Go Make Disciples
Audio releases from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City to further the mandate to "Go Make Disciples."
Go Make Disciples
Roxane Salonen Interview | Red Dirt Catholics LIVE — 2025 Discipleship Conference
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In this episode, Jayce and James talk with author Roxane Salonen about "What Would Monica Do?" and the hidden grief of parents whose children step away from the Church, turning shame into solidarity and sorrow into steady hope. Her story shifts the focus from fixing kids to surrendering, praying, and making home a haven where love speaks louder than debate.
• the friendship and shared heartache that sparked the book
• why the story became about parents’ conversion
• Saint Monica’s tears as intercession and model of hope
• moving from arguments to witness and presence
• home as haven: dinner, blessing, and steady love
• guarding boundaries and building a real support group
• naming shame, rejecting secrecy, choosing solidarity
• preparing the table and leaving the light on
• trusting God’s timing through long seasons of waiting
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Hey, thanks for listening to Red Dirt Catholics. If you were not at the 2025 Discipleship Conference, you're in for another treat. We've got another one of our guests or attendees on the lineup here. Hope you enjoy the listen and it's as fruitful for you as it was for us.
SPEAKER_00:All right, and welcome back to part three of Red Dirt Catholics Live here at the Discipleship Center. And we just had the doors open, so there's just like an immediate injection of energy into this space, which is really awesome. But we're here with Roxanne. How do you say your last name?
SPEAKER_01:Salonin.
SPEAKER_00:Solonin.
SPEAKER_01:It's Finnish and I'm not Finnish, but my husband is.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, there you go. So you had to, did you did you mispronounce it the first time that you met your husband?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I don't remember. Yeah, I remember it. So if people it's it's S-A-L-O-N-E-N, and a lot of people want to say Salonin or whatever, but if you could think of King Solomon but with a with a N instead of an M.
SPEAKER_00:So actually, it's act this is a really deep cut, but one of my favorite female disc golfers. I'm I'm big into disc golf. She and disc golf is huge in Finland. Evelina Salonin is there.
SPEAKER_01:So I've heard the last time Smith in Fin Finnish. Oh, is it? Oh I've got that.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, interesting. Wow, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:So another connection, North Dakota. I'm from Fargo, so I don't know where you were. Oh yeah. I heard you talking about North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00:I was I was two hours outside of Williston while I was there.
SPEAKER_01:I grew up in Poplar, which at Montana, which is right on the other side of the line.
SPEAKER_00:So my my degree is in petroleum engineering, right? Which is really not ministry driven, but then encountered focus and had everything change. Um but one of my summers I got to live on a drilling rig out there and just like really have a change in culture. Um it really yeah, just changed a lot about me. Good habits and bad, mostly bad. Um and uh but yeah, I fell in love with North Dakotans and the way that they talked, and I came, I came home and like I was giving the little O's and after everything, my my family was making fun of me, and I was like, I don't know what to say. Like it's it's fun to talk that way.
SPEAKER_04:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Um so so Roxanne, you is it look you co-wrote this book?
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:What would Monica Do? And you are you're here at the Discipleship Conference and you're gonna be giving talks on this. Just tell us a little bit, maybe even a little bit of your story, maybe a little bit of a background behind the book. Just like bring us in to help us understand.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm from Fargo, North Dakota, and my friend Patty Maguire Armstrong, who's the co-author, um, we both write for the National Catholic Register. We're both veteran mother writer, Catholic people. Nice. At some point, we were in the same article that someone had done, and I'm like, oh, there's another Catholic mom writer from North Dakota, even though she's on the other side. But my mom lives in Bismarck. We ended up connecting, and I would go visit my mom, and then we would go walking and talking about just praying for each other, and we ended up revealing this heartache that we both shared, which was some of our children were leaving the faith. And we have between the two of us, she has 10 kids, I have five. So we have 15 kids, and our friendship became cemented by this shared grief. And we always wanted to work on something together, and so we were looking at different books, like maybe we both have um relationships with religious religious communities. So we thought maybe something about the the secrets of the cloister or something like that. But at some point there was a tapping, and I said, What if we wrote a story about children leaving the faith? And Patty said, Oh, oh, well, I want to write that book someday when my kids come back to the faith. And I said, Um, you know, you might be dead, right? I mean, we don't know. Um, and so we really prayed about it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Could you imagine your friend just saying that to you? You might be dead.
