the female of the species

Many of you already know that the past month has been hell for me. My beautiful mother, Beth, passed away suddenly on June 27th, 2024. I want to share a few words about the woman she was, and the weeks leading up to the unimaginable.

We received my mother’s cancer diagnosis eight weeks prior. She was always the enviable picture of health, beauty, and energy, even at 63. No one could have imagined that the back pain that emerged last fall was the medically mysterious, aggressive killer that it was. By the time she had her first biopsy, it was diffuse. She didn’t let us use the word “metastatic,” because she thought it sounded too grim. 

I choose to understand these weeks, however short, brutal, and utterly heartbreaking, as a gift to our family.

Petty disputes of the past faded to nothing in seconds. The thing that was always true, good, and beautiful – our mother’s love – was brought into sharp relief. Dad, Danny, Mom, and I refocused and regrounded together as a family. Each of us, in those final months, created and shared some of our best memories with Mom. We said what needed to be said. We forgave. And, cast into the darkness of tragedy, we looked for the light together. We remain devastated. We grieve to the bone. I don’t know how to be a mother without my own mother. She gave me everything and then some. But I find peace in the memory of her most perfect gift: her example. And I have resolved to emulate her excellence, grace, generosity, determination, and sense of justice all the days of my life. 

Immediately after Mom died, the women of my hometown descended into our home like a swarm of friendly worker bees. There wasn't a need unmet or a wish ungranted. Our home quickly filled with pimento cheese sandwiches and hydrangeas. I say with confidence that she is grateful. This diluvian outpouring of love reflects a core part of my mother’s identity: her unyielding devotion to her friends. To be a friend to Beth was to be family. Her friends became my mothers, and my friends became her daughters. The same goes for my brother; the marines she brought into our home every year over the holidays are yet another testament to her effusive generosity. The void she leaves behind aches, but I find sweet solace in this community of people. She did, too.

That these past few weeks have felt so much like a hive is ironic because Beth’s nickname was “Bee-Bee,” which had started as a joke between friends: Beth the busy bee, always flitting to and fro between her businesses, her parties, countries and even continents. She embraced the symbol of the bumblebee and filled her home with it. The bee traditionally represents hard work, community, prosperity, and, well, fertility. Mom’s multiple businesses, expansive network of friends, beautiful home, and rapidly – like, very rapidly – expanding family are a testament to just how fitting her symbol is.

She’s been leaving us with signs of her presence in a very literal sense. On the day that Mom passed, we were loading our (what feels like) millions of tiny children into the minivan to go sleep at my godmother’s house. Because we have millions of tiny children, my eldest has to crawl through a tunnel of carseats in order to get to the back of the car. In pristine condition, placed in the center of her path, Mary Helen saw a perfectly preserved bumblebee lying on the carpet. There’s never been a bee in my car to my knowledge, nor do we leave our windows open. The synchronicity – which my ever intuitive mother always loved to point out to me – is hard to ignore.

Speaking of Mary Helen, she keeps telling me with sweet, childlike faith when she sees me cry: “It’s okay, Mama, Bee Bee is with Jesus and Mama Mary in Heaven.” I know she’s right. On July 4th, my parents’ anniversary, as we were watching the fireworks, Clementine threw her hands to the sky and exclaimed “BEE-BEE, HEAVEN NOW!” I know we will all remember Bee Bee the way she lived, and how she will be in God’s kingdom: lighting up a room, laughing, and cuddling her precious grandchildren. The ones I never got to meet are with her now.

Three years ago, a friend from Budapest called me up to offer a writing fellowship with the Danube Institute. For three years, I have postponed. I kept getting pregnant, to be frank. The timing wasn’t right. This year, though, at my mother’s urging, we accepted. Our last text messages are full of listings for homes to rent in Budapest. She was going to come with us after her last round of chemotherapy. 

I have no choice but to press on without her, buoyed by the intuition that she’d want us to go. I’ll be writing about family policy and, more generally, how public beauty can play a role in supporting a family-friendly society. Among her many talents, my mother was an interior designer. Her impeccable taste led her to Europe many times. I will do everything in my power to uphold her devotion to beauty and to family.

So, we are going to Budapest. The whole family. Welcome, y’all, to Roy House in Budapest. 

It’s a new chapter. My work here will change and adapt as a consequence. I will continue to post practical essays on managing a growing family, and I may venture into more creative things, too. Photography, for instance. My artistic side was the part of me that I think pleased Mom the most.

I will continue to think and write about womanhood and motherhood, a choice that was always inspired by Mom, but I want nothing but distance between my work and that of the ascendant, right-coded misogyny that currently dominates the media space. This is not who I am. I owe everything that is good about me to the love of a good woman. I cannot abide the sneering condescension or outright hatred any longer. So, I’ve renamed the podcast, too. I initially used the word “girlboss” with playful irony, but it has taken on an embittered tone in the discourse since. I don’t like that it is used to aggressively minimize women with any talent at all, and I regret any role I might have had in tacitly diminishing the work of energetic and enterprising women everywhere. For better or worse, memes flatten reality. They no longer interest me.

The podcast is now called “The Female of the Species,” based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem. 

