My friend Nikki McArthur is here visiting, and she brought her little bundle of Hutch Mayhem.  We are swooning.

Nikki is here to satisfy my baby cravings and laugh at my kitchen incompetence, but also to start work on my website rebrand.  I’m so excited to unveil a new online look for you guys in a little while– a virtual Queen Sweep, if you will!

Let’s talk about a very important political topic of import: flowers.

Portland is POPPING with flowers right now. 

(If you live on the East Coast, I’m so sorry.  Feel free to hate me.)

I love flowers ridiculously much.  Some parched part of my soul gets all filled up by the blossoms everywhere, and if you follow my Instagram feed, you’ll know that I can’t stop taking pictures of them and smelling them and rubbing my cheek against them.  Pretty much flowers are my religion.  (Also swearing.)

If you’ve been around a while, you know that every year I declare a theme for myself.  (Last year it was EFBA, which stands for Epic Fucking Badass.  This year it’s EFBA Writer.)

Well a few years ago, I chose the word “Bloom” as my theme.

So lovely, right?  Gentle?  Delicate?

Yeah.  Bloom was hands-down the hardest year of my life. 

It was when everything fell apart.

It makes total sense in retrospect.  For me to bloom into a fuller version of myself, a lot of things had to be completely broken down and stripped away.  And it was raw, and terrifying, and painful.

So now I pick dainty themes like EFBA.  None of this blooming business.

Because it takes enormous courage to bloom.

You have to unfurl in the darkness, with no guarantee of what lies above.
You have to push through dirt and stone and worms and creepy-crawlies.
You have to show your tenderest parts to the world, knowing full well that the world might be harsh and inhospitable.

And that’s what we have to do too, any time we want to open up into a bigger version of ourselves.  It’s scary.  It’s risky.  You might get pummeled.  You might get mocked.  You might fail publicly and mortifyingly.

But if you want to be beautiful, it’s just part of the deal.

In high school, my boyfriend gave me a journal with that incredible Anais Nin quote:

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

(He also gave me a journal that said, “Life is too short to wear uncomfortable shoes,” and I crossed out the word ‘uncomfortable’ and wrote in ‘ugly,’ but I digress.)

It’s important to tell the truth about how scary and painful and awkward it can be to bloom, because that part is usually invisible. 

We see people on TV and getting published and in the newspaper when they’re in full bloom– waving boldly in the wind, all petals outstretched in all their glory.  So then we compare ourselves with them– our weird contorted scared selves, with our funny bumps and lumps and dirt still clinging to us– and we think we must be doing something wrong.  We figure maybe we’re just not meant for full blossom glory.

But all those people who you see blooming wildly?  They had to push their way up through the dirt, just like you and me.  It’s just that our culture doesn’t celebrate that part, so we don’t usually hear that part of the story.

Make no mistake– it’s scary as fuck to do something new, try something you don’t know if you’re good at yet, and even do it badly a bunch of times before you get the hang of it.  That’s the underground part, and it can be lonely and disheartening.

But if crocus and muscari and lilacs and tulips can do it??

So can you, dearheart.  Because you’re an epic fucking badass too.

The glorious women of valor and courage in The Queen Sweep are doing this part right now, and I’m watching them with my heart pounding because I know exactly how scary it can be to show those tender parts to anyone else–and they’re doing it ANYWAY.  They’re opening up their underwear drawers and their closets and their histories to each other in a way that is both shy and wildly revolutionary.  I am so freaking proud of them.  They’re blooming gorgeous.

So wherever you are in the process– planting new seeds, raking away the old growth so something new can be born, or pushing your way out of the ground tender and scared– just remember that the ingredients are the same for both flowers and humans.  Water, sunlight, courage, and lots of love.

Happy blooming, dear ones.

much love,
Anna