The Intersection of Healing, Veteran Service, and Motherhood: A Praxis Podcast featuring Amy Sexauer

Maddison Tenney: Before we begin, let's start at the beginning. Can you tell us your full name and where you're from?

Amy Sexauer: My name is Amy Sexauer. I grew up a military brat, which means my dad was in the Army. So, I don't claim a hometown. I've moved a lot, but I moved from North Carolina to Cambridge, so that's my most recent home. 

Maddison Tenney: What is your degree, and what are you focusing on? 

Amy Sexauer: I'm in the Master of Divinity program. And we don't have to declare a focus, but I will say that taking Professor Dunning's class last year, my first year, which is the Sex, Gender, and Sexuality class, has probably had a big impact on the direction I'm going to go the next two years. 

Maddison Tenney: I was in that class with you, and I agree. I think that class changed a lot of things for a lot of people. 

Amy Sexauer: Yeah, I'm so glad I took it. I mean, it was just luck. But I'm so glad that I had that first semester. 

Maddison Tenney: It was so good. And then last, before we get into it, do you have a faith tradition? And if so, what is it? 

Amy Sexauer: I definitely come from a Protestant Christian tradition. My dad's side of the family went to a Presbyterian Church in my childhood, and my mom's side of the family was Southern Baptist. Or I guess they are Southern Baptist. But being a military family, we moved. So basically, by the time I was born, my parents were moving every two years. And we lived in a lot of different states. We lived in different countries. And my parents were not very conservative. 

I actually got exposed to a lot of different faith traditions and a lot of different interpretations of Christianity, which I didn't realize until I was much older, has made me very eclectic in my own beliefs. 

I definitely was shaped by a Christian worldview, but I'm kind of a hot mess in terms of what I currently practice and believe. 

Maddison Tenney: I love it. Aren't we all? I feel, like, also in the middle. So, Amy, what brought you to Harvard Divinity School? 

Amy Sexauer: That is a long story, but I'll say a couple things. 

First of all, one of my very good friends did—she studied at the Kennedy School and the Business School, and I was at her graduation. This was maybe like three, four years ago. I was at her graduation, and a queer woman from the Divinity School spoke at her graduation. And I noted how cool that was, but I didn't think anything of it until dinner that night. My friend was like, Amy, you would fit in so good at HDS. 

And I, of course, I rolled my eyes, because I was like, thank you. I don't see myself as a Harvard person. I didn't think that was a path I could take. 

I guess my first career—I don't know how to say that—is, I was in the Army, so I served on active duty for nine years. And then I worked in the nonprofit sector, originally working with veterans and then in some different types of charity work.

I'm still in the Army Reserves, and so I really love that at Harvard Divinity School, we use the term meaning making because that resonates with me so much. I think for a long time I've been really interested in how people make meaning from their lives and their experiences. And with my military background, I mean, from the moment you join the military, you're dealing with humans and their suffering and they're living. 

I could talk a little bit about deployments and warfare specifically, but that certainly sends people often into a faith crisis of, why am I here? Who am I? Why am I doing this? Do I really believe what I'm doing, or did I just follow in some prepared for me path? And so, honestly, from probably before I even commissioned, I was really interested in those questions. And then being in the military, I got exposed to a lot of different healing modalities. Cognitive behavioral therapy. Meditation. 

People don't think about the Army and think those things. But the military community has been suffering, and so there is a lot of programs that teach veterans how to do yoga. And the VA is getting better at offering behavioral health resources. And so there are actually quite a lot of conversations happening in that space. 

Basically, I timed applying to school with my daughter being kindergarten age so that she would start school and then I could have time to go to school. And so, I applied to a writing program, a literature program, and then this is the only Divinity program that I applied to. For me, literature and writing are spiritual practices. And I felt that at Harvard, the Divinity School program here was broad enough that I could wed those things together. I kind of let the universe decide for me when I applied to those different programs. 

Maddison Tenney: I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about your experiences in choosing religious studies. So, you apply to these different programs. You have this experience in the military. This very eclectic, Christian-esque background. Definitely an expansive background. And then a ton of life experience. What made you decide going into religious studies? 

