A friend comes to visit and for this reason, and this reason alone, I begin to clean the house. She hasn’t been to our house here in Saint Louis since we moved nearly four years ago. Four. I say the number aloud, not believing it but having to because it is the truth and I’m hunting for it. Now that I have children who also hunt, it’s become clear: this is not a journey particular to me, but one that most find themselves lost on, looking this way or that, wondering if what they see is mirror or mirage.
Read MoreDear Somebody: A thousand years.
The Biggest Dream, originally published in Issue #38 of Chickpea Magazine
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
I’m sitting under the Dallas sun when I hear about the blood. The bleeds are two fish making their way through the currents of your brain and I wonder what they are looking for. What do they hope to find? Do they realize the disruptions they are causing?
I’m sitting in the DFW airport when it occurs to me that the fish inside your brain are still swimming, that possibly they’ve been swimming for a very long time. It occurs to me that sharks are a type of fish: stealthy, silent. Their bodies are made out of cartilage; they are unburdened by the weight of bone. Sharks sneak up on us when we finally set our anxiety aside, just long enough for a dip in the salty waters. Just long enough to enjoy life for a few minutes. I feel torn. I’m stuck between my own anger and the reality of knowing that no sharks singled you out. They were just hungry. You were just there.
I’m sitting in the ICU when I first see that the waves in your brain are large. Only a large object could cause such a disturbance, ripples that wash over your memory, your judgment, your speech. The brain is categorized into eight separate lobes and there is water, I mean, blood—everywhere.
These are some big fish, I think to myself, trying to reach you through your closed eyes. I’ve spent years trying to catch the big fish, and here you caught two all on your own without even trying. I wonder if you’ve ever been whale watching; I don’t think you have. Maybe once in Hawaii? I begged you to take me fishing when I was a kid, but I don’t think we ever did…right? Right? I want you to wake up so I can confirm this information, but your eyes remain closed no matter how loud I scream.
I’m sitting in the hospital room next to you when you tell me the year is 1926. I don’t blink; I ask you to try again. You want to ask where my sister is, but you can’t retrieve her name. She’s coming soon, I tell you, and your face softens. What’s my name? I ask, and you hesitate. You don’t answer. I don’t blink; I don’t ask you to try again. I know you recognize who I am and the warmth of you washes over me. You’re still you, and I feel comforted by your presence, just like I did when I was a kid. Even though you don’t know my name. Even though everything has changed.
I’m pulling a sheet over the chair next to your bed when you speak to me unprompted. I think I’m going to get better, you say, and my heart breaks over the light in you. Some people swallow a little of the sun and it stays with them forever; you did, and I know that. The sunlight beams out of your face brightly even though everything is cracked. It’s a light that always plays, even when it’s a bad hand, even when it’s easier to blame, to argue, to just plain quit.
You lay down in bed and I lay down in the chair next to you. It is so loud in this room filled with patients and nurses and lights and flashes and I am filled to the nose with overwhelm and questions. How strong is each ripple moving through your brain? Will the water hurt or heal all that it touches? After everything evaporates, what will remain?
You are confused, displaced. I’m right here, I reassure you. It’s time for sleep. I think about how many times my small children have fought against the night, apprehensive about what happens after they close their eyes. I think about how many times I’ve waited until they’ve fallen asleep before backing out of their room slowly, sometimes on my knees. I think about how life is a ripple, a wheel that keeps turning. Time waits for no one.
It’s been one thousand years since I relied on parental presence to feel safe enough to close my eyes; for you, it’s been even longer. You’re my dad, and for the first time in a thousand years, I fall asleep holding your hand. And you fall asleep holding mine.
TUESDAY
Pops in March (sketchbook, 2026)
Pops in March (sketchbook, 2026)
Pops in March (sketchbook, 2026)
I’m no good at capturing likeness, but for once, I don’t let it bother me. I just focus on the moment, the drawing, the memory. Everything changes in time.
WEDNESDAY
I’ve cited this passage in my newsletter before, and I’ve no doubt I will do so again; it is one that I return to repeatedly as the years roll on by:
“Care is like ephemeral art—an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture of mac and cheese and baby wipes and no tears shampoo and socks that never match and chore charts that never work and all that just gets blown away with the winds of time. And like art that isn’t static, isn’t permanent, can’t be put up on a wall and admired in a museum—care is devalued. We stumble on it sometimes in the wild and it takes our breath away, a momentary glimpse of the tenderness with which we hold and protect and nourish and delight in our loved ones; just like one of Goldsworthy’s mandala’s, there’s a divine structure to it, a feeling of inevitability. It’s as ordinary as dirt and as sacred as the kind found at Chimayo. It’s here, there, and everywhere, so kind of nowhere.
Caring for someone you love is, of course, a reward on to itself, the deepest of them, but it need not be labor that happens in such embattled circumstances. It could be absorbed and still revered, invisible and still funded, ephemeral and still prized. It could be held as the center of our existence, rather than the thing we rush through to get to our “real work.” We could see and honor the seasons—caring for children, caring for elders—and the variable capacities—the neurodivergent and disabled and chronically and temporarily ill.
I wish we had policy and professional expectations that mirrored our better angels, which show up again and again and again. Meanwhile, the winds will keep blowing away our beautiful care. That’s okay. That’s as it should be. Most of what is wildly worthwhile is achingly impermanent.”
—from Courtney Martin’s The Art of Care Mostly Disappears
THURSDAY
Some folks’ lives roll easy as a breeze, drifting through a summer night; but most folks’ lives, oh, they stumble, Lord, they fall; some folks’ lives never roll at all.
FRIDAY
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
—The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider
Of all the things you can put in front of your eyes, I’m grateful that my little letter is one of them.
If you’d like to support me, please buy my books. My art prints and line of greeting cards make excellent gifts for yourself or a friend. You can also hire me for your next project—I’d love to work together.
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: More Than Machine.
“More Than Machine” for Issue #68 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
I sit on Zoom with three friends, all of us hoping to connect after the slog of winter holidays and time away from ourselves. I look forward to our monthly calls—we are all four South Asian, all four book-makers, all four interested in bringing our identities to the forefront of an industry that, with all of its promise, still resists a bend towards change.
One friend lives in Minneapolis. Her life is grocery deliveries and running escort for those too frightened to leave their homes; her life is organizing and comforting her community; her life is checking social media to see where it’s safe to go; her life is trying not to fall prey to the horrors of social media; her life is carrying her papers on her person, though she is a US citizen, though she knows her papers may not spare her. When you look eye to eye into a gun, it’s a roll of the dice. How generous or angry or sad is the gunman today?
Another friend lost a parent swiftly, unexpectedly, during a personal season reserved for joy. Our hearts explode with the conflict of emotion. Our faces contort with grief while we listen to her story. I feel tiny muscles in my face move involuntarily. For hours, we listen. We speak sparingly, holding space for each other to exist in this liminal space between the reality of our lives and the memory this call will soon be. The tears fall rapidly.
I cry for two days after. I am not unfamiliar with death. It is not hidden in our culture: We hold the bodies close, we help the spirit go on. Still, the sadness I feel seems to double in size. The anger burns me up inside. I call my parents and ask them to explain Hindu death rituals to me, why the dead are cared for more lovingly than those who are still alive. I can’t stop thinking about violence—in life, and death, and then again while we escort the dead to the afterlife. Why I am so shaken? For a few days, I interrogate myself for my weakness. Why am I so affected by another person’s pain? Why can’t I let it go? How will I ever handle this grief when it is my own?
It’s a few weeks later now. My mind is beginning to sing, rather than scold, as I have instructed it to do. I do not feel shame for my sensitivity; rather, I recognize the barbaric nature of having ever asked myself to detach from another person’s grief. From a community’s grief. From our country’s grief. My children are five and two. Already, they feel the discomfort of observing pain in each other’s eyes. They ask questions. They move towards each other. They try to help. Though they feel discomfort, they do not avert their eyes. They do not look away.
I stretch and check the walls of my body, the home that houses this mind. I exercise to keep my head on straight. I draw so that I can care for my children and husband. I sleep so the anger doesn’t burn me up from inside. I call my representatives. I donate to the cause. I chisel away our resistance towards change.
T opens the back door to collect N, and the cold air soars into me like a stone. It is six degrees this morning. I shake the cold off and head upstairs to write, to call, to help, to do whatever I can to keep the lights on inside this home of mine.
TUESDAY
A photo of my essay and illustration, “More Than Machine” for Issue #68 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)
I wrote about making art when it feels hopeless to do for my column, Being, in the current issue of Uppercase Magazine:
“It is easy to criticize your role in society as an artist—to say that your work is less urgent than that of someone who works in medicine or education. It is artists, however, who have sparked change in every single generation, through the books they have written, the paintings they have created and the music they have played. Writer Ursula K. Le Guin said, “Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” Many people believe that art is separate from politics, but who you are and what you believe in fortifies what you create. What you create can make someone reconsider their own actions and thoughts, so clarify your values and pour them into your work.
Part of your role as an artist is being able to imagine a world that does not already exist—a society that responds differently to the needs of those living within it. If you lose the ability to imagine, you lose the opportunity to create a sense of possibility within your work or ignite it within others. Imagination requires hope, not only the belief that something new is possible—but that it is worth working towards.”
A photo of my illustration and essay, “More Than Machine”, for Issue #68 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)
Issue #68 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)
You can read the entire essay, More Than Machine: Guidance for Creative Resistance in Issue 68 of Uppercase Magazine.
P.S. As for resistance on a more personal level, I wrote about how creating this illustration helped me understand and process my own life in last week’s letter.
WEDNESDAY
Monarca offers training in becoming a legal observer; Publishing for Minnesota is offering original art, manuscript crits, and business resources and more; Immigrant Rapid Response Fund from the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota will direct your money to where it’s needed most. Stand with Minnesota. Call your representatives.
THURSDAY
“To draw yourself back into being” by Charlotte Ager.
FRIDAY
All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman’s silence
receiving the river’s grace,
the gardener’s musing on rows.
I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.
—The Want of Peace by Wendell Berry
Of all the things you can put in front of your eyes, I’m grateful that my little letter is one of them.
If you’d like to support me, please buy my books. My art prints and line of greeting cards make excellent gifts for yourself or a friend. You can also hire me for your next project—I’d love to work together.
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: The space between.
