An Interview with Sara Dietz

Sunflowers, Vincent Van Gogh

Today and tomorrow, I’ll be publishing two interviews from different stages of motherhood.

Today, I’m so pleased to publish this interview with

Sara Dietz

, who has much to share on homemaking and mothering littles. I wish I had possessed Sara’s wisdom when my kids were as tiny as hers (I think at the time I was mostly still very much on the struggle bus of new motherhood).

Tomorrow, I’ll publish an interview with the great

Ruth Gaskovski

- who has incredible perspective to offer now that her oldest child is in university.

Two preliminary notes:

1. I do not think of being a homemaker as excluding paid or unpaid work outside the home. Rather, I think of it as a vocation towards home and family—but one that is compatible with all sorts of other activities besides mothering, housework, and cooking (though those are very important!) Many homemakers I know freelance or have part time jobs -- or do significant volunteer work in their communities.

2. I conceived of this project as a series of interviews with people who view themselves as homemakers. Other professions have career development, professional journals, continuing education, and so forth to help inspire and sharpen skills. I’d like this series to provide a little of that for homemakers.

On to the interview! Let’s talk to Sara!

Our kind interviewee, Sara.

I would love to hear about your educational and work background before you became a mother.

I attended parochial school from Pre-K until seventh grade. From eighth grade through high school, I was homeschooled using a lot of curriculum from Kolbe Academy, as well as a hodge-podge of classes taught by the parents of the four or five other homeschooling families on our block. I received my undergraduate degree in History from Texas A&M University (gig ‘em), with minors in English and Anthropology because I couldn’t make up my mind. All during college, I interned at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in the Youth Education Collections. Museum work was a formative experience for me, and one that deeply shaped my desires for post-graduate work. I was wholeheartedly pursuing a career in the field of interpretation, and I swore that I never wanted a desk job, but the Lord had other plans for me.

Just a few months after graduation, I joined a non-profit organization called the St. John Paul II Foundation as a Conference Coordinator. The role was a mix of day-to-day email management for about a year leading up to an event, and a fast-paced, exciting weekend to execute. Rinse and repeat five or six times a year. It was, in many ways, an ideal first job: Mass was offered daily and Confession available regularly in our office building; my entire team was composed of young women in a similar season of life; I had daily access to several doctorate-level theologians who were always happy to answer questions; and I got to travel quite frequently and work with some lovely individuals around the US.

I worked for the Foundation full-time for three years, and for another year and a half in one part-time capacity or another after the birth of my eldest daughter. However, when I was four months pregnant with our youngest, I began to feel pulled in too many different directions—motherhood, pregnancy, and employment all felt too important to do halfheartedly, but I was no longer able to live up to the my own expectations in any area when trying to juggle all three. Something had to give, and while it was certainly hard to say goodbye to a job and an organization I deeply loved, I know I made the right choice in stepping into full-time caregiving and homemaking. (I still bring my girls by the office every couple of months, just to catch up, share the baby rolls, and drop some cookies off. The team I worked with at the Foundation will always have a piece of my heart.)

When did you become a mom? What was that transition like?

I became a mom in August 2021… well, no, I guess in November 2020… well, wait, no—

I became a mom in March of 2020. On a Monday, my husband and I were both told to begin working from home. That Thursday, March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, we found out we were pregnant. The following Thursday, we found out that my hormone levels indicated a high probability of miscarriage. An ultrasound a week later revealed that the baby had stopped growing long before, and we opted for expectant management. My body began to miscarry within a month of the pregnancy test.

That year on Mother’s Day, my own mother left a bouquet of flowers on my doorstep and I burst into tears. The pregnancy hadn’t been unexpected, but it certainly hadn’t been planned, and in the midst of everything happening with COVID, I hadn’t really taken time to grieve.

Mere weeks before that child, who we named Raphael, would have been born, we found out we were pregnant again. The weeks leading up to Raphael’s due date were excruciating—I think I received six pregnancy announcements in two weeks, and between the “what should have been” thoughts and the “when will it be our turn” thoughts, I was ready to go live under a rock for a few years. I remember one day just taking my lunch break and stepping into the chapel in our office, with the lights off, and just bawling. For the full hour. I did my best to hide my puffy, red eyes as I walked past the lunch table where two or three of my pregnant coworkers were eating together, feeling deeply alone and left out, and went back to my desk without speaking to anyone. We found out we were pregnant a week or so later. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

My transition to motherhood-on-the-outwomb was, all things considered, a very smooth one. I was exposed to the actual tasks of caring for an infant when my baby brother was born (I was twelve at the time), so very little of that aspect of motherhood was shocking or surprising to me. And we are profoundly blessed to have an incredible support system, with many family and friends in walking distance who are generally willing to share childcare duties in emergencies, meet up for last-minute save-my-sanity play dates, or bring cups of coffee and slices of breakfast cake by after a sleepless night.

In the two years since our toddler was born, I’ve come across the term “matrescence” used to describe this season of transition into motherhood, and knowing that it is, for everyone, turbulent and disorienting at times has really eased my mind and allowed me to just let it come and go without feeling the need to fight it.

