Tag: resolutions

trust

KatieLeave a comment

It is a little past 10pm on New Year’s Eve. I’m alone, and the house is quiet. A neighbor invited me to stop in for a drink and an appetizer, so I grabbed a flashlight and my heaviest coat to walk over for a little while and home again now to find my warm bed and a book. It is cold – for Georgia anyway. A solid week of freezing temperatures ahead. Tomorrow begins 2018.

I drove 45 minutes today to spend a few hours at Atlanta’s Korean Spa and Wellness Center. My friend introduced me to this spot earlier this year, and today I went alone. It seemed to make sense to end the year this way, and I needed the physical element of self-care today. It’s gender-segregated with nude areas, and as I sat there in the hot tubs – not knowing a soul around me – I considered how much change I have seen in my own self in the past few years. Most of my timidness is gone, and what is left underneath is someone I genuinely like. This is important, I think. To like yourself. At 36 years old, here in 2017, I figured that out.

I had a body scrub where I laid still while someone scrubbed every bit of outer skin from my body to leave me feeling like velvet. Then I laid in various saunas – charcoal and salt and clay and jade – for hours, stepping out only to cool off a minute and refill my water. I sweat out and sloughed off every last bit of 2017 today. My body is ready to begin the new year.

When I got home, I took a minute to relax a bit more and light candles and pull out my journal. I made a list of the most beautiful and meaningful moments or experiences in 2017. There are so many. I will forever remember this year as the year I got out of survival mode and ran forward in a real way. I scribbled a list that runs the length of the page. … The kids learned to swim. I began my online writing workshop. I deepened my yoga practice. We spent a weekend alone in the woods that was perfect. I embarked on a relationship, and it broke and was mended again in a different way and left the two of us with a deeper friendship now that we are on the other side.  I began my book. My confidence grew in a million tiny ways that somehow add up to something big.

Then I wrote a list of the things I want to leave behind in 2018. They are no surprise. All the shoulds. Needless apologies. Self-judgment. Fear. Timelines.

Rather than abide by regular formal goals and resolutions, I’ve been looking to theme words this past few years. 2016’s was write. 2017’s was intention. This year, my word is trust. I want to lean into the unknown with the assurance that I am held. I want to trust that everything is right on time.

I added a Rilke quote on the back of our Christmas cards this year. And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been. I have such high hopes for you, 2018. For abundance and clarity and trust above all else. So many things lie ahead. Things that have never been.

 

 

soft start

Katie5 Comments

Georgia weather is always the strangest, but this year’s more than ever. It was rainy and 75 on Christmas day. This morning when I took the dog out, it was a windy 27. I’m learning to let go of any expectations at all – a good exercise for my life in general.

I was without the kids for a solid length of 5 nights over the holiday break, and it stretched long before me as it began but was over in a flash. Solitude is getting so much easier, it seems. I always have something to do, and I’m seeing the power of intention and creativity. When I put in even the smallest effort, it multiplies and is rewarded ten times over.

I’m not a fan of winter, and I know those of you in colder climates are probably laughing at me as I say that. Atlanta isn’t exactly frigid. But having grown up a southerner, my bones can hardly stand it, and I’ve grown spoiled in that way. February drags with the heaviest weight, but January is always nice despite the cold. The fresh slate of a new year made even more noticeable to those of us in academics who get to begin a new semester as well. It all starts over for me when the calendar flips, everything begins again.

This week is a soft start for me. Classes don’t begin until next week, but I have a lot of planning to do. One day I might step into the 21st century, but for now, books with real pages and an actual pencil and paper are the only ways I can plan my semester. There’s always that moment when you begin a new task or a new class, and you think you are nowhere near ready and that this is not going to come together the way you’d like it to. But then it always does somehow.

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I was talking with a friend on Instagram last week about how I had to make such a conscious effort in 2015 to ditch my old distaste for sentimentality and truly surround myself only with ideas that lended themselves to my own growth. This has meant a lot of non-fiction reading and very little snark and sarcasm. Positivity everywhere. The only way I could “keep on keepin’ on” in light of what happened to me and the speed at which it happened was to not even for a second consider that something better wasn’t coming my way.