Amy Sexauer: What I noticed in my own healing experience and working with other, mostly veterans in their healing experience is, some people's beliefs about the world and about themselves really keep them stuck. So, when they go through a traumatic event, if that traumatic event can only be interpreted in certain ways by your worldview—maybe it's your religion. Maybe it's how your parents raised you—it's hurtful. It doesn't help It does not make you resilient. It keeps you stuck. 

Often, it's a narrative that people will carry throughout their entire life. Maybe this happened to me because I deserve it. Bad things only happen to bad people. That's just an example. And so, I had to personally get to a place where my belief system became adaptable. But I also was very blessed to have healers and role models in my life who showed me that that doesn't mean my faith isn't real. That doesn't mean that God—for example, if you're coming from a Christian tradition, it's not saying that God is not sovereign or that God's not real. But more, can we investigate this belief you have about God and how God feels about you? 

It was just the kind of questions. And again, I've been in different kinds of therapy, like traditional psychology therapy. And I've had a wonderful experience from that. I'm definitely not minimizing that. I think it's an important tool that people need to have access to. But there's also this, I think, feeling of being politically correct in those spaces where you don't want to say certain things, or you don't want to bring up certain things. Or maybe you're bringing something to that therapy session, and you don't know how the therapist feels about that. 

I just felt like I wanted to find a place where I could investigate the illogical, emotional, spiritual side of being a human that didn't need to fit into this clean chart of symptoms and cures and medicines, if that makes sense. My job in the army for most of my career was psychological operations, whichI think a lot of people have a lot of assumptions about what that means. But what I'll say is, we do talk and think and study a lot about why people do what they do. 

It's very behavioral focused. Because it's still the army and the government, right? So they're not really concerned about what's going on in your brain. They're concerned about the actions that they can see and measure. 

It's not as spooky as people think. But I remember I was in an Arabic language class, and I was trying to explain—I think I had broken off into English at this point because it was outside my depth of Arabic. But I was trying to explain to my Arabic instructor what we do as PSYOP. 

I probably said something about appealing to people's logic to get them to change their behavior. And she said something that really stuck with me, which is that in her culture, it's not about logic. It's like, who are you and why are you trying to convince me of this? And at the time, people were very dismissive of, well, your culture's wrong. Like, our culture is better because we're logical and your culture is less than because it's less logical. 

I had this huge epiphany that the fact that we think we're logical is a myth. That human beings don't—we think that we're logical, and we try to tell ourselves to make logical decisions. But a lot of what we feel and do is not tied to logic. I love here having this space to just lean into that and be like, maybe I am crazy for thinking that there's some higher being. But it makes me want to be a better person, so I'm just going to acknowledge that I think that instead of hiding it. Because I do think all people have some beliefs. And it's okay if those beliefs are different. But I think it's counterproductive to just act like you don't. 

Maddison Tenney: I completely agree. I think that a place like Harvard Divinity School is the perfect place to explore that really in depth. Which leads a little bit to my second question. Why did you choose Harvard Divinity School? 

Amy Sexauer: It's really hard to pick a program from afar. So, again, I had a friend who was at the Kennedy School and the Business School. Very different worlds from Harvard Divinity School. I don't think you can deduce anything about HDS from those programs. What I perceived, honestly, just from the website and from reading through the materials, was that while this program is still called a Divinity program, which is like, as you know, the legacy term for a Protestant pastor's ordination path, that the faculty and student body represented a lot of different religions. 

Again, I'm perceiving this solely from the website, but I felt that it was very genuine. I felt like everybody was a part of the program. There are other divinity schools I looked at that were still just very solidly Christian, and they had other people there to complement their Christian education. And that's not what I was looking for. 

I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do on the other side of this program, but I knew that I wanted to be someplace where my beliefs would be challenged, and that I would be encouraged to be open minded to all different worldviews. But in a really genuine, sincere way. Not like in a just trying to make everybody feel like everyone's safe here, but in a really authentic way. 

Maddison Tenney: I was curious if you could speak a little bit more about what you are studying and what you're doing while you're here. 

