Dear Somebody: In the name of sisterhood.

Color testing for a risograph edition of Stay Golden (2024)

For local folks: next week I’ll be in conversation with Sacha Mardou to celebrate the launch of her graphic memoir Past Tense. I’m incredibly impressed with the amount of emotional and physical work this graphic novel has taken, and how smoothly Sacha takes us not only through her tumultuous upbringing, but through the complicated passageways of her mind. Come see us if you can.

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

MONDAY 

Since the Penguin saga (Part 1 and Part 2), it’s been a tough couple of weeks for mothers and daughters. N is not even four but somehow she’s already fourteen, defiance coming off her like hot steam. I feel myself skulking back into my own teenaged self each time N strikes a match and hurls the flame directly at me; it’s my least favorite version of myself to be.

No is her new favorite word. It sprints out of her mouth like an outraged boxer, like someone who’s been outfought many times and will not allow themselves to come second any longer. No is followed by loyal companions it’s not and I’m not and I won’t. The words are followed by the tears—my god, so many tears—as if the salt water seeping out of her eyes is determined to make our house it’s new home. After the tears, it’s the screams, then the kicking and shrieking, and then finally, the entire bag of three-year-old bones crumples in the very spot where it was previously standing and goes silent.

Tantrums are tough on the body. I feel my frustration radiating with nowhere to go. I too want to win; I, too, refuse to come last—but my idea of winning means only that my oldest child doesn’t feel too misunderstood, too often, and that one day when she does, she’ll have the language to tell me, to my face, why. It’s not the first time parenthood has brought me to tears and nor will it be the last, so I dry my eyes and get back in the ring.

12 hours later, when it’s finally time to tuck into bed, thoroughly exhausted and all cried out, N tells me she’s afraid of falling asleep. Her dreams scare her. The shadows have teeth. I tell her our brains will believe anything we tell them, so we have to give them lots of joy. Lots of reasons to smile. What’s something that always makes you smile? I ask her.

“F,” she says and closes her eyes. In this moment, despite the hundreds of ways I am failing as her mother, I feel, in the name of sisterhood—that maybe I’m also doing something right.

TUESDAY

My 2025 Start Where You Are calendar

Working pastel into the painting (2 of 3)

My 2025 Life Blooms One Day at a Time weekly planner

A favorite spread from my 2025 weekly planner

My 2025 calendars and planners with Amber Lotus Publishing/Andrews McMeel are available!

I am so pleased to say that both of these items are filled with illustrations painted and written by me, and no one else. Valuing the practices and thoughts that have helped me along my way as much as I value someone else’s words has been a long time coming—but now it’s here, and I am glad.

These make wonderful gifts for yourself or a loved one—if you’re inclined, please support me by purchasing one (or a few) through Andrews McMeel, BuyOlympia, or Amazon.

WEDNESDAY

I started a new practice of listening to poetry while I draw. This week I’ve listened to Jericho Brown and Margaret Atwood. Ideally, I’d like to choose a prolific poet and listen to their entire body of work over the next several months as I work on illustrating Dear Library. If you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments—especially if the audiobook is narrated by the poet.

I started two books: I am reading the My Father’s Dragon trilogy by Ruth Stiles Gannett and I am listening to Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange.

I want to memorize poetry—my memory is pretty shoddy so maybe this will be both interesting and exciting; I confirmed I am registered to vote; I started waking up before the sun again.

THURSDAY

Color study of N and Penguin (2024)

I received this beautiful copy of Ornithography by friend and illustrator Jessica Roux and the inside artwork is every bit as stunning as the cover. I’ve placed it near our front door so we can reference it while bird-watching from our windows, door, and porch. Jessica is also a gifted gardener and publishes The Garden People with artists Ginnie Hsu and Libby VanderPloeg.

FRIDAY

me and you be sisters.
we be the same.
me and you
coming from the same place.
me and you
be greasing our legs
touching up our edges.
me and you
be scared of rats
be stepping on roaches.
me and you
come running high down purdy street one time
and mama laugh and shake her head at
me and you.
me and you
got babies
got thirty-five
got black
let our hair go back
be loving ourselves
be loving ourselves
be sisters.
only where you sing
i poet.

—Sisters by Lucille Clifton

xx,

M

Dear Somebody: There is every reason to believe.

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

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

MONDAY 

On Saturday, a week to the day that we lost Penguin, we drag ourselves to the library. It’s a hot, humid day—one of summer’s final waves, a last-minute delay to autumn’s much-wanted arrival.

Both girls are tired. F doesn’t want to sit in the stroller; N doesn’t want to put shoes on, or leave the house. I feel cooped up. Even though the girls have been back at school for 3 weeks now, I find myself struggling to adapt to our new school year routine. I missed my work all summer, but now September is here and I feel daunted by my dreams for it. As they tend to do, my dreams turn into expectations, and my expectations are high—too high, somewhere in the clouds. There is so much I want to make, so many ideas I want to see through, so much more I would do if only there was more time. Each day, I wake with the same expectations; each day, I fail to meet them and my disappointment comes calling, comes climbing, knocks another dream off its cloud.

These are the thoughts in my head as I strap F, wailing, into her stroller. These are the thoughts in my head as I strap a helmet onto N’s sulking head. We trudge down the alley towards our library, and when we arrive, I hold the door open for a little girl and her mother, letting the door close behind them.

I tell my group to collect itself before we enter the house of books. This is a special place, I stress. We’re not going in like this! We are only a group of four, but two of us are wailing and the remaining two want to.

We enter the library, and that’s when I see that the little girl who walked in before us is holding a penguin. A small black and white penguin. A penguin with a squashed nose that looks like its been loved each day of its flightless life.

I ask the girl’s mother if the penguin belongs to her, and she tells me that her daughter found it in the corner with all of the other stuffies. I ask if I can look at the penguin’s tag, and when I do, I see that it’s Penguin. Pen-Pen. Our guy.

Incredulity floods my body. I stammer out an explanation to the girl’s mother, who hands Penguin to N. I look at T in disbelief. All of this time? Under our very noses? In our own neighborhood? Even when it hurt to hope? Holding Penguin in her arms, N bursts into tears.

I’ve never been someone who fully believes—not beyond reasonable doubt, not past what I can see, never in something outside of myself. I don’t let my hope overshadow my demand for proof or pragmatic solutions. As I walk home, I tell myself that all of that stops right now—the self-doubting and the disappointment. I won’t allow anyone, especially not myself, to keep knocking down my dreams.

A couple of leaves fall from the maple tree near our house. They are crinkly, already auburn. The forecast for tomorrow reads cool, maybe even pleasant.

My kid, the absolute portrait of innocence, gets to keep loving the friend she loves—and have the same friend love her back. What else is there? The world gave us back a friendship. There is every reason to believe.

TUESDAY

A quick look into the process for the painting of N and Pen is below.

I started taking photos halfway through, so unfortunately I don’t have the beginning of the process to show, but: I sketched onto watercolor paper using colored pencil, then began light washes of gouache.

Adding light washes of gouache (1 of 3)

This is the part of the process that frightens me: I’m satisfied with the sketch, but as soon as I add color, it begins to go awry. For me, this is due to both a lack of confidence and experience. Pushing through this part is a practice.

Working pastel into the painting (2 of 3)

Above: I’m trying to figure out light and shadow. I usually add light arbitrarily, content if any comes through at all, but I paid attention to the large shape of Pen to see where both shadows would fall in the snow. I also wanted to create and capture a glow between the two friends.

Adding colored pencil and more pastel (3 of 3)

I continued adding layers of pastel and colored pencil, careful to work each into the paper so it doesn’t simply sit on top. I added the snow using white pastel. After I removed the tape (which always tears my paper, does anyone have a solution?), I added a border using colored pencil.

This drawing is OK. Naturally, I’m dissatisfied with the end result, but I’m also becoming comfortable with that. I learned a little—namely, that I prefer warmer palettes over cooler ones—and I painted a painting I’ve wanted to for years (I first drew this idea two years ago).

When I remember to, I’m starting to note and share more of my process because it helps me understand that each day, when I sit at my desk producing what feels like copious amounts of garbage, I’m doing what I’m supposed to: Practicing. Trying. Thinking. Believing.

WEDNESDAY

I’m listening to the Sunny soundtrack. I’m interested in this new color class by Sha’an D’Anthes. I’m waiting to receive Mythmakers by John Hendrix. We read the Knufflebunny series by Mo Willems over the past week, and I’m late—but really excited—to discover the work of Lisk Feng; I enjoyed this profile on her.

THURSDAY

When we first moved to Saint Louis, I liked most that it’s a city that feels like a small town. As I settle more into parenthood, I see the appeal of the small town more and more: a strong, intimate community; a sense of familiarity and safety; the ability to take more risk because it can be easier to build a solid foundation, both financially and creatively.

Color study of N and Penguin (2024)

My friend Erin Austen Abbott released her latest book,Small Town Living, this week. It highlights the many creative people, places, and communities that thrive inside American small towns, and I received a copy of it, along with artwork fromAvery Williamson Studio(Ypsi, Michigan), stationery fromWorthwhile Paper(also Ypsi, Michigan!), and a beautiful patch keychain fromThree Potato Four(Media, PA), which now sits on my keyring.

We are always thinking about where to live next. I’m naturally drawn to large cities, but this book makes me curious if the large, expansive life that I want for myself and my family…exists somewhere much smaller.

