The Church can manage your hunger. The Church asks you to come, to ask, to walk bravely forward with your palms turned upward, cupped and ready to receive the good gift.

Resting in God When Your Faith is Characterized by Busyness

My faith was characterized by busyness: read my Bible, volunteer at youth group, journal, go to church, teach my children Bible lessons, read something spiritual, lead a Bible study—and I was exhausted.

Shame and God’s Divine Mercy

Depression came like a tsunami, I was completely submerged and there was no coming up for air. People who I called friends turned their backs on me. I was judged because of my nationality and skin color. My relationship with my parents was struggling. I didn’t know where I fit in or where I belonged.

A Small Cross Proves a Lovely Crown

(I) encourage you to not be so quick to categorize the crosses in your life as just suffering you’ll need to buckle up and deal with. Allow yourself the space in your spiritual imagination to envision how something really hard in your life could actually be a wildly massive gift.

Letters, Motherhood, Identity, ReceiveCorynne StaresinicMarch 20, 2019 Comment

What We Can Learn from Our Longing

I find myself overwhelmed by the many endeavors I want to pursue, the vastness of improvement that I can still make in so many areas of my life, and the restlessness of my longing in general to find lasting and satisfying happiness in my current walk of life.

Letters, Identity, ReceiveCorynne StaresinicFebruary 13, 2019Longing, Pregnancy, Loss, Identity, Single Life, Community & Family Comment

What a Birth Defect Has Taught Me About Womanhood

It seems that no matter how much we try, loving ourselves and the physical bodies God gave us can be a never ending cycle of good days and bad days. Everywhere we look, we see other women to whom we compare ourselves, always finding something wrong with what we have and something beautiful with what they have. I should know. I was born with one breast.

Do You Believe That You Were Created Good?

At a young age, sporting soccer shorts and a mullet, all I cared about was climbing the next tree and wondering when the new issue of LEGO magazine would arrive at my door. I asked for hot wheels for Christmas and role-played as the boy character for all our childhood adventures. I looked around me, saw my friends and sisters and knew I didn’t fit the mold. My (little) heart ached and wondered, “why am I so different?”, “am I good?”

When You Look in the Mirror

Your identity is not found in your pants size, or the parts you deem imperfect, or in competition with other women, but in being fully known and loved as a daughter of God.

Letters, Identity, ReceiveCorynne StaresinicDecember 19, 2018Body image, Perfectionism, Self-care, Well-being, Beauty Comment

Mother of Tenderness

If we are all called to be like Christ, that must mean we are also called to be vulnerable and not only that, but to be held by Mary.

Letters, Identity, ReceiveCorynne StaresinicDecember 7, 2018Mary, IdentityComment

Who Do You Say That I Am?

Suddenly a piercing thought came to mind and focused my attention: “Do I believe in the resurrection of the dead?” Of all the things running through my brain, this one moved to the front of the queue.

Letters, Spirituality, ReceiveCorynne StaresinicNovember 14, 2018Suffering, Belief, The Creed, Death, Faith, Living Peace Comment

Glimpses of Eternity

How Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP, a former atheist, confronts the meaning of death.

God is Greater than Our Uncertainty

"Doubting my faith was never part of my plan. ...I thought that the number of hours I’d banked in Mass, confession, rosaries or ministry would protect me from this."

Letters, Spirituality, ReceiveCorynne StaresinicSeptember 28, 2018Doubt Comment

Letting Jesus Into My Existential Crisis

"When in the light of God's own words of love, I intimately shared my temptations to atheism, God responded by showing me what it was to be in love with him…”

Letters, Spirituality, Faith, ReceiveCorynne StaresinicSeptember 7, 2018Doubt, Atheism, Staying Catholic Comments

The Certainty of God's Love Amidst the Uncertainty of Change

“Dearest Sister, I am writing this letter to you from a crowded coffee shop on a rainy Monday afternoon in Boston. It’s my day off, but like most of my days off in the last month, it doesn’t quite feel like one…”

Letters, Spirituality, ReceiveCorynne StaresinicSeptember 5, 2018Faith Comment

On Not Feeling Feminine and Embracing Womanhood

Dear Sisters, for most of my life I didn’t feel very feminine. I wouldn’t consider myself pretty; I’m not graceful or delicate; I’ve never been very interested in makeup or clothes.

Pornography Addiction and the Love of Jesus

'I believe that You love me' were the words I prayed to Jesus in adoration that changed my faith-life forever. I received these words as part of my penance in confession.

How a Disease Has Taught Me to Be Vulnerable

Dear Sisters, vulnerability is something that has been on my heart and something I have struggled with for years, as I’m sure so many of you struggle with as well.

Healing from Relationship Anxiety

If I’ve learned anything in the last two years in my struggle with anxiety, it’s that life isn't wrapped up in a little bow, easy to understand or accept. It's much, much messier.