I follow a pretty awesome Instagram feed that said last week that rather than thinking of resolutions and ways to “fix” your life, you should see the new year as “a time to reflect. To learn. To create an intention, a positive call to shift, a spark of magic + manifestation rooted in self-love and backed with action.” That explanation resonated with me in so many ways. For the first time in a long time (ever?) I don’t look at the new year as a way to fix anything about myself. The ways that I have shown up in my own life before this moment in time were all necessary to get me where I’m going. I see that clearly now.

For me, this month is about a clear intention + magic + manifestation, and I can see it in little glimmers already. It’s this formula of focused intention + hard work that equals so much more than just the hard work, I’m finding. Life is not as simple as just wanting something, praying for that thing, and then watching it appear before you. But devoting space in your own imagination for it, saying aloud I want that, outlining the ways to accomplish it, working hard, and then allowing space for it to unfold in ways that might be different from what you expected but so much better. That’s the way.

This January feels less like a completely blank slate and more like a soft start. I don’t want to be something entirely new, and I see countless ways every single past experience of last year worked together to create a fuller picture of myself and my own abilities.

We don’t ever really start over, do we? We can never completely leave it all behind. So many people try to do it that way, to cover it up or turn a new page to be totally remade in an instant. But that’s the most dangerous approach, doomed for failure. The real fruition of what we can be lies in carrying it all with us as we move forward – all the past experiences and the good and the bad – and making sense of it in new ways as we make new intentions.

Wednesdays are crazy for us. I leave at 7:30, get Jude on the bus, commute 45 minutes with Norah, work until it’s time to head back and get Jude. I pick him up in his after-school program, and then back-track 20 minutes to go to our 5pm weekly speech therapy appointment. It’s past 6pm when we get home – logging miles and hours and long days for all of us. And this time of year it is dark which only seems to amplify the tired bones and empty bellies.

I picked up pizza on the way home tonight. Not a single healthy vegetable on the table. We ate it with one hand, standing up. I fed the dog and as I went to take him out, I heard laughter inside and turned around to see my glass patio doors framing our little table like a movie scene as it was light inside and dark out. Both of them laughing, mouths open, chasing each other around the table holding pizza. I guess it was the bitter cold outside and the light and warmth inside, combined with their little laughing voices. But it looked like perfection when I know what it really was – a tired mom, tired kids, long day, and a $9 dinner.

That’s the way it goes though. The comfort in the mess. I’m not starting over this year; it’s just a soft start, a calm reset to carry what I already have and let it push me forward to where I’m meant to go next.

new year

Katie2 Comments

2016 is here, and I’ve never been so happy to see a new year arrive.

Thank you so much for the kind comments, emails, and messages in the past few weeks. I read every word and every bit was encouraging. I’m happy that this space has grown a little, but the small growth comes with new challenges in the writing process, and I just needed a few weeks to take a break and regain my footing creatively speaking.

My resolution last year was to find what makes me happy. And I’ve done that this year. I spent New Year’s Eve with the kids at the home of a good friend in the afternoon. The kids played happily with her crew, and her husband made tacos for an early dinner. By 7:30, we were driving home, and my two went down for a usual bed time which left me with a couple of hours to look through my jar. I read them all. Every single little moment that I recorded in 2015.

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There were so many little seconds recorded there that I would have forgotten otherwise. Jan 11 Winter sun. Driving home. Distant flock of black birds in a perfect formation. / Jan 24 Two students moved to tears by poetry in class. A tangible connection to the page in front of them / May 3rd Sitting in the warm grass next to my grandmother. Watching kids pick flowers in her yard. / July 31 Cousins running through the grass, ice cream, lightning bugs. / Sept 4 Broken A/C, but it just rained. Cool sheets, windows open, kids asleep. Feels like summer camp. / Oct 28 Making dinner, dancing in the kitchen with Norah, Jude laughing. / Dec 15 Watching Jude build a rocket ship from a box on the back patio. Concentration with his paint, tape, scissors.  There were so many more, tiny details of happiness, even in a dark season or on otherwise bad days.

