Dear Somebody: N turns five years old.

N is five (mixed media, 2025)

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

MONDAY 

When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, the morning is ready. The sparkly lights have been hung, dangling over the bannister. The pom poms have been hung, twirled around the sparkly lights and the felted banner that reads happy birthday. The gifts are piled on top of the squishy yellow chair, waiting to be opened. The flamingo cake is baked and assembled, waiting to be eaten. The birthday breakfast is cooked and plated, a tiny candle on top, waiting to be blown out.

When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, her sister is ready. F follows her around with arms outstretched, longing to place them around her big sister. Happy birthday, N. Birthday huggie time! she screams over and over again, in the only pitch volume she knows: loud. F follows N from room to room, struggling to hug her while N struggles to walk away, struggling to hug her while N brushes her teeth. That’s enough hugs! N says, annoyed, and F, finally giving up, turns to me and says: I want my birthday to come out now.

When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, her father and I are ready. We’ve been talking about it for days now: how it’s been five years since we first became parents, how five is a milestone, how five means something. I recall every moment in the past five years when I have faltered under the weight of parenthood, and wish I’d been more present for the sweet child in front of me. I remind myself that all I can do is offer N who I am; give her the space necessary to dissent, grow, and learn; and to try—genuinely try, to live a little more graciously. A little more in the present. 

When N climbs into bed on the night of her fifth birthday, her bedroom is ready. The ceiling fan whirls. Her sparkly canopy gently sways. The stars on her walls twinkle and swirl. When I tuck her in, she asks me to stay and snuggles into me. She clutches my body like a toddler during drop off, so closely that I forget she’s five years old. So closely that I forget that next year she’ll be six, then twelve, and then out of my arms altogether. N is quiet. Her eyes are closed, but I know she’s awake because her hand moves so closely in mine. Quite suddenly, I don’t feel ready anymore. 

TUESDAY

N’s flamingo cake, on her fifth birthday (2025)

N requests a flamingo cake for her birthday and although I fret about it for weeks, it comes together quite nicely and with little difficulty. Five years into making birthday cakes for my kids, I feel something I rarely feel, which is pride: for taking on a task and accomplishing it, for making a young kid’s wish come true, for enjoying the process and letting the mistakes show. 

N eats a flamingo on her fifth birthday (2025)

Past cakes include F’s bluey cake, F’s rainbow cake, N’s rainbow cake, N’s painted cake.

WEDNESDAY

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin

THURSDAY

To celebrate the publication of my journal, Learn to Let Go, I invited a few people I admire to share what they’re letting go of, and what they’re learning in the process. 

Today, I’m featuring New York Times Bestselling Author, wellness educator, and Restorative Writing teacher Alex Elle. Alex is also the author of How We Heal, a practical and empowering guide to self-healing. 

I’ve known Alex since my Brooklyn days, and it’s been stunning to see her growth over the years—as an author and artist, but also as a mother, partner, and friend. I’m so happy to share this space with her today. 

What have you let go of?

AE: I’ve let go of the belief that I have to prove my worth through overextending myself—creatively or personally. I no longer chase validation by saying yes when I mean no, or by holding onto relationships and projects that no longer align. Letting go of people-pleasing and performance has made space for deeper honesty, more intentional work, and a steadier connection to my own voice. What’s mine won’t require me to betray myself to keep it.

What did you gain when you released it?

AE: I gained a grounded sense of self-trust and the freedom to create, connect, and care from a place of alignment—not obligation.

What are you letting go of?

AE: I’m learning to let go of urgency—the need to have all the answers, fix what’s broken, or rush my healing..

What are you learning from this process?

AE: I’m learning that the more I unfurl, the more I bloom.

Many thanks to Alex for sharing a little bit of her journey with us. You can learn more about Alex’s work and subscribe to her newsletter, Gratitude Journal. 

P.S. Past interviews include Carolyn Yoo on letting go of artistic identity, and Malaka Gharib, on letting go of yes.

Learn to Let Go came out last week! Thank you to everyone who has bought, shared, and celebrated the release of this special book. 

In case you missed it, I spoke about acceptance, letting go, and making books with Radim Malinic on the Daring Creativity podcast. I joined my friend Kena Paranjape for a really lovely conversation about the book in the Supernova community. The book is featured in the latest issue of Uppercase Magazine (thank you, Janine!), and I joined Jessica Swift for a conversation about letting go in our creative practices at her Art Oasis retreat.

