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Eight Years

December 31, 2018 RaeAnna

Alex and I rarely take cute pictures, they are usually goofy. | My Sweater (backless!) | My Jeans | My Socks | My Boots | My Watch | Alex’s Sweater (I picked it out) | Alex’s Jeans (these too)

To the rest of the world, today is New Year’s Eve. Up until eight years ago, it was just New Year’s for me too.

My most influential person came into my life eight years and a few hours ago. His name is Alex. He’s made appearances here and there on my blog. He’s been a big part of my travels this year. He helped make 2018 brilliant.

I can’t really describe Alex to you in any way other than he is an amazing person. People love him or hate him. There is no in between. I don’t know why people hate him except he is an intense kind of man in all the best ways. So there is probably something wrong with the haters.

There are people who come into our lives and change everything. Alex is that person to me. I am who I am because of him. He has become such a part of my story it is impossible to tell it without him. He is written on my soul.

We are always laughing together. Seriously. It’s obnoxious… To other people, I imagine.

On New Year’s Eve of 2010, Alex came into my life, and he never left. We were in college together. He was a senior; I was a freshman. We had almost no reason to meet. Due to fate and a heart condition, he’s stuck with me. We were in choir together. When our director rearranged the seating arrangement, he ended up sitting in front of me. Very few people know this about him anymore: he has a beautiful singing voice. Long story short. Out of sheer optimism or naiveté or stupidity, I invited this dude, who I’d never had an in-person conversation with, to my house for New Year’s. He hugged my dad before we’d ever touched. It was ballsy. It worked out.

In the last eight years, Alex and I have been through more than I could ever write about. We walked to hell and back holding hands a few times over. It wasn’t easy. Actually, it’s been the hardest eight years of my life. Because of him, they have been the best eight years of my life. He is just shy of sainthood. Flawed as he is, he has always put me first. I have severe PTSD. I’ve been through sexual assaults and domestic violence. I have been in abusive relationships. I have been insecure. I have been broken. I have been bruised literally and in a non-physical sense of things. I have seen some pretty horrific things. Through my darkest days, Alex has always been there. He has never left. He has never made me feel less than. He has made me laugh through my tears. He has held my hand when there were no words to be said. When I have been unable or unwilling to pick up the pieces of my soul, he has put them back together. He helped make me whole, when I had never known what that felt like.

Alex went into the Marines over five years ago. We spent three years living together before he enlisted. In five years, we have spent one Christmas and one birthday together. He deployed twice. Two weeks ago, he left on his third deployment. He’s on a boat somewhere in the world. I don’t know where. Late on Christmas Day, I was lucky enough to get a phone call from him. We exchange emails whenever he has internet. I don’t know when he’ll be home. It will be eight months or more. It’s hard. I miss him. I miss hearing his voice. I miss getting to visit him. This isn’t new. We’ve gone over a year without seeing or talking to each other by phone in the past. It’s part of life in the military and loving someone in the military. Many other women, men, and families go through the same thing. Worry is part of our lives.

Just doing normal people stuff in a field in 12 degree weather. Like normal people.

Alex and I have been a part of each other’s lives for eight years. They have been beautiful and stressful and all the feelings in between. Life has been hard on us. A lot of things were out of our control, some that weren’t, and some that seemed like they were. I wish many things had gone differently in our combined lives and our lives before each other. Then again, I don’t. I wouldn’t change him or I or what we have for anything in the world.

I can’t tell you who I am without talking about Alex. He has been an integral part of my life. Some people don’t just influence who we are, they form who we are. He has pushed me to be better. He has questioned my opinions and thoughts. He has held me when I’ve cried. He always challenges me to be the best version of myself. I don’t think I’m as good for him as he is for me, but I’m not going to tell him that any time soon.

It’s been eight years. I hope to have about a gazillion more, but I’ll settle for another seventy. I think I can make it to 97. Any day after that will be a blessing I think.

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“Can we just take a normal picture???” I ask. He responds “No.”

Books, Fiction

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

November 27, 2018November 27, 2018 RaeAnna

The Silence of the Girls | Boots | Jeans | Knit Headband

Read Maybe
Length 304
Quick Review Pat Barker retells the Iliad in The Silence of the Girls from a new and forgotten point of view: the women. Briseis was queen of a city before it fell making her a slave to Achilles.

We know the story of Helen of Troy. We know of Helen through the stories of men. What about women? Where were they? What is their story? They were lost to history, so Pat Barker gives them a voice in The Silence of the Girls through Briseis, a queen who fell with her city.