Life is neither good nor bad, but it is a lot of things at once, and it glimmers in the best way if we just take notice. Mary Oliver wrote, “I don’t know what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention.” Sometimes I think they are the same thing – to pray and to pay attention.

Healing is not a straight line, I suppose, and my life is not always shimmering. I’m still grieving a bit, and it sneaks up on me sometimes. But grief doesn’t mean I can’t move on in the best way I know how. I have more to do, and I can feel it stirring. I’m still working to shed the last bit of what needs to fall away, but that is always a process in life, I think. If you are awake and aware, then you are always growing and changing. And the layers are falling away all the time.

I look at 2015 as a year I am ready to leave behind, one I never want to do again. But I cannot bring myself to look at it as a bad year. It is the year I built my own bones. I think back to December 31, 2014 when I was alone in a house that no longer felt like home, still married though he celebrated in NYC and I stayed at home with Jude and Norah. We made an early dinner. I put them to bed, and stereotypical as it sounds, I remember crying in the bathtub as the final hours of the year were coming to a close. The night felt heavy and scary and lonely. I had no idea where I was going next or how I would climb that mountain in front of me.

Now I look back at all the little tasks – opening the solo bank account, meeting with attorneys, selling and buying a house, dealing with my insurance and retirement accounts, the stacks and stacks of paperwork that felt like they’d never end.  I can’t believe I did all that – emotional wreckage aside. I can’t help but sit here today in a house that is my own, surrounded by a life I am composing on my own volition and wonder how I even got here. One step at a time is how it happened, but that doesn’t make it any less miraculous. I did it, and my story doesn’t end here. That has been the common theme in these months. I can feel it moving and stirring and pushing me forward. There have been dark days when I felt overwhelmed or unworthy, but never once have I doubted that there is a story unfolding and a reason for every single moment of my year. I’m so grateful for all of it, every second.

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I know beyond a shadow of any doubt that I’m meant to do something that I couldn’t do in my former life, and I am not even sure what it is or how it will surface, but I feel certain I will do it. If this year has taught me anything it is the power of my own strength and determination. If I am meant to do something and I want to do it, it will happen.

In a famous advice letter on Dear Rumpus, Cheryl Strayed describes the process of writing her first book, and she explains it by saying,  “I didn’t know if people would think my book was good or bad or horrible or beautiful and I didn’t care. I only knew I no longer had two hearts beating in my chest. I’d pulled one out with my own bare hands.” I feel a little of that every time I write here. And every time I pull out that piece with my own hands, it facilitates a healing and a clarity that I cannot achieve any other way. Writing is the raft that pulled me through my past year. And as you look back at so many posts that emerged in 2015, you can see that I was writing for myself– for the questions and fears in my own mind. And yet without much effort on my part, it has made its way to many of you and caused a few small ripples in the world around me. It’s been such a beautiful thing to watch.

I’m finally reading Big Magic after hearing so much about it, and she describes writing in a way that was so familiar to me that I had to say yes! aloud and read it again — “Sometimes when I am in the midst of writing, I feel like I am suddenly walking on one of those moving sidewalks that you find in a big airport terminal; I still have a long slog to my gate, and my baggage is still heavy, but I can feel myself being gently propelled by some exterior force. Something is carrying me along — something powerful and generous — something decidedly not me” (66). The vast majority of the time I spend writing just feels like laborious digging, to use Seamus Heaney’s metaphor, but sometimes I get picked up by that moving sidewalk, and it is the strangest and most amazing feeling ever. I will read a sentence or a paragraph, and I think did I write that? Really?

Friends, I’ve got only one resolution for the coming year and that is to make space for that moving sidewalk.  I’ve got a second beating heart inside me, and 2016 is the year it is going to make its way out.

It will come in fits and starts and bits and pieces, but I will write and write and write without fear of judgment or failure this year because it is what I am here to do. I’ve always felt that teaching was my calling, and it still is. But something else is bubbling up. What has happened this past year with writing is that it moved from a tiny voice to a loud roar on my inner radar. There are so few things in life that give you a clear message telling you to walk that path. When it happens, you need to listen. I don’t know where it’s leading, but for now, I am just going to listen and obey and make space for it. I own every single thing that has ever happened to me. I need to unload this second beating heart because it is burning me up.