FRIDAY

the silhouettes of their bond visible still at the last glow of the sun

they experience each other and the life of the night as it begins to stir

standing there in silence holding hands

no rush to go back inside

there is so much beauty and comfort in being in love and just being…

—amidst sounds of buzzing

chirps

crickets

the pleasant but irregular blowing of the wind

fireflies dancing in step with the light of the moon

how strange it is to become aware of another’s heartbeat but forget one’s own—

finally love.

—At Last…Another’s heartbeat by Marcellus Williams

xx,

M

Dear Somebody: Losing a penguin

N and Penguin — love goes on and on and on (pencil on paper, 2024)

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

MONDAY 

Over the weekend, we drove to a farm in Illinois to find our way through an 8-acre corn maze. We did, and then we piled back into the car and drove home to have lunch. After F’s nap, we walked to the library and chose new books, stopping at the playground to practice the monkey bars. We hurried home to make dinner and it was halfway through, while shoveling chicken and rice into her mouth, that N told us that she couldn’t find Penguin anywhere. 

Penguin, or Pen-Pen, is N’s lovey, who has slept in her arms each night since she was born. He eats meals with her regularly, both at our home and in public. He gets his own seat and sometimes, he gets his own meal. He’s taken baths with her, made wishes with her, traveled across state lines and open seas with her, and it is he that she calls for when most upset or unconsolable. N’s love for Pen is so great that it inspired F’s love for Tunafish, an absolutely identical penguin that N gifted her only so F would stop thieving Pen from her room. 

T goes to check the car and the garage, and when no Penguin is found, he gets on his bike and rides through the neighborhood. He retraces the path we took to the library and the playground, searches the alleyways, checks the slides. I email the library, already closed, and ask them to please look for Penguin. I call the farm, which is still open, and the manager tells me she’ll check the lost and found. If I leave my name and number, she’ll call me when he turns up. Her voice is sweet and understanding. All of us at the farm—we’re all mothers, she tells me. We know what this is like. We’ll find him.

For the first time in her almost-four years of life, N goes to bed without her penguin. I miss Pen, she says. What if we never find him? Breaking my own rule, I lie with her until she falls asleep. I wonder where Pen-Pen is. It’s a big world for such a small, sweet penguin. 

Afterwards, I search the house and play the tape back in my mind. I rewind it over and over, stopping at all the same moments, pressing play. Did F bring him to the farm thinking he was Tuna? Did I put him in my bag when we got there? Did he fall under the picnic table? Did he fall out when I opened the car door? I saw him in the car—didn’t I? Didn’t I? 

In the morning, N makes the shape of a penguin with her arms. Mom, last night when I didn’t have penguin, I closed my eyes and it felt like I was holding him. I am grateful for her brilliant imagination, for its ability to comfort her. I am disappointed that memory—as shoddy and unreliable as it is, with all its faulty limitations—is still the next best thing to the actual presence of something we love. 

T tells us he’s going to work and then drives back to the farm. He runs the entire 8-acre corn maze again, retracing our steps through the playground and the farm field stores. He searches the grassy field, now beginning to fill with the morning rush of cars and giggling children. Not here, he texts me. The heart breaks. 

I think of somebody—anybody, who wouldn’t know how much our family has cared for this little penguin—and how they’d find and toss him, casually, into the trash. The heart breaks.

Things become family because we care for them, because we choose to divest our finite energy away from one avenue and pour it into another. N loved Penguin into our family, caring for him as we care for her. She considered his feelings, as I do for her. I loved him because she did.

N finds the first drawing I did of her and Penguin. It’s the invitation from her first birthday party. She tucks it into a tote bag and says she’ll show everyone in the neighborhood his picture, so they can call us when they find him. So they can return him to his family. She retraces the steps T already retraced, carrying the invitation like a missing-child milk carton in her hands. When we don’t see him, she asks me again: Mom, what if we never find him?

I tell her I don’t know if we’ll find him or not, but that it’s up to us to keep looking, to keep believing that we will. Missing somebody is hard. It’s a difficult thing to feel, the love a too-big-something squashed inside our hearts, but what it tells us is good: that we care. 

More than the missing, it’s the not knowing that causes ache. Penguin’s absence is unexpected—after hundreds of near-losses, I took for granted that he’d always eventually turn up again. We’ve saved him from airplanes and cousin’s houses, bathtubs and alleyways. I didn’t think he’d ever actually disappear. 

I know that Penguin is a stuffed animal. I know there isn’t any substantial value to him other than the love that he symbolized for a child and her family. I know his story is every child’s story, or every child’s worst fear. I know N will be fine. But it’s a big world for such a small, sweet child—and the heart still breaks in ways I didn’t know it could.

TUESDAY

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” 

—from Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit

WEDNESDAY

It’s been an unexpectedly good week for mail: 

I received a beautiful copy of Mai and the Missing Melon by Sonoko Sakai, illustrated by my old friend Keiko Brodeur. This sweet story explores the relationship between a young girl and her grandmother, the Japanse folktale of The Stone Buddhas, and Japanese food, culture, and history. In the package, Keiko also included a generous selection of gorgeous new cards from her sweet stationery company, Small Adventure.

I received my copy of FAIL-A-BRATION by my friends Brad and Kristi Montague, which celebrates failure. I’m not sure a better (or more necessary) celebration can be had. 

Brad Montague

 also runs a really heartfelt and encouraging newsletter called The Enthusiast which I always look forward to reading. 

After gifting my professor a copy of Tolkien’s The Father Christmas Letters, I ordered one for myself and it arrived today. I am taken by this collection of letters, written and illustrated by Tolkien (as Father Christmas) to his children over the span of 23 years. The letters eventually inspired parts of The Lord of the Rings, which is really exciting. It reminds me to play—to remember that the art we create for fun can lead us to our most challenging and fulfilling projects. Reading through the letters, what strikes me most is how vast a person’s imagination can be—and how untapped most of ours are. 

THURSDAY

Color study of N and Penguin (2024)

A small color study of N and Penguin. I’m trying hard to capture the feeling of such a classic childhood relationship—a child and her stuffy—with colors and washes that withstand the test of time. 

I keep asking myself what makes a good picture, or a good sentence—it’s ability to speak to anyone, regardless of age or experience? I don’t know; I’ll keep asking.

FRIDAY

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
   one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
   of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
   somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
   at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”

—Your Catfish Friend by Richard Brautigan

xx,

M

Dear Somebody: I am not a machine.

A page from my sketchbook (September 5, 2024)

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

MONDAY 

N and F both started school this week. For N, it was after 18 weeks at home; for F, it was for the very first time, after nearly 18 months at home with me. I’ve missed my work, time, and space immensely, but a sense of overwhelm still lingers. I’m working on a few projects that I’m really excited about—illustrating a beautiful picture book manuscript, developing a few other proposals, and beginning a new accordion book—but nothing much has gotten done this week.

I sink into my ennui, hoping it will lead somewhere. Almost entirely present, I shop for groceries, enjoying the quiet of the empty early morning aisles. I go on a walk around my neighborhood and adopt a leisurely pace. I catch up with an old friend and marvel at how wonderful conversations are without a toddler shouting in my unattached ear. Sometimes I miss the girls, and sometimes I don’t. At 10:30 in the morning, I sit on the couch and read my book because I want to. I say nothing aloud for hours. I answer to no one. 

I think about what I want, and how it isn’t to be an artist on demand. It’s to be an interesting person, one who reads books and poetry, who speaks when it’s necessary and not only to fill the absence of something, even if the absence is a place inside myself. I think about what I need, and how it isn’t to be lauded for what I do or do not make. It’s to breathe air and have space. To move my body. To let that be enough.

Instead of starting on my next round of picture book sketches, I make a very messy painting in my sketchbook. I write my needs down so the pages can remind me when my mind cannot. The painting is garish, even to me, but something about it—perhaps the honesty—feels sweet, and I like it. 

Everything I make doesn’t come out beautifully—mostly, I make mistakes. When something works out, it’s usually because I worked hard at it. I am tough, but I am not a machine. 

TUESDAY

Thanks to the internet, I am painfully aware of what others are accomplishing, and it’s often a constant reminder of what I’m not. When I feel guilty for not working—for relaxing, pursuing hobbies, or simply feeling content (!), I ask myself the following questions.

• What is the source of my self-worth? My insecurity is at its highest when my self-worth is linked to something outside of myself: career success or achievements. I feel guilty if I haven't worked a certain number of hours because I believe my worth is intrinsically linked to my productivity. I believe I must earn my value as a human being.

• What if that source disappears? There is always the possibility of losing your job, being unable to pursue your goals for, say, health reasons, or simply being unable to meet your own expectations. Ensuring that your self-worth is internally rooted is necessary for enjoying yourself and your life, guilt-free.

• What do you value about yourself? For me, it is my discipline, my thoughtfulness, and my ability to empathize with other, helping them feel seen. Valuing myself for existing as a unique being in the world allows me to seek validation and self-worth from myself, rather than from others.

Society is designed to feed off our output; feeling content despite my fluctuating productivity is a continuous work in progress. I regularly remind myself of my inherent value, finding that when I do, I no longer need to frantically goal-seek to feel worthy.

—Excerpted from How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Clarity, Purpose, and Heart, my book of illustrated essays

WEDNESDAY

We spend a few days in Kansas City doing the same thing we do wherever we go—finding the best playgrounds and taco shops. 

Among my personal highlights was visiting The Rabbit hOle, an immersive museum celebrating children’s literature. I’ve been wanting to go for a few years now, since I learned of the initial idea for it, and it was just lovely to experience so many beloved books brought to life.

Every exhibit we saw was beautiful, but I was especially taken by the Strega Nonaexhibit, one of the stories I read most repeatedly as a little girl. 

