On Jane Austen and Seeing Ourselves in Stories

I’ve had Jane Austen on my mind lately. It feels like over-the-top, “anti-historical” shows and films are having a moment, and while I love The Great and am entertained by Bridgerton, I’m not quite sure what to think about the new film Persuasion, Austen’s classic turned into a surprisingly comedic romance.

The story of Persuasion has always stuck with me because of its melancholy, its despair, its regret. I spent much of my early adulthood building my own regrets and learning that a lack of independence usually means disappointment and unhappiness, so the story spoke to me. I could relate.

This new adaptation takes a lighthearted approach to the story, making Anne into a comedic commentator on her own mistakes as she frequently breaks the fourth wall to explain her feelings. I don’t hate it as much as some do, but it’s not the subtle character development and quiet desperation that I relished as an eighteen-year-old stay-at-home daughter…

Cait WestAugust 14, 2022jane austen, persuasion, stay at home, stay at home daughter, reading Comment

You Are the Author of Your Story

For most of my life, my story was dictated to me. God had already planned my days, and if I wanted to honor him, I was supposed to follow my father’s interpretation of the Bible in order to fulfill God’s plan.

I was always a secondary character in this story. One could say the protagonist was God, the controller of the universe, but since he’s invisible, his stand-in was my father, eventually to be replaced by my future husband.

I remember once as a twenty-four-year-old, when I was trying to assert myself, I was told, “You can think whatever you want, but you can’t act on it.” That statement encapsulated the essence of the spiritual abuse I was experiencing…

November Update

When I was little, I used to fold pieces of printer paper, staple them together, and write “nature books” in the pages. I loved watching Reading Rainbow because I could learn about new books to borrow from the library. I couldn’t wait till bedtime when my mom read me stories before I fell asleep. In short, I’ve always been obsessed about reading and writing and stories, so it’s probably no surprise that I now work in publishing and spend much of my spare time reading and writing.

For the past few years, I’ve been working on creative nonfiction essays, threads of my life in the Christian patriarchy movement as a stay-at-home daughter. And now I’m starting to weave these threads together into a memoir. It’s not finished quite yet, but I’m getting close. I can feel it coming together. Finally.

Which brings me to some exciting news . . .

Complexity and the Power of Stories

You never know who will be impacted by your story.

More than ten years ago, I was a stay-at-home daughter, waiting around for a man to marry me and wandering in Borders bookstore looking for something to read in the meantime.

I was about to leave the store when a book with the image of a girl’s face stood out to me. The book was called Paper Towns. I’d never heard of it, but something about it made me know I needed to bring it home . . .

Book Review: The Making of Biblical Womanhood

I remember being taught that women were created to be under men, to be their helpers, to find their purpose only through the purpose of their fathers or husbands. The Old Testament served as a foundation for this kind of teaching: Eve was created after Adam because Adam needed a helper. Eve also led Adam into sin and was cursed with always having a “desire” for her husband. This phrasing was written in a different language thousands of years ago, but still Eve’s curse was translated to mean modern-day feminism in the religious world I grew up in.

It’s easier to go along with sexism and misogyny than it is to speak up for yourself, especially when you’ve been indoctrinated into a patriarchal system that doesn’t have any safety net for those who are abused, neglected, hurt, or questioning. It’s easier to live under Eve’s curse, accept your fate as a female to be passed from father to husband as if you are property.

I only knew what I was told, and any outside information was strictly filtered or banned. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

My First Job

When I first left the Christian patriarchy movement and moved to Michigan, I knew that I wanted to work, but I didn’t know much at all about how to get a job. As a stay-at-home daughter, I hadn’t been allowed to work outside the home because that would mean being under submission to a man who wasn’t my father. The only thing I could do to make money was teach piano lessons from my parents’ home, which ended up being a significant reason I was able to save up enough resources to eventually leave.

In Michigan, it seemed like there were endless opportunities, but I had limited options and very limited experience. I didn’t have internet in my apartment, so I would spend my days at the library looking for job openings on the computer and submitting applications. I applied to more jobs than I could count, from retail work to babysitting jobs, anything entry level that didn’t require any college education. I got a few interviews, but I had zero practice, and I felt so inexperienced, even though I was in my mid-twenties. Another snag was that I shared a car with my husband, making it difficult to find a job flexible enough to correspond with his work schedule.

