Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss Ms. Rachel’s mask.

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There is always something behind the eyes of soft-spoken women that instantly triggers my fight-or-flight instinct. I don’t know if it’s because all of the women in my family are outspoken and never pretend to be daisies. Or if it’s because most of the supposedly tender females I have come across in my life have turned out to be emotionally manipulative and deceitful.

Either way, the rise of Ms. Rachel, the popular children’s content creator, is extremely confusing to me. It seems obvious that an insidious radical lingers behind her supposedly gentile, preschool tone. Still, millions of normal parents who don’t see themselves as staunch conservatives or liberals continue to consume her content. Worse, they let their children’s brains and emotions be regulated by her message.

I don’t begrudge them of their naivety. I sometimes crave the time before I knew everything I do about how our culture or government works. Life would be simpler that way. However, I do wish that they would see Ms. Rachel the way I see her. To me, she is a pawn being used to sugarcoat left-wing ideologies in a consumable way.

At first glance, she seems sweet. Everything about her appearance is purposefully designed to disguise the truth. If you saw a picture of her without knowing anything else about her, you would assume that she was normal. But she’s far from that.

In fact, she holds extremely radical views, from pushing anti-semitic and pro-LGBTQ episodes on her channel to her anti-border exceptionalism. What started as an educational sing-along for little kids is now a platform of 19 million subscribers to which she peddles her political views.

The first problem is the age of her audience. Ms. Rachel’s viewers are toddlers and preschoolers, meaning around ages 2 to 5. At this stage, their brains are still developing fast and are easily manipulated. They are unable to think critically or understand complex topics such as borders, war, or identity politics. They think in simple, concrete ways. They believe what adults tell them, especially adults they see as friendly teachers on screen.

So when Ms. Rachel sings songs or plays games that align with her political views, the kids absorb her ideologies as part of their daily routine. The brand loyalty built on cute songs makes it harder for parents to walk away, even if they disagree.

Her recent activism on the ICE Dilley detention center in Texas is another example. In March, she made video calls to children held there with their families. She posted clips on her channels and called for the center to close. She told reporters she is political because she believes care for children does not stop at a border.

The videos show her singing with detained kids and highlighting supposedly poor conditions. But not once did she mention that their parents bear the blame for the situation these children are in. None of these children would be in a detention center if their parents hadn’t entered the U.S. illegally.

Nor does she seem to care about the effects of illegal immigration on American children. Jocelyn Nungaray was only in the 6th grade when two Venezuelan illegal immigrants lured her away. She was sexually assaulted, tied up, strangled, and her body dumped in a shallow creek under a bridge.

Twelve-year-old Dereon James Robinson and nine-year-old Mikhail-Lee Smith were riding bicycles on a sidewalk when a drunk driver veered off the road and struck them. Both died at the hospital. Eri Otoniel Roblero Perez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was charged with two counts of felony DUI resulting in death, among other charges. One of the family members described holding one son as he bled to death.

Eight-year-old Arya Cruz Acencio, the daughter of a U.S. Marine, was killed after a drunk driver hit the family’s car in a head-on collision. Brayan Josue Alva-Rodriguez was an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who had multiple arrests related to drunk driving and had a deportation order that the Biden administration had ignored.

Rachel Morin, a mother of five children, was raped and brutally murdered while jogging on the Ma & Pa Trail in Maryland. Her body was found stuffed in a tunnel drain. Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, was sentenced to life without parole.

The list sadly goes on.

But even without the death toll to grapple with. As an educator, Ms. Rachel should understand the hardships American students face, as their teachers are forced to accommodate English language learners (non-English-speaking students) when creating lesson plans. Everything has to be slowed down to accommodate these students, leaving American citizens to sit through repetitive lessons that hinder their success.

None of this is compassionate for anyone involved. And yet, Ms. Rachel, with her theater kid smile and bright pink shirt, tells our children that this is all they deserve.

Ms. Rachel has the right to spew whatever nonsense she likes, and parents can choose to allow it into their home if they want. However, it strikes me as incredibly deceiving to dress these harmful ideologies up with nursery rhymes and fake smiles. It’s almost as if she knows that no parent in their right mind would sit their children down to watch an hour of her spewing her political views, if not for the educational mask she uses to hide her true intentions.

I am so put off by her that when parents innocently tell me that their children are obsessed with Ms. Rachel, I make a mental note not to let my children do playdates at their house. It’s not that I believe they are intentionally trying to indoctrinate my children into performative compassion that will eventually kill our society. It’s just that I know at the end of the day if they aren’t willing to protect their children from this, then they are incapable of protecting mine.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss the rise in the American ostrich, willingly sticking their head in the sand.

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I think it’s pretty interesting that in the span of a couple of days, both Vice President JD Vance and Justice Clarence Thomas have said in their own way that Americans cannot sit out of this upcoming election cycle.

Thomas delivered a rare public lecture at the University of Texas at Austin on Wednesday, critiquing progressivism as an “existential threat” to America’s founding principles and urging Americans to engage more deeply in self-government.

“I think if we don’t stand up and take ownership of our country, and take responsibility for it, we are slowly letting others control how we think and what we think,” Thomas said.

“If you want it to have trust, if you want to correct what you think is wrong, then get up and do it ... If you think it’s losing confidence, then you get up and you participate. You don’t sit on the sidelines,” he said.

Similarly, Vance echoed themes of civic engagement, encouraging supporters — particularly younger voters — not to disengage over policy disagreements but to get more involved, make their voices heard, and help “take the country back” through political participation.

“I’m not saying you have to agree with me on every issue. What I’m saying is: Don’t get disengaged because you disagree with the administration on one topic. Get more involved, make your voice heard even more. That is how we ultimately take the country back,” Vance said at a Turning Point USA event April 14 in Georgia.

“But here’s fundamentally the issue: When you see a politician, or you see a political movement, or you see an administration that isn’t doing what you want it to do, I think you have two choices. You can say, ‘Oh, to hell with those people,’ and check out of the process. Or you can say, ‘You know what? I’m going to get more involved. I’m going to make my voice heard even more. I’m going to pressure that administration to do exactly what I want them to do because they got my vote, they earned my vote, but they can’t take it for granted,’” Vance said.

I think the point is that both men see the writing on the wall, not just for the 2026 midterms but more broadly.

The first year of Trump’s term seemed to be going full speed ahead on enacting our voter mandate. DOGE was uncovering fraud. The military was getting back in shape again. The mass deportation operation was happening unapologetically. And our cultural issues from pardoning January 6ers to kicking men out of women’s sports were being dealt with. However, at some point, it seemed that the momentum had shifted. The cracks in our armor started to show.

A lot of people in my life are pretty disappointed with the Trump administration right now for one reason or another. I have MAHA moms who are upset with the lack of action to clean up the nation’s food supply, among other issues. I have young men who felt like the Iran War was a mistake. People are asking why the Epstein file cover-up continues, or why the administration seems to be softening on amnesty and mass deportations for illegal immigrants.

None of these people regret voting for President Trump in 2024 and have told me outright that even with everything they know now they’d vote for him again because Kamala Harris should never be allowed in the White House. Still, the disappointment they feel with how Trump has tackled 2026 is making them rethink ever participating in the election process again. In short, they’ve become blackpilled.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I was sent a graph about birth rates that sent me down memory lane to the day 15 years ago when my husband and I got married.

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Apparently, we aren’t supposed to worry about birth rate declines in younger women because the trend shows they are making up for it in their later years. However, the graph The New York Times shared doesn’t even begin to tell the full story.

At first glance, the graph suggests that declines in American birth rates among younger women are offset by older women having more children, supporting the idea of a temporary postponement of motherhood, with a full catch-up as these women age.

Paul Novosad, founder of Development Data Lab, called the NYT graph a “felony-level chart crime” because it created a misleading visual impression of balance and recovery. When he replotted the data to show changes in the actual number of births by age group (rather than percentage changes in rates), the supposed recovery is nowhere to be found.