I write a lot here, but there are so many things I haven’t said.  Lessons I have learned – not just as my marriage dissolved but as I began to discover life on my own. Lessons that began long before I ever thought about boyfriends and marriage. Lessons that start deep inside all of us and take a lifetime to learn, and some of them take longer still to unlearn. These are lessons I am learning everyday still. I have something to say, and I think if it is knocking so hard on my heart, it is meant to be heard by someone else as well.

I’m getting braver as the months roll by, and this task requires a lot of courage. Memoir is what we call it when you write about your own experiences, but if it is done well, it taps into that common consciousness that every human has. It’s not writing about me specifically. It’s writing about Us in the largest way. When a book shakes me at my core and makes me question everything I know or makes me scribble in the margins and say yes! me, too – that is memoir done well. You can’t do that when you hold back from your reader or guard yourself with some attempt to seem perfect.

My goal at the start of 2015 was to find what makes me happy, and I did. Writing is it for me. My resolution for 2016 is to listen to that calling, to set loose that second beating heart, and to do it with painful honesty.

I don’t expect it to pay the bills. I don’t expect to accomplish some perfect recipe for major publication. But I can say with all certainty that writing has given so much to me these past few months, and it’s the least I can do to give back to it as best I can – with determination and courage and dedication. Basically I’m saying that this is the year when I begin to take my craft seriously. Hiding in a corner of the internet and writing my way through my own path has been exactly what I needed this past few years. But now I’m ready for more.

I’m going to do my own part. I’m making a commitment to give writing a higher priority in my life in the coming year. To do the work – to get through the ugly early drafts, do the painful editing, and submit in hopes to be heard by someone else. But I’m also going to ask for your help as I begin this task, friends and readers. The publication industry has changed much in light of online connection, and my work begins here. I’ve begun a Facebook page for this site, and if you are active on Facebook, I’d love to see you there. I’m also new to Twitter as Mama the Reader and hope to share there often if you would like to follow along.

For the past five years, I have written here for my own self and shared a bit with family and friends. I haven’t made much effort to really reach the world beyond, but I’m ready to change that.

I’m asking you from my deepest place of heart and purpose – when you read something here that moves you or changes your perspective, please pass it along. The small growth that has happened last year in this space encourages me so much, and I’d love to see that expand and open new doors for me as I begin writing more seriously in a way that I feel I’m meant to. Each of you is instrumental in building that platform for my voice, and I can’t thank you enough. If Facebook and Twitter aren’t your thing, pass along through links or emails or conversation or any way that you feel led to. There are new spaces to illuminate and new views emerging everyday for me, and I’d love to move forward together.

My favorite thing about writing is that I never know what’s on the other side. I never know when I sit down to write what kind of treasures and discoveries I will find by the time I reach my conclusion. I’m ready, 2016. I can’t wait to see what’s in store on the last page.

on being happy

Katie3 Comments

I usually make long, elaborate lists of goals or resolutions with the dawn of a new year. This year, I have only one.

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It’s so easy – in the roles of wife or mother or teacher or whatever your title is – to become consumed with what others want for you, what others ask of you, what makes them happy. Sometimes I neglect to think about what makes me happy, what motivates me to reach for bigger and brighter things. That is my simple one-statement resolution for 2015. Find what makes my heart sing, and do more of it.

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On January first, I began a happiness jar, which I already mentioned on Instagram a few weeks ago if you follow me there. The idea is to reflect on your day for a few minutes before bed and decide what the happiest moment of your day was. Then you just write that down and place it in the jar. It’s a daily gratitude practice that serves two purposes for me. It makes me see the good in life, no matter how messy it gets. But it also makes me pause to think of what really makes me happy, what drives me.

So far, the notes I’m scribbling in this exercise really surprise me. Some I knew I loved – cuddles with my kids, a good dinner with old friends. And others are things I forgot I loved so much – a sweaty mile or two at the gym, a new music discovery (like this one or this one I am loving lately), and connected moments in the classroom with engaged students and eager ears.

So that’s it. That’s my resolution. To see what makes me happy, and to do more of it. If it stirs my heart, I’m going to say yes in 2015. If it doesn’t I will say no.