Tiny Book of Trees (watercolor and ink, 2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
When L married us in April of 2019, I’d known him for nearly 10 years. We’d met on Tumblr, back when Tumblr was a place where your art was seen and your thoughts were read and responded to. I was pleased to meet a friend who lived overseas but with whom I connected to well, and overlapped with on the points that mattered to me: creativity, personal values, a desire (and fear of) new adventures.
Our friendship bloomed easily. Years later, it was with L that I adventured through Iceland, making new friends and peeling back the years of fear and anxiety that kept me huddled inside my home. Years later, it is L that I have to thank for getting me through much of my twenties: years that were full of self-doubt and loneliness, years that I didn’t feel would ever amount to very much.
It is L that I thank for introducing me to my long-time editor, with whom I have published an oeuvre of work that aids readers in more deeply connecting with themselves and the world. It is L that I have to thank for introducing me to my agent, who helped me build a career that can withstand the ripples of time.
It is L that I thank for marrying me and T on the steps of our farm in Nashville, having flown from Germany to bring us together; having written the ceremony in pencil, in his signature tiny, handwriting on a piece of white paper that I wish I had.
In August, we go to London. L, who I haven’t seen in 6 years, since my wedding, is flying from Berlin to meet us. I am excited and nervous. So much has changed since we saw each other last, with marriages and children and shifting values; with the insular nature of our isolated American life. Time has sped up into an unrecognizable blur and blurred so much around me that I no longer assume a friendship will feel the way it always has. Things change, and quickly. Often imperceptibly.
When the doorbell rings and my children answer it, it is L standing in the doorway, carrying a friendship that hasn’t changed. T hugs him tightly and my children scamper towards him, drawn to this stranger they’ve never met. Children are sharp, unencumbered by social etiquette. They sense uneasiness in the places we’ve learned to numb, they know when they’re being spoken about or spoken down to, they surround themselves with good energy and shrug off the rest.
L with Thing 1, Thing 2, and a seesaw (London, 2025)
For a few days, I have my friend back. The five of us watch the changing of the guard, we have lunches, we draw on menus with N while F takes her sleep. We eat dinners and have evening drinks, but mostly, we walk to the playground. We swing on the swings and chase the kids around and do boring everyday things, each of us knowing the monotony of life is always better with a friend.
Today, I find myself thinking of a moment that still hasn’t left me. As we walked through St. James’ Park, N stopped to watch every bird. What’s that one? she asked L and he answered. How about this one? And this one? He named each one and together, they walked on. I didn’t know you knew so much about birds, I told him, surprised. Yeah, I know a fair bit, he said.
St. James Park #1 (photographed by N in London, 2025)
St. James Park #2 (photographed by N in London, 2025)
St. James Park #3 (photographed by N in London, 2025)
In this moment, I become acutely aware of how much I don’t know about my friend. This small, benign fact unsettles me: I think about how much more I never will know, because L and I don’t inhabit the same places; most likely, we never will. We see each other for a few days every handful of years. We speak regularly, but words alone are not a replacement for shared time. I think about how many facets of my friends are hidden, never to be realized because we simply don’t share enough of life together.
Nearly fifteen years ago, during my Tumblr days, one of the first pieces of art I offered for sale was a drawing of an astronaut on the moon. I NEED MORE SPACE, the astronaut said, and for a long time, I believed the astronaut was me.
Now, space is a divider. It divides us in terms of distance but also depth. It sets a limit for how deeply I can know another person, of how many layers I’m able to cut through and under. Here—in January, in an entirely new year, I remain full of sadness, staring out into the space that lives between me and the people I love.
J, L, Me, T, and F (London, 2025)
TUESDAY
The beginnings of final artwork for DEAR LIBRARY (ink on Arches, 2025)
Here’s a look at where I am in my DEAR LIBRARY process: laying down the very delicate linework for my pages in ink. It’s a tedious, time-consuming process, and I’ve questioned whether I should’ve gone the route I have with this artwork a few times—but the facts are that I did, and I am. I only have a couple of weeks to turn these pencils into final ink-and-watercolor paintings, but instead of filling myself up with stress, I’m simply believing I can, and will. It’s a refreshing change of mind for me after nearly three decades (maybe more?) of I can’t I can’t I can’t. Maybe I can’t—but maybe, I can.
“I’m just, you know, kind of happy in the doing of things. Even just having a great cup of coffee is happiness. Getting an idea, or realizing an idea. Working on a painting…working on a piece of sculpture, working on a film. One thing I noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work for a goal. For a result. And in the doing, it’s not that much happiness. And yet that’s our life going by. If you’re transcending every day, building up that happiness, it eventually comes to: it doesn’t matter what your work is. You just get happy in the work. You get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn’t what you dreamed of, it doesn’t kill you, if you enjoyed the doing of it. It’s important that we enjoy the doing of our life.” —David Lynch
Along with believing I can, I’ve been ruminating on my immersion of the process and less on the outcome I produce. All I can do is the best I can do right now with the skills and time I have now. I’ve always believed it’s hard to be in the present and to focus on the process, but the way David Lynch has lived his life makes me feel like maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is a switch I can just turn off. More and more, it feels like I already have.
WEDNESDAY
Tiny Book of Trees (watercolor and ink, 2025)
Over the holidays, I made T a tiny book of trees. This marks my second tiny book in two months (here’s the first!) and I have ideas for so many more—including a new year’s tiny book where I envision the next ten years of my life. Stay tuned.
Instead of thinking big, this year I’m determined to think tiny: tiny steps forward, tiny ideas, tiny stories, tiny books. Tiny cells turning over, slowly leading to a new brain and body. Tiny bids for connection, actively building stronger relationships. The tiniest of pieces, eventually coming together to form a whole. Stay tuned.
THURSDAY
“When we love the Earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully. I believe this. The ancestors taught me it was so. As a child I loved playing in dirt, in that rich Kentucky soil, that was a source of life. Before I understood anything about the pain and exploitation of the Southern system of sharecropping, I understood that grown-up Black folks loved the land. I could stand with my grandfather Daddy Jerry and look out at fields of growing vegetables, tomatoes, corn, collards, and know that this was his handiwork. I could see the look of pride on his face as I expressed wonder and awe at the magic of growing things. I knew that my grandmother Baba’s backyard garden would yield beans, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and yellow squash, that she too would walk with pride among the rows and rows of growing vegetables showing us what the earth will give when tended lovingly.”
—from Touching the Earth by bell hooks in Orion Magazine
FRIDAY
I am so busy. I am practicing
my new hobby of watching me
become someone else. There is
so much violence in reconstruction.
Each minute is grisly, but I have
to participate. I am building
what I cannot break.
—from The Sun is Still A Part of Me by Jennifer Willoughby
Of all the things you can put in front of your eyes, I’m grateful that my little letter is one of them.
If you’d like to support me, please buy my books. My art prints and line of greeting cards make excellent gifts for yourself or a friend. You can also hire me for your next project—I’d love to work together.
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: N turns five years old.
N is five (mixed media, 2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, the morning is ready. The sparkly lights have been hung, dangling over the bannister. The pom poms have been hung, twirled around the sparkly lights and the felted banner that reads happy birthday. The gifts are piled on top of the squishy yellow chair, waiting to be opened. The flamingo cake is baked and assembled, waiting to be eaten. The birthday breakfast is cooked and plated, a tiny candle on top, waiting to be blown out.
When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, her sister is ready. F follows her around with arms outstretched, longing to place them around her big sister. Happy birthday, N. Birthday huggie time! she screams over and over again, in the only pitch volume she knows: loud. F follows N from room to room, struggling to hug her while N struggles to walk away, struggling to hug her while N brushes her teeth. That’s enough hugs! N says, annoyed, and F, finally giving up, turns to me and says: I want my birthday to come out now.
When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, her father and I are ready. We’ve been talking about it for days now: how it’s been five years since we first became parents, how five is a milestone, how five means something. I recall every moment in the past five years when I have faltered under the weight of parenthood, and wish I’d been more present for the sweet child in front of me. I remind myself that all I can do is offer N who I am; give her the space necessary to dissent, grow, and learn; and to try—genuinely try, to live a little more graciously. A little more in the present.
When N climbs into bed on the night of her fifth birthday, her bedroom is ready. The ceiling fan whirls. Her sparkly canopy gently sways. The stars on her walls twinkle and swirl. When I tuck her in, she asks me to stay and snuggles into me. She clutches my body like a toddler during drop off, so closely that I forget she’s five years old. So closely that I forget that next year she’ll be six, then twelve, and then out of my arms altogether. N is quiet. Her eyes are closed, but I know she’s awake because her hand moves so closely in mine. Quite suddenly, I don’t feel ready anymore.
TUESDAY
N’s flamingo cake, on her fifth birthday (2025)
N requests a flamingo cake for her birthday and although I fret about it for weeks, it comes together quite nicely and with little difficulty. Five years into making birthday cakes for my kids, I feel something I rarely feel, which is pride: for taking on a task and accomplishing it, for making a young kid’s wish come true, for enjoying the process and letting the mistakes show.
N eats a flamingo on her fifth birthday (2025)
Past cakes include F’s bluey cake, F’s rainbow cake, N’s rainbow cake, N’s painted cake.
WEDNESDAY
“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin
THURSDAY
To celebrate the publication of my journal, Learn to Let Go, I invited a few people I admire to share what they’re letting go of, and what they’re learning in the process.
Today, I’m featuring New York Times Bestselling Author, wellness educator, and Restorative Writing teacher Alex Elle. Alex is also the author of How We Heal, a practical and empowering guide to self-healing.
I’ve known Alex since my Brooklyn days, and it’s been stunning to see her growth over the years—as an author and artist, but also as a mother, partner, and friend. I’m so happy to share this space with her today.
What have you let go of?
AE: I’ve let go of the belief that I have to prove my worth through overextending myself—creatively or personally. I no longer chase validation by saying yes when I mean no, or by holding onto relationships and projects that no longer align. Letting go of people-pleasing and performance has made space for deeper honesty, more intentional work, and a steadier connection to my own voice. What’s mine won’t require me to betray myself to keep it.
What did you gain when you released it?
AE: I gained a grounded sense of self-trust and the freedom to create, connect, and care from a place of alignment—not obligation.
What are you letting go of?
AE: I’m learning to let go of urgency—the need to have all the answers, fix what’s broken, or rush my healing..
What are you learning from this process?
AE: I’m learning that the more I unfurl, the more I bloom.
Many thanks to Alex for sharing a little bit of her journey with us. You can learn more about Alex’s work and subscribe to her newsletter, Gratitude Journal.
