#helpmeet

5 Ways I Build Up My Husband Daily

Being his helpmeet is my honor, not my burden.

1. I Speak Life Over Him

Not just to him—but about him. I brag on him when he’s not around. I speak blessings over his work, his heart, his leadership. My words are either building a fortress around him… or tearing it down brick by brick. I choose to build.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue…” – Proverbs 18:21

2. I Cook With Love

Even when I’m tired. Even when it’s simple. He works with his hands all day—I serve with mine in the kitchen. Feeding him is a form of care, honor, and deep gratitude.

3. I Pray for Him

Not just “God, bless him,” but really pray. I ask the Lord to guard his mind, give him strength, grow his faith, and protect him from temptation. He may not always see the battles I fight in the Spirit, but I fight them anyway.

4. I Show Him Respect

I watch my tone. I let him lead. I listen, even when I don’t agree right away. I resist the urge to nag. I remind him that I trust him—and more than that, I trust the God who gave him to me.

“…and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” – Ephesians 5:33

5. I Touch Him

I hold his hand. I run my fingers through his hair. I kiss him. I initiate. I prioritize regular intimacy. God made physical affection a powerful way to connect, and I don’t withhold that—it’s part of being one flesh.

My husband is not perfect. But neither am I.

Still, each day I ask the Lord to help me be a crown on his head—not a weight on his shoulders.

“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband…” – Proverbs 12:4

Personally when I find myself in a slump I tend to go for short books and novellas to try and avoid that mid-book slog that can happen when I'm not feeling motivated lol

Some excellent fast reads for me were

- Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E Harrow it's only 33 pages and it is legitimately one of the best stories I've ever read lol

- This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar is less than 200 pages and has some of the most romantic language I've ever read if, like me, you live for the yearning lol

- Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W Moniz is a collection of short stories that comes in around 200 pages and has some of my favourite contemporary lit fic stories I've ever read mostly surrounding the Black female experience in Florida. Just the range and quality of writing are just *perfect*

- The Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo currently has 5 or 6 books around 120 pages each and are all excellent examples of Asian inspired high fantasy and are real love letters to storytelling in all its forms (the second one is my favourite though I love the tigers lol)

- Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells are a great choice if you like Sci-Fi, the first one All Systems Red is 150 pages and surprisingly funny and heartwarming considering the name lol. I think a couple of the books are full length novels but the first one at least definitely isn't

- or, if you're more of a horror girlie, Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones, Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum, The Country Will Bring Us No Peace by Matthieu Simard, and Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris are all dark weird little 100 page stories that I ate up in one sitting

Hopefully there's something on this list that appeals to you because slumps are so tough to be in and push through so I hope you you find something that helps soon 😩❤️

Warning: Helpmeet spoilers ahead. If you’re interested in reading the story, this ain’t the time for this post to find you!

That's the review.

Okay first book of the year that’s surplus to reading list requirements. I put a hold on this because it got shortlisted by the World Fantasy Awards and then, well, totally forgot about it such that when my hold finally came in I had no idea what the book was or where I’d heard of it. Going in totally blind like this was, I think, the best possible choice – spending thirty pages thinking it was some kind of literary period piece definitely improved the gothic horror twist.

The novella is set in 1900 and follows Louise Wilk as she prepares to take her husband, a surgeon, away from Manhattan to his family cottage in the country before he dies of a gruesome and mysterious wasting illness contracted during one of his many affairs (and just ahead of the bank repossessing their house). Over the course of the preparations and travel the history of their relationship and of the disease’s progression are teased and hinted at, and it becomes clear that the disease isn’t anything so simple as syphilis – that really its less a disease and more an incubation.

The atmosphere and presentation feel very pure Gothic horror to me – and very well-done, too. Everything from the descriptions and atmosphere to the repressed and evasive relationships to Louis’ total ostraiza tion from her husband’s social scene even before he began to rot to the whole plot centring around sexual immorality leaving the Man Of Science literally rotting from within and helpless to cure himself no matter how much he scrapes and cuts away.

Of course, the ending turns all of that entirely on its head. The eldritch entity that births itself from Wilks’ rotting corpse is actually quite a sympathetic sort, and sorry to have put the pair of them through such trials. It offers to reunite them – or just unite for the first time, really. Pushing Louis into the husk of her husband’s body like an ill-fitting suit and suturing them together in a way that revives his consciousness around hers as both body and mind begin to synthesize into a single whole. With their help, the entity takes the woman who summoned and sought to enslave it as a host instead, and rides off into the sunset to leave them to make a happy new life in the cottage and the orchard around it. In the end, it’s really quite a sweet love story.

The book is beautifully written, and by that I mean it is grotesque and horrifying in the best possible way. The oblique descriptions of the doctor’s rotting body – how Louis walked in on him shaving away the last rotting flesh of his noise over boiling water, the difficulties of finding whole veins to inject morphine into, the way the gauze over his face turns red and yellow in turns so soon after its replaced – fill something like a third of the books wordcount, and even beyond that rot and decay and filth are everpresent themes.