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find out.

28 Feb

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I am in a weekly writing group. In this group I submit a few chapters a week, and then we meet up at a local brewery to go over the pages, brainstorm, make new goals, share writing triumphs & failures.

And basically whip one another into shape.

Recently I submitted a larger chunk (20k words) for feedback on the book, Flicker, that I finished writing earlier this month.

Wanna know my response to the edits and suggestions? : Wahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

It is hard to get critical feedback on anything you pour your heart and soul into. It is hard to digest what other people have to say about your craft. It is hard to fix the problems, and move on.

Because it isn’t easy. It isn’t easy to refine, to polish. And then do even more refining and more polishing.

IMG_5196But that is the part where magic happens. When you say, about any area in life— not just writing— where can I improve? Where can I make this better? What is missing here? And then act on those answers.

I really want magic to happen. I do.

So I sat down and started going through the critiqued pages. I sat for two hours and made my way through eight manuscript pages. And you know what? They are so much better than before. I did not have it perfect on my own.

I NEEDED INPUT AND INSIGHT FROM PEOPLE I VALUE.

We all do.

Not completely. Obviously I don’t want (and don’t want you) to glean so much from others that I lose my voice. I want to still be me, on the page and in the world. I want to tell my story. Not just on paper, also in the way I parent or partner with my spouse or decide how I spend my time. I don’t want to so be swayed by the people around me so much that I am no longer hearing my own whisperings.

But still— other people are really quite smart. And I am a terrible speller and using appropriate apostrophes. And also, I am pretty lame about not getting stressed out over a busy schedule and remembering to not yell at my kids and mopping my floor. See. I have lots of places I need other people to say, ‘Anya, you really need to clean up this area’.

So listen. Even if it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

Then the magic will happen, I promise.

 

 

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Isabela turns 12.

27 Feb

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I honestly can’t believe she is twelve. It seems like yesterday she was a newly seven-year-old girl I was meeting for the first time, learning to read and ride a bike. Learning to be apart of a new family. Learning so.much.every.single.day. She’s spent years on over-drive, learning habits and patterns other kids know intuitively when they are apart of their family since day one.

But you know what?

She has taken that incredibly steep learning curve and summited the mountain over and over and over again.

She amazes me.

It’s like, in adoption we talk about the hard stuff or the crazy stuff— but this stuff? This is the good stuff people. This is the beauty. This is a broken girl healed. This is a scared girl becoming fearless.

This is my daughter.

And I get all weepy because it is humbling to be apart of someone’s life who shows up, over and over and over again and tries. Tries when it is hard. Pushes through when it is scary.

And the thing about showing up and working hard is— growth happens.

Isabela Nicole is growing up.

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And she has really good taste in cake.

IMG_5194And she got her birthday wish— purple streaks in her hair. And a gift card to the craft store because she could spend hours walking around that place dreaming.  And trendy scarves and sweet design-your-own-Nikes  because she is so into fashion. And an iTunes card because she knows what music she likes. (She was so loved on by her extended family!). And the thing is, this is the girl who I once worried would never know what she thought/liked/wanted/cared about/enjoyed. And now? I’m telling you, this girl knows what she is into. She doesn’t say yes because she thinks it’s what someones wants to hear. She says what she thinks. She is herself, through and through.

So there you go friends. You made me cry on this Wednesday morning. But they are good tears. Because they remind me, and you, that we won’t be in the same place forever. We can all continue to grow up if we work at it.

May we all grow as beautiful as Isabela.

Happy Birthday Bela. xoxo

 

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new adventures. a.k.a. yes i’m a homeschooling mom (again).

6 Feb

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After Christmas break Isabela stayed home. It was the plan. It wasn’t that school was a bad thing, per se, it was more like we knew there was better for her.

IMG_4742I can honestly say this has been one of the best parenting choices I have ever made. And I know I am really sarcastic a whole lot of the time— this is not one of those times. Bela being at home is an absolute joy.

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This girl has suddenly been given space, attention and time to figure out who she is. I know it’s only week 4, I know there is an ebb and flow to these things. But right, we are in the flow, and I’m digging it. So is she.IMG_4592

She is a very domesticated nearly-12-year-old. She says, “I’m gonna make a chocolate cake from scratch this afternoon.’ Then she doesn’t ask for help. Not once. And makes chocolate frosting to boot. Maybe many eleven year old girls do this. I don’t know, she’s my first— but I do know Bela. I know that a few years ago she couldn’t do a single thing without asking a zillion non-sensical questions, (and I know all you older-child-adoptive mamas out there are nodding your heads yes). She is growing up. And baking homemade cake pops and sewing cute critters and reading (for fun!!!!) and laughing and smiling and not-so-stressed-out and just being herself. It is a beautiful thing.