As a reminder, Bookshop.org is offering a 15% on all orders with the code LTLG15 for a limited time. This is a good time to grab a copy or two or five, especially for upcoming holiday gifts. You can also purchase from another shop listed here, or if you’re overseas, the UK edition. Thank you, always, for supporting my work. 

FRIDAY

On the bridge
A village witch
Tells me

You see nothing
Clearly, since in all your eyes
A fog gathers generations

—The Witch by Ye Hui

See you next week!

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Birthday thoughts.

New storyboard for an old story that has a special place in my heart (graphite on tracing paper, 2025)

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

MONDAY 

A Bluey cake for little F’s second birthday (April 2025)

F was born the day after I was, in late April, after the cherry blossoms have bloomed, beamed, and quietly begun to fall. I like having our birthdays sandwiched together because it makes me feel closer to her—one of the only instances, in my life, where a feeling is more important to me than the actual facts. 

For her second birthday, I made F a Bluey cake. F is the strangest bird, afraid of nothing and no one. She’s always in search of coconut water, her sister’s hand, and a good chuckle. F pulled the entire sun and its shine into our lives; she’ll laugh at a room full of darkness and then, when she’s ready, she’ll turn the light back on.

TUESDAY

An image from Frog and Toad: Dragons and Giants by Arnold Lobel

Birthday thoughts from Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel, my always-favorite. 

WEDNESDAY

On one of our recent playground days, I found Anno’s Counting Book in the little free library. I’d never heard of Japanese illustrator and author Mitsumasa Anno before, but I loved the tiny, charming illustrations immediately, and wanted to spend more time with them. Skimming the inside jacket flap, I was struck by his belief that all children are born mathematicians and want to bring sense and order into all they observe through numbers

Cover of Anno’s Counting Book by Mitsumasa Anno

Interior spread from Anno’s Counting Book

Interior spread from Anno’s Counting Book

As a child—and now as an adult, I detest math, because I don’t believe I’m good at it. It doesn’t come naturally to me and never has. So much of what we like and don’t like as adults is rooted in how it made us feel about ourselves as children. When I was young, math made me feel incompetent; today, it still does. 

I tell N all the time that her brain is the most powerful thing she has. If she tells it she can do something, it will help her to. I appreciate that Anno, who spent 10 years teaching math before writing books, held the deep notion that all children are brilliant mathematicians, and that our job as adults is to help them believe that. 

It is a simple and powerful belief, and I feel silly that I never really considered it before. But, of course, as is the way of books: now I have. 

P.S. When Mitsumasa Anno died in 2021, Publisher’s Weekly published a short obituary worth reading. 

THURSDAY

“…I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.” 

—from Edith Wharton’s The Ghost Stories

FRIDAY

today we are possible.

the morning, green and laundry-sweet,
opens itself and we enter
blind and mewling.

everything waits for us:

the snow kingdom
sparkling and silent
in its glacial cap,

the cane fields
shining and sweet
in the sun-drenched south.

as the day arrives
with all its clumsy blessings

what we will become
waits in us like an ache.

—birth-day by Lucille Clifton

See you next week!

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Cutting out the rot.

N’s 4th birthday cake: a rainbow cake! (2024)

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

MONDAY 

N’s 4th birthday cake: definitely a rainbow cake. (2024)

Over the past decade, my relationship with my work twisted itself into a rotting mass—one where I searched for the proof of my own self-worth in my work. When my ability to work very hard was the only thing I still liked about myself, I knew it was time for a change. So I cut the rot out.

Part of this excavation process involves consciously expanding my love for working into a broader love for everything outside of it. I know that my work will only be as thoughtful, as intelligent, and as full as my actual life is. I also know that I live in a country where no one really cares if a mother has a room or time of her own to put towards developing her mind, spirit, or craft. I live in a country with a supremely unhealthy work culture, where there’s little desire to separate a human being from their production value. I know the history and lineage behind my harmful admiration of debilitating independence and relentless hard work. And yet, I love my work. I am lucky to have found it, lucky to love it so. But I want to love myself more. 

So I cut away the rot. I take my need for external validation and wring it out. I want only what’s good: the creativity in being unobserved, the freedom that’s left behind. I love friendship and quilting and books and children and elaborate meals and I want more of myself to put towards these parts of life. I love the alchemy of it all—the ability to make something out of nothing. I want to be less focused on creating intelligent work and more focused on being an intelligent person. 