Since 2007, the number of U.S. births to women aged 15–19 has dropped by about 320,000. Births to women aged 20–24 have declined by around 552,000, and births to women aged 25–29 have fallen by roughly 326,000.

According to the NYT, this decline is nothing to worry about because older women are having more children and will make up for it in the end. Except they don’t. In fact, the gains in older age groups are far too small to offset the losses.

For women aged 30–34, the change has been near zero or only modestly positive. Women aged 35–39 saw a gain of roughly 80,000 births. Those aged 40–44 had an increase of about 37,000 births, while women aged 45–54 had an increase of just over 6,000.

Overall, there is a gap of more than one million births between the declines seen in the 15–29 age groups and the modest gains in the 30–54 age groups.

Lower birth rates among women in their 20s and early 30s in recent generations are only partially compensated for later in life. This is leading to the obvious effect that we see in our communities. An entire generation of women is experiencing drastically smaller family sizes than their older cohorts. This is not a temporary shift but emblematic of a massive societal problem.

It is impossible to overstate how devastating the plummeting birth rates among American women truly are. For decades, the narrative in media and policy circles has been that the decline is simply postponing motherhood and not permanent. Even now, the NYT is trying to sell the same old drivel in hopes that women don’t wake up to the fact that our society has led them down the path to a sadder life.

There is a deeper cultural hollowing-out that can’t be seen on the graph. Families are the backbone of a healthy society. When young Americans delay or forgo having children, communities become less cohesive simply because they are no longer passing down the values and traditions that connected generations. Why would a childless adult volunteer at the local Little League concession stand if they don’t have children? These types of civic engagement that held neighborhoods together are eroding because adults have fewer stakes in the future.

A society that treats children as optional lifestyle accessories rather than the central purpose of adult life has lost its way.

The most common excuses I see among my friends who have chosen to delay building a family are the cultural shifts driven by modern feminism (budding corporate careers) and relentless economic pressures that make family formation feel impossible.

Blaming this on the feminist girl boss is probably the easiest way to make sense of this phenomenon. Popular culture celebrated this archetype while portraying early marriage and childbearing as traps that would derail ambition. But it was really more than that. Not only were you told that you would sacrifice your career for children, but it was framed as giving up on your life.

I remember being asked snarky questions on whether I actually wanted to finish college or if being a mom was more important because it was easier than succeeding in the corporate world. They asked me in a way that made it clear that motherhood was the option that only losers chose.

Growing up, there was a lot of propaganda placed on my generation against teen pregnancies. As a mother of four daughters, I think it’s pretty obvious that I wouldn’t want any of my daughters to be pregnant at 15. However, the effects of telling millions of young girls that getting pregnant would be the worst thing that could happen to their lives can clearly be seen in Novosad’s graph above. It takes a serious amount of deprogramming to break free from that thinking.

The result was a generation of young women internalizing the message that their 20s must be devoted to building their resumes. Changing diapers was for the women who had nothing to offer. Birth control and abortion provided the path to enforce this delay, but the cultural script supplied the motivation.

The economic fallout of this messaging is now swallowing my generation alive, and it’s not slowing down for younger women. It’s become the norm for households to rely on two incomes because wages stagnated while the cost of having a family has skyrocketed. Every generation has dealt with inflation, recessions, or depressions. But ours has been seemingly never-ending.

Families are forced to rely on both parents working in order to achieve a middle-class lifestyle. Home prices and childcare costs, coupled with the rising cost of living, create the perfect trap. Having children now feels like a luxury. Whereas, for the countless generations before us, having children was simply seen as a natural progression of life.

And we can sneer at them and blame feminism or their coffee orders, but that does nothing to help. In fact, it turns them off from ever wanting to pursue a traditional family.

If we ever want to reverse this trend, it’s incredibly important that we stop pretending that postponing children is costless. We need to teach young women that motherhood is a noble and honorable life path. It doesn’t prevent you from reaching your potential, but is in fact the greatest thing you can do in life. And our political policies should be focused on uplifting the family.

I got married at 22, much younger than most of my friends, but on trend for my family. My husband and I had four girls before either of us turned 30. We received a lot of backlash for our decision to settle down. But looking back now, even through the hard times and everything I know about life, it was the best decision we have ever made.

We feel like the lucky ones. Our lives were blessed exponentially with each child that came into our family. Nothing about having children prevented our worldly success. It’s made us more driven and focused. We value community and legacy, and we strive to pass down our traditions to our children.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I’ve been thinking about the midterm. I see the writing on the wall. We have time to fix it, but we have to act now.

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There was a time not too long ago that I didn’t know much about the political world at all. I had checked out from the political process. I had four young daughters, and my days were consumed with raising them. The closest I got to politics was voting in the presidential general election every four years, only to be disappointed when Barack Obama won twice. Then 2015 happened, and Donald Trump rode down those golden escalators. Simultaneously, I was given a spreadsheet on the new sex education curriculum at our local elementary school. My oldest daughter was the only one in school at the time, and although we sent her to private school, I knew it wouldn’t be long before this material made its way to her.

I didn’t know at the time that what I was reading in that pamphlet was transgender and far-left sex ideologies, but I knew it was insidious. It was the moment I began to wake up to the realization that, while I didn’t care about politics and the culture wars, they cared about my children and me.

I watched Trump’s 2016 campaign religiously. I didn’t vote in the primary that year because I still didn’t realize what was at stake, but by November, after school drop-off, I took my three younger daughters and waited over an hour in line to cast my vote for Trump. He spoke to my soul.

Trump called the Bushs out to their faces for being frauds and for the disastrous global wars they pushed on our country. He talked about how the establishment had sold out American workers when they made it acceptable to move major manufacturing hubs out of the country for cheaper labor. He promised to do something about illegal immigration and the crisis Obama had let fester at our southern border. Everything we had been talking about for years around the dinner table had become a major component in his campaign.

The night of the election, I couldn’t sleep. I was glued to the election results. Every poll indicated that we didn’t stand a chance. Hillary Clinton would become our president whether we liked it or not. Still, something inside me felt that it wasn’t over and that Trump would win. And he did.

For the next eight years, I defended him to my friends and family who demonized his governance. I was called every name in the book for my support. I lost people I loved because I refused to give in to the mainstream narratives about him. When he was almost assassinated in 2024, I knew he’d win. Biden had ruined our country, and Kamala admitted she’d be a continuation of his governance. The stars were aligning again. We had another shot to reclaim our country.

As we approach the midterms, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that controlling the wild monster that is our federal bureaucracy is harder than anyone could imagine. The moment we cut the head off one snake, three more show up.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I discuss American citizenship and whether that has any meaning.

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When I am writing my newsletter or my column for the website, I typically put on my headphones and listen to a podcast. I don’t know why it helps me formulate my thoughts into a coherent message, but it does. Last week, instead of a podcast, I listened to the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over the birthright citizenship case currently being decided. For the first time in a while, it did the opposite. In fact, the entire exercise was frustrating beyond belief.

I don’t want to be a doomsday pundit who claims that the case has already been decided. Still, it feels pretty clear to me that a majority of the justices seemed inclined to vote in favor of upholding the idea that anyone born in America, regardless of the circumstances, is an American citizen.

Justice Alito seemed to be one of the few Supreme Court justices who was worried about the ramifications of allowing such a broad interpretation of American citizenship. He asked the lawyer arguing for the challengers, Cecillia Wang, about the meaning of “not subject to any foreign power” and whether it could exclude children born in the U.S. to foreign nationals, including those whose parents entered illegally or whose home countries impose obligations like military service. Something like this seems like an obvious issue that would create a potential divided allegiance between their parents’ birth country and the U.S.

Wang’s response throughout her arguments was that case precedent and common-law tradition established near-universal birthright citizenship for those born on U.S. soil, with narrow exceptions only for children of diplomats.

