I'll See You in the Morning

Lives in Connection through Fifty Years of Exponent II

Over months of research that started with the July 1974 inaugural issue of Exponent II, I became familiar with the name Margaret “Meg” Rampton Munk. She was one of many contributing writers to this small newspaper founded in the Boston suburbs by Latter-day Saint housewives, graduate students, and young professionals. The paper’s founders had met through Relief Society, and after years of discussing the women’s movement in living rooms and collaborating on projects, including the 1971 “Pink Issue” of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, they launched Exponent II. The women saw themselves as the spiritual descendants of the original Woman’s Exponent, a Utah-based newspaper that ran from 1872–1914 and argued for women’s suffrage and rights. Exponent II, “poised on the dual platforms of Mormonism and feminism,” published personal essays, book reviews, poetry, short fiction, and more. Now, as a quarterly magazine and blog, it continues to do so.

My research was in service of the forthcoming book Fifty Years of Exponent II (2024, Signature Books). My co-writer, Heather Sundahl, and I wrote an original history of the organization and curated selected works to commemorate the organization’s 50th anniversary. While Heather had been with the organization for over 25 years when we began and had served as an associate editor and president of the board, I was a newcomer. At the 2021 Mormon History Association Conference, I saw Exponent II’s founding editor, Claudia Bushman, and her husband, Richard, from across the courtyard of Park City’s Utah Olympic Park. I was too intimidated to approach the Bushmans then, but as a new Exponent blogger, it struck me that many of the organization’s founders were still around. I thought we ought to do something for the anniversary. Heather, as historian on the board and having begun interviews with foundational leaders, did not hesitate to join the effort.

As our project took shape, I began reading each issue, taking trips to the Exponent II archive at Brigham Young University’s L. Tom Perry Special Collections, and recording interviews with over three dozen participants. Though intimidated, I knew the project would connect me with many writers and scholars I admired. Interviewing foundational leaders like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Nancy Dredge, Sue Booth-Forbes, and later leaders like Caroline Kline and Margaret Olsen Hemming was an honor and a privilege. I was prepared for the women of Exponent II to enter my life as I read their words and recorded their histories; however, I was not prepared to lose them.

Early on, Meg Munk’s poems stood out to me. Her writing, though deeply personal, had an evergreen quality. Her voice had presence. In “A Skeptic’s Prayer,” her words echoed my own fears and desires. “Is it true / Thou lovest best / Thy meek, unasking children? . . . Let me speak / To thy lost sheep / As one who, / Understanding how they went astray, / Still loves the Shepherd.” Her poems touched on doubt, grief, infertility, adoption, and Heavenly Mother. I noted her name each time her writing graced the pages of Exponent II. So when I got to the Winter 1983 issue, I was shocked to read her essay, “Aftermath.” She shared an account of being attacked in her home by a knife-wielding man in an attempted rape. When the man left, she was alive and her children were unharmed, but the man had badly cut her hands. A year later, her hands still lacked sensation, though she could again write and play piano. She was forever changed. Anger, sadness, and grief washed over me in waves as I read her story. My trips to special collections were asynchronous to my reading through the periodical, but it happened to be there that I learned the next bit of Meg’s story.

In August 2022, I visited the archive. Days before, I had met with my gynecological oncologist and scheduled a prophylactic hysterectomy and oophorectomy. My mom died of primary peritoneal cancer, the twin sister of ovarian cancer, in 2012. A few years after she died, I underwent genetic testing. I learned that I am BRCA1+, which means that I have a genetic mutation on my BRCA1 gene that makes me highly susceptible to breast, ovarian, peritoneal, and other cancers. Since then, I have undergone bi-annual breast cancer screenings, but because there is no good screening method for early detection of ovarian cancer, my doctors recommended a complete hysterectomy by age 35. With my four children slightly more independent—my youngest then in preschool—I scheduled my surgery for October 2022, the month I turned 35. Cancer was on my mind when I entered the archive that August, but I was unprepared for what I would find there. In a box of Exponent II documents, I learned that in 1983, Meg had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Not Meg, I thought. I knew the likely outcome of such a diagnosis. Tears quietly slipped down my cheeks as I braced to learn more.

