Favorite warning (London, 2025)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
After our usual English breakfast, we start a long, leisurely walk to Bishop’s Park along the river. I’m meeting V, a fellow writer (and editor), for the first time. We first entered each other’s orbit nearly a decade ago, when she commented on an Instagram post of one of my books. I was honored then, as I am now, to have my work read by someone I so deeply admire.
I drag the kids along, half-pulling N, half-carrying F. We left plenty of time to walk, but the children pause to kiss every dog and wave at every gull and before I know it, I’m already late, nowhere near the park. Go on ahead, T tells me, and I do, half-walking and half-running, now pulling myself along faster than my feet prepared for.
Gulls congregating along River Thames (2025)
When I finally arrive, we get drinks and move over to a bench facing the river. After the initial few moments, we fall into conversation quickly and easily. I am so comfortable with this stranger, in fact, that although it gushes a mere few feet away, I never look away from V and back towards the river. Not once.
I am reminded, once again, about how expansive life becomes when I allow others in—how, no matter how small or routine my life may feel at any particular moment, opening myself up to the right person will immediately buoy it. The right person reminds me of my own possibility, my own effervescence, my own value. The right person reminds me that the right people are worth the effort: the hundreds of lackluster coffees and playdates and one-sided creative collaborations that led me, eventually, to this moment in Bishop’s Park.
For two hours, I am engulfed in conversation with another creative, another mother, another writer who I don’t have to explain myself to—because she already knows. For two hours, my brain buzzes with interest, with joy. I am invigorated in a way only possible when sharing meaningful conversation: when the conversation itself is the meal, the food and drink and river all forgotten. All this from a chance meeting with a stranger? All this from a comment on an Instagram post many moons ago? All this from a text message, a kind word, a hello? All this.
T and the kids arrive to collect me. I sign books for V’s friends and daughter, I place the gift she’s brought me—a prescription bottle of poetry, labeled A Room of One’s Own, in my bag. Hugs are exchanged, letters are promised, and I walk away satiated, wondering if this the beginning of a new friendship.
It’s now been four weeks since our time together in the park; I think of V often. At this age, there is so much space and strangeness between me and anybody else, lifetimes of moments and memories that we’ll never share. How do new friendships begin? How do they sustain when so much life has already been lived? V lives in london, I live in Saint Louis. Her daughter began college this fall; mine beg me to ensure no monsters take them away. Our day-to-day lives? Different. Our faces and brains and cultures? Different. Our upbringings? Our thoughts and fears and desires? Different, different, different. Life is a series of unfinished roads, dozens of bricks piled up and forgotten.
A gift from V: A prescription from The Poetry Pharmacy (2025)
A month to the day I placed the bottle of poems inside my bag, I finally open it. The pill I shake out is indigo, my favorite color. It’s a quote by Hélène Cixous, that reads: The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed.”
Poetry prescription from my bottle of medicine (2025)
I know this is true of my work and I want it to be true of my life. After all, what’s the difference between writing a book and writing a friendship? Both require a little bit of vulnerability. Both require a knock. Both require you to stand at the door, asking to be let in. I’m afraid of many things, but I know that fear is a costume that courage wears often—so I pick up my pencil and begin to write.
TUESDAY
I’ve recently seen the cyanometer, an instrument for measuring blueness, make its rounds on the internet. It was invented by Horace Benedict de Saussure, a Swiss physicist and mountain climber in 1789.
I was reminded of Sophie Blackall’s recent creations of her own four cyanometers, which she used to measure the blueness of the sea. I don’t know what to call it, but I’d like to make a meter to measure the color of clouds.
WEDNESDAY
My Start Where You Are 2026 weekly planners and wall calendars (2025)
For those of you who haven’t seen, my 2026 wall calendar and weekly planners are now available, and they are bright, lovely, and a joy to use. This will be my last calendar collection, so if you’ve been wanting to hang a calendar of mine, now’s the time to grab one.
You can order them directly from Andrews McMeel/Amber Lotus Publishing or in my BuyOlympia shop, as well as your local book shop or Amazon.
THURSDAY
I haven’t recorded a podcast in a few years now, so it was especially enjoyable to break my recording fast with a really, really lovely conversation with designer and author Radim Malinic.
We discuss all things creativity and books, but I especially loved how easy it was to sink into a meaningful conversation about letting go: life is a continual series of transformations—and if you’re going to grow, you have to let go of the person you used to be. You can listen to the episode here.
A bonus episode, that focuses on a few especially meaningful moments (including my belief that letting go isn’t something you do, it’s simply the byproduct of acceptance) is available here.
My gratitude to Radim for having me on, and for such a pleasurable conversation. And! If you haven’t already, you can pre-order Learn to Let Go: A Journal for New Beginnings.
FRIDAY
That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.
—Paul Robeson by Gwendolyn Brooks
A year ago, these were the five things I most wanted to remember:
See you next week!
xx,
M
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