Dear Somebody: The space between.

Tiny Book of Trees (watercolor and ink, 2025)

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

MONDAY 

When L married us in April of 2019, I’d known him for nearly 10 years. We’d met on Tumblr, back when Tumblr was a place where your art was seen and your thoughts were read and responded to. I was pleased to meet a friend who lived overseas but with whom I connected to well, and overlapped with on the points that mattered to me: creativity, personal values, a desire (and fear of) new adventures.

Our friendship bloomed easily. Years later, it was with L that I adventured through Iceland, making new friends and peeling back the years of fear and anxiety that kept me huddled inside my home. Years later, it is L that I have to thank for getting me through much of my twenties: years that were full of self-doubt and loneliness, years that I didn’t feel would ever amount to very much. 

It is L that I thank for introducing me to my long-time editor, with whom I have published an oeuvre of work that aids readers in more deeply connecting with themselves and the world. It is L that I have to thank for introducing me to my agent, who helped me build a career that can withstand the ripples of time. 

It is L that I thank for marrying me and T on the steps of our farm in Nashville, having flown from Germany to bring us together; having written the ceremony in pencil, in his signature tiny, handwriting on a piece of white paper that I wish I had. 

In August, we go to London. L, who I haven’t seen in 6 years, since my wedding, is flying from Berlin to meet us. I am excited and nervous. So much has changed since we saw each other last, with marriages and children and shifting values; with the insular nature of our isolated American life. Time has sped up into an unrecognizable blur and blurred so much around me that I no longer assume a friendship will feel the way it always has. Things change, and quickly. Often imperceptibly. 

When the doorbell rings and my children answer it, it is L standing in the doorway, carrying a friendship that hasn’t changed. T hugs him tightly and my children scamper towards him, drawn to this stranger they’ve never met. Children are sharp, unencumbered by social etiquette. They sense uneasiness in the places we’ve learned to numb, they know when they’re being spoken about or spoken down to, they surround themselves with good energy and shrug off the rest.

L with Thing 1, Thing 2, and a seesaw (London, 2025)

For a few days, I have my friend back. The five of us watch the changing of the guard, we have lunches, we draw on menus with N while F takes her sleep. We eat dinners and have evening drinks, but mostly, we walk to the playground. We swing on the swings and chase the kids around and do boring everyday things, each of us knowing the monotony of life is always better with a friend.

Today, I find myself thinking of a moment that still hasn’t left me. As we walked through St. James’ Park, N stopped to watch every bird. What’s that one? she asked L and he answered. How about this one? And this one? He named each one and together, they walked on. I didn’t know you knew so much about birds, I told him, surprised. Yeah, I know a fair bit, he said. 

St. James Park #1 (photographed by N in London, 2025)

St. James Park #2 (photographed by N in London, 2025)

St. James Park #3 (photographed by N in London, 2025)

In this moment, I become acutely aware of how much I don’t know about my friend. This small, benign fact unsettles me: I think about how much more I never will know, because L and I don’t inhabit the same places; most likely, we never will. We see each other for a few days every handful of years. We speak regularly, but words alone are not a replacement for shared time. I think about how many facets of my friends are hidden, never to be realized because we simply don’t share enough of life together. 

Nearly fifteen years ago, during my Tumblr days, one of the first pieces of art I offered for sale was a drawing of an astronaut on the moon. I NEED MORE SPACE, the astronaut said, and for a long time, I believed the astronaut was me. 

Now, space is a divider. It divides us in terms of distance but also depth. It sets a limit for how deeply I can know another person, of how many layers I’m able to cut through and under. Here—in January, in an entirely new year, I remain full of sadness, staring out into the space that lives between me and the people I love. 

J, L, Me, T, and F (London, 2025)

TUESDAY

The beginnings of final artwork for DEAR LIBRARY (ink on Arches, 2025)

Here’s a look at where I am in my DEAR LIBRARY process: laying down the very delicate linework for my pages in ink. It’s a tedious, time-consuming process, and I’ve questioned whether I should’ve gone the route I have with this artwork a few times—but the facts are that I did, and I am. I only have a couple of weeks to turn these pencils into final ink-and-watercolor paintings, but instead of filling myself up with stress, I’m simply believing I can, and will. It’s a refreshing change of mind for me after nearly three decades (maybe more?) of I can’t I can’t I can’t. Maybe I can’t—but maybe, I can. 