How many and how old are your kids now?

Our eldest is two and some change, and our youngest is six months. My favorite fun fact about them, besides the fact that they’re just absolutely smitten with one another, is that they weigh pretty much about the same. For two gals with the same gene pool, they ended up with some very different genes.

Our toddler is such a little mama—she’s always telling me she needs to grab her nursing cover and feed her baby, or take her for a walk, or put her down for a nap… her baby being any stuffie in arms reach. Sometimes she’ll ask me to put her baby in her shirt or in a little scarf tied around her torso and call it her “backpack” (baby carrier), just like I wear both of them in the carrier at different times. She’s wildly ahead in her verbal skills so she just narrates everything all day long, and she’s just started memorizing lines of little songs (“schoolbus schoolbus round round round” is the name of the game this week).

The baby is just really good at being huge and smiley, so everyone loves her. She’s just starting solids, with all the occasionally tummy-discomforts that attend that season, and I’m realizing that I need to set some time aside to really buckle down on elimination communication with her before the end of those beautiful breastmilk poops. The baby phase is going by so, so much more quickly this second time around and I can’t stop to think about it too long because I’ll start to cry.

One of the biggest tensions in my experience of motherhood is the desire to protect them and give them some privacy from the online world—I don’t share any pictures of them—balanced with the fact that I think they’re precious and want to tell all of my online friends about every single funny or dumb or cute thing they do.

How and when did you become a homemaker? (I’ve talked to many women for whom it has been almost an accidental transition, and others for whom it was very purposeful).

I hesitate to even call myself a homemaker now, although I “stay home” full time (it feels like we’re never actually at home!) and I manage our home… I still feel very much in the process of becoming. But if I had to put a date on it, I would say some time in the last six months or so since our second child was born. Before that, I think I saw “keeping house” as an irritating necessity; however, I’m beginning to see it—to choose to see it—as a gift and an act of love, albeit one that isn’t always fun and daisies and sunshine and roses.

Before our daughter was born in August 2021, I was convinced that I would want to go back to work full-time, just to keep myself sane, as I don’t tend to do well in long-term solitude. However, it quickly became clear to me after her birth that this was not where the Lord was calling me. When I met with my supervisor to tell her I was no longer planning on returning to work full time, I’ll never forget her response. She said, “Sara, I knew this conversation was coming from the moment I stepped into your home to bring you dinner.” It was the best response I could have hoped for, not only because it was low-confrontation (I’m very conflict-averse) but because it really affirmed for me that this is where I was being led. If my desire to be home with my daughter for more of the time was that glaringly obvious that my friends and coworkers could see it, then surely I wasn’t being “selfish” or making a choice that I would regret later.

I stopped working outside the home completely around Christmas of 2022, and our second daughter was born in April. Some time since then, as our home has gotten messier and my energy level has gotten more unpredictable (babies, man), I’ve come to appreciate the importance of caring for our home as an act of love for my family, as an act of care and sanity-saving for myself, and as an art to be practiced and cultivated. In so doing, however, I’ve had to let go of a lot of expectations for doing things perfectly and settle for doing things functionally, at least in this season. We’re in a rental for the forseeable future, so there’s a sense in which I’m still waiting to have a space that feels like “mine” but the Lord is giving me (and our family as a whole) so much grace to be patient and trust in His timing, rather than trying to rush into something imprudently.

One last thought on this transition (of mindset, if not of lifestyle) is that I have “felt” more and more like a homemaker the more I’ve chosen to set aside time each day during my girls’ shared naptime to rest, to read and write, to pray, and to pointedly not do chores. Maintaining my “Little Silence” has been critical for maintaining my sanity and my joy as I embrace the role of homemaker more fully.

What do you think are the most important skills to be a competent homemaker? How did you learn or how are you learning them?

Flexibility is so so important. Both in the sense of having a plan and in the sense of being willing to deviate from it when the need arises. This is something that I’ve really struggled with, again, until we had two under two and I was trying to make everyone’s naptimes happen on time every day. But being forced into a daily situation where something always goes “wrong”, something always gets forgotten at home, someone always needs a potty trip or a diaper change at an inconvenient time… it’s also taught me a lot about being flexible with the way I manage our home. I want structure. I want control. I want to do the same thing on the same day of the week every week until I die. And that’s just not how life works, so I’m learning on the job how to roll with the punches a little more.

Giving people the benefit of the doubt is another big one. Remembering that everyone you interact with is also human, is also going through physical and/or emotional growth that’s stretching and uncomfortable, and that their words and actions aren’t really about you. Taking a step back to ask yourself whether it’s reasonable that this person would know that thing you think they should know, and being willing to step in or teach them (again!) if needed. Getting out of your head, in a sense, and grounding yourself in the reality of the person in front of you.

And learning how to rest. In practice: how to make a pot of tea, how to settle your mind and heart so you can pray, how to read, how to do at least one creative thing, and how to put your phone away to be present with the person or moment the Lord has placed in your path.

What do you think is the most difficult part of becoming and being a homemaker? Any suggestions for those who might be facing similar problems?

