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: 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: Should I be doing more?
My desk this week: color studies, sketches, rewrites (2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
Lately, the position I find myself in most in nose to the ground, cleaning up after F’s meals. I sweep up crumbs and half-chewed banana, along with entire chunks of sandwich that have fallen out of her grinning mouth. Mine is a kid whose laughter will not wait for a bite to be chewed or properly swallowed; whose joy will not be tamed by rules or fatigue or her sister’s annoyance—whose joy is, in fact, a medicine for even-reasonable rules or well-earned fatigue or understandable annoyance; whose heart will not falter or close, even as mine does, at the state of this world.
Lately, the position I find myself in most is sleepwalking to F’s room around midnight, then two am, then three, and four. For months now she’s been wide awake when she should be sleeping, and over these past few weeks, she’s begun screaming, too. I wonder if the world’s collective anxiety seeps into her skin during the dark hours of the night, if she is so annoyed at our inability to separate wrong from right that she’s resorted to screaming.
When I lift her out of bed, she clings to me with relief. At nearly two years old, F is still a tiny thing, a baby monkey smuggling herself away in my arms. Outside of this room, beyond the walls of my home, families are bundled up and sent back to countries they don’t recognize. Others move of their own accord, to states and cities who will attempt to protect them when the rest of their country will not. Some go to school and don’t return home because their friends and neighbors believe real freedom is the power to destroy another person’s world.
Safety is a matter of luck, and I was born on the side of it that faces up—the side sunlight reaches after it travels through a thousand years of cold and darkness.
Lately, the position I find myself in most is stiff-necked, eyes closed, breathing in my kid’s presence and thinking of all the others. I breathe in her brown skin’s scent and consider what I can do—how I can transform the small marble of hardness in my own heart into something new, something that will help someone else. I breathe in my kid’s spirit and I know I can try harder. I breathe in my kid’s pulse and my heart, a temperamental old thing, slowly begins to open once more.
TUESDAY
The problems of our time are overwhelming—so much so that a paralysis can set in. Unfortunately, paralysis is just that: paralysis. It doesn’t encourage you to create change in yourself or the world, and it doesn’t allow you to help anyone else.
Helplessness stems from inaction. Commit to fostering hope within yourself by believing that your actions matter—that there is meaning in every small deed, even if it seems underwhelming. Does it feel like enough? Never. Is it better than doing nothing at all? Yes.
Operating in a state of total despair (or worse, being unable to function)doesn’t mean you see reality more clearly than those who are content.Cultivating joy within yourself despite the realities that surround you is a strength.
Ask yourself which causes align with your values. Choose a single issue that is close to your heart. Learn more about it, and slowly integrate small changes in your lifestyle that support these causes.
Learn to live with a certain amount of fear and anxiety. Remember that the presence of both indicates that you care—that you’re a thoughtful, feeling person who wants to make a difference.
—Excerpted from How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Clarity, Purpose, and Heart, my book of illustrated essays.
WEDNESDAY
“People are redefining ambition. Most of us who hit 40 have had enough experiences—winning and losing—to know that it is all actually “winning” and “losing.” The best job in the world can also cause you profound stress. Getting the promotion, raise, book deal that you always wanted, might feel like a hard-won achievement in certain ways, and in others, it is likely to be anti-climatic and send you spinning off into a moment of existential confusion. If you’ve experienced the texture of work long enough, you start to sober up about what really matters to you, what you are really made for, and what you want to spend your precious energy and time on. You understand that the deepest sense of self-realization doesn’t come through paychecks or titles, but through genuine, intrinsic pride that you have done something you are delighted by with people who delight you. Midlife is a moment to seek a more finely calibrated understanding of all of this and start advocating for yourself within work settings (whether that means joining a labor union or saying no more to freelance work or not tolerating assholes). Of course the most insecure your financial situation, and the less lucrative your life’s work, the more constraints you face on living into these truths. Which is why economic disparity is about so much more than “food on the table,” but people’s ability to give the world their best gifts and live their fullest, most realized lives.” —From Courtney Martin’s Grow Bigger, Not Bitter
THURSDAY
Winsor McCay, Little Nemo in Slumberland, 26 July 1908
The animated legacy of Little Nemo’s walking bed: I read Little Nemo as a child; as an adult, I have a deep appreciation for Winsor McCay’s imagination and drawing ability. I find more and more that McCay’s tight lines and evocative color palette are influencing how I think about drawing and the drawings I want to make—that maybe “fun” in drawing doesn’t necessarily mean spontaneity in line or execution, but fluidity in thought and effective communication.
