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For Love of the Broken Body: A Spiritual Memoir
“Julia Walsh gives me hope for a future with religious women changing the world. She tells a story all her own, but I felt her doubts, questions, and passion each step of the way. Highly recommended.” —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and River of Fire

A questioning novice nun’s coming-of-age story. Readers will be moved to reflect on the universal human experiences of being broken and the pull to be part of something bigger than themselves.

At the age of 25, just a month into her novitiate as a Franciscan Sister, Julia Walsh fell from a cliff and became disfigured. While working toward healing, she felt pulled to religious community life, but also toward unresolved feelings regarding her own sexuality, identity, and injustice.

For Love of the Broken Body is a story of pain, questioning, recovery, and discovery. What does it mean to exist as a broken body? Why would a young woman dedicate herself to the Catholic Church—to a life as a Franciscan Sister—while others are leaving churches in droves?

The number of women choosing to enter religious life across the U.S. is shrinking rapidly, so Walsh encounters a lot of curiosity about her choice. In this memoir, she writes honestly about feeling drawn to men and to sex, as well as what it means, in this age of self-discovery and hook-ups, for a young woman—physically broken and still very much attracted to the world—to join a celibate, religious community.

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For Love of the Broken Body: A Spiritual Memoir
“Julia Walsh gives me hope for a future with religious women changing the world. She tells a story all her own, but I felt her doubts, questions, and passion each step of the way. Highly recommended.” —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and River of Fire

A questioning novice nun’s coming-of-age story. Readers will be moved to reflect on the universal human experiences of being broken and the pull to be part of something bigger than themselves.

At the age of 25, just a month into her novitiate as a Franciscan Sister, Julia Walsh fell from a cliff and became disfigured. While working toward healing, she felt pulled to religious community life, but also toward unresolved feelings regarding her own sexuality, identity, and injustice.

For Love of the Broken Body is a story of pain, questioning, recovery, and discovery. What does it mean to exist as a broken body? Why would a young woman dedicate herself to the Catholic Church—to a life as a Franciscan Sister—while others are leaving churches in droves?

The number of women choosing to enter religious life across the U.S. is shrinking rapidly, so Walsh encounters a lot of curiosity about her choice. In this memoir, she writes honestly about feeling drawn to men and to sex, as well as what it means, in this age of self-discovery and hook-ups, for a young woman—physically broken and still very much attracted to the world—to join a celibate, religious community.

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For Love of the Broken Body: A Spiritual Memoir

For Love of the Broken Body: A Spiritual Memoir

by Julia Walsh
For Love of the Broken Body: A Spiritual Memoir

For Love of the Broken Body: A Spiritual Memoir

by Julia Walsh

Übersicht

“Julia Walsh gives me hope for a future with religious women changing the world. She tells a story all her own, but I felt her doubts, questions, and passion each step of the way. Highly recommended.” —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and River of Fire

A questioning novice nun’s coming-of-age story. Readers will be moved to reflect on the universal human experiences of being broken and the pull to be part of something bigger than themselves.

At the age of 25, just a month into her novitiate as a Franciscan Sister, Julia Walsh fell from a cliff and became disfigured. While working toward healing, she felt pulled to religious community life, but also toward unresolved feelings regarding her own sexuality, identity, and injustice.

For Love of the Broken Body is a story of pain, questioning, recovery, and discovery. What does it mean to exist as a broken body? Why would a young woman dedicate herself to the Catholic Church—to a life as a Franciscan Sister—while others are leaving churches in droves?

The number of women choosing to enter religious life across the U.S. is shrinking rapidly, so Walsh encounters a lot of curiosity about her choice. In this memoir, she writes honestly about feeling drawn to men and to sex, as well as what it means, in this age of self-discovery and hook-ups, for a young woman—physically broken and still very much attracted to the world—to join a celibate, religious community.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781958972274
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing Company
Publication date: 03/26/2024
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 347,587
Product dimensions: 9.00(w) x 6.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Julia Walsh is a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration and part of her congregation’s formation team, serving women who are discerning their vocation. She co-founded The Fireplace, an intentional community and house of hospitality on Chicago’s southside that offers spiritual support to seekers, artists, and activists. She has a MA in Pastoral Studies from Catholic Theological Union and is a spiritual director and secondary teacher. As a creative writer, educator, and retreat presenter she is passionate about exploring the intersection of creativity, spirituality, activism, and community life. Sister Julia’s work can be found in publications such as America, Living Faith Catholic Devotional, National Catholic Reporter, Living City, The Christian Century, Chicago Sun-Times, and St. Anthony Messenger. She hosts the Messy Jesus Business blog and podcast and is on Twitter and Instagram as @JuliaFSPA. A lover of the outdoors, she sometimes can be found studying wildflowers near Elgin, Iowa, her hometown.

Read an Excerpt

I’m alone, face-down in a stream on the farm in Iowa where I grew up. My body is soaked. I taste blood in my mouth. What happened? Oh my God. I fell off the cliff, twenty feet onto the rocks. And I’m not dead. God, help me.

In each direction, hills rise and fall across sweeping farmland: pastures of grass and forest, corn and soybean fields. I roamed this land freely as a child, tangled blond hair bobbing and thorn-scratched white freckled arms all-flailed about. In a nearby park, I learned to cross-country ski: I learned how to fall and protect my head. That falling lesson may have saved me just moments ago. As I fell, I lifted my hand to my forehead: my wrist a cushion for my skull, as my body rammed into the creek bed, face first. My whole body crashed into the limestone, sharp stones jabbing into my soft flesh. Glasses jammed into the bridge of my nose, piercing open my skin. My body tremored: my jaw wobbled, cracked, split. Two lower front teeth ejected from their roots. Right above my chin, my teeth are shattered, my tongue feels edges of bone and pieces of teeth rolling around in the metallic, warm blood mixing with saliva, flooding my mouth.

I gasp, spit, lift my head out of water.

I hear my voice moan, weakly, as a blur of water, blood, and teeth fall from my mouth. Glasses fall from my face, quickly disappearing downstream. All is blurry. This body, my body, is broken; I’m soaked with water and blood.

The water is shallow, six inches deep: enough to drown me. My mind says: Julia, get up!

I need to fight for my life or accept death—an unexpected outcome for this day of prayer, when I’d hoped to make peace with this farm no longer being my home. I came back to ritualize goodbyes to the land, as a fresh new novice, a Franciscan Sister. Ritual erupts out of us, though; the spiritual made physical, I’m learning. Blessed? I’m broken and bloody at the bottom of a creek bed.

Table of Contents

Part One: Shattered

Part Two: Repaired

Part Three: Held

Acknowledgements

Permissions

Glossary

About the Author

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