Author Archives: Joanna Wiebe

Birth Mother

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Birth Mother by Joanna Wiebe

My first book, BIRTH MOTHER, available for the Kindle, opens in the weeks preceding Christmas 1975.  I longed to celebrate the holiday with my family in Hillsboro, Kansas, but the relationships were tense.

Why, after having a baby out of wedlock, did I take new lovers like I was sampling chocolates?

What did my worldly lifestyle lead people to think about our Mennonite Brethren family?

And, when was I ever going to begin to have a personal relationship with Jesus?

Six years earlier, on Christmas eve 1969, my son Matthew William was born. Three days later I gave him to a social worker. Soon he was in his new home, in the process of being adopted by a loving Western Kansas family.  As I understood the law, adoption meant “final surrender” and I would never see him again.

Since then, the holidays always triggered bleak, black states of being. Now as the 1975 festive season approached, I attempted to solve my problem by launching a Christmas road trip to Mexico with my current boyfriend and my dog, Perfect Master Lord Shiva. However, my dog was soon run over by a truck, my van’s transmission broke down, my friend left me to go back to school, and I was out of money.

After a 7.3 earthquake, I disappeared into the social chaos of Guatemala City, playing a temporary role as La Maestra with a street gang, embracing a dark, dangerous, and all-absorbing way of life.

A journal of my journey toward wholeness, my book BIRTH MOTHER includes drawings and Mennonite and Guatemalan recipes. The book includes descriptions of the closed adoption process in Kansas in 1969, and my experiences at the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers in Wichita, Kansas.

If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can read this Kindle version at no cost. Others can purchase the Kindle version for $2.99.  I am working to make a hardcopy version available on Amazon later this year.

If this book resonates with you, please be in touch and write a review on the Amazon page for my book!

The incredibly perfect cover illustration is by Ellen Greene, an artist born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, and a friend from our homeschool association when our family lived in Chicago. 

Questions as you write your spiritual journey

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“A spiritual autobiography focuses less on the people, events and experiences of a person’s life and more on what these people, events and experiences meant for him/her and how they formed him/her or shaped the course of his life. It allows the writer to communicate who she or he is as a person and what is important in her or his life.“  —Jesuit brother Charles J. Jackson

Here are two dozen queries to spark you as you write your spiritual journey.

  1. How did you perceive God or the sacred when you were a child?
  2. Who first helped shape your view of the Divine?
  3. Does your name have a meaning or story attached to it?
  4. Have you been influenced by a variety of spiritual traditions or were you brought up in a single faith?
  5. Who have been the important spiritual role models in your life? Who are your saints, holy people, spiritual mentors today?
  6. What authors have influenced you the most, and what do you read for spiritual nurture?
  7. How has your faith changed or grown?
  8. How have you learned to incorporate discipline and accountability in to your life, for example your finances, education, professional work, and physical health?
  9. What spiritual practices shape your spiritual life today, and how do you connect with others in these disciplines?
  10. If married or partnered, how would you characterize the spiritual relationship you have, including shared spiritual practices?
  11. What spiritual resources do you need now?
  12. Where do you think you are heading in your faith and practice?
  13. Draw or describe a metaphor for your spiritual journey. For example, some people imagine life as a ship sailing across uncharted waters, and their faith, values, and beliefs as the wind in the sails. Others imagine it as a spiral of experiences and realizations, as a journey over mountains and valleys, or as a river.
  14. What scriptures or other books did your family regard as holy? How seriously were the teachings in them taken?
  15. Did your family observe any religious rituals? How were those rituals related to their beliefs?
  16. Have there been times when you felt the presence of the sacred outside your place of worship, when there were no priests, pastors, rabbis, or other teachers around?  What was that experience like?
  17. When have you experienced awe or wonder? Where were you, and what happened?
  18. What holy days do you celebrate?
  19. Are your spiritual beliefs or values relevant to what you wear, what you do, who you are friends with, how you educate your children, how you relate to the earth, animals, plants, water?
  20. Do seemingly random events of your life seem to reveal interconnectedness?
  21. Call to mind the significant turning points in your life; what are they?
  22. What are the most significant decisions you have made?
  23. What are the most intense struggles and conflicts, successes and failures you have experienced?
  24. Have you ever felt or experienced a sense of being “called” to do something?

Second thoughts

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Katie Funk Wiebe, my mom

Go over to  http://kfwiebe.blogspot.com and read my mom’s blog.  Here’s a little sample:

“In a used bookstore I picked up a copy of Frederich Buechner’s Listening to Your Life, a compilation of selections from his books arranged for daily reading. Sixty-five cents, the tag said. Why not? I have enjoyed Buechner’s books in the past, especially The Hungering Dark.

“His idea of good writing is to stick a pen into a vein and start writing. Passionate, life-giving writing is fueled by blood. I have sometimes told would-be writers to think of writing as wearing your heart on your sleeve for all to see what makes it tick.”

That’s what  I love about my mom.