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Well, Theresa, now I think the past couple of hours have given us a really good framing for what I think

represents the vast majority of the questions that I received on my blog and preparation for this interview.

And maybe that's partly due to how I phrased and introduced you when I advertised my interview.

But tell us how these experiences in your life led to this feminist awakening where you go from sort of putting feminism in the closet

and doing the mommy thing to sort of breaking out in 2010 as being viewed as sort of maybe a leader for the next generation of Mormon women and feminism,

along with people like Lisa Butterworth and Joanna Brooks and Elizabeth Cowversmith and others who are all your friends at.

Yeah, so what led to the awakening, real awakening.

The real awakening.

Well, if you're not up on all the different waves of feminism, this might seem ironic.

But I think what really got me back into feminism was both my efforts at home making and my years of infertility.

I think for one thing, when I say my years of infertility, it's because that intense loneliness and all of those years of chronic illness that I experienced had me spending a lot of time online.

And so I have been participating on one level or another at FMH or feminist woman housewives since the very beginning, usually as like a years, years of commenting and then, you know, now as a perma.

So having that, and I can't even remember how I found it now, but having that community has really, you know, just blown the doors off that closet.

I tried to keep my feminist self in, but it was also my crafting.

And, you know, I think that's a part that people might find ironic if they have a second wave view of what feminism is.

But, you know, I've worked for several years as a craft designer, and that's what the main thing I focus on my blog, you know, parenting and crafting and cooking and all of those kinds of things.

And it's something that my interest came partly because of my dad who I explained was like this, you know, MacGyver and had to figure everything out and make it all himself.

And another part was that intense desire to be this great Mormon lady and know how to do all these things. And so, but when I was at college and thinking I was too cool for this kind of thing, I would try to keep it quiet.

But I apparently was unsuccessful because like my roommates remember me, you know, crafting all the time, even though I don't remember.

I'm obviously they did, but I don't remember. I just did not define myself that way at all.

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