Merry Mary-Marthas: Chats with Catholic women exemplifying the feminine genius in the world and in the home.
Meet Jeannie Ewing,
wife, mother, and writer
Jeannie Ewing is a writer and national speaker who uses direct and honest language to put into words the difficult experiences of others. She explores hard topics, such as mental illness, marital strife, caregiver burnout, and battling spiritual darkness. Through essays and reflections, she brings refreshing encouragement to others in similar situations. Find her at jeannieewing.com
Jeannie’s books include two devotionals, a book on the spirituality of waiting, understanding the spirituality of grief, parenting with the Beatitudes as a guidepost, and two books of reflections on womanhood and motherhood. Her newest book, How I Came To Embrace Mary As My Mother, will be published in October 2022, and includes insights into how my relationship with Mary has changed and deepened over time.
Tell us a little bit about yourself – your family, hobbies, experiences, education, etc., basically anything you’d like to share.
I’m a severe introvert and a highly sensitive person. This means that I’m usually inside my own head most of the time. That’s difficult, considering I have 5 children (Felicity – 11.5, Sarah – 9, Veronica – 5, Joey – 3, and Auggie – 2). A few of my kids have high needs – Felicity struggles with anxiety and OCD, Sarah with a complex genetic condition called Apert syndrome. This is a craniofacial condition that causes one or more of the cranial plates to prematurely fuse in the skull. We did not know about any of this before her birth. Most people with Apert undergo between 20 and 60 surgeries throughout their lifetime; Sarah has had 9 surgeries in 9 years. Her needs are complicated. In fact, her geneticist told me once, “Apert syndrome is one of the most complicated genetic diagnoses the medical community knows in our modern day.”
I was born to two cradle Catholics and was raised in a consistently Catholic home. We did the “typical” Catholic things, like attend weekly Mass and on Holy Days of Obligation. We prayed before meals and at bedtime, but we never really prayed the Rosary as a family until I was almost in high school, and we didn’t go to Adoration or learn about the saints. I think my parents assumed I’d get enough of that information at the Catholic grade school I attended.
After my experience at the largest public high school in my city, I decided to return to a familiar, more intimate environment and chose a small, Catholic university within commuting distance from my home, University of Saint Francis. This is where I received my Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Master of Education in School Counseling degrees.
I spent one year as a part-time high school counselor, quit, and never looked back.
After struggling to conceive our first daughter, I decided it was a good time to learn domesticity and become the stay-at-home mom my husband and I agreed I would be.
I didn’t start writing publicly until after Sarah’s birth, mostly because I was so drained from having to repeat myself about her condition and updates on where she was with treatment and surgeries. The little blog I started eventually graduated into writing for Catholic Exchange and Cora Evans and Catholic Mom.
Now, I’m a writer, yes, but I’m in a weird place. My work doesn’t fit in with the narrative that Catholic publishers want to promote, so I’m trying to pivot in an entirely new direction – memoir. It’s my favorite genre to read, and I feel the message I have about my challenges in motherhood will make a good memoir. Not because my story is “better” than other women’s, but because I think I can put into words the experiences of other women regarding infertility, miscarriage, giving birth to and raising a child or children who are neurodiverse and have special needs, getting pregnant when I was trying to avoid, postpartum depression, my shift in identity at midlife, marital struggles. These all relate back to my vocation as a mother.
My hobbies include reading, writing (of course), watching true crime with my husband, Ben, wine tasting, scrap booking (once a year with my mom), and travel (when time and money permit).
What is your apostolate? How do you bring truth, beauty and goodness to the world? How did your ministry/apostolate begin?
I don’t really call what I do an apostolate, though I understand the term. To me, labeling what I do as an apostolate or ministry feels very formal. I’d like to believe my work is more organic and evolves in natural conversations and settings.
Creating goodness, beauty, and truth is vital in our modern world so devoid of any real meaning. I think art – real art, in which we participate as co-creators with God – is what will, in part, save our culture from hopelessness. Art uplifts the soul. It invigorates. Inspires. Strengthens.