IMG_4670If any of you readers knew me when I was homeschooling a few years back, I am sorry for the complete wreck I was. I know I had a ton of anxiety about going into this another time around having had things spiral out of control before. But it is very different for a variety of reasons. I am hopeful for the relationship I am nurturing with my daughter, and want to extend to you, as friends, to support us in this. I know the change for me is a flexible one. I am a homebody and have my own outlets. But for Bela she is learning a much quieter pace of life. If there are ways you would like to reach out to her, for example via letters or an afternoon coffee date, let me know. Also, if you know of any awesome girls her age she could meet up with, we would dig that too:)

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using the back door, tonight.

9 Jan

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I feel like using the back door on my own blog tonight. I want to slip inside, unnoticed, maybe lean on the kitchen counter and take in whatever is going on around me. Maybe the real party is happening in my living room. Maybe friends are sitting around, on the couch and in the blue velvet chairs talking over  glasses of mason jars filled with boxed wine. It is cozy in the living room, I know, I am welcome  out there. But I just want to stand in the back ground for a bit, by the back door.

The holidays were good. Busy and good. And I really love the New Year. I love the possibilities, the plans. This feels like a good time of year. But this year just feels like a full blown scale-back. Scaling back in terms of commitments and pressure. Scaling back in terms of making a good impression and making people happy. Scaling back in terms of the actual scale after that Christmas Day butterscotch pie ( & more). I dunno. I just kinda want to use the back door and do my own thing.

Maybe I’m getting old. You know,  maybe I am becoming the old lady down the street who doesn’t wear a bra and is always sneaking out the back door to smoke a cigarette (or worse). Don’t worry, friends, I’m not there yet. I am still me through out, just  feeling quieter, yet braver, all at the same time and in all different ways.

Come on the back steps, if you like,  and sit with me, away from the party happening inside. I will share my lighter. If you sneak me out  a jar full of wine.

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new year, ect.

1 Jan

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Hi Friends!

I know. I went missing around here at the end of 2012. I kept thinking, these past few weeks, I really must sit down and pound out the words on my heart at this moment in time. I didn’t  want to forget or I was wanting to remember, but then life kept happening and so all those little words and thoughts are mostly lost.

But some of them, I guess the ones that really matter, are still swimming around in my mind. Life-happenings helped me refine my thoughts and avoid blog-vomit. You’re welcome.

The holidays were really weird and emotional and weepy for me this year. It is like everything I used to think was wrong is actually right and everything I held tight to is a bit of a waste. Like wasted energy. And wasted space and wasted brain power. I think for the past forever I’ve been one of those people who are wound up too tight (although always denying it). And I know I eluded to it a bit back about redefining expectations- but seriously, like  LIFE IS SHORT. And if my expectations on my life are out of whack, that means my life is out of whack. And seriously, I don’t want my short, short life to be whack.

I WANT MY LIFE TO BE MARVELOUS and INTOXICATING and RIDICULOUS.

And the thing is, my short life will never be marvelous or intoxicating or ridiculous if I am stressing out on Christmas Eve that the one package I am waiting on to be delivered from the interwebs HAS NOT ARRIVED AND THEREFORE CHRISTMAS IS RUINED -> that is not an intoxicatingly marvelous person- that is an annoying person. I don’t want to be annoying.

I think a lot of times I get all stressed out about what people are gonna think or say or if they are offended or if they are mad. And then I stop living my short life the way I really want to. I am going to stop doing that. Obviously I don’t want to be this major jerk, I want to be compassionate and graceful and kind- but I also want to be okay with saying, HEY, ACTUALLY I DONT WANT TO DO XYZ AND I WANT TO DO QRS. And then after I say that, to not think about it anymore, because I need to know that the people who would get mad that I feel like a change is the best thing for me, aren’t really my people.

I also wanted to say one more thing (and I kinda feel like the blog-vomit I was wanting to avoid is actually happening now), but I am in a really happy place in my life right now. My word for last year was BRAVE and I just want to say, I think that me accepting and embracing the concept of BEING BRAVE is what has helped allow space for so much healing in my life. I feel like choosing to BE BRAVE this year gave me this crazy-fearlessness I haven’t felt in a really long time.  And the sad thing is, that was always who I have been, THIS BRAVE GIRL. It’s just that life wear us down, right?  And we lose those little pieces of ourselves that are precious and beautiful and real.