Outside Strega Nona’s house at The Rabbit hOle museum

Inside Strega Nona’s house, saying hello to Tomie dePaola

These photos are just less than, but inside Strega Nona’s house were several dioramas built into the wall, each one—complete with working mechanics—playing out a scene from the story, from the time Strega Nona hires Big Anthony to work for her to the very end, where the never ending pasta overthrows the entire town. N was mesmerized, watching each scene on repeat until I pulled her away to explore other exhibits. I am married to books, but I'd love to create sets for plays and exhibits one day, too. 

Related: Phoebe wrote about the depiction of Strega Nona in her Fat in Picture Books section of her newsletter last week. 

Related: one of my favorite Tomie dePaola books for artists (and their self-doubt), is The Art Lesson, gifted to me by T a few years ago. 

THURSDAY

F & N, entirely too comfortable in someone else’s studio (2024)

I also had the chance to finally visit fellow artist Sarah Walsh at her lovely studio! Sarah was gracious enough to accomodate my two tiny monsters and gifted N some gorgeous puzzles from her line with Eeboo. I haven’t been able to meet very many artists over the last few years, and it was a breath of fresh air to talk to another working mama about the mechanics of building a creative life and staying honest with ourselves, in our work and in our lives. 

If you aren’t familiar with Sarah’s work, I recommend checking out her latest zine, Horse Girl, and her latest book, Rainbow Science. 

FRIDAY

Bring me all of your dreams, 
You dreamers. 
Bring me all of your 
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them 
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world. 

—The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: A neverending field.

Fred in a neverending field (mixed media on paper, 2024)

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

MONDAY 

Sitting in the hospital bed, F looks smaller than usual—a tiny sailor lost at sea. Her face is washed with fluorescent light, and she rustles when the heart monitor beeps every few seconds. I look around us: there are wires and monitors and shuffling feet all around us, but mostly, I see luck—great gobs of it, golden and glittering against the walls. We are in a good hospital. Our medical team is gracious, caring, intelligent. I trust them to care for my child. 

Still, though, I am stuck—frozen—for the entire duration that F is asleep, anesthetized by a medical professional who assures me he will administer only the amount appropriate for her weight and blood pressure, only the amount her heart can take. I recite my favorite poem by Gerald Stern to myself. My child is in safe hands, and I know the only reason why is luck. If life is a gamble and our family is playing the ponies, we’ve already won. 

A few moments before she’s taken into surgery, I change F into her hospital gown. Sensing a moment of transition, she begins to cry. F’s young, but I believe she knows this is the moment before and that none of us, not even her mother, knows when afterwill arrive. She sits still, a stoic little Alice—but her eyes wander curiously, full of wonder even as she prepares to fall down the rabbit hole. F’s gown gathers in folds, impatiens bunched together in a neverending field. This is winning, I remind myself.

If I close my eyes, I can erase this entire hospital from my mind. If I close my eyes, I can picture F in the neverending field, her entire face beaming at a summer breeze. In this field, bees hum around us, hunting for a sweet smell. There is bird song and chatter; the occasional plane flies overhead. In this field, we are together—and no mother ever wonders if her child will wake up. 

TUESDAY

An illustration of my family for Issue 38 of Chickpea Magazine

“Each day after school, my husband and I picked up our daughter from daycare and walked over to my parent’s apartment, where they’d have tea and snacks waiting for us. My daughter took her bowl of pistachios or kaju katli, an Indian sweet made of cashews—and settled herself in the small nook between the oven, sink, and refrigerator. There she’d sit cross-legged on the floor, chatting about her school day with my mom. My dad cut fruit—apples, mangos, or guava, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and cumin—and we’d sit on the living room floor, chatting about my school assignments and progress. On some days, dinner would be ready and waiting for us on the kitchen table; on others, I’d join my parents in the kitchen and help finish the preparations. Each evening, without fail, we’d migrate to the small wooden table and eat dinner together—all three generations of us, each with our own set of disappointments and dreams.” 

—From my latest illustrated essay, “The Biggest Dream”, for Issue 38: Ease of Chickpea Magazine. 

WEDNESDAY

On asking yourself what kind of artist you want to be by Fariha Róisín and Generation Gap by Sarah Moss; paintings by Ewelina Bisaga; showing the dissonance between what one says and what one does in visual work by Jillian Tamaki. 

THURSDAY

You shouldn’t get disillusioned when you get knocked back. All you’ve discovered is that the search is difficult, and you still have a duty to keep on searching. —Kazuo Ishiguro

FRIDAY

HEY

C’MON
COME OUT

WHEREVER YOU ARE

WE NEED TO HAVE THIS MEETING
AT THIS TREE

AIN’ EVEN BEEN
PLANTED
YET

—Calling on All Silent Minorities by June Jordan

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: The Biggest Dream

From my illustrated essay, The Biggest Dream, for Chickpea Magazine

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

MONDAY

Chickpea Magazine, Issue 38: Ease

An image of my essay, “The Biggest Dream,” for Issue 38 of Chickpea Magazine

An image of my essay, “The Biggest Dream,” for Issue 38 of Chickpea Magazine

For Issue 38: Ease of Chickpea Magazine, I wrote about meal preparation as an act of love and care, especially among immigrant and first-generation families—and in my own, as I’ve known it. 

I think about food like I think about most things: pragmatically. I always liked to eat and cook, but that’s evaporated since becoming a mother. Now, meals feel overwhelming: a neverending physically-and-mentally taxing chore necessary for nourishing my young family. I’ve resented this task for who I believe it asks me to be: a devoted mother who easily slaps together healthy, delicious meals without stress or sweat—not because I don’t want to be this person, but because repeatedly, I’ve failed at actually becoming her. 

I first spoke to Cara, the editor of Chickpea Magazine about this piece because I was interested in exploring the perception of care. A single act of love can communicate a wildly different message to the recipient than the message the giver intended to relay; our culture, environment, and personal histories all factor into how we give, perceive, and receive care. For many first generation children, care is not easy to receive. It takes a good deal of work to crack ourselves open enough to even see that it’s there. 

In this essay, I look back on my last pregnancy, which I carried while finishing my final year of graduate school at Washington University. I explore the inevitable clash of multiple generations and cultures living under one roof; parental love shown through the monotony of meal planning, grocery shopping, meal preparation; and how food saves us in the places where, often, language fails. 

This was also the first time I drew my father, pictured here making granola with N, while me and F (in my belly!) talk to my mom, who is, of course, of course…making chai. 

I grimace, almost daily, about my kitchen: it is small, dim, and feels crowded if there are more than two people in it. The magic of drawing is it allows me to see what my eyes cannot: the walls that opened up to let my family grow; the hundred-year-old bricks that still stand strong; the love and care blooming in this tiny kitchen that is, for now, just the right size.

You can read “The Biggest Dream” in its entirety in Issue 38: Ease of Chickpea Magazine. Many thanks to Cara for the opportunity. 

TUESDAY 

I finished Laurie Frankel’s Family Family, which I loved, and can’t wait to read the rest of her work. I wrote about This is How it Always Is in a previous letter (“Tiny miracles everywhere,” see below) and will read The Atlas of Love next. 

I finished Happiness Falls by Angie Kim and am amazed at how well her brain works. 

I’m also reading Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, which I am frightened by and want to put down—but I read on because of Knoll’s sharp, intelligent writing, and the truth it exposes about living as a woman, especially in America.

WEDNESDAY

To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness will find banks full of roses under my cypresses. —Friedrich Nietzsche

THURSDAY

I’m still thinking about these gorgeous sketches by Winsor Kinkade and the art of American illustrator Alan E. Cober, which I only discovered because he did the cover art for this thrifted copy of The Sword in The Stone that I’ve had on my dresser for over a decade.  Illustrator Fatmia Ordinola’s work is lush and makes me feel the way it looks: vibrant, buzzing. 

FRIDAY

Imagine: 
I stop running when I’m tired. Imagine: 
There’s still the month of June. Tell me, 
what op-ed will grant the dead their dying? 
What editor? What red-line? What pocket? 
What earth. What shake. What silence.

—from Hala Alyan’s Naturalized

See you next week,
M

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Dear Somebody: I wouldn’t have without you.

T and Jack, May 2024.

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

MONDAY 

I turn the kitchen light on around 5:45 am. Most days, Jack stirs and watches me while I brush my teeth in the half-bath, careful not to wake our sleeping family. Then he waits by the door and we go out. The past few weeks, he doesn’t move—his sleeping body just rises and falls while I brush my teeth, while I count out vitamins, while I go downstairs for a Peloton ride. I return 30 minutes later, sweaty. His eyes slowly open but he doesn’t move. Let’s go outside, Jackie, I say, and he steps away from me. He retreats, watching me quietly. I feel like a stranger, almost an intruder. Somebody he used to know. 

After some time, I coax him outside. The sky is far more than what I can ordinarily imagine. Over our wooden fence and the neighbors trees and beyond the curves of our busy street, the sun rises eagerly, the fruit of it red and new. Dang, it’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it, Jack-o?, I ask, but when I look for him, he’s already at the door wanting to go back in.

The girls and I go to the library, but when we come home through the back door, T is waiting for us. He sits on the floor with Jack sweetly, the way close friends do—casually, with little inclination towards boundaries or good posture. What he tells me I don’t want to hear, so instead my mind wanders to friendship and how golden it is. Through good friendship, you can transcend your own reality—you have the chance to grow into a person you can one day even admire. I’ve known T for 7 years and his friendship with Jack for just as long. All the cliches about man’s best friend are true: they’re better friends than most, and they try harder, too.

