reconciling things

The Gospel of Relaxation

Daja Steuer

June 23, 2026

I found this little book at an antique shop that contained two essays by William James, one of the founders of American psychology. It was published in 1899 and cost 75cents in the 1922 reprint. I paid $15. That’s the inflation rate on antique philosophical little books that you can read by the lake for leisure in the summer.

The second of the two essays in the book is called The Gospel of Relaxation he makes a point quite in opposition to our current American culture. He writes, “…our emotions are mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus of the exciting object or situation. An emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect of the object’s presence on the mind, but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion which the object suddenly excites.” For example, “when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid it is because we run away, and not conversely.”

Catholic Sex Talk #1

Daja Steuer

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June 18, 2026

I don’t know if there will be a part two. The rest of this talk may only exist in voice memos to my best friend and rants in the car with my husband. Because quite frankly, I think a lot of Catholic content creators on the internet have lost the plot.

But I will begin with the response to my last post of “Women of a Certain Age.” To sum up, that post was about perimenopause and how I am learning to grieve the loss of my fertility and still embrace the other physical and spiritual manifestations of my femininity. Although I try to be a pretty clear communicator, obviously I missed the mark because people have misunderstood. Comments on my socials very kindly tried to comfort me with advice to deal with the physical symptoms of perimenopause or reasons behind menopausal weight gain or with the fact that once I have grandkids I won’t worry about my own fertility or that once I hit menopause my libido will be long gone along with the hormonal unpredictability.

Now, pour yourself a cup of tea or a shot of vodka, because I’m going to make a bold statement. If you are not hungry, happy, and horny, you are not healthy. Sorry, not sorry. These are natural God-given drives that are indicators of what is going on in your cells and in your soul. Lack of desire is not maturity; it’s depression, honey.

Women of a certain age

Daja Steuer

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June 12, 2026

If you want content built by women traumatized by perimenopause there is plenty out there. You can watch reels all day about hot flashes, lack of libido, weight gain in your midsection, and overall dryness–including personality. In mom groups you can find out the best pads to use because apparently we start peeing ourselves at a certain age and which doctors prescribed which hormones. You can join the bitch-fest of how suddenly the love of your life is the most annoying man on the planet and how maybe separate bedrooms will help save the marriage during menopause.

If you have not yet reached the age where people are throwing weighted vests and peptides at you all day long while checking in on how much protein you are eating, then you may still be in the stage of life where you are fertile. For you the culture would like to offer you birth control pills or injections because your fertility is a problem to be dealt with not a reality to be celebrated.

Me? I’m in no mans land. I’m not quite in the former camp, but neither am I part of the latter.

I don’t hate my cycle. It is something to be treasured. When my daughters’ started their cycles I gifted them with jewelry I’d picked out for them years ahead of time. I took them out to lunch and celebrated with flowers. And each month when any woman in my house starts her period, she need only send a text and one of the boys will bring her a celebration treat. Not, an “it sucks to be you” treat. Not even a “feel better” treat. The treat is explicitly an act of celebration.

The truth is, I love my period. And I’m very sad to see it starting to disappear. It’s packing its bags. It’s not gone, but it’s called for the Uber.

And I’m not ready.

Consoling the Sacred Heart

Daja Steuer

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May 20, 2026

“My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love You; I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You.” (Prayer given to the children of Fatima from the Angel of Peace)

Have you ever been confronted with something so painful that you didn’t know how to process it? The thing strikes you to your core and for a moment time stops. I have had several such experiences recently. In response to my love, I was rebuffed. Although I was aware of the lack of affection, it is always shocking to me when love is not returned for love.

A Mother’s Worth

Daja Steuer

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April 21, 2026

It’s almost Mother’s Day. And you know what that means: well meaning posts, reels, and AP articles will start popping up with calculations of the financial worth of a mother. The hypothetical “If you had to pay for these services how much are they worth?”

These imaginary salaries are based on a stay-at-home parent being chauffeur, chef, nanny, tutor, therapist, housekeeper, and laundress. Current estimates put these services somewhere between $175,000 and $205,000 annually. These calculations are usually used to sell you things like life insurance. “If you die, what would your family do without you? Buy some life insurance to ensure you can be replaced.”

These reports always begin by talking about the “unpaid labor” of women–a concept I find reductionist, Marxist, and quite frankly stupid. Every year well-meaning people send me these reels or posts because I have so many children. They are trying to be complimentary. But it’s condescending at best. Does that sound harsh? I feel like it should.

St. Mary of Egypt and the meaning of truth

Daja Steuer

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April 1, 2026

What we know about St. Mary of Egypt comes from oral tradition, recorded by St. Sophronius. And though the facts seem fantastical, it is one of the truest stories in Christendom. It is beautiful, nuanced, rich, and shocking to the point of being sensational. Yet it is transcendent in that it is true, good, and beautiful.