Briseis was still a teenager and a queen of a neighboring Trojan city when the Greeks attacked her city. As a little girl, she lived in Troy spending time with Helen. She was a proud Trojan woman. She watched everything and everyone she cared for destroyed by the Greeks led by Achilles. She became a slave to Achilles in the Greek camp outside of Troy. Briseis is used as a pawn and as a woman, but she listens and watches. The Silence of the Girls is Barker’s take on what the women, who were barely old enough to be called women, went through as victims of war. Pawns of men.

The women in the camp have one role: serve the men. They do it in a variety of ways: being “bed-girls,” working in the medical tent, weaving, and serving. They go where they are told, when they are told, and they do it silently. They are no longer women; they are objects with a purpose. They were a fundamental reason the Greeks won the war.

The Silence of the Girls is told mostly from Briseis’ perspective. There are minor chapters told from Achilles’ perspective. Briseis is strong and broken and full of disgust for her owners and situation because who wouldn’t be. BIG BUT. Briseis is the flattest character in the novel. The side characters were far more interesting. Briseis showed almost nothing but disgust the women who were fond of their captors. Achilles was the enemy, but he was complicated as all humans are. As a woman with a past of abuse, it’s far more complicated than the simplicity of emotion that Barker illustrates in Briseis. Stockholm syndrome is real and complicated. In a world where there is very little kindness, Briseis was on the receiving end of a lot of kindness, which would affect how she felt about her captors, but it just doesn’t in the novel. Barker really needed to dive into the psyche of an abused woman, and she didn’t.

I’ve seen The Silence of the Girls referred to as a masterpiece. It’s good, but it’s not that good. The emotions fall flat for the situation. The Washington Post’s review said the only remnant of Briseis’ past as a queen is a tunic of her father’s and that Pat Barker upends the storytelling of famous women, who have the most privilege. Except this isn’t true at all. Barker is telling the story of a privileged woman. Briseis was a queen and a young, beautiful one at that. She was Achilles’ concubine because she was a queen. A “prize.” Had she been a woman of lesser or no status, she would have been one of the women scavenging under tents and dying with the rats. Briseis complained of her life as a slave, but even her atrocious status as a “bed-girl” was much better than women of lesser status. She was not beaten. She was not passed around. She was not starved. She was not on the receiving end of so many possible horrors. There is no gratitude for that, and victims of abuse always, always, always see how it could be worse. Briseis doesn’t.

I truly did enjoy reading The Silence of the Girls. It was a really entertaining book to read with the right amount of mysticism and historicity. It could have been more, though. It could have been a triumph for abused women. Instead it fell flat.

Buy on Amazon || Buy on Book Depository

Memorable Quotes
“Oh, I watched him all right, I watched him like a mouse.”
“Men carve meaning into women’s faces; messages addressed to other men.”
“How on earth can you feel any pity or concern confronted by this list of intolerably nameless names.”

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Title: The Silence of Girls
Author: Pat Barker
Publisher: Doubleday
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780385544214

Books, NonFiction

Well-Read Black Girl

November 23, 2018November 23, 2018 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 272
Quick Review Glory Edim is the amazing woman behind the Instagram @wellreadblackgirl. I have been obsessively following her since I started my blog. Her book is a testament to the importance of books.

Well-Read Black Girl is a book of essays about reading journeys by amazing black women from a variety of backgrounds compiled by Glory Edim, the creator of @wellreadblackgirl. It is beautiful. Literature is white-centric. As a girl, I read books and new they were about girls who looked like me. To be honest, I didn’t really read books with people who don’t look like me as the main characters until I was in high school. There aren’t that many of them. For a huge swath of the population, they don’t see themselves in the pages they read.

The authors of the essays talk about finding their reflection in the books they read within the pages of Well-Read Black Girl. The books they talk about are meant for the world, but have unique meanings to each woman. They searched for themselves in books like we all do. For them, it was harder because literature rarely tells their story. These are the essays about the books that changed them. We all have that book, I think.

I honestly don’t want to go into too much depth about the book because it’s so fabulous. You should take the time to read it. The essays aren’t long, so you can enjoy them with a busy schedule. I will be returning to the book often because it’s inspiring.

I truly loved reading this. There were names I knew and names I am not familiar with, but I’m going to try and broaden my horizons more. Several books and authors are mentioned in several essays. The fact this is so prevalent goes to show how few options there are for and about women of color. In fact, the books the essays discuss are the same books that touched me deeply.

