Dear Somebody: On giving up.

March 6, 2026

*Days 6 and 7 of the 100 Day Project* (ink on paper, 2026)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

I wake up at midnight to F’s anger. Her blankets are tangled, lost to her flailing limbs, and my eyes take too long to adjust to the night. Even in sleep, the anger spills out of her like a river, threatening to drown everyone in sight. In the daylight, I’m plenty busy cowering around the 24 pounds of her wrath, but the night offers me enough of a shield to sleepily wonder: Dang, she’s angry. Is this what I’m like?

Her eyes are still closed while I sort her sheets, but she cries from behind a darkness only she can see and feel. I cover her body gingerly, wincing with her every movement, wanting to comfort without disruption, wanting to help without getting burned.

I climb back into bed and lay awake for hours. The shadows on the walls are nice, not too severe. I think about drawing them but know I won’t. My body is aging. I’m learning to take sleep when it arrives and to forgive each time it refuses. What’s the use in holding onto anger?

Outside, it continues to rain. I love the rain always, but especially at night. I love the thunder, the majestic sound of earth crushing our dreams and concerns. I think of how the day will hum pleasantly when I throw open the back door in the morning, fresh with the fragrance of damp earth and new beginnings. I think of my sleeping children, each replete with their own combinations of worry and joy, each with a mind they’ll learn to affectionately wrestle with, or so I hope. I think of T, sleeping on top of the covers in a too-warm-for-him-home, and I think of how I am changing, really changing, like a cobra shedding its diamond-studded skin, like water rising up to become vapor, and for the first time in my almost-over thirties, I am tormented by absolutely nothing.

TUESDAY

I sit on a panel for Penguin Random House’s Author University alongside Chris Guillebeau, Allegra Goodman, and Phil Stamper. We’re here to discuss writer’s block, creativity, and advise authors on remaining inspired through the various stages of publishing—the actual writing process, through various drafts and revisions; the marketing work as we prepare to push a book out into the world; and the publicity process, which continues long after a book is published.

The questions themselves are routine but important: How do I maintain boundaries and protect time for creative work? What rituals and routines help me muddle through writer’s block? How do I encourage others to locate and encourage their own creativity?

As I answer each question and listen to my peers’ responses, I understand that advice, in life and in writing, only goes so far. I can’t think my way into a healthier parent-child relationship or into emotional regulation the same way I can’t think my way into writing better sentences. Instead, I have to do. I have to try. I have to fail.

Although all four of us have successfully found a way into our writing and into the world of published authors, we grapple with the same setbacks, and our advice reflects what works for us. The confidence I hear in our voices is built from years of trial-and-error, from years of listening to how our bodies and minds respond to certain environments and challenges.

All of us, despite our successes, struggle: self-criticism, repeated rejection, the impossible struggle between paid and creative work, and, always, the pressure to sell more books. All of us take advice from others and try it on for size. Sometimes, it fits. Most of the time, it doesn’t. A large part of why the four of us were chosen to sit on this panel and advise others is because none of us have, yet, given up. And that makes all the difference.

WEDNESDAY

N loves doing seek-and-finds so much that I was over the moon to receive an opportunity to illustrate my own for the HIDDEN OBJECTS section of SPARK, a magazine for young children.

*HIDDEN OBJECTS in the January issue of SPARK Magazine* (2026)

Since it was for the January issue, I wanted to draw a winter scene—and since N laments about how easy most seek-and-finds are, I wanted to make it challenging. I went with a detailed, ornamental tree scene, with various objects embedded in and hanging from the bark.

*A close up of HIDDEN OBJECTS in the January issue of SPARK Magazine* (2026)

When I sent in the final files, my art director made a few edits. He felt some of the objects were too difficult to find for such a young audience, and swapped them for some more obvious ones.

When we received our issue, N finished the seek-and-find within five minutes, told me it was too easy, and moved onto another page full of puzzles.

Such is life. My children are hard to please, but I am not — thank you to my editor, Katie, for such a fun assignment, and to my art director, Mark for bringing it all together. You can check out SPARK magazine here.

THURSDAY

“With each new stage of life, we outgrow the strategies that worked for us at an earlier stage. We find ourselves in an environment that pelts us with more challenges than our current self can manage. If we don’t grow bigger, we can become bitter. When our problems become too big for us, our healthiest response is to expand our capacities. That growth is qualitative.” —Mary Pipher

FRIDAY

After she’s gone to camp, in the early
evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes
from the rosewood table, and find a dinky
crystallized pool of maple syrup, the
grains standing there, round, in the night, I
rub it with my fingertip
as if I could read it, this raised dot of
amber sugar, and this time,
when I think of my father, I wonder why
I think of my father, of the Vulcan blood-red
glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a
broken-open coal. I think I learned to
love the little things about him
because of all the big things
I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.
So when I fix on this image of resin
or sweep together with the heel of my hand a
pile of my son’s sunburn peels like
insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,
I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have–as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

—Little Things by Sharon Olds

Dear Somebody: In the dead of winter. (March 7, 2025)

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: A monster inside the wall.

February 20, 2026

*An illustration for* ANYWAY Magazine *(2026)*

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

Life with F is loud. At almost three, she defaults to screaming as her primary manner of communication, and the screaming is loud. Wrong plate color? Screaming. Bath too hot? Screaming. Having too much fun? Screaming. I try to be patient, to emotionally detach, but my nervous system thins, teetering. The flood of constant sound—of unreasonable discontent, is overwhelming. I find myself constantly tip-toeing around her tiny being, flinching at her every movement. I feel trapped by the creature I created.

Each evening, I wait for F to fall asleep. I want to return our house to the night, to let it infuse our walls with its calm and its silence. Instead, F screams and cries and wails: there’s a monster living inside her wall. She’s never been afraid of much, and a large part of me files monster under manipulation, but a smaller part of me, the part who is still afraid, stresses about leaving F alone in a room with her fear.

After the fourth check-in, when all I can think about is my workout and my shower, when my only consideration is how my own bedtime is ticking farther and farther away, I close F’s door. I walk one, two, three feet away into my own 100-year-old bedroom, crammed so closely to hers, and listen to her wails. I think about how I left F alone in a room with her fear. I separate my childhood from my parenting, I remember that no single choice I make will affect her too greatly.

T walks in smiling; he’s been reading about tulips. He tells me about how, in Persian culture, tulips symbolize the brevity of life. From the moment their strong leaves poke through the soil, it’s a rapid progression towards death: quickly they bloom; quickly they dazzle; quickly we breathe in their sweet scent. Quickly they fall, petal by petal, back into the soil again.

My favorite flower is a tulip. They remind me of time capsules, planted only to be forgotten. I love the idea of burying what I love most in the earth. I like that they often arrive before spring, a jolt of joy at the very moment when winter feels too long. Most of all, for no particular reason I can identify, I like their shape.

Tonight has been long. F screams all through bath, all through pajamas, all through books. She sobs and throws a book; she sobs and throws her jewelry; she sobs and swats at me with tiny hands I’m afraid of. After I throw her into her crib and switch off the light, she finally quiets. There’s a monster inside the wall, she says. Can you stay for a little bit?

