Hi friends!
This is not a normal post. This is just my every-couple-of-months boilerplate where I tell you where to find me when I’m not here and how to support my work. I’ll have a writing or recording worth your time up later today.
The fall is finally over here in Steubenville! In the past few months, as you’ve read here on Patheos, I went back to my work teaching art and geography at the church outreach and I’ve had a great time. I finally got my bucket of bolts car back on the road, and took Jimmy’s boy and Adrienne on a beautiful trip beside the still waters. The nutcrackers came back to downtown Steubenville, and I got to take Jimmy’s boy to see those as well. I have been pondering religious trauma and also what it means to have joy. I have been writing about the crisis with the closing of the homeless shelters in Steubenville, and I’ll keep you guys updated on that situation.
Please remember that I’ve got a separate blog on Substack now, where I put my writing that isn’t specifically Catholic in nature; mostly politics and writing about autism acceptance. Substack makes it easy to post live videos of better quality than I can do going live on Facebook, so that’s where I have my Gospel meditations for paid subscribers, and I’m going to try to post more un-paywalled videos there as well. Subscribe there and you’ll get an email whenever I post!
Besides the Substack and the Patheos blog, I have been published at the Post Gazette recently, and I am going to be there again over Christmas (I’ll edit a link into this post after it’s published). If you read, like, and share those articles, I’m much more likely to be invited back!
As far as social media, I’ve become infamous for my Twitter/X rabble rousing, and I still post there a bit, but I’m most often on Bluesky now. Give me a follow where the sky is blue!
And now, of course, the tin cup.
My husband works in a restaurant and has been moved up to full time, but wages are low and his boss isn’t allowed to give him overtime very often. My various writing projects are how I support my family, and they’re still over half of my family’s income. I get paid when I write for the newspaper, I get paid a tiny smidge of book royalties, and I get a tiny check for clicks in the United States when you open one of my Patheos posts. Other than that, my whole living is gratuities in the tip jar and paid Substack subscriptions. Lately, my husband’s work pays rent and most bills, and my tip jar and subscribers are paying for gas and groceries.
Just now, in December, we’ve got a lot of bills we can’t catch up on here at the tail end of 2025, and it’s Christmas in a few days which is even more expensive. (I’ll delete this paragraph when the Christmas and end-of-year expenses are met. If you’re reading this, we still need a boost.) We’re going to be in a very tight spot in January so we can break even and continue getting by for the rest of the year if we don’t catch up now.
So, as always, I ask: if you like what you read, consider subscribing or give me a tip when you can!
If you subscribe to my Substack at any paid level, you get to see all of my paywalled content. And you can also leave a tip in my Venmo or in my Paypal. The Paypal has an option for you to sign up to tip at the same time every month if you’d like. The name of the PayPal account is “The Little Portion” because that’s the name of an Etsy I used to have. That button says “donate” but it isn’t a charitable donation, it’s just a gratuity I pay taxes on every year.
If you’ve been subscribed to leave me a tip on Paypal or Venmo regularly and would like a complimentary paid Substack membership so you can seem my paywalled content without changing the way you pay me, just let me know and I’ll email you one, but my Substack doesn’t let me send an email to people without their permission so I can’t do that unless you ask.
And now, back to writing worth your time!
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