Amy Sexauer: I forget if it was during orientation or during one of our first Arts and Ministry classes, but Dean Teddy made this comment about how they all know that we lied on our applications. And he didn't mean that we were disingenuous in our applications, but I think he was acknowledging that when you put together an application, it has to be this very clean, coherent narrative of, “I was born, and this happened to me. I now have this calling, and I'm going to study this and I'm going to go here.”

That acknowledgment made me feel empowered to just be honest that I'm very overwhelmed by the resources and the opportunities here. And so, I came to HDS feeling like I knew I wanted to work in what I'll call ‘nondenominational meaning making’. I'm not super tied to—I mean, I think chaplaincy is what my path will be, but I'm not feeling super tied to one type of chaplain or one type of religion or any of that. 

When I got here, again, I'm like, I don't know even what you study to do that. I don't know what the path is. So, my first semester, I think we had two required classes and then two electives. 

I just took two classes that looked the most fun, because I was like, first semester, be nice to myself. So I picked a class on alchemy and hermeticism and sex, gender, and sexuality. 

That class with Professor Dunning, the Sex, Gender, and Sexuality class, hugely impacted me. Whether I end up in chaplaincy work or not, I think the heart of that class was just understanding human beings and how much our identities are crafted, and, I don't know, the ability to acknowledge that and talk about it. And so many of the people that we read are thinkers that I want to keep reading and wrestling with. 

Now, I know that I want to keep studying, not necessarily just gender studies, but psychoanalytic theory. Critical theory. A lot of the people that came up, I just loved the way they talked about being a person. 

Separately from that, and this is sort of a pivot, but I think something I haven't brought up yet is I've always been a really big nerd, and I love reading. I love reading fantasy and Sci-Fi, and more recently love reading romance. Storytelling and fiction, both creative writing as a spiritual practice and also just reading, are something that I'm really interested in. So I haven't necessarily taken any classes on that specifically. Almost every class I take, I somehow make my final paper about that topic. 

Maddison Tenney: Amy, you've talked a little bit about feeling like you're leading towards chaplaincy and wanting to work very much with the emotive experience of being human. And also, I think your experience is also bespoke. A specific interest in providing care to other people. And you've also talked about being in very academically rigorous classes like Sex, Gender, and Sexuality, which was a very intense class. There was a lot of readings. A lot of theory. How did you decide Masters of Divinity?
 
Amy Sexauer: The surface level, shallow answer—I should say, the impersonal answer is that the Divinity program was a year longer. And I was like, I just know I'm going to need more time. But really, this reflects making the decision before you get here. So, once you're here and you're taking—we all take classes next to each other. Before I got here, I really—and again, this is an arbitrary decision, but I felt like what I had to decide was, am I going to be emotionally vulnerable and authentic and apply to a program where I have to talk about how I feel, and I have to open myself up to sitting with other people's feelings? Or do I just do the program that sounds more academic, and so you can just have an intellectual answer for everything and an intellectual reason for being there? 

That was my perception on the other side. I really challenged myself to do the Divinity program, because I love to intellectualize my problems and my feelings and to not be emotionally vulnerable. To be clear, you can. No one's going to make you, again, I didn't know these things coming here. But no one's going to sit you in a corner and be like, feel more feelings. You're not being emotionally authentic. But that was just what I kind of felt was the difference between the two programs. 

Maddison Tenney: I'm so curious to hear how your experiences in challenging yourself emotionally has led to you deciding on your focus and what you're doing here at the Divinity School. 

Amy Sexauer: It would be easy for my story to be, I was in the Army. I saw violence and I saw a lot of sad people, and so I'm going to find some job where I get to sit with people who are sad and help them feel better. Or just sit with them. I don't think making them feel better is necessarily part of the job description. 

That is the fallback answer, and I think there's definitely some truth to that. But I'm at this point in my life, too, where I am better at questioning the designed path. When I was younger, it's like you go to college and you get a job. My dad was in the Army, so it was like I went to a military academy. I joined the Army. In the Army, your career is very laid out for you in steps where it's like by rank, by positions you have to have, and the cliché expression, desires of your heart, are at best sweet things that make life meaningful, and at worst, distractions from the projected path. 