I couldn’t figure out what was more depressing to me: the fact that the highest court in the U.S. was filled with judges who seemingly agreed with her or that there were citizens in my own country who would actively fight for this to be true.

And then, as if God was giving Americans a preview of what is to come, two days after the Supreme Court heard the birthright citizenship case, DHS arrested two children of illegal immigrants and their parents.

Two US-born siblings, Alen and Ann Mary Zheng, were accused of planting a failed IED at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. Their parents, Qiu Qin Zou and Jia Zhang Zheng, illegally entered the U.S. in 1993 and were served deportation orders in 1998, but remained in the U.S. until their children reportedly tried to bomb a U.S. military base.

According to the left, Alen and Ann Mary are U.S. citizens, despite Ann Mary being arrested while returning from a trip to China (her parents’ home country) and her brother, Alen, supposedly still being in China. It’s insanity.

Americans often talk about the U.S. as if it has magic soil that automatically transforms a person’s soul into a liberty-loving U.S. patriot. I think this is because we love this country so much. Its unique formation ignites a sense of pride and optimism found nowhere else in the world. But this is exactly why we have to be more honest with ourselves about what it actually means to be an American citizen.

Our first step is to admit that there is nothing in the soil that automatically turns a Chinese, Mexican, Iranian, or British citizen into becoming an American. It’s not magic. It doesn’t possess the power to end allegiances to other countries.

When Trump started the war in Iran, Iranians living in the U.S. flooded the streets. The pictures of the demonstrations went viral, showing a sea of activists draped in Iranian flags. It was American blood being spilled for their cause, and yet they weren’t celebrating drenched in the stars and stripes, but the green, white, and red. When ICE went into Minnesota to crack down on Somali immigrant fraud, again, Americans didn’t see our flag but the Somali flag being flown in support of the accused. And in Los Angeles, when ICE began immigration raids, it was the Mexican flag.

Yet the children of every one of these protesters waving foreign flags would automatically be considered U.S. citizens despite their parents’ clear allegiance to a foreign country. And it’s clear their parents would not be raising these new citizens to honor and uphold American values or laws. Their true identity has nothing to do with where they were born, but rather with the principles instilled in them by their parents.

This is what Wang and her cohort are asking SCOTUS to rule in favor of.

Whether they know it or not, they are arguing for the complete destruction of our country. And as an American, I am being asked to sit back and take it.

Being an American isn’t the soil I walk on, even though I see it as my birthright. It’s the values that bind us together, the heritage. It is the character forged by common principles, not mere residency. Our country can only survive if each generation internalizes the habits passed down to us by our ancestors. That internalization happens at the family table, in bedtime stories, and in the moral formation parents provide. It can never be transcribed by simply being born here.

We are a welcoming country. Some of our greatest citizens were immigrants from other countries who actively chose to embrace American ideals. Their success was earned by cultural transmission. When immigrants fail or refuse to pass on that heritage, their children may grow up physically present in the U.S., but they are undoubtedly spiritually foreign. And that’s how we end up seeing American citizens (on paper) taking to the streets professing foreign grievances.

Birth is incidental. We are blessed to be born into the long line of Americans. Those who come here seeking a piece of this crown should face a hurdle that requires more than mere physical presence, but rather an actual allegiance to the legacy they seek to be part of. If we don’t have this basic requirement, there is no point in asking the meaning of American citizenship because, without allegiance, there is no value.

Sometime this summer, SCOTUS will hand down a ruling that will fundamentally change the meaning of American citizenship. I don’t have high hopes that it will protect the U.S. from harm. But I know that I will never stop fighting for my country and the legacy that I am responsible for protecting.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I discuss the importance of suffering.

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

I Want You To Suffer

We are coming to the end of Holy Week, where we celebrate the Passion of our Lord. Christians all over the world participate in some sort of abstinence this week in order to sacrifice in memory of His suffering. I am coming to the end of a seven-day fast. I’ve had no food since last Sunday at dinner time. I won’t break until Easter Sunday when we celebrate Christ’s resurrection.

This is the longest I have gone without eating in my life, and today I am struggling to continue. The physical effects of not eating can be felt in every movement I make. While my mental capacity was at a peak Thursday, by Friday morning, I felt slow and mentally clouded.

Despite this, I won’t give in. Suffering is an important part of life. It’s something our modern world works to prevent as much as possible.

I’ve been thinking about the purpose of this fast all week long. My hope was that I would gain some sort of mental clarity about what God wants for my life. But the overwhelming lesson that keeps coming to mind is that God wants us to suffer for Him.

Suffering has such a negative connotation. We avoid it at every turn. Part of this is because our human nature begs for ease. But we are called to do hard things. This doesn’t mean that we are supposed to put ourselves in situations to purposefully cause us pain and heartache. However, when there is a cross for you to bear, you should willingly take it and carry it.

I’ve had chronic joint pain my whole life. We have never found the root cause, so I just live with it. For decades, I would take daily pain relievers like Tylenol or Advil, until eventually I gave myself a stomach ulcer. I had to stop looking for relief from the pain in order to heal. Doing this completely changed my perspective on suffering.

I know it may sound crazy to say, but once I stopped looking for a way to numb the pain and embraced the suffering, I finally started feeling relief. I still take an occasional Advil when the pain is too much for me to handle. But for daily relief, I turn to prayer. I’ve even begun thanking God for the chance to use this suffering for a good greater than myself.

Suffering, whether it’s loss, pain, hardship, can be a hard thing to understand. It’s easy to wonder why a loving God would allow these things to happen to us. But He is not asking any more of us than what Christ or our Blessed Mother went through — some of the worst moments of my life paved the way for the greatest joys I have ever experienced.

When I finally woke up to the idea that pain can be used for a greater purpose, that maybe I don’t see the reasoning behind it now, but eventually I will, I began noticing all the ways in my life that I avoid doing the hard things just to make my life easier.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I discuss the importance of fighting for our heritage and shared culture. If we don’t, our children will have nothing to inherit.

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Defeating The Hoard Of Invaders

I recently stopped a Muslim development from happening here in Texas. It was one of those rare moments in politics where unrelenting pressure eventually broke the dam of special interests, forcing elected officials to bend to the will of the people.

I was interviewed about the development and why I felt so strongly about fighting against it. I didn’t really understand why I felt so passionately about it at first, but as I gathered my thoughts, I was overwhelmed by the reality of what had happened.

It had nothing to do with the color of their skin. Their culture is incompatible with ours. I knew they weren’t going to assimilate into that community. They were going to completely change the fabric of that beautiful Texas county. When residents reached out to alert me to the situation, something deep inside me knew that if I didn’t no one would, and their lives would never be the same.

I’m a ninth-generation Texan. My family can trace our lineage back to before the American Revolution. We have fought in every American war. We tamed these wild lands and helped build the greatest nation in the world. Our culture still reflects the grit and defiance needed to accomplish this task, but a large percentage of our citizens have fallen asleep and forsaken our birthright. Even worse, our elected officials, the ones tasked with upholding our interests above all else, abuse this complacency.

My whole life, I’ve sat back helplessly watching our governors and representatives import socially incompatible people, completely reshaping the communities that I once loved. If you live in Texas, you know exactly what I mean. Everyone likes to point to Epic City, the Muslim development in North Dallas, as the pinnacle of this, but it’s been going on a lot longer.

At one point in the interview, I was asked how Texas has changed over the years. I told her that it’s important to understand how I grew up. My small town was a community. If you have ever watched a movie about Texas football and Friday Night Lights, that’s a good description of my childhood.

My town would close down on Friday nights for the football game because everyone came, whether they had kids playing football or not. Local restaurant owners would shut down until the last quarter, then reopen to serve the kids, players, and families coming to celebrate after the game. Main Street was decorated for Christmas and Easter. There were nativity scenes and crosses on display in shop windows. Then, when Christmas and Easter came once again, the entire town would close. It was an idyllic way to grow up because, as an adult, I understand that there was complete community buy-in. I felt it when I was younger, but I wasn’t able to articulate what that meant. It was simply our way of life.

