Dear Somebody: Letting go of yes.

October desk (2025)

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

MONDAY 

There is a thought that I keep close to my heart and consider often: There are so many beautiful things waiting for me on the other side of my fear. I am careful to welcome new people and experiences, despite the chance of rejection, because just as likely is the chance that my vulnerability will introduce me to a brighter world—one where I feel comfortable being fully seen and understood.

I’ve built up resilience against rejection knowing that if someone is incapable of accepting my honesty, it’s because they are engaged in a battle against themselves, not against me. Vulnerability creates a renewable energy—each time I open myself up, I am encouraged by how this simple act can bring me closer to someone else. When I give another person the chance to see me, I also give myself the opportunity to love myself more. The wins are worth the wounds—each time I share a part of myself and see the hint of recognition in someone else’s eyes, I see myself, again, for the very first time.

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

TUESDAY

On Artists and Hopelessness by Beth Pickens; Helen Keller’s moment of realization; the artwork of ATAK.

WEDNESDAY

Words by Georgia O’Keefe that have stayed by my side this week:

“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”

“Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven’t time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” 

“I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.”

My studio mate Georgia O’Keefe, made by artist Krista Coons (2025)

THURSDAY

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

Today, I’m featuring journalist, cartoonist, and graphic novelist Malaka Gharib. Malaka is the author of the beloved I Was Their American Dream and It Won’t Always Be Like This.

What are you letting go of?

MG: I became a parent two and a half years ago and I’ve had to learn how to say no a lot more…to hanging out with friends, to the social life I was used to, to a lot of the free time I had to making art, reading, writing and seeking inspiration through art, music and film.

What did you gain?

MG: I learned I was spending a lot of time with people who didn’t matter—and actually, I was learning for the first time to seek inspiration from the present and to live fully in the moment. In a lot of my artwork and writing, I am writing about the past, but with a child, you learn to appreciate the joys of every passing moment because my time with him is so fleeting.

Many thanks to Malaka for sharing so intimately with us. You can follow Malaka’s work here and check out her books here. 

P.S. Last week’s interview was with the lovely Carolyn Yoo:

In case you missed it, I spoke about acceptance, letting go, and making books with Radim Malinic on the Daring Creativity podcast. 

We’re only one week away from the publication of Learn to Let Go, and I’m happy to share that for a limited time, Bookshop.org is offering a 15% on all orders with the code LTLG15. A good time to grab a copy or two or five! 

You can also purchase from another shop listed here, or if you’re overseas, the UK edition. Thank you, always, for supporting my work. 

FRIDAY

One: from The First Elegy

Yes—springtime needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All that was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren’t you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)

—The First Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke

See you next week!

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Rules to live by.

Five Rules for Artistic Integrity for RULES TO LIVE BY Zine (2025)

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

MONDAY 

As a mother, my priority isn’t to be liked by my children. I want to be liked by them, and I hope that hundreds of moons from now, when they don’t have to call or visit or care, they still choose to—but it isn’t a need, the way their safety or ability to respect themselves is. 

My actions don’t waver. They march to the tune of my priorities, even as my heart falters—even as my mind, alert to my own fallibility, nicks me like a sharpened blade. Ten years from now, when they have friendships and interests and independence, will my children still want to be near me? 

Yesterday, N and I sit outside for hours and draw: first, me on my iPad, working on final drawings for Dear Library and N in her sketchbook, working on self-portraits; then me, in my sketchbook, working on my diary comics and N on my iPad, experimenting with different brushes. Then: both of us together, concrete under our knees, squished together on the old, emerald bedsheet used to protect the porch. 

It’s quiet between us. Our work is important and we take it seriously. It is no small task turning a large cardboard box into a rocket. After some time, N breaks the silence. “Mama, you draw me and I’ll draw you,” she says, and I agree. I choose neon yellow, she chooses blue. I draw her sweet face, she draws my topknot. “I like listening to nature’s music,” N says. “And did you notice that breeze? I like drawing with you, mama. I like when it’s just us.” 

I wish I were more like the earth, who rolls along on her axis and grows her great trees and recycles her sweet air and demands nothing—not to be loved, not even to be liked, in return. I don’t know what life will be ten years from now. I don’t know who my children will become, or whether I’ll have found my road towards self-actualization. Lately, it feels like I’ve only taken wrong turns. 

Still, I am aware enough to recognize love when it’s in front of me. In this moment, it is here, on this porch. It is in this child who once lived in the belly of her mother, and upon her escape, grew into her own person who can also feel and express love. It is in her valuing of birdsong, a fresh sketchbook, and, for now, time alone with her mama. 

TUESDAY

An image of Rules to Live By, a risograph zine (2025)

I was honored to contribute to the Rules to Live By zine organized by Carolyn Yoo, which is a collection of creative manifestos written by 18 fellow artists: Coleen Baik, Dan Blank, Anna Brones, Lian Cho, Kristen Drozdowski, Kelcey Ervick, Petya K. Grady, amelia hruby, Nishant Jain, Adam Ming, Jenna Park, Michelle Pellizzon Lipsitz, Beth Spencer, Nina Veteto, Mitchell Volk, and Seth Werkheiser. 