I got one of the best compliments of my life the other day. I was leaving the movies with my sister-in-laws and husband. We had just watched This Is 40. And there is this scene in the movie where the couple leaves their kids for the night and stay at a hotel and get all cray-cray, letting all of their guards down. So my SIL turns to me and says that while she was watching that scene she could picture Jer and I acting exactly like that when we go out of town.

And it was a simple sentence but it made me feel amazing, becasue I was seen by someone else in this way, like the girl I am was seen by my SIL. It made me feel so known. And maybe that seems weird to write down, but the thing is, I have worked hard to be understood and be known and I guess being Brave has been a big part of that for me this year.

And I want my people, the ones who read this blog, to feel like they can be known and understood and accepted too. Because it feels really good.

I don’t have a word for this year picked out. I don’t know, nothing has come to me I guess. And in light of my continual choice to redefine, I am being okay with not having a word on JANUARY FIRST. The world, mine or otherwise, has not ended because of this.

Okay, so one more thing, (and this is the very last, I promise)- Thank you for reading this blog and adding your thoughts to the posts and just being apart of this short life with me. I feel honored to be on this journey with you. Really. And I hope your 2013 is full of marvelous-ness.

xoxo. anya

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oh christmas tree, oh christmas tree.

7 Dec

 

IMG_4037In a lot of ways I am a Things-Have-To-Be-A-Certain-Way-Kinda-Girl. They don’t though. Things can be different (like my hair!) or unconventional (like a child in a residential treatment center) or ‘just because’ (like buying Little Debbie’s for the kids lunches, even though they are a No-No). And even though I know that, and embrace it in certain areas of my life, others are totally off limits.

Like Christmas. I am usually a At-Christmas-Things-Have-To-Be-A-Certain-Way-Kinda-Girl, too. Like the entire balance of the universe is going to be off if things aren’t how they should be.

I don’t know what is going on, but this year I am like a Christmas free for all. I wasn’t up for cutting down a tree the day after Thanksgiving like always- so the kids added to the yarn tree on the wall (and lovveeeddddd doing that). I usually host Christmas morning at my place, but this year my mom has dibs. I usually meticulously plan a Christmas budget- this year, there is what there is and I am not stressing about it for a minute.

It’s like a light went on, or off.

I think it is in part because last year, when Phoenix spent his first year at a RTC, it was like a sense of relief that we would have some peace at the holidays. It was like a weight was gone and I could enjoy myself knowing he was in the safest place possible and all my others kids were, too.  This year I just want him home. I just want all my kids together in one place. And since we’re not getting that, it’s like everything else is just a little off. Or not off actually, just different.

And maybe it’s in part that I am finding out a bit more out about myself each day. I am finding I like the dining floor to be littered in scraps of paper from the snowflakes we are making to hang in the windows. I am finding I don’t really mind spending time with music on while I wash the millionth dish of the day (the dishwasher has been out for a few months). I am finding I like the quiet days I am spending at home with a wide open schedule, and the quieter they are, the happier I am.

I am finding that stressing out about things at the holidays is just not apart of who I am anymore. I like that. I like my yarn tree and my randomly hung lights and my blue painters tape holding the snowflakes in place- I like my lovely messy home.

I hope you are also finding ways to embrace the lovely messy in your life this holiday season, too.

 

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time travel.

28 Nov

 

 

I was looking for an old hat  I had stored in the furnace room. And I reach inside the box and instead of a hat my hands find a way to time travel. 

 

It is a magic portal to another time and space and my hand shakes as I hold the photograph containing pieces of my heart. My eyes fill fast, because I know time travel is a tricky thing and the formula doesn’t always translate the same the second time you try.

 

But this time, it is working. And I see through foggy eyes the power of the past. The  little fingers and the curly hair  caught in an image and the image is standing still. And my breathe is standing still, too.

I look around for a hand to hold, although I know the house is empty, because suddenly stumbling on the past seems like to much for my heart to bear.  I breathe in, deep, even though it is hard to do.  There is a longing and a love and an ache that happens when you time travel, I’ve done this before.  I close my eyes, smiling through the tears, holding tight to the memories stored in this portal.

