In new book, millennial Catholic women chat faith, life and dating

Denver, Colo., Jul 25, 2016 / 23:48 pm

Megan Finegan and Kaylin Koslosky are not theologians, journalists, or youth ministers. But the 22-year-old friends believe that they can minister to other young women by writing a new book about femininity. 

Their book, "Daughter of the King: Wait, Where's My Crown?!," addresses issues young women face in today's society from the perspective of young women themselves.

Finegan recently graduated from Benedictine College and is now a paralegal. Koslosky is finishing up her last year at Colorado State University and is hoping to teach high school science.

In what they hope will be a fun and easy to read format, the two friends discuss faith, relationships, beauty, modesty, and what they call "twenty-first century buzz topics" like homosexuality and abortion.

"We just felt incredibly called by God to help Him get this message out there to His daughters--our peers," Koslosky told CNA.

Koslosky and Finegan said competition and judgment are prominent in today's culture, but this book takes a different approach.

"We're here with you now, and it's hard, and we're still struggling with this information too," Finnegan said, "but this is the truth and this is what we're striving for, but it's a journey."

"And this is what's helped us," Koslosky added.

Though the two frequently finish each other's sentences and joke that they share one brain, they have many different life experiences as well.

"We have touched on every topic faced by high school and college women nowadays," Koslosky said.

In addition to their testimonies, Finegan and Koslosky offer tips and personal discoveries in every chapter. They said they also researched the topics, citing more than 30 sources.

"(The book is) just resurrecting a deeper beauty and understanding that who we are is beautiful and the life we bring to the world as women," Koslosky said.

According to Koslosky, the idea for the book came from "Megan's mouth."

In the summer of 2014, the two prayed a novena to St. Anne.

"She and I would meet up at the adoration chapel and talk about the reflection of the day and it would be about all these feminine virtues," Finegan said.

"We were like yelling at each other, agreeing, but yelling because we were so passionate about it," Koslosky said.

The idea of doing something about it popped up, but was forgotten as time went on. It was not until the Feast of the Assumption on August 15 of that year, that it resurfaced.

The two women were in the car driving to Mass when Koslosky began talking about how she loved the books she was reading on feminine virtue.

Finegan said she loved those books too but they would always lose her attention part-way in and that, "honestly, I feel like we need someone in our generation to write to us because I'm tired of 40-year-olds writing to us when really, our generation is different."

They pointed out that the culture of dating had completely changed and with the influence of technology, everything was different. The two agreed that someday a college student should write a book when Finegan said, "I feel like we should do that."

"I was like, 'Nope, do you know what it means to write a book?'" Koslosky recalled.

"That's long. We are busy people," she said.  

That fall semester, Finegan was leaving for a study abroad trip in Florence, Italy and Koslosky was getting ready to coordinate a large retreat for her college's campus ministry. They were both loaded up on school credits and said they did not have the time.

But they prayed about it that day and said, "It was a weird Mass experience."

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Koslosky said she began to laugh and was full of joy. She thought, "We have to do this." Finegan said she knew God was asking a lot and she was scared, but once she gave it all to Him, she had peace about the idea.

"Both of us were dead in," they said.

As Mass continued, they began to write things down on a little notebook Koslosky had in her purse.

"We get to her [Kaylin's] home and we just like start looking at what we had written down and we typed it up and we had an outline and intro done," Finegan said.

Neither of the young women were writers, but they said journaling was how they prayed best. During the fall semester, they tried writing more, but it was not very productive. So that Christmas break, they gave themselves one week to get it all done.

"Each day we wrote a section," Koslosky said.

They would begin the day with Mass, then go to a coffee shop next to St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Centennial, Colorado and write as much as they could. If something were too difficult to write, they would go to Adoration.

"The really hard, vulnerable parts, Jesus had to help us with," Koslosky said.

"We are very vulnerable in this book," she continued. "Here's our entire life; everything we've done wrong, everything we're not proud of, but here's what God's done with us."

"And that's what's amazing."

According to Koslosky, they wrote the book in six days.

"On the seventh day, we rested," Finegan chimed in.

After it was finished, the young women did not know what to do next. Koslosky said, "We didn't know the words platform or book proposals."

But that summer, Koslosky happened to meet Curtis Martin, the founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), and Finegan met international Catholic chastity speaker Jason Evert, at separate events.  

Not only did the interactions encourage the two to continue with publishing the book, but FOCUS said they would sell it, and Jason Evert offered the young women a place to build their platform on his website, the contact to his own editor, and the advice to self-publish.

One of Koslosky's blogs for Jason Evert, entitled "I Never Knew a Bikini Could Hide So Much," was the top blog post on chastityproject.com for 2015.

On August 15 of this year, the book dedicated to Mary will be published.

The two authors said they just want other women to know, "No matter what you've done or where you've been, or what your past is or isn't, you're beautiful, you're loved and you're a daughter of the King."

They described the book as a starting point for any young women to delve deeper in their faith or open their minds to the possibility of truth in its pages. Finegan and Koslosky hope it is just the start of a journey and are offering further resources on www.restoreyourcrown.com.