Though her eyes brim with mischief, I sit on the floor next to her crib. She soothes herself by petting Tuna, her penguin, then takes my hand and shows me how. After a few minutes, she falls asleep, her hand on top of mine, mine on top of Tuna.

I consider the brevity of life. The moment I’m in right now is already gone. F’s screams are lost to the silence of this night; her nightmare, a petal turning back towards the soil. Perhaps it isn’t so terrible to be needed after all.

F’s body moves quietly, a tiny stem braced against the late-winter wind. I sit on crossed legs for a long time, watching.

TUESDAY

A few months ago, I was invited to write and illustrate a piece on anxiety for NYC-based youth magazine, ANYWAY. The pleasure I receive from writing these pieces is paramount. Nothing can be accomplished or enjoyed in life without a sound mind and grounded heart, so I take this work seriously—and I’m grateful for independent publications that provide guidance that wasn’t as readily available to me as a kid.

*In the Know: Anxiety for* ANYWAY Magazine (2026)

I also created a coloring page and two journal exercises designed to help adolescents calm their bodies, align their breath, and refocus their minds during periods of stress or overwhelm. All three were derived from exercises found in Learn to Let Go: A Journal for New Beginnings.

*Coloring and journal pages for* ANYWAY Magazine *(2026)*

*Journaling exercise for* ANYWAY Magazine *(2026)*

*December 2025/January 2026 issue of* ANYWAY Magazine

Thank you to ANYWAY founder Jen for a fun and importance assignment, and for including my work in these pages.

WEDNESDAY

I’m reading Brian Selznick’s illustrated version of Live Oak with Moss, a collection of 12 poems by Walt Whitman about his affection for other men; I am listening to Bad Bunny’s TinyDesk again and again; I love this book of drawings Heidi Griffiths made of her children.

THURSDAY

*Studio desk on February 19, 2026 (2026*)

A photo from my studio as I work on wrapping up the interior art for Dear Library. Messy, full of mistakes, and long stretches of quiet work. The scratch scratch scratch of pen against paper; the strange, metallic smell of fresh watercolor paint; the white noise of my space heater; the various audiobooks I dip in and out of, droning on and on. I’ll miss this project when it’s done.

FRIDAY

We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.

Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.

Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That was an absolute vista.
Those waves raced far, and cold.

'How far could you swim, Daddy,
in such a storm?'
'As far as was needed,' I said,
and as I talked, I swam.

—With Kit, Age 7, At The Beach by William Stafford

Dear Somebody: Nothing, Nothing (February 14, 2025)

Of all the things you can put in front of your eyes, I’m grateful that my little letter is one of them.

xx,
M

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: The space between.

January 16, 2026

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 Par*k #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.

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

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

Dear Somebody: The Anchors We Carry (January 17, 2025)

Of all the things you can put in front of your eyes, I’m grateful that my little letter is one of them.

xx,
M

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: Taking creative inventory.

November 21, 2025

Three Sisters Make a Wish *for* Uppercase Issue #67 (2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

For my current Being column, I wrote about taking creative inventory. I make an effort to do this at the beginning of ever quarter, in order to re-align my creative work with my evolving values. An excerpt is below; the entire article is available for reading in the current issue of Uppercase Magazine.

Three Sisters Make a Wish, *published in Issue 67 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)*

“On a rudimentary level, this means disengaging with behavior where other people’s lives and work stamps out the value of mine. I stop scrolling Instagram, where it becomes easy to believe that everyone else is better at everything—from parenting to painting—than me. I stop reading books by artists I love if I find that I’m comparing my voice to theirs. Instead of turning to Pinterest—or even the books in my studio, for inspiration, I head to the library. I turn back 100 years or so and usually find the most exciting inspiration in work that was created prior to the Internet’s existence—before the allure of someone else’s life and creativity became more important than my own.

On a more conscious level, this work means recognizing my true voice—my values, stories, and desires, deeply enough to separate it from the rest. When self-doubt creeps in and tells me my work isn’t good enough, I recognize that it’s the voice of my fear, who can’t bear to see me fail. When the pressure of producing more work than is sustainable grinds at me, I recognize that it’s the voice of my immigrant upbringing that tells me I must succeed to be worthy, even of my own love.”

—from Creative Inventory: Going Back to the Basics for Issue 67 of Uppercase Magazine

TUESDAY

“My grandmother says that mango trees used to belong to everyone”; tracing the removal of Confederate monuments across the American south; the principles of patience.

WEDNESDAY

*The cover of* LEARNING TO LET GO, published by Michael O’Mara Books (2025)

The UK edition of LEARN TO LET GO, titled LEARNING TO LET GO, came out this week! I’m thrilled to have this edition available for overseas readers, and very grateful to Michael O’Mara for supporting this book.

If you’re in the UK or overseas, please support this edition of the journal buy purchasing directly through Michael O’Mara, Amazon UK, Waterstones, or at your local independent bookstore.

For a limited time, Bookshop.org is offering 10% off with the code LOVEBOOKSHOPS — it’s the perfect time to pick a copy or two for the upcoming holiday season. Thank you, always, for your support and encouragement.

THURSDAY

Some of you may remember that I painted Tony Hoagland’s Reasons to Survive November during my MFA program three years ago. I was introduced to the poem by Laura Olin and from the moment I read the first line, the poem has never left my brain.

To me, the mark of good art is if it propels the reader to do something. Hoagland’s poem did that for me; it inspired me to pick up a paintbrush and create something new. The poem itself speaks of an enemy, and in my early years of motherhood, the enemy felt external: the many obstacles that stood in between me and the art I so desperately wanted—needed, to make.

Over the past handful of years, I’ve worked myself up into a fever trying to make emotive work—not work based on an emotional subject or experience, but work that made the viewer feel. How can I use colors to better express certain emotions? How can I use texture to create an emotional landscape? How can word and image come together to create something otherwise inexplicable? How can I make a simple drawing that beckons a feeling otherwise unseen, a feeling that can only survive deep inside the heart?

Years later, the questions above are still the questions I ask myself each time I sit down to make. And years later, Hoagland’s poem still inspires me to take action: to pick up a paintbrush and create. But as I grow as a person and as an artist, my enemy looks less like someone or something outside of me. The more I make, the more deeply I understand that my biggest obstacle isn’t balancing motherhood and career, finding clients, or growing an online platform: it’s reducing the volume of the voice inside me that says I’m destined to fail.

Reasons to Survive November hanging in our mudroom (2025)

This painting now hangs in our mudroom; N refers to it as The November Poem. Most days, I walk right past it in an effort to tidy the mountain of shoes, pack backpacks, or shove tiny feet into even tinier socks. But when I do look up, I see much more than a strange painting laden with young brushstrokes and skewed perspective. I see myself in a kaleidoscope, through a million different lenses, every version of myself eager to help the next survive.

FRIDAY

November like a train wreck—
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

The sky is a thick, cold gauze—
but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.

—Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.

I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.

—Reasons to Survive November by Tony Hoagland

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: Speckles and streamers.