FRIDAY
I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple as well.
—The World Has Need of You by Ellen Bass
See you next week!
xx,
M
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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
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Dear Somebody: The moonlight is here
A sketch of me and baby Frida in the hospital.
On April 21, we welcomed Frida Iyla into the world. Frida means peace in Old High German and Iyla is based on the Turkish Ayla, for moonlight.
Writing this newsletter weekly is important to me, but if needed, I’ll take some time away from the world to care for myself and my family. I have no schedule or particular ambitions; I’m planning on taking it exactly one day at a time.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
It’s no surprise that I admire Frida Kahlo as a woman and artist; as a human, she has the enviable ability to embrace her strangeness, her differences, and to find strength in them. As I learn more about her life, I am stunned by her endurance, determination, and ability to find romance—that is, beauty and value—in even the most treacherous moments of her life.
My favorite words by her are below:
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”
—Frida Kahlo
TUESDAY
My experience with birth the second time has been vastly different from the first, and a positive reminder that the past does not have to be indicative of the future.
What do I want to remember most?
• The way I was cared for by my surgeon, my doctors, my nurses, my husband, my daughter, and my family. The friends and classmates who’ve called and comforted. The editors who have stretched deadlines, the cohort who has taken on my Thesis installation, the publishing team who has taken on more work in my absence.
• The humanity of those that gave a little of themselves to me and my family, though we were perfect strangers—during many moments of great vulnerability over the past week.
• A never-before-felt grace towards my body, which always tries to care for me, and endures far more than I ever give it credit for. A promise to give you rest.
• The joy of experiencing motherhood with a lot more patience, a lot less anxiety, and priorities—and a perspective—that suits my values, my needs, and the life I want for myself.
• The sweetness of you, my little Frida, who has brought out such unexpected, dormant sweetness in me. At six days old, you have already changed me.
WEDNESDAY
“When things go well, it is easy to celebrate our bodies. But when things go poorly, or not how we imagined, it becomes much harder. I could look back and think about the ways my body disappointed me—and I did, a few times. But whenever I went down that road, I found that it was a dead-end street that made me feel terrible. Hating my body remains a waste of time. At some point, just for the purpose of survival, I chose, deliberately, to focus on all the things my body did right, what it did so well on my behalf. Everything it tried to do.”
—Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes
THURSDAY
Frida’s childhood home in Mexico City, Casa Azul, was turned into the Frida Kahlo Museum in 1958. I’d love to visit one day — many of her paintings are still on display, including Viva la Vida, her final work. In true Frida fashion, she remains in the house as well: an urn containing her ashes lives in her bedroom.
Below are a few of my favorite paintings by Frida:
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
FRIDAY
I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark
morning streets, I point and name.
Look, the sycamores, their mottled,
paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves
rusting and crisping at the edges.
I walk through Schiller Park with you
on my chest. Stars smolder well
into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks,
the dogs paddling after their prized sticks.
Fall is when the only things you know
because I’ve named them
begin to end. Soon I’ll have another
season to offer you: frost soft
on the window and a porthole
sighed there, ice sleeving the bare
gray branches. The first time you see
something die, you won’t know it might
come back. I’m desperate for you
to love the world because I brought you here.
—First Fall by Maggie Smith
xx,
M
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Dear Somebody: A simple photograph
On my desk this week: a few in-progress illustrations for my thesis project.
Hi, friends.
