real womanhood

I do layout and design for a woman’s literary magazine that seeks to provide a safe space for expression of honest womanhood in all it’s raw and varied forms. I’m proud to be part of this venture and am privledged to lend my skills. I am also honored to be friends with the inspiration and driving force behind it. Heather has helped me become a little less cynical about the possibility of beautiful and honest friendship.

While at this point our advertisers are local to the Northern Colorado region (for now), we send the magazine anywhere in the US. I thought I would take this opportunity to promote this unique publication to men and women alike and encourage you to subscribe. Our website is still in process but you can visit getbornmag.com for a sneak peak and to subscribe. The magazine contains essays, short fiction and poetry and we are always looking for content.

We are also always looking for cover photos that communicate the complexity of REAL womanhood and the hope of “getting born”. At this time we do not pay for submissions.

Keep in mind when I say “honest”, and “raw” I’m not being cute, get born explores the harsh realities of womanhood (the season of motherhood in particular but not exclusively), often with humor, but just as often not. We also do not censor so you will find cussing. I would encourage you however, not to let that deter you. Sometimes a few well placed swears can communicate a powerful message of freedom and “getting born” (some of you might recall some of your choice words uttered in the throes of labor *wink*)

In the vein of honesty, here is a little piece I blogged awhile ago called “It’s Not All Pink Balls of Fuzziness”. This was written to explore our faith journey - which I edit here to intertwine with the other journeys we are on as women, of being born, becoming a woman, giving birth and becoming born again as we find our feet and our stride and spread our wings.

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Sometimes it’s awesome and fuzzy and all kinds of pink balls of loveliness.
Sometimes it’s barbed, angst ridden, doubt filled and all kinds of black balls of frustration.

You fear, you hope, you dream, you love and laugh and learn, you question, doubt, grapple, wrestle and postulate, theorize and hypothesize but at the end of the day you realize that this God you are trying to serve the best way your feeble humanity is able, THIS God simply IS. Coming to earth, serving and loving, healing and getting angry, doubting and getting frustrated, being tempted and questioning while bleeding in a garden. When we add OUR story to THIS story we have a beautiful but very human thing going.

And then we get to add our humanity to another’s humanity and do all those messy things together with them and we join together to connect with the Missio Dei, the God at work on the Earth - and in that, we continue the story. We become vessels of reconciliation and healing, peace and restoration. At our best, we are incarnations of Christ, and at our worst, we are at least trying.

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that is living, that is getting born