October 3, 2025

*A beautiful Midwestern ripped sky, in Septembe*r (2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

When I pick N up from school lately, the conversation is minimal. She’s tired; I’m tired; we drive along in silence, each of us held quiet by our own thoughts. Every so often, I check on her in the rearview mirror. She catches me looking and gives me a small smile. Sometimes the smile is genuine, pleased at being noticed. Other times, I get the feeling that the smile is for me—obligatory, a response to my unasked questions. It reminds me that, day by day, she’s growing up: growing accustomed to social rules and performances, growing aware of another person’s gaze on her, growing an invisible shield between her mind and mine. Slipping through my fingers.

Today is different. From the moment I buckle her into the carseat, N’s mind and eyes are locked into one thing only: the clouds. Mom, she says. Did you notice the clouds today? I squint around the sunlight striking my windshield and look at the sky. The clouds are in tatters, sprinkling the blue sky in bits and patches, like an animal tearing its way through a fresh carpet. Others streak across the wide sky in ribbons, long lines that travel as far as we can see.

What kind of clouds are those? N asks me, curious. Prompted to remember what little I know about clouds, I recall three of the four main classifications and I consider them aloud. They don’t look like cumulus clouds, I reason. Those are…popcorn-like? I remember that cirrus clouds are wispy, which none of these are, and stratus? No idea there.

While I’m busy talking to myself, N classifies the clouds herself. The long ones are streamers, she says, like the kind you bring to a party. And the rest are ripped out of the sky, like speckles. Speckles and streamers.

There’s little else that excites me more than hearing N describe the world. Her use of language is extremely visual; it isn’t difficult for me to imagine what she sees. Her choice of words feels intimate, considered. Though her vocabulary is smaller than mine, she chooses words carefully, with affection.

For the next thirty minutes, we drive on in excitement. N points out each unusual cloud she sees and takes photos of them with my phone. There’s a few cloud-shaped ones,she says, spotting a cumulus. There’s a spaceship one. And that one is a sea streamer, because it waves up at the end. Like a whale.

As we grow closer to the intersection where I make a left for F’s school, she laments: the cloud she loves most will disappear from her view. Mom, make sure you look at this cloud before you turn, she says, her cheeks pressed to the window. Isn’t the sky really just so beautiful today? I turn around and look at her, my sweet stormy cloud. Often full of rain and a bolt or two. In a few weeks, she’ll be five.

Yeah, I say, staring at her staring out the window. The most beautiful thing I can see.

TUESDAY

On the value of shame, which I hadn’t considered before:

“Very few of us are moral saints—certainly not me. Unlike everlasting, lofty, abstract principles, we who try feebly to live up to them down in the muck of reality face mucky obstacles: we get tired, impatient, envious, and angry. Our values and principles ask more than most of us are able to give—if they don’t, they are probably too weak to be worth holding. But we don’t have to celebrate our failures or, worse still, confuse them with our successes. This is one valuable function of shame: it reminds us of who we want to be when we fall short, a goalpost that is necessarily anchored to the lofty height that our conduct fell beneath. We also encourage and defend these general social standards when we hold others to them, and not just ourselves.”

—from How Can We Live Together? by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

WEDNESDAY

*My first Diwali card with Biely & Shoaf!* (2025)

I’m very excited to share my first Diwali card with you, made in collaboration with Biely & Shoaf! When I began my career a decade ago, no publisher would consider creating a Diwali card with me—really—and so, many years later, this feels like a small win. A win: for me, for the culture, for the field of illustration, for all of us.

You can purchase this card on the Biely & Shoaf website.

THURSDAY

To celebrate the upcoming 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 art, illustrator, and writer Carolyn Yoo. She writes the newsletter SEE YOU, which focuses on the intersection of creativity and self-discovery. I particularly enjoy the way Carolyn views creativity: holistically, as an integral component of good health. Her writing often provides me with something useful to consider or implement into my own creative routine.

What are you letting go of?

CY: A clear artistic identity.

What is this process teaching you?

CY: I’m allowing myself to inhabit the mystery of my interior mind, paying attention to what I’m drawn to and letting all of it percolate into my work with self-trust, without worrying if I make sense to others.

Many thanks to Carolyn for offering a glimpse into her current practice of letting go—a practice that many of us creatives may find useful. You can see Carolyn’s work hereand sign up for her newsletter here.

In case you missed it, I spoke about acceptance, letting go, and making books with Radim Malinic on the Daring Creativity podcast.

We’re only two weeks away from the publication of Learn to Let Go, and I’m happy to share that for a limited time, Bookshop.org is offering a 15% on all orders with the code LTLG15. A good time to grab a copy or two or five!

Thank you, always, for supporting my work.

FRIDAY

it rained in my sleep
and in the morning the fields were wet
I dreamed of artillery
of the thunder of horses
in the morning the fields were strewn
with twigs and leaves
as if after a battle
or a sudden journey
I went to sleep in the summer
I dreamed of rain
in the morning the fields were wet
and it was autumn

—September by Linda Pastan

Two years ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:

Dear Somebody: Inyeon. (October 6, 2023)

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: The only book worth writing.

September 19, 2025

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

After our usual English breakfast, we start a long, leisurely walk to Bishop’s Park along the river. I’m meeting V, a fellow writer (and editor), for the first time. We first entered each other’s orbit nearly a decade ago, when she commented on an Instagram post of one of my books. I was honored then, as I am now, to have my work read by someone I so deeply admire.

I drag the kids along, half-pulling N, half-carrying F. We left plenty of time to walk, but the children pause to kiss every dog and wave at every gull and before I know it, I’m already late, nowhere near the park. Go on ahead, T tells me, and I do, half-walking and half-running, now pulling myself along faster than my feet prepared for.

*Gulls congregating along River Thames (2025)*

When I finally arrive, we get drinks and move over to a bench facing the river. After the initial few moments, we fall into conversation quickly and easily. I am so comfortable with this stranger, in fact, that although it gushes a mere few feet away, I never look away from V and back towards the river. Not once.

I am reminded, once again, about how expansive life becomes when I allow others in—how, no matter how small or routine my life may feel at any particular moment, opening myself up to the right person will immediately buoy it. The right person reminds me of my own possibility, my own effervescence, my own value. The right person reminds me that the right people are worth the effort: the hundreds of lackluster coffees and playdates and one-sided creative collaborations that led me, eventually, to this moment in Bishop’s Park.

For two hours, I am engulfed in conversation with another creative, another mother, another writer who I don’t have to explain myself to—because she already knows. For two hours, my brain buzzes with interest, with joy. I am invigorated in a way only possible when sharing meaningful conversation: when the conversation itself is the meal, the food and drink and river all forgotten. All this from a chance meeting with a stranger? All this from a comment on an Instagram post many moons ago? All this from a text message, a kind word, a hello? All this.

T and the kids arrive to collect me. I sign books for V’s friends and daughter, I place the gift she’s brought me—a prescription bottle of poetry, labeled A Room of One’s Own, in my bag. Hugs are exchanged, letters are promised, and I walk away satiated, wondering if this the beginning of a new friendship.

It’s now been four weeks since our time together in the park; I think of V often. At this age, there is so much space and strangeness between me and anybody else, lifetimes of moments and memories that we’ll never share. How do new friendships begin? How do they sustain when so much life has already been lived? V lives in london, I live in Saint Louis. Her daughter began college this fall; mine beg me to ensure no monsters take them away. Our day-to-day lives? Different. Our faces and brains and cultures? Different. Our upbringings? Our thoughts and fears and desires? Different, different, different. Life is a series of unfinished roads, dozens of bricks piled up and forgotten.

