Fabulously Featured: Better Than Eden

Welcome to Catholic Sistas’ newest series, featuring some of our friends in the Catholic blogging world entitled Fabulously Featured which will run on Wednesdays. I have always wanted to introduce you to some new blogs to follow and support, but seriously lacked the time to put this together before now. In a Facebook group of fellow Catholic women bloggers, I asked ladies to answer some questions for this series, and they were all too excited to participate! I give you their answers in their own words. 🙂

BetterThanEden

Mary Haseltine of Better Than Eden is Fabulously Featured in this edition of the series. She brings with her a fresh look at the life of Catholicism. Imagine if you were to take an apple and spin it around…it would look different as the light hit it in different ways. So it goes with her writing. All rooted in the Faith, she takes you on a journey from all things that are close to her heart, from homeschooling, her life as a doula, wife and mother to some delicious looking little boys, to DIY and liturgical posts. It’s such an eclectic mix. Can I just say how much I love her blog design, too? Beautiful and soft on the eyes, I’d say Mary has a real eye for design! Now, let me hush up so we can read more about her…then head over to her blog to read about her newest bebe who arrived just days ago. 🙂

Mary Haseltine

ESTABLISHED:

I started the blogging adventure in March of 2011.

THEME:

I love writing about birth and pregnancy loss, two topics very close to my heart. I write a lot about faith and my experience of God within my vocation as wife and mother. I do a fair amount of DIY posts and liturgical year posts and recipe posts and home project posts and homeschooling posts…basically anything that I’d want to chat about in my living room is what I write about on the blog.

INSPIRATION/MOTIVATION:

I started blogging after a very traumatic and difficult time in my life and in a way, it was how I found my voice again after it had been lost for so long. Seeing the beauty and hope that other Catholic mom bloggers were putting out into the world was a huge motivation for me that maybe my little voice and story could be something that could do the same.

What motivates me now is the community I have found, the encouragement and feedback of my readers, and the trust that if God has something He wants me to share, He’ll give me the words to do it.

FAVORITE ELEMENT:

Hmmm…I think my favorite element is that feeling of release after I have written something. Even if it’s something not necessarily that profound, I think it’s good for my heart and soul to put myself out there a bit. It’s scary and vulnerable as heck sometimes but very very good for me.

FAVORITE POST:

This is so hard but I think I’d have to say my favorite post is The Battle that is Marriage.

It still makes me cry. And it still reminds me that I’ve never shared our whole story and that maybe God will ask me to one day. Yikes.

BALANCE:

I try to remember that blogging is not my vocation. That He is and they are. When I remember to put first things first, God blesses that and it seems like somehow the time multiplies and prioritizes itself. I’ve never been one to schedule my blogging time or my posts much and I kind of fit it in random moments throughout the day when other duties have been met…usually 🙂 There are times when a chore is waiting because I felt like I needed to write something and write it now. I am a very early riser and use that time to pray and sometimes to write. One way that God seems to want to work in me is by using my blogging to keep me accountable. It’s my tangible way of seeing what my focus has been and I sometimes use the thoughts I lay out in my posts as a way to keep me living the way I say that I want to live.

AUDIENCE:

I write for Him, for myself, for those who may glean some hope or support from something small I’ve written. I write for the community it fosters and to share a little piece of my life with the outside world. Most of my readers are also mothers with young children but there are a number of young single women and women with grandchildren who also read. I think there’s even a male or two out there as well 🙂

CATCH PHRASE/TAGLINE:

Underneath my blog name is the quote from the Easter Vigil liturgy, “O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer.” My blog name, Better Than Eden is a testimony to the ways that God calls us not to initial perfection but to redemption. He calls us to a life of beauty and passion and grace but it is only found through a love, THE Love that sacrifices His very Self and we have the ability to share in that, too. I thought that prayer from the Church was a good reflection of that reality. Our personal story is one of redemption and while some days I have to will it with all my might, I believe that because of the cross, God can use our pain, our battles, the ugliest parts of our story to make us more fully the men and women He wants us to be.

ADVICE :

My advice for anyone considering starting a blog is to pray 🙂 Whether you want to blog about the Faith or not, it’s so important to make sure that it’s where HE is calling you to spend your time and talent. And if you feel like that is where He is leading you, remember those reasons when it is so tempting to be pulled into boosting your own reputation or judging your worth based on your blog stats. It can be really challenging. But write because HE wants you to write and write WHAT He wants you to write. In the end, that’s what will matter.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?

Have a question or comment for our featured blogger? Please leave them in the comments below!

Would you {or someone you know} like to be fabulously featured?

Send an email to Martina@CatholicSistas.comand reference the Fabulously Featured series and we’ll get the ball rolling to get you or your friend featured!