I contributed my 5 Rules for Artistic Integrity, which is something I’ve considered more deeply over the past few years as I’ve felt the consequences of living as a working artist in the age of social media:

5 Rules for Artistic Integrity by Meera Lee Patel, as part of the Rules to Live Byzine (2025)

The zine was printed, assembled, and bound by hand. Carolyn generously wrote about her entire process for making this zine, including the inspiration behind it, and several contributors wrote about their own experiences with this project:

• Dan Blank wrote about 5 Rules for Sharing Your Creative Voice

• Kelcey Ervick wrote about 5 Rules for Dreaming

• Nishant Jain wrote about 5 Rules for Making Sneaky Art of Your World

• Kristen Drozdowski wrote about 5 Rules for Creative Authenticity

• Mitchell Volk wrote about 5 Rules for Collaborating with Yourself (and made an amazing GIF cycling through all the pages of the zine!)

Many thanks to Carolyn for including me in this thoughtful project which was a joy to consider and illustrate. 

WEDNESDAY

I was pleased to see How it Feels to Find Yourself awarded in theSkimm’s 2025 GOOD FOR YOU AWARDS as the best book for self-discovery.

I finished reading We Do Not Part by Han Kang; I started listening to Demon Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver; I started re-reading—with a new appreciation for the beautiful writing—Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.

I’m over my own heels for Japanese illustrator Rokuro Taniuchi’s work, which is difficult to find. I’d love to own a copy of Taniuchi Rokuro Gensouki (Shinshindo, 1981) one day. 

THURSDAY

Portraits of N and Mama (Mother’s Day 2025)

FRIDAY

We said she was a negative image of me because of her lightness.
She's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex.
Daughter, where did you get all that goddess?
Her eyes are Neruda's two dark pools at twilight.
Sometimes she's a stranger in my home because I hadn't imagined her.
Who will her daughter be?
She and I are the gradual ebb of my mother's darkness.
I unfurl the ribbon of her life, and it's a smooth long hallway, doors flung open.
Her surface is a deflection is why.
Harm on her, harm on us all.
Inside her, my grit and timbre, my reckless.

—The Daughter by Carmen Gimenez Smith

See you next week!

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Should I be doing more?

My desk this week: color studies, sketches, rewrites (2025)

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

MONDAY 

Lately, the position I find myself in most in nose to the ground, cleaning up after F’s meals. I sweep up crumbs and half-chewed banana, along with entire chunks of sandwich that have fallen out of her grinning mouth. Mine is a kid whose laughter will not wait for a bite to be chewed or properly swallowed; whose joy will not be tamed by rules or fatigue or her sister’s annoyance—whose joy is, in fact, a medicine for even-reasonable rules or well-earned fatigue or understandable annoyance; whose heart will not falter or close, even as mine does, at the state of this world. 

Lately, the position I find myself in most is sleepwalking to F’s room around midnight, then two am, then three, and four. For months now she’s been wide awake when she should be sleeping, and over these past few weeks, she’s begun screaming, too. I wonder if the world’s collective anxiety seeps into her skin during the dark hours of the night, if she is so annoyed at our inability to separate wrong from right that she’s resorted to screaming. 

When I lift her out of bed, she clings to me with relief. At nearly two years old, F is still a tiny thing, a baby monkey smuggling herself away in my arms. Outside of this room, beyond the walls of my home, families are bundled up and sent back to countries they don’t recognize. Others move of their own accord, to states and cities who will attempt to protect them when the rest of their country will not. Some go to school and don’t return home because their friends and neighbors believe real freedom is the power to destroy another person’s world. 

Safety is a matter of luck, and I was born on the side of it that faces up—the side sunlight reaches after it travels through a thousand years of cold and darkness. 

Lately, the position I find myself in most is stiff-necked, eyes closed, breathing in my kid’s presence and thinking of all the others. I breathe in her brown skin’s scent and consider what I can do—how I can transform the small marble of hardness in my own heart into something new, something that will help someone else. I breathe in my kid’s spirit and I know I can try harder. I breathe in my kid’s pulse and my heart, a temperamental old thing, slowly begins to open once more.

TUESDAY

The problems of our time are overwhelming—so much so that a paralysis can set in. Unfortunately, paralysis is just that: paralysis. It doesn’t encourage you to create change in yourself or the world, and it doesn’t allow you to help anyone else. 

• Helplessness stems from inaction. Commit to fostering hope within yourself by believing that your actions matter—that there is meaning in every small deed, even if it seems underwhelming. Does it feel like enough? Never. Is it better than doing nothing at all? Yes.

• Operating in a state of total despair (or worse, being unable to function)doesn’t mean you see reality more clearly than those who are content.Cultivating joy within yourself despite the realities that surround you is a strength.

• Ask yourself which causes align with your values. Choose a single issue that is close to your heart. Learn more about it, and slowly integrate small changes in your lifestyle that support these causes.

