Letters to Women - Exploring the Feminine Genius

When Sarah Swafford first started talking to college students about friendship, it was 2007. They were trying to figure out cellphones, dorm life, emotions, and virtue. Sixteen years later, Sarah is still talking about friendship—and it hasn’t gotten any easier with the rise of social media, smart phones, and a world pandemic. Sarah fist came on the podcast way back in 2018 to talk about emotions...

I’m sitting down with Grace Babineau. She’s a wife and mom of two, and she recently wrote an article on Verily Magazine called “Thrift is the Really Romantic Thing” about why saving money might be the best thing for your marriage. And today we’re talking about thrift and romance, but also the virtue of simplicity, prioritizing creativity in seasons where it’s easy to write it off as a luxury or se...

We all know someone struggling with substance use disorder. We might not know it, but since nearly one in five Americans older than twelve reported illicit drug use in 2018, someone in our life is struggling. And those numbers were before a pandemic threw our culture into further isolation. With those kinds of numbers, if you live in the United States, it’s nearly impossible for you to not know so...

Have you ever wanted to sit down with a woman who is a few season of life ahead of you, settle in on her couch with a big cup of coffee, and pick her brain about all of the joys and challenges of the season of life you’re in now -- and the seasons you’re looking forward to? To hear her advice and learn from the wisdom she’s gained over the years? That’s exactly what today’s episode from the archiv...

There are so many tasks on our to-do lists as women, wives, and moms that are repetitive—and hidden. You plan meals every week and wander the aisle of your grocery store, only to be back again the week after to do the exact same thing all over again. You fold a massive pile of laundry and as you’re putting clean clothes in dressers, you find the laundry baskets are full again and ready for the nex...

Every single one of us has a feminine genius -- a particular way that the Lord is inviting us to bring forth new life into the world. But embracing that feminine genius in your daily life can be incredibly challenging if you’re facing something challenging in your life….but you’re pretending everything is fine, that you’re okay, and that you don’t need any help. Maybe it’s hard to admit to a frien...

It’s an incredible gift to share the beauty of the Catholic faith with the kids in our lives. Whether you’re sharing about Christ in the Eucharist with your toddler, diving into Scripture together, or preparing children for their first reconciliation or first communion, there’s a lot that goes into evangelizing the littlest people in our lives. How can we explain the faith, the realities of sin, a...

For 2,000 years, Catholics have been at the heart of the culinary arts. Maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering the sacred feast of the Eucharist and how it gives life to our faith. But, like so many other things in our lives today, our relationship with food has become compromised, cheapened, and robbed of its wholesomeness and purpose. And it’s so easy to lose the sacramental nature...

In my home growing up, we said a family Rosary every morning at 9am—my mom, dad, and seven siblings gathered in the living room and prayed together. We took turns leading decades and corralling toddlers. But when I moved out, I got out of the habit of the daily Rosary. And I have a growing desire to get back into it now that my little crew of kids is able to say a few words of the Hail Mary themse...

Valentine’s day is around the corner, and that means that you might be encountering a lot of Instagram-worthy pictures and posts about marriages over the next few days. And the vocation of marriage is incredible. God draws spouses closer to the ultimate Heavenly marriage through the powerful sacrament of marriage. That doesn’t mean that marriage is always easy, and it isn’t always like what I imag...

We’ve all experienced moments of pain and suffering. And while all of us carry different crosses, suffering is something that is part of every one of our stories. But how do you pray when you struggle to find words to express your pain and trauma? How do you validate the emotions you experience in the valleys of life and embrace them as a gift instead of stuffing them down some place deep ins...

Hey friends, Merry Christmas season! I love that this episode drops in your podcast feed the day after Christmas, and I hope it finds you well rested and joyful. Our little Langr crew has been sick this past week, so we’re enjoying quiet family time and praying for everyone soon. But this episode also finds you just a few days before the first day of 2023. There are many resolutions that I’ve made...

