Interview with Amanda Held Opelt

By: Anna Grace Glaize

Amanda Held Opelt is both a published author and a songwriter. Her work deftly examines faith, ritual, and meaning-making in the wake of loss. She’s published two books: A Hole in the World and Holy Unhappiness. Amanda lives in Western North Carolina with her husband, Tim, and their two young daughters.

This interview was conducted via Zoom on March 26, 2025, and has been edited for clarity and length.

AGG: Your book A Hole in the World explores grief rituals in particular. For you, what's the purpose of ritual in general?

Amanda: I have an interesting relationship with just the term ritual, because I think a lot of people use it to describe their morning routine or habit. They call it a ritual. That’s a misuse of the term. Rituals are indeed habits, but what makes a ritual “ritual” is agreed-upon meaning. The ritual accomplishes something that's metaphysical to some degree or that names meaning beyond the act itself.

It’s communal meaning, too. I used to think, “Why do we go to all this trouble for weddings and spend all this money and go through all these activities?” It’s certainly worth asking about the expense of these things, but the pomp and circumstance of these embodied practices help us mark change. They help our bodies catch up to what’s really going on. It’s also having a community of people acknowledge something is happening to you, whether that’s good or bad. Maybe the summary [of ritual] would be the habitual nature of it is important, the embodied nature of it is important, the communal nature of it is important, and the marking of a life change is important.

AGG: In A Hole in the World, one of my favorite passages is your description of Jeremiah’s instruction for women to teach their daughters to wail. You even talk about God as stepping into this very important social role of the wailing woman. What’s the power in depicting God as emotionally uninhibited?

Amanda: We ignore passages in the Bible that even talk about God repenting from his anger or relenting or changing his mind. Because it’s so much easier to focus on God's sovereignty. We understand sovereignty as fixed, sovereignty as control, sovereignty as complete consistency. What makes God so powerful and worthy of our adoration is God's ability to both be sovereign and dynamic. Meaning God's an interactive God!

AGG: In the same chapter, you talk about how words like “emotional” and “hysterical” have been weaponized against women.

Amanda: The intense emotional quality that has been assigned to women has not always been a pejorative…This used to be an honored skill set. For God to wail — or for God to be a woman in labor — these were celebrated things.

AGG: Do you take Jeremiah’s instructions seriously? Are you going to teach your kids to wail?

Amanda: Well, let me tell you…

AGG: They already know how to wail?

Amanda: They already know how, that’s for sure! Tim [her husband] and I do try to make an effort to not hide our emotions. We’ve had a lot of difficult things happen in the years since they were born. Even with Hurricane Helene recently, I thought it was important for them to see me crying.

If I was having a moment and felt like crying, they don’t need to be sheltered from that. I always tell them why, like, “This is why Momma is crying.” It’s important for them to feel stable. I don't want to be falling apart around them all the time. But I think showing emotion, naming it, and then saying, “Okay, and now what are we going to do?” Sometimes we pray, and sometimes we get up and do the next right thing. I want them to be comfortable with seeing somebody that they trust, and somebody that they know they can depend on, as emotional.

AGG: One of the chapters in A Hole in the World is about food. This is a high-stakes question for a Southerner: Do you have a go-to dish that you bring to people you love when they're going through something?

Amanda: That’s a great question. It depends on the season, and it depends on the method of delivery. Practicality when it comes to food is really important. I am all about the soups and stews when people are going through something. I throw as many vegetables in as possible. Food is healing. It’s incredible what God has literally infused in plants that can regenerate and fuel our bodies.

I was sick with COVID, and my friend brought a soup over. I think about that soup all the time! There's just something about it being made by her. She's like, “There’s a lot of good stuff in here, man! There's kale, there's onion, there's garlic, there's beans—all this stuff that's really good for you when you're sick.” I literally felt like that soup brought me back to life. People always give Esau a hard time for selling his birthright for lentil soup. Well, maybe that's a good trade.

AGG: You've written books, and you're also a very talented songwriter. I encourage all our readers to listen to your music. Do both forms of writing satisfy the same creative itch?