• Learn to live with a certain amount of fear and anxiety. Remember that the presence of both indicates that you care—that you’re a thoughtful, feeling person who wants to make a difference.

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

WEDNESDAY

“People are redefining ambition. Most of us who hit 40 have had enough experiences—winning and losing—to know that it is all actually “winning” and “losing.” The best job in the world can also cause you profound stress. Getting the promotion, raise, book deal that you always wanted, might feel like a hard-won achievement in certain ways, and in others, it is likely to be anti-climatic and send you spinning off into a moment of existential confusion. If you’ve experienced the texture of work long enough, you start to sober up about what really matters to you, what you are really made for, and what you want to spend your precious energy and time on. You understand that the deepest sense of self-realization doesn’t come through paychecks or titles, but through genuine, intrinsic pride that you have done something you are delighted by with people who delight you. Midlife is a moment to seek a more finely calibrated understanding of all of this and start advocating for yourself within work settings (whether that means joining a labor union or saying no more to freelance work or not tolerating assholes). Of course the most insecure your financial situation, and the less lucrative your life’s work, the more constraints you face on living into these truths. Which is why economic disparity is about so much more than “food on the table,” but people’s ability to give the world their best gifts and live their fullest, most realized lives.” —From Courtney Martin’s Grow Bigger, Not Bitter

THURSDAY

Winsor McCay, Little Nemo in Slumberland, 26 July 1908

The animated legacy of Little Nemo’s walking bed: I read Little Nemo as a child; as an adult, I have a deep appreciation for Winsor McCay’s imagination and drawing ability. I find more and more that McCay’s tight lines and evocative color palette are influencing how I think about drawing and the drawings I want to make—that maybe “fun” in drawing doesn’t necessarily mean spontaneity in line or execution, but fluidity in thought and effective communication. 

FRIDAY

I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple as well.

—The World Has Need of You by Ellen Bass

See you next week!

xx,

M

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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: When I change my perspective.

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

MONDAY 

I’m agitated, disappointed in myself; I thought I’d be further along by now. I need to send my final illustrations to the client by this evening, but I’m still working on the first round of sketches. The day is mapped out between daycare pick-ups and drop-offs, graduate school classes, my job, and house chores. I have an exact amount of time slotted for each task; this is how I ensure everything gets done.

My expectations crowd me. They squeeze the life out of everything I do, making it impossible for me to be present. I focus on expectations (“Creating paintings that others will adore!” “I will be happy if I stick to my rigid schedule during these unprecedented times!”) that I have little control over. Expectations are unforgiving; they reduce our feelings of ease or imagination—two ingredients necessary for thriving creativity. It’s difficult to draw well with my brain in a vice, jammed between an increasingly long to-do list and a timer waiting to go off.

I decide to replace my expectations with intentions. I can’t control what happens, but I can choose how I want to feel, and quite frankly, I’m tired of feeling disappointment each day. I say it aloud: I intend to create work that meets others where they are. I intend to try my best with the time and limits I have. I intend to be kinder to myself.

I try this for a week and notice small shifts within. I’m able to recognize my progress and feel good about it, rather than obsessing over all I haven’t achieved. I feel calmer and in control. I’m less reliant on external circumstances for satisfaction or fulfillment, knowing that although I can’t always control what happens, I can control my intentions–what I choose to see, feel, and give—and that is enough.  

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

TUESDAY

It’s summer. I’m working, or trying to work, on two books currently—a new journal and a picture book. I care deeply about both. I’m knee deep in revisions for one and up to my nose in sketches for the other, and struggling to make progress on 12 hours of childcare a week. Some mornings I wake up empty—physically empty, like the engine in me has fallen out, and I know that emptiness will always find a place inside a body that is overtired. 

My work is solitary, which I love, but in this particular phase of life feels dangerously isolating. Isolation breeds self-doubt and discouragement—both are part of the territory, I know, of being an artist, but this year feels particularly prickly. It’s alarming just how negative the negative self-talk can get. How ugly can one’s self critic be? Pretty ugly. 

I’m lucky enough to recognize it, mostly, when it happens, and this week I deliberately pulled myself out from inside myself and showed up for 

Andy J. Pizza

 online pep rally, a virtual meeting of creatives, and I’m just so happy I did. Spending an hour with him and his supportive community reminded me that I’m a person, not simply a pair of hands, and I left the call feeling more human, which is what I really needed.

Right now, it’s an evening in late June. The house is quiet. I hear the crickets and wasps outside my studio window. I watch the sun fade, leisurely, to make way for moonlight. I think of myself decades from now, and wonder what future me will think of the life I live: with work that challenges and fulfills me, and a family who does the same; with a home that feels like home inside a city that doesn’t, but could, someday; with an overtired body that insists on keeping on; with a life that promises the same it does for everyone else—some constant, some change. 