For me, the most difficult part of becoming and being a homemaker is cheerfulness. By a long shot. It’s so easy—both, I think, because women tend to be more relationship-minded and because we live in a feminist culture—to get caught up in this spiral of soul-sucking resentment about who is or isn’t doing this or that thing around the home, whose job is harder, who has it worse, what’s unfair in family life. There is, especially in our current season of young, young children, just so much more to do than can get done in a single day, especially when something like an illness comes along and throws off the routine.

I’m still very much “in progress” when it comes to being more cheerful in the midst of the mess, but the two biggest things I’m learning in this season are:

1.       Just say one nice thing in a silly happy voice, just to get yourself and your kid(s) to smile. It really, genuinely will make you all feel better, help diffuse the tension, and lessen the absolute mind-fog of overwhelm. It will make apologizing easier when you’ve taken your irritation out on your family. It will make being patient easier when they’re still just moving oh. so. slowly.

2.       It doesn’t all have to get done today, and it doesn’t all have to get done perfectly. Right now, I wash laundry consistently throughout the week, but I only fold once every seven to ten days. In the meantime, everyone’s clean clothes can be found in a big pile on the floor of the laundry room. It isn’t ideal; it isn’t what I hope will be our forever solution; but it’s working for us right now. The mental and emotional space that’s freed up when I stop worrying about the minute details of when and where and how every little household chore is going to get done allows me to be a more present, more attentive, and yes, more cheerful wife and mother.

This is something I wrestle with a lot. I have written a short reflection on the virtue of cheerfulness that will come out on November 2, that just barely scratches the tip of the iceberg… but I’m so far from even adequate or passable in this area. I definitely notice a difference in my ability to maintain cheerfulness (or even just the bare minimum of emotional equilibrium) when I go to Confession regularly, when I make it a point to ask for things I need (even when I wish I didn’t have to), when I spend time with close adult friends (as an introvert I hate that this is a necessity), and when I apologize genuinely rather than out of defensiveness or spite.

And friend, get thee a creative outlet! I was just telling my husband James last night that, while this year has unquestionably been the most challenging I’ve ever experienced, I’ve never been happier. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve taken writing up again—writing is very much how I process my experience. Whatever it is that you do, whether it’s writing or drawing or painting or knitting or cooking or anything, make time for it.

What do you think is the most rewarding part of being a homemaker?

This question is actually really difficult for me to answer, not because there’s nothing rewarding, but because so many of the rewarding moments feel small or silly or insignificant… but perhaps that’s the glory of family life, at the end of the day. Finding peace and joy and glory in the mundane. I often feel so much pressure as a wife, mother, and homemaker to give this life a good public image—to fight back against the feminist stereotypes I imagine that others see in me—to try and drum up these poetic words and act like what I’m doing is something that feels grand and majestic, like I didn’t have an full-on emotional breakdown before 6:00am today because the baby just wouldn’t go back to sleep.

But the reality is that I’m not yet in a season where my children can really “give back”—they’re still both so young, and most of our interactions take the pattern of them making verbal or non-verbal demands—so most of my joy as a homemaker comes from seeing individual tasks well done, and from the cherished hope and desperate prayer that these little efforts will bear fruit in time.

I love the feeling of sitting down on the couch when there’s nothing else on the couch. More than is probably reasonable. There’s such a sense of accomplishment in having the whole living room tidied enough that the couch is empty of clutter.

I love the way that

James Dietz

tells me every time I cook dinner, “Thank you so much for dinner. This is the best meal I’ve ever had.” (The example this sets for our daughter of gratitude and of masculinity/fatherhood is so important to me.) I love the way that countertops look when they’ve been freshly swiped down, and don’t even get me started on how satisfying it is to wipe all the hard-water build up out of our bathtub, even if I don’t do it as often as my mother thinks I should I’d like. I love finding good rhythms for prayer, for chores, for friendships, for visits with loved ones–sticking with them is another beast, though! The delight of a freshly made bed! A floor that’s been swept recently! The first autumn breezes blustering their way through our living room when we leave the door open to let the toddler play outside. Hearing our toddler “prayer-ing” or walking around the house singing “allulah”. The way she tells me four or five times a week, “I want go church. See Jesus. I want go park after Mass.” I love baking with our daughter, watching (and sometimes cleaning up after) her fierce desire to participate and do things by herself.

I don’t know. I don’t feel like that really answers the question in a way that is satisfying to me. But it’s what I’ve got right now.

For those who would like to get to know you and your work (both as a homemaker and outside the home) better, where should they look?

I write in two places here on Substack! I write non-fiction reflections at Whole and Holy about motherhood, living out the Christian life, and whatever other thoughts I’m wresting with. I also write fiction at Blinking Blue Line, where I am currently serializing the re-write of a novel I drafted back in 2013. I also, because why not, am a certified coach for elimination communication and non-coercive potty training, so if you want to know what the heck that even means or if you’re in the thick of it and want to chat, you can find out more about my coaching at Go Diaper Free.

Readers, I would love to hear your thoughts on early motherhood and homemaking. What did the process of becoming a mother, or “Matrescence” look like for you?