P.S. Past interviews include Carolyn Yoo on letting go of artistic identity, and Malaka Gharib, on letting go of yes.
Learn to Let Go came out last week! Thank you to everyone who has bought, shared, and celebrated the release of this special book.
In case you missed it, I spoke about acceptance, letting go, and making books with Radim Malinic on the Daring Creativity podcast. I joined my friend Kena Paranjape for a really lovely conversation about the book in the Supernova community. The book is featured in the latest issue of Uppercase Magazine (thank you, Janine!), and I joined Jessica Swift for a conversation about letting go in our creative practices at her Art Oasis retreat.
As a reminder, Bookshop.org is offering a 15% on all orders with the code LTLG15 for a limited time. This is a good time to grab a copy or two or five, especially for upcoming holiday gifts. You can also purchase from another shop listed here, or if you’re overseas, the UK edition. Thank you, always, for supporting my work.
FRIDAY
On the bridge
A village witch
Tells me
You see nothing
Clearly, since in all your eyes
A fog gathers generations
—The Witch by Ye Hui
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: I'm on my way.
River Thames (London, 2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
After our standard London breakfast (coffee from Tamp, chocolate croissant from Gail’s, a banana from the street vendor) we walk to the train and board for Blackfriars. We’re going to Tate Modern to meet Honee, a friend I made in 2022 when she attended our Visual Journaling retreat in the south of France.
I haven’t seen her since then, but our time together feels easy. We catch up on our present lives and then we visit our past ones: I learn about her childhood and upbringing, we exchange notes on our familial relationships, on art-making, on daily evolution. When we hug goodbye, it doesn’t feel like it’ll be for the last time.
Afterwards, I meet up with T and the girls and we venture into the Tate Modern bookstore. I haven’t stepped inside this gorgeous room since 2019, and the selection is always so tempting: dozens and dozens of beautiful books, all of which I want to purchase and take back home.
T immediately spots Start Where You Are on the shelves and excitedly shows our girls. He makes such a big deal out of it that I feel sheepish. I feel demure—after all, it’s been a full decade since this, my first book, was published—does it still deserve such fanfare? My relationship with deserve is a sticky one, conflated with dangerous notions of self-worth and how I must earn it.
Start Where You Are: A Journal for Self-Exploration (2015!)
It’s been 10 years since Start Where You Are was published—with well over a million copies in print, it’s sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, has been translated into a dozen languages, and continues to help people all over this earth learn more about themselves. Seeing that it’s still stocked in one of the most prestigious museums in the world, a decade later, is validating.
Finding Start Where You Are at Tate Moden with N and F :) (2025)
This book changed my life. It began my career as an author; it invited me into the world of publishing—and allowed me to build my life around my love of books; it gave me my first real reason to take a chance on me. It has a very dear place in my heart, and if I consider it quite clearly, it’s disappointing to know that over time, I have learned to push all of my achievements away.
Luckily, T forces me to recognize my success, regularly, and for that I am grateful. Celebrating this book with my young girls is beautiful. I’m grateful for the chance to show them, first hand, that making things from the heart, with honesty and integrity, can take you to incredible places—to places that once, they weren’t even allowed to go.
I want to raise young girls who don’t feel the constant need to minimize their achievements, and believing that I deserve good things is fundamental for doing that. Believing that I deserve good things is hard—but I’m on my way.
TUESDAY
I’m On My Way by Ben Kweller, obviously, for the aforementioned reasons.
WEDNESDAY
A peek into N’s London sketchbook, which was made inside an actual sketchbook but also on various paper menus throughout the neighborhood. This one, that she made while we had lunch at Franco Manca’s with a dear old friend, is one of my favorites:
N’s London sketchbook (2025)
THURSDAY
A few sketchbook pages from my time in London, including (in order): St. James’ park, colors as memories, the girls walking to Homefield Park, N in front of a cobbled doorway, and the greens of London.
London sketchbook (2025)
London sketchbook (2025)
FRIDAY
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
—You Reading This, Be Ready by William Stafford
A year ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:
Dear Somebody: I am not a machine. (September 6, 2024)
Dear Somebody: Losing a penguin. (September 20, 2024)
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: A pair of wings.
Observing Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France (2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
As we approach Chamonix, I see Mont Blanc rising in the distance, rising up out of the ground as it once rose out of the sea. The only time I ever felt the word majestic come alive with meaning was in the Yamanashi Prefecture, when, after days, the clouds petered for a few minutes and let Mt. Fuji materialize before our eyes.
I felt awe then, as I do now.
Moon! F says, pointing at the sky, and we all look up. Dozens of moons sway in the sky, so tiny they look like colorful pinpricks in the clouds. They slowly drift closer, and as they do, we realize that each pinprick is a person falling from the sky.
Falling from the sky in Chamonix, France (2025)
I’m going to do that, says T, watching each paraglider careen over mountains and pine trees. Some pirouette as they come towards earth, some swing back and forth, many simply glide. Each one is attached to their own pair of wings, in hues of bright yellows or pinks or reds. As the ground swells up before them, they quickly find their legs again, no longer able to rely on pockets of air to help them move.
Every time I look up, I see tiny pinpricks in the clouds: red, yellow, pink. Our eyes follow each person as they slowly come into view; we hold our breath until we see them land; we cheer as their feet touch the ground. Each flight is staggering, a feat of engineering that allows a person, who will never possess the splendor of a bird or a mountain, to momentarily gain wings.
All week, T talks about paragliding. He asks me to go with him, but I have little desire to fall from the sky. I have no interest in jumping off a cliff, or a plane, or a bridge. I like being on the ground. By the end of the week, it becomes evident that no one else is up for the risk, either. The only person adventurous enough to accompany T is N, who, at four years old, simply isn’t allowed. When I’m five, I’m going to fall out of the sky, too, she stubbornly vows. Like dad.
Two days before we leave France, I tell T I’ll join him. I know we simply can’t go home without him having flown. I make peace with knowing that for my wings to take flight, I’ll first have to fall.
In the morning, I feel calm—detached, even, but as our gondola begins the steep incline up Mont Blanc, the familiar rush of anxiety washes over me. We climb higher and higher. After a few minutes, I stop looking down. At the foot of Aiguille du Midi, I’m 8,000 feet above ground. My gliding instructor, Luciolle, is serious and kind. He asks me what my name is.
OK, Meera, he says. When I tell you to run, you run quickly, with strength. You run until you run off the mountain. Don’t slow down. Don’t stop running. Can you do that?
Yes, I say. I can do that.
Luciolle clips me into the harness, and then clips himself in behind. He untangles our wings and makes sure our wires aren’t crossed. He checks that the impending storm brewing in the clouds isn’t heading our way. Then: he tells me to run.
The foot of Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix, France (2025)
I turned my brain off in preparation for this moment, so when I hear his shout in my ear, I don’t hesitate or think or ask questions. I just run, really fast. I run off the edge of the mountain.
Suspended 9,000 feet in the air in Chamonix, France (2025)
Suspended 8,000 feet in the air, I try not to let the anxiety in my stomach turn into nausea. We catch thermals and climb higher, to 9,000 feet, and then higher still. I tell myself I’m a bird, and I am. I tell myself to breathe slowly and I do. Luciolle teaches me to steer, and I take us over a sea of pine trees, emerald crayon marks against a bright sky. If I go east, I’ll head towards the storm, and if I go west, I’ll scale Mont Blanc, the crest of its face covered in glittering show. At 10,000 feet in the air, I make choices I never dreamed I’d have.
The air is cool against my face. Up this high, the world is quiet, and calm, and sweet. I feel the silence of everything; freedom from thought. It’s my one chance to fly—to do what man isn’t supposed to do—and I do.
T jumps into flight in Chamonix, France (2025)
Even now, weeks later, I’m not certain of why I decided to fly. All I know is that my desire for T to get his wish is greater than my desire to keep my feet on the ground. I recognize that the thrill, for me, isn’t in becoming a bird or in surprising myself by doing something I’d never imagined I’d do. It isn’t even in the joy of seeing my small children run to me upon landing, their sweet faces split into wide grins. For me, the thrill is in seeing T get his wish—in knowing that because of our companionship, a person I love won’t later feel regret.
I joke about it now—how I begrudgingly ran off a cliff for a person I love. But I know that every now and then, in order to become the person I wish to be, I, too, will need a gentle prod—or maybe, a pair of wings.
TUESDAY
The portrait of a young artist in Annecy, France (2025)
Lake Annecy is stunning—so turquoise and clear that it’s easy, for a moment, to believe it won’t always be this way. Dozens of summering families mill about, sunbathing or sleeping or wading out into the water. For once, summer feels easy—like the simple glories provided by the earth are finally enough.
As is her way, F makes friends with a local street artist who invites her to paint with him. As we leave, he gifts her their collaboration, which now hangs proudly in her room.
WEDNESDAY
I promise myself I’ll work in my sketchbook while traveling, and though I did here and there, I mostly take notes and photos, save scraps, and make scribbles to revisit later.
France sketchbook (2025, colored pencil and marker on paper)
France sketchbook (2025, crayon and marker on paper)
France sketchbook (2025, crayon and marker on paper)
I find that I work in my sketchbook more when I give myself a break: get to it when I can, make peace with the drawing that appears, and demand less of myself when I’m in the present moment—other than simply being there.
THURSDAY
“Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned. But I should stop pretending that I know you. Perhaps you do not have to imagine. Perhaps your library, too, went up in smoke.
You must understand: There is no single day on which a war begins. The conflict will collect around you gradually, the way carrion birds assemble around the vulnerable, until there are so many predators that the object of their hunger is not even visible. You will not even be able to see yourself in the gathering crowd of those who would kill you.” —from V. V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night
I listen to Brotherless Night, which is set during the Sri Lankan civil war, over the course of a week. Each time I stop to tend to the realities of my life, I find myself unable to stop considering the reality of a life—and a family, splintered by war. There is nothing I didn’t love about this book, but Nirmala Rajasingam’s eloquent, perfectly-paced narration makes listening to it an absolute pleasure.
FRIDAY
By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color—no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.
—I Remember by Anne Sexton
A year ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: How do I start this day?
Dear Somebody,
My family has spent most of this month traveling: Chicago, London, Geneva, Chamonix, Geneva again, London again, Phoenix, and back home again. It’s been wonderful and exhausting; astonishing in different ways. I’ve come back feeling untethered, which is, for once, a pleasant feeling. This, too, is a surprise.