Thanks so much for all of the support towards my accordion book, elegy/a crow/Baand for the warm reception to the Craft series! Most of you enjoyed a look into the process behind my work, so I’ll plan on continuing that series. I’m excited to.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
This simple photograph that T took of me and N a few weeks ago, newly clad in my third-generation hand-me-down from B, and before her, J. Prior to this photograph I was living my slovenly existence in too-big sweats and T’s old tees, since nothing fits and I have no time (or desire) to shop.
Nothing makes me feel quite as cozy or cared for as a hand-me-down. I think of all each garment has seen: the laughter and tears housed inside the body it hugged, the hands that carefully held and washed it, the wear-and-tear that adorns only the most well-loved. Like a heart, a hand-me-down shows the signs and strengths of all it’s been through—and all it’s willing to take on.
There haven’t been many photos taken of me since N was born over 2 years ago. I’m still uncertain of my own appearance, and now with baby #2, I know it’ll still be some time yet before I feel comfortable in my body again. But this photo, taken randomly by afternoon sunlight in my parents’ temporary apartment, captures much of what I’d like to remember: the walls that sheltered the people who cared for me and my family during this pregnancy, the littlest heart who is so excited to become a big sister, and the hands that insisted on capturing this moment—because he believed it was important to.
TUESDAY
“My daughters have pulled back the curtain to see that I am the false wizard, that I can offer no promises to them other than to point out the courage and wisdom and heart they already possess. All parents face this moment at some point, but I would have hoped to wait.
My worries hover in the back of my mind, keeping me awake in the dark hours poetically called madrugada in Spanish — the time before the dawn, when the world is quiet. I try not to share those worries with my daughters. That is not the honesty they need. Instead, they bubble up when I break a glass or burn dinner or stumble in any one of a million ways; then I am the kettle screaming to be removed from the heat.”
—My Child Is in an Impossible Place, and I am There With Her by Sarah Wildman, a beautifully-written and heartbreaking read about life, impossibility, and parenting
WEDNESDAY
“If you take a moment to really look at any of the ‘State of Children’ studies, it can be overwhelming. You could easily be thrown into spirals of hopelessness or “overwhelming I’m just not-enoughness”. Heck, just look at your local school and it’s easy to feel the weight of the work there is to be done right in your own backyard.
There’s so much work to be done. There’s so many kids. There’s just one you. There’s just one me. This is a great place to start.
Our best hope forward is not in using our imaginations to escape reality, but using our imaginations to create a better reality. There’s the world that is and there’s the world that could be. There’s also a you. There’s also a me.”
—State of the Children Address from Brad Montague’s newsletter, The Enthusiast
THURSDAY
“Part of it is observing oneself more impersonally… When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, “You’re too this, or I’m too this.” That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
—How to Be Less Harsh with Yourself (and Others) by Ram Dass, via The Marginalian
FRIDAY
On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons.
The equivalent weight of how much railway
it would take to get a third of the way to the sun.
It’s the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Times three.
Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.
There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.
—Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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If you'd like to support me, you can pre-order my upcoming book of illustrated essays, How it Feels to Find Yourself, for yourself, a loved one, or both! My art prints, stationery, and books are available through BuyOlympia. Limited edition prints and original paintings are available in my shop.
xx,
M
To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.
Dear Somebody: Confronting your inner critic.
From The Worst Boss I've Ever Had, a comic about confronting your inner critic.
Hello, everyone! I know it's been awhile. I'm navigating some unexpected personal news and health changes, but things are finally beginning to finally shift to a manageable place. Though it's freezing here in St. Louis, I'm enjoying the seasons' transition; I hope brisk air is sweeping you into its arms wherever you are.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
I don't often feel like a mother. Two years into being one, the title continues to feel like a pair of too-big shoes I'm eagerly waiting to grow into. What does a mother feel like? I have my suspicions, certainly. A mother is calm. A mother is well-assembled. Someone that knows what to do. Someone who has answers, and a medicine cabinet full of tried-and-true remedies. A mother knows their way around the kitchen, and a new city, and the inner workings of their own mind. A mother is someone who knows. Someone whose heart has been split open, as I hear so often, by their child––a heart that's now grown so large there's barely enough space for it left in their chest. Is this me? I don't know. My heart seems well-adjusted to its cavity.
