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Hello and welcome to the Abiding Together podcast where we hope to provide a place for you of connection,

a rest and an encouragement on the journey, living on our passion and purpose in Jesus Christ.

So grab your coffee and get comfortable with us. My name is Sister Miriam James and I am joined as always by my lovely dear friends Heather Kim and Michelle Benzinger.

Michelle, how are you today? And this great day.

Oh, I am really good. So good. You know, how are you guys?

Are gals.

Yeah, Heather.

I'm feeling a little under the weather, but other than that, I'm doing great. Yeah, I'm doing really well.

It's a new day here and we went, we're actually in part two of our series on the feminine genius.

And so we were talking last time about the area of feminine genius, the receptivity of the feminine genius of who we are.

And so we talked a little bit about actually before we started recording about just the characteristics of woman, but also the dangers of stereotypes, I think as well.

Michelle, could you share with it a bit about you had some really great comments that I wish we were recording when we were talking about that, but I love what you were speaking about St. Tris little flower and really how the flowers grow.

Yeah, as we're talking about, you know, feminine genius and what it is and like even to give a reference like genius like the definition of genius means like exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability.

And so we are a person who influences another for good, you know, and each of us like we think genius is just for the few where genius in the terms of feminine genius for women is for the all, but we bring a unique.

And it's not a one size fits all and I think when you think of Catholic womanhood, we often think that it looks a certain way that it fits into a box that has to be this one size fits all, which is not and when you know what I always love about St. Tris of Lesoux is she talks about, you know, comparing the rose, the lily and one look like the other than spring time would lose its fullness of beauty.

And she talks about let's be like the wild flowers, the wild flowers, you know, all look different from each other and they all grow in different directions and they, you know, some spillover some don't that they're all different and that we each need our unique geniuses as women and not to conform to what we think, you know, a good quote unquote Christian woman Catholic woman looks like or what any woman looks like, you know, and I think for.

As women that has to really be modeled that we champion differences instead of conforming to a status quo or conforming to suppose definition of what a good Catholic woman looks like so yeah, you know, what are your thoughts, sister.

I agree with you I was sharing that I've been listening to some really wonderful.

But Catholic speakers lately, Dr. P. Adaisalani and Dr. Helen Alvarez and Dr. Mary Healy and they were all talking about that very thing and it just really made me think and I think that the pressure took in form, especially by our Instagram, filtered, you know, Photoshop society is so great and we often just because of our broken human nature, we view any difference to whether that's between men and women or even among women of how we're different from one another as.

And areas of competition or areas of judgment or criticism, but to really I love the phrase you've always used Michelle as champion to really champion the difference and people have commented listening to our podcast how different the three of us are.

But I think that I love how different we are because we see things differently in our lives are different and there's a beauty and not harmony of giving the gift of ourselves.

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