Dear Somebody: Letting go.

Page 150 from my book of essays, How it Feels to Find Yourself 

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

MONDAY 

I’m reading more middle grade these days, both because it’s good reading (for the most part) and because I’d like to write a middle grade novel one day. I just finished Pax: Journey Home by Sarah Pennypacker.

On recommendation from Margaux Kent, I started reading Martyr! this week. So far, so good. I also enjoyed watching this interview with author Kaveh Akbar and Arian Moayed, where Kaveh speaks generously about how he crafted the book and what it feels like to live in the in-between, a topic I am perpetually interested in.

I pre-ordered Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray’s Becoming Little Shell and honestly can’t wait to receive it. I love Chris’s writing. It’s very clean. It’s precise. Something about it feels warm, alive. Maybe because he lives in accordance with the earth? Maybe because he writes with all of his senses? Maybe because he has a wonderful grasp on language and rhythm? Maybe because his thoughts appeal to me and give me something to reach for? Likely, all of the above. Give it a try. 

TUESDAY

Three years into motherhood, I’m just now beginning to understand why many parents are unable to separate themselves from their children. After swimming in your child’s vomit and tears for the better part of 20-something years, becoming ridiculously invested in even the most benign of their milestones (F and I are currently working on her wave), and using the better part of your brain and heart to shape theirs? After all that, it’s difficult to let go. 

As research for my own well-being, I’m reading a lot about letting go. In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle talks about how our only true reality is whatever we’re experience at this very moment. He says, “…to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.” 

My brain knows all this but it still likes to live in the future, in a place that has never existed and never will—a place where my current grievance has disappeared and no new complaint has arrived to replace it. I want to change my brain, so I practice living in the now.

When N wakes up with the worst toddler stomach illness going around, I try to be present. Nothing I want to get done is going to happen, I say and open my arms to the now. This resignation sets me up for success. I find myself present through the tears, the laundry, the crackers, and the soup. T vacuums N’s room; I open a window and light a candle. When I walk in a few hours later, I’m overwhelmed by how beautifully clean it smells. Like a field of watered flowers ready for bloom. Not only is my nose working, but I’m paying attention to it. 

When F goes for her morning nap, I set N in front of the television and sit next to her to take notes for the essay I’m writing. After a few minutes, N announces that she’s done watching and wants to play. Right, I say, putting down my book and pen. Let’s play. We play Zingo and Genius Square. I study N’s strategy through the moves she makes. I see her concentration through her brows, but only the left one. She’s getting better at placing pieces without knocking others over. 

The day continues. F wakes up and N goes for her nap; N wakes up and F goes for her second nap. I drink a little coffee, I eat a cookie for comfort, I ask my editor for an extension on my deadline. The coffee is good, the cookie too sweet. I know my interest in sugar is emotional, so I only have one. Only occasionally do I find myself frustrated with all that is out of my control. I work on letting go.

By all measures, it’s been an ordinary Tuesday: a sick toddler, a restless baby, and two parents struggling to work from home. But as I make dinner for my family, it starts to feel a little special. It’s true that I didn’t get time to work on my assignments or keep up with my daily poem practice. It’s true that my book deadline is growing closer and closer. It’s true that there was no moment of quiet or solitude. But I did practice something notoriously difficult for me: I practiced letting go. 

Ooowee N, what a Tuesday!, I say, pouring myself a glass of wine. I read about tortoises aloud to her while smashing chickpeas and carrots for F’s screaming mouth. I don’t remember what the wine tasted like, only that it was perfect. The day is, finally, almost over. 

Mom, N says, looking at me with her big, serious eyes. I loved spending this Tuesday with you.

WEDNESDAY

I was interviewed by Avani Patel for Sahaj Kaur Kohli, MA, LGPC’s Culturally Enough, where we spoke about confidence being a skill you can build, the magic of poetry, and how so much of parenting our children is re-parenting ourselves. You can listen here. 

I haven’t shared too much about the Little Revolutions podcast episode I recorded with Freeda in London this past November, but only because I feel so many things about it and want to write about the experience properly. I hope to do that next week. In the meantime, you can listen to me and Masuma talk about redefining feminism as a mother. 

If you missed it last week, I talked with Andy J. Pizza of Creative Pep Talk about pushing through creative ruts and learning how to accept your own multiple (often competing) perspectives in Episode #438. 

THURSDAY

“HAVE FUN. I spent years focusing on skill development and losing the spark that made me feel so connected to my art. Remember that the joy is what will always drive you to make the best work—not money, success, or likes.”

—My advice to artists/my advice to myself, for Petya K. Grady’s How to Work Like An Artist. Lots of good advice from fellow artists and writers here. 

FRIDAY

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

—On Turning Ten by Billy Collins

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: When the ceiling becomes the sky.

The bound dummy book for my MFA Thesis project, When the Ceiling Becomes the Sky.

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

MONDAY

Two days ago, I successfully defended my Master’s Thesis in a room full of faculty, all of whom are working illustrators, writers, and historians. I presented my critical essay, Mothering as Feminism, which proposes a new theory of feminism centered on the liberation of all people through the fundamental viewing of a mother as, first and foremost, an autonomous person worthy of value and care. I also presented my picture book dummy, When the Ceiling Becomes the Sky, which follows a child as she navigates the uncertainty that accompanies the birth of her baby sister and her mother’s postpartum depression.* 

I felt strange. Although the notion of discussing the work I’ve agonized and toiled over for the past year is exciting and opportune, I don’t like being the center of attention. On top of that, I was barely three weeks postpartum, didn’t fit into any of my clothes, and hadn’t slept more than three hours at a time since F was born. In the ten months leading up to this moment, I’d fretted about defense day. I’ll mess up, I told myself. I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to talk about my work in my postpartum haze—hormones surging through me, brain addled, body rearranged. I knew I’d probably cry.

