Is being happy worth it? And the answer is absolutely, unequivocally, yes. - Lyz Lenz

I want to explain to her about work, about how I feel and experience value. I want to tell her how deeply I love my kids and how working isn’t a rejection of them but it’s an embrace of my life and my skills and oh, by the way, why is it the woman’s job anyway? But I can’t reargue the entire first wave of feminism in this church. And if I do, it won’t help. The line has been drawn at values. It’s one word but it means something vastly different to Marilyn than it does to me.

I’m not good at believing the things I’m supposed to,” I said. “I’m not good at being the person I’m supposed to be.

One year after I moved out of my house and my marriage, I wrote an essay for Glamour titled “I’m a Great Cook. Now That I’m Divorced, I’m Never Making Dinner for a Man Again.” The article outlined how for eleven years I’d cooked meals for my husband and then for our children. I had liked cooking. I loved it even. I thought of food as my offerings of love. But as our marriage dragged on, cooking became less of a joy and more of an obligation. When my marriage ended, I stopped cooking. “I stopped cooking because I wanted to feel as unencumbered as man walking through the door of his home with the expectation that something had been done for him,” I wrote. “I wanted to be free of cutting coupons and rolling dough and worrying about dinner times and feeding. I wanted to rest.