From what I’ve been told, my writing and speaking do these things, as well as encourage others in their daily walk with suffering. Being honest and revelatory in my writing helps provide a way for others to recognize what they are dealing with (to put words to their experience) and to find relief in knowing they are not alone and that they are not “bad” for thinking or feeling really dark things.
I’ve always been a writer. From the time I started writing short stories in fourth grade, it was my lifelong goal to become a published author in adulthood. I set that dream aside when applying for colleges, because I was told by my more pragmatic family members that I’d never make any money being a writer (partially true).
But after Sarah’s birth, it was a renaissance for my writing. Everything I’d practiced through private journaling suddenly became a gateway for me to decide what God wanted me to share more publicly.
Now, I have eight books published and another coming out in October.
What have you struggled with and how have you managed to balance the interior life of Mary, with the exterior life of Martha? Tell us about your practice of prayer and any special devotions you have, and how this supports/enhances your apostolate.
“What have you struggled with” is a loaded question! Everything is a struggle for me. Living in this chaotic world is a struggle for a highly sensitive person, with its constant overstimulation and noise and bustle. I hate technology for that very reason.
I struggle with motherhood. I never saw myself as a mother while growing up. I never held babies, didn’t really think babies were cute, definitely didn’t want to change a diaper. I didn’t grow up around babies. I think that’s why I forged ahead with lofty, ambitious dreams. If I couldn’t be a writer, then I wanted to go all the way and get my PhD in psychology. It ended at a Master’s, because I was married and had student loan debt and a baby on the way.
I struggle with detachment and surrender. What I mean is that I am such a passionate person that I feel everything deeply, and when I am committed to something, I usually excel at it. This fuels the perfectionistic nature in me, and I’ve had to learn – a lot, every day – to let go of my high and often impossible expectations and plans and allow things to unfold as they will. A lot of things take more time than what they used to, or at least than what I think they should. The Surrender Novena has reframed my perspective when I lose sight of this.
I’ve always been more of a Martha – a doer, a go-getter. It’s just who I am. I set goals of excellence and strive to achieve them. In the past, I did this exceedingly well and rarely failed. In the second half of my life, though, I’ve failed far more than succeeded. It’s hard to be more of a contemplative “Mary” when you are innately wired to work hard and pursue meaningful work. I have, at times, envied others who are naturally gifted at just taking it easy, relaxing, and not sweating the small stuff like I do.
Private prayer is difficult in a household of noisy, neurodiverse children. My daughters tend to be very talkative and loud and impulsive, so I am always shushing them while I have my quiet time in the morning to read the daily readings or a quick devotional. Journaling two pages is essential to getting my anxious (Martha) thoughts onto the page and allowing myself to surrender them (Mary) to Jesus in total trust and abandonment. There is a constant tug-and-pull for me in this process. It’s messy. I regress a lot. But I think the point is to keep trying, to persevere. Special devotions have fallen by the wayside as I’ve struggled with a severe dark night of the soul for a long stretch of time. The best practice, for me, is sitting in silence with the Lord, just opening my heart to Him. He often does not speak directly to me anymore, nor do I receive obvious consolations and “signs,” but I can look in retrospect and see His subtle ways of working in my day, in my life.
I think women can be both Martha and Mary, though not usually at the same time. But we don’t have to be ashamed if we are more one or the other, because both became saints.
Where can we learn more about you and your apostolate (contact info, website, etc.) and new projects?
My website is jeannieewing.com. You can sign up for my biweekly newsletter, where I usually write a short essay on a difficult topic that most people don’t want to tackle – marital strife, pushing away your cross, self-loathing and overcoming that, giving yourself permission to hurt and to heal, letting yourself acknowledge and experience painful emotions as part of the healing process, grieving in a healthy and honest way, etc.
You can also find me on Instagram, where I post almost daily @jeannieewing and on Facebook @jeannie.ewing.author