Have you ever witnessed the Lord do something incredible in your life? And when you see him at work, what is your response? Do you share it with everyone who will listen, or do you keep it to yourself? So often, we make evangelization too complicated. It’s not about knowing just the right thing to say, or having all the answers. The most potent evangelization is the personal testimony of what Jesu...

The Lord wants to draw you ever closer to himself. He wants to transform you, and in doing so, transform every single relationship in your life—he’s leaving no stone unturned. But growing in deeper relationship involves the hard and holy work of examining both sides of the struggles and the joys, the good memories and the awful memories in those relationships. You don’t have to walk that journey a...

In his Letter to Artists, St. Pope John Paul II said that “Human beings, in a certain sense, are unknown to themselves.” Jesus reveals who God is, but he also fully reveals us to ourselves. Yet we often find ourselves asking “Who am I” and “What is real”? John Paul II goes on to say that “humanity in every age, and even today, looks to work of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.” But...

What does it mean to think deeply as Catholic women today? When you hear that question, do you worry that it means spending endless hours reading and writing academic papers? Do you wonder if pursuing the intellectual life isn’t for you because you don’t consider yourself a thinker? Or have you thought that maybe the intellectual life is for another season of life, one where you’re not as busy, no...

Today’s episode contains a conversation on sexual addiction and healing. If you listen around little ears, you might want to grab a pair of headphones. No one intends to get addicted to pornograpy, masturbation, or other disordered sexual desires. And it doesn’t help that we live in a world that has ingrained into our minds the idea that pornography is a ‘guys issue’. Yes, many men do struggle wit...

There is something so challenging and good in St. Paul’s words to the Romans when he tells them (and us) to both rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. Grieving is hard. And accompanying others who are grieving is hard and holy work. So how can we grieve as Catholic women, especially when grieving the loss of someone so dear and close to us, like our children? In this episo...

About a year ago, when I’d find myself with nothing left to give, I started asking Jesus for His Sacred Heart. I asked him to give me his heart to love those around me, because my little heart was so exhausted. But in the back of my head, I wondered if Jesus was disappointed in me for not being able to love well, for having to return to him over and over to ask for help, to ask for his Sacred Hear...

Has every conversation in this miniseries on friendship has left you whispering “But that won’t work for me"? Today, I’m sitting down with Lea-Anne Virnig.  Lea-Anne is a writer and speaker passionate about inspiring women to live in the freedom of their identity in Christ. She helps women cultivate their magnanimity and grow in holiness through wholeness. A revert to the Catholic faith, she has h...

I’d just like to start this episode off with a moment of total honesty in which I reveal to you that one of my biggest fears is fish. I can’t stand them. I don’t swim in the ocean, I don’t swim in the lake, I don’t go to aquariums with my kids. Even talking about fish is making my skin crawl. But today’s episode is all about the beauty, mystery, and depth that we can encounter when we revisit the...

This summer, I’m focusing in on the topic of friendship with other women, and in this third episode of the series, I’m sitting down with Elizabeth Vargas. Elizabeth is the recipe developer and photographer behind the blog “Elizabeth’s Table”. She was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, studied Economic Consulting and Business Analytics at India University, and currently lives in Ohio. In her free...

This summer, I’m focusing in on the topic of friendship with other women, and in this second episode of the series, I’m sitting down with Lindsay Schlegel. Lindsay is a daughter of God who seeks to encourage, inspire, and lift others up to be all they were created to be. She is also the author of Don’t Forget to Say Thank You: And Other Parenting Lessons That Brought Me Closer to God and the host...

This summer, I’m focusing in on the topic of friendship with other women, and in this first episode of the series, I’m sitting down with Kiki Rocha. Kiki is a Catholic woman on a mission to rebuild culture. She is an overcomer, and it is through her story of resilience that she has found her calling to coach women in wholeness by cultivating their self-worth, mindset, and dreams! Speaking is anoth...

Have you ever secretly (or not so secretly) wondered if you’re doing this whole womanhood thing right? Are you tired of the secular rhetoric that tries to tell you how you should act and who you should be? And are you wondering what the church really teaches about Catholic femininity - but also a little worried about diving deeper into what the church says because you’re afraid you won’t measure u...