I wonder if future me will miss the exhaustion and the noise: the constant running behind tiny feet, the incessant stream of questions, the tugging behind my knees when I’m cooking or working or attempting to form a thought. I wonder if future me will miss being this tired—not because it’s glamorous, but because it’s still beautiful— because it’s from giving my all, each day, to building a life that is richly, unbearably full. 

WEDNESDAY

A few things that are giving me inspiration right now:

The work of Bernadette Watts, which feels very classic. 

I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives. 

Sophie Blackall talks with Roger. 

THURSDAY

“The most important thing is the doing—integrating your life and your work and everything together.”

—Ruth Asawa

FRIDAY

As I turned over the last page, after many nights, a wave of sorrow enveloped me. Where had they all gone, these people who had seemed so real? To distract myself, I walked out into the night; instinctively, I lit a cigarette. In the dark, the cigarette glowed, like a fire lit by a survivor. But who would see this light, this small dot among the infinite stars? I stood a while in the dark, the cigarette glowing and growing small, each breath patiently destroying me. How small it was, how brief. Brief, brief, but inside me now, which the stars could never be.

—A Work of Fiction by Louise Glück

xx,

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 lesson in unconditional love.

A Lesson in Unconditional Love from 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 wake up tired. 

It’s 4:35 am and the baby is crying. I sit up, swing my legs over to the edge of the bed, and stumble towards the door. Jack has been up for some time now, waiting for us to wake. He dances around my feet, tip-tapping excitedly, wanting me to sit down and play with him. “I need a minute, Jackie,” I mumble, stepping over him and into the bathroom. He watches as I brush my teeth and splash cold water on my face. I feel irritated for no reason. After a few minutes, I close the door.

By 6:00 am, the baby has been changed and fed and cried a few more times. We’re sitting on the floor playing peek-a-boo, waiting for the sun to show her face. Jack sits by the bedroom door, waiting. Every so often, he looks over to see how we’re doing.

Around 6:45, I get dressed. Jack bounces around my heels as I pull on pants and a hoodie. “Jack. Jackie. I need some space,” I say, more gently than I have before. When we reach the back door, he’s there, waiting. I let him out and he races around the yard, joyfully feeling the cool air on his face. The trees are dropping their leaves now, and the crinkle of each one fills my ears. The scent of morning dew after a long fall from the sky passes over us in waves. I breathe in deeply and will myself into feeling new. I want to be better—patient, kind, more appreciative of all the good I have. 

Jack walks over and sits down next to me, so closely that his body is on my feet. His head rests under my hands. He waits. 

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

TUESDAY

I loved this comic by Gavin Aung Than that illustrates an excerpt from Stephen King’s On Writing—namely, the difficult work/life balance of most artists, and the larger, more balanced perspective that’s only available to us in retrospect. 

Of course, that led me to Bill Watterson’s advice on inventing your own life’s meaningand Stanley Kubrick’s on life’s purposelessness—both encourage me to continue taking the road less traveled.

WEDNESDAY

I’ve always been reluctant to celebrate holidays, especially ones that make it easy to gloss over honest sentiment for sparkles and gifts. This changed when I became a mother. I want my children to experience the joy of thoughtfulness—to understand what a gift it is to know someone well, and to make them feel known. I also realize how much challenge life will give us—and what a strength it is to find reason, still, to celebrate. 

N made these seed packets for Valentine’s Day. She painted and glued each one. She filled them with Zinnia seeds. For over a week, she sat at the dining table and asked to decorate seed packets until she had one for each person in her world. In the end she made nearly 25. She’s three. 

She turned an ordinary Wednesday into something less ordinary—something special, perhaps—for so many. It had nothing to do with Valentine’s Day and everything to do with her heart—which, as I’ve suspected for awhile now, is far too big for her tiny body.

THURSDAY

I’m enjoying these paintings by Ulla Thynell, this book by Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Ruchi Mhasane, and these rules for a creative practice by Carolyn Yoo.

FRIDAY

Cook a large fish — choose one with many bones, a skeleton
you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying
silver carp that’s invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling
the others into oblivion. If you don’t live
near a lake, you’ll have to travel.
Walking is best and shows you mean it,
but you could take a train and let yourself
be soothed by the rocking
on the rails. It’s permitted
to receive solace for whatever you did
or didn’t do, pitiful, beautiful
human. When my mother was in the hospital,
my daughter and I had to clear out the home
she wouldn’t return to. Then she recovered
and asked, incredulous,
How could you have thrown out all my shoes?
So you’ll need a boat. You could rent or buy,
but, for the sake of repairing the world,
build your own. Thin strips
of Western red cedar are perfect,
but don’t cut a tree. There’ll be
a demolished barn or downed trunk
if you venture further.
And someone will have a mill.
And someone will loan you tools.
The perfume of sawdust and the curls
that fall from your plane
will sweeten the hours. Each night
we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night
we could dream back everything lost.
So grill the pale flesh.
Unharness yourself from your weary stories.
Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.
There is much to fear as a creature
caught in time, but this
is safe. You need no defense. This
is just another way to know
you are alive.

—How to Apologize by Ellen Bass

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: A lesson in unconditional love.