“I’m just, you know, kind of happy in the doing of things. Even just having a great cup of coffee is happiness. Getting an idea, or realizing an idea. Working on a painting…working on a piece of sculpture, working on a film. One thing I noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work for a goal. For a result. And in the doing, it’s not that much happiness. And yet that’s our life going by. If you’re transcending every day, building up that happiness, it eventually comes to: it doesn’t matter what your work is. You just get happy in the work. You get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn’t what you dreamed of, it doesn’t kill you, if you enjoyed the doing of it. It’s important that we enjoy the doing of our life.” —David Lynch

Along with believing I can, I’ve been ruminating on my immersion of the process and less on the outcome I produce. All I can do is the best I can do right now with the skills and time I have now. I’ve always believed it’s hard to be in the present and to focus on the process, but the way David Lynch has lived his life makes me feel like maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is a switch I can just turn off. More and more, it feels like I already have. 

WEDNESDAY

Tiny Book of Trees (watercolor and ink, 2025)

Over the holidays, I made T a tiny book of trees. This marks my second tiny book in two months (here’s the first!) and I have ideas for so many more—including a new year’s tiny book where I envision the next ten years of my life. Stay tuned.

Instead of thinking big, this year I’m determined to think tiny: tiny steps forward, tiny ideas, tiny stories, tiny books. Tiny cells turning over, slowly leading to a new brain and body. Tiny bids for connection, actively building stronger relationships. The tiniest of pieces, eventually coming together to form a whole. Stay tuned.

THURSDAY

“When we love the Earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully. I believe this. The ancestors taught me it was so. As a child I loved playing in dirt, in that rich Kentucky soil, that was a source of life. Before I understood anything about the pain and exploitation of the Southern system of sharecropping, I understood that grown-up Black folks loved the land. I could stand with my grandfather Daddy Jerry and look out at fields of growing vegetables, tomatoes, corn, collards, and know that this was his handiwork. I could see the look of pride on his face as I expressed wonder and awe at the magic of growing things. I knew that my grandmother Baba’s backyard garden would yield beans, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and yellow squash, that she too would walk with pride among the rows and rows of growing vegetables showing us what the earth will give when tended lovingly.” 

—from Touching the Earth by bell hooks in Orion Magazine

FRIDAY

I am so busy. I am practicing
my new hobby of watching me
become someone else. There is
so much violence in reconstruction.
Each minute is grisly, but I have
to participate. I am building
what I cannot break.

—from The Sun is Still A Part of Me by Jennifer Willoughby

• 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. 

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

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Dear Somebody: A new year's day.

Sketchbook page from January 9, 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

Source: Jama’s Alphabet Soup

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: How I give my thanks.

From Notes on Inspiration for Issue 55 of Uppercase Magazine

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

MONDAY

I step out into the evening and breathe it all in: the borrowed sky, the pinprick of star, your small hand lost in your father’s. I’m six paces behind. I follow your shadows like a stranger, I memorize each crack before you step on it, I see the uneven anger of sidewalk lashing against your toes. You talk in night voices, small but bright against the still air. I step onto the ending of each sentence—an eavesdropper, a passing thought, a pair of wings in the sky. A few maple leaves still hold onto the emptying branches above us, stout. Resolute.

For now, we are three. For tonight, there is only us. I give my thanks to whoever still listens, I gulp each stony breath more deeply than the last, I collect the cold like marbles in my lungs. I count how many evenings like this we still have left.

TUESDAY

"Inspiration propels us to act. Within the world of creativity, it is something that inspires us to create, experiment, or expand the way we think. While plagiarism merely replicates another person’s work, inspiration motivates us to thoughtfully collect elements of an artwork we resonate with, to create something new—something that previously did not exist. At its most genuine, inspiration guides us towards innovation and natural evolution.

When I’m drawn towards a particular piece of art, I study it and try to understand what it is I’m captured by. I consider three specific areas and mark my observations in my journal or sketchbook. What I’m looking for is a through-line—the line tying my sources of inspiration to the art that I’d like to create. Pinpointing this is essential in making work that is original and honest—that carries the spirit of you, despite who or what it’s inspired by." 

––An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #55 of Uppercase Magazine 

WEDNESDAY

“We seldom think of conversation as commitment. but it is. I find that expressing what I really feel and telling another person what is actually important to me at the moment is difficult. It requires a commitment on my part to do so, and I sense that this is true for most of us. It is equally difficult to listen. We are usually so full of our own thoughts and responses that we seldom really listen close enough to one another to grasp the real flavor of what the other person is attempting to convey. Creative communication in depth is what allows us to experience a sense of belonging to others. It is the force that limits the destructive potential in our lives and what promotes the growth aspects. Life is a struggle. Coping with a lifetime of change is a struggle, but through a lifetime of change we will experience ourselves as full persons only to the degree that we allow ourselves that commitment to others which keeps us in creative dialogue.” 

––bell hooks on conversation as commitment.  