It is a beautiful thing, finding a gateway to your heart, when you weren’t looking for it.

 

 

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good to be alive.

29 Oct

It feels good to be alive.

I was gone for the weekend at a writing conference. Ladies from my critique group were going, and although I don’t write romance, I do write fiction, and there were a whole slew of great workshops I was able to attend and I wrote pages and pages of notes and made a few pitches to some agents. A friend came with me, and having someone to compare thoughts with really made the conference great.

Another thing that made the conference great was being able to hear from other writers, like this one, talk about their projects, their passion, their stories. It is powerful to be in a room with 300 people who all have a need to put words onto paper. It is powerful to be in a room of 300 people who have all sacrificed time and money to learn more about their craft.  It is powerful to be in a room of 300 people who intrinsically get you, because they do the same thing you do, everyday. Sit down and make stories.

 I have new ideas floating around my head and it makes my heart big and full and reminds me that the time I spend working on my stories is important. It is important because it makes me feel alive and whole in ways nothing else does.

 It feels good to feel alive. It makes mornings, like this one, where I find myself cleaning up the vomit from my 2 year-old, less crappy. It makes the errands and cooking and the life-living feel less crappy because those things don’t define me and they don’t not-define me either. I am the sum total of all these things. The laundry-ing and the write-ing and the parent-ing and the wife-ing and the vomit-cleaning-up-ing.  All the parts are important, because they are all me.

 So yes, it feels good to be alive. And it feels good to nurture the parts that stretch me and challenge me because that is what living is about. Not being stagnant. Remembering to do more with my heart and my soul than the mundane. And then, remembering also, that the mundane is important, too. It can stretch me, if I allow room for that.

 What makes life feel-alive for you?

 

 

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to Love.

3 Oct

“Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping in tact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.” -C.S.Lewis

A friend texted me this quote last week, and tears sprang to my eyes, knowing the truth of the words. Yes, we can all keep ourselves protected from pain- but that’s not really living is it?

May we all Be Brave,  sharing pieces of our hearts, so that we can feel  the tender ache of Love.

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5 years-of-blogging.

14 Sep

5 years ago I sat down and opened up my laptop and started a little blog. It was the fall of September 2007 and my friend had recently introduced me to what a blog was. Little did I know five years later I would still be visiting my little space on the internet sharing my life-happenings with you.

I wrote over at St.Udio for much of the time I’ve been blogging. I stopped sharing there when that site became too hard to visit. It became a very vulnerable space and I needed a fresh start. The Lovely Messy has become that for me, and sometimes change is a very good thing.

I have spent some time scrolling over my past five years knowing I was coming up on a big blog-iversary and it is so wonderful to pick a month in time and be transported back to that moment with pictures and words. I am so glad I’ve preserved my personal history this way. There is no way on earth I could have remembered what we did October 2008 without this sort of documentation. That being said, it is also very hard to look back at myself from five years ago. I feel like I was such. a. different. person.

Five years ago I was 25 years old, had a newly turned 3-year-old {Moses} and Lincoln was just 6 months old. Babies!

I went to mama-playgroups and had so much energy. I thought we could take on the world {which is why we brought home 3 of our kiddos just a few short months later!}! Jeremy and I rented a house from my parents, he was a tennis coach and science teacher. I hung out with the babies and was learning to can {a hobby I still love so much!}. It was just such a different life. I was recently on the phone with my friend, and my eyes were brimming with tears, as I was telling her how I just feel like such a different person. And sometimes I like the person I have grown into, but sometimes it is just really sobering to think about how greatly our life choices and experiences shape us. It doesn’t always translate into what we thought it would. Sometimes it changes our perspective, our beliefs, our dreams- dramatically. And changes them in ways we don’t like.

But change is also a very good thing. It opens our minds and our hearts in magnificent ways. It makes us stronger and wiser and more discerning. For example, five years ago I never knew the beauty of boxed wine or amazon prime. Growth, people. In all seriousness though, I am proud of the woman I am, five years later, and it feels good to say write that.

I am proud of myself for sticking with this blog thingy. I am proud that I have chosen to be transparent in this way, my life is much richer because of it. It always means so much to hear from a reader that something I said has resonated with them, or that something I’ve gone through is something they can relate with. It has been amazing to meet people in real life that I got to know through the internet. It is a really cool time in history to be  a person :)

Thanks for sticking around and supporting me and my family for the past five years.

xoxo,

anya*

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