Mary was born around the year 344 in Egypt. When she was 12 years old she fled to Alexandria and began a life of prostitution. And while she could adequately support herself in this way, sometimes she gave out sexual favors for free because she was insatiable. So, she supplemented her sex-work with spinning flax. Yes, you read that right. She didn’t supplement her spinning with prostitution. She supplemented her prostitution with spinning. For seventeen years she was the city’s premier public prostitute.

Redemption Arc

Daja Steuer

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February 18, 2026

When I was pregnant with my first child we went to a natural childbirth class. In God’s providence we met another couple there. We became friends. And by friends, I don’t mean the kind of friends to whom you say, “We should get together” every six weeks until you’re both dead. Not the kind of friends you see at church and chat over donuts after. Not even the kind of friends who you might call to housesit or borrow their truck to help you move.

Rather we were the kind of friends who nursed each other’s children and delivered each other’s babies. Once you’ve crossed that line with a friend you are bound for eternity, I think.

All You Need Is Love…of the right kind.

Daja Steuer

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February 10, 2026

(I wrote this six years ago. It was first posted in 2019 on the blog of the Catholic Club at University of Maine Farmington.)

I love love.

You can blame it on my personality type (ENFP) or being Enneagram 4 or my heritage or my Patron Saint (St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the patroness of a vocation to love).

I have a deep need to love others and to be loved. I get excited about loving others–my kids, my friends, strangers. Have you ever hugged a perfect stranger in the grocery store? I have.

To love and to be loved is essential; it is what we were made for and from. God is love and we were made from a creative act of the love of God. The first paragraph of the catechism says, “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.”(CCC n.1)

But what does it really mean to love?

The Greeks didn’t just have one word for love that they applied to everything the way we do. In the course of a single day I could say that I love my 3 year old, my husband, my best friend, and cheesecake and it all means something kind of different. The Greeks used four different words: Eros, Agape, Storge, and Phileo.

Maintaining your peace

Daja Steuer

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January 11, 2026

Is the world causing you anxiety? Do you find yourself on edge, ready to fight strangers on the internet about situations that don’t remotely concern you because the news cycle told you that the appropriate response is outrage? Here are some ways to maintain your peace. I don’t say to find peace, because if you haven’t already found your peace hiding under the protective mantle of the Theotokos, these tips may not help you.

I said what I said.

I am also not saying to protect your peace. Because although the best offense is a good defense, that tightness in your chest is not a protection, its a cortisol spike. Put aside the true crime and learn to discern the difference.

Without further disclaimers or clarifications, here’s how to maintain your peace when the world is encroaching with the temptation to engage in an addiction to anxiety:

Inefficiency

Daja Steuer

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November 28, 2025

I’ve never been one for malls, even when malls were a thing. The florescent lights and the muzak make me twitchy after a time. I get weary of window shopping for things I cannot afford. And retailers know that you only think that blouse looks cute because the way it is placed next to their other less cute things, so you take it home, never wear it, maybe hate it because it just doesn’t vibe the same in your bedroom as it did in the dressing room. I have had good times in malls, but that was only because of the company of my friends and/or daughters and we are trying on ridiculous things and come home with a scarf and new hand cream.

Recently sitting around a tea table with my parish friends we found ourselves bemoaning the disappearance of malls. Oh, not because we particularly miss HotTopic and Mervins, but because it was a third space. It was a place we went to a lot when we were younger without an agenda for no specified length of time. People could wander, eat a pretzel, bump into friends, flirt with the guy at the pagoda selling knockoff sunglasses and call your parents from the payphone asking if you could stay a little later. During the holidays you’d go to the mall just to take in the Christmas decorations, listen to Christmas music, watch the train and visit Santa’s village. There in the all-American mall we accidentally found the proverbial village and the third space we needed to develop social skills and to combat the loneliness.

Online shopping has made us terribly efficient at the price of human connection. We no longer have to go buy school supplies or try on new jeans. There is no pimply faced boy with whom to awkwardly flirt as you try on sunglasses. We just hop on Amazon and in a few clicks have everything we need delivered to our door. As a mom of many, I admit that I love the appeal of online shopping, of placing my order at Sam’s Club and having a stranger put it in my car, and then rushing right home. One could honestly go days and even weeks without intentional or meaningful human connection. Shopping, dating, medical consultation, education, and even worship can all be done in the most efficient way and never requires you put on pants. Kids these days don’t ask to hang out with their friends because even that is accomplished online.

To what end have we become this painfully efficient? It’s not so we have more time for leisure, because everyone is busier and more frazzled than ever. No, we saved all this time doing errands so that we could fill our days with more servile labor.