*A gift from V: A prescription from* The Poetry Pharmacy *(2025)*

A month to the day I placed the bottle of poems inside my bag, I finally open it. The pill I shake out is indigo, my favorite color. It’s a quote by Hélène Cixous, that reads: The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed.”

*Poetry prescription from my bottle of medicine (2025)*

I know this is true of my work and I want it to be true of my life. After all, what’s the difference between writing a book and writing a friendship? Both require a little bit of vulnerability. Both require a knock. Both require you to stand at the door, asking to be let in. I’m afraid of many things, but I know that fear is a costume that courage wears often—so I pick up my pencil and begin to write.

TUESDAY

I’ve recently seen the cyanometer, an instrument for measuring blueness, make its rounds on the internet. It was invented by Horace Benedict de Saussure, a Swiss physicist and mountain climber in 1789.

I was reminded of Sophie Blackall’s recent creations of her own four cyanometers, which she used to measure the blueness of the sea. I don’t know what to call it, but I’d like to make a meter to measure the color of clouds.

WEDNESDAY

My Start Where You Are *2026 weekly planners and wall calendars (2025)*

For those of you who haven’t seen, my 2026 wall calendar and weekly planners are now available, and they are bright, lovely, and a joy to use. This will be my last calendar collection, so if you’ve been wanting to hang a calendar of mine, now’s the time to grab one.

You can order them directly from Andrews McMeel/Amber Lotus Publishing or in my BuyOlympia shop, as well as your local book shop or Amazon.

THURSDAY

I haven’t recorded a podcast in a few years now, so it was especially enjoyable to break my recording fast with a really, really lovely conversation with designer and author Radim Malinic.

We discuss all things creativity and books, but I especially loved how easy it was to sink into a meaningful conversation about letting go: life is a continual series of transformations—and if you’re going to grow, you have to let go of the person you used to be. You can listen to the episode here.

A bonus episode, that focuses on a few especially meaningful moments (including my belief that letting go isn’t something you do, it’s simply the byproduct of acceptance) is available here.

My gratitude to Radim for having me on, and for such a pleasurable conversation. And! If you haven’t already, you can pre-order Learn to Let Go: A Journal for New Beginnings.

FRIDAY

That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

—Paul Robeson by Gwendolyn Brooks

A year ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:

Dear Somebody: Losing a Penguin (September 20, 2024)

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: The car ride home.

June 27, 2025

*A glimpse at some of the finished and in-process paintings on my desk (watercolor and ink, 2025)*

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

My new commute to pick both girls up from school closes in on an hour and forty minutes. I was sour the first week, grumbling about my shortened workday, grumbling about the traffic, grumbling about the other drivers. I worried about N sitting for such long car rides, I worried about her falling asleep, I worried about both of us surviving F’s relentless car screams.

A couple of weeks in, N and I have settled into our new rhythm. She slowly climbs into her car seat and asks if I brought her a snack, knowing I did. I drive, she eats. Sometimes she tells me about her day and asks about mine; sometimes we call my sister and N chats with her cousins; sometimes we listen to whatever book I’m listening to until N asks me to turn it off. Nearly everyday, we call T and ask how long until he’ll be home.

Today, N is quiet. I dodge drivers who shouldn’t be on the road, and N dodges the sunlight searching for her eyes. She asks for penny on the train tracks and we both sing to ourselves. I watch her eyes close in the rearview mirror, her head drooping like an overgrown flower. She falls asleep with a sigh of relief, soft and inviting, a strawberry still in her mouth.

I drive along the strip malls and sun-bleached strips of grass. I’m driving through the suburbs of St. Louis, my four-year-old daughter in tow, but all of a sudden I’m the four-year-old, nodding along to sounds of a rolled-down window while my dad drives, falling asleep the instant the key hits the ignition. I am filled with nostalgia for the feeling of absolute safety one feels as a child being driven around by someone who loves her most.

On these drives, I feel solidly like a parent, able to give my daughter a feeling of security and trust. My past becomes my present, and my daughter’s future—and I find myself comforted by the continuous cycle of life, by the mundanity of parenting and all of its tedious chores—which gives me one long drive, every day, with someone I love most.

TUESDAY

100% of sales from Little U, Uppercase Magazine’s books for the young at heart, are donated to UNICEF for humanitarian aid in the Gaza crisis; the new Asian American Literary Archive; risography for Gaza; the surprising ways siblings shape our lives; call it fate, call it karma.

WEDNESDAY

“HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.

HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.

HELPED are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.” —from Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar

THURSDAY

I originally bought Elizabeth Haidle’s Drawing is… as a fun book for me and N to work through together. After reading it on and off for the past few weeks, however, it’s found its way out of N’s room and into my studio, where it sits next to my drawing desk as a symbol of encouragement.

I write about my experience as a working artist often: the process, the sound of my creativity, the small joys, the breakthroughs. The feeling of being forgotten. I’m not sure what I expected Drawing is…to be, but I’m surprised by what it actually is: a thoughtful meditation on discovering the creative, imaginative artist hiding inside you. It has plenty of technical information to help N (and me!) experiment and use different materials, which I expected, and plenty of prompts and exercises for thinking more deeply about your art-making, which I’m excited to try.

What I was most surprised, however, is how Haidle corralled all of this information under the umbrella of a very healthy artist philosophy: that every step you take as an artist—however messy or seemingly insignificant, will lead you somewhere new—somewhere, certainly, worth going.

You can purchase Drawing is… and learn more about Beth’s work.

FRIDAY

I am pulling myself together.
Don’t want to go on a trip.
I have painted the living room white
and taken out most of my things.
The room has never been so empty.
Just now a banging thunder
and suddenly falling rain.
I leave the typewriter and run
outside in my nightgown and take
the cotton blanket off the line.
It is summer and I am in the middle
of my life. Alone and happy.

—Grinding the Lens by Linda Gregg

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: When all is quiet.

June 20, 2025

*A recent sketchbook page* (watercolor and ink, 2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

I sit on the front porch eating a sandwich slapped together with whatever is left in the fridge. I need to go grocery shopping, I need to unpack my kids’ summer clothes, I need to clean the kitchen, I need to take a shower. I’ve been working nonstop towards my current picture book deadline. I’m rewriting a manuscript I care deeply about, I have a new journal coming out this fall, I’ve begun strength training. This fall, I’m determined to learn how to sew. There is so much I want to make, but I am so slow. One day flickers into the next, and then the next, and still, it feels like I’m going nowhere.

My friend Dan Blank calls me to catch up. I confess, with embarrassment, that I don’t have very much to share: life is quiet, almost entirely consumed by my young children, and work is, too. It’s been a few years since I’ve quit the game of social media, and my world feels much smaller because of it. Quieter. I don’t receive many work inquiries because I don’t share as much online. No one can hire you if they don’t know you exist, I tell myself before emailing editors and art directors to remind them. I hold my breath and wait; I listen to the familiar song of crickets. Everyone I know is worried about work, so when my ego flares up in front of me, I stamp it out. As any artist knows, the ongoing quiet can feel suffocating. It plays tricks on you, messing with your sense of worth. It causes you to lose sight of what’s important. It is strong enough to crush your spirit.