SPEAKER_01:No, I it was immediate. It was like, Wow, like, I know, like, I want to run from this. Who wants to write a book? Who wants to write a book about your children leaving the faith? Nobody, including us. So obviously we took this to prayer, but there was a this was an issue that we were hearing more and more on Catholic radio and and everywhere. And and um we we were living it. We were living it. And what we realized when we were writing this book, we wrote it for Ascension Press. Um, they actually came up with the title, which was amazing, what would Monica do?
SPEAKER_05:Right Jace knew immediately what the what it was about, right? Yeah, I did, yeah, I did.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so we kind of had the idea and we floated it to him, then COVID happened, and then we kind of but anyway, we we eventually got the ball rolling. And um, interestingly, because we were very concerned about like our children and would this throw them under the bus. And obviously, like everyone's a work in progress and their stories aren't over yet, right? But what we realized in writing it was it it wasn't about our children, it was about us. That's right. It was about us. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, that's a very humbling. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like what we've talked before. Modern man likes to point at the problem being out there. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, in reality, the solution to everything is if you're looking at yourself interiorly. Yeah. Which we're all so bad at just like wanting to do.
SPEAKER_01:It freed us too. It freed us. It was like that. Well, we we no longer we had to worry about like our kids. Uh, we still are like we're sensitive. Obviously, I'm like not throwing this book in their face or anything. I mean, they kind of know about it, but they just they're often, they're all they're my kids are 20 to 29, five kids, three boys, and two girls. And they they, I don't know, they're not that curious about my writing at this point in their life, they're living their own lives, you know. Sure. Um, they know how I feel. Um, they know that we my husband and I pray for them every day, and um, most of them are away right now. But I have a great hope, actually. And one of the things when Patty and I were discussing this book, I said, Patty, I don't want to like be dead. I don't want I don't want to be dead. Like, I don't know how long I'm gonna have to have to wait. Like, this is a sorrow. Like, it it's we're so connected to our children's hearts, and it's how long will we have to carry this?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then I and then I had a revelation. My father was away from the faith for 35 years, and he came back, and and I was I was like, and he led a whole lived, I mean, after that, he he died a holy death. He was 77, he was a little bit younger than we were expecting, but he had some good years, some good sober years because he had gone into addiction, alcohol. Um, but he came back, and it was it was a miracle. And I don't know why I didn't think of that as I was thinking about my own children, but I thought, first of all, he could be interceding for them. That's grandpa, you know. It took him 35 years. He was gonna be a priest at some point. Thankfully he didn't, because I wouldn't be here, but um, there was a deep faith there, but he kind of he did go away from God for 35 years. So I hope it doesn't take that long, but you know what? The that's what we have to realize. Like, we might not be here. I wish, I hope we can. I hope I will have be able to share my faith with my children like I share it with my mom. But um, in the meantime, we we hope and pray. And the suffering that we share with so many people, like um it it brings us closer to Christ because in our wounds, right, is where Christ comes in. And so if we can like give that to him, and it's it's it's so hard as parents because I almost went away from the faith too. And at some point I I grasped on and I researched it, and I'm like, oh, I wrote a letter to my parents. I'm like, thank you so much for for baptizing me. Wow, and you know, and so then then kids come into the picture and you're like, okay, they're gonna be Catholic, like they're gonna get all the things that I didn't get, and they're gonna and no, and no, and then they just start, you know, wandering away, and it's um the greatest heartache. And um at some point I'm like, is this my fault? Because I'm a I'm a Catholic writer and speaker, like are they rebelling?