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None of that is happening anymore. Very few towns are capable of committing like this now because too many people who don’t understand our values and social fabric are moving in. There are entire subdivisions that don’t house a single native-born Texan. You go to your local grocery store, and the items are marketed to foreign populations. You hear foreign languages more than you do English. It’s disorienting.

If you’ve been on X recently, you might have noticed the algorithm change where American users are being exposed to Japanese users due to Grok’s instant translation. We write in English, and it’s displayed in Japanese and vice versa.

We are finding out more and more that the Japanese love American culture. They uphold our values and support our fight against mass migration. Americans, in turn, have expressed love and admiration for Japan.

The exchange punches straight through the narrative that Americans, especially Southerners, hold racial resentment against outsiders. We are actually very accommodating to people who respect our culture and values. As long as they want to live like us, we are welcoming.

But that’s not what’s happening in Texas and in so many other states across the country. And it’s progressing at such a pace that it feels like our land is being stolen out from under our feet and being given to people who don’t care to understand what it took to tame it. And it’s more than that. They don’t admire us for it.

I am raising another generation of Texan women. I am fighting for their chance to grow up with the same society and community that raised me. I wish I didn’t have to be the one, but there aren’t enough people standing in the gap. As I mentioned before, our elected leaders are largely responsible for selling us out, but at the end of the day, it’s really our fault.

The older generations thought they could vote for conservatives and that would be enough to protect our state. We are only just realizing that the folks running our states are all the same. They are bought and paid for by special interest groups. They know the majority of Texans are too consumed with their lives to pay attention. We are living in a hell of our own complacency.

I was able to save one county from this fate, but 253 others need to be defended. The people are going to have to rise up against the cultural erasure of our heritage. I am bound and determined to turn the tide. I love this land so much. My family’s blood rests in its soil, and our future generations will lord over its growth.

Texas is a uniquely beautiful place that is worth preserving. If my generation doesn’t fight for her, there will be nothing left for our children. Letting that happen feels like accepting death.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we talk about how important it is to model the type of marriage you want your children to choose for themselves.

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

Swapping Places With Your Husband Isn’t For The Faint Of Heart

This is one of those rare weeks where my husband is taking on the brunt of the work at home while I cover CPAC for the Daily Caller. I work from home most days. As most of y’all know, my husband travels a lot, and there aren’t often times when he gets a glimpse of what my life is like when he is away.

But on Thursday, which is our craziest day of the week, he had to handle it all by himself. It was particularly chaotic for him as there were three soccer games, an after-school playdate, and our oldest had basketball practice, which is about 30 minutes away. He had to get help, but I couldn’t be there for him.

He got another mother from one of the girls’ teams to take one daughter to her game. He is the coach for one of our daughters, so he attended that game. My mother took our youngest daughter to her game. And our oldest daughter ended up having to skip practice because there was no way to get her where she needed to go without another driver.

I was able to meet them for dinner after everything was said and done. The girls were all in their soccer uniforms, sweaty and happy from the wins they secured. My husband smiled as I walked up. He ordered food for me when he knew I was on my way. It had arrived the moment I walked through the door. He also looked happy but exhausted.

There was a moment where our eyes locked across the table, and we just smiled at each other, knowing what each of us was thinking.

“This is what it is like when I’m out of town, I bet,” he said.

I just smiled and said, “Yes, it’s not easy, but we manage.”

“No, it’s not,” he responded, grabbing my hand, squeezing it tight.

The girls were smiling, watching this quiet conversation take place. I noticed that on the way home and while we finished our jobs to get ready for the next day, the girls were practically gliding around the house as they did their chores. It makes them happy to see us love each other.

It’s important for them to see him acknowledge the sacrifices we make when he is gone. It’s a form of love that’s hard to explain to them without this, but it’s so important for them to see it because I want them to find a husband who will do the same for them.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I discuss the contempt I have for a husband who shames his wife online for his own benefit.

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

Man Whores Out His Pious Wife For Clout

Before I get into what I want to talk about today, it is very important that I first tell you that I believe there is redemption through Christ waiting for all of us. We all fall short of sanctification, and through His mercy and sacrifice, we have the opportunity to come back from our sin.

That said, sometimes your testimony should be saved for small-group discussions rather than posted online. A husband is going viral right now for essentially slut shaming his wife on the internet under the veil of professing her radical transformation from promiscuity to biblical womanhood.

Right off the bat, as I read his post, I couldn’t help but think how insane it is that her husband is airing her past on the internet for the world to see. I made a mental note to somehow explain to my girls that they should be looking for men who will protect them, not use them for clicks or online clout.

“My wife was formerly promiscuous. I was a virgin,” he said. “She was then radically born-again. Committed to church, evangelized constantly, Puritan books in her bedroom, prayer journals, grief over past sexual sin, etc.”

The post goes on and on about how she regrets the sexual sins of her past and how she’s worked to be the best mother and wife. The reaction to him telling this story is exactly what you’d imagine. His comment section is full of men asking why he would essentially call his wife a whore on the internet, and women being disgusted by his words.

While talking about this with one of my friends, she mentioned that this woman might have been an OnlyFans prostitute, which would make a lot of sense considering her husband talked about her having multiple partners. So I started doing a bit of digging. Her husband mentioned that she had previously professed her “testimony” in public. I figured there would be a record of it somewhere online. After finding it and reading the entire thing, I am even more disgusted by the husband’s decision to talk about her past this way.

The way he wrote about her made it seem like she had wild college years. She went clubbing and hooked up with random men every night. That was the picture he painted for the audience, but the truth was actually quite heartbreaking.

Yes, she admitted to being an OnlyFans-type cam girl for about 4 months of her life when she was around 18 years old. However, she had been systematically groomed and raped since she was at least 16, but I think this actually started around age 15. Older men would lure her in with drugs and then sexually use and abuse her.

Her parents divorced when she was only 3. She was exposed to pornography at a very young age and then by 15 was sneaking out of the house to go to raves out in the desert, where she met older men who would give her drugs and alcohol.

“At a very young age, I was exposed to lots of sexual immorality such as pornography and crude, sexual talk. This soon led me to get enslaved in the sin of indulging in pornography as young as 11 or 12 yrs old and this continued for many years,” she said.

“At 15 years old I became VERY rebellious. I was promiscuous, jumping from relationship to relationship, smoking, sneaking out at night, lying to my mother where I was going, drinking, and partying,” she wrote.

While she, of course, made the decision to follow that path, her parents were nowhere to be found. Why are they letting their teenage daughter sneak out of the house? The first time that happened would be the last time.

A lot of parents with wild children will claim that some kids are just born unmanageable. “I did everything right, and they strayed on their own.” This isn’t the truth. It’s just something they tell themselves to soothe their shame. We have a duty to protect our children physically and spiritually. This clearly wasn’t happening for her, and it began with their decision to get divorced.

Divorce is the ultimate killer, destroying nuclear families under the guise that children will be happier if the parents are happy. But in reality, all children of divorce walk away with deep-rooted scars, and the worst cases turn out like this girl.

This wasn’t some story about a wild teen, but rather a hurt little girl desperately searching for a family after her parents broke it into pieces. They didn’t provide one at home, so she turned to the world. She found sin and wore it as a shield, but it was poisoned. She was dying from the inside out long before she almost overdosed at age 18.

Now she’s finally found God, a husband, and children. The redemption and family she has been looking for all of her life is now hers. But she can never move on from this because her husband uses it as part of his so-called ministry. He tells the world his wife used to be a whore, but never once mentions that in reality, she was left unprotected by her parents and used by evil men who wanted to abuse her until there was nothing left. She will always be the (former) prostitute.