I’ve missing writing to you, but I have been writing: in my Notes app, in my sketchbook, in the margins of takeaway menus and ticket stubs. I have a series of letters to send from our time overseas, and you can expect the first one next week.
In the meantime, a few of my favorite past letters are below. I enjoyed revisiting these. I hope you do, too.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
Dear Somebody: Cutting out the rot.
“Over the past decade, my relationship with my work twisted itself into a rotting mass—one where I searched for the proof of my own self-worth in my work. When my ability to work very hard was the only thing I still liked about myself, I knew it was time for a change. So I cut the rot out.
Part of this excavation process involves consciously expanding my love for working into a broader love for everything outside of it. I know that my work will only be as thoughtful, as intelligent, and as full as my actual life is. I also know that I live in a country where no one really cares if a mother has a room or time of her own to put towards developing her mind, spirit, or craft. I live in a country with a supremely unhealthy work culture, where there’s little desire to separate a human being from their production value. I know the history and lineage behind my harmful admiration of debilitating independence and relentless hard work. And yet, I love my work. I am lucky to have found it, lucky to love it so. But I want to love myself more.”
TUESDAY
Dear Somebody: Losing a Penguin.
“In the morning, N makes the shape of a penguin with her arms. Mom, last night when I didn’t have penguin, I closed my eyes and it felt like I was holding him. I am grateful for her brilliant imagination, for its ability to comfort her. I am disappointed that memory—as shoddy and unreliable as it is, with all its faulty limitations—is still the next best thing to the actual presence of something we love.”
WEDNESDAY
Dear Somebody: When all is quiet.
“On the other side of worry, I divert my energy towards developing a trust between myself, my work, and the world: things will work out. I can move towards my goals andbelieve they will be achieved. I can build creative growth and hope. I can feel forgotten and be excited to one day reemerge. I can choose to feel good—and the more I do, the more meaningful my subsequent choices are.
Back on the porch, I chew slowly. A small breeze comes along and my napkin flutters, a thin pair of two-ply wings. The tulip poplar tree across from our front yard has grown so large in the few years I’ve lived here. Now, green leaves burst forth, invigorated by our recent rains. The branches stretch towards me like the future does, like the past used to before I closed the door on it. In a few hours, my kids will thunder down these sidewalks, begging me to jump rope with them. We’ll walk down to the nearby bridge, press our faces through the windows in the cement walls, and wait for the city trains to rush by. It doesn’t matter if the conductor looks up or not; we always wave.”
THURSDAY
“I don’t optimize. It doesn’t make sense anymore. In the past, I have worried, having convinced myself that worrying is doing something and therefore, at least, still productive. Of course, I was wrong; each day, I continue to be. If there’s a purpose to life, maybe this is it—to constantly unlearn until, at the end, I am stripped of all belief, leaving the way I came in: honest, unharmed, full of possibility.”
FRIDAY
It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
—August Morning by Albert Garcia
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: The many lives inside us.
The Wedding Sari for Issue 65 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
Paul Simon at Stifel Theatre in Saint Louis (2025)
For the first time since 2019, T and I go to a show. The last time I saw a musician play life was six years ago, in Nashville—before the pandemic, before lockdown, before two children and graduate school and all of the rest. I was a different person then, carrying different dreams and hopes and worries.
I’m rarely in a crowded room anymore. I barely remember what it’s like to be part of a collective movement—to be collectively moved, to collectively move alongside hundreds of other people who are listening to the same music that I am. I’m so used to making art alone, within the privacy of my own studio that I often forget what it’s like to witness someone making their own right in front of me; a special kind of bravery.
We settle into our seats at Stifel Theatre and watch Paul Simon walk onto the stage. It is strange to see the person who created the soundtrack to my life. No other musician has taken me from childhood to having children of my own, no other musician who has a song for every moment I remember most. He plays his latest record and I’m flooded with my own past: the many Novembers spent deep in conversation on park benches; the hundreds of letters we wrote; the long drives to Atlantic City, salt water taffy and ankles in the sea; the friendships I believed would follow me to the end of my life; the friendships that haven’t lasted long enough to see me to my forties.
Paul plays and I remember exactly where I was when the Twin Towers fell; watching the dawn chase the night over the Atlantic; years of loneliness and years of being known; running to catch the SEPTA train to Philadelphia; the many New York City winters bleeding me; the gold bracelets I gave to my loved ones on my wedding day, and the one I’ve worn on my right wrist, each day, for the past six years. He plays and I listen to the many people he has been. He plays and I remember myself. After all of these years, after changes upon changes, I am more or less the same.
Ben Kweller at Off Broadway in Saint Louis (2025)
The next day, we see Ben Kweller in a small, crowded space that transports me to my teenage years. It’s a stark opposite to the evening before: the sound is too loud and the floors too sticky. Hundreds of us smushed together, faces full of earnest eagerness, waiting for a 43-year old man play the songs we love most. It’s a stark opposite to the evening before: we jump and we dance and I don’t look backwards once. I’m having fun, something that the seriousness of me doesn’t say or feel that often but that I want more of. That’s what good art does: it wakes the sleeping parts of you.
Ben plays Thirteen and I think of what love used to be, he plays Family Tree and I think of Dorian, the sweetness of a young child finding his way; he plays On My Way and I’m out of my head now, finally in this room, with the music in me. He plays Lizzy and I’ve got T’s hand in mine. We’ll keep love alive, even on Texas time.
TUESDAY
The Wedding Sari for Issue 65 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)
The Wedding Sari for Issue 65 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)
“The more intricate and ornate a panetar is, the more status the bride’s family was believed to have. The panetar symbolizes marital bliss and prosperity; historically, it also promises fertility—a blessing seen not only for the bride herself, but for the family she was marrying into.
At the time, it felt romantic to wear a garment previously worn by two people I loved, on their wedding days, on my own. As much as it connected me to my mother and her sister, my aunt, it also connected me to a longer tradition of compromise and, hopefully, continued compassion between me, my chosen partner, and the family we formed. Now, years later, my wedding panetar means something different to me. It doesn’t resemble prosperity or fertility or wealth, but choice. I consider what marriage meant for my mother and my aunt—and, because of their choices, compromises, and triumphs, what it is now allowed to mean for me. Like any piece of art, each sari is created, painstakingly, by a specific set of hands, guided by certain techniques and traditions, for a specific purpose. However, it’s story and meaning is created by the person who wears it.”
—An excerpt from my latest essay, The Wedding Sari, for Issue #65 of Uppercase Magazine
WEDNESDAY
I can’t believe I haven’t shared Dear Bookstore with you yet! This picture book about the importance of bookstores was written by my dear friend Emily Arrow and illustrated by my friend Geneviève Godbout.
It’s such a gorgeous and sweet love letter to bookstores, the third place they’ve become for so many of us, and the community they foster. Please shout about it, purchase a copy, and request it at your library.
THURSDAY
“Imagination—not intellect—has saved my life. It has saved the lives of the people, animals, and lands to which I belong, those I hold most beloved. Imagination, I believe, is the way we dream into the future—futures that can’t be defined by any paperwork or bullet or algorithm or machine. Imagination brings us into abolitionist practices, into the pu’uhonua (places or people of refuge) we’ve yet to meet. As scholar Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio reminds in her work: there is no ‘ōlelo word for rights, only kuleana—our responsibility.
Making nonsense of the story, of our collective stories, is a weapon. I was a child magician, and what I’ve learned from sleight of hand is that the eyes will follow an arc or shape made, from beginning to end. But if the hand moves in a straighter line, our eyes look back to the beginning, to the source of that movement. This is the objective—to keep our eyes fixed forward, bracing and bracing for what’s next, instead of allowing the space to look back, or around, to what we know. Our work, then, becomes mending the stories. Tying those strings back together.”
—T. Kira Māhealani Madden on Listening to the Past, from 100 Days of Creative Resistance
FRIDAY
I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls
And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England, where my heart lies
My mind’s distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you’re asleep
And kiss you when you start your day
And a song I was writing is left undone
I don’t know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can’t believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme
And so you see, I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you
And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I
—Kathy’s Song by Paul Simon
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: Birthday thoughts.
New storyboard for an old story that has a special place in my heart (graphite on tracing paper, 2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
A Bluey cake for little F’s second birthday (April 2025)
F was born the day after I was, in late April, after the cherry blossoms have bloomed, beamed, and quietly begun to fall. I like having our birthdays sandwiched together because it makes me feel closer to her—one of the only instances, in my life, where a feeling is more important to me than the actual facts.
For her second birthday, I made F a Bluey cake. F is the strangest bird, afraid of nothing and no one. She’s always in search of coconut water, her sister’s hand, and a good chuckle. F pulled the entire sun and its shine into our lives; she’ll laugh at a room full of darkness and then, when she’s ready, she’ll turn the light back on.
TUESDAY
An image from Frog and Toad: Dragons and Giants by Arnold Lobel
Birthday thoughts from Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel, my always-favorite.
WEDNESDAY
On one of our recent playground days, I found Anno’s Counting Book in the little free library. I’d never heard of Japanese illustrator and author Mitsumasa Anno before, but I loved the tiny, charming illustrations immediately, and wanted to spend more time with them. Skimming the inside jacket flap, I was struck by his belief that all children are born mathematicians and want to bring sense and order into all they observe through numbers
Cover of Anno’s Counting Book by Mitsumasa Anno
Interior spread from Anno’s Counting Book
Interior spread from Anno’s Counting Book
As a child—and now as an adult, I detest math, because I don’t believe I’m good at it. It doesn’t come naturally to me and never has. So much of what we like and don’t like as adults is rooted in how it made us feel about ourselves as children. When I was young, math made me feel incompetent; today, it still does.
I tell N all the time that her brain is the most powerful thing she has. If she tells it she can do something, it will help her to. I appreciate that Anno, who spent 10 years teaching math before writing books, held the deep notion that all children are brilliant mathematicians, and that our job as adults is to help them believe that.
It is a simple and powerful belief, and I feel silly that I never really considered it before. But, of course, as is the way of books: now I have.
P.S. When Mitsumasa Anno died in 2021, Publisher’s Weekly published a short obituary worth reading.
THURSDAY
“…I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.”
—from Edith Wharton’s The Ghost Stories
FRIDAY
today we are possible.
the morning, green and laundry-sweet,
opens itself and we enter
blind and mewling.
everything waits for us:
the snow kingdom
sparkling and silent
in its glacial cap,
the cane fields
shining and sweet
in the sun-drenched south.
as the day arrives
with all its clumsy blessings
what we will become
waits in us like an ache.