As most postpartum people will tell you, birthing a child doesn’t automatically revert you back to your old self; instead, it catapults you into becoming someone new—someone you haven’t met yet, someone you’re not certain you’ll even like. This new person feels oddly present—and even more oddly—at peace. This new person feels confident, certain of her capabilities and her power to create change. 

The birth of my child also birthed a new me: one who can not only start over, but who does, and always has—again and again.

* P.S. I am interested in publishing both my picture book and my critical essay. If you know a publisher who may be a good fit for either project, please let me know. 

TUESDAY

Now that my picture book pitch is nearly finished, I’ve moved onto feeling both intimidated and excited at the prospect of pitching to children’s book agents and editors—along with a fair amount of post-adrenaline despair. The following interviews with artists I admire has brought some levity to this next stage of work:

• Michaela Goade on cultural respect, representation, and advocating for Mother Earth in her work. I also appreciated how open and honest she is about her path into the picture book world. 

  I recommend: Berry Song by Michaela Goade

• Jericho Brown on small truths and other surprises, and a wonderful look at how he constructs a poem (first: cut them apart).

  I recommend: Bullet Points by Jericho Brown

• Cátia Chien on the not-balance between motherhood and work, and again on how beautiful art blooms from creative struggle. 

  I recommend: Things to Do by Elaine Magliaro and Cátia Chien

WEDNESDAY

What I’ve been reading lately:

A look into Beatrix Potter’s journals, where her fascination with nature—particularly mushrooms and rabbits—influenced her illustrations and ultimately, the development of characters for her Peter Rabbit books. 

Inside Out & Back Again, a novel in verse by Thanhhà Lại, about a young girl fleeing Saigon for the United States during the Vietnam War.

Lisa Olivera on the ongoing practice of being present. 

THURSDAY

When I stepped outside after my defense, T was waiting for me. 

We’d agreed to quickly celebrate by grabbing margaritas at our local taco place for a few minutes before picking N up from school. Sitting on picnic benches in the warm sunshine, I filled him in on how it’d gone—the advice my professors had given me; the praise that had fallen out of their mouths and seeped into me, warming my bones; how I felt about next steps; what I wanted from my work and career moving forward. How it was all finally over.

It’d been 2 years since I first started graduate school; it was difficult to believe it had all come to an end. I’d sat through full days of class after waking up at 4 am with N; I’d written a book during each year of school, working nights and early mornings to fit it all in; I’d endured another difficult pregnancy while developing my thesis work, and I’d given birth to my second child a few weeks before my Thesis exhibition and defense. It was a lot, and often, I didn’t have faith I’d actually get through it. 

Me and T are both lucky enough to work for ourselves. While this means we have immense flexibility, it also means we work constantly—out of necessity, yes, but also out of a deep love for what we do. During the first year of graduate school, we argued out of sleeplessness, fatigue, both feeling our work had been deprioritized. During the second year of graduate school, we’d settled into a healthier rhythm: both prioritizing each other’s work and each other’s health, with the understanding that each stage of compromise was temporary and for our family’s greater good. The hard year gave way to the healthier year: we learned and grew from our own fallacies.

T moved us from Nashville to St. Louis, driving a 36-foot U-Haul. He renovated a condo for my parents to live in so they could help care for us; for 2 years, he did every single diaper, nap time, school pick-up and drop-off; he took N to the playground or zoo while I wrote my books, he made lunches while I did homework, he cleaned the house while I studied and wrote papers. He listened to me gripe about pregnancy, gestational diabetes, the body leaks, the brain fatigue. He thought through story plots with me, studied my character development, my concepts, my sketches. He told me to rest; he told me to stop working; he told me when he believed I could—and should—do better; he told me to try again. 

In the sunshine, we sit across the table from each other for 23 minutes. Since having children, time is allotted to us in minutes—a few here and there—usually less than 60, in which to shower or write or make a meal. T tells me how proud he is of me; I thank him for helping us all get through the past few years. My eyes well up and when his do, too, I finally understand it—what he has told me over and over again, what has been so difficult but necessary for me to believe—that my win is not my win alone. It is also his, and ours, and our family’s. No one at this table is alone. 

FRIDAY

May they never be lonely at parties
Or wait for mail from people they haven’t written
Or still in middle age ask God for favors
Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.

May hatred be like a habit they never developed
And can’t see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking.
If they forget themselves, may it be in music
Or the kind of prayer that makes a garden of thinking.

May they enter the coming century
Like swans under a bridge into enchantment
And take with them enough of this century
To assure their grandchildren it really happened.

May they find a place to love, without nostalgia
For some place else that they can never go back to.
And may they find themselves, as we have found them,
Complete at each stage of their lives, each part they add to.

May they be themselves, long after we’ve stopped watching.
May they return from every kind of suffering
(Except the last, which doesn’t bear repeating)
And be themselves again, both blessed and blessing.

—Prayer For Our Daughters by Mark Jarman

Guns are now the #1 killers of American children and teenagers. We will continue to demand action; please donate to Everytown to support those trying to keep our children safe. 

The National Network of Abortion Funds helps ensure the bodily autonomy and reproductive rights for all people. Please consider donating if you can.

If you'd like to support me, you can pre-order my upcoming book of illustrated essays, How it Feels to Find Yourself, for yourself, a loved one, or both! To receive a free archival art print from the book, please pre-order through BuyOlympia. My art prints, stationery, and books are also available through BuyOlympia. 

See you next week!

xx,

M

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