It’s a selfish notion, but self-care can be a radical idea during some seasons of our lives. I can’t wait to listen a little more closely to my own soul, as Anne Sexton says. To fill it up and wash it clean.

resolving

KatieLeave a comment

Here we are again.  New year and fresh start and the opportunities that lie in front of us in the next twelve months.  I’ve been thinking a lot about resolutions this past few weeks, and I’ve loved having this journal here to look back on my past resolutions and what stuck and what didn’t.

Remember that one time I resolved to finish at least one craft project a month?  I actually did it.  And that time I resolved to take a photo a day for all of 2012?  That one didn’t happen.  Sometimes they come to fruition and sometimes they don’t.  Nevertheless, it feels good to make goals, and writing them aloud here makes me more accountable, I know.

So first up this year, nutrition.  I have to say that I am really proud of how far I’ve come on this topic and how much healthier my family eats than we used to.  We are more or less purged of processed food, and I feel like I’ve mastered the whole grains quest.  My grain mill has us eating true whole wheat in our muffins and pancakes and breads and cakes and cookies and everything.  Brown rice and quinoa are frequent on our table, too.  And I do feel like that major change has had some really positive effects on our health and well-being.  Where I can improve, however, is my intake of fruit and vegetables.  I’m a creature of habit, and my morning breakfast is almost always one egg and one bread-like thing of some kind … muffin, toast, etc.  And my most often repeated dinner recipes are usually crockpot dinners or some other sort of one-dish meal.  Chicken and potatoes roasted in a skillet.  Fish with a side of bean salad.  Chicken over rice. … You get the point.  Quick and somewhat healthy and easy clean-up and simple to prepare with kids running under your feet.  Lunch is whatever I can grab in a hurry, to be totally honest.  Ham and cheese wrapped in a tortilla or leftover pasta from the night before.  Whatever I can find.  So I’m resolving to eat at least one fruit or vegetable in every meal of the day.  More than one is good and veggie snacks between meals are even better.  I know I probably won’t accomplish this three times a day for the next twelve months straight, but my hope is that it will change the way I think of eating and meal planning.  And making a real rule for myself, one I can count or see clearly, seems to work for my accountability most of the time.

For the past five days (yay, me!) I’ve been doing this, and it’s not that difficult, but it does require thought.  I throw a chopped mushroom and a sun-dried tomato in a tiny omelette in the morning, for instance, and it takes all of forty extra seconds to grab those from the fridge.  Some raw celery on the side for lunch.  Green beans to accompany our chicken and rice for dinner.  They are easy solutions, but they make me feel better about the variety in my diet, and I hope they will shed light on some creativity in the kitchen as well.

The second area I want to work on is my home.  Which I know was on my list of things in 2011, and I do actually think I’ve made strides since then, but I just find that as we add another baby to the mix and the months roll by, routines need re-evaluating and I need to make changes.  The main issue for me is to simplify.  Like simplify a million times over.  We cleaned out a ton of kids toys and old bedding and odds and ends over Christmas break, and I find myself wondering why on Earth we hadn’t done that sooner, or the real recurring question of why do I own this to begin with?  Making a house a home takes time, and you acquire hand-me-downs first and then the cheapest something of your own that you can afford and then maybe years later you get what you really want.  [Or this is how it happened with me.  Am I the only one?] So sometimes I look around my house and think what is that?  Or I find that the corners in my home that make me most happy are the things we’ve carefully chosen and really loved when we decided to buy it or hang it or arrange it or whatever.  I hope I’m making sense here.  All this is just to say that I want to work harder at making my house a home this year.  Whether through some aromatherapy oils or some kitchen cabinet reorganization or some new decorative details or whatever the case may be.  I want to walk in my home and feel that it is ours and full of our flavors and our tastes and our most favorite things and devoid of useless junk that does not serve to make me happy.

And last but not least, I hope to write here more often.  I’m going to try to impose a Wednesday and Sunday schedule for myself, and I’ll hope that it grows from there.  But that will have me checking in at least twice a week.  I miss this space and the journal it gives me to look back on and of course the clarity writing brings.  That’s something I want more of in 2013.