When I hang up the phone, I sit still, sifting through this quiet. I feel ashamed of my embarrassment, for several reasons I can’t separate, quite possibly because there is no separating them. Continuing my career at the same pace, with the same fervor postpartum was simply not a viable option for me. I made conscious decisions to restructure my career and life in a way that made healthier, more meaningful sense. Yet, at times, I feel shame for not barreling ahead at the same pace—for not being able to, for not wanting to, for not wringing myself out in order to simply keep going. Though I know it’s a symptom of the culture we live in, occasionally, I still feel shame for how much I’ve changed.

Though lonely, the past few years have been good for my brain. Instead of documenting every step of my process for social media, I sink into my craft, remembering why this is the life I chose for myself. I’ve grown and solidified. I am more capable, I require less from others. And inside me, life continues to hum steadily. Joyfully. I feel far more grounded in my creative values. I’m proud of the work I make, however slow the progress is. I’m more present with my children, who, for now, still believe that their inherent worth isn’t dependent on what or how much they produce. I’m beginning to believe I’m a good mother.

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.

On this street lined with grandparents, grandchildren, and shiny blue grackles, there isn’t a single soul who cares what I look like or what my next achievement is, including me. I love living on this street instead of on social media, so I give myself over to the silence. I am grateful for my sandwich, the porch I sit on, and every small, quiet breeze.

TUESDAY

“In its simplest form, a whale’s death becomes a source of life for years beyond its time. It is a transformation that turns death into life on an almost incomprehensible scale. Beyond its biological importance, the concept of a whale fall also holds a poetic significance. It reflects themes of loss and renewal, reminding us that even in its most tragic forms, what’s happened in the past can sustain life in the present in ways we are only beginning to understand.

This haunting question reframed my understanding of land and sea as intertwined repositories of history. The ocean, like the soil, bears witness to lives lost and transformed. It warranted asking: What happens to our bodies, to their essence, when they are claimed by the ocean? How do we reconcile the ocean as both a site of loss and a source of life?”

—Omnia Said on contemporary American artist Ellen Gallagher’s Accidental Records series in Atmos

WEDNESDAY

The extremely unassuming frame I ordered for The Wedding Sari finally came, so I framed this piece and am shipping it to my aunt this week. The Wedding Sari is an essay and illustration I created for my column, Being, in Issue #65 of Uppercase Magazine. It explores the history of the Gujarati panetar, or wedding sari, and the one I wore on my wedding day, which was previously also worn by my mother and her older sister, my aunt.

Three prints of this piece exist: one hangs in my home, one hangs in my mother’s home, and now, one is somewhere on its way to my aunt’s. An excerpt of my column was included in a past letter.

THURSDAY

I’m reading: Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, an excellent novel-in-verse about the choices we make and the choices we’re taught to make; I finished listening to Solito by Javier Zamora, a heartbreaking tale of a young child’s migration to the States; I began The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate; I began My Friends by Hisham Matar.

FRIDAY

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

—Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: Rules to live by.

May 16, 2025

*Five Rules for Artistic Integrity* for RULES TO LIVE BY Zine (2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

As a mother, my priority isn’t to be liked by my children. I want to be liked by them, and I hope that hundreds of moons from now, when they don’t have to call or visit or care, they still choose to—but it isn’t a need, the way their safety or ability to respect themselves is.

My actions don’t waver. They march to the tune of my priorities, even as my heart falters—even as my mind, alert to my own fallibility, nicks me like a sharpened blade. Ten years from now, when they have friendships and interests and independence, will my children still want to be near me?

Yesterday, N and I sit outside for hours and draw: first, me on my iPad, working on final drawings for Dear Library and N in her sketchbook, working on self-portraits; then me, in my sketchbook, working on my diary comics and N on my iPad, experimenting with different brushes. Then: both of us together, concrete under our knees, squished together on the old, emerald bedsheet used to protect the porch.

It’s quiet between us. Our work is important and we take it seriously. It is no small task turning a large cardboard box into a rocket. After some time, N breaks the silence. “Mama, you draw me and I’ll draw you,” she says, and I agree. I choose neon yellow, she chooses blue. I draw her sweet face, she draws my topknot. “I like listening to nature’s music,” N says. “And did you notice that breeze? I like drawing with you, mama. I like when it’s just us.”

I wish I were more like the earth, who rolls along on her axis and grows her great trees and recycles her sweet air and demands nothing—not to be loved, not even to be liked, in return. I don’t know what life will be ten years from now. I don’t know who my children will become, or whether I’ll have found my road towards self-actualization. Lately, it feels like I’ve only taken wrong turns.

Still, I am aware enough to recognize love when it’s in front of me. In this moment, it is here, on this porch. It is in this child who once lived in the belly of her mother, and upon her escape, grew into her own person who can also feel and express love. It is in her valuing of birdsong, a fresh sketchbook, and, for now, time alone with her mama.

TUESDAY

*An image of* Rules to Live By, a risograph zine (2025)

I was honored to contribute to the Rules to Live By zine organized by Carolyn Yoo, which is a collection of creative manifestos written by 18 fellow artists: Coleen Baik, Dan Blank, Anna Brones, Lian Cho, Kristen Drozdowski, Kelcey Ervick, Petya K. Grady, amelia hruby, Nishant Jain, Adam Ming, Jenna Park, Michelle Pellizzon Lipsitz, Beth Spencer, Nina Veteto, Mitchell Volk, and Seth Werkheiser.

I contributed my 5 Rules for Artistic Integrity, which is something I’ve considered more deeply over the past few years as I’ve felt the consequences of living as a working artist in the age of social media:

5 Rules for Artistic Integrity by Meera Lee Patel, as part of the Rules to Live Byzine (2025)

The zine was printed, assembled, and bound by hand. Carolyn generously wrote about her entire process for making this zine, including the inspiration behind it, and several contributors wrote about their own experiences with this project:

Dan Blank wrote about 5 Rules for Sharing Your Creative Voice
Kelcey Ervick wrote about 5 Rules for Dreaming
Nishant Jain wrote about 5 Rules for Making Sneaky Art of Your World
Kristen Drozdowski wrote about 5 Rules for Creative Authenticity
Mitchell Volk wrote about 5 Rules for Collaborating with Yourself (and made an amazing GIF cycling through all the pages of the zine!)

Many thanks to Carolyn for including me in this thoughtful project which was a joy to consider and illustrate.

WEDNESDAY

I was pleased to see How it Feels to Find Yourself awarded in theSkimm’s 2025 GOOD FOR YOU AWARDS as the best book for self-discovery.

I finished reading We Do Not Part by Han Kang; I started listening to Demon Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver; I started re-reading—with a new appreciation for the beautiful writing—Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.

I’m over my own heels for Japanese illustrator Rokuro Taniuchi’s work, which is difficult to find. I’d love to own a copy of Taniuchi Rokuro Gensouki (Shinshindo, 1981) one day.