A paint palette from 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 wake up tired. It’s 4:35 am and our 5-month-old is crying. I sit up, swing my legs over to the edge of the bed, and stumble towards the door. Jack has been up for some time now, waiting for us to wake. He dances around my feet, tip-tapping excitedly, wanting me to sit down and play with him. “I need a minute, Jackie,” I mumble, stepping over him and into the bathroom. He watches as I brush my teeth and splash cold water on my face. I feel irritated for no reason. After a few minutes, I close the door.

By 6:00 am, the baby has been changed and fed and cried a few more times. We’re sitting on the floor playing peek-a-boo, waiting for the sun to show her face. Jack sits by the bedroom door, waiting. Every so often, he looks over to see how we’re doing.

Around 6:45, I get dressed. Jack bounces around my heels as I pull on pants and a hoodie. “Jack. Jackie. I need some space,” I say, more gently than I have before. When we reach the back door, he’s there, waiting. I let him out and he races around the yard, joyfully feeling the cool air on his face. The trees are dropping their leaves now, and the crinkle of each one fills my ears. The scent of morning dew after a long fall from the sky passes over us in waves. I breathe in deeply and will myself into feeling new. I want to be better—patient, kind, more appreciative of all the good I have. Jack walks over and sits down next to me, so closely that his body is on my feet. His head rests under my hands. He waits. 

—from ”A Lesson in Unconditional Love” in How it Feels to Find Yourself

TUESDAY

This interview with Blexbolex about The Magicians; this letter by Ruth Franklin of Ghost Stories about the purpose of art in dark times; this conversation on moving past your own self-doubt between Lizzy Stewart and Andy J. Pizza.

WEDNESDAY

Teared up reading today’s note from Courtney Martin, a letter about her daughter turning 10. I myself can hardly fathom a world in which my daughters are 10, or 11, or anything except so small. In it, she writes:

When we were driving home so slowly that day, I never could have predicted any of this—that, ironically, my firstborn would gift me with nourishing, companionable quiet, and return me to my love of solitude and art, and speak an emotional language so foreign to me it would humble me in all the right ways.

I think about this constantly—how N and F are their own mysterious beings, equipped with their own arsenal of language, philosophy, and thought. How they are not extensions of me. How I am humbled continually by how easily they find and hold onto anything good. How they do not dwell. How deeply they feel about their perceived injustices. How it’s not my job to tell them what they should think or feel, but help them find the words to articulate what they do think and feel. How it’s my job to guide them, yes, but how mostly it’s my job to stay out of their way—so they can show me, and the rest of the world, who they are. 

THURSDAY

In the very little time I have to make things, I have been trying, very hard, to make things. Sometimes this is during F’s nap. Often it is while we go on walks. I walk and write poems in my head, on my Notes app. I text lines of poems or this newsletter to myself. I try to capture what I feel in words, hoping that eventually, I’ll be able to translate it into a picture. I draw on the couch after the girls are in bed. I draw when I should be sleeping. Sometimes I draw instead of showering. 

I fret a lot—not about the time I’m losing, but about whether I’ll still want to make the things I want to make when I do have the time. Whether I’ll still feel the spark. Whether the making part of me will keep waiting for the rest of me to catch up.

Two pieces I made this year that I finally framed, ready to hang in our home.

I took the time to frame these two illustrations this week. We’re going to hang them up in our house. Each one took too long to make by any reasonable person’s standards. If I divide the amount of time it took to draw each one by the rate I was paid, it comes out to exactly nothing. If I add up the additional costs—time with my family, regular hygiene, a semblance of a social life, an earlier bedtime—things start to sound a little ridiculous. I start to feel ridiculous. I have written about this period of motherhood before.

But when I look at these two illustrations together, I see that the making part of myself is alive and well. That it is being tended to. That despite being obviously neglected, my creativity is climbing back into my life. Into where it belongs. That it is creating its own space in the places I have abandoned. That it refuses to be forgotten. That I have not left this very integral—perhaps the most integral part of myself, behind. That what’s good is slow in its making, but that the making part is very good, too. That, however slowly, my art is growing and changing, and I am, too—and that both are well worth the costs.

FRIDAY

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

—Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: It's publication day!

Hi, friends.

I’m sending out a special note today because it’s publication day for Go Your Own Way!

Go Your Own Way: A Journal for Building Self-Confidence publishes today through TarcherPerigee (Penguin Random House) and is available through BuyOlympia, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Amazon.

The UK edition is available through PenguinUK and is in Waterstones bookstores everywhere.

This idea for this book was born from a place of confidence. I knew, with certainty, that I wanted to make a journal that embraced our differences—a journal that encouraged others to take the road less traveled, the way I have in my own life. Though an unconventional path is lonely and difficult at times, it is also beautiful and incredibly fulfilling; I wanted readers to know this. I wanted them to take the risk, to give themselves the gift of surprise—of looking back at their own lives a year from now, and saying: Whoa. I can’t believe I did that.