SPEAKER_00:Shouldn't any if anybody's kids?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and then it then it's like, oh no, like is my fervent faith like pushing them away? Well, but I can't not be have a zeal for Christ. I mean he redeemed me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, how can I keep from singing? So it is so so that you're living in that space. Let's let's enter right there into that wounded place because that's I see that in the parish that I that I serve at almost more than anything else sometimes with some of the with some of the um moms that are coming around, and you can see the wound and you can see the pain and you can see and there's just like it like hurts it hurts me to watch because I know that there's so little that like I can do right then and there other than like give me your son's give me your son's number, I'll take him to get a beer or something, you know. Like what was that process of the Lord accompanying to you and you surrendering that pain back to him like?
SPEAKER_01:I think you know, when you're talking about the wound, and I I was just thinking as you were describing that, these parents, the moms in particular, because we're so connected to our kids by their our hearts, you know, we carry them in our womb. And um the wound, uh this is interesting because it like a part of it is is it reflects on us. Like, what did we do wrong? Like, you know, and it and it forces us to look deeper into our faith and figure out where we we are at with God. Like, did I did I do enough, you know? Um so this whole thing, it's not that it reveals our wounds, it reveals our brokenness, but there's a humility there too, okay? So because we have messed up also. Like in looking at our children, like walking away and making these make mistakes, we have to come back to oh, I I didn't do it quite right either. When I was in my 20s, I was kind of wandering around and messing up too. So it it like forces us to come back to our brokenness. And um there's there's so much beauty again in in going to that that wounded place. So in the way, in that way it becomes a grace.
SPEAKER_05:One thing I want to compliment you on, and I think give an encouragement, but also give an encouragement to us everyone who's listening. You just the com the interchange you had with your partner you wrote the book with, the co-author. It's a very common interior movement in conversation, right? Like, okay, I'm actually gonna wait until I'm perfect to do that. Or I'm gonna wait until I'm out of this season that I'm ashamed of, or I'm going to wait until I'm good enough, or I'm going to wait until the things I'm gonna say will be less judged because of the future I'm desiring, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:And it's like that is the enemy speaking, uh-huh. Um to trying to get us to buy that, or it's at least the world and a little bit of the flesh, but it's probably all three. And the Lord invited you to come be humble, to come share your wound, to come share some bread with some other beggars, right? Like in that from that place of vulnerability and like trust, there can be tons of hope and conversion, right?
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:And so, like, it was great for your book and for other people in your setting, but also just as a model of discipleship. Okay, the Lord has revealed something that you have suffered through that you're able to share with another. Don't wait till your work in progress is a beautiful, you know, finished statue to share it with someone else.
SPEAKER_01:And and here's something that happened. It was like, oh, Lord, like this is a this is this is a wound that like I'm we're still living. Like, this isn't a book that we wrote, and we're gonna tell everyone like how to do it. This is like we're right here in the veil with you, but yeah, it's it's an opportunity to uh I got distracted. I'm sorry, I know like there's someone in the house. Hi, Father Dave. No, um bless me, Father Dave. Okay, it's a lot going on here. Um, but to your point, it's it's it became I have something serious, honestly.
SPEAKER_00:Um sorry.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's okay. It became a point of wow, you're gonna let me use this this deep, deep hurt and like try to help others with it. Like in the middle of this, like if we had waited and never done this, but it's giving me a chance to connect with other people and connect with other people's hearts and give them hope and share my experience and share the perspective that I've gained. And it's like, wow, God, what a gift that you allowed me to use this great hurt to help others process who you are and how much you love us, like we're all children before God.
SPEAKER_05:The one of the things I had as you were saying your quick response back to your friend of like, well, you might be dead. The other one I had was like, because she said she really wants them to be home first before writing it, was like, well, this might be part of their way home. Right? So, like, and this might be quite practically the best way for you to cooperate with their way home. And what I mean by that is like, you know, Jason and I've talked about this, like standing tall with the crown of thorns or like actually carrying the cross. Like, in some sense, like her, even though I agree with the human desire of waiting to perfection, actually not waiting was the best way to cooperate with God's grace here and to enter into his suffering with him. Right. Think about it, right? Like it's like, yeah, but I don't have any agency over whether this person I love comes to Jesus or not, you know. Like I have limited agency, but I have total agency to lean into my own suffering in my own wounds, yes, and to share that with other people who are open to like processing it, right?