We sit on the porch Saturday morning, me, T, and Jack. It’s a gorgeous Spring day, the morning not warm yet, the trees billowing with post-rain breeze. It’s early enough for quiet. We listen to the robins and grackles, I hear the occasional woodpecker. It’s supposed to be peak cicada season, but I’ve yet to hear or see one. Jack stand with us uncertainly. I think of him snapping at bees, romping around the yard and playing chase. He’s an old man but he still acts like a puppy, we always joked, but now I can’t remember the last time we did. 

I take a photo of Jack and T, his sleek wolf’s shape finally slackened against T’s body, his head in T’s lap. They are handsome together, a softness in each of them that only appears when the other is around. There’s an ease in the way they lean on each other—the way good friends always do.

T holds Jack’s head and I hold his hand. I don’t see either T or Jack, not quite—I only see them, unable to see one without the other. When it happens, it happens quick—but softly, too, like when the sun sinks down at the end of the day. The sky is a blur of rainbow while it goes, and then it’s gone. The sky is a blur, still, and then it is only still, and then there is only you and the sky and no sun.

T looks at Jack and Jack looks at him and I am only a witness to their friendship. How did we get here?, their eyes seem to ask, and in my heart, I know one will always say the same as the other: I wouldn’t have without you.

TUESDAY

How it Feels to Find Yourself was featured in theSkimm’s Best Products to Support Your Mental Health; I am pleased and proud. 

WEDNESDAY

“Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!” 

—from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet

THURSDAY

I just finished listening to Lara Love Hardin’s The Many Lives of Mama Love and so greatly admired the way Hardin confronted her own demons. 

I started listening to Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake; I’m reading Under the Tamarind Tree by Nigar Alam; I’m asking myself what kind of artist I want to be.

FRIDAY

Woke up early this morning and from my bed
looked far across the Strait to see
a small boat moving through the choppy water,
a single running light on. Remembered
my friend who used to shout
his dead wife’s name from the hilltops
around Perugia. Who set a plate
for her at his simple table long after
she was gone. And opened the windows
so she could have fresh air. Such display 
I found embarrassing. So did his other
friends. I couldn’t see it. 
Not until this morning. 

—Grief by Raymond Carver

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: A tiny hand in mine.

A tiny glimpse of my current project.

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

MONDAY 

The clouds are in fine form today, puffs of thick white acrylic smears. Occasionally, the sun pierces through. I don’t see the birds as I shuffle along with my head down, but I listen to their music. Morning walks are like this: the sky bobbing over me while I retreat further into myself. We moved to St. Louis in June. It’s October now and I haven’t made a single friend. 

I turn the stroller onto Des Peres and navigate the cracked sidewalk towards the playground. Up ahead is a young woman with her baby. I slow down, hoping she’ll leave before I get closer. No such luck.

Hello! Do you live nearby?  She asks me. My heart turns clockwise, tightening.

Yes, I say politely, just down the street. I unstrap N and watch her toddle over to the slide. I feel resistant. I’ve met many people in this city, but none that I connected with. I’m tired of trying.

My heart spins, quietly reminding me that it is there. There are many people to love, it says, but you have stopped looking for them. 

The children play together. I ask the woman questions and listen intently to her voice. I engage my curiosity, studying her face: her long eyelashes and curly hair, the way her eyes crinkle when she smiles, her soft laugh. She looks at N with the love only a mother can feel for a stranger’s child. Opening your heart is like learning a foreign language—it feels self-conscious and clumsy until it doesn’t.

Stepping outside of yourself, that’s what an open heart is. A story that invites you to first look and then listen. A morning at the playground, an unexpected conversation, smears of cloud, a tiny hand in mine.

—from How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Clarity, Purpose, and Heart, my book of illustrated essays

TUESDAY

I love it when it’s just you and me, mom, N says once, and then again. She doesn’t smile, just looks at me with her serious, thoughtful face, and I know she means it. 

We’re having a picnic at the little playground near our home. She eats a peanut butter and honey sandwich, I have peanut butter and jelly. It’s the perfect weather—not a lick above 74 degrees, breezy, our picnic blanket dappled with sunlight under an old playground tree. 

A few days later, she’s reading with T in her room before bed. Dad, I love it when it’s just you and me, she says and though I can’t see her thoughtful face, I know she means it. 

WEDNESDAY

Several weeks ago, T and I celebrated our 5-year anniversary at Bulrush, a truly incredible reparative restaurant that explores Ozark cuisine through the values and vision of Chef Rob Connoley. With their menu, 80% of which is radically foraged locally, Chef Connoley explores the late 18th and early 19th century—”the moment in time when the indigenous people first encountered the settlers, who often brought enslaved individuals. These three cultures came together at one particular time to create what has evolved into the food that we eat today.” 

I find myself still thinking about this night. It encourages me to see a person with strong core values actively living in accordance with them—and building his business and community deeply around them. In a world where fitting in and being well-liked is valued more than critical thought, it’s comforting to see someone deliberately go their own way.

THURSDAY

I am: discovering free zines for a free Palestine, donating to the perinatal project, learning more about Rod Serling, wondering if I have enough self-compassion?, and listening to poems as teachers. 

FRIDAY

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

—from In Those Years by Adrienne Rich

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: Good is in the gray.

F and I by the sea (March 2024)

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

MONDAY 

While F naps off her fever, N and I go to the beach. She builds sand castles and makes seagull soup; I comb the shoreline for shells. The water is cold but I jump in anyway. Under nearly 5 feet of water, I see my toes. The sea is turquoise, a mermaid’s glittering tail. I’ve never been to the Gulf before. 

We walk along the beach and stumble upon some two plastic toy crabs, one yellow, one blue. They’re buried under the deserted white blanket of the beach, with just a claw or two peeking out. I ask N if she wants to add them to her collection but she shakes her head no. “Well, we can play with them for a little while,” I say, and make several crab shapes. 

I want N to love the water. I’m beginning to feel a specific pressure of parenthood I thought I was immune to: wanting my children to experience the beauty of my childhood without the aches; wanting them to feel affection for many of the same things I do; wanting them to share some of the same philosophies. I want N to understand that among its many mysteries, the sea can wash most any despondency away. 

N plays for a few minutes and then pushes the toys away. “Mom, I don’t want these. They belong to another child and that child will miss them.” Standing in the stark black and white of N’s morality, I feel shame. I’m envious, too. I want more of life to clarify in front of me, I want more of it to appear so obviously right or wrong. My conviction, at one point solid, made of stone, is porous now and has been for years. It’s wrung through with the realization that most days, I learn I am wrong about something I once believed. 

I ask N if she’d like to bring the toys to the beach lost and found; she does. We watch as both crabs are placed inside an enormous beach shed, then closed and locked, where they succumb to a much darker life among their fellow comrades—each of whom has been misplaced, forgotten, or abandoned. Lost.

N asks me to close my eyes and walk backwards. I do. We take good care not to look once, not at the sand or the sky or the shells. Not at each other. We use our other senses. We take good care to sense the sun’s warmth on our backs, to hear the gull shrieks in our ears, to feel the powder of Gulf sand between our toes. We stumble along, and as we do, I mildly wonder what people think of us.

“Mom, are your eyes closed? You cannot surprise yourself if your eyes are always open.” N’s voice is small and perfect; I can hear the ocean inside it. You can’t surprise yourself if your mind is always made up, either, I remind myself. The whole world is endless behind my eyes. Maybe gray is OK—maybe even, gray is good. 

My eyes are still closed. I turn my mind off, too. Together, N and I walk backwards into the sea. 

TUESDAY

I’m reading To the End of the Land by David Grossman as part of Ruth Franklin Israeli/Palestinian reading group, I’m donating to the KidLit4Ceasefire fundraiser, I’m attending Palestine Charity Draw #3 hosted by Sarah Dyer; I’m remembering this poem by Gottfried Benn and this essay on divorce by Emily Gould; I’m looking at these illustrations by Nikki McClure which accompany Rachel Carson’s Something About the Sky. 

WEDNESDAY

In-between client work and book projects, whenever I get a moment or two, I’m beginning to rework the illustrations for my picture book proposal. 

I’m reading about the making The Bird Within Me Flies by Sara Lundberg as I prepare to do this. Lundberg is one of my favorite book artists working today, and reading her thoughts, always imbued with such genuine honesty and humility, has been a comfort:

“It was important for me to allow myself to be inconsequent. The characters didn’t have to look the same on each spread, I didn’t have to stick to a specific style or technique. So I just did each scene intuitively, and with the intention of bringing out the most interesting – the essence in each.

I felt confident that everything would tie up in the end anyway, so I might as well have fun on the way there, and avoid trying to do something perfect.” —Sara Lundberg

I’m also deeply interested in the pen-and-ink work of Patrick Benson, who illustrated one of our family’s favorite books: Owl Babies.

“The most important thing that an illustrator has to do is provide lots of visual clues, bits of information - rather like snapshots - that will act as a sort of springboard for the imagination.” —Patrick Benson

I’m keeping his advice close to me as I rework my illustrations, remembering that my job as an illustrator (and a writer) is never to provide the entire story, but to sprinkle just enough light so the reader can find their own path through it. 

THURSDAY

Nicola came to visit last week with her little one in tow, and between the gardens and meals and messes, we managed to take some new studio shots. There’s no one in the world I’d rather be photographed by than this particularly talented friend. Working together is easy: comfortable, classic, no frills—just like our friendship. 

My website requires a long-overdue update, and these new photographs will lead the way. So much has changed since the last time she photographed me in my workspace: a move to a new city, an MFA, a baby who is almost an entire year old. My own tiny studio with a door; a room of my own. 