What about you?  Any things you’ve resolved to work on?

Busy Summer

Katie6 Comments

It’s been a busy morning around here.  Actually, I lied.  It totally hasn’t.  The pace has been slow and leisurely, and we enjoyed some playtime on the porch this morning.  After last week’s soaking in all the gratitude for this new SAHM gig, I feel like I need to get busy and establish a routine for myself.  But, oh!  These are the days.  Sometimes I want to do nothing but play with this happy boy.

Memorial Day is sort of the unofficial beginning to summer around here, and Labor Day is the unofficial end to sweaty pool days and beginning to autumn.  As a teacher, I would begin each summer with absolute laziness and then panic some time around the Fourth of July when I realized that I had a to-do list a mile long and I had accomplished none of it.  While I don’t have the start of the academic year looming ahead this time, I do feel the need to get some A LOT of things done in the next 3 months.  Inspired by my friend Amanda’s list, I decided to write down my goals here so that I have to achieve them or else be shamed by my laziness.  So here they are.  Some big, some small.  I’ve tried to categorize them, but in that process I’ve realized that some of them are quite random.

    In the Kitchen – Cook better food when Scott is out of town.  (I got this awesome book to help me.) – Overcome prior disappointment with dough that refuses to rise and successfully bake my own bread. – Master ten new dishes. – Make decent-tasting tofu dish. 

  • Craftiness – Get my Grandmother to reteach me how to sew. (I have a sewing machine and sewed often before graduate school and teaching, but I haven’t done anything on it at all since the fall of 2004 when I enrolled in Agnes Scott.) – Sew 3 fleece diaper covers for Jude’s cloth diapers. – Complete 25 pages in Jude’s digital scrapbook. I used to love paper crafts (scrapping included), but this AMAZING book made me want to do digital.  I’ve paid $30 for software and now need to get started. – Take more pictures.  Take better pictures. (I began a 365 project on Flickr that has me taking photos everyday and learning slowly but surely to use our camera to soak up those pretty little moments.) – Finish the jewelry organizer I started last weekend.  The window screening I’m using is being difficult, so I think I need to take another route and amend my original plans on that one.
  • Personal / Health – Drink more water. – Drink Kefir everyday. (This stuff does wonders for me; I just need to remember to drink it.) – Make time for reading again. – Start yoga again after not practicing for 7 months. – Partake in some form of physical activity for at least 20 minutes everyday, Monday-Friday.  (This makes me sound like an absolute lazy lard lump, but of course I am up and moving all the time – laundry, playing in the floor with Jude, wearing and carrying him all over town. etc.  What I haven’t done in about 7 months is deliberate physical exercise for the purpose of burning calories or toning myself.  This has to change.  My ass says so.)
  • Home / Organizational – Establish a housecleaning routine that gets the job done and works for me. – Organize our home office. (Y’all this is THE project around here.  The one that hangs over me and slaps me in the face every time I walk in there.  Scary, scary place right now.) – Clean out Jude’s drawers and closet, pack away outgrown clothes, get out new sizes. – Come up with at least 5 bags of junk to leave this house and take to Goodwill. – Pack up infant gear we have outgrown the need for. – Sell cloth diapers that didn’t work for us.  (Yes, people do this.  I have high-quality hemp BabyKicks brand prefolds and cute gDiapers that don’t work for me.  I need to make the money from them and get this out of this cluttered house.)
  • Miscellaneous – Learn to can vegetables.  (My Grandmother is dying to teach me, and it’s a trade I’d like to know if I can get over my fear of the pressure cooker.) – Update this blog twice a week. – Visit the Alpharetta Farmer’s Market at least twice this summer. – Go on at least 5 real dates with my husband. (Real means make-up, sitter, dinner out, maybe even earrings.) – Pay off the Nissan so that we don’t have a car payment and can breathe a little easier with only one income. – Find 2 tutoring clients so that I have some spending money. – Keep my grocery bill at $75 a week and stay on our no-processed rule.  (This is HARD, y’all.  Why is unhealthy food so much cheaper?)

Whew.  It looks like so much when I write it all down.  Public acocuntability works for me though.  What’s on your list this summer?