We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anna Broadway a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Anna, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
As a single woman living in a culture where women often find purpose in roles like wife and mother, finding purpose got harder as I moved deeper into my thirties. I’ve never been as ambitious career-wise, other than having certain writing dreams. So it didn’t feel like I could just redirect my energies to focus on finding meaning through work.
But when I set out to research a book on singleness in the global church — shortly before I turned 40 — I found some of the greatest contentment I’d ever experienced in my singleness. It wasn’t just having a meaningful project; there were aspects of the work for which I really needed to be both single and further along in my adulthood. The nature of that project, which involved 17 months of fieldwork spanning 41 countries, also helped me see ways that my singleness made me really nimble and flexible, which was just what the work required.
Through that project and the resulting book, Solo Planet, I also came to deeper clarity about my calling as a person who’s trying to follow the God of the Bible. Jesus said, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.” What my role looks like has changed many times in my now 47 years — and will continue to change. But God never runs out of work for me to do. The more I remember that, and focus on the things I have control over (instead of the things I don’t), the more peace I have about my life, even when it looks different from what I would have chosen.
If I ever marry, I think one lesson I will take from this long season of singleness is that God’s vision of fruitfulness is so much bigger than just biological reproduction. And that’s great, liberating news.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m the author of two books: Solo Planet: How Singles Help the Church Recover Our Calling and Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity. In Solo Planet, I talk about how I really didn’t want to write another book on singleness, because I thought writing Sexless in the City should have gotten me out of that relational purgatory (which it obviously didn’t).
I eventually came to peace with the project when I approached my forties and started thinking, “What kind of book on singleness would I actually find encouraging right now?” So many books on that topic can tend to focus on what you don’t have, rather than what you do. And they also tend to focus on just the romantic/sexual part of singleness rather than how it shapes all of life.
So in my interviews all over the world, and the book itself, I focus on singleness in day-to-day life. How does it shape housing? Meals and cooking? Leisure? Disease, disability and even death? And I also try to help readers think about what they have in all those areas.
One of the most surprising findings of my research was that a lot of single and married people struggle to continue or build deep friendships with each other. Sometimes that’s rooted in false assumptions about each other, but it can also relate to assumptions about what time together looks like — what I call a “dating mentality,” rather than, say, going to the grocery store together or catching up during your kid’s soccer practice.
Because of that finding, I really tried to write Solo Planet in a way that single and married people can read it together. Every chapter ends with four reflection questions on the topic: What do you grieve? Do you have anything you want to repent of or confess? What do you have in this area? What can you give or offer to others? Single and married people often have in different areas. Viewed one way, that might seem like a barrier to connection. But it can also foster interdependence as we start to see what we can offer each other. I hope the book helps friends and communities explore that together. Toward that end, there’s also a discussion guide at the end. I’ve been really encouraged by some Goodreads reviews by people saying Solo Planet helped diverse reading groups have some rich conversations about their shared life.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Dependence, curiosity and humility. The first might sound weird, but my life would look absolutely different without dependence on God through regular prayer. Through that practice, I am constantly going back to God for guidance. At various times, that’s led me to confront and confess my racism, quit my job, take up ballet or start a conversation with a stranger I just walked past.
Curiosity’s super important for my work as a journalist, and I think it helps me build rapport with people. I feel fortunate for the years I spent being home schooled. I think that educational season really nurtured a deeper sense of curiosity and always wanting to learn more about life, situations and people.
Finally, humility is so important. Some of the most important feedback I’ve gotten as a writer and a person has also been some of the hardest to hear, at least at first. But the more I’m willing to learn from others and rethink what I’ve done, thought or how I’ve approached life, the more I’m able to grow. It’s not easy, and I often fail to practice humility, but it’s also very freeing.
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
I’ve learned more about this through some recent physical therapy and the weekly ballet classes I started four years ago. First, ballet has taught me that I can actually complete certain actions with more muscles than I realized — there’s not necessarily just one option. At times, I default to muscles that aren’t as good to use. Sometimes the better muscles to use are much stronger (like when I balance using my glutes more than my hip flexors). But other times the muscles I ought to use are actually weak. I learned through physical therapy that a lot of some ongoing joint problems probably owe to weak muscles in certain areas. Focusing on those weaker areas will hopefully address some of the problems I’ve dealt with for years.
Similar dynamics have played out in work, too. For a long time, I thought my individual performance was the thing that mattered most at work. But I learned through painful experience that what others thought about me and what they knew or didn’t know about my work also affected my ability to get things done. In order to be effective, I had to spend time working on things like diplomacy and tact that I was weaker at then. But as I invested in those areas of weakness, it gave me more opportunities to use my strengths — and people moved from resisting my involvement on some projects to seeking it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.annabroadway.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danzfool/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anna.broadway
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/annabroadway
- Other: https://www.goodreads.com/annabroadway
Image Credits
Black and white headshot and ice skating photo taken by Brian Adams.
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