For her 4th birthday, N requests a rainbow cake. I put my work aside, and I plan out a rainbow cake—six separate layers, a homemade buttercream frosting, a boatload of rainbow sprinkles. I am slow—a slow learner, a cautious beginner, a creature of habit. It takes me two days to bake and assemble the cake, but the cake is good. It is spotty and uneven and it stands up on its own. It is imperfect. It is exactly what I hoped to make, and for once, my eyes lined up with my hands. It is good. 

Most days, I wander around my own life wondering why motherhood feels so difficult for me—why I carry the weight of it around, instead of sinking into it like the bizarre and bewildering dream it is. Most days, I am frustrated with myself for feeling so much, for wanting, so badly, to be naturally good at something, instead of working so hard to be mediocre at it all. I envy those for whom writing or mothering comes intuitively, comes evenly. I want to be good.

When we cut the cake, N sees all six colors stacked on top of each other and her mouth falls open in genuine awe—the awe only accessible to a fresh four-year old. Her face is worth a two-day bake; it always will be. We eat the cake and it is good. 

N tells me it’s her favorite cake. I don’t really know what I’m doing, in life or in my work, but I keep cutting the rot out. I want to feel the joy of making deep inside my bones. I want to like my work even when no one else does. I want to like myself when I don’t make anything at all. 

Slowly, I cut the rot out. I think this is the way to something good. 

P.S. For archival purposes, here are past birthday cakes: F’s first birthday, N’s third birthday.

TUESDAY

“The thing is that my brain is just as broken as it was before. Winning this award might have fixed my life on the outside, but it certainly didn’t fix my psychological issues or my sense of self. I am just as insecure as I was the day before I got the award, and just as scared as well, and that part has not changed. I really wish it had because I’m so sick of being afraid, afraid that my career will end, that I will never write anything again: all the fears that I’ve always had. Every time I write a story, I’m like, “I bet that was the last one.” I still feel that way. That part has not changed.” 

—Bruna Dantas Lobato on life after winning the 2023 National Book Award

“What’s real is that if you do your scales every day, if you slowly try harder and harder pieces, if you listen to great musicians play music you love, you’ll get better. At times when you’re working, you’ll sit there feeling hung over and bored, and you may not be able to pull yourself up out of it that day. But it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives." 

—Anne Lamott on writing

“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good, many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm—and that’s a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you.” 

—Vincent van Gogh in a letter to Theo

WEDNESDAY

I rediscovered Sandol Stoddard’s I Like You on N’s bookshelf a few days ago, and we read it together before bed. It’s just as endearing as it was 20 years ago, when I first discovered it—and one of the quirky books (like Ruth Krauss’ A Hole is to Dig) that encouraged me to make sweet little books of my own. 

THURSDAY

I’m reading: about how leaves change color in autumn and Past Tense by Sacha Mardou. 

I’m watching: Pachinko — I fell for this series hard and fast, and think about it all throughout the day and miss it even while I’m watching. 

I’m listening: to the Minari soundtrack, to anything composed by Joe Hisaishi, and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath on tape. 

FRIDAY

Every evening, an hour before 
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while.
When I return, the moon is there. 
Like a changing of the guard.
I don’t expect the light 
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.

—The Light Continues by Linda Gregg

See you next week!

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: A birthday wish.

Me and my birthday girl (2024)

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

MONDAY 

On my birthday, I set out to make F’s birthday cake. She was born the day after I was and I choose to believe that this consecutive sequence of celebrations will bind us for the rest of our lives. It makes me happy. 

F is turning one, and I wish for her cake to be beautiful and healthy. Making a birthday cake for my children each year is important to me. For my sixth birthday, my mother made a cake for me that I remember with great affection: a magic school bus cake with a jellybean-filled top layer and Oreos for wheels. I think about this cake often; maybe this is why. I love cake; maybe this is why. I cook and bake for my family multiple times a day, an act of care—and therefore, an act of love; maybe this is why. Baking is an art and I want my ability to extend past the written and painted page; maybe this is why. All of these reasons are the reason why and because I’ve taken on the task, it’s something I want to do well. What I really wish for is to surprise myself. 

