“And now these three things remain – faith, hope, & love. But the greatest of these is love.”
~ 1 Corinthians 13:13
Latest from the Blog
Some Things Are Better Left Dead
Oh, here we go again. The voices in their head. I breathe deeply, attempting to calm the unnaturally fast rhythm of my heart as my own head spins. I can forgive you. I can move forward. But I can’t forget what you said last night. Knees nearly giving way, I lean on the bathroom vanity,…
The Lie that Love is Enough
One more time. C’mon girl, you can do it. I spoke the words over myself for the tenth time that dawn, praying that, if prayed loud enough, they would somehow end up as a prophecy instead of a plea. After all, isn’t that what the poets and prophets did? Wrote and wept tears of ink…
At the Center of Our World: Finding Pride in my Women’s & Gender Studies Major
When situations become awkward at Georgetown, we usually default to asking the infamous Georgetown intro: your name, where you’re from, what year you are, and what you are studying. I’ve got the first three questions down pat: Kami Steffenauer, Southern Illinois, and Class of 2026. But when it comes to the last question, I sometimes…
Two Wombs Intertwined: Reading Motherhood in Lucy Becomes a Sculptress
My motherhood in television paper for my Reading Motherhood English class: Born and bred in a Midwest rural town, I came to know I Love Lucy as one of my family’s staples, watching reruns in black-and-white that transported my sister and me into a crowded New York City apartment where one woman reigned supreme -…
If Sexuality means Selfishness & Motherhood means Selflessness: A Comparative Analysis of Black Motherhood & Sexuality in Imitation of Life and Beloved
My final paper for my Reading Motherhood English class: A few months ago, my girlfriends and I were watching Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” music video, an international hit of the Queen dancing fiercely and fearlessly, owning her sexuality as a source of power as opposed to something of which to feel shame. One of…
For All Are One: Mistaking Complementarity for Biblical Womanhood
My final paper for my Women in Christianity class: Historian and Baylor professor Beth Allison Barr wrote in her groundbreaking book The Making of Biblical Womanhood “Patriarchy may be a part of Christian history, but that doesn’t make it Christian” (Barr 37). Yet this notion has spread throughout U.S. evangelical subculture, most infamously in the…
The Lives They Wish with The Protections They Deserve: A Study of Sexual & Reproductive Labor as Decolonization in Latin America and the Caribbean
My term paper for my Race, Gender, & Coloniality in Latin America & the Caribbean class: Of all the topics I’ve studied as a women’s and gender studies scholar, very few have stirred such strong reactions as did the subject of sex work in the Caribbean and Latin America. Eyes saddened, mouths curved downward, hearts…
Whole – A Disability Study of Dios
Exhausted, I placed my hands on my thighs, futilely attempting to catch my breath and steady my shaking heart. Gasping, I ran my hand along the front of my knee, feeling but not seeing the long coil indented upon my skin, forever marking my body as changed, broken, and made new again. Yet new doesn’t…
Mimicking Colonial Ideologies: The Myth of Liberal Feminism
When I told my group of friends that I was planning on studying abroad this summer, their initial reaction was, “You can’t wear that in Ecuador.” I looked down at my sports bra and short shorts and burst out laughing, recognizing that modesty has never been one of my virtues. But the laughing stopped when…
The Fear of Economic Instability: A Study of Rural Slaves in Roman Antiquity
My final paper for my Slavery in the Ancient Mediterranean Classics class: Since Moses Finley first published his ground-breaking work, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, in 1980,1 classicists and scholars alike have investigated the institutions of slavery in antiquity, particularly in the Roman context. While this field has sought to remove the idealistic lens historians…
The Truth of the Matter: A Study of Jewish Women’s Healthcare in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza
My term paper for my Judaism Under Crescent & Cross Theology class: Spanning from roughly 950-1250 CE, the Geniza period was the time in which the Cairo Geniza obtained the majority of its four hundred thousand letters, leaflets, and other literary texts of the Jewish community throughout Fatimid Egypt and beyond.1 Even with such an…
Black Mothers Matter: A Study of Black Pregnant Workers’ Challenges in Receiving Paid Maternity Leave
My term paper for my Disciplining the Poor Welfare class: In 2019, U.S. Olympic runner and six-time Track and Field Champion Alysia Montaño made headlines as she broke her contract’s confidentiality clause and informed the world that her sponsor, Nike, paused her contract when she became pregnant. Outraged, Montaño published the now viral New York…
How to cancel culture, not people
The debates on cancel culture have been long and hard, and I in no way, shape, or form want to get in the middle of them. I do wish, however, to offer my thoughts on reconciliation and manners in which to address these instances. Rarely do we hear from the people who have been canceled…
F*ck “Happily ever after”
Life doesn’t turn out the way you expected. I feel like I’ve heard that line twenty times, maybe twenty thousand, but it never fails to cause some stir of emotion in me: sometimes joy, other times sorrow, and even still another feeling – anger. Yeah, no shit, I often think to myself. You think I…
The God of Trauma… Or Is He?