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Matthew 27:50-51a).

The profound significance of the tearing of the veil is explained in glorious detail in Hebrews. The things of the temple were shadows of things to come, and they all ultimately point us to Jesus Christ. He was the veil to the Holy of Holies, and through His death the faithful now have free access to God.

The theological implications of the moment of Christ’s death are clear enough. But I also think that symbol goes further: the death of an intimate beloved rips the fabric of reality for those left behind. There was Mom, and now there is after Mom. I don’t know what is to come. I love her more than tongue can tell. I miss her. I’m also anticipative and optimistic. Grief is strangely motivating, however sorely immiserating. The drive to compensate for years of haughty indignation and graceless ingratitude as a daughter is overwhelming. I have to live up to her love. I will honor her.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O, Lord. May she see Christ’s face forever, and may the souls of all the faithfully departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

Thank you for your prayers.

xx Helen & family

Anti-white racism, undisguised and unembarrassed, has increasingly become official policy in America. That’s what Jeremy Carl, former Deputy Secretary of the Interior, argues in his book, “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart.” While political elites and the media condemn an imaginary epidemic of “white supremacy” on a daily basis, in the real world, white Americans are openly discriminated against in many areas of both public and private life. Indeed, anti-white policies have become so interwoven in the fabric of American life, that we take them for granted and often fail to even see them for what they are. 

What will a future for white children look like in a world where their disenfranchisement is written into the law — and justified by the common assumption that their perennial, unshakeable, yet still ephemeral, “privilege” will serve and protect them despite the endless scapegoating?

Launched with a laudable appeal to justice for all regardless of skin color, the Civil Rights Movement went off the rails even as it achieved its original goals. As actual racism in society diminished, political activists used the inevitable failure to achieve a utopian equality of outcomes between races to justify discriminating against whites in business, education, law, the military, entertainment, and even the church. The Unprotected Class is a comprehensive explanation of how we got here and what we must do to correct course and create a system that enshrines equal rights for all Americans.

Buy Jeremy’s book here. As ever, be sure to like, subscribe to Ladies’ Late Rome Journal, leave me a five star rating, and share your thoughts in the comments section.

Last week, I spoke with Tim Carney, author of Family Unfriendly, on the ways in which the corporate life and culture of America has made it difficult for – especially big – families to thrive. His thesis stuck with me, and it changed the way I’ve been thinking about the work-home dichotomy. Following this train of thought, this week, I brought Regina Bethencourt on to explain how she has organized her life and company to accommodate big families.

Regina is a mom of four and founder and CEO of Tenuto Consulting, a company that provides research-based branding solutions for higher education and mission-based organizations. In this episode, she shares how she believes it is in fact possible to be a stay-at-home mom and a working professional – given you have a little courage and creativity to spare. 

As always, leave me a five star review, share this episode with your friends, and never forget to subscribe and leave me a comment here on Substack.

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Our culture tells parents there's one best way to raise kids: enroll them in a dozen activities, protect them from trauma, and get them into the most expensive college you can. If you can't do that, don't bother.

How is that going? Record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness and more. In Family Unfriendly, bestselling author and Washington Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney says it's time to end this failed experiment in overparenting.

He joins the podcast today to explain how we can be the change we want to see in the world — and help our kids avoid the pitfalls of hyperindividualism and careerism. Carney’s criticism of what he calls “workism” and liberal feminism as an implicitly anti-human ideology is the same impulse that inspired me to start this podcast. Much to discuss! Enjoy, share, leave a 5-star review, send me a message, and if you haven’t already, subscribe to Ladies’ Late Rome Journal. Chat soon!

Birth is one of the most fraught and polarized issues of our time, at the center of debates on abortion, gender, work, and medicine. But birth is not solely an issue; it is a fundamental part of the human condition, and, alongside death, the most consequential event in human life. It is for this reason that Jennifer Banks wrote Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth. Although we have long intellectual traditions of wrestling with mortality, few have ever heard of natality, the term political theorist Hannah Arendt used to describe birth’s active role in our lives. In this ambitious, revelatory book, Banks begins with Arendt’s definition of natality as the “miracle that saves the world” to develop an expansive framework for birth’s philosophical, political, spiritual, and aesthetic significance.

Banks focuses on seven renowned western thinkers―Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Sojourner Truth, Adrienne Rich, and Toni Morrison―to reveal a provocative countertradition of birth. She narrates these writers’ own experiences alongside the generative ways they contended with natality in their work. Passionately intelligent and wide-ranging, Natality invites readers to attend to birth as a challenging and life-affirming reminder of our shared humanity and our capacity for creative renewal.

Jennifer Banks is a senior editor at Yale University Press.

Catherine Ruth Pakaluk is an Associate Professor of Social Research and Economic Thought at Catholic University, and the author of the new book, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth.

In the midst of a historic "birth dearth," why do some 5 percent of American women choose to defy the demographic norm by bearing five or more children? Hannah’s Children is a compelling portrait of these overlooked but fascinating mothers who, like the biblical Hannah, see their children as their purpose, their contribution, and their greatest blessing.