My work has changed tremendously. I have, too. It feels good to capture some of this new. 

A tulips update: positively blooming. These little guys are bringing so much joy to us and all who walk by our home. 

FRIDAY

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 Lucky Life by Gerald Stern

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: The sound of my creativity.

Combing through the paintings from my picture book and starting all over again

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

MONDAY 

It’s harder to wake up this week but I do it anyhow—to exercise, to sit, to write. I take on an essay assignment I could’ve (should’ve?) passed on—and now the question of it lingers, imploring when I’m going to write it, how I’m going to illustrate it, if it’ll be good enough, as if anything we make ever feels good enough. 

It’s harder to keep my eyes open this week, the tug towards bed so great after the girls are tucked in and quiet, but I do it anyhow—curled up on the couch, typing away, striking out my thoughts, rewriting clumsy sentences multiple times. Far past the hour of sleep, I paint the faces of my family. Our skins are too orangey-red or peachy and our shadows reach all the wrong places for I need light to gauge color correctly, and the sun has long said goodnight. 

T keeps me company. He looks over every now and then, silently measuring progress, wondering why I took on an assignment that doesn’t pay my rate and that I don’t have time for. I could be sleeping. I could be reading. If I choose to work, I should be working on my upcoming book deadline, and if I wanted to do something for me, there are plenty of poems waiting to be written—for myself and for Margaux Kent. I could’ve; I should’ve; I did not. 

One at a time, the poems are written. How? Slowly, that’s how. The essay, long fleshed out in my mind, is finally typed out for unknown eyes to read. How? One sentence at a time. This newsletter, which I’d almost abandoned for next week—because surely, something has to go—is, too, written, and with care. How? In the early hours of the morning, when F just begins to stir and the mourning doves mourn so loudly that I stop every few minutes to listen. 

It’s harder to find time this week, but I find it because there is a picture in my heart that wants to be drawn. At first it is nothing—a blank page that frightens me. But line by line, I begin to build and slowly, it takes shape. I correct skin color, I draw in each crumbling brick, I draw and redraw faces until they come alive, until they come into their own. I take more than one hour I don’t have to figure out how to draw my mother’s hand. This used to be a slog, but now it’s just fun. 

I didn’t have to take this assignment, it’s true, but I heard the sound of my creativity and chose to follow. I’ve lost her before, almost completely to the pressure of achievement, the demands of paid work, the tangle of self-worth. I’d lost her so deeply that it took me years to quiet the sound of everything around me so I could hear her once again. 

The sound of a picture in my heart is the sound of an essay in my head. The sound of my creativity is the sound of my own voice. When she speaks, I listen. 

TUESDAY

I’m currently listening to Dave Eggers’ The Eyes and the Impossible audiobook while drawing or doing my chores. The book is read by Ethan Hawke, who reads it like a very good actor in a very good performance. At first I was put off by the listening—it almost seemed like too much, a sensory overload, but after I read Taylor Sterling’s thoughts on picture books as performances, I started listening again, and now each time I listen, I am alone in an auditorium watching Ethan Hawke perform in a play as Johannes, a free dog. It is bewildering, encompassing, joyful.

“I don’t know if the love of a friend is more powerful than that of a family member, but it’s definitely less talked about. That’s why, in art, depictions of committed friendships hit us so hard. Johannes and his friends show up, and don’t ever question whether any of their group will show up. It’s a given that they will be there. A lot of friendship is just a matter of presence over time. Being there year after year, showing up at good times, at banal times, and times of great struggle. The animals in the book are all adults, alone but for each other, and best of all, they’re united by a common purpose. Nothing is better than that—having something urgent to do, and doing it with the people you love.”

—Dave Eggers on The Eyes and The Impossible

WEDNESDAY

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

—from the preface of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, filed many years ago under List of Quotes I’d Like to One Day Paint and Preserve

THURSDAY

Last November, N and T planted tulips in the cold, hard ground and hoped for the best; this is a photo of the second bloom that pushed her way through the earth. 

Each day, N comes home from school and counts how many new faces are showing. Like her, it is always a surprise.

FRIDAY

I have spent a year mostly alone.
Walking a lot.
With a poetic attachment
to street drawings.
Staring at concrete.
My shoes.
And going over my life.
Situations.
Walking
and sitting in my room.
Or movies.
Or reading.
Working. Practicing the 
new patience.
The year has been good.
With long thoughts.
Care to myself.

—from Six Poems by Aram Saroyan

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Stay golden.

The artwork for a recent collaboration with Golden Hour Candle Co.

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

MONDAY 

I wake up wanting to find the golden thread. 

I do my morning chores. The dog waits to go out. It’s still dark but the robins woke well before me. They sing; we listen. I wonder if they ever tire of doing the bird thing, if even the miracle of flying feels like a slog once in awhile. The golden thread is everywhere: in the leaves fluttering in the wind; in the birds, filling the air with their song; in the light streaming over my head. I can still see a few stars pressed faintly against the sky. They will soon leave; they will return.

The first person I see is F. I let her wail for 15 minutes and then I go to retrieve her. She lays face down in her crib in resignation, but when I turn her over, she’s smiling. The golden thread is here: in her mess of long hair, much too long for her body; in her golden, gummy smile that stretches over her entire face and into whatever space she occupies; in her tiny little hands that find tiny specks of dust to examine and eat; in her laugh, which begins deep inside her belly and bubbles over, finally, when it’s too much for her body to hold. The golden thread is in her absence of desire. She is herself and that is enough. 

Next is T, who is still sleepy for at least an hour post-wake. He stumbles down the stairs and F rushes over to look up at him, in full cobra pose. She adores her dad and I adore their relationship, so easy and full of endearment. The golden thread is everywhere: in his morning smile, genuine and full of teeth; in his goofy humor, always looking to score a laugh; his mild temperament. The golden thread is his earnest demeanor, so willing, always, to build towards a greater love.

By the time N makes it to breakfast, I’ve found enough thread for a few spools. She is cross and hungry, her typical early-hours disposition. She reminds me a lot of me, except for when I can’t relate to her at all. Still, I don’t have to look very hard for the thread: it’s in her delicate grasp, the way she buries her face in the couch, consumed by her oversized feelings. It’s in her small, matter-of-fact voice when she replies “not now, but after school with my afternoon one” when I ask if I can give her a morning kiss. It’s in the way she immediately brightens and blooms after her first few bites of breakfast. “I think I was really hungry,” she says. “And tired. But I feel better now.” Golden threads radiate from her like sun rays.

After N leaves from school, I clean the kitchen and do the dishes. I wash the oatmeal pot and find myself in its metal reflection. My hair is crumpled, my skin is tired, but my eyes are alive. Not bad, I think. A person who looks for the golden thread: not always without fail and not always with ease, but someone who tries, anyhow. A golden thread. 

TUESDAY

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I’m so excited to share this collaboration with my dear friend Nirali, the owner of Golden Hour Candle Co..

I was given complete freedom to create whatever I wanted, which is obviously my favorite kind of project. The artwork for this collaboration was inspired by my own ever-changing definition of feminism—one where the efforts of caregiving is shared by all beings because it is valued as necessary, respected work.

It is grounded in the promise of the three young girls in my life: my two young daughters and my niece, who came into the world carrying the greatest love there is—the love they have for themselves. The ultimate golden thread. 

The crewnecks are available for purchase here on the Golden Hour website. 

WEDNESDAY

This particular section from Austin Kleon';s newsletter, We Love Because We Care:

In her book, The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik advocates for abandoning the word “parenting” as a verb. She encourages readers to think of being a parent as a relationship that runs on love, instead of a job that runs on work.

“Love doesn’t have goals or benchmarks of blueprints,” she writes, “but it does have a purpose.” The purpose of loving children is to care for them as a gardener would tend to plants, creating the conditions under which they will thrive.

This caring, she says, changes us, and deepens our love. “We don’t care for children because we love them,” she writes, “we love them because we care for them.”

THURSDAY

“Perhaps the most important truth I’ve learned across the whole of my life is that it’s only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.” 

—from William Kent Krueger’s This Tender Land, my current read

FRIDAY

The value of an individual life a credo they taught us
to instill fear, and inaction, 'you only live once'
a fog on our eyes, we are
endless as the sea, not separate, we die
a million times a day, we are born
a million times, each breath life and death:
get up. put on your shoes, get 
started, someone will finish

—from Revolutionary Letter #2 by Diane di Prima

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: The start of something.

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Happy new year, everyone. 

I took the last few weeks off in an effort to not be on the computer or my phone and it was wonderful, though I missed writing. This week’s letter is a mush of end-of-year recap, more/less for the new year, and, of course, poetry. 

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

MONDAY 

End-of-year lists are tough for me, because I tend to zoom in on what doesn’t work instead of celebrating all that does. This used to be motivating. Recently, I’ve realized how continuing to push myself without acknowledging how far I’ve come has taken a toll on my confidence, resilience, and motivation. 

I don’t want the rest of my years to continue this way. Luckily, I am reminded daily that nothing in life has to be this or that. I can celebrate some things and decide to do other things differently. I can feel gratitude for what I have and let go of what I don’t need or want. I can love well and uphold strict boundaries. 

The gray is where clarity lives. It is simple. It is both. 

My 2023 memorables: 

• Having a safe delivery and giving birth to beautiful, healthy F. She is the greatest of all gremlins, the loudest 13-pounder, the absolute apple of both my eyes, and N’s favorite lovey. I can’t wait until she can look me in the face with her gigantic moonbow eyes and say, quite clearly, “no”—just like her sister does. 