MemoirCait WestJune 28, 2021work, Dutch, first job, stay at home daughter, christian patriarchy, exfundie, equality, gender rolesComment

Getting Out of a High-Control Group

Eight years ago, I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter in the Christian Patriarchy movement.

I was struggling with depression, anxiety, and terrifying fear. My voice was silenced, and I had no agency over my life. I was not allowed to get a job outside the house, not allowed to go to college, not allowed to date. I had few friends and was mostly cut off from extended family.

The conservative Christian church I was a part of as a teenager was deeply invested in teaching strict gender roles, homeschooling as the only way to raise children, courtship instead of dating, and father-controlled families. Hate speech toward women and the LGBTQ+ community was preached from the pulpit. In this church, I learned to fear everything and to hate myself . . .

On Loss and Leaving

I’ve been thinking about those of you who have lost through leaving.

Maybe you have lost your family, community, sense of safety, belonging, friends, church, or work. Maybe you feel this loss in ways you can’t share with others. Maybe you have lost everything, or what used to be your everything.

Maybe you feel like you’ve lost yourself.

Leaving can mean different things: leaving behind something or someone you care about, leaving a faith, leaving your past self in an effort to grow into who you are becoming. For me, leaving Christian patriarchy meant losing some family relationships, losing the scattered kind of community I grew up in, losing my sense of certainty, my support network.

When I left, I felt like I was losing pieces of myself, only to find that leaving was the only way to healing, to becoming more whole. . . .

Sleeping Beauty

We were told daughters need protection, daughters need help, daughters need supervision.

Daughters need fathers.

We were told a daughter is a princess, and her father is the king. It doesn’t matter if this daughter is 5 or 35 years old. She is bound to her father’s kingdom, waiting for an approved prince to marry her and become her new protector.

I was one of those stay-at-home daughters. . . .

Stories like Ours

We all need books that move us, change us, challenge us, enlighten us, educate us, heal us. One book that has been healing for me in my journey away from fundamentalism and spiritual abuse has been Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu. This is just one of many that have made me feel less alone in my experience, that have opened my heart to the possibility that my story is important too, that this hasn’t all been for nothing. That our experiences mean something.

When I first heard about Jennifer Mathieu, I was attending the Festival of Faith and Writing three years after leaving the stay-at-home-daughter movement, and I saw her talk in the conference program, with a description of her book mentioning Christian Patriarchy. I hadn’t heard of any fiction books about the world of fundamentalist Christianity, and I was curious to see what she had to say and what her book Devoted was about. . . .

Shelter

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to shelter in place.

The world seems off-balance this year, but the deep part of me has found the old tracks through the forest, hidden due to years of absence, but still there.

During the work week I can muffle the echoes of the past, stay busy in my virtual office, stay connected with the present.

But on my days off, I’m reliving something I haven’t experienced in the seven years since I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter. . . .

MemoirCait WestOctober 14, 2020stay at home, stay at home daughter, shelter in place, covid-19, pandemic, learning, hope, remembering, memory, changeComment

Choosing to Stay Home

The rain and the waiting and the forgetting of days—all this that we are dealing with together from our separate homes—remind me of a time years ago, a time of habitual rain and endless waiting and how it didn’t really matter whether you called today Tuesday or Wednesday. A time when I lived on Kaua`i as a stay-at-home daughter, an available bride with no groom in sight.

Under the stay-at-home order, I am returning to the long stretches of afternoon stillness, quiet moments that turn to hours, a deeper familiarity with my walls and windows, time to read books without the focus to read them. Pen in hand, nothing to say. Aimless walking in neighborhoods that seem to have no neighbors. . . .

The Education of a Stay-at-Home Daughter

They called it Babylon. A place without God. A place where you would lose your faith, lose your innocence, lose your soul.

We were told the professors were armored with the “liberal agenda.” We were told they hated God, that they spoke lies. College was a place where the naive were brainwashed.

For us daughters, college was off-limits. Women who went away to university would forget their calling to be wives and mothers. They would become obsessed with careers and displace men in the workplace. They would get ideas. . . .