The subtitle of Faith-Ann Dalton‘s debut book In This House We Lived–“A Faith Journey of Choosing Life Again and Again”–is more than a play on her first name. The memoir, which comes out May 8, is a raw and moving account of this first-time author’s struggles to move from a harrowing childhood through an unplanned pregnancy and many other personal trials to establish a life centered around her faith in God and herself.
The publisher, Anointed Colony Media, describes In This House We Lived as “a raw, redemptive memoir of trauma, crisis, faith, and the slow, intentional construction of healthy habits. “
“With unflinching honesty and hard-won clarity, Dalton traces her story of becoming a mother before she was ready, learning to choose herself without abandoning her soul, and discovering that healing doesn’t always mean getting it right—it’s about refusing to give up.”
Now a licensed cosmetologist, married, and a mother of four, Faith-Ann lives in St. James, Missouri.
Read on to learn more about Faith-Ann and her memoir. But first, please read this disclaimer:
I have known Faith-Ann and her family since her childhood, when she and her family attended the same church my wife and I attended (and still attend) in Salem, Missouri. Although we lost touch over many years since, we recently reconnected and, when I learned about her book, I reached out to request an advance copy and to ask her to participate in an upcoming Friday Five. In addition, readers should not infer this Q&A as an endorsement of Faith-Ann’s position on reproductive rights or of the use of artificial intelligence in writing. (Faith-Ann discloses at the end of her book that AI helped her organize her thoughts and bring clarity to the narrative, but not to create the narrative itself.)
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the questions!
1. Why did you choose to write this book?
I wrote In This House We Lived as an act of gratitude to Pregnancy Resource Center (PRC) supporters. I hope that shows in not only my writing, but in how I live my life now that I’m on the other side of crisis. Being a supporter can be a thankless job, especially when the naysayers are so loud. We see a lot of suffering in the world, especially for impoverished families. However, I believe there are many families who are just a hand up–or two–away from living a totally different kind of life. And with the right support, they can sustain it. That’s what PRC was for me, along with other organizations and programs mentioned throughout my story. I also wanted to show that those resources serve as stepping stones to the destination: self-sufficiency. They are not meant to be a lifestyle. The combination of the stepping stones, and Bridges Maternity Home, “bridged” the gap there for me.
2. You cover a lot of difficult topics in this book, including your strained family relationships, sexual abuse, drunk driving, and stays in a mental health facility, among other incidents. What was most difficult for you to write about, and how did you push through to get the words down?
It was most difficult to write about my family’s dynamics. I had to go through several years of counselling to even be able to identify the areas of dysfunction and how it was affecting me and the entire family system. When you’re in it, it’s normal. That was my pivot point for the definition of love and support. It resulted in crippling cognitive dissonance that only therapy by a qualified professional could help me sort out. Once I learned to sort out my thoughts and feelings I could then begin to identify the distress. Have you ever heard of Name It to Tame It? It’s a very true saying. Once I got there, I could start looking for the antidote to those issues in my relationships. And that began with me. I had to look at myself and ask, “What am I contributing to this dysfunction? Is this how I want the people I love most to remember when they interact with me? If the answer is no, what do I want them to see, feel, hear and how do I intentionally present myself moving forward?”
Simultaneously naming the abuse felt accusatory, and that’s not what I wanted to accomplish through my story. I don’t know if others will read my story and see hurt humans hurting humans or not, but I did my best.
3. Who is your intended audience? Who do you think will benefit most from your story? (Okay, that’s two questions. But they’re related.)
My target audience is anyone who supports Pregnancy Resource Centers and pro-life organizations. My sub audience is individuals who oppose the pro-life movement. I believe we all have very similar goal: A better world. We just differ on how to achieve the set goal. There are the select few who genuinely do not have good intentions on both ends of the spectrum. My last sub audience is women who have gone through or are going through an unplanned pregnancy. Though I doubt they have the time or energy during the crisis to pick up a book and read it from cover to cover, I hope they connect with my story and feel like I am a friend with them during or after the crisis. I am concerned that some will look at my story and feel intimidated, they might think, “Yeah, that’s you but this is me and I am not you. I can’t do this.”
I get it. Maybe not as fully as you, and I’m sorry you feel that way. I hope you can process that inner belief and replace it with the truth about who God says you are. And I hope you find the will to choose the life you truly want for yourself and your baby.
4. At one point in this book, you refer to yourself as a feminist. (This was during one of your dates and before your conversion to Catholicism.) What are your thoughts about feminism these days? Do you still consider yourself a feminist?
This question makes me chuckle; thank you for asking. No, I do not consider myself a feminist these days–at least not by modern culture’s standards. I believe in women empowering women, and I believe we can do anything we set our minds to without it being at the expense of another person– or at the cost of allowing men to be gentlemen.
5. At the end of your book, you include a “content disclaimer” that your memoir “has been shaped with the assistance of artificial intelligence. While every story, memory, and emotion is my own, I used AI tools to help organize my thoughts, refine my voice, and bring clarity to the narrative. These tools supported the writing process–especially in shaping transitions, editing for flow, and recovering lost material from memory. The heart, however, is entirely human.” Many writers and their publishers oppose the use of AI in writing. What are your thoughts about the role AI plays in writing, and where do you draw the line when using these tools to ensure your authentic and creative human voice is not compromised?
The majority of my use with AI was for brainstorming, learning, and rearranging developmental structure that would normally take several days of uninterrupted concentration– valuable time that would be better used for the creative process. I began writing this book in 2021. I wrote five drafts (100k words) and paid a professional editor for a line-by-line edit that took one year to complete before being introduced to AI.
My first experience with AI was awful, it tried rewriting my whole manuscript in a totally wacky way. I hated it. It removed me from the book. I’m not a great writer, but I could tell this generated stuff did not have a heartbeat. I’m not even a confident writer, I always think my sentence structures sound like nails on a chalkboard, kind of like hearing your own voice in a recording. My grammar and spelling is subpar. I use way too many reallys, verys and -ly words. But the AI-generated writing was worse. Purple prose galore. Tons of fluff. Like bad botox on someone who would naturally be so much prettier without it. The grammar was perfect, the sentences flowed but there was no substance, the meat wasn’t there.
Moving forward, I went careful. I specifically told AI not to change any of my verbiage. If I came across a sentence I wasn’t sure was communicating my intended message, I asked AI to tell me what I could do to make it better and teach me why it would be better. Even when I did that, my publisher quickly recognized that a certain spark to my writing was missing and we had to do edits based on the “virgin” draft while working through the restructured manuscript.
Just like in grade school when I was learning how to write, the teacher would often strike out a word or sentence and give a clearer alternative. This was what AI did for me as well. …
I regretted using AI for the convenience when I realized how much it cost me in some of the details that made my writing unique. I hadn’t realized the gift my dicey sentence structure truly was. I write conversationally, and only I can shape the words around how I experience the world, what I think about it, how it feels, and why it motivates me. Sometimes I can ask AI what a specific word is, like using a thesaurus to help me communicate more clearly. However, AI cannot replicate my experience.
Connect with Faith-Ann Dalton on her website, faithanndalton.com.
Andrew Careaga 