N wakes up sobbing lately. Her cries are like a siren; she sits up and wails with such alarm that I wonder what terrors visited her young mind. When the crying doesn't stop, I go in and pick her up. We move to the light that slips in between the closed blinds. I sing Carole King until she says Mama, no, putting her hand to my mouth. We sit in the big chair, her face buried in my chest, my cheek resting on her head. Already she's so tall, legs like a ballerina jutting out from my either side. Her breath becomes deeper, steady. She is asleep and my arms are full of her. She is asleep and I feel strangely settled. She is asleep and I am someone who knows how to soothe. For her, I figured out how. My medicine cabinet is empty, but my heart is full. I am a mother––this I have known, but for these few minutes, I begin to believe it, too.
TUESDAY
For the WORK issue of The Nib, I made a comic about the worst boss I've ever worked for: myself. You can read the comic here on my blog and order a print issue of the The Nib – please help support this wonderful indie publication!
My 2023 calendar and planners are also now available, through Buyoly and Amber Lotus Publishing. These are excellent gifts for the upcoming season, and a great way to encourage my little business.
*Support more BIPOC makers this year! I love these hand-poured candles by Golden Hour Co. in rainier and oakmoss.
WEDNESDAY
“You have consented to time and it is winter. The country seems bigger, for you can see through the bare trees. There are times when the woods is absolutely still and quiet. The house holds warmth. A wet snow comes in the night and covers the ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white. For a while in the morning the world is perfect and beautiful. You think you will never forget. You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise.”
––Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
THURSDAY
All through autumn I wish for my body to become something new. I want my body to be stronger, less sensitive to these invisible, internal changes. I want it to be stoic, indifferent to the weight of its responsibility. I want it to perform flawlessly. I disregard the fact that it completes thousands of tasks to keep my heart beating and lungs full of air, without my knowing when or how. I am grateful, I think, but I ask it for more. I want my body to be decent. I want it to look beautiful though I know it is doing too much. It is tired and needs rest, but there are books to write and school to attend and so many to care for.
For months, I offer my body no grace. I shroud it in resentment. I criticize it and wonder why that doesn't amount to change. Why it won't simply be better, the way I imagine other people's bodies to be. I speak to it like I would never speak to another; I allow my imagination to make me even more cruel. After months of sickness, when I finally come to my senses, when I remember how love actually works, it strikes me that I have never taken my body into both arms, never voiced the words buried beneath my anger: Yes, it is you. It is you that I choose over and over again.
FRIDAY
she told me then
that they
"the slaves who were ourselves"
searched for one another
tried to get back
to places they had been before
to them that they had known
needed and loved
to them that knew
she told me then
that this searching
was hard journeying
harder even than
moving over water
than finding strange language
and people with nothing under their skin
hard journeying she told me
this way back to ourselves
––exiles return by bell hooks
xo,
M
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Dear Somebody: Together at last.
From Three Shooting Stars, a tiny comic about the life of an artist.
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
When we board the plane to New Jersey, a switch goes off. I don't know where the switch was, or is, but it must exist because something flips it from ON to OFF.
I refer to it as The Sea Switch. This switch controls the space between me and N, a swath of distance that rose between us when I crossed the Atlantic for France back in June, and has remained between us for the 8 weeks since. This sea is full of rocky waves. Thrashing storms. A constant swallowing of debris.
When the plane begins taxiing, N‘s eyes open wide. She immediately shuts the window shade and crawls into my lap. I’m wedged into the middle seat, a sleeping stranger to my right, T to my left. N takes my hand in hers and burrows her face into my neck. I’m surprised by the intimacy in her actions: something so traditionally mother-and-child, that for us, has become foreign. Forgotten. I’m so pleased that I ask T to take pictures of us, and he does.
When I send the photos to my sister later that evening, she tells me I’m beaming, the light shooting out of my face. I study the photos and it’s true: mother and child, in each other’s arms, together at last—even, if only, for a little while.