Though the idea for this book was born from a place of confidence, it was written from a place of insecurity. When I began writing Go Your Own Way, I was still a new first-time mother, having freshly given birth and plunged into motherhood during the pandemic. N was 8 months old when we moved from Nashville to St. Louis so I could begin graduate school at Washington University. I was in a new city, in a new state, trying on these new identities of mother and student while searching, feverishly, for all of the people I used to be. 

I didn’t realize the impact that this combination of change would have on my self-esteem, but it became obvious pretty quickly: I was lost, unsure of where I wanted to go or how to get there. I knew I didn’t feel good about myself, that I didn’t feel like myself—but I didn’t know how to change it.

It turned out that having zero self-esteem was the perfect place for me to be. 

In writing this journal, I learned that although self-confidence can be shaken by large change—say, having a child and shaping it into a critically-thinking-and-feeling person—it is something that can be built back, again and again. Learning to stumble along your own path, however rocky or dark it may be, is the only way to build self-confidence. It is the only way to forge meaningful connections with yourself and others—and to create a life that ultimately reflects your own strengths, values, and priorities. 

I spent the last two years in graduate school while settling into our new home in our new city. Along the way, my 8-month old turned into a toddler, and then a child. I learned how to parent. I began feeling less like an imposter, more like a mother. I wrote How it Feels to Find Yourself (which published in May!) and then Go Your Own Way. I carried and birthed my second child during my final year of school, and graduated with my MFA a few weeks later. 

It's been...a whirlwind. A beautiful, difficult, challenging whirlwind. All of this is to say: I've really gone my own way. The confidence I have comes from knowing I can, because I did. 

Like all muscles, confidence strengthens with use; it grows as you do. It is not boastful or arrogant. It is quietly self-assuring, the little fire inside you that knows who you are is exactly who you should be—and that it is always best to go your own way. 

Purchase GO YOUR OWN WAY

GO YOUR OWN WAY is a fully-illustrated journal for building self-confidence, designed to help you cultivate the inner trust necessary for making healthy decisions and facing disappointment with resilience. Through the pages of this book, you’ll gain the strength necessary to recognize and speak your truths, create healthy boundaries, and take steps towards the future you envision for yourself. Transitioning from safe prompts to more challenging exercises, this journal recognizes that genuine self-esteem blooms slowly and deliberately, over time.

Each page of this journal is filled with comforting, empathetic quotes by world leaders, artists, and activists who have faced their own challenges with self-confidence and acceptance; thoughtful exercises that encourage you to find the value and beauty in yourself, and challenging prompts that help build a quiet, steady self-confidence that cannot be eroded by any external element. 

Purchase GO YOUR OWN WAY

Here’s how you can support Go Your Own Way: 

• Order a copy (or like, five) of Go Your Own Way: A Journal for Building Self-Confidence

• Forward this newsletter to someone who will appreciate this book!

• Ask your local library to carry the book if you can’t afford to purchase it—knowing that your entire neighborhood will now have access to it!

• Ask your local bookstore to carry the book. I love local bookstores and want to support them as much as possible throughout this launch. 

• Write a review on Amazon so more people can find this book

• If you want to review or write about Go Your Own Way (or know someone who might), feature it in your publication/podcast/etc., or interview me — just reply to this email to reach me. Every little bit helps.

Purchase GO YOUR OWN WAY

THANK YOU for reading and for all of your support and encouragement. It means the world to me. 

See you on Friday with a new edition of Dear Somebody, where I’ll talk a little more about self-confidence, the making of this book—and celebration.

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: A wish.

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

MONDAY 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TUESDAY

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

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

WEDNESDAY

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

—from Beloved by Toni Morrison

THURSDAY

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

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

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

FRIDAY

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

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

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

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

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

He is teaching me
to live in imagination:

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

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

Ah, he says, you are dreaming again

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

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

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: 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: An open heart

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

MONDAY 

After 11 weeks of life, Fred finally catches her first cold. Her breathing is raspy and catches on her congestion. She sleeps fitfully through the night, waking every 3 hours to eat feeble amounts, unable to nurse properly with a stuffy nose. Her cries are loud, uncomfortable. She runs a fever; her skin is flushed. I see stop signs behind my eyes, but this is my second child, so I don’t call the pediatrician. Instead, I run the shower.

I turn the handle toward blistering, I turn the handle until it can’t turn anymore. Our small bathroom warms quickly and begins to steam. I pick Fred up and muffle her cries against my chest, one hand around her waist, the other holding a glass of water, a bottle of aspirin, and my phone. 

I open the shower curtain halfway and a little light filters in through the wedge of patterned glass window. Fred is quiet now, watching the steam rise like clouds against the ceiling. The steam dances and swirls; the shower spray flickers in the light. I play Queen on my phone and lean against the sink, rocking gently to the breath of my own sweet Freddie. Her tiny body rises and falls. I hold little Freddie, and she holds my shoulder. I think about how many writers, artists, and musicians have changed the course of my life—who, in the most troubling of times, have helped me help myself. I think about how many of them have helped me want to help myself. I think about how many of them are mothers. I think about all the art the world is missing, all of the necessary art that isn’t made—that can’t be made—because the artists are busy mothering. 