And I understand that some will read his post claiming that the hate he is receiving is unwarranted. “He’s showing God’s forgiveness!” But I would like to know: if the wife was so willing to have her “testimony” shared in public, why did she try so hard to scrub the details from public view that I had to use a special website to fix the broken link just to read about her life?

My girls will grow up to understand that a good man will shelter you. They will pray for your protection, provide a life that uplifts your soul, and give you a home where you can calmly raise your children. He won’t use you like this. He won’t humiliate you in front of the world for his benefit. Instead, he will fight for your honor and get justice for those who wish to besmirch your character. This is what real men who love their wives do for them.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.

The full subscriber edition continues below with expanded analysis on topics that caught my eye.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, the phone situation has come back to haunt me.

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

Stay Away From Her, You Creepy Weirdo

People were enraged at conservative commentator Megan Basham this week, which I find to be completely insane. I might be biased because I respect Megan and enjoy following her work. Still, the hate she got after sharing a story about her daughter should rub any rational person the wrong way.

For a little context, Megan noticed a late-night text on her 16-year-old daughter’s phone from a friend asking a quick question about dance class. Since her daughter was already asleep (and her family keeps electronics in the parents’ room overnight), Megan replied briefly as if she were her daughter. The problem was that she used perfect grammar, capitalization, and punctuation.

The next night, Megan saw her daughter giggling while on her phone. It turned out the friend’s mother had done the exact same thing as Megan. She was the one who asked the question, posing as her daughter. Both mothers wanted to avoid having to explain who the original texter was, so they both pretended to be their teenage daughters while using flawless formatting.

Neither girl wanted her friend to think she was the one suddenly using proper grammar, so each quickly confessed that it was actually their mom texting. As a mother of a daughter who texts her friends on my phone, I found this hilarious and all too familiar. I have found myself in similar situations and was also caught because I used capital letters and punctuation.

It was an innocent story about generational divides in communication, and showing how to properly protect your children from technology while they are still young. However, the internet has a way of showing the worst in humanity, like Jim Drumheller, who said: “Your 16 y/o daughter is not a child anymore. Disrespecting her privacy is wrong, not to mention creepy.”

He goes on to say that Megan keeping her daughter’s phone in their room at night somehow means she doesn’t trust her daughter, and he suggested she ask her daughter whether she considers herself a child.

It’s probably worth noting that Jim has pride and trans flags in his bio. In this climate, there seems to be an issue with predators wearing these emblems as a mask in order to get close to children. That’s not to say Jim is hoping to do that. However, if he had suggested those things to me, I would have demanded that we check his hard drive.

I’m becoming increasingly aware that I cannot put off giving my high schooler a phone forever, but making that leap feels overwhelming. Especially considering the fact that giving her a phone means weirdos like Jim could have access to her.

Right now, she is (somewhat) content using my phone to communicate. However, we are getting to the point where she will be driving or at events when we are not with her. It would feel safer to give her a phone for these occasions than to have her rely on friends.

Part of my hesitation is definitely the reality that there are bad people in the world. If you’ve ever watched the Shawn Ryan podcast with guests who talk about online predators, it’s enough to make you never want to give your children a phone, computer, or tablet.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I am fighting the urge to take on my husband’s battles for him.

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Burn The Village. Salt The Earth.

Whenever people cross my husband, I find myself turning into St. Olga from her time before she converted.

Good or bad, I can’t stand watching people take shots at my husband. He can defend himself better than I ever could. Still, when they come for him, it makes me want revenge. He’s currently experiencing something like this, and I immediately thought of St. Olga.

If you’ve never heard her story before, it’s proof of how far a woman will go to avenge her husband.

At 15, Olga married the Viking king, Igor, who inherited the Kievan Rus Empire. This is now modern-day Ukraine/Russia. Igor went to a Slavic tribe, the Drevlians, to demand tax payments. One thing led to another, and the Drevlians ambushed and murdered Igor by tearing his body into pieces.

Olga became Queen Regent, since their only son, Sviatoslav, was only 3. The prince of the Drevlians, Prince Mal, dispatched twenty noble ambassadors by boat to Kiev, bluntly reporting that they had slain Igor and proposing that Olga marry him so they could rule together. He saw this as a great opportunity to take over her late husband’s empire.

Olga did not take this proposal well. Now a widow and interim ruler of the Kievan Rus Empire, she set out to avenge her husband’s death.

Olga agreed to host the Drevlian ambassadors and made them believe she would accept Mal’s proposal. They were greeted with warmth, but told to sleep in their boats that night. They were told that in the morning, her people would carry them in their boats into her courtyard. While they were sleeping, Olga instructed her servants to dig a deep trench in her courtyard. When the Drevlians arrived, the people of Kiev carried the boat, with the ambassadors still inside, straight into the pit. Trapped at the bottom, the servants filled the trench with dirt, burying the ambassadors alive.

She wasn’t done there. Olga sent a message back to the Drevlians stating that she had agreed to the marriage but required an even more distinguished escort. She wanted Mal to send his finest nobles and chieftains to accompany her on her journey to Drevlian. Mal eagerly agreed, sending his best men. Upon their arrival, Olga invited them to wash off the journey in a bathhouse before the formal audience. Once the nobles were inside, her servants locked the doors from the outside and set the entire building ablaze, burning the men alive.

Still not satisfied, Olga traveled to Drevlian territory with a small number of soldiers. She announced that she would hold a funeral feast in honor of Igor. The Drevlians accepted. Olga arrived, wept over the grave, and joined the banquet. As the Drevlians became intoxicated, she signaled to her soldiers. Five thousand Drevlians were slaughtered at the feast.

Olga’s final and most devastating act came when she marched her army against the Drevlians. She laid siege to their capital city, which dragged on for over a year. The Drevlians were desperate for relief, so she sent messengers to offer peace.

She told the people inside the city that her thirst for vengeance was over. If they wanted to end the siege, all she asked for was three pigeons and three sparrows from each household. The Drevlians gathered the birds and delivered them to Olga. Her soldiers were instructed to attach embers to the bird’s legs before releasing them back into the city. The capital city erupted in flames as the birds went back to their homes. As the residents fled, Olga’s troops finished the job.

Years later, Olga converted to Christianity and, after her death, became the first Russian saint.

This is where my mind was last night. I want to be like Olga after her conversion, leading her people to peace and truth in God. But sometimes I find myself seeking retribution, especially in matters that concern my husband or children. I want their enemies brought before me and dealt with.

I think there are lessons to be learned from both sides of Olga’s life. She was fiercely loyal and loved her husband. I’m not suggesting that every wife should want to burn an enemy’s village to the ground, but they should want their husband’s success just as much as they want their own.

I’ve seen so many of my friends who take shots at their husbands or denounce them in public, and it always makes me cringe. You can disagree with your husband, but those conversations should always stay in the privacy of your relationship. Once you step out of your house, you are one unit in lockstep.

A strong marriage is built on the reality that it is the two of you against the world. Everything about our society is seeking to pull you apart. You have to fight that with everything you have.

Olga is also the pillar of redemption. You should always strive to come back from your desire for vengeance to a place of peace and forgiveness. Not every battle has to be won, and sometimes even when you think your cause is just, you have to remember that humanity is still deserving of dignity.

I have peace knowing my husband can handle himself. He doesn’t need me to fight the Drevlians in his life. But I also have a tinge of satisfaction knowing that I would be willing. Like I said, good or bad, this is where I find myself. I want to be like St. Olga.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I tell you when I knew my husband was the “one.”

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

Touch Me One More Time

I’ve been thinking about it all week long and wanted to tell y’all how I knew I would marry my husband.

It’s probably important that I first tell y’all that I’ve been in desperate need of an attitude adjustment this week. Our spring school and sports schedule, combined with my husband being out of town again and it storming every night, has put a damper on my mood, to say the least. Imagine Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, moping around the house, and you’ll get a glimpse of what everyone has had to suffer through.