In an age where people overuse and self-diagnose mental health conditions like a second language, I go out of my way to distance myself from the buzzwords of “depression,” “codependency,” and “boundaries” and leave the decision up to the medical professionals. Yet after a horrible week of medical procedures, pain killers, and immobility, I laid…
Dear Ladies, 2023 Edition
Sitting in the darkened interior of my Honda Accord, I lean back and smile, electrified by the semi-religious concert my sister’s best friend and I had just experienced. Despite the fact that I had been driving since early morning and that the clock had long since rolled past midnight, my heart felt full and my…
Maybe this time – Addressing the Church’s crimes in the Americas
As a Protestant, white woman who attends an elite, Catholic, primarily white institution and hails from a ninety-eight percent white area, I feel inadequate to even attempt writing a piece on white supremacy in the Catholic Church. And as a Christian, I feel it is my responsibility and a requirement of my faith to speak…
My Mirror
Coming home after your first year of college is one of the weirdest experiences in a person’s life. You’ve just spent a year living on your own with a complete stranger, figuring out an entire new city with people you’ve just met days, sometimes minutes, before, and you’ve learned how to write term papers, conduct…
The Danger of White Feminism in the Non-White World
When I originally told my group of friends that I was planning on studying abroad this summer, one of the first things that came out of their mouths was, “You can’t wear that in Ecuador.” Looking down, I would burst out laughing, seeing my sports bra and short shorts and recognizing that modesty has never…
Healing Hurts
You know, God, from the start of time, we’re told life’s not perfect. We’re told in this world we will have trouble, yet we should take heart, for You have overcome the world. Maybe we’ve all just forgotten that last part. Or maybe in the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day grind, we forget about…
February 14th
Dreams are a funny thing. They inspire us, ignite a fire within us, illuminate all that is possible in this dark and dreary world. They cause us to lift our heads to the heavens in awe, in anticipation, and they cause us to put our heads down in elation as we excitedly work towards the…
Someone Else’s Dream – For You
My dad is one of my best friends. Everyday, he texts me, checking in to see how I’m doing, and everyday, he emails me the St. Louis Art Museum’s Object of the Day, oftentimes with a little message at the bottom that reads something along the lines of, “LOVE YOU: VERY PROUD OF YOU.” As…
Just Grace
Perhaps it’s ironic that I’m a Christian who hates giving grace, but perhaps that’s why I am one – I suck at it and know I need all the help I can get. Well, perhaps I don’t hate giving grace as much as I hate receiving it. After all, as someone who’s worked her way…
What Do We Do with Church Hurt?