Together, Freddie and I listen to her namesake and mourn the artists who left before us and those who will arrive too long after. After a few minutes, she falls asleep. The steam soothes her ragged nose and tired lungs. I stand there, still listening, for a long time after. 

TUESDAY

These embroidered book covers by Jillian Tamaki that I keep coming back to as I set out to begin my first embroidery project for my girls. This illustration by Karlotta Freier as I consider perspective and composition. 

WEDNESDAY

An excerpt from How It Feels To Find Yourself was published in Issue 57: BLUE of Taproot Magazine. Taproot is one of my favorite independent publications, and I was lucky enough to illustrate all 6 covers published in their 10th year. Many thanks to editor Amanda Blake Soule for the kind feature. 

THURSDAY

“It seems to me that, in a way, the most fundamental and important capacity we have as human beings is the capacity for love. And I think the feeling of love couldn’t exist without a range of other feelings that surround it, the primary one being the fear of loss. If the loss of someone you love didn’t make you sad, then what substance would the love have? And I think that, therefore, the emotional range that includes great sadness and great pain is essential to the kind of love and attachment that we form.”

—Andrew Solomon, in conversation with Krista Tippett

FRIDAY

A thousand doors ago,
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling over me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother's window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father's window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

—Young by Anne Sexton

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Should I be doing more?

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

MONDAY

So many friends and peers have been sharing How it Feels to Find Yourself, which means a great deal to me. Some highlights are linked below:

• The May/June issue of Spirituality & Health features a palette from the book on the back page. It addresses an overwhelming dilemma for my generation: Should I Be Doing More?

• A beautiful excerpt and look into how I crafted the palettes in this book, featured in Issue #57 of Uppercase Magazine:

• A shout-out in The Daily Good, one of my favorite newsletters!

• My conversation with Julie Bogart of the Brave Writer Podcast, where we discuss confidence in parenting, adapting to new stages in life, and prioritizing what matters most.

• The Artist’s Life: my conversation with Tessa Tovar of Outside the Studio, where we discuss embracing fear to mitigate major life changes, a formula for finding inspiration in everyday life, and how to keep going. 

TUESDAY

Although How it Feels to Find Yourself just came out, I’ve been working on a new journal proposal for the past few months. Inspired by my sister, I’ve been focusing on the idea of letting go: how it’s only possible to change, grow, and blossom by leaving large swaths of ourselves—and our beliefs—behind. 

I’m really thrilled, and humbled, to say that this journal will be published with TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in 2025: 

I’m on maternity leave for the rest of this year—let’s see how long I last—but I’m excited to develop this journal come January. 

As you can probably imagine, not working is pretty hard for me. I’ve measured my self-worth in terms of accomplishment, productivity, and ladders climbed for decades now. I’m using my time off to unlearn these habits and thought patterns, though if I’m being honest, it’s slow going. Some of the questions I ask myself in the middle of the night sound irrational, but I wonder if we don’t all consider them from time to time. One in particular that I keep coming back to is: If I’m not in service of someone or something else, am I still of inherent value?

For now, I’m savoring where my work has brought me, appreciating those who have helped me, and learning to…let the rest go. 

WEDNESDAY

“As someone who thrives on receiving recognition for my work, the private daily work of intentional parenting has been challenging. Still, there are days when it sounds appealing to simplify life and settle solely into a singular role at home, especially knowing that this choice would be praised by at least one segment of society. But, if I were to completely exit the paid labor market, would I be supporting an ideology that I disagree with? Would I inadvertently be acting as an obedient pawn of the patriarchy if I fully embraced the role of stay-at-home mom?

Clinging to my space in the workforce isn’t necessarily the progressive conscience-liberating solution it masquerades as. It doesn’t absolve me from participation in a suppressive system; it simply shifts my actions to participate in the parallel system of capitalism. Any labor outside of the economy (housework, caretaking, etc.) cannot be recognized as valuable in a system dependent on the fallacy of financial achievement being the ultimate goal. This creates a lose-lose situation for those seeking a path of theoretical progressive purity. 

Naming the inability to win at this tug-of-war game might be just what overthinking mothers like myself need. Once we accept the impossibility of escaping perceived participation in either system, we mentally free ourselves to design lives that make sense based on our unique individual situations, partnerships, and desires.” 

—How One Mother is Reframing Her Relationship to “Work-Life Balance” by Ellie Hughes

THURSDAY

F has been sleeping fitfully for the past few nights, waking up every hour or two in tears, screaming for something I can’t provide. At five in the morning, I nurse and T rocks her; at six she wakes and I bolt straight up in bed; at seven she wakes and I again bolt straight up in bed; at seven-thirty we get N out of bed, brush our teeth and head straight for the coffee.

