Help Me Decide My Newsletter Name!
Because it's EARLY VOTING SEASON Y'ALL
Hello, friends! I’ve been through about 4 iterations of what I want to call my newsletter in the past week. As you probably know, it’s been the Trauma-Informed Take for a little while now. But in an effort to hone in on what exactly I write about, and what the identity of this newsletter is, I want to shake things up a bit.
The background of my current name: “Trauma-Informed” is a therapist term for being aware that people often walk in to our offices with trauma baggage and knowing how to help tend to that. We assume that people behave the way they do in large part because things have happened to them. The approach is generally collaborative, and the therapist / provider is not seen as an all-knowledgeable expert. Rather, the client / patient is thought of as being the expert on their life, and we providers can help open up insights and changes through the questions we ask and reflections we provide.
I love the idea and most definitely consider myself a trauma-informed therapist. But… I’m not sure that is the most succinct identity of my newsletter!
I write a fair amount about religious trauma, and that’s the topic of my book I hope to one day bring into the real world (not just my Microsoft Word document). So one idea for my newsletter name is: Unpacking Religious Trauma. A lot of what I write about is tangentially related to religious trauma (because it’s usually related in some way to evangelicalism, or ex-evangelicalism).
The downside of that is I’m not sure how much everyone is familiar with the term religious trauma. Or if people are, then they probably follow or read a lot of other folks who write about religious trauma as well. And like I mentioned above, many of my topics are more directly related to (ex)evangelicalism, with religious trauma hanging more in the background.
I kept brainstorming, wondering what makes me unique as a writer in this space? I’m a therapist, I’m an exvangelical, I went to seminary. OH! I decided to marry a pastor. That’s fine, people do that — but I decided to marry a pastor, even though I carry plenty of my own religious trauma baggage, even though I have a lot of difficult feelings about the church, even though I waffle on whether or not I would even call myself a Christian. And I am anything but a stereotypical pastor’s wife, for sure.
So my other option for a title is this: Rebellious Pastor’s Wife.
Unpacking Religious Trauma? Rebellious Pastor’s Wife? Option C, your own creative suggestion? REMEMBER TO VOTE, VOTE EARLY, VOTE HERE IN THE COMMENT SECTION PLEASE.
(For real though it’s literally early voting season, at least in my state, so literally go out and make sure you vote for the November election! But also please weigh in on my name choices!)
And now for other things that are thought provoking… Links, Links, Links!
This Atlantic article features a long profile on Kari Lake, the Arizona governor candidate. She’s like Trump, but actually a skilled orator, a skilled politician, and pleasing to look at [I AM NOT TRYING TO BE SEXIST BUT TRUMP IS PRETTY UGLY SORRY]. A dangerous combination because she’s also an election denier - at least for the purposes of grabbing herself some political power - and promises she would have turned Arizona’s votes over to Trump if only she’d been in charge in 2020. An interesting tidbit was how she used to be friendly with the gay community and friends with a drag queen, but now she’s complaining about those same exact people being menaces to society. Yikes.
Anne Helen Petersen writes this week about the idea of time and calendars, and how in this society (which we’ve imposed around the world) we operate on “monochromic” time which most highly regards striving, efficiency, masculine-coded work, and other capitalistic values.
And mental health providers in California working for Kaiser Permanente are on strike. Like pretty much everywhere, there are too few providers and too many people in need. Plus California recently passed a law saying that patients need to be followed up with within 10 days of initial appointment (if the provider deems it necessary). So why are the therapists on strike when the need is so great? Well, because their caseloads are overflowing, follow-up appointments are often only able to be booked 6-8 weeks out, and the providers are being asked to do too much with too little time and cannot provide good client care. This article actually goes really well with the AHP article….
If you’re still here and haven’t clicked away to all the interesting links… leave me a comment! And don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already!
I really like Rebellious Pastor's Wife! Yet I voted for something else without anything specific. I wonder if you could keep working on the Rebellious Pastor's Wife idea and tweak it? Keep the fun, rebellious, feeling and the use other words? Maybe there are no better words to capture the idea/feeling. In that case I vote for "first idea, best idea."
Christine, I’m so glad you didn’t see my comment as negative. I know being a wife and mom is a huge part of your life, but you are also a therapist, social commentator, iconclast, and guide/therapist to us who are growing out of Christianity. I just wanted to encourage you to think bigger, try to capture as much of that as you can! I like, “Now It’s My Turn To Talk” and its shorter variations—“My Turn,” “Now It’s My Turn,” and “My Turn To Talk.” They all leave the topic door wide open, and there’s still something a little rebellious in it (which I love), implying that you’ve listened to society, the patriarchy, Christianity, your clients, maybe even your husband and men in general, and now (brace yourselves!), you get to talk back to all of that!! 😄 Love it!!