I make a frosting with no sugar, which tastes good but has low viscosity. I worry it won’t support the five layers of this cake, but I’m pressed for time. N and her cousins want to help. They take turns frosting each layer and one by one, I stack them high. The cake leans to the right and refuses to stop. I straighten it repeatedly but instead of a cake, it resembles a sloppy pile of pancakes. My brother-in-law, sitting across from me at the kitchen island, raises his eyebrows at the mess. He makes eye contact but says nothing. 

What is that? my dad asks as he walks in and settles himself at the island. It’s F’s birthday cake, I say, obviously frustrated. My dad’s eyes widen and he tries not to laugh. Don’t ask her what that is, he loudly warns each person who walks into the kitchen. It’s supposed to be a cake.

I roll my eyes, but all of the insecurities I’ve grappled with over the past year flood my eyes. I don’t have good instincts; ordinary tasks are difficult for me; I’m not a real artist—it’s just something I work hard at; I don’t know how to be a good mother; I will never measure up. These thoughts are gauzy, shadow-like. Threatening. But I also have another thought: that tomorrow, F will be an entire year old—and everything I didn’t know how to do for her, I eventually figured out. 

I start over. I take each layer off, scraping the icing off and back into a bowl. Masi, what happened? my oldest nephew asks, seeing the cake he had just frosted now fully disassembled. I know, I tell him. But I’m gonna figure it out. I add corn starch to the icing and stick it in the fridge. After 20 minutes, I take it out and begin again. I decide the cake needs additional support, and my dad, who has finally stopped laughing at me, neatly saws a chopstick in half.

When the layers are all iced and assembled, it looks like a cake. An adorable, small-and-tall cake, perfect for a one-year-old. My younger nephew sets out all the sprinkles and we call N and Z over. Go wild, we tell them and they do. Z pours all the sprinkles within reach on top and N eats the rest. My nephew and I watch them. We look at each other and smile. 

It’s not the rainbow cake I’d wanted for F; it’s something better. My sister baked the layers so I didn’t have to; maybe this is why. My nephews helped me start over; maybe this is why. My dad heckled me and then offered support; maybe this is why. My daughter and my niece listened to themselves, which is the most honest form of creativity—while decorating F’s cake; maybe this is why. I want to be a good mother and I will always try, very hard, to be one; maybe this is why. 

All of these reasons are the reason why and because I want to do the work, it’s something I will do well. On my birthday, on the eve of F’s birthday, what I really wished for, I got: I surprised myself. 

TUESDAY

“The lens is a black eye, and a camera has an aperture. That’s easy enough; but it’s not easy, because the metaphor has blossomed the camera into the brown poet, into we brown poets (the recipients of the instructions): black-eyed aperture. To be black-eyed, yes, perhaps, to have the eyes of a black person, and we can have a lot of conversations about what that means, but at the very least, it means to see black people. Since her earliest poems, Finney’s model for us has been to see black people. To lay her eyes (and pencil) on her beloveds.

But to be black-eyed also means to have bruised eyes, hurt eyes: eyes that have been hurt by what they’ve seen, and eyes that have been hurt maybe for what they’ve seen. And an aperture, in addition to being a part of a camera, is a hole or an opening through which the light comes. Be a black-eyed opening for the light to come through. Be this. It’s my first final instruction. It’s the best I can say first and last. Let’s start here.”

—Ross Gay on the poetry of Nikky Finney for The Sewanee Review

WEDNESDAY

We finished the black comedy Beef a few weeks ago and I still find myself thinking about it. To me, this short series manages to capture a particular flavor of darkness: the self-loathing and self-destructiveness that blooms inside a first-or-second generation child who realizes they’ll never achieve a level of achievement or happiness that can neutralize the many sacrifices their parents made. Beef digs into this internal grappling, in all its complexity and absurdity, with poignancy and humor. 

THURSDAY

I’m reading The Magic Words by Joseph Fasano and helping N write her first poems; I’m listening to Ghibli Sleep, my current writing playlist which doubles as car/calming music for F.

FRIDAY

Never ran this hard through the valley never ate so many stars I was carrying a dead deer tied on to my neck and shoulders deer legs hanging in front of me heavy on my chest People are not wanting to let me in Door in the mountain let me in

—Door in the Mountain by Jean Valentine

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: A wish.

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

MONDAY 

For N’s third birthday, I tell her we can have a sleepover in her room. She’s been begging me to sleep in her bed for weeks, informing me each night that if she had it her way, I would stay in her room forever.

