Exponent II
A feminist forum for Mormon women and gender minority voices
Faith isn’t like a seed It’s a garden grown within. Winter flowers bloom in chill As daisies burst in spring Leaves once bright in autumn Rot away in mud and rain Pleasant plants erupt from hidden places Only later to wither away Then in times of trauma In grief and devastation F…
Last week I took my baby, now eighteen years old and almost a foot taller than me, to the airport so he could leave me to serve two years in a faraway country. I hugged him for longer than his dignity could stand, then watched him swallow hard and turn away to go through security…
We pulled into a premium parking spot right in front of the entrance to San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. I laughed. My husband turned to me, eyebrows raised, expectant. “We aren’t supposed to be able to park here,” I said, “we’re supposed to have to circle around the block sev…
“Be in the world, but not of it.” * The human body shares many similarities with the earth it inhabits. For example, water comprises more than half of both the human body and the earth’s surface. This lifeblood of the earth flows through vein-like rivers and streams. But the body…
God does not shroud this truth in disguise. Rather, God spreads the good news of salvation through Christ with the clarity of a trumpet. The full content of this post is available to subscribers. Subscribe now or log in!
It was our first family gathering since the outbreak of the pandemic. No social distancing now as fourteen of us squeezed elbow to elbow at the fully extended dining table that had seen many family gatherings since my father purchased it at auction over 50 years ago. My then nine…
Weaponizing The Word Strong: A Black LDS Woman’s Guide to VulnerabilityBY RAMONA MORRIS | AUGUST 12, 2021exponentii.org/weaponizing-the-word-strong-a-black-lds-womans-guide-to-vulnerability . . . As a twenty-four-year-old convert, the word “strong” super-glued itself onto my enti…
I have to learn alone/to turn my body— Adrienne Rich * I wasn’t born in the boat, but within its long shadow. Not like my friends, who talked about the boat and told me I was strange for not living on it. Or the boys who came in pairs some Sundays with tiny envelopes for us to pu…
The shallow waters tip me over Make me sway and bend and fall I try to reach out but they pull me down I think they will guide me But shallow waters only run so deep I lay in shallow waters far too long Then I wrote a poem — how cliché The waters held me prisoner Because I wouldn…
Some people are so fatalistic and so neurotically attuned to our own bodies that we are certain every new sensation means that we are dying. Each stuttered heartbeat is a latent blood clot; every twitching muscle warns of early-onset ALS. Others, like my husband, live blithely in…
LIGHTWORK I didn’t know until after Grandma died that daisies were her favorite flower. Daisies on her coffin. Daisies in the pallbearers’ boutonnieres. Daisies arranged with Hershey kisses, another of her favorites. Daisies belong to the Asteraceae or sunflower family. What look…
BY GUEST POST · PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 23, 2021 · UPDATED NOVEMBER 15, 2021 Guest Post by McArthur Krishna and Martin Pulido. McArthur comes from a pack of storytellers. And while the pack rightly insists she’s only in the running for third-best storyteller on a good day, she’s made …