Some days, breath feels like something I have to work for. Asthma has taught me that breath is never something I can take for granted. It’s a companion I listen to, a teacher I respect, a reminder that my body has limits and wisdom of its own.

So when Angela Parker writes that “the inability to give full-throated voice to your own questions based on lived experience is what I characterize as ‘stifled breath,’” something in me sits up a little straighter and definitely takes notice. I know what stifled breath feels like in my body. Many women know what it feels like in their spirits.

Parker’s work in If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? invites us to notice where breath has been held, monitored, or muted, particularly in spiritual places shaped by someone else’s authority. She names the alchemy that occurs “when women begin to breathe in larger bursts of air instead of constantly holding their breaths because some man (Paul or Pastor) has not allowed full breathing.” Her words open a doorway into our own stories. It asks us to pay attention to the places where we’ve been holding our breath for far too long.

A Gentle Doorway into Womanist Theology

Womanist theology begins with the lived experiences of Black women, their wisdom, their survival, their joy, their resistance, their faith. It asks what Scripture looks like when read from the underside of power, from the bodies and stories that have often been ignored.

It is a theology rooted in breath, flesh, memory, and truth-telling. It insists that God is found in the real lives of real women, not in the versions of faith that erase or diminish them.

Parker stands in this tradition. She reminds us that interpretation is never neutral, that our bodies read the text alongside our minds. Her work gives permission, quiet, steady, liberating permission, to trust what our own lives have taught us.

Where Breath Meets Your Story

So today, in this small corner of the internet where your story is welcome, you might pause and notice:

• Where has your breath felt constrained, spiritually, emotionally, socially?
• What helps you breath deepen, soften, or return?
• What parts of your story have been asked to stay quiet in sacred spaces?
• What would it feel like to trust that your breath is holy, too?

And maybe, as Parker writes, you might sense the beginning of “redemptive self-love”, that is, a love and acceptance of yourself regardless of what others say or think. A love that makes room for your breath. A love that honors your lived experience as a place where the Divine meets you.

A Blessing for Your Breath

May you feel the spaciousness of God’s breath moving in you. May you sense the difference between what constricts and what gives life.

May you trust the wisdom of your own body as you read, pray, question, and grow.

And may you remember that your breath, your story, is a sacred place where God delights to dwell.