We brush our teeth and get ready for our slumber party. We drag her grass-green nuggets onto the floor and cover each with a blanket: hers, a rainbow; mine, rainbow-colored. We each get a stuffy: her, Daniel Tiger; me, a bunny. We each get a book: her, High-Flying Helicopters; me, Madeline and the Bad Hat. We turn on her color-changing Little Prince starlight, turn the bedroom lights off, and climb under the covers. N is jubilant, excited for her first sleepover; I am just as jubilant, excited to be in bed at 6:45 pm. 

N kicks off the covers and then asks me to tuck her back in. We do this four times before my spirit begins to blur. She gets several drinks of water, marveling at the autonomy that a life outside crib bars can offer. She asks if we can share a blanket. We do and she closes her eyes. “I am asleep,” she announces, her entire body still as stone. I close my own eyes for a moment, opening them again when I feel her gaze on me. “Hi,” she says, through a small smile. Her face is an entire field of wildflowers, quiet and soft among the evening stars. 

She tells me she had a good birthday. While she talks about her cake and friends and wonders if it’ll still be her birthday tomorrow, I think about her very existence—how quickly it came to be, and how each day, I realize it’s a miracle that she still is. 

It’s been three whole years since she was nothing but a seed in my belly, a small-nothing-speck no different from the small-nothing-specks floating in the air or trapped in the lint catch or orbiting the stars—no different at all except she happened to become, and now, oddly, I watch her become more of herself each day.

Under the covers, while staring into my child’s small face, I admit to myself I am not entirely present. My mind is occupied, so crowded with thought that the thoughts themselves have surely become visible—by ongoing violence, both here and overseas. I bake banana bread muffins for N’s birthday breakfast and feel strange, disconnected by the compartmentalization required to complete ordinary tasks. I search online for balloons, tensely, avoiding photo and video coverage of the ongoing bombings. My stomach is no longer able to digest the violence it could before I became a mother. I have that privilege—the luxury of avoidance. I feel strange about that, too. 

By now, N has abandoned her side of our makeshift bed and slid over to mine. She asks if we can hold hands and I say yes. She scoots closer to me, her breath on my neck, her small hand in mine. I think about all the children who have been killed before my mind reminds me that these are only the ones I know of. For each one I see, there are a dozen more that no one writes about, that I don’t read about, that I don’t think about or stop in my day to wonder about: the faceless and the voiceless, invisible lives and invisible deaths. I see them all in the faces of my children, in the face of this child who, more than anything else, wants only to sleep next to her mother. 

What is there to do, I wonder, except love her more? What is there to do, except teach her how to love more deliberately—to open her heart wider, to not let it become calloused or closed by injustice and unfairness? What else is there to do, except teach her how to love herself fiercely, so that loving others comes more easily? What else is there to do but tell her not to let someone else’s indifference douse or dampen her inner flame, to show her how hard I work at lighting my own? 

I pry myself from my own thoughts, all too aware that as far as motherhood goes, years one through three have swept through me—long in each moment but still, too quick to even recall. The years flicker by without my knowing, like my life is a long spell I’ve been cast under. If I’m not careful, year four will slip by, too, a stockinged shadow I can’t catch.

I am not a praying person, but I hold N’s hand and make a wish: a feeble utterance to the universe to absorb some of this world’s hatred so our children do not have to. 

Then I turn my mind off. There are little hands touching my face, little hands that I can still hold, little hands that have not been taken from me.

*Please read more about a ceasefire resolution and ask Congress to protect the children in Gaza and Israel.

TUESDAY

Each year I have magnificent birthday cake plans and each year, I scramble to actually execute—but I’m quite thrilled that I managed to continue my tradition of baking a birthday cake for my kid!

For N’s third birthday, I made this pumpkin birthday cake inspired by her beautiful paintings. I loved making it; she loved eating it. Joy hides inside the little things. Joy waits for us to find it. 

WEDNESDAY

“Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face… Love your mouth… This is flesh… Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms… Love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver — love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts… love your heart. For this is the prize.”

—from Beloved by Toni Morrison

THURSDAY

Kena of All You Are was one of the first people who gave me a chance when I was beginning my creative career. She started BRIKA, a beautiful shop in Toronto which sold my books and products, and truly sang my praises to whoever would listen. She believed in me when I didn’t know why I should believe in myself. Over the years, she has turned into a trusted friend and wise, older sister. This unfolding—from a stranger to a sister—is, in itself, so special. 