I don't know if this is part of becoming a parent. Part of this might be the transition of having a child and watching her grow. But I now think that the desires that you feel in your heart mean something more than just—so for me, I could say, I read romance novels because they're fun and they're an escape from reality. But I also remember being a teenager and reading a fantasy book where there was like powerful women. 

It deeply impacted me to have in a story woman who were doing powerful things. And I remember thinking like, I want to be like those women. And not in a superficial sense. Anybody who reads fantasy and sci-fi, there's honor and integrity and courage. The first queer beings in my life were from fantasy novels, which I know nowadays is probably like sad to say. But I remember the book, Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. And one of the characters, you find out at some point, is queer. And they have this sweet love story. 

That was my first exposure to non-heterosexuality, and it deeply impacted me. And again, it made me look at the world differently. This is kind of a meandering way to say that I feel very safe and comfortable here just leaning into whatever weird little feelings come up. Like, this feels right. 

With the alchemy class, I have no idea how that's ever going to be relevant to anything that I do. But I was like, I've always been interested in that. There's a class here on it. I want to learn about hermeticism and alchemy. That's cool. Same thing with Sex, Gender, and Sexuality. I had no idea that class was going to be so impactful, but I just had this little urging in my heart, like, I need to follow. I need to listen to that. I don't know if that answered your question, but I'm getting better at following the little urges without having a plan, if that makes sense. 

Maddison Tenney: Amy, I think a part of the beauty of your story is both the depth of your experiences in the classroom, but also you have lived a full life outside of the classroom. Like this is the second act. This is the next big thing of your life. And I just would love if you could talk about the outside the classroom experiences you've had. Parenting, working with the military still and navigating that relationship, being an adult—a full adult and coming to Harvard. I just would love if you would just talk to us about what those experiences have been like and what you've learned and what you've struggled with and what you've experienced.
 
Amy Sexauer: Well, I'll start by saying that I'm not sure if there's going to be any other veterans that listen to this. But there is a veteran community in Boston, at Harvard specifically. I, over the last year, didn't put any effort into connecting to that network at all because it just wasn't something that happened intuitively or, say, organically as I told you this earlier last weekend.

The Pat Tillman Foundation is an organization that provides scholarships to veterans pursuing higher education. And I'm very fortunate and blessed to be a recipient of that scholarship this year. And so, I went to this conference. For those that don't know, Pat Tillman was an NFL player who played for the Arizona Cardinals and had this amazing, successful life. He chose to walk away from that to join the Army after the September 11 attacks. 

And then he was killed in action, so his family created this foundation in his honor. The organization is really about championing his values and his character and keeping his name alive. But it was this really amazing opportunity to connect with veterans in higher education. So, I was telling you before, but most of the people there were like doctors, lawyers, and getting their MBA. There are some people in the humanities. 

I got to meet a handful of people at Harvard, and I didn't even know that they existed. So now, I feel a little bit more connected to some of the veterans at Harvard. I'm still in the reserves. I'm probably not going to maintain that throughout my time here. But again, for anyone who that's relevant to that's listening, there's lots of resources in Boston, if that's your world. 

As far as being a parent, I think that when people have children, depending on your circumstances, it can be very overwhelming, and it's a big change. And I think that some people feel like their life is over, or their life is on pause, maybe. I think that I was only liberated from that because as a single parent—and also my daughter was a surprise baby. I wasn't planning on that happening at that time in my life. I just stubbornly refused to give up on having a life. 

Even more than that, when she was born—and this isn't exactly what you're asking, but I'm going to get there. When she was born, my love for her—I had this realization that she's going to learn from my example, more than what I say. And so I could just preach at her the things that I value, but that it will mean more if she sees me living it. So ever since she was born, I've been on this path of, I want to be the best version of myself, even if that means leaning into uncomfortable things. 

I have always wanted to go back to school. So this was like a dream of mine. Harvard's this prestigious institution, and I'm sort of fulfilling a childhood dream by applying here. But more than that, it was setting an example for her of, you can follow your dreams. You can career pivot at any point in your life. You can change your mind. And so that attitude has really impacted me as a student. 