TUESDAY
"A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
––Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
WEDNESDAY
For those wondering if art school is necessary, I enjoyed this series of interviews:
“I think college is important if you want to learn specific skills. But later I prioritized making art — I didn’t go into an M.F.A. program after I got my bachelor’s degree, because I really wanted to think about what I was doing. That’s when I made a U-turn — I stopped taking assignments, decided to make use of what I had learned, went home to Jamaica for a while and began making work about the Caribbean, a marginalized place, but a place of opportunity nonetheless. And that’s what a lot of my work still deals with: Caribbean ecosystems, their issues, what’s beautiful. School taught me to write down my dreams and attack them, that they turn to dust if you don’t.” ––Paul Anthony Smith, from Art School Confidential by Noor Brara
THURSDAY
A simple ink-on-bristol comic titled Three Shooting Stars: Chronicling the Life of an Artist, now up on my blog.
FRIDAY
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
––The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
xo,
M
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Dear Somebody: The Classroom.
A snippet of an illustration from my sketchbook series, The Classroom
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
A few months ago, my professor asked us to keep a sketchbook of life drawings. Our instructions were simple: draw quickly, draw truthfully. No self-editing, no time for over-thinking, and no digital materials.
I decided to focus on N's classroom, capturing a little of her day during morning drop-offs and afternoon pick-ups. I drew the loving community she'd formed in the few months since she'd begun attending school, the way she chanted her friends' names over and over on the drive home. I drew her teachers, who cared for her mind and her body, though none of their blood ran through her. I drew her imagination, the way it chugged steadily along and then blossomed, encouraged by all she's exposed to within her four classroom walls. I drew the ache of leaving her behind, and the relief of it, too.
This collection of sketchbook pages, titled The Classroom, is now on my website. In light of the news from Uvalde this week, this project feels different to me now: still joyful, but calloused. I know I shouldn't. No one should feel guilty for being spared. But I also know this: nothing separates me, or N, from the parents and children in Texas––nothing but sheer luck.
TUESDAY
N's home sick from school today, so I take the day off work, too. We're in my studio drawing when the first Times headline appears in my inbox. I scan it quickly, my body tensing. Oh no, I say quietly, under my breath. N, who listens too carefully for an 18-month-old, looks up and echoes my reaction, her smile splitting her face in half. Mama? Oh no? Oh no! Not understanding, she begins to laugh.
Not understanding, I close my email and focus on our drawing. We are drawing scribbles today, which is different from every other day only in that it is a different day. I inhale and exhale. I will myself to relax, monitoring my body language and tone constantly, all in an effort for N to feel free and joyful for as long as she possibly can. If I can hold it in, she won't have to hold it at all.
I'll read the news after she goes to bed, I tell myself. The headline said the children were only injured. My own reaction is ludicrous––poisoned, even: only. Only injured. The rest of the day progresses routinely, save for the punctuating news updates and anxious texts from other parents. I read each one and then press a smile back onto my face. After she goes to bed. We push the wagons, we throw strawberries on the ground, we begrudgingly take a bath.
Around 6:45, N snuggles up to T and coaxes him to read the second of one thousand bedtime stories. One dozen times is how many times I tell N that I love her, and even after that, I continue telling her within the confines of my own mind as I head downstairs to make dinner. I take all the ingredients out: the soup, the bread, the spoons, the bowls. I place the dutch oven on top of the burners and start the flame. After that, I simply lean over the stove and sob, my body shaking for all of the beautiful children we insist––so stupidly, on leaving behind.
WEDNESDAY
"There’s a thousand ways it could happen, I know. Images flash in my mind, glimpses of what could be when danger looms near. A car gets too close to the curb when we’re walking on the sidewalk. Another rolls through a stop sign just as we cross the intersection. I imagine scooters flipping and bikes ramming into walls. Trucks driving in the wrong lane. I see baseball bats swung too close to heads and escalator rides gone awry. Every fever brings on the reality that illness can hit anyone at anytime, that many don’t recover. That that could be one of mine. I tell myself to breathe deeply and heavily when they go onto the roof with their dad to string the Christmas lights. But I don’t actually breathe until their feet are back on the ground. I grip their hands tight on the Ferris wheel, remind them to sit and not lean over too far. Remind them not to dive into the shallow end. To not walk too far out into the ocean.
