Genre: Christian, Spiritual, Self Help
What a beautiful, complex, layered book is Even After Everything by Stephanie Duncan Smith. Two caveats for readers. Smith is a believer and her faith is imbued throughout the text. A reader can certainly benefit from her ideas without sharing her faith, but the faith is leading the content in most ways. Also, she talks frankly and passionately about pregnancy and miscarriage. If as a reader you are in an uncertain place here, proceed with this knowledge. I am a long way from pregnancy. The lessons she teaches (and I don’t think she’d prefer that wording) are universal. I am finding it difficult to encapsulate the thesis of the book simply (beautiful and complex, right?). Smith discusses the need to love and hope even in the face of loss and inevitable death. She frames her discussion around the church’s liturgical calendar - arguing that we try to live in a linear way when the world invites us to live in a cyclical way: the seasons, the liturgy, women’s monthly cycles.
I love this way of thinking. Raised a United Methodist, I have long had my worship framed by the liturgical calendar, but Smith’s insight takes it from a frame to a philosophy, and I am here for it. I have learned over a long period and with good counseling that for me grief is, in fact, cyclical (not what I was taught in Psych 101) and that trying to power through it with “positivity” was not working for me. I had not, however, made the connection to the cycle of liturgy that organizes my faith life. She points out how the loss is baked in and that we acknowledge it yearly. And suggests that we gain wisdom each time we move through cycles. I love that. Her reasoning is compelling and the idea is beautiful and points to a more hopeful way to experience loss and turmoil. Can I just advise you to read the book?
For me, the use of poetry and literature to support Smith’s ideas is very powerful. I have long believed that literature can clarify so much about life if we would just allow it to do so. She also quotes other research and thinkers. She creates these beautiful metaphors based on her personal experience. I value her transparency very much. She, then, uses the stories and experiences of others to expand her ideas. Finally, she anchors these ideas with literature and research, speaking to the universality of them. Oh how Smith speaks to the English teacher’s heart here. Also, I love liturgy and church history. I cannot celebrate the joy of Easter without reflection on sacrifice during Lent. I love the advent approach to Christmas. I have been told by more evangelical friends that this approach seems quite old fashioned and out of step, but how it works for me.
I am fascinated by the fact that I have read about women’s cycles and periods in two different self help books in the last two weeks. Folks, we have ignored them long enough. When Smith wrote of the conditioning we have to be quiet and perhaps a little ashamed of our cycles, I felt it more deeply than I expected - do you remember trying to get to the bathroom at school - hiding the necessary supplies somehow? In The PLAN, Kendra Adachi, urges us to build our cycles into our planning - embracing the high and low energy times. Smith uses them as another illustration of how life, living and dying-hope and loss, is about cycles. Accepting the cycles instead of ignoring them is a key to a more effective life. I’d love to have had these insights as a much younger woman - I’d love to have passed them on to my daughter.
I am grateful to Stephanie Duncan Smith’s Even After Everything for deepening my liturgical life and increasing my propensity to love and to hope in a difficult world. I appreciate how she encourages her readers to reframe how we live. I am thankful for the reminder that God will meet us where we are. I recommend this title most highly. Thank you to NetGalley and Convergent Books for allowing me to read an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