My husband is the exact opposite of me. I am the worrier who thinks that the sky is going to fall at any minute. He is the positive one who always promises that there is nothing to fear because it’s all going to work out. And he’s always right. They do end up working themselves out for the better.

The night we met, I knew he was different. We were in college, and I had just gotten a job at the same English pub where he worked. He walked through the door with the biggest smile on his face, and my heart started racing. He walked over to introduce himself to me, and it felt like I knew my life had changed forever. We wouldn’t officially start dating for a year, but in that time, we were practically inseparable. He looked after me even though I wasn’t his responsibility.

I remember one time, right after we started dating, when one of my sisters, who lived with a group of our friends and me, went out for a girls’ night. I had mentioned it to him before I left work that night, hoping that he would get the hint to meet us out, even though it was just supposed to be us girls. Hours had passed, and I found myself looking at the door, waiting for him to walk in, even though there was no guarantee he would show. Just when I had given up hope, I felt his arms wrap around me, and it was like in an instant every bit of my body relaxed. I didn’t have to see his face to know it was him.

His touch calms me like no one else can. I was young, but somehow I knew that if you find someone who can give you relief from your worries, you should hold on to them. And so I did. For the last 15 years, anytime a serious issue has come up, he’s found a way to get us through. Even in moments where I am unable to see the light, he shows me that if I just keep pushing forward, I’ll reach it. All I have to do is trust him.

Trust is probably the most important foundation a relationship can have. It’s so much more than whether they tell the truth. It’s found in the deepest parts of your heart, where you know without a shadow of doubt that the other person wants the best for you and will work until their dying breath to make sure you get it.

I knew he wanted this for me back then, and all of these years later, it has only grown. He wants to be the person who provides me with safety and protection. It’s not always right when I want it to happen, but he finds a way through the darkness every time to bring it to me.

I miss this the most when he is gone.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I tell stories about my childhood.

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

26 Kids And Counting

I have three pregnant sisters right now. One with her first child, one with her seventh, and one with her eighth. By the end of the year, my parents will have 26 grandchildren. So watching the anti-big family ghouls come for Hannah Neeleman’s nine children has radicalized me.

Hannah has a large social media following on her “Ballerina Farm” accounts. Her videos follow her and her husband around as they raise their family and run their farming business in Utah. Shortly after she posted an ad for their new protein powder and simultaneously announced she was pregnant with their ninth child, the internet exploded.

Author Rebecca Reid, who claims to be pro-natalist, went viral for criticizing Hannah’s decision to grow their family.

“You cannot give nine children adequate time, attention and connection. You are, unquestionably, with nine children, spending less time with your children than a working parent with two kids,” she said.

A part of me understands that big families, unless you are part of a Catholic community, are an anomaly in our society. Of couples from my generation who are having kids, most are having just 2, MAYBE 3. The national average is about 1.6 children per married couple. So the idea of them having even 4 or 5 kids seems insane, much less nine. Still, their reaction to her family size is disordered.

Truth be told. I feel bad for them for thinking this way. Having a large family is one of the greatest blessings my parents ever gave us.

Summers were always the most fun. We weren’t allowed to just sit inside and veg out in front of the TV all day. We had a swimming pool and acres of land to run around on. He expected us to use them. And we did.

I remember when the dollar movie theater opened up a couple of towns away from us. My dad would take us to see movies during the day while everyone else was working. We’d get popcorn and watch every kids’ movie that was out, even if we’d seen it before. Then we would reenact those stories at home.

In our front yard, we had a massive willow tree. Naturally, after we watched Pocahontas, we’d all pretend to be her, singing the Grandmother Willow song while we swung from its branches. We built forts and established clubs. We voted on the hierarchy, even though unsurprisingly, the oldest siblings always won the races. We swam in the pool for hours and hours.

Every minute of our day was spent together.

You could look at this and claim that we were deprived of outside friendship or other relationships. But you’d be overlooking what they built by having us and raising us together like this. To this day, my non-family friendships have come and gone, but my sisters will always be there for me.

When I am upset or excited about something, I immediately take it to our group chat. If I have questions about parenting, I turn to them. When I need encouragement or a slap in the face with reality, I know they are there to give it to me.

We don’t always see eye to eye, which makes being part of a big family even more important. When we quarrel, it’s typically the sisters who aren’t involved who beg us to come to some sort of resolution. There is an unspoken agreement that no matter the situation, we will always find our way back home to each other.

I know this is different for my friends who only have one or two siblings. When they tell me about their interfamily drama, there is no one who tells them to “cut the shit and apologize.” Sometimes their parents will be the ones to do it, but often I find myself in that position for them just because nothing makes me sadder than when siblings refuse to reconcile.

Everything I have learned about conflict resolution and building relationships started by navigating my own with my sisters. I was taught how to handle strife and disagreements before I ever ventured out into the world. I had the opportunity to learn these lessons in the safety of my family, with people who loved me. And I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

You don’t know what you don’t know. And I think a lot of the criticisms big families receive are from people who are incapable of understanding the joy these families share. The money, attention, etc., all work themselves out. As parents, you figure out who needs what in that moment, and you give it to them. On any given day, that will look different, but the process stays the same.

I couldn’t be happier that my sisters are pregnant, even if I am a little jealous that I can no longer have children of my own. I don’t look at them and wonder how they are going to do it all because I know they are capable. When I go to their houses and spend time with their children, all I see is love and smiling faces. And that’s all I see with Hannah Neeleman and her family. Much like my parents and sisters, they’ve given their family the greatest blessing in this world.

The next time you see a mother out with her gaggle of children, instead of saying the snide comment about having her hands full, tell her how beautiful her family is. Let her know that she is a blessing and that what she is doing has a purpose greater than anything else. The world is a hostile place for big families, when it should be praising them for taking on the mission.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.

The full subscriber edition continues below with expanded analysis on topics that caught my eye.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I get to tell y’all about Hunkules and the best dinner ever.

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

Hot Guys And Blue Eyes

I received so many subscriber emails after my Wednesday newsletter that I want to thank everyone for their outpouring of love and support. I understand that talking about war can bring out supporters on both sides of the engagement, and expected some pushback. However, it was truly heartwarming to read the responses from so many of you who saw that what I wrote came from my love for our country and our military. The love far outweighed the opposition.

Outside of that, my week has been pretty crazy. We’ve had a lot going on, and my husband is once again out of town for work. We have a routine we fall into when he is not home that usually makes it pretty seamless. While it’s more work, it’s the kind of work I love because it gives me more time with the girls.

However, our routine was thrown into a tailspin Wednesday, and it felt like nothing was going to plan. By the time I got home that night, I realized I hadn’t pulled the meat out of the freezer for dinner, which meant I was staring down the possibility of not having dinner ready for several hours. I took one look at the girls and told them to get back into the car. I was going to break one of my cardinal rules and take them out for dinner on a weeknight.

I don’t like eating out during the week if we can help it. Staying home means I get unfiltered conversations with the girls and control over the ingredients in their food. However, after the day I had, the idea of cooking and then cleaning up the dishes felt like torture. And while I could have had them help me in the kitchen to ease the burden, they also had a long day. Eating out felt like a mercy to all of us.

This turned out to be the best decision I could have made.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, the newsletter wades into the conflict in Iran. What happens to our daughters if we kill off all the good men?

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

Make Love, Not War

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why I am so upset by the war in Iran. A part of it definitely has to do with feeling betrayed by President Trump and his administration, who have repeatedly promised not to pull us into any new foreign wars. They seemed to understand that enough American blood and money had been spent in the Middle East. Their new posture does not reflect the promises that were made during the campaign and early administration.

I’m a millennial who came of age during the post-9/11 era, particularly the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. So watching U.S. military members once again die in the Middle East immediately causes worry. The Global War on Terror (GWOT) was sold to the public on claims of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq, which ultimately proved to be an unfounded lie. Intelligence was cherry-picked or exaggerated, leading to a war that dragged on for nearly two decades, well into our adult lives. This not only cost trillions of dollars but resulted in thousands of U.S. military deaths and tens of thousands wounded.