THURSDAY

*Portraits of N and Mama (Mother’s Day 2025)*

FRIDAY

We said she was a negative image of me because of her lightness.
She's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Daughter, where did you get all that goddess?
Her eyes are Neruda's two dark pools at twilight.
Sometimes she's a stranger in my home because I hadn't imagined her.
Who will her daughter be?
She and I are the gradual ebb of my mother's darkness.
I unfurl the ribbon of her life, and it's a smooth long hallway, doors flung open.
Her surface is a deflection is why.
Harm on her, harm on us all.
Inside her, my grit and timbre, my reckless.

—The Daughter by Carmen Gimenez Smith

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: Learn to let go.

May 9, 2025

*The first time I held a printed copy of* Learn to Let Go *(Saint Louis,* *2025)*

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

I am excited to reveal the cover for my upcoming journal, Learn to Let Go: A Journal for New Beginnings! This cover came together after many, many rejected concepts and sketches, and after much back and forth between me and my design team.

In the end, I am pleased: it is bright, joyful, and reinforces the beauty in letting go: only by relinquishing our attachment to the emotions, relationships, and dynamics that weigh us down can we create the space necessary for new, evolutionary growth.

I will speak a lot more about this journal in the upcoming months—I have a slew of comics and interviews (all about letting go!) that I’m excited to make and share with you. Releasing the unfair expectations I have of myself—as a mother, artist, and general human-person—has been a reoccurring lesson over the past few years and I’m strangely excited to dip into these reflections and share how I’ve grown.

If you have the means to pre-order and support this journal, please do—pre-ordering now will make a huge difference in the success of this book!

As I’ve written before, pre-orders are vital to the success of any book. All publishers rely on pre-orders (and sales, in general) to see whether the books we write resonate with people and whether they should continue supporting us in creating them. Strong pre-orders for this book indicate strong interest. Strong interest encourages my publisher to buy my next book.

More than that, pre-orders signal to my publisher—and the larger world of book publishing—that the work I’m making is important. That talking about emotions, vulnerability, and the complexity of the human condition is important. That a person will be required to let go of that which hurts them, but that sometimes, they’ll have to make peace with the loss of a thing, or a person, or a place they loved, too—and that it’s okay to need help.

Below are links to the regulars; I’ll update this list as the book becomes more widely available:

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Books A Million, Hudson Booksellers, Target, Walmart

As always—thank you for reading, engaging, pre-ordering, and supporting my work. Every little bit helps, and I am ever so grateful.

TUESDAY

“On returning from a walk today I said to myself that I would not be like some girls, who are comparatively serious and reserved. I do not understand how this seriousness comes; how from childhood one passes to the state of girlhood. I asked myself, "How does this happen? Little by little, or in a single day?" Love, or a misfortune, is what develops, ripens, or alters the character.

If I were a bel esprit I should say they were synonymous terms; but I do not say so, for love is the most beautiful thing in the whole world. I compare myself to a piece of water that is frozen in its depths, and has motion only on the surface, for nothing amuses or interests me in my DEPTHS.”

—from artist and writer Marie Bashkirtseff’s diary, Marie Bashkirtseff: The Journal of a Young Artist, 1860-1884

WEDNESDAY

As I continue to research, practice, and begin to incorporate various methods of collage and printmaking into my art, I’ve been unable to get the work of María Berrío out of my head.

Aminata Linnaea, 2013 by *María Berrío, courtesy of Victoria Miro*

Berrío works primarily by layerring hundreds of torn, cut, and collaged pieces of Japanese paper on top of each other. She then adds light, shadow, and detail using watercolor or acrylic washes, pencil, and ink. The effect is dazzling. I love her use of color and pattern, and especially how her figures remain starkly flat throughout.

THURSDAY

“Satori is kind of enlightenment in life. These moments of illumination: Lying in bed at night, and all of a sudden you realize, I need to be a better partner, a better brother, be more patient, stop being petty. Then you wake up and life happens — a bad work email, someone’s being annoying — and you lose sight of all of that. So satori is a brief window, and the idea for Buddhists is to allow the understanding in that brief window to alter your life.”

—from an interview with Ocean Vuong in The New York Times

FRIDAY

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

—In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: A field guide.

April 11, 2025

*Sketchbook from the week of April 6th (2025)*

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

It’s been almost a year since F regularly slept through the night. Once a duck, quietly quacking to herself, her brain has blossomed in the months since—skyrocketed even, awakened by the world and the possibility in each moment. Even her sleep has sensorial needs, and at all hours of the night she asks for more: more engagement, more stimulation, more.

At 12:30 am, she begins chanting her own name. Refusing to look at the camera monitor, I instead imagine the early birthday party she’s throwing for herself: moonlight streamers, a parade of stuffies rolling around with her—a celebration of the spectacular wonder she is, gate kept only by her boring diurnal parents and a few wooden crib bars.

At 2:30 am F screams for coconut water, her one true source of solace, and when none of her sleeping family responds, she screams louder. For now, it’s only sleep, but all the same, it’s painful to watch your child do something that hurts herself, that will contribute to a more difficult tomorrow. At 3:30 am, she demands a new diaper, then a story, then a song. I give in to the diaper, but not the story, and pause at the request for a song. It’s 4:00 am; I have to be up in two hours.

Twinkle song, F pleads, her eyes bleary. Her perfect mouth is a perfect rainbow, quivering slightly, worn from midnight chanting. I know she hopes for acquiesce: a soft win, just something to get her through this endless night. She is tired of being awake for so long, of being alone for so long.

Not having slept well for nearly five years now, I am also tired of being awake—but F’s sweetness is too sweet, her longing too clarified, her needs far more reasonable than my own. I hold her in my arms and begin singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Her small body rests against mine. I’m fully here, in this moment. Next week, F will turn two; I don’t have many more years of this ahead.

Halfway through the song, F straightens up. She looks me in the eye. With all the solemnity of a funeral attendee, she raises two hands to cover my mouth and says: Stop. The End. Then she climbs into her crib without looking at me, and closes her eyes.

TUESDAY

The cover of *Bystander*, a comics anthology edited by Kadak Collective

I am slowly making my way through Bystander, a comics anthology edited by Kadak Collective, a group of South Asian womxn, non-binary and queer folk who believe making art is “inherently political and can be an intentional, radical act of communication and change.”

I’m unsurprised in reading so many personal stories that are byproducts of sweeping political and social narratives—stories that were incubated inside a society that forgets community in favor of oneself. The actions of any bystander—one who observes but does not participate, will always transgress the walls of an individual life and seep into the fabric of our larger societies and worlds, whether or not one intends for it to. Every action has a consequence; every inaction does, too.

WEDNESDAY

I am pleased to share that my 2026 calendars with Amber Lotus Publishing are now available for pre-order!

*Start Where You Are* 2026 weekly planner

*You Are Made of Stars* 2026 wall calendar

Pre-orders do make a huge difference for artists. Now, especially, it will help my publisher give me the opportunity to create calendars for the 2027 year, too.

Start Where You Are 2026 weekly planner: Available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

You Are Made of Stars 2026 wall calendar: Available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

If you’re planning on grabbing a few for yourself or a friend, please do! I am, as always, grateful.

