters shape your writing of this book and your idea for it?

Thank you kindly for that! The Screwtape Letters obviously did inspire the book, though only loosely. Like millions of other admirers of C.S. Lewis, I was knocked out by his success in delivering orthodox apologetics under the cloak of humor. In writing The Loser Letters, I was aiming for a similarly unexpected combination of satire and religious seriousness — especially for the newer generations of readers who may not have seen that combination before. That said, the influence ends there; they’re very different books from head to toe.

The humor in The Loser Letters is a key element. What was your goal in using humor the way you did, and was it difficult to get right?

The new atheism itself practically invites satire. After all, this movement has grown fat and happy by painting religious people as grim and humorless and self-righteous — all while exhibiting plenty of humorlessness and self-righteousness itself, as the book’s protagonist A. F. Christian enjoys pointing out.

 
As for the particular humor of A.F., I actually found it pretty easy to enter into her voice. Like many young adults in the electronic age, she bubbles constantly with an indiscriminate brew of the high and the low, the sublime and the ridiculous, the irreverent and the deadly serious — everything from the Bravo Channel to rehab patter to St. Augustine all rolled into one. Once I got used to her particular mix, the story pretty much wrote itself.

Another question regarding humor:   In my review of your book, I write about how my previous reactions to hearing atheists interviewed would go one of two unhelpful ways: either eye-rolling annoyance (not exactly charitable), or a profound sadness for the person and the state of the world.

But after reading The Loser Letters, I now laugh; not in a mocking way, but in a human way, and with a protective kindness that I felt for the fictional Letters protagonist.  I’m so grateful for that, and I also wonder if writing the book changed you.  Did writing the book change your views of those who are influenced by or even lead the atheist charge?

It hasn’t changed my view of the movement’s celebrity leaders, because my main impression of their work remains the same as it was before. It’s a view based not on anything personal, but rather just on close inspection of their books. Those books almost without exception are astonishingly angry, belligerent – and contemptuous of religious believers. Even by the debased standards of publishing today, their genre stands out for those negative characteristics. In quoting so liberally from their work, I’m trying to make readers think along with A.F. about where all that anger comes from and what it says about the new atheist movement.

 
That said, I’m taking aim at those leaders and their arguments – not at ordinary unbelievers or other secular folk. I think our modern world is a rough world for some of them, too, including in ways they don’t always understand. It certainly was hard on A.F. Christian – and of course I adore A.F.!

Have you met or had any response from the atheists you write about?   What would you say to them if you could?

No response as yet from the celebrities – though I did receive a gratifying e-mail, my favorite so far, from a man saying he’s been an atheist all his adult life, and that he’s now re-thinking that because of The Loser Letters. As for the leaders of the atheist movement, I think A.F. Christian has already said plenty to them in her letters! I don’t really have anything more to add.

I read a few of the “letters” online, but I found the physical book a much more satisfying way to read the story.  What are you hearing from readers?  Is there a generational difference?

This seems to be a case where the book form has certain advantages over online installments (before Ignatius Press put them out in printed form, the letters were serialized weekly at National Review Online). The Loser Letters is in part a mystery story – the slowly revealed tale of what happens to a particular girl – and the plot details and clues are definitely easier to follow if you can flip back and forth for them in a book. Also, believe it or not, that book cover Ignatius gave it seems to have acquired a cult following of its own! So while it’s great to have the book out in both forms, I think there was and always will be something special about a book, especially one with a plot.

How do you think The Loser Letters would be helpful for college students or young adults in facing classes or professors or fellow students who are atheists?
I think it will help college students to know that the atheist movement doesn’t have the market cornered on confidence. Believers can be pro-active too, including in ways that are fun, as I hope this book is. Beyond that, I do hope that college students especially will find in this book some useful refutations of certain atheist arguments making the rounds these days, especially on campus. In a way, this book is intended as a gift to those students— some fighting words about religion for the Facebook generation, delivered by a character they can feel for.

I gave the book to one of our teenage babysitters, and she was astounded by how much she “heard” other young people she knows in the narrator’s voice.  How did you accomplish that?
I’m privileged to spend a lot of time around teenagers and young adults, both our own and others. Their cadences, their stories and dramas, and the way they live now are all part of what inspired A. F. Christian.

Do you think The Loser Letters can serve as a platform for dialogue between and atheist and a believer?  How?

Definitely – if you can get any atheists actually to read the book! I can tell by the few atheist reviews I’ve seen that most either aren’t finishing it, or aren’t understanding what they’ve read. Even so, I hope what they do read of it percolates down somewhere.

In recent weeks Christopher Hitchens has been in the news because he announced he is suffering from cancer, and commentators and others are reflecting on his legacy. Do you have any thoughts on this?

I’m a great admirer of Christopher Hitchens’ prose. He’s preternaturally gifted, one of the best essayists in the English language. He’s also inadvertently done religious believers a favor, I think, because his particularly sharp writing has forced many take a closer look at their own arguments. I wish him well.