Many of us remember the initial promises of quick victories and democracy spreading. But these promises were just more lies that gave way to endless occupation, with little accountability for leaders who promoted the false premises. Instead of victory, our generation was handed economic recession and a growing distrust in the government.

But that’s really only part of it.

We watched as boys from our small towns enlisted in mass under the guise of protecting American freedoms at home. We sent them off with parades. We praised their bravery and prayed for their safety. Most of us made care packages and wrote letters to them on deployment so they would never forget how much we appreciated their sacrifice.

Then we watched, horrified, as these same boys came home ghosts, as if their lives had been sucked out of them. We sent them off as strong examples of American might, and the war sent them back as shells of themselves, if they came home at all. So asking us to “trust the plan” after all of this heartbreak seems insensitive at best.

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These were the boys I went to school with. They were potential mates, but most were barely capable of handling civilian life, much less marriage and children. The war had removed this possibility for them and us women.

I’ve told y’all this before, but I am a strong-willed woman. There is no reality in which I was going to settle down with a man that I could control or walk all over. Like most women, I desire protection and strength from my husband. Naturally, I am attracted to the type of man who would typically go into law enforcement or military service. What our government did for twenty years was take the best men our country had to offer, feed them into the meat grinder.

When I look at my husband, I am always relieved that I found him. Due to circumstances outside of his control, he never joined the military. Still, he exhibits the same characteristics of men who do. He was spared from this fate, and I will be forever grateful to God for putting him into my life.

However, as we embark on yet another seemingly endless war in the Middle East, where six service members have died, and 18 are wounded (as of Tuesday afternoon), I can’t help but worry that the Trump administration is committing the same sins as previous presidents by once again sending our best to the meat grinder.

What does this mean for my daughters? I am raising them to be different than their cohort. They aren’t obsessed with social media; they don’t even have phones. They understand the horrors of abortion. They want to get married and have children. They are looking for men they can love and support. If this does turn out to be another 20 years of American soldiers fighting in the Middle East, where does this leave my girls when they start looking for strong men to marry?

Every generation of Americans has had to deal with deadly conflict. We are not unique in this. However, our society is clearly paying the price for our obsession with war. We’ve already seen what it does to a generation when the best and bravest never come back home. Our society can’t handle anymore of these Americans being lost to the Middle East. We need them here at home, protecting and providing. We need them to raise families and guide the culture. Without them, our country is weakened, and the wolves (transgender ideology, abortion, DEI, etc.) are given the power to destroy us.

A lot of how I feel about this conflict has to do with my own experiences during the GWOT. Maybe I am overreacting, and this won’t last decades. But the drums of war are beating louder than ever. The warmongers in Washington, D.C., are salivating at the chance to jump into another civilization-destroying war. The calls for this to continue are only growing stronger as they feel the power shifting.

But it’s not just in D.C. I was shocked to hear older generations of Americans, who lambasted the ineffectiveness of the last Middle Eastern war, celebrate with overwhelming enthusiasm over the regime change in Iran. They know the cost and yet still support it.

If you love our country and its military, how could you say that this is good for America? If you love your daughters and granddaughters, how could you not weep for what’s to come? What happens to our daughters if we send all the good men to die?

None of this is to say that I believe the U.S. should never deploy its military. A just war is always worth fighting. The American Revolution was a bloody war that took many lives, but it gave us the greatest country in the world. But there has been no explanation given that tells me the Iran conflict was worth the lives we’ve already lost and the others that will likely be taken.

I know this isn’t a typical newsletter from me, but the thought of losing American lives is weighing heavily on my heart. When I listen to my daughters talk about the future, there’s a tightness in my chest over the worry about what that will look like for them.

We have the greatest military in the world for a reason. It’s filled with men from small towns all over the U.S. who are willingly risking their lives to protect the mission. All I am asking is that the administration in charge ensure that the mission is just.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.

The full subscriber edition continues below with expanded analysis on topics that caught my eye.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss dinner-table topics and how they are the best way to know your children.

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Would You Rather

One of the best things you can do for your family is to make sure that every night you sit down at the dinner table and unwind after a long day. However, our modern world, with its jam-packed schedule and outside commitments, makes it almost impossible to do this.

We are in the break between sports seasons, so right now, nothing is keeping us out late at night, so the dinner table has been revitalized. And it’s the best part of my night. Sometimes it’s filled with the girls telling us what happened during the day, and my husband and I give them advice on how to work through these things. Sometimes our girls sit in silence as my husband and I talk about our days.

The girls like to listen to us work through our issues at work or praise each other over accomplishments. I don’t really know why, but I think it has something to do with seeing us love each other. It’s so important for your children to know that there is a life outside of them, including a marriage that needs tending. They want to see me get excited about some deal my husband is working on or him helping me navigate a tricky situation.

And when nothing serious needs to be discussed, our family often finds itself playing little games. We like to tease each other and joke around a lot. But the other night, we started playing “Would You Rather?” At first, it was pretty silly stuff.

“Would you rather fight 5,000 chicken-sized elephants or one elephant-sized chicken?”

“Would you rather only eat bacon for the rest of your life or only eat eggs for the rest of your life?

The girls were laughing about having to fight a chicken or elephants. The conversation was lighthearted and fun. But then I started thinking about deeper topics to see where their maturity level was and how they felt about the future. The best way to get a good idea of how your children are feeling is to turn a seemingly innocent game into something more.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I talk about … sex.

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If you haven’t heard by now, , the only women’s magazine of its kind, dedicated its latest print issue to marital sex. I wrote a calmer version of this for the Daily Caller, if you are interested. However, I have some thoughts on this that I think would be better for our Substack audience, and I want to convey them.

To reiterate what I wrote earlier on the subject, I think it is a beautiful thing that Evie is stepping into the void to have honest conversations about sex. It is desperately needed. Young women should not learn about pleasure and intimacy from degenerate leftists who will tell them that hook-up culture is more fulfilling than marital sex. The writers and podcasters in the women’s media space will tell your daughters that they must have one-night stands and threesomes as the only way to achieve female liberation.

Evie Magazine is giving a profound blessing to a generation of women by fearlessly telling them there is a different way.

There has been so much focus in the conservative Christian world on preaching the message of abstinence and waiting until marriage that we never even thought to tell our daughters what it is that they were waiting for. I know several women who, despite having children of their own, struggle with the shame and guilt of marital sex. This isn’t how God intended it to be.

The Catholic Church, through Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, provides what I believe is the perfect understanding of this, as it teaches that marital sex should be both beautiful and pleasurable. It is not simply for procreation, although as Christians we must always be open to life in these occasions, marital sex is divinely designed for spouses to experience pleasure that unites them as one unit. It is as much a spiritual act as a physical one. God designed us to enjoy it.

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Because of our fallen nature, we use this pleasure in a sinful way. Hook-up culture distorts sex, makes it dirty, and leads Christian women into feeling shame about having sex with their husbands. This is why what Evie Magazine is doing is so important.

I feel conflicted, as I am sure many Christian mothers do, about when I need to have a discussion about sex with my daughters. I want them to avoid living a life that gives in to lust. It’s a deviant way to live, and I would hate for that to consume them. But I have also seen the pendulum swing so far in the opposite direction that it causes strife and hardship in the marriages of people close to me.

At the end of the day, I fear the two ends of the spectrum equally. Knowing this, my girls will learn about sex from me because I believe this is how our society should be. They shouldn’t need to turn to a women’s magazine to find out that pleasure with your husband is divinely inspired and holy. The older women in their lives should be passing on generational knowledge that will help them navigate this new world until they and their husbands have a clear understanding of each other.

But for millions of women, they didn’t have that. Our mothers and grandmothers never told us what to expect on our wedding nights. We were left to find out about the wide world of sex from secular entertainment. Some women never made it to their wedding night before entering this world, and some went in so blind they ultimately ended up disappointed or wrecked with guilt.