Meg succumbed to her cancer in 1986, the year before I was born. In the Summer 1986 issue, Judy Dushku wrote a tribute to her friend. She recalled that when Gloria Steinem turned forty, someone said, “Wow, you sure don’t look forty!” to which she replied, “Hey, this is how forty looks!” Dushku remarked that Meg’s slight frame belied her presence. One might be tempted to say, “Wow, you sure don’t look powerful!” To which Meg might well reply, “Hey, this is how powerful looks!” Meg’s was the kind of power that meant her friends longed for her words years after she was gone. Her work continued to appear in the paper for decades, with “A Skeptic’s Prayer” reprinted as recently as 2003 by Nancy Dredge, then serving as Exponent II’s editor-in-chief for the second time. When Heather and I asked Nancy for her recommendations for pieces to include in the selected works of our book, Meg Munk was among Nancy’s strongest suggestions from her combined fifteen years as editor.

Meg’s writing touched on so many of the core themes that Mormon women return to again and again in the paper. In 1994, Exponent II published Meg’s talk, “Pillars of my Faith,” which had been presented at a Sunstone Symposium in 1985. Meg was too weak from treatment to read it herself and asked a friend to give the talk for her. Meg wrote that to her, the most important principle of Mormonism was the concept of “eternal continuity, with God as designer and vitally interested overseer. From this concept spring the corollaries that this earthly life is a purposeful stage in a larger plan; that human relationships continue beyond this stage; and that all human beings are literal brothers and sisters, creatures of inestimable value, beloved offspring of and potential heirs to divine parents.” For her, other teachings paled in comparison. She walked with doubt, but had firm beliefs upon which she built her faith, life, and relationships.

Not only did Meg’s writing continue to appear in print, but her friends also wrote about her. In 1991, Karen Rosenbaum published in Dialogue about her 25-year friendship with Meg, drawing on memories and decades of cross-country letters. Karen writes about flying to see Meg near the end and acting as a scribe for a talk that Meg wanted read at her funeral. Karen recalls, “I weep as I write. I marvel that the words, barely audible, come out firmly, deliberately: ‘I say goodbye to you for a little while. And I love you forever and ever. And I’ll see you in the morning.’” If there is any bright spot in dying too young from cancer, it is the chance to consider what your loved ones mean to you and to tell them. Karen Rosenbaum was another name I had come to know through Exponent II. Heather and I loved her essay, “Minus Motherhood,” and received her permission to include it in the selected works. Karen writes about marrying in her 40s and having a happily childless marriage, which some church members struggled to understand. She recognizes that some of life’s greatest lessons can come from motherhood, but others from its absence. “Sometimes, because we don’t have children, we can be at a deathbed or a sickbed where we are needed. We can hear a catch in a voice, and we can fly across the country or drive across the bay to puree yam soup and walk dogs and rub backs and offer our gifts of love.” I wept upon re-reading this essay and realizing that one of those people whose voices she heard catch and then dropped everything to fly out and visit was Meg’s.

Meg’s friends taught me something of the reciprocal nature of caregiving. In 1995, Kay Atkinson King reflected on Meg. Feeling helpless during Meg’s treatment, Kay and another friend organized dozens of volunteers to help finish the kitchen remodel that Meg had started before her diagnosis. They also cleaned the Munk’s home from top to bottom, allowing the family to return to a transformed home. Writing while facing her own battle with breast cancer and experiencing similar care from loved ones, Kay wrote, “I have not been spared the fiery furnace, but just as Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego, I have not had to face the flames alone.” None of us is spared the hardships that call for care. I don’t think I am unusual in how I struggle to ask for help or allow others to serve me in times of need, even when they are willing. It can feel unbearably vulnerable to be seen in my time of need. But perhaps I have it wrong. Perhaps seeing and being seen allows us to carry each other through the hard times.

Before she died, Meg’s friends convinced her to publish a book of poetry. Roslyn Udall reviewed it for Exponent II. She wrote, “My spirit soars as I read her poetry; it is intimate, tender, beautiful, and sometimes very painful. This book is a legacy that deserves to reach far beyond Meg’s circle of acquaintances.” I ordered a used copy of So Far: Poems by Magaret Rampton Munk. The slim volume stayed on my nightstand as I recovered from my surgery. I read of her wrestling with doubt and faith and her battle with cancer. Moving slowly in the weeks after surgery, I thought of Meg, Karen, and Kim and what it means to care for one another to the end and beyond as I put another frozen meal given to me by my Exponent II sisters into the crockpot.

Katie Ludlow Rich is a writer and independent scholar living in Saratoga Springs, Utah.

Art by Ethel Sands

Wayfare is a publication of Faith Matters. Please discover more at faithmatters.org, and follow on social media at @faithmattersfoundation.