Amanda: It's definitely in some ways, yes, and in other ways, no. Writing books has been fun because it indulges my curiosity and my interest in history. It's an opportunity to explore and take people on a journey of historic discovery or ecological discovery or theological discovery in a way that songwriting just can't.

I can't remember who said the quote, but there's some kind of quote that's like, “I paint pictures so I can communicate what can't be communicated with language.” What I love about songwriting is that it really does that. Songwriting is more about feel. Communicating something that's really hard to put into words. It's about the experience of it. Whereas books, to me, are about deep dives and exploration and discovery.

AGG: Do you have a favorite song that you've written?

Amanda: Well, I did write this song about my six-times great-grandfather who was a settler here in the mountains. He was killed in the Clinch River by the Cherokee. I have complicated feelings about even my presence here [Amanda lives in Appalachia]. What does it mean to love a land that wasn't originally your own? My ancestors were settlers. So, I wrote a song about those complicated feelings. I don't know if it's the best song I ever wrote, and it’s not even out on Spotify or anything, but for me it was maybe the most therapeutic I’ve ever written.

AGG: What Is God Like? and What Is the Bible? are books started by your sister Rachel and finished by her friend Matthew after her death. Both are excellent introductions for kids to God and sacred stories. Your book Holy Unhappiness examines some of the misconceptions you had about the Christian life and how those myths got debunked in various ways. Can you do a kids’ version of Holy Unhappiness? Little six-year-old me could’ve used it!

Amanda: If I could transform it into a children's book, I think the way I would do it would be to celebrate all the different paths that Christians walk. Like, some Christians will write books. Some will write songs. Some will be artists, and some will work in offices. Some will work in churches. And some will work cleaning up the trash. Some will get married, and some will have children. Some won't. Some will be sick, and some will die young. I don't know if you can put that in terms of kids’ stories.

AGG: I think you can. Those Victorians had some messed-up children’s books. I think we're underestimating kids.

Amanda: I hope so. Yeah, I would love to expand their imagination to understand that a life of faith might not look like the American dream. It might not look like some of the expectations the church places on us as it relates to family. But that doesn't mean that you can't actually have happiness and meaning and fulfillment.

AGG: Do you have a favorite woman in the Bible?

Amanda: I hate to just go with the crowd here…When I think about women in the Bible that I can’t get out of my head, it’s Mary, the mother of Jesus. Again, I know, I’m going with the celebrity woman from the Bible. It really should be Dorcas. Or Abigail. But it’s not — it’s Mary.

It’s not her status as God’s mother that I find so inspiring. It’s her quiet trust. She is a consistent, non-anxious presence in scripture. She was able to see the vision of the Messiah so clearly that she was able to celebrate in the midst of, “My life is over.” Even in Jesus’ adulthood he was being referred to as the son of Mary. Which would have been countercultural. Like, people remember this child is illegitimate! They remembered her supposed shame, and that shame no doubt followed her for the rest of her life. She was able to look past it and see “the world's being turned upside down by this miracle I'm going to participate in.” It’s her vision [for the future] that speaks to me.

If I get a second choice, I would mention Martha. She gets such a bad rap because she's seen as this busybody that doesn't notice Jesus. But then, when her brother [Lazarus] dies, it’s her sister Mary who’s completely overcome by grief. And Martha’s doing the needful. She demonstrates an incredible faith that’s often overlooked because she was the busybody in the kitchen. She’s the one [in the Lazarus story] who goes out and meets Jesus on the road. Martha understood the assignment. Jesus corrected her, and she was like, “Alright.” I appreciate that about her; she grew! Her character development in Scripture’s pretty great.

AGG: What are you working on next?

Amanda: I just signed with Harper One for a book about traditional Appalachian food practices. It’s using Appalachian food to tell a story about theology of the body, theology of food, and theology of creation care. How food is an invitation to be present in your body. And how food is an invitation to be present in community and present to the earth. It's been so fun to write. I've been going to sorghum boils and visiting farms. It’s been super great. It’s not a book just about food. It's about a lot of things, but food is the mechanism by which I’m telling the story.