• Graduating from Washington University with my MFA and a permission to dream bigger.

• Working less. Letting social media fall away. Creating less content, less paid work, less of everything. 

• Publishing How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Purpose, Clarity, and Heart, a book that was born in the pandemic and carried me through the past few years. 

• Publishing Go Your Own Way: A Journal for Building Self-Confidence, the fourth in my journal series. Remembering Start Where You Are, which began it all. Feeling grateful for my past self, who took a chance on herself. Feeling grateful for my present self, who continues to.

• Some of the best work I made this year was for my column, Being, in Uppercase Magazine. I have the freedom to experiment with full support from my editor, Janine, and I feel lucky and grateful for her trust. 

• Pushing past the overwhelm to travel with two small children: 

  • Visiting friends and family in New Jersey. Playgrounds. Laundry. Meal prep. Doing the same mundane stuff I do at home, but with my sister. Three o’clock drinks, hide and seek, splash pads. Watching five tiny people I love so much love on each other. 

  • Visiting friends and family in London. Meeting my Penguin UK family. Seeing the city through N’s eyes from the very top of a double-decker bus. Holiday lights. N’s first ice cream crone. F’s first croup. Making it through. 

  • Spending our very first cousins Christmas at my sister’s. The joy of five little adventurers. All-floor hide and seek. Evergreens. Cold walks. A warm and cozy home, supported by a inexhaustible thermostat and family who knows me well. 

  • Visiting upstate New York for the final few days of 2023. Managing expectations. Practicing flexibility. Looking for the helpers; finding them inside ourselves. Creating new traditions that will carry into each next year. 

• Joining Margaux Kent a poem-a-day project, which has been a lesson in friendship, grace, and the power of art that isn’t shared publicly. 
  *I wrote more about this project in my last letter.

• Writing this newsletter! This year, propelled by an apathy towards my work, I shifted my focus away from marketing and towards meaning. I write this newsletter for myself, first—and second, in the hopes that it will resonate with someone out in the world. Most of the time, I find that it does. If I’m honest with myself, I can also be honest with you. 

  I wanted to write Dear Somebody weekly, and I tried my best to. Instead, I wrote 32 letters and gave myself a break when I needed one. That feels just right. I feel proud of how much I wrote and I’m excited to write more this year. Both/And. 
  

TUESDAY

Now that she’s 3, N has taken on an interest in Santa. I myself don’t know how to explain the phenomena of Santa, though my childhood was also made up of The Nutcracker and Christmas trees, dreaming in the same red-and-white-and-sugarplum colors that my children do. 

I don’t feel particularly attached to the idea of Santa, but I recognize what he can bring: Joy. Innocence. The ability to believe in something you can’t see, like friendship or courage or sometimes, yourself. The skills necessary to decide, on your own, when something isn’t worth believing in anymore. 

Who is Santa? N asks. You know, I’m not sure, I reply.  Is he kind? she says. Yes, I say. I think so. He tries to make others happy. She thinks this over. I’d like red rain boots from Santa, she says. Well, I tell her: Then you’ve gotta write to him and ask. And so she does.

Her very first letter to Santa reads: 

Dear Santa,

I want to see you because I really want to see Santa. I want you to take a photo by the Christmas tree so I can see you. And I would still like my red rain boots please. 

Your friend,
N

N places her letter to Santa on the coffee table, next to all of the other letters her cousins wrote to him. She studies the table, laden with cookies and milk and carrots for the reindeer. She looks at the chimney, which definitely doesn’t have room for even the slimmest of Santa’s to shimmy through. She wonders if she’ll hear him. She wonders if the reindeer will wait for him to return. 

I hope these letters will keep him warm, she says, at long last, before climbing up the stairs to say goodnight. 

WEDNESDAY

“Racism, it seems to me, is usually not calculated but is rather a form of stupidity: it’s the absence of thought. That’s why it is very important to think and speak as clearly as we can.

Of course I do also believe in the political value of slow forms, of art-making, even if this value is quite intangible and unpredictable, and even if I fairly regularly experience crises of faith. People with different professions and temperaments might be more suited to quick action; the present extremity of violence will eventually crest (even though this is actually very difficult to think about right now) and the tempo will shift and the slow people will become useful again. And at the same time there are shorter-term things we can all do, like speak truth to power when power is lying. We can try to lift up the voices that are being suppressed or drowned out. We can insist on history, and on facts, and on humanism.

But, also, artists and intellectuals are just people of the world. We need to hold on to the very basic democratic principle that the exercise of individual agency becomes powerful en masse.”

—Isabella Hammad in conversation with Sally Rooney

”If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.”

—from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

THURSDAY

After seeing Elizabeth Haidle’s more/less list, I read Anis Mojgani’s and Julia Rothman’s. 

And then I made my own:

Also: more hide and seek, more lemon, more taking new paths. 

FRIDAY

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

—”i am running into a new year” by Lucille Clifton

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In 2024, I wish us all health, happiness, and hope. Thanks for being here with me. It will forever mean the world to me. —M

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xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: May all, should all.

A houseboat in London, banked along the Thames River.

Hi, friends. 

I missed writing to you while I was traveling for the last few weeks—but write I did, mostly in my head or in my Notes app or in the new Moomin journal I bought during our trip to London. 

I am home now and hoping to return to my weekly schedule. We’ll see. I’ll manage what I can and try to let go of what I can’t—I hope you are doing the same.

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

MONDAY 

Week of November 17, 2023

A blush of robins circle above our heads as F and I set out for our morning walk. They are quiet, save for the occasional call. I lose sight of them as I walk down the alley across the street from our own. It is my favorite alley because it’s made of St. Louis red brick, cobblestoned together, still, despite the hills and sinks that threaten to displace them. Another reminder of the earth’s uprising against man. The brick path rattles the stroller, creating a rhythm that soothes F and that she allows herself to succumb to. It makes me feel like I’m in New Orleans, or at least somewhere else. 

A single robin follows us along, hopping from brick to brick. I wonder where else she’s been.

Week of November 24, 2023

After three days in London, F wakes up in with a fever. Her breath is short and raspy, her tiny nose closed. I give her a bottle but she barely drinks, her eyes closing before they’re even really open. All day she sleeps, either on my chest or T’s shoulder. She is still small enough to be toted around on another’s giving body, the world moving unbeknownst around her. She is still small enough where a prolonged fever ignites fear, too small to understand why her passageways won’t allow air in—why a body or a friendship or a story that is meant to work sometimes will not.

The air in London is cold but bright. We walk along High Street to flush some cool air into F’s lungs. She sleeps on T while he walks, a tiny little Joey inside a quilted blue jumper and mint green beanie. Her breath comes slowly, labored. But still, it comes.

Week of December 1, 2023

A chatter of mint-green parakeets abandons the tree on our corner while we walk towards them. They swoop low, once, before returning to the sky and resuming formation. They are joyful and though they bring me joy, I can’t help but question their belonging. They are out of place. Lovely green jewels dotting an otherwise bleak November sky. 

Week of December 8, 2023

Croup rattled F’s body for nearly a week. I sleep sitting up, with her body on mine, so that if she stops breathing, I’ll know. I feed her every two hours, as if she was newborn, to keep her tiny body hydrated. The humidifier is on high. The entire guest room feels like a tropical sauna, wet and hot but also, somehow, cold. I wish we were at home so she could get the care she needs, I think to myself, not understanding that she is getting the care she needs.

I remember all of this now, but it is unclear. It takes effort to recall the climate, or the shoulder ache that persists from holding a baby upright for hours through the night. It takes effort to even remember the days-long headache, or how my eyes leaked from behind my glasses, not from sadness or fright, but sheer exhaustion. 

What I do remember is how much love existed within the white walls of our London guest room. What I remember is my two hands on F’s back, feeling for her breath through her spine. What I remember is studying her small mouth, tongue having fallen out, as it sought her next breath. What I remember is the slight of her frame, huddled close against mine. The light that climbed out of me to find its way to her. The deliberate care that this child received; the affection bestowed upon her; the comfort of complete observation. The respect of being valued as a human being—as decent and significant and with causes as great as any man grown, or with power. The love of her father and mother and sister and aunts and uncles, all hurtling towards her through touch and thought and mysterious language I am not privy to. 

What I remember are the wishes I made through each hour of the night. They are easy to remember because I wish them each night still. May all children feel their mothers’ two hands on their back. May all children feel the support of a community under their feet. May all children be given another’s light when they cannot find their own. May all, should all. But all are not. 

TUESDAY

The music in my ears, spotted in the London underground last week.

Cat Power singing Bob Dylan’s 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert has been on repeat in my house for weeks now. The few times I’m out in London on my own, I listen to her voice while I walk, singing along: She's got everything she needs. She's an artist. She don't look back.

WEDNESDAY

It was an actual joy to speak with Nicole Zhu last week about the process behind Go Your Own Way and How it Feels to Find Yourself for her newsletter. 

Nicole has supported my work for years now. She is an incredible writer and puts out one of my favorite newsletters. After the kids were settled in bed, I spoke to her about how motherhood propelled creative growth, my writing/illustration process, and cultivating quiet confidence. It was easily the most enjoyable hour of my day.

You can read the entire interview here!—and enter a giveaway for a chance to win my books.

THURSDAY

The Dutch edition of Go Your Own Way is now available through my publisher Unieboek! This is my fourth journal, but I still find it incredibly exciting to see my work translated into foreign languages, reaching more readers across the world. Feeling lucky; feeling grateful. 

