1 – The very beginning of the book mentions the queen saying: Either you or your head must be off. What is very self-descriptive of Jeanette’s emotions at that time? How bad Jeanette was for making her own decisions! It hurt my heart that her mom wanted her to leave her home, and the whole church would be supporting this decision. In the last chapter, I mentioned how beautiful it was that even though Jeanette was sinning in their eyes, they would not abandon her. That is not the same case as her mom. Her mom wanted her to leave as soon as Jeanette said she could not keep going to the church. If before there was an emotional disconnect between them, now we see a complete disconnection! She now needs a place to stay and to figure things out by herself. The name “Judges” is also very interesting, because it could be a derivative of “judged,” and that is what this chapter is all about. She is highly independent in her plan of working in the evening, and on some level, I was taken by surprise by her decision to leave, but it felt natural as she writes about all her experiences and learnings she would say that. I am admired by a sense she did not seek for emotional validation as she took this decision, but still she would acknowledge her hurt as the consequences of the decisions she took. It makes me wonder which type of terrible experiences her mom had in her life to be so cold blooded with her, but still Jeanette is persistent and faithful in this situation.

2 In this scene, we can perceive Jeanette’s growth as an individual. As Jeanette decided to leave church, her mom and the pastor had many hours of conversation. Her mom asks her to leave her house, and then Jeanette says: “I do not have anywhere to go.” And her mom replies: “The Devil look after his own”. This is just after she said she would leave, and Jeanette is still processing all the situation. Following up, she thinks: “I knew I could not cope, so I did not try. I would let the feeling out later, when it was safe. For now, I had to be hard and white.” As Jeanette grows and matures as a woman, we can notice the difference between a little child who would have her whole world drew by his mom and the church changed for a woman making her own decisions even though they feel very hard, hurtful and unfair. In this scene, Jeanette still knows that her mom’s rejections were painful and she could not deal with it, but it was not the time to express that. She was rational, thinking about a plan and then crying or expressing her unregulated mood in the right time, a time it would be safe and practical. Then, she states: “At that time I could not imagine what would become of me, and I did not care. It was not judgment day, but another morning.” In this moment she states real faith, based on all she learned in the past. She is learning to live in the present even though she would be experiencing uncertainty, but still in “another morning”, making me understand she is ready for what comes next in her life.