2024 Closeout

reader and personal favorites

While I continue to still and sort through the whiplash that’s been the last several months- while I sit and sort through the fact that the slow consistency I long for may never be real, I have few things to say.

I have so many more things to feel and think.

I love the crispness of a blank page that January 1 brings but without the hard press of agenda pen scribbles, without the ferocity of Western resolutions, and go-getting. Because I not only know better, but because I have access, I allow my body to ebb and flow within the natural rhythms and thrums of seasons and January/February are for the Great Retreat. The winter sans merry. The cold and dark without high-celebration. Don’t confuse this with sadness, though there’s much to grieve now and forever, but rather a blessing to myself and my family and my work.

A deeper iteration of quiet and rest and with that I feel inspired to follow in

Devin Kate Pope

’s footsteps and share with you my personal and reader favorites of the year-

Winter

Spring

Spring pt 2

Summer

Fall

Fall pt 2

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I got married this year. I started a (free) workshop for writers that built gorgeous queer community.¹ I was published in Hippocampus Magazine, my first literary magazine publication- it was actually the first literary magazine I pitched and while I’m not keeping score it does feel good as someone that has long struggled with not being an academic. I ate plates of pasta under thick swaths of climbing jasmine. I kissed my husband by the sea. I experienced a death of self, of ego, that both terrified and electrified. I forgave. I planted and tended to a garden. I self-published My Me: a guided journal for kids that is radically inclusive, anti-diet, gender neutral and queer as hell. I did a remarkable amount of healing. My babies are here and they are whole. Our family suffered loss and tragedy like a gold-star chart nobody asked for.

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I write this to you in mourning in morning-

Between cups of tea, yes, tea (tea?) that have woefully gone just as their coffee predecessors did for many years prior. Between 987 snacks given to my kids and others. At a kitchen table that doesn’t belong to me but that welcomed me without hesitation- if there ever was, I never felt it.

My kids never felt it

And that’s what matters.

Anaya’s family scattered throughout Michigan and the suburbs of Chicago has become my family without the obligation and awkwardness associated with family, never mind extended family. The first time I sat at this table was two years ago in the heat of July with a bink-mouthed two year old still in diapers and I haven’t looked back. I haven’t wanted to. What a gift.

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I write this with balsamic half moons cradling my eye sockets. With tendrils at my nape curling from the midwestern damp. With glances at my husband from across the room, across someone else’s car, across a sleeping kid. I sleep with Little, Anaya is on the couch, Moonie in the beach-themed Blue Room. We are shattered from weeks of relentless illness, exhaustion, worry, hospitalizations and the dark cloud of legislative session looming- darker than usual. To tell you the truth, we had no business taking this trip. We should have cancelled, we should have stayed home and rested as much as we could with two small children but on the other side were the hugs and card games and pink cheeks from a couple glasses wine that we needed and sometimes we roll the dice, especially if it’s for this, and when I tell you I won…

While we drive into the city, Little extends his arm behind his head into the third row and Moonie catches his hand in her’s and they sit quietly like this for some time. They are each other’s constants- they are each other’s slow consistency so I know it’s real. It turns out I have it after all.

I keep saying that I’m tired inside-my-bones tired and I feel inclined to stop because I don’t know anybody that isn’t and so isn’t it to say we’re just tired.

I didn’t realize we’d all arrive here but I can’t say I’m surprised.

What are your seasons? Where do you cycle?

I love you, you know? I do and I say that in a way that feels good when someone says it and they mean it. When they say all three words so that you can hear. When they say it without pause.

I love you.

Thank you for hanging out with me. Thank you for staying.

With the softest love,

AR

1. Evocative: a writing workshop will be on a month-long (overdue) hiatus throughout the month of January so I can find my footing again. If you’d like to receive email updates about workshop, please message me your email address or send an email to truckeyava at gmail dot com