Memory Lane
All of our voices singing songs of liberation and freedom will change the world. One story. One name. One woman at a time.
Dearly Beloveds,
I come to you from the road as I tour parts of Texas with Blessed Are the Women. What a gift. What a dream. What a joy. What a trip down memory lane.
Thursday we visited Fabled Bookshop in Waco, TX, a quaint and beautifully curated local bookstore in Waco’s downtown that certainly didn’t exist when I was a student at Baylor some twenty plus years ago. Fabled hosted a wonderful book event in celebration of Blessed Are the Women, and I was joined by
, who is a women’s and church historian, faculty in the Baylor history department, and author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood.Our conversation was woman-led, woman-centered, woman-celebrated, and it felt like I was talking with an old friend. True to her work as an academic and historian, Dr. Barr asked me what my preparation and research was like for this book, and I elicited laughs from the crowd when I said, “Well, not much.”
To be fair to myself, my preparation, and my research, I followed up by saying that this book was not an academic endeavor. Rather, it was a spiritual one. A prayerful one. A justice-seeking one. Of course, I prepared by reading scripture and commentary, but mostly, I treated the writing of this book like I treat prayer. I showed up, I was present, I was curious, and I trusted that the women, with their names and their stories, would show up, too.
We need all of us, after all. The academics, the historians, the researchers, and the liturgists, the poets, the pastors. We need to be in conversation with each other. We need to listen and learn alongside each other. Thus, for a historian and academic to be in conversation with a liturgist, pastor, and poet, both of us singularly and beautifully focused on women and our stories, was a dream come true—a profound widening of the circle of women that has always been and always will be.
One of the women in Blessed Are the Women says, “Women, we’re always leading each other to each other.”
We can’t help ourselves. We know that our true power lies in the expansion of the circle, in the growing of the community, in the getting larger and larger for the sake of love.
***
Waco was just the first stop on this Texas tour. Today, I’ll be at Interabang Bookstore in Dallas, and then Tuesday, I’ll be in my hometown of Abilene to teach at Abilene Christian University and offer a reading and signing at Seven and One Bookstore in Abilene’s downtown.
Returning to my home state, my college town, and the lands of my youth has me reminiscing about the years past, many of which I write about in Blessed Are the Women. I enjoyed a beer and burger at a local restaurant/bar where I spent too much time in college pining for those who didn’t return my affections and where I made questionable choices as most mushy-brained twenty-one-year-olds do.
I smiled, though, as I sat there watching my eight-year-old son play arcade games in the very place I played and drank and tried to fit in, circling the drain of shame as I lacked the language and the tools that would fully empower me, and, therefore, set me free.
I imagined sitting across the booth from my twenty-one-year-old self in her low-rise jeans, high heels, and tight shirt, her air of confidence covering up her deep insecurity and fear that she wasn’t enough.
We’ve written a book, I said. We’ve spoken our truth from the deepest parts of ourselves. Shame dies when truth is spoken. We’re free.
She looked up and said something that surprised me. I always knew we would, she said.
Really? I asked, confused.
Really, she said. How else do you think you (we) got here? The part of you that’s always known was always the part of you (of us) that sang the loudest, hummed the longest, stomped the hardest. She hung on when all else let go, and so here you (and we) are. Embodied. Empowered. Free.
I love you, I said to my twenty-one-year old self.
I know, she said. It’s our love and the women that have carried us this far and will carry us onward.
***
The women and their ever-widening circle were with me then and are with me now. I’m grateful to be here. I’m grateful to be more and more free from the shame and the lies that the system of patriarchy would have me (and all of us) believe, and I’m grateful that I showed up, got curious, and figured out how to write about it.
Maybe, just maybe there’s another young woman out there who, like me, needs some encouragement and some love, a reminder that shame tells lies and love speaks truth and that women know the melody of freedom in their very bones. And that one of the reasons we women circle up is so that when one of us forgets the melody, there are others by our side who remember it and sing it on behalf of the one who’s forgotten.
Maybe, just maybe the young woman who needs some encouragement and love will find it within the pages of Blessed Are the Women, and as she discovers the women and their voices, perhaps she will discover her own and begin to sing it from the rooftops. Because we need her voice, her truth, her freedom, too.
All of our voices singing songs of liberation and freedom will change the world. One story. One name. One woman at a time.
I’ll see you here next week, beloveds, when I share more from the Texas roads and my wide-open heart.
With love,
Claire
***
THANK YOU! | BOOK REVIEWS!
Thank you for helping me get to 48 reviews for Blessed Are the Women! This is HUGE and helps the advertising algorithm kick in and get my book in front of more readers. Thank you, again!
My new goal is to surpass 50 reviews by the end of March, so please, if you haven’t reviewed it yet, do so, and if you have, please encourage other readers to do so! Even if you purchased your book elsewhere, you can still review the book on Amazon as long as you have a verified customer account! Visit this page, scroll to the bottom, and click on the button that reads “Write a Customer Review.”
Please, too, offer love and praise for Blessed Are the Women on Good Reads and anywhere else available to you. The more, the merrier, and I am eternally grateful for your support.
Thank you! Love you! Happy reading and reviewing!
***
UPCOMING EVENTS!
3.17.2024 | Interabang Bookstore | Dallas, TX | 2 p.m. | Learn more here.
3.19.2024 | Seven and One Books | Abilene, TX | 5:30 p.m. | Learn more here.
I taught with the community of Seventh and James Baptist Church in Waco, TX last Wednesday, and I’ll be with the faculty at Abilene Christian University on Tuesday. Our son, Wade (8 years old), is with me on this Texas Book Tour, and we appreciate your prayers of love and joy as we teach, travel, and share the good news of women and our love. Thank you!
Thank you for reading my Substack. This post is public so feel free to share it.
Love all of this. Sending lots of love from Nashville! <3