Discussing the Lit Blitz: Lara Niedermeyer's "Use It in Our Daily Lives"

Discussing the Lit Blitz, previous finalist Annaliese Lemmon talks with the finalists from our most recent contest about their work.

​This interview has been edited for clarity.

Annaliese Lemmon:  Welcome everyone to the Mormon Lit Lab podcast. I'm Annaliese Lemmon, your host for this series where we discuss the 14th Annual Mormon Lit Blitz. Today I'm joined by Lara Niedermeyer, author of “Use It in Our Daily Lives.” Welcome, Lara.

Lara: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Annaliese Lemmon: Right and could you introduce yourself and explain what your experience is with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?

Lara: I am Laura. I live in the Pacific Northwest with my husband and my kids. We lived just south of the Canadian border and north of Seattle in a beautiful little town on the ocean. I was born and raised in the Church. All of my ancestral lines crossed the plains, but my family of origin is no longer associated with the Church for the most part.

I had a witness of the truthfulness of the gospel when I was baptized at eight. And that has kept me holding on, even though it has not always been an easy road, as I think it is for most people, whether you're born, you know, in or out of the Church. But I keep walking and walking and walking as the primary song says. And I blame it on the inherited fortitude of all of those pioneers, that sometimes even when I feel like giving up on portions of the Church, that I haven't, and I just keep walking. So it's a blessing and a curse.

Annaliese Lemmon: Yeah. And I feel like that goes very well with the theme of your poem. The need for struggles in earthly life is a topic we turn to often in our lessons, and it's appeared in the Mormon Lit Blitz before. So what interests you in this topic?

Lara: I think we are drawn to this topic as a people because of the need we have to normalize having imperfect lives and being imperfect beings at this point. I think it helps us to work through the pain and the complications that we experience in mortality, and it is universal because we all have things that are hard and things that are painful in our lives. I think that if our goal is to move through our mortal experiences, both the good and the bad, and become more wise and more whole as a person, that we have to reflect, we have to recognize how these experiences can connect us to our eternal selves, and are worth more than just enduring them on the surface of our lives. A lot of my poetry is me trying to look at the reality of what we are doing here and, you know, look it in the eye, and then extrapolate how this suffering ministers to our education, as Orson F. Whitney said. 

A lot of our struggles are long term in mortality. They're not just the quick, over in a day or two, sort of struggles. And so, technically we have the time within that space of mortal trial to do this if we take the time and find a way to be able to reflect in the midst of those experiences with them, not just waiting until they're over and looking back at them. Because again, if you have a trial that's lasting for months or years, you can't just wait till it's over to gain something from it. 

And one of my earliest poetry memories is of my mom reading to me Carol Lynn Pearson's “Trial Number Five,” which is a lovely, brilliant poem that talks about how our Heavenly Parents design trials that are intended to show us what we can do and what we can handle. And my mom passed away just a couple weeks ago from early onset Lewy body dementia, and she and I had a lot of conversations in the last few months of her life about, you know, why was her mortality ending this way. You know, she had tried to be a good person. She struggled with that feeling that she had sort of done something, which I spent a lot of time trying to disabuse her of.

But we read this poem together a lot in the last couple of months and we talked about that concept of, why they're omnipotent. They don't need to know whether we can do it. We need to be able to know. There's a lot of confidence that comes to us spiritually and emotionally when we know that we can do hard things.

And so, it's just a piece that for me is part of how I survive. Part of how I get through things is trying to find space in the trials to look at them squarely and figure out what it's supposed to help me do.

Annaliese Lemmon: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I've seen that this way of thinking even goes beyond our Church. I recently read a nonfiction secular book that was talking about how people are, they called it “anti-fragile,” where not only are we resilient, but we need challenges in order to grow.

Lara: Yeah. And as a dancer, which I spent a lot of my young life as, we know that you only build muscle by breaking down muscle. By repeated exercise is how muscle is built, and that process includes a certain amount of breaking down and rebuilding and breaking down and rebuilding. So like you said, it's not just resilience. It's recognizing that there is something within this experience that is building us.

Annaliese Lemmon: Yeah, so I am in no way a poet. So I was just curious, is this freeform or does it have a more formal structure that you chose to make for this poem?

Lara: This is free verse, which is what I like to write in the most. For me, the structure of the poem typically appears really naturally as I work through the poem, both the line breaks and the length of the stanzas. Sometimes I'll play around with the structure once the poem is completed and try and sort of change some of those things to see how it works or how it might fit.

But often it really grows organically. This poem is no exception to that. Usually when I finish the first stanza, get it to a spot where it feels good, then that right there will dictate the line length and the stanzas for the rest of the poem, which is what it did here.

Annaliese Lemmon: Okay. And your other poetic tools with especially the alliteration with, you know, fire and flood, flesh and fabric, baking and breaking, that repetitive motion just really feeds into what you were saying about, you know, things breaking us down in order to build us up. And just that description of grief, like a wrecking ball, that really hit me because that's a good description of my grief and how I've had it expressed. So how long did it take you to put everything together?

Lara: I think that it really varies with poems. I don't always remember that whole process. With this piece, I think that it came pretty quickly. Often for me, a first draft does come pretty quickly when I sit down to write. It's the editing and the refining process, which takes longer.

And especially if I'm submitting something somewhere, then there's a lot more effort and energy that goes into that refinement process. Usually I send it to a few friends, look at their changes, and make some decisions, and how it reads for other people. 

