Writer
In case you missed it: Last week, I spent part of a morning talking with Jay Fadden and Fr. Robert Reed about chastity on an episode of “This is the Day,” the live talk show they host on CatholicTV.
If you’d like to watch, click here. My interview starts 8:23 into the episode. Enjoy!
HAPPY (almost) NEW YEAR! A year ago right now, from atop an air mattress (long story), I began to type the final few thousand words of Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin.
As 2014 draws to a close, I begin the next leg of that journey: to share the finished product with THE ENTIRE WORLD.
Or — let’s face it — with as many of the people in it as I can reach.
I wrote Chastity Is For Lovers because adults who practice chastity exist, who are saving sex or sex from now on for marriage, who have felt alone — I want them to know that they aren’t. I wrote it because adults exist who have been taught that chastity is abstinence (it isn’t) — I want to present real chastity to them so they can decide whether to practice it based on the truth, not on a misconception of it.
As Ave Maria Press and I continue present the book to the public since its November 2014 release, a question has come up among my blog’s readers: “Can I get a signed copy?”
I finally have an answer: YES. Continue reading “Want a signed copy of ‘Chastity Is For Lovers’? Get one in 2015.”
The moment I learned I would become an author is vivid, even now, almost two years later:
11:12 a.m. on February 28, 2013.
I sat beneath the bright bulbs of the chandelier that floats over the kitchen table and grabbed my phone while a notification buzzed: an email from Patrick, the editor who that morning, had presented my book proposal to his colleagues at Ave Maria Press.
“So, I was wondering,” he had written. “How would you like to write a book for us? :)” Continue reading “Thoughts on becoming an author.”
[callout]This post is an excerpt from chapter 5 — “Love: The Hardest Thing You’ll Ever Have to Do” — of my forthcoming book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, (Ave Maria Press, 2014).[/callout]
In the dark on the seventh deck of a Miami-bound cruise ship, I curled into a comfy chair to the left of the stage in the Latin club.
A Dominican quartet played live music. I sat alone, up late for the last night of my trip.
I tipped back my glass of ice water to take a swig, and the giant white napkin I at first didn’t know was stuck to the glass’s bottom shone like a beacon in the night.
Smooth.
I laughed at myself when I noticed the napkin, tore it off the tumbler’s sweaty bottom, and made another, more startling discovery: the Dominican quartet’s drummer probably saw it happen. He had a smile on his face, at least, and a güiro in his hand, while he watched me from behind his drum kit. I smiled back and nodded to the beat of the merengue he played.
While we held eye contact, my heart stopped before it pumped faster, and I blushed and got butterflies. For no sensible reason, I wanted to meet him. I had to meet him. I also had to get some sleep, in order to be ready to debark at the port at 7:00 a.m. Continue reading “An Excerpt From Chapter 5 of ‘Chastity Is For Lovers’”
[callout]This post is an excerpt from chapter 3 — “Providence: A Reason For Reckless Abandon” — of my forthcoming book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, (Ave Maria Press, 2014).[/callout]
I am single, and I am happy, but I am not always happy to be single. It isn’t fun to feel like a third wheel, or a fifth wheel.
There are no warm and fuzzy feelings in discovering, while walking and talking with a friend and her boyfriend, that I am talking to myself because they stopped ten feet back to hug.
. . . Being single is especially difficult during holiday seasons, or at theme parks, where—nearly without fail—I am sandwiched between couples in lines for rides, uncomfortably privy for upwards of forty-five minutes to all the ways they can publicly display their affection. What they are is a reminder of what I’m not: taken.
But I have had to learn to snap out of self-pity when it hits, because feeling sorry for yourself when you’re unhappy doesn’t make you happy. Changing your perspective does. When we feel unhappy, is it because we’re single or is it because of what we say to ourselves about being single?
“Nobody wants to be with me.”
“I’m clearly not attractive.”
“I’m going to be alone forever.”
First, prove it. And second, when you can’t prove it (and I promise you can’t), consider, is it possible to feel happy while thinking thoughts like that? Continue reading “An Excerpt From Chapter 3 of ‘Chastity Is For Lovers’”