Some of this is my anxiety, I know. But the rest is my motherhood. The part of my brain that changes when babies are born, the part that is conditioned to sense danger in every corner.
It’s the part that screams in silence when nightmares are near.
And here, in America, nightmares are always near."
––on living in the space between grief and rage by Ojus Patel
THURSDAY
This week, I look at what other artists have chosen to remember:
American People Series #15: Hide Little Children, 1966 by Faith Ringgold
“Mera sohna gagaloo magaloo puth” by Baljinder Kaur
Boy Among Withered Leaves by Chihiro Iwasaki
Three Ages of Women by Gustav Klimt
FRIDAY
The world
is full of doors.
And you, whom I cannot save,
you may open a door
and enter a meadow, or a eulogy.
And if the latter, you will be
mourned, then buried
in rhetoric.
There will be
monuments of legislation,
little flowers made
from red tape.
What should we do? we’ll ask
again. The earth will close
like a door above you.
What should we do?
––Letter Beginning with Two Lines by Czeslaw Milosz by Matthew Olzmann
xo,
M
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Dear Somebody: Where has all the time gone?
In the sixth month, a collage illustration for Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
“Probably the best thing my parents did—two simple things that don’t seem to occur to many people—was to give me my own desk just for art and to let me use professional (or at least good) art supplies from a very young age. My father was a printmaker in the 1980s, so he had all of his stuff lying around and was very generous about it. Other than that, I did not have after-school art classes or trips to museums or things that people assume are key to inspiration. In the 1980s, art was seen as an optional thing in the sidelines of life, so you got to make “creative stuff” at school if you happened to get a teacher who was personally into it. That was about once every three years. I would say that, instead, boredom was the key to inspiration. My family didn’t have any money to spare, didn’t go many places, and therefore my brothers and I had loads of unstructured time, our own desks, and a backyard with plants and dirt. We didn’t have vacations, other than driving to a river or a beach once in a while, so I figured that exploring ideas in the far reaches of one’s imagination was perhaps the best way to travel.”
–from Elizabeth Haidle's interview with Haley Laningham in Southeast Review
P.S. Elizabeth (who is as lovely on the phone as she is on the internet) has a new needle felting course out that I'm excited to take this summer. Maybe you'd like it, too!
TUESDAY
Today marks the last day of my first year of graduate school. It feels anticlimactic; I knew it would. Significant days have a way of doing that: feeling like a terrific storm that took a wrong turn somewhere, forgetting to arrive. The body fills with an anticipation so large that there is very little room left for the prospect of satiety.
In preparation for my final review, I finished illustrating Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War, and bound my illustrations for William Bronk's The Tell into a neat little book. I thought about how much I love poetry, and how poetry has always loved me back, the way only books or paintings or music can, without reason or knowing how.
This summer, I'll write and illustrate some of my own poems. I want them to be good. I want them to be so good, so badly, that I often think about not writing them at all. The one thing graduate school has taught me is the one thing I already knew. In life and love and art and parenting, you can't really plan on it being good. The only thing you can plan on––all you can really count on––is trying.
WEDNESDAY
"The Ama divers of Japan are all-women divers. The women dive tankless making them free divers, and while they also collect seafood and seaweed, their main focus is pearls. Ama means ‘woman of the sea’ or ‘sea women.’
The world of the ama is one marked by duty and superstition. One traditional article of clothing that has stood the test of time is their headscarf. The headscarves are adorned with symbols such as the seiman and the douman, which bring luck to the diver and ward off evil. The ama are also known to create small shrines near their diving location, where they will visit after diving in order to thank the gods for their safe return."
–on the Ama divers of Japan, from Erin Austen Abott's newsletter, Field Trip
THURSDAY
It's 6:45 am and we are downstairs in the kitchen, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppersplaying on the stereo, N shoveling fistfuls of granola into her face. Her head hinges at the neck like an L-shaped bracket and she moves corpse-like to the beat. She is, by far, the best dancer under this roof.
