For Love of the Broken Body
A Spiritual Memoir
Julia Walsh
Paperback
9781958972274
US $19.99
eBook available
April 2024
“Julia Walsh gives me hope for a future with religious women changing the world. She tells a story all her own, but I felt her doubts, questions, and passion each step of the way. Highly recommended.” —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and River of Fire
A questioning novice nun’s coming-of-age story. Readers will be moved to reflect on the universal human experiences of being broken and the pull to be part of something bigger than themselves.
At the age of 25, just a month into her novitiate as a Franciscan Sister, Julia Walsh fell from a cliff and became disfigured. While working toward healing, she felt pulled to religious community life, but also toward unresolved feelings regarding her own sexuality, identity, and injustice.
For Love of the Broken Body is a story of pain, questioning, recovery, and discovery. What does it mean to exist as a broken body? Why would a young woman dedicate herself to the Catholic Church—to a life as a Franciscan Sister—while others are leaving churches in droves?
The number of women choosing to enter religious life across the U.S. is shrinking rapidly, so Walsh encounters a lot of curiosity about her choice. In this memoir, she writes honestly about feeling drawn to men and to sex, as well as what it means, in this age of self-discovery and hook-ups, for a young woman—physically broken and still very much attracted to the world—to join a celibate, religious community.
Author Bio
Julia Walsh is a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration and part of her congregation’s formation team, serving women who are discerning their vocation. She has a MA in Pastoral Studies from Catholic Theological Union and is a spiritual director and secondary teacher. As a creative writer, educator, and retreat presenter she is passionate about exploring the intersection of creativity, spirituality, activism, and community life. Sister Julia’s work can be found in publications such as America, Living Faith Catholic Devotional, National Catholic Reporter, Living City, The Christian Century, Chicago Sun-Times, and St. Anthony Messenger. She hosts the Messy Jesus Business blog and podcast and is on Twitter and Instagram as @JuliaFSPA. A lover of the outdoors, she sometimes can be found studying wildflowers near Elgin, Iowa, her hometown. She lives in Chicago.
Praise
“For Love of the Broken Body is a beautiful, searching, searing book.” —Liam Callanan, novelist, author of Paris by the Book, winner of the Edna Ferber Prize
“A searing, riveting, surprising, challenging and ultimately inspiring work that asks some of the hardest questions a human being might face.” —James Martin, SJ, New York Times Best-selling author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage
“I laughed out loud, gasped, felt seen, and learned so much in this exquisitely written memoir. It is full of universal truths, questions, and doubts.” —Marlena Graves, professor of spiritual formation, Northeastern Seminary; author of The Way Up Is Down
“This bold, stereotype-busting book is bursting with wisdom. It helps us turn toward our weaknesses, self-doubt, and anxiety and walk through these, with Love, into self-acceptance, self-kindness, and concrete love for others. Bravely coloring outside the usual religious lines by sharing her story frankly, Julia brings us into the brightest hope. Highly recommended!”—Carmen Acevedo Butcher, poet and translator of Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence and The Cloud of Unknowing
“Walsh debuts with an introspective chronicle of her rocky path through physical trauma and self-doubt to nunhood. After she began her novitiate at age 25, Walsh fell 20 feet from a cliff near her Iowa family home into a creek bed, lacerating her face and breaking her nose, jaw, and many of her teeth. She recounts the accident in the book’s dramatic opening, then rewinds to detail her young adult years, during which she weighed whether to become a nun; her initial forays into the religious life, including a stint as a Jesuit volunteer; and her anxieties over romantic and physical longings, including a friendship with a Franciscan postulant. As she simultaneously wrestled with an arduous recovery process and her internal conflicts over a life of obedience and celibacy, Walsh was moved to commit to the order and use her ‘brokenness’ to serve ‘the broken body of Christ, the Church—as complicated and messy’ as ‘[it] can be.’ With evocative prose, she captures the days and months after her accident and how her bodily trauma served both to defamiliarize and clarify. ‘Every tooth has moved while my jaw has healed, while the brackets and wire held everything in place.... I don’t know my mouth anymore,’ she writes at one point. And yet, ‘I still smile a lot,’ as ‘the goodness of God’s creativity continues to impress me.’ This leaves a mark.”— Publishers Weekly
“With zeal and a hearty dose of humility, Walsh discloses her innermost thoughts. . . . Some might be startled at what they hear in the context of religious life. Other readers, perhaps seasoned by their own experience of being human, will recognize the innate desire to be seen, to be touched, to be held, to share an intimate connection—desires from which Catholic religious are not excluded.” —National Catholic Reporter