What do I mean by that? I mean, I timed applying to school with her being kindergarten age. If anybody listening to this has kids, I'm happy to chat through the complicated and numerous but awesome resources that Cambridge has for families. But it means I'm not able to participate in as much. There are so many super cool extracurricular things at HDS, and I do have a little bit of grief around not being able to do as much. 

At the same time, most of the clubs—so there have been a handful of events where I'll just say, can I bring my daughter? if it seems surface level to not be too crazy. And there's only been one instance where I think there was going to be a lot of grief and processing happening where they were-- they didn't say no. They were just a little hesitant. And so I chose to not bring her to that event. 

I have brought her to guest speaker conferences. I've brought her to the Ecstatic Dance. I brought her to a singing bowl thing. I brought her to when the MRPL students were presenting their papers. And of course, she's bored out of her mind. She's like, why are you making me do these things? 

I love that it's OK to bring her. Not only can she have the exposure, but just that I can still do things. Again, it's a narrative in my head of, you can still do these things. You just have to—either—there's more of a logistical burden, I think, for parents than there are for non-parents. But you can go to graduate school with children. 

Maddison Tenney: We've touched on this a little bit, talking about how you feel like your path will end up in chaplaincy. But what's next for you? Where do you hope to go after your time here? 

Amy Sexauer: The short answer is, I have no idea, and that I have two more years to figure it out. But I feel very lucky that I've had—so the role models that I mentioned, Reverend Potts before, but also my advisor, Professor Paulsell. Stephanie Paulsell. She's retiring, by the way. So, I think I'm going to get a new advisor in the next couple of months. 

But both of them have done, I don't know if I should call it chaplaincy work or ordained work. But they're also professors. That's an example of the kind of thing that feels like too big of a dream to be feasible or possible. And I have no idea how to do it, but I've had these two role models demonstrate to me that it is possible. 

I do feel very called to chaplaincy, but I also love school. And I didn't think that I would think that when I got—coming in, I didn't think this. But now I'm like, if I could get into a PhD program, I would love to keep studying with the added caveat that I'm really interested in studying abroad for my own broadening experience, but also because I was fortunate enough to live in different countries growing up. I grew up with a very different perspective than I think people who've never left their home country. 

I'd like my daughter to also have that experience. So I've started thinking about what it would look like to continue my education abroad while maintaining, what does that look like if you want to serve in some kind of a chaplain context? So I have no idea what that means, but those are the ideas I have right now. And it might wildly change a year from now. 

Maddison Tenney: Your response just makes me so emotional. And I think I feel that way because hearing about you talk about your experience being a parent is the most beautiful and loving and expansive experience. And I love how you've integrated that. I think sometimes folks feel like their life inside the classroom has to be different than their life outside the classroom, especially if they have kids. 

One of my hopes is—with this interview, but also with what we do at Harvard Divinity School, that that breaks down that false dichotomy and that we do more of the work of integration, of being your full self and bringing your kids. Bringing your experiences. Bringing all of who you are and who you hope to be into our community and shared spaces, because that is the whole point of this program together. 

Amy Sexauer: Thank you. 

Maddison Tenney: And I have three rapid fire questions. So, in a sentence or less. The first question is, what musician or artist are you currently listening to? 

Amy Sexauer: I'm listening to Chappell Roan, and I'm reading the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. 

Maddison Tenney: Incredible choices. Second question, if you could create any class at Harvard Divinity School, what would you create, and why? 

Amy Sexauer: It would be some kind of interdisciplinary class on romance novels. 

Maddison Tenney: 10 out of 10. And then finally, any words of wisdom you would give your younger self who is just starting at Harvard Divinity school? 

Amy Sexauer: It's so cliche, but I would just say follow your heart. Because I feel like I did that, and I took the most random first couple of classes, reached out to people that resonated with me with no plan, no logic behind it, no reasoning, and it worked out really well. So, I'm going to keep doing that. 

This has been a Harvard Divinity School podcast. Thank you so much to Caroline Cataldo and Jonathan Beasley for editing this podcast. For more information on the show, you can view the show notes or go to the Harvard Divinity School website.