And I really, appreciate, you know, what you're saying about this particular metaphor. For me, grief always includes sort of that free swinging moment when you feel like maybe you're okay, maybe you'll live through this, maybe you're feeling a little bit better or a little bit healed, and then that grief just like smashes into you again, and you feel like you're back at the beginning when it's so raw and it's so fresh. And then again, you start to heal and there's that swing of the chain. And so for me, that is also a very apt description for me in my life of how grief comes and goes.

Annaliese Lemmon: So, which phrase are you the proudest of creating?

Lara: I don't know. Proud is kind of a funny word for me, I guess, but I think that the second stanza is my favorite. Just that real reminder that eternal existence will be comprised of both body and spirit, which means that we have to feel everything on both a temporal and a spiritual level in order for us to change it.

We can't just think about it. We can't just experience the hardship physically. There has to be part of both. And so, “we must be earth and bone, / creation and repetitive motion, as if / the architecture of musculature / could be made any other way.” which again goes back to what we talked about earlier in terms of how muscle is made. 

And I think both spiritually and physically, that's the case. And so I feel like that really encapsulates, the idea for me in that piece there.

Annaliese Lemmon: Is there anything else you would like to say about this poem?

Lara: Titles are always difficult for me. And so the title of this piece, you know, I felt like, How many opening prayers and how many meetings have we listened to with that phrase, you know, that we'll be able to, you know, use it in our daily lives. I think that is a huge lesson that I've learned in the last season of difficulty for myself, that it can be a throwaway phrase so often I think, in our prayers, in our meetings. 

And at the same time, if we don't figure out how to use the trials and the suffering and the pain as part of our education, if we don't figure out really how to use that in our daily lives, it doesn't do us any good. You know, we're just suffering without recognizing that there's a piece that will make a big difference to us, in there.

And I really appreciate the idea that our Heavenly Parents have a plan. And if this kind of struggle and this kind of suffering is a part of that plan, there has to be a reason for it because they love us. And it wouldn't be part of the plan if there wasn't something really useful in that.

And I thought also a lot about how, within the idea of mortality as a test or a trial of some kind, what is it for? Well, if we're supposed to become gods and goddesses, I'm not ready. I should not be put in charge of a planet at this point in my existence. You know? I still get annoyed when drivers cut me off. I'm not always charitable in the way I think about people.

And I think people can see in my writing that I've started to really recognize that I'm not ready for exaltation. But if this process that we're in right now, the experiences that we have, the things that we deal with in mortality are to make us ready to be in that place at some point.

I don't think there's a magic button for that. It's not like we're resurrected and then it's like, yay, you're perfect. Go on to eternity. That process has to have made a difference, for us in mortality. And so when I look through that lens at the pain and the suffering that I've been through in my life, I recognize that my response is what needs to change and that response has to come really from my heart, really from who I want to be and what I want to be. 

And that has helped me to recognize that there are a lot of experiences I've had that I have hated. And yet, they have made me a different person. They've made me more patient, more empathetic, more understanding of what other people are suffering from and how to show deep empathy and love for them. So that, sort of, the title brings that forward for me. That this is not so abstract, that it shouldn't be something we figure out how to use in our daily lives, that our suffering has to become part of the life we're living and part of who we are in order to end up better than we are at the moment.

Annaliese Lemmon: Yeah. That's beautiful. And do you have a piece of media, any format, any genre that you recommend for our audience?

Lara: This was the hardest question on the whole list that you sent me. There's so many. But also I feel like the last few years for me, I've been so deep in elder care for so long, that like, media has had to be an escape. It has had to be that place where I can go, where my real life is not really present.

And so, you know, mainlining romance and science fiction on my Kindle app has been a lot of the media that I've consumed in the last several years, because getting into something deep, getting into something meaningful has just not been the place that I'm at as much. I will say that I only started watching The Chosen this year. I'm late to the party. I was really doubtful that I would like it, but I've also really been touched by how human and yet transcendent the portrayal of the Savior is. And also just the ridiculousness of the disciples. I've never identified with any of the apostles before and I find myself being like, oh my gosh, I do that all the time.

And how tender the portrayal of the way that He works with His disciples is. He does not beat around the bush about things, but His love often just like, takes the wind out of their sails. You know, it just stops their distress. And I definitely see how many experiences I've had where the Savior does that for me. And where His love just sort of cuts off my complaints, lovingly. And so, I would recommend that if you are a holdout like me, who is sure you are never going, to watch it, because I really have felt like it's a portrayal of the Savior that surprisingly feels extremely genuine to me.

Annaliese Lemmon: Yeah, I really like how the apostles are portrayed as human because so often we put them on pedestals. 

Lara: Right?

Annaliese Lemmon: And you have to know they were human just like us, and they had their squabbles.

Lara: Doubts, you know? Yeah. That's been really comforting to me. 

Annaliese Lemmon: Yeah, I've not finished it yet. I'm still in season four. 

Lara: Yeah, me either.

Annaliese Lemmon: But yeah, I've enjoyed it. Alright. And do you have any other projects or places to find you online that you would like to tell our audience about?

Lara: My main online home at this point is Segullah. Segullah.org is where you can find the most of my writing other than Lit Blitz. I'm behind the scenes most of the time at this point, writing editorials. As far as newer things go, it's been a rough few years for our little organization, but I'm really pleased at the work that we're doing.

I really love what we are creating there and I'm really excited about the vision for Segullah, that's coming in the next few years. So that's really where you'll see the most of me and my writing online right now.

Annaliese Lemmon: Okay. Thank you so much for making the time to chat with us.

Lara: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for all the work that you do.

Annaliese Lemmon: And hope to see you again in the Lit Blitz.

Lara: Yes, thank you.

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