THURSDAY

What if every subway stop was named after a woman? the latest project by Rebecca Solnit; America’s brightest minds will walk away by Neel Patel.

I read Big Swiss by Jen Beagin, which felt far too gratuitous for me to maintain interest in—but I did finish it.

I finished The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, which I enjoyed, mostly, for the introduction to rural Alaskan living, but it didn’t choke me the way Hannah’s work usually does.

I’m beginning Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin and drawing my way through Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India by Rakesh Khanna and J. Furcifer Bhairav.

FRIDAY

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

—Field Guide by Tony Hoagland

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: Tiny joys.

April 4, 2025

*A few pages from my 100 Day Project* (2025)

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

Week of March 9, 2025

*Two sketchbooks open at a coffee shop (*2025)

After a long night of not-sleeping, I take a shower and walk myself to our local coffee shop to meet a friend. We’re going to draw together, something I haven’t done since I lived in Nashville nearly four years ago. Our conversation meanders naturally, and I watch where it goes with interest, each turn leading to a fork where both roads seem equally worth the stroll. I spend 3 hours unregrettably, using my hands in the way I prefer. The time together is easy and sweet; a tiny joy.

Week of March 23, 2025

We take the girls to Miami for a couple of weeks and it doesn’t go as expected. Though full of sea, sunshine, and new adventures, it’s also sticky with resistance, sleeplessness, and many more meltdowns than I’d been prepared for.

I find myself more tired than I usually am when we travel—vulnerable, even, as if I’d foolishly let my guard down. Had I fooled myself into thinking our family had become good travelers? Why am I so surprised by the inconsistent nature of young children? I try to stay in the moment, but I fail.

Back at home, I wince at how poorly I’d handled the trip. I wish I’d been steadier—the consistent one, the dependable one. I wish, I want, but all I can do is try again—so I don’t dwell, knowing that that in itself is progress. In a couple of months, we’ll go to the lake, and I’ll breathe as I swim through those waters, and I’ll breathe as I help my sweet kid swim through her endless tears, too: a tiny joy.

Week of April 1, 2025

On the walk back home, the morning doves commune. Clusters of grackles scavenge the dumpsters, the deep peacock blue of their feathers glinting in the sunlight. The tulips we planted last November peak through the soil, their leaves sturdy and true. N runs ahead to count how many faces are turned to the sun. Later, when the sky opens up to let the thunder through, she watches the tulips button themselves up again, dozens of soft leaves bracing against the sudden wind. I watch her, and this is a tiny joy.

TUESDAY

“I tell my students all the time that all writing makes a thematic argument with the reader. Even the writing that seeks not to, that’s still a stance. The stance that says “escape is a worthy cause.” That means, according to my own rules, this piece of writing is making an argument with you. What could it be? I’m never sure at first. And this is supposed to be about writing and I’ve jumped the shark. But I think if I analyze my argument here, it would be this: there are different flavors of privilege. There is the kind of privilege that, when you use it, takes something away from other people. And then there is the kind that, when you use it, doesn’t. It just—is. And then there is the kind that, when you use it, actually makes it easier for other people to use their privilege, too. Escape is the last kind, when used in particular ways, at least, and at particular times. But you have to escape and also stay for it to remain the last type of privilege.”

—from “Escape” by A.E. Osworth, author of the forthcoming Awakened

WEDNESDAY

*A few pages from my 100 Day Project: poetry and collage* (2025)

I joined the 100-day project a few weeks ago, as always, encouraged by my friend Margaux Kent. For it, I picked our daily poem project back up and added a bit of collage, a bit of sketch, and every week or so, I mail a stack of them to her home.

There are many reasons why daily habits are nearly impossible for me to implement, both logistically and practically. Strictly emotionally speaking, perfectionism rests at the heart. I have an unfair expectation of progress—that if I do the same thing everyday, I’ll eventually master it. A fear of failure, the dreadful sense that I might not get better, even if I keep at it, leads me to stop before I start.

I’m on day 40 of the daily project now. I’ve missed days here and there, but I’ve always caught up. I don’t like what I write or draw 99% of the time, but I do it anyway, and the next day, I do it again. I haven’t progressed in any of the ways I’d anticipated—I don’t write better poetry and my sketchbook isn’t full of beautiful drawings—but I have noticed small, unexpected changes that feel even more fruitful:

I have ideas. I write them down, and I find I have even more the next day.
I feel less emotionally-indebted to my work or myself, less tied to what I produce or how much of it.
I like writing to another person daily, even if they don’t write back. The unrequited nature of this project makes it feel even more powerful, like I’m corralling my own attention back.
I am proving myself wrong. I am changing, developing discipline, and determined to complete the challenge.

Are any of you doing the 100-day project? If so, let me know in the comments — I’d love to follow along

THURSDAY

Reading artist Julie Benbassat’s illustrated 7-year eulogy for her father, David, brought me to tears. This walk through David Benbassat’s life, and Julie’s remembrance of their time together, reminded me of how little so many of us know about our parents, and who they were before they brought us into the world.

FRIDAY

The man I married sat next to me
after our wedding, October light pouring in
over dusty pews as he loosened his tie
and sipped from a cup of apple cider,
closing his eyes to savor the taste.

Now I think I didn’t marry him so much
as his amazement for the everyday,
the way he still gasps each time we see
something new—baby painted turtle
plodding through a stream in the quarry,

or a neon-orange caterpillar inching
across crisp leaves on the trail,
how he kneels to film it from every angle
while I crouch beside him, in awe
of his awe, learning all that I can.

—Married to Amazement by James Crews

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: A new friend.

February 28, 2025

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,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: Should I be doing more?

January 24, 2025

*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,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: A new year's day.

January 10, 2025

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

When the first snow of the new year falls, I wake up to the syrupy hours of early morning and slope down the stairs. My cold nose presses against the iced windows while drifts stream down, soft ribbons sparkling against the dark night. A lone car whistles. An enormous moon watches.

Last year felt like a loss, a piling up of all I didn’t get to. The days moved slowly: a never-ending trail of meal-making and playing catch up, of falling farther and farther behind, of willing my mind to be present and my temper further restrained, of tempering my expectations while motioning for my spirit to remain untethered, unfettered, dancing before me.

Last year felt like a loss, a blur of all I was too overwhelmed to see. The days turned quickly: a whirl of cake-making and playing dress up, of celebrations and wishes, of willing myself to be a better mother than the ones I’ve been before, of one step forward and several steps back, of choosing—again and again—to tear it all down and rebuild, rather than simply walking away.

Last year felt like a loss, a constant pinging of everything beyond my control. A year of reaching: where the person I am followed the person I want to be, of days that marked death and deaths that marked each day, of choosing to remind and remember, of chilling loneliness and bitter stagnation, of seeding and searching for new growth, and still—the gratitude for each new morning, evening, star.

Now the days are gathered up behind me, three hundred-and-some in all. Looking back, I see a few neatly washed, some fed and watered, some treasured—but all worn through well, all loved and wanted.

Last year felt like a loss, but it also brought me back to myself. I sit here and write, the most honest form of loving I know, and feel the presence of someone I haven’t been before. Someone who tries, in the ways she knows how, to leave a change in the people and places she comes across.