SPEAKER_01:That's it.
SPEAKER_05:Like I can carry that cross.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, all the way. That's the only cross we can carry is our own. Like the only soul we have, you know, domain over is our own. Yeah. That's it. And that's why this became a book about us.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And there's so much hope in that. Like, he wants to use this brokenness right now. It is like a perfect storm that happened to us. We were not expecting it. And then, you know, there's an age where, like, oh, well, wait till they get married and they'll come back. That's not happening. That's not happening. It's forced us to go, what is going on? And we really like some people say, so why did your kids leave? How do I answer that? I don't like how do I know the journey of a soul? Like, I can guess, I can pick different things and say maybe that happened. But you know what? Here's the beautiful thing: we don't know the hidden workings of God in a soul. We don't, but he hears every single prayer. And I I think you know, Saint Monica's tear is a prayer. Her little tear is like the weight of heaven is in that little tear. And God knows, God knows her heart, he knew her heart, he knows ours. I feel like 17 years is pretty, pretty great. I mean, she she um in in think of her son, like he's affected all of Christendom forever. And she ultimately, you know, there's a lot of lessons. We we really in this book did go deeper into who she is because a lot of people have kind of like just that surface level knowled knowledge of Monica and everything we know is through her son. But sure, um, we also learned about her, and even when she was waiting, she didn't uh eventually she let go of her tears, she prayed that others would come, like the same St. Ambrose's, right, will come into their lives. We have to let go and let other people like every night I'm like, Lord, meet my children. Like, I don't know how you're gonna do it, but just today and thank them in advance. Thank them in advance. Like, thank you, Lord, for blessing them. I know you want them in back in the church. So just thank you for everything you're gonna be doing today and tomorrow. And you know, there's just so many little things we can do to um to cope with this because I will say in moments, I feel like if I open that portal to my heart, I could cry for a week.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So it we and the thing is like we're holding this hurt until they're back. So we may hold it the rest of our lives. It's not something that you just like let go of, like it is there with us. Yeah, but it keeps us beholdened to to the cross, it it keeps us dependent on our Lord.
SPEAKER_00:I was gonna say that's like that's like the your heart being pierced in a way, in a way that our mother, holy mother says.
SPEAKER_01:Our Lady of Sorrows, right here. She's my girl.
SPEAKER_00:And I think it's just so wonderful. Like it's so easy, it would be so easy as a parent to just like hide it, be embarrassed, be afraid, all of those things, like our natural things that the evil one would want to say. And I think we can almost extrapolate that to the broader, uh, broader evangelization of souls, much less like our own children, of like sharing your very life with all of us through this book, with your friend, um, is what the Lord was calling you to do, and is like like James and I was were talking about this with jo with Josh a little while back, was that there's this interior inhale and exhale and mission, and this is a beautiful but kind of thorny exhale. Like that's a little bit, and it just makes me wonder like we the thorny exhale is like what what are we doing to equip people to like get after it in the thorny exhale? Because that's harder. Like that's like that just that that's something that's more difficult to join up with, and I'm not sure. Like my imagination's just kind of trying to run, but that's kind of where I want to like enter in there because I feel like all of our exhale is like being guarded by these thorns in a way.
SPEAKER_01:Do you want to know what the provocation was for me deciding that this is the topic we should undertake?
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:It was someone on Facebook, fellow Catholic mom, who was trying to like connect her son with someone the age of my daughter. She wanted to like play, you know, Cupid or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I was like, you know, I really w wish I could, but I know what you're wanting, and my kids aren't there right now. You know, and and she was like, this was a public, you know, conversation. She's like, Your kids aren't Catholic? You have kids that aren't Catholic. And and I was like, Yeah, I think there's others of us. And that made me want to write the book. I'm like, I I I am sure I did things wrong, and I have asked for forgiveness, and we were imperfect, and there's things, you know. But it's like we've also done a lot of things right, and and there was a lot of factors, and the world is crazy right now, and there's a lot going on. But I knew I didn't, I knew I had a sense of like it's not your fault. Like, I might have contributed to some things, but the shame that I felt like that in that moment, I wanted to rectify that somehow and go, no, that to me was the evil one. Ooh, your kids, you're Catholic, you're a big, you know, you write for the the paper, and yet your kids aren't, you know. So I was like, no, no. I want to bring light to this. Yeah. And I think the secretness of this issue, like you were saying, like keeping it hidden and don't tell people because then they're gonna think we're bad Catholics.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, like we're human, we're humans struggling in this world.