My favorite thing in Well-Read Black Girl are the book recommendations. There are several lists of books for and about black women throughout. It also compiles all the books mentioned throughout the pages. There are so many good books mentioned and several I still need to read.

I can’t recommend this book enough!

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Book Depository

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Memorable Quotes
“I suddenly understood that her story was part of the larger story of Black womanhood and survival.”
“We are not looking for anyone else to give us validation; because we have one another.”
“Mom raised us more like cactuses, rather than orchids.” Gabourey Sidibe

Title: Well-Read Black Girl; Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves
Author: Glory Edim
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9770525619772

Blog + Dog

Closet Anxiety Attack

November 7, 2018 RaeAnna

Just so you know, these pictures were taken this morning. She was in a very good mood with a wagging tail and being bribed with treats. Lots of treats. I would never invade her privacy or exploit her during an anxiety attack. She’s very good at putting on the sad puppy eyes for treats; it’s a boxer trait.

Sometimes, the only place to go is the closet.

Beau is a rescue dog. Honestly, she is the best dog I have ever had, and there have been a more than a few. I brought her home almost two years ago. The first year was a little rough, but so worth it.

As a rescue, she has a lot of idiosyncrasies. With time, she has gotten more comfortable and less tightly wound. The evidence of her struggle during her formative years is always evident, though. The kitchen is a difficult place for her. Everything is terrifying. I love being in the kitchen, so we have bad days sometimes. Usually, she sits on the couch watching me or curled up on my feet on a comfy rug.

Last week, I was cooking dinner in the kitchen like I usually do. Beau was sitting next to me on her rug. Her back leaned up against my calf. I had one of the bottom kitchen cabinet doors open to grab a pan out; it was situated in front of my legs. The stove made a clicking noise every once in awhile, which is usual. This day, the clicking noise triggered something in Beau. I felt her start to shake. Her shaking became stronger over the next minute. She stood up and pushed her way between my legs crawling into the cabinet. I stopped everything I was doing to sit down next to her.

Giving the camera her signature side eye.

I put her sweater on her because it helps make her feel safe. I held onto her tight. Like in people, when there is weight pressed on her body, it help calms her anxiety. She likes to be in enclosed spaces where nothing can sneak up on her. As someone with PTSD, I understand this more than she knows.

She crawled out of the kitchen cabinet shaking violently and ran to the closet. She crawled as far into the corner as she could under all the clothes and on top of the shoes. Luckily, I managed to get the shoes out from under her. We sat there for twenty minutes. She shook and shook and shook. She cried. I held onto her. She was so scared. She even peed a little; it’s not abnormal during her severe anxiety attacks. It breaks my heart every time. She was curled into my body as far as she could. We both cried in our own ways. Her breathing started to quicken, and I had to help slow it down. Her shaking slowly eased up.

When she started to pace, I tried to find somewhere else we could sit down. She was not comfortable anywhere in the house. So we went outside. Beau needed to run the shakes off. So we ran and ran and ran around the apartment complex until her tail started to wag again.

Her anxiety attacks have become a rarity now. They happen every few months instead of every few days. They don’t usually last more than a few minutes, but this one was a particularly bad one and lasted over an hour. I still don’t know exactly why it happened because nothing was out of the norm.

Beau is such a sweetheart. She is the light of my life. Sometimes, all I can do is hold her and love her as she fights her own demons. As a rescue and a former abused animal, these things are part of our life.

xoxo,
Beau and RaeAnna

Lifestyle

I’m Not In It For the Free Stuff… BUT!

June 26, 2018 RaeAnna

For this week’s Tuesday Truth, I want to talk about the one thing that is really starting to get on my last nerve about being a blogger.

I started Bookish Liaisons as a hobby and a passion project. A place I could take all my thoughts and opinions about the books I read. It still is. It has definitely grown larger than my wildest dreams. It accidentally turned into a small job and business. This place of mine transformed from a book blog into a bookish lifestyle blog because I’m a nerd with a life!

I never, not once, started this to get free stuff. Actually, the first time someone sent me a free book, I was thrilled and mostly shocked. “I should have started doing this a long time ago,” went through my mind because free books! A bookworm’s dream. I do not search out free books, and I do not search out free stuff. Sometimes, I get things in exchange for an honest review. Always honest. I’m never going to sell out for loot. Or try and sell my followers on things I don’t genuinely believe in.

Complete honesty: I’m pretty proud of the following I have on Instagram. I love all my followers because they are joining in on this great journey of mine. I’m no Selena Gomez, but I’m doing just fine!