FRIDAY

I won’t be able to write from the grave
so let me tell you what I love:
oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter,
cheese and wine, a windy day, a fireplace,
the children nearby, poems and songs,
a friend sleeping in my bed—
and the short northern nights.

—I Won’t Be Able to Write From the Grave by Fanny Howe

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Better together.

Seven Presidents Park, the New Jersey horizon I grew up on.

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

MONDAY 

I’ve spent the past month bouncing around New Jersey, visiting some of my closest friends, many of whom now have children of their own. I’ve known these friends for decades. I’ve seen them struggle and shout and fall over backwards; I’ve held their tears and vomit and laughter in my hands; I’ve argued with and hugged and begrudgingly forgiven them; because of them, I’ve learned how to willingly forgive. These friendships taught me how to love—other people, yes, but mostly myself. 

We take N and F to the bay where we look for seashells and colored glass. N shakes her head solidly at the gorgeous whole clamshells a friend finds, opting instead to pocket handfuls of crush. She builds her first sand castle, she fills buckets with sea, she lets the water reach her shoulders. We take N and F to the beach, where we gawk at the outrageous seagulls and stare at the horizon of my childhood. I look and look, but there is no end; only sea and sky and the moment they meet. It’s overcast, a little too cold to be in the water, but F cries until I start to wade in. She listens to the crash of water against shore, her tiny body calm against my own. I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time—settled, perhaps? Or reignited.

In between the beach and the boat and the aquarium and the half dozen playgrounds, we spend most of our time at my sister’s new home with her three children. N is all smiles and bewilderment, chasing after her cousins with the glee of a child who has no one to chase at home. F lays wherever we put her, spitting up like a fountain, giddy for a television that’s always on and her cousins who treat her as a person with respectable wants and needs of her own. As for me, I do all of the same things I do at home—ungodly amounts of laundry and a too-long bedtime routine. I grimace over what to make for lunch and dinner, consider which activities will occupy the children for the longest conceivable amount of time, and clean poop and vomit and crumbs off every surface in sight. There are two significant differences: I am with my sister and I am not working. It is easy to be content. This is summer. 

My sister and I gripe about parenthood and motherhood, we care for each other’s children, we share too-early glasses of wine or pumpkin beer or both. Our good friends come over and bring their children; it’s a perfect commotion of too many mouths to feed and no one listening to each other. When F projectile poops all over my summer jeans, my sister orders me to take them off, whisking them upstairs before the stain sets. My oldest nephew wanders into the living room and advises me to locate new pants immediately. I oblige, and the weeks saunter along. The kids are tired. The adults are tired. It’s too much and also not enough. This is summer. 

There is barely a moment of quiet. When one finds me, I think about how lucky I am to have a sibling with whom I feel at home. My own children are so little and sweet, in need of me more than each other, but it’s only a handful of years before that changes. I worry about their sisterhood constantly—will they be good friends? Will they think of one another? Will they care for each other when their father and I are no longer the places they choose to turn?

Friends ask me what the best part of my trip was—the boat or the beach? The New York slice or the Strollo’s? Neither, I think to myself. Drawing orcas with my nephews, one art directing, the other editing. Playing indoor hide and seek with N and Z, afternoons full of shrieks and screams and a pleading for just one more round. 

Folding laundry on my sister’s couch, waiting for my three o’clock glass of wine. Having entire conversations without talking. Sharing a gripe and a smile, rolling our eyes. The good, the bad, the incredibly monotonous: it’s nothing like when we were growing up. Now, everything is better together. 

TUESDAY

Thinking on friendship, as I do almost daily, always brings me back to the same place: my very favorite friendship of all. 

WEDNESDAY

While in New Jersey, my sister and I wandered into her local Target. I was so surprised to see this Wellness end cap that featured a sold-out How It Feels to Find Yourself, next to Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. 

I feel incredibly proud to see this little book (written by little ol’ me!) slowly make its way into this great big world. Thank you for supporting us both. 

THURSDAY

Old Friends by Simon & Garfunkel, another ode to friendship that I’ve kept close for many years—and a reminder that even friendships that fall apart can hold everlasting value. 

FRIDAY

Every time I'm in an airport,
I think I should drastically
change my life: Kill the kid stuff,
start to act my numbers, set fire
to the clutter and creep below
the radar like an escaped canine
sneaking along the fence line.
I'd be cable-knitted to the hilt,
beautiful beyond buying, believe in
the maker and fix my problems
with prayer and property.
Then, I think of you, home
with the dog, the field full
of purple pop-ups—we're small and
flawed, but I want to be
who I am, going where
I'm going, all over again.

—The Problem With Travel by Ada Limón

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: For the love of sisters

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

MONDAY 

I was able to speak with the wonderful Margo Tantau on her podcast Windowsill Chatsabout building a life of creativity and purpose. We also discuss living according to your values, being dedicated to your vision, and what I believe most holds us creatives back from success. You can listen to Episode 146 here. 

TUESDAY

My sister and her family visit for a couple days, a trip that comes and goes so quickly that it feels like a blur even while it’s happening. In tow are my two beautiful nephews and my niece, Z, who was born only a handful of weeks before N. The two girls are as different in personality and behavior as they are close in age: where N is cautious and meditative, Z is adventurous and impulsive. Together, though, there is some semblance of balance. 

Different doesn’t always attract. It was more than two decades before my sister and I discovered our own rhythm, mashed somewhere between college graduations, first apartments, and marriages. Each time I reached a life milestone she’d already passed through it brought us closer together. For awhile, we’d swim in the same waters, and then she’d go on ahead again. 

Our personalities follow traditional birth order to a certain degree. As the older child, my sister tends to be a bit of a perfectionist while I enjoy making a good mess with my hands. She’s conscientious and thoughtful, quick to say the right thing and mean it; I have learned how to be less judgmental, more vulnerable. I am confrontational, she likes keeping the peace. We’re both cripplingly self-aware. 

We take the kids to the City Museum, the emerald city of St. Louis. Z bounces off the industrial bridges and steel-roped ladders, climbing as quick as her agile little body allows. N clings to her dad hard. She doesn’t want to climb, she doesn’t want to run, she doesn’t want to try—or she does, but not now. I encourage her, and then fight the urge to continue. How often have I wanted the very same thing my parents have wanted for me, simply in my own time? 

Z and her brothers are out of sight, lost somewhere in the noise of Sabreliner 40 aircrafts and frighteningly oversized slides. Slowly, N begins to open. She walks across a four-foot-wide Slinkie and peers through each square window. She watches. She avoids the vertical tunnels, opting instead for the narrow stairs, and climbs to the top of a castle turret. I ask her what she’s thinking, as I often do, but she doesn’t answer. She watches. Eventually, she lets her dad’s hand go and climbs a half-dome gym on her own. Slowly, I see her unfurl. She’s a lily, blooming—not hesitantly, but with deliberation, the way someone who knows herself well does. 

After awhile, we all meet up and herd the kids inside for lunch. There, surrounded by half-eaten pretzels and hot dogs, ice cream cups and toddler water bottles, N and Z begin to run. They run back and forth across the 1870’s Vault Room, chasing each other with open arms. Z speeds across and N helps her up when she falls. N laughs hysterically, falling on purpose, and Z puts out her hand for the assist. They smile and hug, their faces full of childhood and joy. This is special, I think to myself, as I look at their eyes which are looking into each others’. 

I’ve spent my entire life counting the ways my sister and I are different, as if it matters, as if we’d allow the very things that make us who we are keep us apart. I know, with certainty, that this is driven by the fear that we one day will. 

I note this now, as I watch N and Z fall to the ground still hugging, still laughing, their arms braided together. At my age, it is obvious: the way sisters can fall apart if they’re not too careful, how all friendships—even those bound by blood—need nurturing, like young lilies waiting for bloom. 

To N and Z, it is far less complicated. As it should be. The afternoon sunlight streams through the second-story window. One child’s tiny hand prepares to reach out in anticipation, in knowing—before the other child falls. Slowly, my heart grounds itself. 

WEDNESDAY

On learning how to see in our creative work:

“I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world. They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes. To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things. This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them. At the beginning, they typically "see" things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all. Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become "old men with snow on their shoulders," or the lake looks like a "giant eye." The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness. And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck. But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeing—and the physical world pours in. Their journals fill up with lovely things like, "the mirror with nothing reflected in it." This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not looking—just as she must write when she is not writing. To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing. The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human.” 

—The Art of Finding by Linda Gregg

THURSDAY

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

—George Bernard Shaw

FRIDAY

Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as the years went their way
until it was home to bats and swallows
and still when spring climbed toward summer
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened
you and the seasons spoke the same language
and all these years I have looked through your limbs
to the river below and the roofs and the night
and you were the way I saw the world

—Elegy for a Walnut Tree by W. S. Merwin

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: The moonlight is here

A sketch of me and baby Frida in the hospital. 

On April 21, we welcomed Frida Iyla into the world. Frida means peace in Old High German and Iyla is based on the Turkish Ayla, for moonlight.

Writing this newsletter weekly is important to me, but if needed, I’ll take some time away from the world to care for myself and my family. I have no schedule or particular ambitions; I’m planning on taking it exactly one day at a time. 

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

MONDAY

It’s no surprise that I admire Frida Kahlo as a woman and artist; as a human, she has the enviable ability to embrace her strangeness, her differences, and to find strength in them. As I learn more about her life, I am stunned by her endurance, determination, and ability to find romance—that is, beauty and value—in even the most treacherous moments of her life. 

My favorite words by her are below:

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”

—Frida Kahlo

TUESDAY

My experience with birth the second time has been vastly different from the first, and a positive reminder that the past does not have to be indicative of the future. 