SPEAKER_05:Mask off.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yes.
SPEAKER_05:Mask off.
SPEAKER_01:It's scary. That's what we want to do. Ultimately, we we wanted to bring other people into this circle. I know there's other, there's a monik St. Monica's Club and things, but just to break open our own hearts and just bring like just bring people into the fold. So we have like a Facebook page that is kind of Catholic Parents, what would Monica do? It's private. People have shared all sorts of things like estrangement, suicide.
SPEAKER_05:So if someone's in this place right now, they can find a community and what what do they do? They look at the Facebook.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's just a Facebook page that we yeah, we started. It's called Um Catholic Parents, What Would Monica Do? And it's private, so you know you can be assured that we're we're people.
SPEAKER_00:We interview people before they get in. Like there's some Facebook groups where you have to like fill out a survey just to make sure you're on the level and you're not at a jab screen. You know what?
SPEAKER_01:Some pe some younger parents want to get in because they want to see what to do to not or what not.
SPEAKER_00:And we're like, no, no, not for you.
SPEAKER_01:This is like a this is a support group.
SPEAKER_00:This is not this isn't a fishbowl for you guys. Dude, I would totally be judged.
SPEAKER_05:This book this book can be the fishbowl. Yeah. Perhaps if you need to beautiful. I'm glad you have that resource. Speaking to anyone that might have a a similar situation in their family, like what advice do you have with regard to speaking the truth with love?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:Versus just being present.
SPEAKER_01:We have a we have a chapter when the debates are over. There's a there's a a couple decades where we get to teach the faith and then we get to witness the faith, live the faith, love, create a home with love. And and and a thought has come to me, like they're they're in the dark world and they're trying to they're trying to survive in this world, right? That's that's a reality. Let our home be a home of love and peace. And and you know, my my husband and I have grown so much closer and his faith has grown so much. He's a convert. Um, we have grown so much tighter together because we are so dependent on God. We pray for our kids every single night, and just like that has bonded us together. And um we maybe didn't do things perfectly earlier on. We're we're we're getting better. We're getting better. And it's like sometimes I wish, ah man, I wish we would have had that strength earlier, but you know what? We have it now, and and they're still watching us, and we're still loving them. I so I think that's the answer to your question. Invite them over for dinner, um, say grace together. It's so simple, it's really so simple. Because in the end, we just um we're just witnesses to to what we tried to teach earlier, and we we zip our lip and we um we love them. And I think um I think they're gonna come back.
SPEAKER_00:And that's and that's easier said than done in a way. Uh huh. Like I can totally see how if I saw this as like a uh you know, the the the shame or the failure, there would be a temptation, I think, to like kind of put a little distance there. Yeah. Um and like like what we're talking about is Like leaning into that crown of thorns is like inviting them over and like loving them harder.
SPEAKER_05:Well it's interesting. Yeah, we all uh in this fractured world, like we we were designed to be known, loved, cherished, like and secure like that's where we found security. So if we keep giving that and they feel it here, and they feel it here, and they feel it here, and we go out into the dark world we're in, where the cultural imaginary and the zeitgeist is completely different. Yes, completely different set of offering assumptions. We'll know what home feels like.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and leave a leave a path open. I will tell you that. We have had some prodigals come back into our home that have left and gone into the world, and we left a path open for them to come home. That's awesome. So leave the light on and prepare the table. I'm gonna talk about preparing the table today. Prepare the table, get ready for their return.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome. Stay on the porch, be watching, be ready. Yes, Roxanne. This has been amazing. I wanna I want to let you go so you can make it to mass if you need to be. We can hear that we can hear the organ in the in the background here, but it was amazing having you on.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks. Bye bye.
SPEAKER_01:Bye bye.