Maybe the fact that I wrote my entire college essay on why I was never going back to church means I have no credibility to guide others to church; maybe the fact that I now attend church religiously means my spirituality is unstable, like the river outside of town as opposed to the cornerstone of…
The Promised Land
How often do I just get to do this? Sit down in my school library, look out at the bright autumn leaves against a building that came straight out of a Gothic novel, and just be. No essays due at midnight, no tests the very next day, and nowhere to be, no one to tell.…
Mirror, Mirror
The words come quickly, in the night, you would think, but actually in broad daylight with family, friends, and loved ones abound. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Obviously, it’s just a fairytale (my mirror NEVER said one thing to me, although I wish it emitted green glow-in-the-dark smoke),…
“Speak Now” (Kami’s Version)
Heart-rejuvenating, I take in my surroundings, mesmerized by the lush trees, ripples of wildflowers, and brilliant blue sky encompassing me in what looks like Sleeping Beauty’s woods, making me feel like I live in a fairytale where fairy godmothers, kings and queens, and adventure awaits at every corner instead of the nightmarish world that has…
Roots
I can still see it all in my mind: golden fields rolling as far as the eye can see, wind in my hair, surprising me with such refreshing coolness in the middle of July, and deer running in and out of the brush, barely protruding antlers and spotted coats flashing before me only to disappear…
Longest T. Swift Sidebar
As a recent Taylor Swift converter (is that the word?), I’ve spent my senior summer listening to as many of her songs as humanly possible, even getting sick just to make myself sit still long enough to watch her “folklore: long pond” sessions on Disney+. My fandom knows no boundaries, clearly. While my friends were,…
Home – Graduation Speech
For my high school graduation, I was blessed with the gift of delivering my class’ salutation. While this message was & is addressed to the Class of 2022, my prayer is that it inspires parents and students alike, serving as an encourager from the past, and for the students struggling in the younger grades to…
What I Had
As I near the end of my high school career, preparing to say goodbye and trying feverishly to thank every beautiful soul who the stars have blessed me with over the past four years, I find such gratefulness in my heart. Gratefulness for the smiles, the people who could make me throw my head back…
That Green-Eyed Monster
“O, beware, my lord (and lady), of jealousy: It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” ~ William Shakespeare I love Shakespeare. No, I’m serious. His flowery words, his flowing sentences, and his miraculous ability to weave stories together that are still finding their way into modern hands nearly four…
Surrounded by Truth
Have you ever had that perfect movie moment, where time feels like it’s come to a halt, where your head is spinning, trying to process everything at a mile-a-minute, where you are simultaneously fully present yet fully aware that this moment will shape your life forever? That feeling swept over me in a hurricane of…
Homecoming: Dancing in the Streets
Lamps dangle above us, the kind you see in those old-fashioned movies where a party is thrown and everyone in town is invited and dressed to perfection, although this isn’t a movie. After missing my last two Homecomings to reconstruction surgery and COVID-19, I can’t believe that my senior dance actually happened, let alone that…
When Love Fails…
If the universe handed out prizes for worst-handler-of-stress-and-homework-and-jerks-and-sleepless nights-and-society, I think I win a gold medal for my performance this past week. Every single possible thing that could have gone wrong did, and every single possible thing that I thought I had in my corner to stand upon was ripped out from under my feet,…
Unplug & Look Up
After surviving the devastating movings of close friends, the shame of the middle school locker room, and the petty in-fighting of every high school club from the school play to the soccer team, I cannot believe I’m finally here. Autumn 2021. Eighteen years old. Senior year. Truth be told, I’m not sure if I’ve yet…
Living Wide Awake
Opening my eyes, I inhale deeply as I pull the pile of blankets closer to my skin, encompassing me in a cocoon of warmth, safety, and love. Since school’s started, my mornings have consisted of jumping awake at the sound of my alarm, stumbling towards my desk in order to silence the melody, and glancing…
A Letter To The Battling Teen
Hey there. I’m glad you stopped by. And I’m glad I live in a world where you do, too. I hope & pray that you’ll soften your heart and open yourself to the possibility that the sayings your parents, teachers, and mentors have told you for years might actually be true, because they are. There…
Staffs Made of Scars
Heart racing, I rest my hands on my sides, fighting to keep them in place as the sweat encourages my palms to slide right off and sway tiredly besides me in utter defeat. I bend down to grab my towel and instantly feel the pain shooting up my right hip. Annoyed, I crouch in an…
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Last Love 
❤️❤️❤️Kami your writing is beautiful!! Can’t wait to see what the future holds!!
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