From the Heart
The Bible falls open on Micah, and with the baby in my arms I read aloud of Israel as a wailing woman — barefoot, shaved, howling like the jackals. Then a teary five-year-old confesses that her head is full of nothing but Princess Aurora, and two women stand before us: the abandoned wife, or the Bride of Christ.
Read More →The resident doctor is refusing to take more labs and says we will be discharged. I swallow panic. They don't know my son — brown eyes sparkling, not school-bus yellow and zoned out on the hospital couch.
Read More →I am amused at the irony. I nagged my husband into buying this condo then hated living here. I lay on the sofa in a bog of despair and scroll Instagram — and a book appears that will change everything.
Read More →One blue, sunny day I am driving down the road singing with my children when, like a bell gonging, the face of a woman appears — strangely beautiful and weeping deeply.
Read More →A quiet conversation with another mother opens the door onto my own November: a positive test, a feast day that landed like a hammer in my heart, an eternal soul the size of a poppyseed buried in the woods — and the Eucharist carried to my bedside like a divine blood transfusion.
Read More →Greatly overdue with my Emma-Seraphina, my spiritual director discerned a spirit of Jezebel oppressing me — and bound it at the foot of the Cross. When the daily readings turned to Jezebel and Naboth's vineyard, every vice of womanhood was laid before my eyes, and against it the glory of Our Lady's submission and the scrubbing grace of the Litany of Humility.
Read More →In the midst of anxiety over our unfinished home, the hymns of childhood, Psalm 139, a forgotten prayer card, and the Litany of Trust lead me back into the Divine Will.
Read More →Endless fatigue, chaos, and the cry of children give way to the Presence: kindness and truth meeting, justice and peace kissing, and the Bridegroom coming to His Bride in the Eucharist.
Read More →Fresh from my husband’s medical trauma, we set out for a family camping trip: tents under trees, campfires and French presses, lakes and children and lost shoes. In the midst of it all, the Eucharist pulses ever more clearly as the Source of Life.
Read More →The ER treats our fears as real, and the tears begin to flow. In triage, James reads Psalm 23 over me as we wait among the suffering — a couple losing a baby, a man crying out for relief. We soak up life together, faced with uncontrollable fate, until at last the doctor walks in with the results of the scan.
Read More →Researching late into the night, I grow certain this is no ordinary infection. The heaviness sinks onto me — the submission to the Divine Will. We decide to head to the ER, and as we pray the Sorrowful Mysteries together, I begin to see the signs everywhere.
Read More →My husband, my father-in-law, and I have spent the afternoon sawing trees and dragging branches under the spring sun. As I drive down to check on the children, a call comes through from the surgeon's office — a large mass is growing behind my husband's eye.
Read More →It is Our Lady of Fatima's feast, and we have slipped to the back of the church with my wild little ones. As we rise for Communion, my Elsie-bet tugs my sleeve and whispers, "I think I see Mary! I think I see Mary, Mama!" — a lady in white and gold, come out of the air.
Read More →This morning I awoke to a coughing baby and cold coffee. The baby falls asleep and I decide to go to Mass by myself. After Mass, I go to the chapel for Eucharistic Adoration and, in the silence, I see the face of Jesus in the Host — His eyes looking at us, at all the people gathered here because we love Him.
Read More →It is First Friday and St. Joseph the Worker day. My husband has to go into town so I look up the nearest noon Mass — Mother Theresa church. We load up the children and head out, and find a beautiful brick house on a hill where the Mass is said in a former master bedroom, little and hidden from the world.
Read More →This morning my six-year-old asked me to play Memory Game before I had barely gotten out of bed. Later, sitting in the Presence during my holy hour, I found myself meditating on bread — and on the Woman who baked the Bread of Life inside herself.
Read More →The lawnmower is broken. I sit on the porch all by myself, enjoying the stillness. The grass is beautifully tall, waving in the wind. I hear the birds singing in the trees.
Read More →As I taste Jesus's Sacred Heart on my tongue, the thought shoots into my head that my tongue is consecrated — and I begin to think of all the ways we use, and misuse, the gift of our words.
Read More →During Mass tonight I was so struck by Father Michael — total calm, no hurry, reminding me of Padre Pio. The homily: everything in life is a gift. Motherhood has been the greatest teacher of them all.
Read More →Written in Verse
"The warm sun floods me through the stained glass. I embrace the Bread that breathed the worlds, breathed Himself into the Embryo, breathed the Bread into God."
— Shekinah, by Camille Wolaver
Between the Lines
A woman drives through the dark to the foot of a Sedona mesa, heartbroken and alone. What she finds at the summit — and what finds her — is a story of dust, pride, love, and the mountain that watches them all.
Read More →A gothic romance exploring the mystery of the veil — what is hidden, what is sacred, and what is revealed only to love. Published at Illuminations of the Fantastic.
Read at Illuminations of the Fantastic →A Dickensian tale of a heroine navigating the demands of duty and desire. In the tradition of great literary heroines. Published at Illuminations of the Fantastic.
Read at Illuminations of the Fantastic →Follow Along
Children · Dresses · Nature · Devotion
The Marian Mystique is written in the shadow of the Blue Mantle — where faith, art, and the feminine sacred meet. Here, the Holy Spirit is found in every moment of daily life: in the Apostolate of Holy Motherhood, in the Eucharistic Presence of Jesus, in the laughter of children and the quiet after they sleep.
Camille lives in the rolling hills of Tennessee with her husband and six children. She loves sitting at Jesus' feet and writing what He inspires in her — when she's not changing diapers, washing dishes, or sewing buttons.
CAMILLE ROSE MARY DASILVA · WRITTEN WITH LOVE · OFFERED IN FIAT
A Rule of Life
In the 1980s, Jesus and Mary spoke to a mystic with a message for mothers: that the hidden, exhausting, holy work of raising children is not a detour from the spiritual life — it is the spiritual life. That a mother's penances, her sleepless nights, her daily offering of self, can aid in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart and the salvation of souls. That suffering is not to be fought but embraced. That her children are her greatest joy and her penitential way to Heaven. This book changed everything for me. It is the rule of life behind every word written here.
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