There are some in the conservative movement who have chosen to denounce Evie for its decision to write the “Sex Issue,” without ever understanding why they felt the need.

Evie’s founder, , was very honest that this was years in the making and not because she wanted to use her magazine to talk about sex, but because her readers were desperate for answers to questions that the women in their lives had made too taboo to ask.

“For years, a recurring plea has shown up in our DMs, emails, and survey responses. Young married women asking us for real, honest, detailed guidance about sex,” Brittany said.

“Many young women, especially from traditional or religious families, have come into womanhood without learning anything about sex. They saved themselves for marriage and then realized the culture that told them to wait had absolutely nothing to say about what comes after the altar,” she continued.

“They grew up with negative associations to intimacy, but were expected to become uninhibited the moment they said ‘I do.’ We believe sex is one of the most important foundations of a thriving marriage. You cannot call something sacred and then refuse to take it seriously,” she added.

It’s our fault. We should be ushering these women into this beautiful, exclusive club with glee, but instead, we pretend it doesn’t exist. Or worse, we tell them that marital sex is an obligation that women just need to get through in order to have children and keep their husbands happy.

For the first time in my life, a woman’s magazine is talking about sex in a way that aligns with my faith. It’s making a topic that would otherwise make someone blush into a fruitful discussion that will hopefully help marriages thrive. And because of this, we should support their mission. Buy the print issue and save it for your daughters as a wedding present. Use it as a template to help open up a conversation on a topic that can be hard to discuss.

Marriage is the most wonderful blessing of my life. The intimacy I share with my husband brings me so much joy, and I want my daughters to experience it too. All mothers should. So, before you attack Evie, realize that they wouldn’t have had to write the book on sex if we were doing a better job preparing our daughters for marital bliss.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.

The full subscriber edition continues below with expanded analysis on topics that caught my eye.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I talk about teaching your children the importance of winning.

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Don’t Be A Loser

I received an email from one of my readers this week that made me think that either he missed the point of my Wednesday newsletter, or I didn’t explain myself well enough.

“I object to the focus on winning. The point of all games is to play well and have fun. It is more fun when you win by playing well, but that is a secondary consideration,” he said.

As a reminder, I wrote about my dilemma of having to be in two places at once this week. My high school and middle school daughters both had games on the same day, and my husband was out of town. I chose to go to my oldest daughter’s game, but told my younger daughter that her mission was to win. This wasn’t because telling her that winning is the most important thing, but because if she lost (and she did), I wouldn’t be able to watch her play again this year.

And even though that’s not what I meant when retelling this story or when talking to her, I think it’s important to explain that I firmly believe telling your children they shouldn’t focus on winning breeds apathetic children.

He’s right that playing well is incredibly important and that children should choose a sport they enjoy. Not every child is going to be a starter or the best at what they do, but playing sports is a great way to build confidence and learn to work together toward a singular purpose: winning.

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, I talk about choosing between two daughters.

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It’s Hard Choosing Between Two Kids

I have two daughters in the hunt for championships right now. One is in middle school, and the other is in high school. My husband is out of town for work this week, which means I am in the impossible position of being in two places at once.

While this isn’t the first time my older daughter’s team has been good enough to win it all, as a freshman, she’s playing on varsity for the first time. The game matters more. So I’m choosing to travel with her team to the regional finals rather than attend my younger daughter’s middle school game.

I’m not leaving her without a cheering section. My mother and stepfather are taking the girls to her game. I’ve told her that her only mission is to win. If they win, I’ll be able to see her play in the championship game later this week. And while I’ve been drilling this in her head for the last five days, I have also been honest with her about why I have to go to her older sister’s game.

Her older sister is no more important than she is, but the varsity game is more important than the middle school game. The stakes are higher and so are the accolades.

And while I’ve been incredibly intentional about how I’ve spoken about the games, because I don’t want her to think she is less than. I still worry about how she’s feeling about me not being at her game. I never want her to walk away feeling unimportant or unloved.

I am honest with her about the games, not to be cruel, but to give her something to look forward to when she gets older.

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The rest of the moms and I have been working hard to prepare the locker room and entrance into the high school to showcase school spirit. While my daughter was at her club team’s practice over the weekend, her little sisters and I made posters to put up so they could see everything involved as much as possible. We are having lunch catered for them so they can have a “team lunch” before they leave for school, and each player will receive a gift bag filled with snacks and small gifts to mark their achievement.

To be honest, I felt like I was doing a good enough job trying to explain to her the “why” behind my decision, but you never really know how pre-teens (especially girls) are going to take disappointment, and I knew she wanted me at her game. But there was nothing I could do to make that happen this week, so the plan stayed the same, and I had to live with the decision I made. Even if I knew it might hurt her.

But in what felt like a little mercy to me, I got my answer as I walked my daughters and a group of younger boys into the locker room to help hang posters.

One of the middle school boys gazed at the decorations at the high school entrance in awe.

“Man, we are in the playoffs! I wish they’d do this for us too!” he said.

“Well, when you make it on varsity, you’ll have something to look forward to,” my daughter responded without missing a beat.

She looked over to me and winked after she said it. I immediately felt like she got it. This wasn’t a punishment for her, but a milestone to look forward to when she entered high school. And thankfully, she doesn’t see my choice as anything neglectful of her feelings. Instead, she wants me to go. If I were to stay home and watch her game, there would be no one there to cheer on her older sister. She doesn’t want that.

My older daughter’s middle school team made the playoffs every year, and we didn’t decorate their lockers or put up posters around the elementary school. Not because it wasn’t important, but because it was part of the culture of the school.

Looking back at it now, I’m glad we didn’t. It makes this playoff run feel so much more special.

I’ve never really liked the idea of making everything into a celebration because it diminishes the truly incredible moments of their lives, like a kindergarten graduation. There’s nothing special about matriculating up a grade at that age.

You haven’t worked hard and sacrificed for years to achieve anything. It’s really just a celebration for parents having trouble with the idea of their children getting older. And it’s not that allowing them in a cap and gown at 5 years old is somehow going to dampen their feelings when they graduate high school, but some things should be kept sacred.

There will be a time in my middle schooler’s life when a similar situation happens. I’ll have to be in two places at once, and she will have the more important event. She just unfortunately got the short end of the stick this week. She seems to understand that.

But I think this only works because our girls know we show up, and if we can’t be there in person, we send someone to stand in our place. They will never look into the crowd, worrying about whether they are supported. It’s understood that they aren’t alone.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to goodlife@dailycaller.com. While I can’t always respond, I do try to read them all! The community we are building is one of my favorite parts of this experience.

Continue reading the full subscriber edition below with expanded analysis on topics that caught my eye.

Heard It Through The Grapevine:

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Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss a hot-button issue: abortion.

Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with your friends and family! And if you’re one of those friends or family members, you can sign up to get your own copy every week right here.

I Willingly Offered My Life For Hers

Abortion absolutists are starting their war against pro-life legislation again. It seems to always happen right around the buildup for election season. They want to push as many stories as possible of women being arrested after having “miscarriages,” only to find out that the truth is actually abhorrently ghoulish. Like the mother delivering her child and proceeding to abandon the baby outside alone and exposed, leading to the child’s death.

I’ve been pro-life for as long as I can remember, which I think is kind of incredible considering my generation was particularly deceived into believing that intentionally killing your baby made you a hero, not a villain. Still, it wasn’t until I became a mother that I realized what it truly meant to be pro-life.

There is a moment, especially with your first, that you realize you are willing to do unspeakable things to keep this little life inside you alive. You will go through nausea, sleeplessness, bloating, pain, all to make sure that their entry into this world is as smooth as possible.

And while that’s enough to make you a hardened survivor of pregnancy, nothing prepared me for the moment I actually had to choose between my life and theirs.

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