—birth-day by Lucille Clifton
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: In the dead of winter.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
The work I’ve done all week has amounted to nothing, nothing I am proud of, anyway—but each morning, in the dead of winter, while the snow bares its teeth, as the light trickles slowly onto my desk, I sit and think of the hundreds of tulips we planted last November; the hundreds of snowdrops, too, and how one day soon will be the day that each bloom stands and turns its shining face towards the sun.
The work I’ve done all week has amounted to nothing, nothing I can show or use, anyway—but each morning, in the dead of winter, while the snow bares its teeth, as the light trickles slowly onto my desk, I sit and do my best to order a feeling that sits inside me into sentences or pictures that another person might one day find comforting or clarifying. It doesn’t always work out, but what one thing always does? I stand and turn my shining face towards the sun.
TUESDAY
Does It Honor Life? in Yanyi’s The Reading; Krista Haston’s board of cutaway houses; Thelonious Monk’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960.
WEDNESDAY
“Clarifying the why behind the work you make, and the work you wish to one day make, is necessary for maintaining creative longevity on a small and large scale. Artists who pursue their craft for internally seeded reasons, such as a sense of personal satisfaction or because it aligns with a personal value, will persist in circumstances where those who are achieving goals for external reasons will not.They will be able to endure disappointment and discouraging circumstances because there is meaning behind their pursuit. Their creative practice is steady, unwavering, and often leaves them with little choice: It is something they must do because it reflects the person they wish to be and the person they believe they are.”
—An excerpt from my latest essay, Finding Your True North, for Issue #64 of Uppercase Magazine
THURSDAY
“To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron: it burns into you and that is very painful.
Therefore, to love somebody else in the first place is always an escape which we all hope for, and we all enjoy it when we are capable of it. But in the long run, it comes back on us.” —Carl Jung
FRIDAY
Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was living it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.
—Vacation by Wendall Berry
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: A new friend.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
Last week welcomed our seventh snow day this year, so what was once novel and exciting quickly became an all-too-familiar slog of parenting-and-working or parenting-and-working-at-night, where both the quality of parenting and the quality of work suffers. I find myself dreaming of the hobbies I’ll one day adopt when my career fits more neatly into our lives, tucked into the corners of a regular school day. I wonder, regularly, how other parents manage it all; I imagine they get by with a little help from their friends.
F is sick and has been, on and off, for a few weeks now. My relentlessly joyful kid has turned into a bundle of crank, screaming when I pick her up and screaming when I put her down. I find myself overwhelmed by everyone’s needs, not because their needs exist, but because I am responsible for them; the overwhelm persists despite the fact that this is a responsibility I both respect and take seriously. I find myself longing for the intimacy community brings, the ease of togetherness that transforms a simple snow day from a state of isolation into a festive celebration, full of joyful shrieks and snowy dogpiles.
Each day, the city grows colder. The temperature dips from 16 degrees to 10, then six—but feels like six below. The days are full, and for that I am grateful, but there is a fierce restlessness that accumulates after spending so many days indoors. On day five, we pull on our cozy boots, our hats, our gloves. N zips her coat up to the throat and we stuff a screaming F into her snowsuit, transforming her into an incredibly puffy, even cuter version of herself. We traipse outside.
The frigid winter air smacks my face and immediately, I feel exhilarated—thrilled by the snow white sky hovering above me, removed of all color or feeling. Such is the wonder of mother earth. We lay down on the sidewalk, backs against snow drifts. My palms face the clouds, empty, open.
A neighborhood girl wanders up to us, clad in a bright pink outfit. She doesn’t introduce herself, just shimmies right in, and lays down on the ground next to us. N stiffens, not ready for somebody new. The girl tends to F instead, helping her up when she falls over, holding her hand to help her jump.
I am impressed by this child’s demeanor, her refusal to be ignored. She is sweet and hopeful; she is looking for a friend. We chit chat, wondering if N’s heart will open. Slowly, it does.
Over the course of 20 minutes, I watch parallel play turn into cooperative play. My role as facilitator shifts into unnecessary interference, and I remove myself to watch from the porch. N and her new friend imagine, run, stomp. They take their little sisters and spin them around. They shriek and find snowballs. There is joy.
When I tuck N into bed that night, her voice shines with pride. Mama, she says, her eyes bright: Did you see? I made a new friend today.
I think about the magic of friendship—how unlike so many other experiences, it never loses its particular thrill. A new friend at age 4 brings the same combination of unexpected love, surprise, and excitement that a new friend at age 34 does, and I suspect a new friend at age 40 will feel the same.
This is the beauty of friendship. It doesn’t always last, and it doesn’t always fit well, but when it does, it calms your spirit like a colorless sky, and brings you somewhere new.
TUESDAY
I recently listened to The Partition Project and am in the middle of listening to Solito.
Upon Ruth Franklin’s recommendation, I re-read Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, not having remembered it from my high school days. Shocked, once again, at how clear of a mirror literature is, how it reflects the degree of our humanity back to us.
I love that fellow illustrator/author Sandra Dieckmann is chronicling her daughter, Ronja’s, drawings — they are just so gorgeous, truly suspended somewhere between reality and imagination. I’m frequently inspired by N’s artwork, and Sandra’s endeavor has me considering how to best catalog her artwork, too.
I found my friend Cyndie Spiegel here, and welcome her weekly missives on life, work, and finding microjoys.
T and I watched Hack Your Health and I loved two things most: learning about my gut microbiome and being re-introduced to Andrea Love’s animation. She’s worked on a few films I’ve loved, like Tulip (a collaboration with Phoebe Wahl) and Pinocchio, but I really lost myself in these cooking with wool animations.
WEDNESDAY
After five rounds of concept sketches for Dear Library, I started over. There were several reasons behind this, and I’ll share more when I can, but for now, it means that I need a new color story for this book.
I’ve never had a color swatching practice — it seemed an indulgent use of time, and it still does. The process of swatching colors is incredibly meditative. Restorative. Like most healthy pursuits, there’s not much to immediately show or share of the work taking place—but internally, incredible shifts take root.
I make conscious efforts in rewiring the parts of my brain that tell me fun should be replaced with productive and so I’ve been color swatching diligently, ignoring the voice inside my head. It’s been great.
For me, this process has been most useful in:
Pushing myself to create color harmony with unlikely color palettes; exploring palettes beyond my comfort and regular rotation.
More accurately seeing the temperature of any particular color and how that temperature changes when placed against another hue.
Being able to pinpoint which combination of colors evokes the emotional atmosphere I’m trying to create.
Quite literally seeing that there is usually, and almost always—more than one solution.
THURSDAY
I enjoyed looking through these illustrated love letters from the Archives of American Art.
FRIDAY
The night sounds like a murder
of magpies and we’re replacing our cabinet knobs
because we can’t change the world, but we can
change our hardware. America breaks my heart
some days, and some days it breaks itself in two.
I watched a woman have a breakdown in the mall
today and when the security guard tried to help her
what I could see was all of us
peeking from her purse as she threw it
across the floor into Forever 21. And yes,
the walls felt like another way to hold us in
and when she finally stopped crying
I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting, Some days
the sky is too bright. And like that we were her
flock in our black coats and white sweaters,
some of us reaching our wings to her
and some of us flying away.
—Magpies Recognize Themselves in the Mirror by Kelli Russell Agodon
See you next week!
xx,
M
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Dear Somebody: Nothing, nothing.
Finding Your True North for Issue #64 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
It’s been awhile since I wrote. There was some travel, some sickness, some coming back to life. I’m still figuring things out; I’m still dedicated to the daily task of figuring things out. What else can I do? Nothing, nothing.
Failing friendships, abandoned resolutions, the agonizingly slow crawl towards progress: these were all things that clawed at me a few months ago, seeping into my brain in-between my dreams and demanding more of my time, more of my efforts. Now, I let them fall away with ease. What can I do? Nothing, nothing, so I pour the skeletons out my window and raise the blinds to the morning ahead.
Each day feels less like it’s getting away from me, and I feel less like I’m trying to get away from myself. Somehow, the smog has lifted. My brain is less dreams-and-pollution, more dreams-and-strangeness. I am reminded of time’s simple magic: its ability to transform a dilemma so magnificent into a pebble, into a not-problem so small, so ordinary, that I forget to think of it.
I slip on my shoes, small cloud-like things, and head out the door. I listen for the cardinals and the mourning dove; I follow the clouds through the sky. I like my little walks—to the corner coffee shop, the neighborhood library, the community garden. To nowhere at all.
I walk to the library, but it’s closed. I walk to the coffee shop, but it’s closed, too. My timing is amiss or the world wants me to stay still—what can I do? Nothing, nothing. I turn around. A mile away, my sweet little family breathes childhood into our sweet little house. Quite happily, I take the shortest way home.
TUESDAY
Meera Lee Patel x Biely & Shoaf: SO MUSHROOM IN MY HEART FOR YOU
Meera Lee Patel x Biely & Shoaf: MY HEART IS WITH YOU
Meera Lee Patel x Biely & Shoaf: HAPPILY EVER AFTER
I have a new collection of cards out with Biely & Shoaf, and I’m especially charmed by how the gold foil on these turned out! All of my new cards are available on the Biely & Shoaf website and at stores throughout the country.
WEDNESDAY
Sisters celebrating a birthday (2025)
I flew to my sister’s for a quick few days to celebrate her birthday. It was a sweet treat to sit around a table with a very large martini and so many wonderful friends who love her as much as I do.
THURSDAY
There are many versions of Conference of the Birds, a 5000-line Persian poem written by Sufi poet Farid-ud-din Attar; I treasure the edition I have, illustrated by the skilled Peter Sis.
Serendipitously, I stumbled upon this article by The Heritage Lab which summarizes portions of the poem and distills some of the symbolism within it—but what I love most are the many included paintings, many dating back to the mid 16th-century, all inspired by this classic poem .
FRIDAY
My husband and I held the films up against the sliding glass door in
Oregon the summer it seemed my sadness might never go away, trying
to make sense of whatever illness swirled there in black and white and
gray, so terrible the river winding through me seemed more real than I
was, somewhere beneath the Douglas fir's shawl of liquid silver, the
grape leaves unfurling their fuzz of green.
Here were thought and memory, feeling and dream. I stared into those
transparent sheets of myself my husband traced with one finger as I'd
seen him trace our route across a ten thousand foot mountain, follow-
int the convoluted folds and cross sections as patiently as he followed
the slow lines of elevation.
