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Mothering Spirit

everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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About Laura

Welcome. I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer.

Since 2010 I’ve been blogging about parenthood and spirituality. Now I write more frequently on Instagram and Facebook.

I also publish a monthly newsletter called The Holy Labor. Sign up here for free (or support my work with a paid subscription and enjoy special bonus offerings).

More about me

My husband and I are raising five children while remembering three forever in our hearts: our baby lost to miscarriage and Maggie & Abby, our identical twin daughters who died days after their birth in 2016 from twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS).

Drawing from our experiences of loss, my husband and I co-authored Grieving Together: A Couple’s Journey through Miscarriage (Our Sunday Visitor, 2018).

I’m also the author of Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting (Liturgical Press, 2014) which is available from Liturgical Press, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

As part of my theological work on vocation with the Collegeville Institute, I’ve written To Bless Our Callings: Prayers, Poems, and Hymns to Celebrate Vocation (Wipf & Stock, 2017) and co-authored Living Your Discipleship: 7 Ways to Express Your Deepest Calling with Kathleen A. Cahalan (23rd Publications, 2015).

I’ve written several devotional books for Blessed Is She and 3 short volumes for Little Rock Scripture Study: Mercy: God’s Nature, Our Challenge, Dashed Hopes: When Our Best-Laid Plans Fall Apart, and Grief: Finding Hope in Sorrow.

I write a nationally syndicated column for Catholic News Service that runs monthly in Catholic newspapers across the U.S., winner of several Catholic Press Awards. My writing has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, On Being, and the Christian Century, and in popular outlets including People Magazine and the Kelly Clarkson Show.

Why “Mothering Spirit”?

I started this blog shortly after my first son’s birth. As I rocked him in the church’s cry room one Sunday, the choir sang a hymn about God’s Mothering Spirit. I’ve been captivated by connections between faith and parenting ever since.

This space is for you:

  • If you’re yearning to deepen your relationship with God in the midst of family life, work, or multiple callings
  • If you’re longing for hope in grief after infertility, miscarriage, or loss
  • If you’re looking for prayers for pregnancy or books on parenting
  • If you love reflecting on spirituality, Scripture, prayer, and questions of faith

I also speak regularly at churches, conferences, and retreats. I’d love to hear from you if you’re looking for a speaker for your event. Learn more here.

I love to hear from readers (even if it sometimes takes me a few days to respond with kids underfoot). Contact me here.

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About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

thismessygrace
I have a habit of walking the ATL tunnels, but nev I have a habit of walking the ATL tunnels, but never made it to terminal T until yesterday. What I found stopped me in my tracks and spun my day around.

May we let ourselves be interrupted by joy and remember the beauty of being human.

Even in the least likely places.
If our daughters had lived, we never would have pl If our daughters had lived, we never would have planted this garden. 

There are pockets of beauty in my life today that could not have existed if they had survived.

Acknowledging this does not mean I accept their loss. Or that I wouldn’t trade it all to have them here instead.

But the grieving know this strange, stubborn, saving truth: that goodness can grow in the gaping holes left by the ones we love.

I don’t know any simple ways to make sense of the hard times in which we’re living. As a porous soul, I feel it all and it breaks my heart, even as I cling to what I know is true.

But loving and losing my girls has taught me that life is both heart-breaking and resilient, that surviving is more complicated than we suspect, that most people are walking around shattered beneath the surface.

Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, searing as sunlight: the grief in someone’s eyes behind their anger, the burden sagging their shoulders, the past that’s poisoning their present. Few things have transformed my life more than learning to recognize pain in others.

Grief is a long letting go of a life you thought you’d have. Most of us are carrying more of it than we realize—or remember when we’re dealing with each other (especially when we’re tearing each other down).

Go gentle today. Practicing compassion and generosity of spirit will crack open more of the world and its confounding struggles. You might lose the satisfying clarity you clung to before life broke your heart in complicated ways, but you will find more of God in the messy, maddening middle.

I have learned this much from the garden I never planned to plant, from a version of life I never dreamed.
The Moment After Suffering By Jessica Powers (Sis The Moment After Suffering

By Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit)

Time’s cupped hand holds
no place so lenient, so calm as this, 
the moment after suffering. It is like
a sunlit clearing after densest wood,
bright by antithesis.
One sits upon a stump to get one’s bearing
and to admire such evidence of day.
Thicket and tangle fade; the furtive creatures
of darkness take their leave and slink away.
One feeds upon a succulent rich wisdom
that, to the mind’s surprise, has naught to do 
with late abjection; it is revelation,
God-fathered, heaven-new.

Oh, there are woods, of course, long forest stretches
of wide inhabited darkness to be crossed,
with pain and hunger, fear of unnamed creatures,
an imminent certainty of being lost.
But even these elude this meditation,
or if intrusive bring yet more release.
One muses as to what it will be like
to step at last from final forest into 
the infinite meadows of unending peace,
a place all light and yet not lighted by
the harsh, obtrusive sun that walks our sky,
light that the soul assimilates until
not witness but participant it stands,
taking of Godhead its amazing fill.
A morning meditation after a week of hard conversa A morning meditation after a week of hard conversations.
I bristle whenever I hear (well-meaning wise ones I bristle whenever I hear
(well-meaning wise ones say)

“Little kids, little problems.
Big kids, big problems.”

I know what they mean, of course. Parenting gets more complicated as young people grow.

But when my children were tiny, I was faced with trying to keep them alive despite life-threatening complications. That wasn’t little.

I know parents with grade-schoolers on suicide watch or tweens in intense therapy. That’s not little.

Life can be complicated and challenging from its very beginning.

The deeper wisdom I find is that smaller children do bring solvable circumstances in ways that older children do not.

Wet? Change to dry.
Hungry? Feed to full.
Sad? Comfort to calm.

In the midst of potty training my fifth child, I’ve realized something that my younger self would scoff to hear:

I will miss the cloth diaper laundry.

For thirteen years the bright colors have churned in our washer, tumbled in our dryer, hung on the line. Contrary to what you might think, they’re the easiest laundry of the household. Simple to sort, quick to fold, satisfying to stack.

But we’re leaving behind this stage for bigger clothes, washed independently by bigger kids. They’ll have to figure out more messes on their own.

May I stay grateful for whatever solvable circumstances their lives bring them.

May I learn to love them through whatever can’t be easily cleaned or smoothed or sorted.
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

Grotto Network shares stories about life, work, faith, relationships, and more. Check out their videos, podcast, and articles to help you reflect on where you are in your journey.
 
Grotto Network has generously given 2-$100 gift cards to Bloomin’ Brands Restaurants (Outback, Carrabba’s, Bonefish Grill & more) to help you celebrate this month with friends & family! It’s a huge giveaway, because we all need to savor and celebrate whatever joy we can find these days.
 
To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
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