reconciling things

Fathers

Daja Steuer

August 3, 2026

This weekend our parish had our first priestly ordination. A young man I have known for almost a decade was ordained to the priesthood right there in our little parish. The Maronite Bishop, Chor-Bishop, the Roman Catholic Bishop, and dozens of priests, deacons, subdeacons, and seminarians from the Maronite, Latin, and Byzantine Churches were there. It was glorious beyond words. I cried so much as my heart was really quite overcome with gratitude that God calls these men to such a life. They pray, they love, they serve. They give us the Sacraments. They look after our very souls. And what do we give them in return? Probably a lot of grief. But you wouldn’t know it from how they lay down their lives for us.

And so I reflected on the good and holy priests I’ve experienced in my about 13 years of practicing Catholicism. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is just a highlight.

The Village

Daja Steuer

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July 10, 2026

In my recent post about growing older and learning to negotiate the impending change of life (which you can read here), I lamented that I needed a woman two steps ahead of me to help me to understand living out this season with gratitude, grace, and joy. In that post I wrote, “I need someone to brew me an herbal tonic of ashwagandha, lavender, and linden and lovingly hold my hand and tell me it’s not all bad. I need someone to cry with me–not about growing older–but about how grateful we are to be women who were allowed to participate in this beautiful act of bringing life into this world. I need someone to speak of hope. I need someone who knows how to live out Virgin, Bride, and Mother metaphysically and liturgically. I need a woman who loves being a woman…”

I am grateful to report that I have found her. But, she isn’t one, she is many.

The Gospel of Relaxation

Daja Steuer

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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.