As you can imagine, it was especially fulfilling to talk to her last week on her podcast, Be All You Are, about listening to yourself, the discomfort necessary for growth and personal expansion, and, of course, how it feels to find yourself. 

You can listen to our episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. 

FRIDAY

Leo Cruz makes the most beautiful white bowls;
I think I must get some to you
but how is the question
in these times

He is teaching me
the names of the desert grasses;
I have a book
since to see the grasses is impossible

Leo thinks the things man makes
are more beautiful
than what exists in nature

and I say no.
And Leo says
wait and see.

We make plans
to walk the trails together.
When, I ask him,
when? Never again:
that is what we do not say.

He is teaching me
to live in imagination:

a cold wind
blows as I cross the desert;
I can see his house in the distance;
smoke is coming from the chimney

That is the kiln, I think;
only Leo makes porcelain in the desert

Ah, he says, you are dreaming again

And I say then I’m glad I dream
the fire is still alive

—Song by Louise Glück, who died a week ago today. RIP. 

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Another year over.

A portrait of my mother and N, for Issue #53 of Uppercase Magazine

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

MONDAY

When my mother first comes to visit me on the farm, she’s in awe. She’s lived in the suburbs for her entire adult life, ever since she emigrated to the United States as a young woman. For the last 30 years, she’s been surrounded by streets and sidewalks, the chatter of neighbors, the early morning rumble of school buses picking up their children. Here, it’s quiet.

"Look at all this land!” she says, walking around the 20 acres of wood that surrounds us. “Wow. It’s so green. So beautiful. Look! There’s deer there.” I look, but my eyes miss their delicate limbs as they disappear into the maple trees. Instead, I see the weeds inching past my knees, the stone driveway in need of leveling, the demolished kitchen I spend my days re-tiling. We wash our dishes in the bathtub. We spend our nights tilling the earth, weeding the greenhouse, or clearing years of neglect from the yard. It’s difficult for me to imagine the future, but I know it will take many years to love this neglected land into something new.

–An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #53 of Uppercase Magazine

TUESDAY

"To be reminded of your cosmic insignificance therefore isn't just relaxing, but actively empowering. Because once you remember the stakes aren't anywhere near that high, you're free to take meaningful risks, to let unimportant things slide, and to let other people deal with how they might feel about your failing to live up to their expectations."

–Oliver Burkeman on Cosmic Insignificance

WEDNESDAY

Today, on my birthday: this is what I look like. This is what I look like nearly all of the time: like I'm sleepwalking through life.

I've got one year of graduate school nearly finished, one forthcoming book of essays written and under my editor's care, and one beautiful baby who loves waking up at 4am.

Sometimes I look at my little family and feel like I'm in a dream. Sometimes I get off the phone with a friend and I think about how lucky I am to have such meaningful relationships. I've built a life my 15-year-old-self couldn't even have imagined. I feel myself changing nearly all of the time. Things are hard and beautiful; challenging and all the more fulfilling because of that.

Low on sleep, but life is full, full, full: this is a lucky life.

THURSDAY

Over the past half-year, slowness has settled into me. I've become a lot more comfortable with taking the long road, letting go of ideas that dictate where I shouldbe and how it should look.

It is especially difficult to be patient with creative work, which can be quite isolating and lonely, and which relies on a strong connection with your honest, artistic self. I'm continuously rebuilding this relationship. While I do so, interviews with those I admire have been especially comforting: Shaun Tan on taking the long road, Caver Zhang on gradual acceptance, and Lois Lowry on reading as a rehearsal for life.

FRIDAY

Lucky Life isn't one long string of horrors
and there are moments of peace and of pleasure as I lie in between the blows.
Lucky I don't have to wake up in Philipsburg, New Jersey,
on the hill overlooking Union Square or the hill overlooking
Kuebler Brewery or the hill overlooking S.S. Philip and James
but have my own hills and my own vistas to come back to.

Dear waves, what will you do for me this year?
Will you drown out my scream?
Will you let me rise through the fog?
Will you fill me with that old salt feeling?
Will you let me take my long steps in the cold sand?
Will you let me lie on the white bedspread and study 
the black clouds with the blue holes in them?
Will you let me see the rusty trees and the old monoplanes one more year?
Will you still let me draw my sacred figures 
and move the kites and the birds around with my dark mind?

Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky the waves are cold enough to wash out the meanness.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life. Lucky life.

–from Gerald Stern's Lucky Life

xo,

M

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