And I thought, This is what matters--the transparent mind that lets the
world through like a window, one we can open any time, whenever we
want, the wind in our hair, mysterious, fern-delicate, human. Or is it his
standing beside me that I remember, ready to remind me that what felt
crazy was only a matter of degree, my footing on that mountain easily
recovered by reaching my hand out to his as he balanced, just a few steps
ahead, impossibly steady before me?
—Looking at MRI Scans of My Brain by Alison Townsend
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: The anchors we carry.
Moon Man and the five children (sketchbook, 2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
For the second time since N was born, I board a plane and travel with my children alone. We embark on a surprise trip to my sister’s, and none of us can wait. For N, it’s her cousins and all of the treats she doesn’t receive at home—but mostly, it’s her cousins. For F, it’s her cousins and the acrobatics—three flights of stairs to climb up and down on—but mostly, it’s her cousins. For me, it’s all of it: me and my sister and our five children, all corralled under one roof, a tangle of limbs and tears and, of course, indoor hide-and-seek.
Now and then, it pokes at me that the places most comforting to me are the ones where I’ve spent my formative years: by the water, on the east coast, near my sibling. Will I always turn towards the anchors of my childhood? Will I always feel the tug, known deeply by younger siblings—of reaching, wanting more? Of forever feeling two steps behind?
The thoughts tumble in my mind while I stand at the kitchen island, watching my nephews play Madden on the living room floor. The oldest offers to teach me, but I love him too much to disappoint him by actually playing. N and Z are in the playroom, concocting meals out of pretend ingredients. They feed their dollies, they feed each other. They yell to see if anyone else is hungry; we all yell back that we aren’t. Only F feels out of sorts, clinging to my legs, wailing for something she doesn’t have the language to express. My sister scoops her up and carries her outside.
I smell the snow before I sense it, before I see the soft clumps accumulate on the back steps. The kitchen window isn’t cracked but the sharp, dampened scent of winter leaks in anyhow. I’m going to watch the snow, I announce. No one responds.
In my sister’s arms, F is quiet. She’s listening to the snow, or maybe it’s very arrival is the world’s simple way of listening to her. Such is the strength of a young child’s heart.
One by one, the rest of our band files onto the porch: first Z, who wants to see; then N, who wonders what Z is up to; then both boys, curious as to where everyone went. For this moment, Madden is on pause.
The snowdrifts sort my thoughts and I know what I know: I don’t have an affinity for New Jersey or the east coast—or any particular nostalgia for the past. The only anchor I carry from childhood is my sibling, an anchor I’ll carry from house to house, shore to shore.
Our five children are cousins: together and sweet. The snow is the snow: always a pleasure. And I, so far removed from the roof, roads, and city that I call my own, feel perfectly at home.
TUESDAY
“There’s one ceramic piece, by my daughter — my wife and I are super sad that we lost that. It’s an image of her as a 12-year-old holding a globe with the world on fire on top of her head. And it’s her in her overalls with her striped shirt on and brown hair. It’s an interpretation of an image I made after the fires in Malibu. She was becoming this awesome artist, interpreting the world through her art just like I do. To me it was an image of uncontrollable powerlessness — that feeling you know everyone shares, but through a kid’s eyes. My daughter’s sculpture was a symbol of someone becoming who they are in a moment of time we’ll never get back to.” —Cleon Peterson on what they grabbed.
I found these resources for LA from Nicole Cardoza’s Reimagined to be really helpful. Included are links to help organize, volunteer, and donate to aid those impacted by the wildfires.
WEDNESDAY
The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood
The Census at Bethlehem (1566), oil on wood panel
These world landscapes by painter Pieter Bruegel which simultaneously evoke in me a sense of war and peace, storm and calm, winter and the first day of spring.
THURSDAY
“Consciousness lives on. The body is like a car, and the driver is the spirit, the bit of consciousness, the atom, the soul, you could say. And so the car gets old and rusted and falls apart and the driver gets out and continues on.” —David Lynch, rest in peace.
“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.
The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish—a fragment of an idea—that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.”
—from Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch
FRIDAY
So after weeks of rain
at night the winter stars
that much farther in heaven
without our having seen them
in far light are still forming
the heavy elements
that when the stars are gone
fly up as dust finer
by many times than a hair
and recognize each other
in the dark traveling
at great speed and becoming
our bodies in our time
looking up after rain
in the cold night together
—January by W. S. Merwin
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: You are spring.
A small peek into my latest drawing (mixed media, 2024)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
When the first snow of the season slowly falls, I wake up before the world and climb down the stairs. I press my nose against the cold windows of the front door and watch the drifts settle on the dark streets. A lone car whistles down the street, its headlines waving like a ribbon through the snowfall. After that, it is quiet, and I feel lucky to be alone.
Before the snow begins, T salts a hundred houses where his family doesn’t live because someone else’s does. I read the news gingerly, like a child checking to see if the burners are still warm. Dead children, wildfires, disease, manhunts. Hopelessness is not helpful, but actual food and water is, so I donate everywhere I can and feed my own girls. It feels like so many direct their own pain onto others, but I feel lucky that so many do not.
Before T salts a hundred houses, we spend a few days in Nashville. We celebrate friends, visit their children, see how we’ve all fallen and mended. We sit around the table in a friendship that feels more comfortable each year, and I eat a meal that someone else lovingly cooks for me. I see each person’s heart growing wider, more open, pumping blood, struggling as it reaches—but always reaching anyway. I know how much mine has struggled to stay open this year—but it has, it does, and I feel lucky to know each open heart at this table, especially my own.
TUESDAY
Jo Nakashima’s beautiful and strange origami; the right of return (100% of proceeds directly aid the people of Gaza); Einstein time; this gorgeous edition of The Complete Tales by Beatrix Potter, which I was thoughtfully given to borrow by a friend.
WEDNESDAY
I am reading many interesting picture books while I rewrite a manuscript I began a few weeks ago. The manuscript itself is simple, which gives me the ability to push the envelope further with my drawings. The question I keep asking myself is: How can I tell multiple stories at once?
A few books that do this well are:
The Midnight Fair by Gideon Sterer and illustrated by Mariachiara Di Giorgio, a very enchanting, completely wordless book about forest creatures visiting a fairground.
Crushing by Sophie Burrows, which really illuminates just how deeply emotions can be communicated in only two colors. Another twoc-olobook that does this beautifully is My Best Friend, written by Julie Fogliano and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki.
Small in the City by Sydney Smith, which utilizes panels to draw the reader closer (or push them farther away) from the main character’s world.
THURSDAY
A few days late to share this, but still remembering my favorite November poem and the painting I made for it a few years ago.
A small peek into my latest drawing (mixed media, 2024)
FRIDAY
Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.
You need not die today.
Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.
—To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks
See you next week!
xx,
M
Dear Somebody: Like a cloud.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
T and I voted early last week, with N in tow. We talked about the election and voting process, but mostly we talked about why your voice matters—why you must believe it does, and act as though it does—even when it feels inaudible. Even when you feel invisible. So much of life is comprised of pretending, of doing before believing. Of doing the thing your future self would do so that one day, eventually, you become your future self.
As I cast my ballot, I thought about all the things that can go wrong between my filling out a very paper ballot and it actually counting: so many things. Elections are fragile. Ours are increasingly so, bitten through with voter restriction and misinformation, but the fact that no one other than me wants my vote to count just makes me want it more.
This morning, I read about Craig Mod’s experience of casting his ballot from Japan:
I slammed my ballot down and shoved it into an EMS international airmail envelope and gleefully paid thirty freggin’ bucks or so to get that sucker to my utterly blue state knowing damn well that that vote won’t tip the scales in any meaningful way. And yet. And yet — AND. YET. — I wanna be on that ledger. Goddamn, you bet I want to be on that ledger. What else is there but the ledger in a moment like this? Pull the lever, cast your tiny pebble into it all and hope things add up. De minimis? Hell no. At the very least, you’ll be present on the cosmic scale, a little number at the end of a bigger number — one that wouldn’t have been quite as big without you. That’s not nothing, and when your grandkids asked what you did right now — in this mythic time of madness and infinite resources all seemingly used in the wrong ways, facing the wrong directions, directed at the wrong people — you can at least say you were present, doing the smallest of things you could in whatever way you could.
Freedom doesn’t usually feel like freedom until it’s taken away. In 2024, I’m still allowed to vote in an American presidential election. I did, and I will, until I can’t. There were many things my family did last Thursday that were meaningless, that genuinely did not matter—but casting a vote and reminding myself and my kid that what we domatters, that who we are matters—was not one of them.
TUESDAY
“In the past, I’ve been perplexed by artists who work intuitively–artists who say they simply knew to use a certain color or to make a specific mark. A fear of failure, compounded by a mountain of self-doubt, led me to believe these artists possessed an innate talent I didn’t have. For years, I attempted to use logic and reason to convince myself of this self-sabotaging belief because it relieved me from the responsibility of accepting the truth: that intuition in craft develops through years of regular practice.
In Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland address this very idea: ‘For every artist who has developed a mature vision with grace and speed, countless others have laboriously nurtured their art through fertile periods and dry spells, through false starts and breakaway bursts, through successive and significant changes of direction, medium, and subject matter. Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won’t count for much.’”
—An excerpt from my latest essay, Intuition and Your Creative Voice: One Leads to the Other, for Issue #63 of Uppercase Magazine
WEDNESDAY
“There’s no shortcut. I’m no accident. People like to say it’s natural. It’s not so. You have to practice and you have to study.” —Miles Davis
“…I personally have been focused on changing my own negativity bias. And because our brains have plasticity, we can actually change this. I’ve spent the past two years trying to unlearn a focus on the negative all the time as the main thing. And because a focus on all our problems is draining, and it is super depressing and sometimes actually is debilitating. And something that organizing campaigns taught me early on was to focus less on problems, but to turn those problems into issues that people could maybe actually find a way to engage in to transform and change. And this has really kept me going over the years. I think oftentimes about, if I hadn’t been involved in organizing campaigns, what my life would have looked like, how much I probably would have been so depressed, you know, more depressed. Because I just think having a way to be able to see a way forward to transform and change my conditions is such a huge part for me of being able to live in the world.” —Mariame Kabe, in conversation with Kelly Hayes, on their book, Let This Radicalize You
THURSDAY
As a longtime reader of Modern Love essays, I enjoyed learning a little more about how illustrating the column for so long has affected Brian Rea.
