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A.R. Stanley

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A Year on The Porch

My blog about life, grief, finding my way, and everything in-between, A Year on The Porch. Follow the blog here or snippets and posts on Instagram @ayearontheporch

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It’s amazing what we absorb from our environment. Remember to keep your soil rich in love, kindness, empathy, and grace to give. You are colored by what you inhale.

It has been a month of avoiding writing. For a few weeks, I felt like I was herding cats when I sat down to blog. My mind felt connected and filled with ideas. When I would sit to write, they would all come out sideways and upsidedown. I decided to journal more, which would help me find the answer, root around in my mind, and work through my stuff. It was helpful, but not in the way I wanted. I was hopeful my mind would organize, and my thoughts would come together cohesively in a manner worth sharing. They did not. I kept telling myself I couldn’t write, I couldn’t share, I didn’t know what it was I was doing. Perhaps I was right—an imposter after all. Still, the nagging in the back of my mind tells me I’m wrong. It isn’t that I can’t write. It’s that I won’t write. I make up excuses to do the very thing I need to do.

I've struggled with my writing since the fall. I can feel it simmering below the surface, but the words themselves have felt hard to find. Going from writing a novel a year for 4 straight years to a complete creative lull for about 8 months spanning 2019-2020, blogging every morning as if it were my religion, and going to save my soul for 5 months last summer, to back to a lull... Well, it's easy to say it's felt like a rollercoaster. Grief, divorce, special needs, a pandemic will do that, I suppose. I've been working on myself, and with that, I've been trying to find my creative voice again. I'm not a whole person without these pieces all playing their part. Tara-Nicholle Kirke would say human evolution only works when we are all participating and giving the world our gift to give. I know mine is writing, creating, sharing. Even if that is only for one person, who would they be if I didn't share? Who would I be if I never let myself? When I say the struggle to find the words has felt hard, that feels like an understatement. I've cried real, hard tears more than once. What is this thing inside me that I can't let out? Steven Pressfield calls it resistance, and I'm trying to find what it is I'm resisting in this season. I have an inkling. I'm trying to pay attention to the tears and when and why they come. To see if they are the arrows pointing my way out of this. I've been reading Allison Fallon's new book on writing, and she tells us time and again to get out walking, to move our bodies, to get into our limbic brain. OK, Allison, I'm hearing you. I felt like I couldn't find the time to walk enough. I did the other things, cleared my writing space, got a new journal, remembered the essential oil I used to diffuse while writing, making a map back to my creativity with the things around me. Damn the walking. Then Serendipity showed up. I like to think the Holy Spirit and Serendipity are the same. She brought me a puppy. Hmm... suddenly the walking felt easier, the getting up at 5 a.m. felt easier, the limbic brain awoke. I'm still wrestling with those words, ideas, and frustration, but something is slowly working out in me. Perhaps it's Serendipity.

Happy International Women’s Day! You may have noticed a new look, a new name, maybe a new feel at A Year On the Porch, but it’s still me. 🙂 I’m still here doing what I do. I just felt a shift inside myself that urged an outward change as well. I hope you enjoy it.

One of my favorite mugs sits on my desk, warm, inviting, a tall spoon sticking out the top of it. It is filled with tea, a little bit of honey, lemon. It transports me back to my childhood. I can still picture that old farmhouse, nestled behind the peach orchard, dark wood, white lace curtains, always full of piano music and tea. I loved that house. I loved the people who lived in it. Mostly, I loved how I felt when I went there. Mrs. Nitzsche had the gift of hospitality and a great red lip. I can still hear the clank of the china, smell the lemon slices, hear the box fan humming in the summer months. I remember the evenings we would spend, mothers and daughters, sitting in her family room, teacups perched on our laps, listening to Elisabeth Elliot on cassette tape. I don’t remember if it was once a month or every few weeks. I remember those nights: the talking, the giggles, us girls trying to act proper and grown-up, failing miserably. I remember the feeling of being seen, taught, cared for.

I bought a bright red bullet journal in 2019 to use in 2020. Around October 2019, I started doodling in that audacious little book. I created my opening pages for the coming year, and through that process, I realized my word for 2020 should be Permission. It all felt bold, scary, thrilling. I started 2020 like no other year. I stayed in an Air B&B, watched comedy, worked on my bullet journal, wrote, journaled, and told my then-husband over the phone when he called hysterical that yes, I did want a divorce. I could in no way keep doing what we were doing.

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