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Bookish Tay

Good Books + Good Living

Categories: Journal

In This Season

In this season there is anxiety and turmoil and chaos and also light and joy and beauty.

Happy Sunday, Friends. Just like last week, I’m coming at ya with a weekly update from our life. This past week seemed like it was a million years long (even though Griffin had Monday off) and Von spent a day with her grandparents.

It’s just one of those seasons right now that I don’t really want to be in, at least, not really.

I’ve had a lot of really dark, hard mental health days and the light at the end of the tunnel often seems very, very far away. But this week I set a goal to write in my journal every night, and I’m really glad that I did. I was able to see and remember the smaller things that are often looked over, but that made the week better.

Little girl playing with wooden train track

Von and I played a lot this week. I was feeling a tad bit guilty about our screen time usage the past few weeks (but I’m letting go of the guilt cause half the time I have been in survival mode). But we did play a lot.

Lots of trains and coloring and making a million tiny balls (ornaments as Von calls them) out of play dough.

Stack of books on a bed

Tuesday was my hardest anxiety day. The weather was still super cold and I was concerned about Texas and what was happening there. I pulled out a stack of my favorite books (above) and was planning to read from each of them until I felt calmer.

First, though, I wrote in my journal (seriously, it’s so helpful!) and then I opened up the gospel library app. I’d been reading a talk by President Nelson and he’d quoted this scripture:

“The Lord our God did visit us with assurances that He would deliver us; yea, insomuch that he did speak peace to our souls, and did grant unto us great faith, and did cause that he should hope for our deliverance in him.” – Alma 58:11

What comfort.

Girl, age 3 holding yellow flowers

After months of struggling and looking for some sort of break, on Wednesday I got one. Von (and Griffin since our WiFi stopped working) went to his parents house for the day. I got the house to myself for a while and had a major writing breakthrough!

And it was just nice to have a little time to myself. It’s the longest I’ve been a part from Von in over a year (not including when we’re all sleeping). It was needed for all of us.

So yeah, this week was kind of full of anxiety, but the kind that creeps in and lingers just underneath the edge of everything and I don’t know it’s there until it’s almost too late. But, I’m doing all the things to take care of my mental health as much as I can anyway.

And I can’t help but think that someday down the line, I’ll be grateful, grateful that even in this hard moment I wrote about it. I’m not the same person I was a year ago, or two years ago. Von’s not, you’re not. I’m so glad that we can change and grow and even if things aren’t going the way we hope, there’s still some light at the end of the tunnel, even if it’s hard to see.

Happy Sunday.

Categories: Journal

It’s a Love Story

Hey friends! For the past several weeks I’ve had the feeling to bring these types of posts back. The ones where I share more personal things about what’s been happening in our life and give a little update.

When I first started blogging, over ten years ago, these were the only types of blog posts that I wrote. They were meant for friends and family and to help me remember.

That’s why I’m bringing them back. To have a chance to update friends and family who don’t live close on what’s been happening in our lives, and so that I can remember more about this time instead of making only book lists all the time (those are fun, but not all I want to write about).

As of right now I’ll be sharing these updates/more personal posts every Sunday.

This week was cold, like it’s 3 degrees outside but feels like -10 right now cold. We also got a little bit of snow every morning, which we desperately need. Von LOVES the snow and we did get to play outside for a few minutes when we got more than an inch.

Taylor Swift also announced that her re-recordings are officially coming! Fearless (Taylor’s Version) will be out in April and we got Love Story (Taylor’s Version) on Friday. Why does this make my weekly wrap-up post? Because I love her music, I’ve been listening to Love Story on repeat and I think it’s really amazing that she’s finally going to own all of her music.

I’ve been slowly dabbling on my second book. Right now, my first novel is with an editor, and I have been patiently (sort of) waiting for her feedback. I’ve been writing a few scenes here and there of my second book, but I won’t fully dive into that one until the first one is finished.

We celebrated my father in-laws birthday on Friday and Von sent out Valentine’s Day cards to all of her aunts and uncles.

I started reading Wildly Optimistic, in hopes of redirecting my negative attitude and to have more trust in God.

Happy Sunday!

Categories: Journal

Reading the Scriptures Out Loud

Von woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

We all have days like that. When everything feels hard and doesn’t seem to go our way (in this case it was me saying no to watching Mickey Mouse before we’d even had breakfast)

But the morning tears made me wonder how our day would go. Would V have a hard day all day? Would I be able to respond with love or would I snap because I haven’t been feeling very well?

Around 11, Von was playing happily with her sensory bin full of water, with me sitting next to her. I grabbed my scriptures since I woke up late and hadn’t had time to do my morning study.

Von said “read to me mommy” those are words that I never ignore, and for a half-second, I was tempted to run into her room and grab the scriptures that have pictures.

Instead, I just started to read. I first read our chapter for the Come, Follow Me lesson this week. Then Von said “keen reading!”