As a longtime admirer of printmaking techniques, I’m working up the courage to make some Tetrapak prints—has anyone done this? Does anyone still have or use their Gocco printer?
As a longtime fan of all sky-related matters, I was initially perplexed (“…a cloud?”) and ultimately renewed (“…a cloud!”) by N’s request to be a cloud for Halloween this year. I made two costumes out of paper mache, but when they didn’t work out, I turned to newspaper print and cotton batting.
N as the perfect cloud (2024)
I constantly use my voice to tell my children to be who they are—to go against the grain if the grain doesn’t suit them, and to listen to themselves, even if it’s a little lonelier when they do.
On Halloween, in a sea of glitter and color and power, there was only one cloud. Steady and sweet, if a little unassuming. Flying under the radar, certainly, but unreplicable. Irreplaceable. Like a cloud. Like freedom. And I was proud.
FRIDAY
When they say Don't I know you?
say no.
When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.
If they say We should get together
say why?
It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.
When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
—The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: Cutting out the rot.
N’s 4th birthday cake: a rainbow cake! (2024)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
N’s 4th birthday cake: definitely a rainbow cake. (2024)
Over the past decade, my relationship with my work twisted itself into a rotting mass—one where I searched for the proof of my own self-worth in my work. When my ability to work very hard was the only thing I still liked about myself, I knew it was time for a change. So I cut the rot out.
Part of this excavation process involves consciously expanding my love for working into a broader love for everything outside of it. I know that my work will only be as thoughtful, as intelligent, and as full as my actual life is. I also know that I live in a country where no one really cares if a mother has a room or time of her own to put towards developing her mind, spirit, or craft. I live in a country with a supremely unhealthy work culture, where there’s little desire to separate a human being from their production value. I know the history and lineage behind my harmful admiration of debilitating independence and relentless hard work. And yet, I love my work. I am lucky to have found it, lucky to love it so. But I want to love myself more.
So I cut away the rot. I take my need for external validation and wring it out. I want only what’s good: the creativity in being unobserved, the freedom that’s left behind. I love friendship and quilting and books and children and elaborate meals and I want more of myself to put towards these parts of life. I love the alchemy of it all—the ability to make something out of nothing. I want to be less focused on creating intelligent work and more focused on being an intelligent person.
For her 4th birthday, N requests a rainbow cake. I put my work aside, and I plan out a rainbow cake—six separate layers, a homemade buttercream frosting, a boatload of rainbow sprinkles. I am slow—a slow learner, a cautious beginner, a creature of habit. It takes me two days to bake and assemble the cake, but the cake is good. It is spotty and uneven and it stands up on its own. It is imperfect. It is exactly what I hoped to make, and for once, my eyes lined up with my hands. It is good.
Most days, I wander around my own life wondering why motherhood feels so difficult for me—why I carry the weight of it around, instead of sinking into it like the bizarre and bewildering dream it is. Most days, I am frustrated with myself for feeling so much, for wanting, so badly, to be naturally good at something, instead of working so hard to be mediocre at it all. I envy those for whom writing or mothering comes intuitively, comes evenly. I want to be good.
When we cut the cake, N sees all six colors stacked on top of each other and her mouth falls open in genuine awe—the awe only accessible to a fresh four-year old. Her face is worth a two-day bake; it always will be. We eat the cake and it is good.
N tells me it’s her favorite cake. I don’t really know what I’m doing, in life or in my work, but I keep cutting the rot out. I want to feel the joy of making deep inside my bones. I want to like my work even when no one else does. I want to like myself when I don’t make anything at all.
Slowly, I cut the rot out. I think this is the way to something good.
P.S. For archival purposes, here are past birthday cakes: F’s first birthday, N’s third birthday.
TUESDAY
“The thing is that my brain is just as broken as it was before. Winning this award might have fixed my life on the outside, but it certainly didn’t fix my psychological issues or my sense of self. I am just as insecure as I was the day before I got the award, and just as scared as well, and that part has not changed. I really wish it had because I’m so sick of being afraid, afraid that my career will end, that I will never write anything again: all the fears that I’ve always had. Every time I write a story, I’m like, “I bet that was the last one.” I still feel that way. That part has not changed.”
—Bruna Dantas Lobato on life after winning the 2023 National Book Award
“What’s real is that if you do your scales every day, if you slowly try harder and harder pieces, if you listen to great musicians play music you love, you’ll get better. At times when you’re working, you’ll sit there feeling hung over and bored, and you may not be able to pull yourself up out of it that day. But it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives."
—Anne Lamott on writing
“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good, many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm—and that’s a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you.”
—Vincent van Gogh in a letter to Theo
WEDNESDAY
I rediscovered Sandol Stoddard’s I Like You on N’s bookshelf a few days ago, and we read it together before bed. It’s just as endearing as it was 20 years ago, when I first discovered it—and one of the quirky books (like Ruth Krauss’ A Hole is to Dig) that encouraged me to make sweet little books of my own.
THURSDAY
I’m reading: about how leaves change color in autumn and Past Tense by Sacha Mardou.
I’m watching: Pachinko — I fell for this series hard and fast, and think about it all throughout the day and miss it even while I’m watching.
I’m listening: to the Minari soundtrack, to anything composed by Joe Hisaishi, and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath on tape.
FRIDAY
Every evening, an hour before
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while.
When I return, the moon is there.
Like a changing of the guard.
I don’t expect the light
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.
—The Light Continues by Linda Gregg
See you next week!
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: In the name of sisterhood.
Color testing for a risograph edition of Stay Golden (2024)
For local folks: next week I’ll be in conversation with Sacha Mardou to celebrate the launch of her graphic memoir Past Tense. I’m incredibly impressed with the amount of emotional and physical work this graphic novel has taken, and how smoothly Sacha takes us not only through her tumultuous upbringing, but through the complicated passageways of her mind. Come see us if you can.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
Since the Penguin saga (Part 1 and Part 2), it’s been a tough couple of weeks for mothers and daughters. N is not even four but somehow she’s already fourteen, defiance coming off her like hot steam. I feel myself skulking back into my own teenaged self each time N strikes a match and hurls the flame directly at me; it’s my least favorite version of myself to be.
No is her new favorite word. It sprints out of her mouth like an outraged boxer, like someone who’s been outfought many times and will not allow themselves to come second any longer. No is followed by loyal companions it’s not and I’m not and I won’t. The words are followed by the tears—my god, so many tears—as if the salt water seeping out of her eyes is determined to make our house it’s new home. After the tears, it’s the screams, then the kicking and shrieking, and then finally, the entire bag of three-year-old bones crumples in the very spot where it was previously standing and goes silent.
Tantrums are tough on the body. I feel my frustration radiating with nowhere to go. I too want to win; I, too, refuse to come last—but my idea of winning means only that my oldest child doesn’t feel too misunderstood, too often, and that one day when she does, she’ll have the language to tell me, to my face, why. It’s not the first time parenthood has brought me to tears and nor will it be the last, so I dry my eyes and get back in the ring.
12 hours later, when it’s finally time to tuck into bed, thoroughly exhausted and all cried out, N tells me she’s afraid of falling asleep. Her dreams scare her. The shadows have teeth. I tell her our brains will believe anything we tell them, so we have to give them lots of joy. Lots of reasons to smile. What’s something that always makes you smile? I ask her.
“F,” she says and closes her eyes. In this moment, despite the hundreds of ways I am failing as her mother, I feel, in the name of sisterhood—that maybe I’m also doing something right.
TUESDAY
My 2025 Start Where You Are calendar
Working pastel into the painting (2 of 3)
My 2025 Life Blooms One Day at a Time weekly planner
A favorite spread from my 2025 weekly planner
My 2025 calendars and planners with Amber Lotus Publishing/Andrews McMeel are available!
I am so pleased to say that both of these items are filled with illustrations painted and written by me, and no one else. Valuing the practices and thoughts that have helped me along my way as much as I value someone else’s words has been a long time coming—but now it’s here, and I am glad.
These make wonderful gifts for yourself or a loved one—if you’re inclined, please support me by purchasing one (or a few) through Andrews McMeel, BuyOlympia, or Amazon.
WEDNESDAY
I started a new practice of listening to poetry while I draw. This week I’ve listened to Jericho Brown and Margaret Atwood. Ideally, I’d like to choose a prolific poet and listen to their entire body of work over the next several months as I work on illustrating Dear Library. If you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments—especially if the audiobook is narrated by the poet.
I started two books: I am reading the My Father’s Dragon trilogy by Ruth Stiles Gannett and I am listening to Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange.
I want to memorize poetry—my memory is pretty shoddy so maybe this will be both interesting and exciting; I confirmed I am registered to vote; I started waking up before the sun again.
THURSDAY
Color study of N and Penguin (2024)
I received this beautiful copy of Ornithography by friend and illustrator Jessica Roux and the inside artwork is every bit as stunning as the cover. I’ve placed it near our front door so we can reference it while bird-watching from our windows, door, and porch. Jessica is also a gifted gardener and publishes The Garden People with artists Ginnie Hsu and Libby VanderPloeg.
FRIDAY
me and you be sisters.
we be the same.
me and you
coming from the same place.
me and you
be greasing our legs
touching up our edges.
me and you
be scared of rats
be stepping on roaches.
me and you
come running high down purdy street one time
and mama laugh and shake her head at
me and you.
me and you
got babies
got thirty-five
got black
let our hair go back
be loving ourselves
be loving ourselves
be sisters.
only where you sing
i poet.
—Sisters by Lucille Clifton
xx,
M
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Dear Somebody: There is every reason to believe.
Meeting Penguin in a Dream (mixed media on paper, 2024)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
On Saturday, a week to the day that we lost Penguin, we drag ourselves to the library. It’s a hot, humid day—one of summer’s final waves, a last-minute delay to autumn’s much-wanted arrival.
Both girls are tired. F doesn’t want to sit in the stroller; N doesn’t want to put shoes on, or leave the house. I feel cooped up. Even though the girls have been back at school for 3 weeks now, I find myself struggling to adapt to our new school year routine. I missed my work all summer, but now September is here and I feel daunted by my dreams for it. As they tend to do, my dreams turn into expectations, and my expectations are high—too high, somewhere in the clouds. There is so much I want to make, so many ideas I want to see through, so much more I would do if only there was more time. Each day, I wake with the same expectations; each day, I fail to meet them and my disappointment comes calling, comes climbing, knocks another dream off its cloud.