I laugh aloud and the future flashes behind my eyes: N at 14 slamming the door in my face, N at 3 giving me a soaking wet post-bath hug, N at 22 calling me on the phone, I hope, just to say hello. I laugh aloud and her voice fills the space between my ears like crickets' song, beautiful against the early morning stillness.
It's 6:48 am and I'm back downstairs, standing in the kitchen while she bops along to Kendrick Lamar. “MA-ma!" she shouts, beckoning me to dance, but I feel exhausted, having traveled to the future and back. She's only 18 months, I know, but it was yesterday that I brought her home from the hospital.
Where has all the time gone, I wonder.
FRIDAY
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.
–from Ada Limón's How to Triumph Like a Girl
xo,
M
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Dear Somebody: Holding onto the proof.
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A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
The past few weeks have been a series of can-we-make-it-to-the-next-day? days. Days full of class-and-homework, my looming book deadline, and the last dregs of winter; weeks that all seem the same.
I sit on the edge of our bed talking to T, whose eyes are worn with sickness. We have food poisoning, and it's the first time we've both been sick, at the same time, since having N. I rake the carpet with my toes, listening to her shout No! over and over again, her tiny voice permeating through the walls and ringing in my ears. She should've been asleep a long time ago. This weekend has been hard. I am tired. But something in me feels new.
Somewhere between the hours of school and hours of work, between the food poisoning and the exhaustion, between the constant cleaning and meal-planning and piles of neglected laundry, I'd found the proof. I didn't even know I was looking for it, but here it was, hanging in the mundanity: proof of a life well-lived.
Even the most disappointing of experiences hold meaning. I try to remember that even though I'm not always successful. But when I stop rushing through them to get to the “good” part of life, the value is too great to miss. The good part is here––in the illness, the deadlines, and the round, giddy baby who watched an entire hour of Daniel Tiger while her mother lay, utterly exhausted, beside her.
The good part is here: I'm holding onto the proof.
TUESDAY
"But how does one keep an imagination fresh in a world that works double-time to suck it away? How does one keep an imagination firing off when we live in a nation that is constantly vacuuming it from them? And I think that the answer is, one must live a curious life. One must have stacks and stacks and stacks of books on the inside of their bodies. And those books don’t have to be the things that you’ve read. I mean, that’s good, too, but those books could be the conversations that you’ve had with your friends that are unlike the conversations you were having last week. It could be about this time taking the long way home and seeing what’s around you that you’ve never seen, because most of us, especially city folk, we stay in our little quadrants.
But what if you were to walk the other way? What if you were to explore the places around you? What if you were to speak to your neighbor and to figure out how to strike a conversation with a person you’ve never met? What if you were to try to walk into a situation, free of preconceived notion, just once? Once a day, just walk in and say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, and let’s see. Let me give this person the benefit of the doubt — to be a human.” ––Jason Reynolds on Imagination and Fortitude (via On Being)
*For those with pre-teens, I recently listened to When I Was the Greatest and recommend it for many reasons, but especially for what it teaches about non-traditional friendships, families, and building inner confidence.
WEDNESDAY
I'm continuing my experiments in collage (see above for my latest). This process has brought forth several questions within me: Whose voice is lost when an existing work is combined with something new? Does an artist have the right to illustrate someone else's words? What does it mean to be inspired?
For now, I'm enjoying the exercise collage brings. It attracts me to a wider range of ephemera, opens up my compositions, encourages me to combine textures, and forces me to relax. It's also been a really surprising exercise in letting go: I cut and paste without really knowing why or how, propelled further by intuition than my thinking brain, and in the end, I find that I'm somewhere unexpected––and that it is good.
THURSDAY
As far as kisses go, N's way of giving them has been to smush her cheek next to yours. This is all she's ever done in her 17 months of life. Tonight, after dinner and bath time, she climbed into T's lap and gave him her first real kiss: her mouth against his cheek, followed by a great big cozy hug. The first kiss she's ever given anyone! I watched the whole thing from a front-row seat, extremely wide-eyed, only 20% of my body angry with envy.
FRIDAY
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
–from Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War
xo,
M
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