What do I want to remember most? 

• The way I was cared for by my surgeon, my doctors, my nurses, my husband, my daughter, and my family. The friends and classmates who’ve called and comforted. The editors who have stretched deadlines, the cohort who has taken on my Thesis installation, the publishing team who has taken on more work in my absence.

• The humanity of those that gave a little of themselves to me and my family, though we were perfect strangers—during many moments of great vulnerability over the past week.

• A never-before-felt grace towards my body, which always tries to care for me, and endures far more than I ever give it credit for. A promise to give you rest. 

• The joy of experiencing motherhood with a lot more patience, a lot less anxiety, and priorities—and a perspective—that suits my values, my needs, and the life I want for myself. 

• The sweetness of you, my little Frida, who has brought out such unexpected, dormant sweetness in me. At six days old, you have already changed me.

WEDNESDAY

“When things go well, it is easy to celebrate our bodies. But when things go poorly, or not how we imagined, it becomes much harder. I could look back and think about the ways my body disappointed me—and I did, a few times. But whenever I went down that road, I found that it was a dead-end street that made me feel terrible. Hating my body remains a waste of time. At some point, just for the purpose of survival, I chose, deliberately, to focus on all the things my body did right, what it did so well on my behalf. Everything it tried to do.”

—Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes

THURSDAY

Frida’s childhood home in Mexico City, Casa Azul, was turned into the Frida Kahlo Museum in 1958. I’d love to visit one day — many of her paintings are still on display, including Viva la Vida, her final work. In true Frida fashion, she remains in the house as well: an urn containing her ashes lives in her bedroom.

Below are a few of my favorite paintings by Frida:

The Two Fridas

The Wounded Deer

Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird

Thinking About Death

FRIDAY

I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark
morning streets, I point and name.
Look, the sycamores, their mottled,
paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves
rusting and crisping at the edges.
I walk through Schiller Park with you
on my chest. Stars smolder well
into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks,
the dogs paddling after their prized sticks.
Fall is when the only things you know
because I’ve named them
begin to end. Soon I’ll have another
season to offer you: frost soft
on the window and a porthole
sighed there, ice sleeving the bare
gray branches. The first time you see
something die, you won’t know it might
come back. I’m desperate for you
to love the world because I brought you here.

—First Fall by Maggie Smith

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Where has all the time gone?

In the sixth month, a collage illustration for Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War

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

MONDAY

“Probably the best thing my parents did—two simple things that don’t seem to occur to many people—was to give me my own desk just for art and to let me use professional (or at least good) art supplies from a very young age. My father was a printmaker in the 1980s, so he had all of his stuff lying around and was very generous about it. Other than that, I did not have after-school art classes or trips to museums or things that people assume are key to inspiration. In the 1980s, art was seen as an optional thing in the sidelines of life, so you got to make “creative stuff” at school if you happened to get a teacher who was personally into it. That was about once every three years. I would say that, instead, boredom was the key to inspiration. My family didn’t have any money to spare, didn’t go many places, and therefore my brothers and I had loads of unstructured time, our own desks, and a backyard with plants and dirt. We didn’t have vacations, other than driving to a river or a beach once in a while, so I figured that exploring ideas in the far reaches of one’s imagination was perhaps the best way to travel.”

–from Elizabeth Haidle's interview with Haley Laningham in Southeast Review

P.S. Elizabeth (who is as lovely on the phone as she is on the internet) has a new needle felting course out that I'm excited to take this summer. Maybe you'd like it, too!

TUESDAY

Today marks the last day of my first year of graduate school. It feels anticlimactic; I knew it would. Significant days have a way of doing that: feeling like a terrific storm that took a wrong turn somewhere, forgetting to arrive. The body fills with an anticipation so large that there is very little room left for the prospect of satiety.

In preparation for my final review, I finished illustrating Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War, and bound my illustrations for William Bronk's The Tell into a neat little book. I thought about how much I love poetry, and how poetry has always loved me back, the way only books or paintings or music can, without reason or knowing how.

This summer, I'll write and illustrate some of my own poems. I want them to be good. I want them to be so good, so badly, that I often think about not writing them at all. The one thing graduate school has taught me is the one thing I already knew. In life and love and art and parenting, you can't really plan on it being good. The only thing you can plan on––all you can really count on––is trying.

WEDNESDAY

"The Ama divers of Japan are all-women divers. The women dive tankless making them free divers, and while they also collect seafood and seaweed, their main focus is pearls. Ama means ‘woman of the sea’ or ‘sea women.’

The world of the ama is one marked by duty and superstition. One traditional article of clothing that has stood the test of time is their headscarf. The headscarves are adorned with symbols such as the seiman and the douman, which bring luck to the diver and ward off evil. The ama are also known to create small shrines near their diving location, where they will visit after diving in order to thank the gods for their safe return."

–on the Ama divers of Japan, from Erin Austen Abott's newsletter, Field Trip

THURSDAY

It's 6:45 am and we are downstairs in the kitchen, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppersplaying on the stereo, N shoveling fistfuls of granola into her face. Her head hinges at the neck like an L-shaped bracket and she moves corpse-like to the beat. She is, by far, the best dancer under this roof.

I laugh aloud and the future flashes behind my eyes: N at 14 slamming the door in my face, N at 3 giving me a soaking wet post-bath hug, N at 22 calling me on the phone, I hope, just to say hello. I laugh aloud and her voice fills the space between my ears like crickets' song, beautiful against the early morning stillness.

It's 6:48 am and I'm back downstairs, standing in the kitchen while she bops along to Kendrick Lamar. “MA-ma!" she shouts, beckoning me to dance, but I feel exhausted, having traveled to the future and back. She's only 18 months, I know, but it was yesterday that I brought her home from the hospital.

Where has all the time gone, I wonder.

FRIDAY

I like the lady horses best,

how they make it all look easy,

like running 40 miles per hour

is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.

I like their lady horse swagger,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let’s be honest, I like

that they’re ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

that somewhere inside the delicate

skin of my body, there pumps

an 8-pound female horse heart,

giant with power, heavy with blood.

Don’t you want to believe it?

Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see

the huge beating genius machine

that thinks, no, it knows,

it’s going to come in first.

–from Ada Limón's How to Triumph Like a Girl

xo,

M

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Dear Somebody: 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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Dear Somebody: Holding onto the proof.

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

MONDAY

The past few weeks have been a series of can-we-make-it-to-the-next-day? days. Days full of class-and-homework, my looming book deadline, and the last dregs of winter; weeks that all seem the same.

I sit on the edge of our bed talking to T, whose eyes are worn with sickness. We have food poisoning, and it's the first time we've both been sick, at the same time, since having N. I rake the carpet with my toes, listening to her shout No! over and over again, her tiny voice permeating through the walls and ringing in my ears. She should've been asleep a long time ago. This weekend has been hard. I am tired. But something in me feels new.

Somewhere between the hours of school and hours of work, between the food poisoning and the exhaustion, between the constant cleaning and meal-planning and piles of neglected laundry, I'd found the proof. I didn't even know I was looking for it, but here it was, hanging in the mundanity: proof of a life well-lived.

Even the most disappointing of experiences hold meaning. I try to remember that even though I'm not always successful. But when I stop rushing through them to get to the “good” part of life, the value is too great to miss. The good part is here––in the illness, the deadlines, and the round, giddy baby who watched an entire hour of Daniel Tiger while her mother lay, utterly exhausted, beside her.

The good part is here: I'm holding onto the proof.

TUESDAY

"But how does one keep an imagination fresh in a world that works double-time to suck it away? How does one keep an imagination firing off when we live in a nation that is constantly vacuuming it from them? And I think that the answer is, one must live a curious life. One must have stacks and stacks and stacks of books on the inside of their bodies. And those books don’t have to be the things that you’ve read. I mean, that’s good, too, but those books could be the conversations that you’ve had with your friends that are unlike the conversations you were having last week. It could be about this time taking the long way home and seeing what’s around you that you’ve never seen, because most of us, especially city folk, we stay in our little quadrants.

But what if you were to walk the other way? What if you were to explore the places around you? What if you were to speak to your neighbor and to figure out how to strike a conversation with a person you’ve never met? What if you were to try to walk into a situation, free of preconceived notion, just once? Once a day, just walk in and say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, and let’s see. Let me give this person the benefit of the doubt — to be a human.” ––Jason Reynolds on Imagination and Fortitude (via On Being)

*For those with pre-teens, I recently listened to When I Was the Greatest and recommend it for many reasons, but especially for what it teaches about non-traditional friendships, families, and building inner confidence.

WEDNESDAY

I'm continuing my experiments in collage (see above for my latest). This process has brought forth several questions within me: Whose voice is lost when an existing work is combined with something new? Does an artist have the right to illustrate someone else's words? What does it mean to be inspired?

For now, I'm enjoying the exercise collage brings. It attracts me to a wider range of ephemera, opens up my compositions, encourages me to combine textures, and forces me to relax. It's also been a really surprising exercise in letting go: I cut and paste without really knowing why or how, propelled further by intuition than my thinking brain, and in the end, I find that I'm somewhere unexpected––and that it is good.

THURSDAY

As far as kisses go, N's way of giving them has been to smush her cheek next to yours. This is all she's ever done in her 17 months of life. Tonight, after dinner and bath time, she climbed into T's lap and gave him her first real kiss: her mouth against his cheek, followed by a great big cozy hug. The first kiss she's ever given anyone! I watched the whole thing from a front-row seat, extremely wide-eyed, only 20% of my body angry with envy.

FRIDAY

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.

–from Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War

xo,

M

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