These are the thoughts in my head as I strap F, wailing, into her stroller. These are the thoughts in my head as I strap a helmet onto N’s sulking head. We trudge down the alley towards our library, and when we arrive, I hold the door open for a little girl and her mother, letting the door close behind them.
I tell my group to collect itself before we enter the house of books. This is a special place, I stress. We’re not going in like this! We are only a group of four, but two of us are wailing and the remaining two want to.
We enter the library, and that’s when I see that the little girl who walked in before us is holding a penguin. A small black and white penguin. A penguin with a squashed nose that looks like its been loved each day of its flightless life.
I ask the girl’s mother if the penguin belongs to her, and she tells me that her daughter found it in the corner with all of the other stuffies. I ask if I can look at the penguin’s tag, and when I do, I see that it’s Penguin. Pen-Pen. Our guy.
Incredulity floods my body. I stammer out an explanation to the girl’s mother, who hands Penguin to N. I look at T in disbelief. All of this time? Under our very noses? In our own neighborhood? Even when it hurt to hope? Holding Penguin in her arms, N bursts into tears.
I’ve never been someone who fully believes—not beyond reasonable doubt, not past what I can see, never in something outside of myself. I don’t let my hope overshadow my demand for proof or pragmatic solutions. As I walk home, I tell myself that all of that stops right now—the self-doubting and the disappointment. I won’t allow anyone, especially not myself, to keep knocking down my dreams.
A couple of leaves fall from the maple tree near our house. They are crinkly, already auburn. The forecast for tomorrow reads cool, maybe even pleasant.
My kid, the absolute portrait of innocence, gets to keep loving the friend she loves—and have the same friend love her back. What else is there? The world gave us back a friendship. There is every reason to believe.
TUESDAY
A quick look into the process for the painting of N and Pen is below.
I started taking photos halfway through, so unfortunately I don’t have the beginning of the process to show, but: I sketched onto watercolor paper using colored pencil, then began light washes of gouache.
Adding light washes of gouache (1 of 3)
This is the part of the process that frightens me: I’m satisfied with the sketch, but as soon as I add color, it begins to go awry. For me, this is due to both a lack of confidence and experience. Pushing through this part is a practice.
Working pastel into the painting (2 of 3)
Above: I’m trying to figure out light and shadow. I usually add light arbitrarily, content if any comes through at all, but I paid attention to the large shape of Pen to see where both shadows would fall in the snow. I also wanted to create and capture a glow between the two friends.
Adding colored pencil and more pastel (3 of 3)
I continued adding layers of pastel and colored pencil, careful to work each into the paper so it doesn’t simply sit on top. I added the snow using white pastel. After I removed the tape (which always tears my paper, does anyone have a solution?), I added a border using colored pencil.
This drawing is OK. Naturally, I’m dissatisfied with the end result, but I’m also becoming comfortable with that. I learned a little—namely, that I prefer warmer palettes over cooler ones—and I painted a painting I’ve wanted to for years (I first drew this idea two years ago).
When I remember to, I’m starting to note and share more of my process because it helps me understand that each day, when I sit at my desk producing what feels like copious amounts of garbage, I’m doing what I’m supposed to: Practicing. Trying. Thinking. Believing.
WEDNESDAY
I’m listening to the Sunny soundtrack. I’m interested in this new color class by Sha’an D’Anthes. I’m waiting to receive Mythmakers by John Hendrix. We read the Knufflebunny series by Mo Willems over the past week, and I’m late—but really excited—to discover the work of Lisk Feng; I enjoyed this profile on her.
THURSDAY
When we first moved to Saint Louis, I liked most that it’s a city that feels like a small town. As I settle more into parenthood, I see the appeal of the small town more and more: a strong, intimate community; a sense of familiarity and safety; the ability to take more risk because it can be easier to build a solid foundation, both financially and creatively.
Color study of N and Penguin (2024)
My friend Erin Austen Abbott released her latest book,Small Town Living, this week. It highlights the many creative people, places, and communities that thrive inside American small towns, and I received a copy of it, along with artwork fromAvery Williamson Studio(Ypsi, Michigan), stationery fromWorthwhile Paper(also Ypsi, Michigan!), and a beautiful patch keychain fromThree Potato Four(Media, PA), which now sits on my keyring.
We are always thinking about where to live next. I’m naturally drawn to large cities, but this book makes me curious if the large, expansive life that I want for myself and my family…exists somewhere much smaller.
FRIDAY
the silhouettes of their bond visible still at the last glow of the sun
they experience each other and the life of the night as it begins to stir
standing there in silence holding hands
no rush to go back inside
there is so much beauty and comfort in being in love and just being…
—amidst sounds of buzzing
chirps
crickets
the pleasant but irregular blowing of the wind
fireflies dancing in step with the light of the moon
how strange it is to become aware of another’s heartbeat but forget one’s own—
finally love.
—At Last…Another’s heartbeat by Marcellus Williams
xx,
M
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Dear Somebody: Losing a penguin
N and Penguin — love goes on and on and on (pencil on paper, 2024)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
Over the weekend, we drove to a farm in Illinois to find our way through an 8-acre corn maze. We did, and then we piled back into the car and drove home to have lunch. After F’s nap, we walked to the library and chose new books, stopping at the playground to practice the monkey bars. We hurried home to make dinner and it was halfway through, while shoveling chicken and rice into her mouth, that N told us that she couldn’t find Penguin anywhere.
Penguin, or Pen-Pen, is N’s lovey, who has slept in her arms each night since she was born. He eats meals with her regularly, both at our home and in public. He gets his own seat and sometimes, he gets his own meal. He’s taken baths with her, made wishes with her, traveled across state lines and open seas with her, and it is he that she calls for when most upset or unconsolable. N’s love for Pen is so great that it inspired F’s love for Tunafish, an absolutely identical penguin that N gifted her only so F would stop thieving Pen from her room.
T goes to check the car and the garage, and when no Penguin is found, he gets on his bike and rides through the neighborhood. He retraces the path we took to the library and the playground, searches the alleyways, checks the slides. I email the library, already closed, and ask them to please look for Penguin. I call the farm, which is still open, and the manager tells me she’ll check the lost and found. If I leave my name and number, she’ll call me when he turns up. Her voice is sweet and understanding. All of us at the farm—we’re all mothers, she tells me. We know what this is like. We’ll find him.
For the first time in her almost-four years of life, N goes to bed without her penguin. I miss Pen, she says. What if we never find him? Breaking my own rule, I lie with her until she falls asleep. I wonder where Pen-Pen is. It’s a big world for such a small, sweet penguin.
Afterwards, I search the house and play the tape back in my mind. I rewind it over and over, stopping at all the same moments, pressing play. Did F bring him to the farm thinking he was Tuna? Did I put him in my bag when we got there? Did he fall under the picnic table? Did he fall out when I opened the car door? I saw him in the car—didn’t I? Didn’t I?
In the morning, N makes the shape of a penguin with her arms. Mom, last night when I didn’t have penguin, I closed my eyes and it felt like I was holding him. I am grateful for her brilliant imagination, for its ability to comfort her. I am disappointed that memory—as shoddy and unreliable as it is, with all its faulty limitations—is still the next best thing to the actual presence of something we love.
T tells us he’s going to work and then drives back to the farm. He runs the entire 8-acre corn maze again, retracing our steps through the playground and the farm field stores. He searches the grassy field, now beginning to fill with the morning rush of cars and giggling children. Not here, he texts me. The heart breaks.
I think of somebody—anybody, who wouldn’t know how much our family has cared for this little penguin—and how they’d find and toss him, casually, into the trash. The heart breaks.
Things become family because we care for them, because we choose to divest our finite energy away from one avenue and pour it into another. N loved Penguin into our family, caring for him as we care for her. She considered his feelings, as I do for her. I loved him because she did.
N finds the first drawing I did of her and Penguin. It’s the invitation from her first birthday party. She tucks it into a tote bag and says she’ll show everyone in the neighborhood his picture, so they can call us when they find him. So they can return him to his family. She retraces the steps T already retraced, carrying the invitation like a missing-child milk carton in her hands. When we don’t see him, she asks me again: Mom, what if we never find him?
I tell her I don’t know if we’ll find him or not, but that it’s up to us to keep looking, to keep believing that we will. Missing somebody is hard. It’s a difficult thing to feel, the love a too-big-something squashed inside our hearts, but what it tells us is good: that we care.
More than the missing, it’s the not knowing that causes ache. Penguin’s absence is unexpected—after hundreds of near-losses, I took for granted that he’d always eventually turn up again. We’ve saved him from airplanes and cousin’s houses, bathtubs and alleyways. I didn’t think he’d ever actually disappear.
I know that Penguin is a stuffed animal. I know there isn’t any substantial value to him other than the love that he symbolized for a child and her family. I know his story is every child’s story, or every child’s worst fear. I know N will be fine. But it’s a big world for such a small, sweet child—and the heart still breaks in ways I didn’t know it could.
TUESDAY
“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
—from Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit
WEDNESDAY
It’s been an unexpectedly good week for mail:
I received a beautiful copy of Mai and the Missing Melon by Sonoko Sakai, illustrated by my old friend Keiko Brodeur. This sweet story explores the relationship between a young girl and her grandmother, the Japanse folktale of The Stone Buddhas, and Japanese food, culture, and history. In the package, Keiko also included a generous selection of gorgeous new cards from her sweet stationery company, Small Adventure.
I received my copy of FAIL-A-BRATION by my friends Brad and Kristi Montague, which celebrates failure. I’m not sure a better (or more necessary) celebration can be had.
also runs a really heartfelt and encouraging newsletter called The Enthusiast which I always look forward to reading.
After gifting my professor a copy of Tolkien’s The Father Christmas Letters, I ordered one for myself and it arrived today. I am taken by this collection of letters, written and illustrated by Tolkien (as Father Christmas) to his children over the span of 23 years. The letters eventually inspired parts of The Lord of the Rings, which is really exciting. It reminds me to play—to remember that the art we create for fun can lead us to our most challenging and fulfilling projects. Reading through the letters, what strikes me most is how vast a person’s imagination can be—and how untapped most of ours are.
THURSDAY
Color study of N and Penguin (2024)
A small color study of N and Penguin. I’m trying hard to capture the feeling of such a classic childhood relationship—a child and her stuffy—with colors and washes that withstand the test of time.
I keep asking myself what makes a good picture, or a good sentence—it’s ability to speak to anyone, regardless of age or experience? I don’t know; I’ll keep asking.
FRIDAY
If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”
—Your Catfish Friend by Richard Brautigan
xx,
M
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