So I flipped to where I was in the Book of Mormon and then decided to just start reading it out loud from the beginning to her. I read six pages before I had to stop because it was lunchtime and I was hungry.

I feel like up to this point, it’s been a struggle to read scriptures with von. We talk about Jesus and God often but she does not want to listen to the scriptures. Until today.

i have no idea if she’ll like me reading to her like this again, but I’ll definitely keep doing it as long as she will listen. And I hope she will know someday how much peace and comfort and truth the scriptures bring because they are God’s word. I hope she’ll find that peace and comfort someday, and maybe if we keep reading together, she’ll remember that too ❤️

She also wore something other than her favorite green dress (it was very dirty and needed to be washed) and I had to document that! She’s getting so big.

Categories: Journal, Lifestyle

A Season of Something New

Anyone else ready for 2020 to be, well, done?

I keep thinking about an end of year post wrapping up everything that this year has been, and well, that’s just kind of hard to do. We all went through 2020, and we (mostly) survived.

2020 was hard.

mentally. physically. emotionally. It’s not the year I imagined back in January when I wrote out all of my lofty goals. It’s not what I expected as January and February passed and it finally started to get a little warmer and Von got a little bigger and we could finally go to playdates where she could play and have fun or we could go to the park and have a good time.

Then the world essentially shut down and for days then weeks then months I was constantly asking “how long will this last? Is this our new forever?”

It was scary and not exactly fun.

but we made it through.

And 2020 wasn’t all bad.

We bought our first house (!!) and I read some really fantastic books. I made a lot of great friends only and found my relationship with Jesus again as I read from the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Von got bigger (even though she yells “I’m little!” anytime anyone tries to say she’s big) and has so much personality and love.


Adjustments.jpeg

I edited my book and then edited it some more.

Taylor Swift release TWO incredible albums!

We got to learn more about homeownership and all that comes with that.

I’ve been going to therapy regularly since February and while my mental health has sucked a lot this year, I’m also learning new ways to cope with everything that goes on inside my brain.

And at the end of the day, at least this week, as 2020 will come to a close, it feels like we’re on the cusp of something new.


Image of Taylor Epperson

I know that really, not a whole lot will change. Griff will still be working from home. We’ll still be doing virtual church on Sundays and not going out much at all, but 2021 feels new and fresh and I’m holding onto that.

I’m hopeful that even if 2021 isn’t anything like I hope (more normal than this year?!), that we’ll be able to keep slowing down and focusing on the things that matter. Because that’s really what I learned in 2020, about the things that matter.

To me that’s God. My family. Friends. Good books, good food. And creating. Those are the things I want to have more of and do more of in the coming year, and hopefully, I can let the rest just fade away.


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Categories: Faith, Journal

Come What May and Love It

I used to be really good at looking at the bright side of things. I look back on my life and see my younger self full of so much hope, despite the hard things that I was going through.

Sometimes I wonder when that hope turned into bitterness and anger. And lately I’ve wondered how to get that hope back. Because I want it back. I need it back.

Then, tonight in my online zoom class, we were talking about trials and adversity and hard things. And at one point, it hit me hard just how I can bring that hope back into my life. We read this quote from C.S. Lewis:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

What if I started looking more at the bigger picture? What would happen if I put more trust in God instead of trying to do it all myself or getting upset when he starts knocking those walls down? What would happen then?

These were the thoughts swirling in my mind when we read about this experience:

I remember loading up our children in a station wagon and driving to Los Angeles. There were at least nine of us in the car, and we would invariably get lost. Instead of getting angry, we laughed. Every time we made a wrong turn, we laughed harder. Getting lost was not an unusual occurrence for us. Once while heading south to Cedar City, Utah, we took a wrong turn and didn’t realize it until two hours later when we saw the “Welcome to Nevada” signs. We didn’t get angry. We laughed, and as a result, anger and resentment rarely resulted. Our laughter created cherished memories for us.

This comes from a talk given called “Come what may, and Love It” we talked about that idea, that maybe regardless of what came our way, we could try laughing more, showing gratitude, and maybe maybe even loving it.


Come What May and Love it quote

It’s so hard for me to do. And I’m not saying that we should ignore our pain or grief or anger. We can feel those things, we need to feel those things because life is hard and we lose people and dreams fall apart and we can be abuse or hurt or so many different things can go wrong.

But maybe, just maybe (and this really is just me trying to think out loud for how I want to be In the future). But maybe, instead of holding onto that anger (even when the moment has passed) or the stress or the sadness, what if I started to look for the good again, like I used to so often.

Because hard things are always gonna happen, but I’d rather go through life looking for the good things, even in the hard stuff, than feeling bogged down by all the stuff that isn’t so great. Cause I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I don’t want to live that way anymore.

So I’m gonna keep looking for (and sharing) the good. Because there is so much good, even if it’s a small thing today, someday we’ll be able to see the big things.


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Hi there! I'm Taylor! Welcome to Bookish Tay, a book and lifestyle blog. Looking for a good book or way to make life better? You're in the right place.

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