Jen Kiaba

09/16/2026

Attempting Escape, 2019

What if the self that a system recognizes has to die for another self to exist?

In the theology I was raised in, to become “fallen” wasn’t simply to break a rule. The Fall represented a kind of spiritual death—a loss of the identity and future I had been taught were mine as a “Blessed Child.”

When I began questioning and eventually leaving the faith I was raised in, I wasn’t only trying to escape the identity I’d been given as a “Blessed Child.” There was another set of identities waiting for me if I refused to conform: sinner, fallen, w***e.

None of them belonged to me.

This image came from thinking about that strange territory between identities—the difficulty of disentangling yourself from the ways you’ve been taught to understand who you are, before you’ve had the chance to discover who you might be without them.

This territory—identity, belonging, and what happens to the self when you leave a system that helped construct it—is also at the heart of my memoir, The Long Leaving.

09/15/2026

In the late hours of the night I’ve been writing a fantasy about a village healer who accidentally crosses into a magical kingdom full of old ruins, strange magic, and complicated people.

Meanwhile, while mucking around with my inner Archivist Raccoon, I found these in my 2009 photography files: women wandering down country roads in long dresses, flower crowns, veils, mysterious structures in the distance…

Apparently I can hire my 2009 self to do the concept art. 🫡

09/14/2026

The term “love bombing” has entered the cultural consciousness in a big way over the last few years. But its roots go much deeper than current dating culture.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my archives lately. Usually I emerge carrying strange photographs, abandoned stories, or evidence that I have apparently been wandering into the woods in dresses for several decades.

Sometimes I find something more serious.

In 2021, I wrote about love bombing for Lessons on Leaving—not only as a relationship red flag, but as a coercive-control tactic with roots in cult recruitment.

A few pieces from that essay still feel worth carrying forward.

https://www.jenkiaba.com/lessons-on-leaving/love-bombing

09/12/2026

09/10/2026

🕯️ A new lantern has been lit.

This one begins with an old clawfoot bathtub we couldn't keep.

For one afternoon, before it disappeared from our lives, I got to see what had been haunting me.

The Things That Leave.

Read Haunted Lantern #4:

Creating a self-portrait in a clawfoot bathtub during the Wayward Cottage renovation—about letting go, making art, and seeing ordinary things anew.

09/09/2026

Archive Evidence: August 23, 2013.

Past Jen, apparently: I have some thoughts about women, visibility, bodies, membranes, old domestic architecture, and the complicated business of being perceptible.

Current Jen, thirteen years later: “Interesting, I seem to have developed some preoccupations.”

Current novel project: 🤓👆 The Archive would like to enter Exhibit 4,782—

09/08/2026

Apparently Online Civilization had been looking for Jen, but she has been located at the Wayward Cottage, listening to Jane Eyre, making collages, writing memoirs and novels after dark, and documenting giant spiders, suspicious fungus and other peculiar things.

I don’t think we need to return her. 🕯️💕

09/07/2026

A little alone time with Jane Eyre and the scissors.
Apparently, something wanted out.

09/02/2026

Little Bird, 2014

What happens when captivity has been made intimate—woven through identity, obedience, femininity, belonging? When leaving requires not simply walking away, but learning to recognize what has been fastened to you as though it were part of yourself?

Little Bird is about liberation. But it is also about the machinery that makes liberation so costly.