I love making resolutions. I love big, lofty lists of vows and ambitious goals, but in this new year, I have only one: to love myself the way I love life—in acceptance of all it is, in awe of all it can be. And I wish the same for you.

TUESDAY

I’ve been under Chihiro Iwasaki’s spell for years now, long before I visited the Chihiro Art Museum in Nerima, Tokyo in 2019 and took in the full breadth of her work.

Chihiro Iwasaki, Tyltyl and Mytyl Running after the Blue Bird from Aoi Tori (The Blue Bird), Kodansha, 1969 | Courtesy of the Chihiro Art Museum Tokyo

*The Little Mermaid Thinking of the Prince*

It’s been five years since I visited that museum, which was previously the home she shared with her husband and son, but her work continues to influence the paintings I make and the shape I’d like my life to take.

Rarely do I spent a day in my studio without considering the war-struck life she lived, the ethereal nature of her paintings, the sensibility in her line work, or the philosophy steadily strung throughout her paintings: to live a simple and modest life, to listen for laughing voices, and to protect our children at all costs.

WEDNESDAY

*An image of Richard Brautigan’s* Karma Repair Kit

THURSDAY

I kept my more/less list extremely minimal and to-the-point this year, with the understanding that improvement on this one core item will greatly impact the rest of my world and everything inside it:

“The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb. I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word "love," and was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's classic self-help book The Road Less Traveled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Explaining further, he continues, "Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love." Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually.” —from bell hooks’ All About Love

For archival purposes, here’s last year’s more/less list.

FRIDAY

The day feels put together hastily
like a gift for grateful beggars
being better than no time at all
but the bells are ringing
in cities I have never visited
and my name is printed over doorways
I have never seen
While extracting a bone
or whatever is tender or fruitful
from the core of indifferent days
I have forgotten
the touch of sun
cutting through uncommitted mornings
The night is full of messages
I cannot read
I am too busy forgetting
air like fur on my tongue
and these tears
which do not come from sadness
but from grit in a sometimes wind

Rain falls like tar on my skin
my son picks up a chicken heart at dinner
asking
does this thing love?
Deft unmalicious fingers of ghosts
pluck over my dreaming
hiding whatever it is of sorrow
that would profit me

I am deliberate
and afraid
of nothing.

—New Year’s Day by Audre Lorde

See you next week!

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: You are spring.

December 6, 2024

*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.

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: In the midst of things.

November 22, 2024

Stay Golden, four-color risograph. Printed by *Land Gallery* *in Portland, Oregon (2024)*

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

I plot the process for my current book, drawing a path that can take me from concept sketches to final paintings and then production work. I follow the path, and for awhile, all goes according to plan: I collect inspiration; I draw initial concepts and then four rounds of revised sketches; I kill my darlings, I stay open to criticism.

I keep to the path but the path stops making sense. The more I work on sketches, the more afraid I feel of making final drawings. The more I work on perfecting my linework, the more afraid I feel of picking up a paintbrush. I don’t want to fail; I know I will.

I’m overwhelmed by how circuitous the path has become, as if it were designed to keep me from progression. But the path is a line, not a loop—and hadn’t I drawn it myself? I know how I like to work: matter of factly, like a machine. I know how I like my process to feel: clean, orderly, with little friction. I know what I want to create: surprise, the unfolding of what I haven’t planned.

On Saturday morning, I visit Chris Wubbena’s exhibit at The St. Louis Artist’s Guild. It’s titled In the Midst of Things. Each sculpture is created by the enmeshment of everyday objects, each removed from where they once stood in the middle of their own respective lives. I walked around the room of miniature buildings, some tilted at precarious angles or stacked atop slippery mixtapes. There are poems in the center of these buildings; there are voices and video; there are people and their stories. All smushed together. All leaking surprise. Somewhere in the middle.

In the midst of things is a literary device where the narrative work begins in the middle of the plot—not at the beginning. Though I carefully designed my creative process to keep my fear and anxiety at bay, it only cultivates more of both. It encourages me to continue planning instead of creating. It forces me to stay in the beginning so I never have to be in the middle—and the middle is where surprise lives.

When I come home from the exhibit, I say goodbye to my plan. My studio is a mess. I’ve only properly sketched out half of the book, but instead of planning the rest, I jump into a final painting. I choose colors like an artist instead of a scientist; I let myself feel. I swish the paint around on the page, I let it pool where it shouldn’t. This painting isn’t from the beginning of the book, nor at the end. It’s page 17—right in the middle of the story, where all of the surprises are still waiting to happen.

I have a bunch of thumbnails, only one final drawing, and more questions than answers—but I know the answers are somewhere in here, beneath the gouache tubes and tracing paper and my own apprehension. It feels messy being in the middle, but I also feel the satisfying stretch of discomfort—of knowing my mind is working under conditions it isn’t used to, that my body is familiarizing itself with a feeling that isn’t easy.

I don’t know how to paint this book, but I’m figuring it out. It’s messy where I am, but I stand my ground. I’m on the cusp of unraveling a mystery, of finding water, of waking up in the place where it all finally begins to make sense.

Standing in the middle, I begin to understand it—where surprise really lives. It’s somewhere here: in the midst of things.

TUESDAY

Stay Golden, *four-color risograph (2024)*

Stay Golden, *four-color risograph (2024, detail shot)*

After much experimentation, Stay Golden is available as a four-color risograph print! It was printed very thoughtfully in blue, yellow, green, and magenta inks by Land Gallery in Portland, Oregon. It is available exclusively through Buy Olympia.

Many thanks to Pat for all of his hard work and dedication in making this edition happen!

*Stay Golden crewneck sweatshirts, made in collaboration with Golden Hour*

The original Stay Golden crewneck, made in collaboration with Golden Hour Candle Co., is available here — perfect for this crisp, cool weather. Both make excellent gifts.

WEDNESDAY

“You will take bits from books you’ve read and movies you’ve seen and conversations you’ve had and stories friends have told you, and half the time you won’t even realize you’re doing it. I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It’s from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start to grow.”

—from Ann Patchett’s This is The Story of a Happy Marriage

I am still working my way through all of Emile Mosseri’s film scores, which is my current favorite music to write or draw to. My family is tired of the Minari soundtrack, so now I’ve moved onto Kajillionaire, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and Homecoming.

As a middle-schooler, I was hugely mesmerized by Frank L. Baum’s method of worldbuilding. I bookmarked this piece by John Updike to understand more about how a series of intricately-crafted books continue to be overshadowed by the film they inspired.

Lastly, I loved this list on how to reassess your childhood relationships by Malaka Gharib—thoughtfully provoking.

THURSDAY

I was pleased to receive a few copies of the French edition of Go Your Own Way, from my French publisher, Le Livre de Poche!

The French edition is available here, and the English version is available here.

FRIDAY

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

—Advice to Myself by Louise Erdrich

See you next week!

xx,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: Like a cloud.

November 4, 2024

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.

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,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: In the name of sisterhood.

October 11, 2024

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

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,

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

Dear Somebody: There is every reason to believe.

September 27, 2024

Meeting Penguin in a Dream (mixed media on paper, 2024) — *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.

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.

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,

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