THURSDAY

Last night, we watched The Snowman, an animated short based on the original children's book by Raymond Briggs. It was perfect in the way most movies from childhood aren't––that is, it stood up to the high bar of wonder and magic my 7-year-old self encased it in. Better yet, as an adult (and artist), I'm now able to fully appreciate the hundreds of hours that go into drawing and animating such a fantastic film.

Today, I listened to the soundtrack on repeat. My favorite track is, of course, Walking in the Air: gorgeously haunting piano music paired with Peter Auty's beautiful voice. 

P. S. I'm also reading Grace Loh Prasad's The Orca and the Spider: On Motherhood, Loss, and Community. Have you read it? I'd love to hear your thoughts if you have.

FRIDAY

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

––Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

xo,

M

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Dear Somebody: Confronting your inner critic.

From The Worst Boss I've Ever Had, a comic about confronting your inner critic.

Hello, everyone! I know it's been awhile. I'm navigating some unexpected personal news and health changes, but things are finally beginning to finally shift to a manageable place. Though it's freezing here in St. Louis, I'm enjoying the seasons' transition; I hope brisk air is sweeping you into its arms wherever you are. 

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

MONDAY

I don't often feel like a mother. Two years into being one, the title continues to feel like a pair of too-big shoes I'm eagerly waiting to grow into. What does a mother feel like? I have my suspicions, certainly. A mother is calm. A mother is well-assembled. Someone that knows what to do. Someone who has answers, and a medicine cabinet full of tried-and-true remedies. A mother knows their way around the kitchen, and a new city, and the inner workings of their own mind. A mother is someone who knows. Someone whose heart has been split open, as I hear so often, by their child––a heart that's now grown so large there's barely enough space for it left in their chest. Is this me? I don't know. My heart seems well-adjusted to its cavity. 

N wakes up sobbing lately. Her cries are like a siren; she sits up and wails with such alarm that I wonder what terrors visited her young mind. When the crying doesn't stop, I go in and pick her up. We move to the light that slips in between the closed blinds. I sing Carole King until she says Mama, no, putting her hand to my mouth. We sit in the big chair, her face buried in my chest, my cheek resting on her head. Already she's so tall, legs like a ballerina jutting out from my either side. Her breath becomes deeper, steady. She is asleep and my arms are full of her. She is asleep and I feel strangely settled. She is asleep and I am someone who knows how to soothe. For her, I figured out how. My medicine cabinet is empty, but my heart is full. I am a mother––this I have known, but for these few minutes, I begin to believe it, too.

TUESDAY

For the WORK issue of The Nib, I made a comic about the worst boss I've ever worked for: myself. You can read the comic here on my blog and order a print issue of the The Nib – please help support this wonderful indie publication!

My 2023 calendar and planners are also now available, through Buyoly and Amber Lotus Publishing. These are excellent gifts for the upcoming season, and a great way to encourage my little business.

*Support more BIPOC makers this year! I love these hand-poured candles by Golden Hour Co. in rainier and oakmoss. 

WEDNESDAY

“You have consented to time and it is winter. The country seems bigger, for you can see through the bare trees. There are times when the woods is absolutely still and quiet. The house holds warmth. A wet snow comes in the night and covers the ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white. For a while in the morning the world is perfect and beautiful. You think you will never forget. You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise.” 

––Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

THURSDAY

All through autumn I wish for my body to become something new. I want my body to be stronger, less sensitive to these invisible, internal changes. I want it to be stoic, indifferent to the weight of its responsibility. I want it to perform flawlessly. I disregard the fact that it completes thousands of tasks to keep my heart beating and lungs full of air, without my knowing when or how. I am grateful, I think, but I ask it for more. I want my body to be decent. I want it to look beautiful though I know it is doing too much. It is tired and needs rest, but there are books to write and school to attend and so many to care for. 

For months, I offer my body no grace. I shroud it in resentment. I criticize it and wonder why that doesn't amount to change. Why it won't simply be better, the way I imagine other people's bodies to be. I speak to it like I would never speak to another; I allow my imagination to make me even more cruel. After months of sickness, when I finally come to my senses, when I remember how love actually works, it strikes me that I have never taken my body into both arms, never voiced the words buried beneath my anger: Yes, it is you. It is you that I choose over and over again.

FRIDAY

she told me then
that they
"the slaves who were ourselves"
searched for one another
tried to get back
to places they had been before
to them that they had known
needed and loved
to them that knew

she told me then
that this searching
was hard journeying
harder even than
moving over water
than finding strange language
and people with nothing under their skin
hard journeying she told me
this way back to ourselves

––exiles return by bell hooks

xo,

M

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