HeyJaredShani Mcilwain (she/her)
I write all my feelings. I probably share a little too much. I love Jesus. I’m on a liberation train toward freedom, and I hope I die empty, having given everything I was meant to give.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 24
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Sep 2, 2026
Latest issues
Sometimes Church Looks Like: (opens the original)
Read excerpt
51 turns around the sun, and the angels are still here.I entered this side of the universe on a Tuesday, September 30, at 2:32 in the morning at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles, California.According to the oral history, I was five days late.My mother had been pregnant all summer long and was tired. Very tired. She had also been nesting for about ten days, and apparently the parquet wood floors were not sparkling enough for her liking.About 35 hours before I made my grand entrance, she an
Sometimes Church Looks Like: (opens the original)
Read excerpt
When I stopped performing for love and realized I had already been loved well.It has been two years since I sat in therapy and began unpacking what my therapist helped me name as an abandonment wound.I never knew my father.The few memories I have of him are not really memories at all. They are stories handed to me by my mother and grandmother, fragments I collected and held onto because they were all I had.And then there was the photograph.My father had a million-dollar smile. I know because the
Sometimes Church Looks Like: (opens the original)
Read excerpt
We cannot preach that bodies are sacred while maintaining cultures that teach some people they are entitled to other people’s bodies.A few months ago, I reposted a meme that said something along the lines of:“Ask any woman and she knows someone who’s been raped, but men don’t know any rapists.”I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.Not because I believe every man is responsible for sexual violence.Not because predators are exclusively men. They are not. Women can cause sexual harm. Queer
Sometimes Church Looks Like: (opens the original)
Read excerpt
This week, Donna Ganger sat before members of Congress and talked about her daughter, Renée Good.Her daughter should still be alive.Ganger testified at a congressional forum examining fatal shootings involving federal immigration agents. Renée was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis in January. In her testimony, Donna said something that has stayed with me.Her family does not all vote the same way, but they love each other deeply.Then she shared that she is a registered Republican and voted fo
Sometimes Church Looks Like: (opens the original)
Read excerpt
The impossible choices Black parents make when we are trying to save our children inside systems that were never designed to save all of them.I feel Nikole Hannah-Jones.I really do.And I think it is easy to critique a parental decision from 10,000 feet in the air. It is easy to look at someone else’s choices after we know how the story turned out and decide what they should have done differently.But this is not an essay about whether I think Nikole Hannah-Jones was right or wrong.This is about h
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.