Why are We HearthKeepers?

Homemakers, housewives, housekeepers. All different terms to describe a woman whose main calling in life is to create a home. Their main delight is found in the warmth and beauty of their families and making a place for them. They harness décor, culinary delights, nutrition, budgets, education, entertainment, machines, and more to create dwellings. They stand beside their men. They support their men. They raise the next generation of homemakers and they raise the next generation of providers and defenders.

I love this. I love it on every level. This speaks to my soul in a way nothing I have ever done ever has.

So why create a new term? What is a HearthKeeper?

Back in 2016, I had a story pour out of me over about three weeks. I was the vessel and the words filled me. Never in all my writing had I been so consumed, drained, used by a story like I was this one. It was all there in my head, demanding, ready, wanting out onto paper.

The story was set in my ever growing world, the Worlds Before the Door, which I’ve been developing since the mid-2000s. In this urban fantasy, I allowed myself to be as ridiculously silly, cheesy, and epic as I wanted to be without fear of readers or being called out. I call it my B-Movie story. It is utter cheese.

The reason I wrote it was to explore being a woman. I was unbelievably frustrated and bored by the warrior women, the masculine women, the women I would never be and didn’t want to be. I don’t take out men six times bigger than me. I don’t sacrifice my home for the sake of my outside-the-home career. I don’t think children are a waste of time. I don’t think beauty is a waste of time. I’m not that woman. I don’t try to be a man while putting men down. In most of our present-day stories, men and masculinity are mocked. Women view men as stupid sex toys or slaves to their whims. If she is denied anything, if she is less than worshipped by sniveling, weak males well then, toxic masculinity! (Ever notice how that is kind of how we claim they treat us, yet we do the same to them?) We live in a day when we are so unused to strong men, that all male strength is seen as instantly abusive. We’re conditioned to react to male leadership in an instantly negative way. Anything said in the negative to a woman is unkind, ungentle, patriarchal, and abusive. I took all of that frustration and put it in a story: Lighting the Way Back Home. It is my response to all the horrible female characters and weak male characters running around. Dún is the main character. Unlike many of my other protagonists, she is me. More than any of them, she is my ideal self.

The plot of Lighting the Way Back Home is simple: Dún faces targeted attacks by a black tar-ish monster. A grumpy warrior is sent to save her by a group that hunts down monsters loose in our world, they are the Huntsman. At a moment of loss and love, Dún becomes the Guardian of HearthKeeping. She doesn’t have the heart of a warrior, she has a heart for warriors. She wants to love, support, and provide for them. She wants to remember them. She becomes the other side of the Huntsman: HearthKeeper.

It takes great courage to send your man, your sons, your nephews off to war, but that’s what women do. We remember. We hold. We light the way back home. (Note: this isn’t ‘Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’ because it’s not a universal submission of all women to all men, but a freedom to express our womanhood in so many diverse ways.)

HearthKeeping came because I wanted a strong yet feminine title. I love homemaker, housewife, tending hearth and home. All these terms and ideas needed to be included but with a tomboy feel, a woman in the Old West, gun in one hand, a horse at her back, tending her food in cast iron while she actively waits for her man to come back kind of word: HearthKeeping.

In my books, I love to squish words together but mark the different words with a capital letter: SoulReading, SoulDefender, IceFog. It’s something I picked up ages ago reading Beowulf and some Icelandic Sagas. I fell in love with the way something new came out of the melding: HearthKeeper.

To me, HearthKeeper communicates a quiet, humble strength. It binds the work with the inspiration. It highlights the importance of the calling, job, the post of keeping the home. It has a bit of etherealness to it. A bit of magical mystery that should be embraced. Home is magic. Homemaking is ordinary magic.

In part, I think this is why we see a growing resurgence of spiritualism and occultism. Look at this picture. You’re telling me that this isn’t an image, a sense, that the women who have been pushed out of their homes into the workforce don’t feel called back to their homes, don’t feel called back to their kitchens? You’re telling me, women don’t understand subconsciously that cooking, healing, mending, tending is so much deeper and richer than any 9-5 job we could possibly have, even jobs we love? We know it in our bones.

HearthKeeping harkens back beyond the ‘50s housewife to a woman standing beside her man, armed, smart, and determined to scrape out a home in the harsh land. A woman who is all woman. We may have washers, dryers, indoor plumbing, stoves, and grocery stores with pick-up and delivery, but make no mistake, we are still making homes in harsh lands. The very world around you wants you to believe you’re wasting all that God-given talent on those few people who live with you. Gasp! But Christ himself is creating a dwelling. We mirror that dwelling, the church. We lend a little bit of sight to that faith. We are a dwelling for our husbands, our families. This is important work. The world doesn’t see that, though they long for home. The world doesn’t believe this, yet we see women turning to the occult, labeling themselves cottage, kitchen, and hearth witches. We see women who leave corporate jobs for home businesses and thrive. We may not have sod houses anymore, with Indians, thieves, and the elements waiting to take what is ours, but we still have a fight, a line to hold, we still have enemies.

Growing up, I went through a Louis L’Amour stage. I’ve always had a thing for cowboys, I mean they get to ride horses and shoot guns. What’s not to love? I binge-read just about every Louis L’Amour book my Dad owned, which is most of them. Years later, I was struggling with this high view of women I constantly aimed for or beat myself up with. Where did I come by this view? Well, it was all those L’Amour books. All his amazing women. They’re all woman, all grace, and all strength. And he did that without making weak men. That’s my goal. My goal is to be a Louis L’Amour woman because I’ve never seen anything that captures the Biblical teachings on womanhood better. She is respectful, not bossy, preachy, or trying to get her way. She’s beautiful and she creates beauty. Give her a few apples, flour, and butter and she’ll make a pie. Give her a house and she’ll make a home. She is surrounded by sisters. She giggles. She sings and dances. She’s strong, engaged, works, plans, systemizes. She knows the power of a clean home, candles in the window, and a hot meal. Engaged and determined: purposeful! That is what HearthKeepers are!

I have lived through war, and lost much. I know what's worth the fight, and what is not. Honor and courage are matters of the bone, and what a man will kill for, he will sometimes die for, too. And that, O kinsman, is why a woman has broad hips; that bony basin will harbor a man and his child alike. A man's life springs from his woman's bones, and in her blood is his honor christened. For the sake of love alone, would I walk through fire again.

-Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross-

(I don’t even like this book or writer, but this gives me chills every time!)

HearthKeeping to me is something older, stronger, more courageous than the ‘50s housewife, which I’m not disrespecting. I love the ‘50s housewife because she creates beauty, she works clothed in beauty. She takes her job seriously and does everything with her husband in mind. She respects him and he respects her. But for me the woodstove, drying herbs, bread, soup aesthetic is more appealing. 

HearthKeeper.

All this the world wants to take away from us. It tells us that raising children, serving our husbands, creating our homes is a waste of our time and talent. Homemaking just shows what a boring lazy person you are. The world tells us that we are not only fit to do everything a man does, but we can do it better. We don’t need men, though men are obviously so stupid they need us. It takes all our grace and glory and throws it in the trash.

This is our battlefield. This is our sisterhood. This is why I’m a HearthKeeper. I want to light the way back home!