Due to the number of followers I have, I get a lot of offers from companies and people wanting to send me their products. I turn down most because I am very picky about what I associate with. I am only ever going to talk about, post, and promote things I believe in and would spend my own money on. The books I have received from publishers are fabulous, but I only say “yes” to the books I’m actually interested in reading. I have turned down a ton of books, even if they are free. No matter what, I still review with honesty. (The books I have hated the most have been books sent to me for free. Oh man, I roasted a couple.) I’m not going to put my integrity on the line for a free book. No way. If I upset a publisher, editor, or author because of that, so be it.

What is starting to get on my last nerve as a blogger: companies soliciting. I’m a blogger. I’m a blogger on a limited budget. I freelance for a living. I like to spend my money on three things: travel, my dog, and food. I’m a bargain shopper when it comes to books because I’m a bargain shopper with e.v.e.r.y.thing. I ABSOLUTELY HATE WHEN COMPANIES, AUTHORS, ANYONE REACHES OUT ASKING ME TO BUY THEIR PRODUCT AND REVIEW IT. I get. We all have to hustle. It’s the way of the world. If you really want me to review your book, candle, bookmark, product, whatever, then send me an email, ask if I’d be interested, and then send it to me for free. I will never ever ever ask anyone to send me something for free. If I want it I will buy it. I am not going to spend the little money I have on something I do not want, need, or am looking for.

I have been contacted so many times because people want me to buy, review, and promote their product. Being a blogger, creating content, writing posts, and promoting takes A LOT of time. If you can’t pay for my time to market your product as the influencer I am, then at least offer to send it to me for free. I always politely say “thanks, but no thanks.” Sometimes, they even ask if I could shout them out or repost their pictures on my feed directing my followers their way. NO. Unless I can product test, I am not going to promote it. Integrity people. So many of the people who have approached me this way had products I would have totally accepted. Not now. Ya gotta spend some to make some.

I’m nothing special; I have a respectable following. I am an influencer and a blogger. I absolutely love doing this. I hate that people don’t take the work, my time, or my followers seriously. I’m not in this for free stuff. I am also not in this to spend all of my money.

End of rant!

Lifestyle

Merry Christmas

December 24, 2017 RaeAnna

Merry Christmas!

Well, Merry Christmas Eve! I have been in full holiday cheer for about a month and a half, so this is very exciting. I am spending the holidays with my parents in Ames, Iowa where I grew up. It’s the first Christmas I have been home in a very long time, so they are incredibly happy to have me. Beau is by my side enjoying her first Christmas full of treats and a big, shiny stick just for her in all the houses she’s been to!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are exciting but also bittersweet for me because it means the end of the season I love so much. This year is slightly different, however. Today is a very special day. It is the day leading up to the day epitomizing cheer, joy, and goodwill towards all! It also marks my one year anniversary.

On this day last year, I launched my blog, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. It was 2:30 in the morning on Christmas Eve when I finally clicked the launch button on all the accounts. I started off with exactly one follower: my best friend. She was sitting in the room with me as she patiently waited for me to finish up my new passion project before we headed to bed. I went to sleep thinking I would have a handful of likes and maybe a follower or two. I woke up to find over two hundred likes on my first post on Instagram. It ended up climbing all day long eventually topping out with over four hundred likes. How this happened on my first go: to this day, I have no idea. It would take me eight months to have another post on Instagram surpass my first one in popularity.

I chose Christmas Eve to launch because it is my favorite holiday, and I thought I would give myself several reasons to celebrate for years to come. I didn’t know it then, but it was a great decision. I have always found myself incredibly grateful on this day, and this community and experience has added to my appreciation of this beautiful world I live in.

I began this adventure with a review of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and a post of my bookshelves and tree. So I will come full circle with another post of my bookshelves and Christmas tree. As luck would have it, Christmas Eve is landing on #shelfiesunday!

I don’t have much to say other than:

Merry Christmas
I hope you receive armfuls of books.
Thank you for a wonderful year.
I am looking forward to seeing where this next year takes us.

In a year, this has evolved from a minute hobby with one follower and no hopes to something far more amazing and fulfilling than I could have imagined. I have loved every minute getting to know this beautiful community I am a part of. At the beginning, I knew next to nothing. I have learned so much with more still to learn. I can’t imagine my life without this venture of mine anymore.

xoxo, Beau and RaeAnna

xoxo,
Beau and RaeAnna