Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Marla Taviano Interview (Safe Spiritual Spaces Interview Series)
Another installment in a series about what makes a safe/healthy spiritual space
Another bonus post this week! And I’m so excited to share it with you…
Welcome back to the Safe Spiritual Spaces Interview Series, where we hear from writers, artists, therapists, clergy, practitioners, and other voices who do work at the intersections of spirituality, creativity, and justice. For each post in this series, I’ll ask our guests the same four questions, and they will share from their wisdom, experience, and research.
Today, we welcome Marla Taviano!
Tell us a little about your work…
I read and write for a living. Sounds dreamy, huh? The truth is that I write/edit for other people as my day job. In my free time, I write books that I hope will someday make enough money to become my day job. I also read and review books by BIPOC (and a handful of cool white folks) as a labor of love.
My third book in a poetry trilogy releases in March 2024. The first book, unbelieve, chronicles my deconstruction and exit from a toxic faith tradition. The second, jaded, is a reckoning with white evangelical christian indoctrination. The third, whole, is all about reclaiming the pieces of ourselves and creating something new.
My newest love is creating poem art by cutting poems out of my books and gluing them on illustrations from books I read as a kid. It’s been sooooo cathartic.
p.s. If you think you don’t like poetry, I bet you’ll like mine. (wink)
In your experience and/or research, what are some of the things that make a spiritual space safe?
The Christianity I grew up in wasn’t safe for anyone who didn’t fit a very strict and specific mold. You had to be straight and cisgender. You could be a woman, but men were in charge, and you had to be a particular kind of woman who submitted to male authority. You had to follow lots and lots of rules. And you didn’t have to be white, but you had to assimilate to whiteness (that part wasn’t said out loud).
For a spiritual space to be safe, EVERYBODY has to be affirmed and welcomed and allowed to be exactly WHO THEY ARE.
For the record, I haven’t ever been a part of a church like that, but I like to create safe spaces anywhere and in any way I can.
What advice would you give to someone looking for a safe spiritual space after religious trauma?
Oh, gosh. What a hard question. And I honestly don’t think I’m qualified to answer it. Very vaguely, I’ll say this: don’t rush back into a spiritual space. Take your time healing. And make sure there are all different kinds of people there—and that they all feel safe being there. Maybe even talk to people who have left (and find out why).
Bottom line: BE YOU. Be ALL of you. There are people out there who will love you for all that you are. Don’t settle for less than that.
Anything else you’d like to share about this topic or your current projects?
Yeah. Along the lines of being YOU, I’ve reeeeeally been leaning into that lately. I’m recently divorced, a single mom of four, moved from Asia to a new state in 2020 during a pandemic, etc etc etc, and life isn’t easy, but I’m more ME than I’ve ever been in 48 years of life.
And I want that for everyone.
My hope and dream is that my books and my art and my life inspire others to be their very own quirky beautiful wonderful selves. I see that quirky beautiful wonderfulness in you, Kandi, and it’s a big reason why we’ve become good friends. Thanks for sharing your safe spiritual place with me! [Editor’s note: Ya’ll, I promise I did not tell her to say that last part. Marla is an aggressively kind and inclusive human and friend I’m honored to know. And I even got to be part of the editing team for whole, and it is a fabulous book that I can’t wait for you to read!]
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Please join me in thanking Marla for her words and wisdom. And you should definitely go check out her newsletter and the other resources she shared today.
May we all seek and honor each other’s creativity and individuality in whatever spaces we inhabit!
In Wonder,
Kandi Zeller (she/her)
Omg Kandi, I looooove “aggressively kind” as a descriptor. 🥰🤣 Thank you so much for this opportunity to share!! 😘
Thank you for this window into your work Marla. This post resonates with me so much, as someone still uncovering the damage of a toxic faith tradition. I appreciated your very grounding wisdom in not rushing to find a new spiritual community, but to let the process of healing work. I’m fairly recently divorced as well and just posted last week about reckoning with the rippling effects of that reality. Looking forward to following your work! And thank you to Kandi for sharing! Love this series and am tuning in to see what’s next