Carrie Saum

I didn’t realize I was a polarizing person until my late 20s. I was raised in a tradition where being liked was extremely important — pivotal, even.

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Bitter Buddy Mix is a take on an old familiar recipe of rice cereal mixed with chocolate and peanut butter, then coated with powdered sugar.

Here's my favorite lazy food dish. I like it because I feel like I'm doing my body a solid by plying it with veggies, and my taste buds rejoice with spicy-sweet comfort food. It's like your very hardworking grandmother is hugging you from the inside.

By 13, I clearly understood: Thinness was next to Godliness, and I could never achieve either without extraordinary means. Jesus loves skinny people.

We have all been there before. The stuck place. Your body feels heavy, your feet glued to the floor. Maybe you have a hard time getting out of bed. Maybe you feel sad about a relationship that is deteriorating or has completely dissolved. Maybe you just feel completely spent and worn out, and lack the energy to move at all. Or maybe you have this great big beautiful life you're afraid to step into and the fear has you paralyzed.

My friends, food is getting fancier.

We're in flu season hell! In fact, according to, uh, science, it’s one of the worst seasons we’ve seen in the last 10 years.

Insisting on capability robs us of vulnerability. It robs us of the village we so desperately need. It creates resentment and mistrust. And most of all, it sets us up to fail.

I understood in no uncertain terms because of purity culture that having sex outside of marriage was the worst thing I could do as a young woman.