Dr. Pakaluk, herself the mother of eight(!), traveled across the United States and interviewed fifty-five college-educated women who were raising five or more children. Through open-ended questions, she sought to understand who these women are, why and when they chose to have a large family, and what this choice means for them, their families, and the nation.Beyond her formal training in economics, Dr. Pakaluk studied Catholic social thought under the mentorship of F. Russell Hittinger, and various aspects of Thomistic thought with Steven A. Long. She is a widely-admired writer and sought-after speaker on matters of culture, gender, social science, the vocation of women, and the work of Edith Stein, which she shared on this podcast once before. She lives in Maryland with her husband, Michael, and eight children.

It’s Holy Week, which means that on Friday night, I’m probably going to lose the last ten pounds of baby weight in tears while watching The Passion Of The Christ.

One of Gibson’s many genius, and deeply Catholic, choices in the film is his deliberate inclusion of scenes involving Christ’s Mother. One stands out: as Christ first falls while carrying His cross to Golgotha, Mary sees Him. We are given a flashback, where He as a child stumbles on a stone path. Mary runs to Him, arms outstretched, her presence His succor. Flash forward, and she runs again, arms outstretched, as Christ chokes on His own blood, crushed under the weight of the cross. I imagine the profound grief and gratitude comingling in both of their hearts for just a moment of one another’s presence.

The crucifix takes on new meaning from perspective of the woman standing beneath it, soaked in His blood, blood of her blood. In so many ways, His wounds are hers, too. I imagine her human, maternal nature, her desire to bring Him comfort, to take her baby’s pain away, to switch places, something, anything — all brushing up against the knowledge of the greater good to come. The cross is the fulfillment of her ultimate confidence in God’s promise, unchanged by the bitter fact of Simeon’s prophecy. She suffers alongside her Son, as only mothers do, in total surrender. His words in the Garden of Gethsemane and hers at the Annunciation echo one another: Thy will be done.

Catholic tradition holds that we take Christ seriously by honoring who He honors. I love Gibson’s Passion for so many reasons, but primarily because He takes Christ seriously by paying serious attention to His mother — and, relatedly, by refusing to shy away from the brutality He endured, she by proxy.

This sincerity, the act of taking historical subjects seriously, is accomplished by placing oneself in the shoes of those subjects without pretense, judgment, or ideological imposition. Dr. Rachel Fulton Brown, my guest in this episode of Girlboss, Interrupted, in her latest book, Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought, has accomplished something so unique and interesting by doing just this. This history of Marian devotion begins with a call for readers to take their subjects, medieval Christians, seriously, by praying the psalms as they did throughout the day.

I won’t spoil any more surprises. This episode was so fun to record. Please enjoy, and as ever, send messages, leave comments, share with friends, and drop me a 5-star review on Spotify and Apple podcasts.

I hope y’all have a holy Holy week. Christ is coming.

Here at the dawn of the engagement-maximization era, the sex wars have gone nuclear. Every day, despite a pretty exhaustive “mute” list, my Twitter and TikTok feeds are inundated by sanpaku-eyed influencers opining the absolute impossibility of modern love.

Pearl Davis, whose star rose ex nihilo as the first wife of the red pill right, has made it her mission to convince men that marriage is primarily a raw deal for them. Modern women are all dishonest w****s, she insists. Even the speaker?

Compare that to the swarms of liberal feminist influencers who teeth begin to gnash every time Ballerina Farms makes a new post. She peddles a dangerous lie that being a stay at home mom is ideal, let alone a real possibility, they whine.

In a sea of bad (and confused, if not dishonest) PR, the institution of marriage needs defending.

In today’s episode, I chat with Brad Wilcox, Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Future of Freedom Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Having recently authored Get Married: Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization (Harper Collins, 2024), Wilcox came to present the case for marriage as good, not just for society or children or taxation purposes, as it has been previously argued, but for men and women as individuals.

Enjoy! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share with your friends.

Nancy Pearcey is the bestselling author of seven books, including two ECPA Gold Medallion Winners: Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity and How Now Shall We Live? (co-authored by Chuck Colson and Harold Fickett). Additional books include The Soul of Science, Finding Truth, Saving Leonardo, Love Thy Body, and most recently The Toxic War on Masculinity. Find her on Twitter (X) @NancyRPearcey

In this episode, I speak with Professor Pearcey about her most recent book, addressing some of the following questions: how has the cultural ideal of masculinity changed over time? In what ways are feminists responsible — or is there something even deeper at play? How can men lead in a world that retains such a low view of them?

Enjoy this episode! Be sure to leave a 5 star review on whichever platform you discover it, follow me on Substack at Ladies’ Late Rome Journal, share your thoughts, and share with a friend!

Chat soon.

To mark the two year anniversary of this podcast, I am so pleased to welcome Dr. Carrie Gress back on to talk about her new book, The End of Woman: How Smashing The Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us.

Carrie Gress is a Fellow at the Washington, D.C. based think-tank, Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Scholar at the Institute for Human Ecology at Catholic University of America.

She has a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and is the editor at the online women’s magazine Theology of Home.

Please be sure to leave a 5 star review if listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Chat again soon!