All morning F fusses. I try to do a load of laundry but she cries, I try to nurse her but she cries. I check for gas and boredom; I try tummy time and give her a tour of the house; I rock her, swaying side to side. She cries, stopping only to scream. She cries some more. I take all her clothes off and for a few minutes she holds onto relief, kicking the air like an acrobat, smiling broadly at the ceiling fan. When I finally exhale, heaving a sigh of relief, she opens her small bow of a mouth and again, begins to cry.

I’m not sure what else to do, and for once, my being at a loss doesn’t seem to matter: sometimes another person will feel hurt or angry no matter what you do. Instead, I choose not to panic; one can only do so much at the mercy of a six-week old. I put a diaper back on F, and then follow with her clothes. I pick her up slowly and put her on my chest. I sit down on the couch and put my feet up. I inhale deeply from my stomach and exhale audibly through my mouth. 

After a moment, I realize I’m being watched. I look down and see two large, brown eyes looking back up at me, like a fawn wandered into my arms. I wonder what F is thinking; I wonder how someone’s face can be so small and so sweet. She is quiet. I am quiet. For the next twenty minutes, we just sit—quietly, and listen to each other breathe. 

FRIDAY

I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
good care of myself. The weather is perfect.
I read and walk all day and then walk to the sea.
I expect to swim soon. For now I am content.
I am not sure what I hope for. I feel I am
doing my best. It reminds me of when I was
sixteen dreaming of Lorca, the gentle trees outside
and the creek. Perhaps poetry replaces something
in me that others receive more naturally.
Perhaps my happiness proves a weakness in my life.
Even my failures in poetry please me.
Time is very different here. It is very good
to be away from public ambition.
I sweep and wash, cook and shop.
Sometimes I go into town in the evening
and have pastry with custard. Sometimes I sit
at a table by the harbor and drink half a beer.

—The Letter by Linda Gregg

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: How to stop feeling guilty about not being productive

A paint palette and accompanying essay from How it Feels to Find Yourself

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

MONDAY

When you know yourself well, it’s easier to locate the significance in every small moment. Your capacity to retain peace during difficult transitions increases. You understand that most situations have more than one correct answer. You feel freer.

The most important relationship we can spend our lives nurturing is the relationship we have with ourselves. The lens through which we view ourselves determines our connection to the world. If that lens is cracked or cloudy, each of our relationships begins to suffer. Building a strong internal compass that skillfully guides you through life’s uncertainties is possible only by developing an intimate, healthy relationship with yourself. Through this process of continued self-exploration, I began to learn who I am, what my purpose is, and how to intentionally shape my life into one I recognize with joy. Living well means adapting to life’s constant transition; evolving with purpose and clarity is a skill I now practice regularly. This is how I found myself—for the first time, and then again, every time after that.  

—An excerpt from the introduction of How it Feels to Find Yourself

TUESDAY

It’s 4:00 in the morning and How it Feels to Find Yourself will be published today. I feel sloppy and underprepared, like I’m about to take a test I haven’t studied for. In all the chaos of the last few months, I’ve barely been able to put much time into promoting this book. As fellow authors know, especially those who write for adults—your work isn’t over when you finish writing the book. The publicity and marketing aspect of publishing is overwhelming for those of us who prefer staying out of the limelight. I personally prefer being behind a desk than a camera; book promotion demands I summon the extrovert inside me, however well she may have hidden. 

Anyway. It’s 4:00 and we’re up to feed the baby, it being 2.5 hours since she’s last eaten. I stumble around in a haze, changing her diaper and tending to her spit-up, shoving a pacifier in her small. sweet mouth as her little lungs get ready to scream. I hand her to T who looks like a zombie but sits in the recliner to give her a bottle anyway. I gotta write my newsletter, I mumble sleepily, and he nods. 

Back in bed, it’s 4:30 am. I open my laptop and begin to write, promising myself that this is the last crazy thing I’ll do in a long while. I’m going to sleep instead of writing newsletters at 4:30 in the morning, I tell myself. I’m going to exercise instead of giving birth a few weeks prior to completing graduate school, I tell myself. I’m going to delight in healthier cooking and eating instead of working myself to the bone. 

I finish writing and close the laptop. I check on T and the baby, both of whom are asleep again, the steady rise and fall of their chests following each breath. I pull the covers up to my nose and exhale deeply. This is the last crazy thing I do, I repeat to myself. 

This is the summer of long walks and less running around. This is the summer of cookouts and lazy pool days and no homework. This is the summer of breathing in baby and being crazy with toddler. This is the summer of new recipes and friendships and sleep and smiles. This is the summer I see more and do less. This is the summer I read more and write less. This is the summer for rest and replenishing. This is the summer of silence. 

I will not feel guilty for not being productive. And maybe, months from now, when I feel good and ready—I will begin again. 

WEDNESDAY

Most of us who hit 40 have had enough experiences—winning and losing—to know that it is all actually “winning” and “losing.” The best job in the world can also cause you profound stress. Getting the promotion, raise, book deal that you always wanted, might feel like a hard-won achievement in certain ways, and in others, it is likely to be anti-climatic and send you spinning off into a moment of existential confusion. If you’ve experienced the texture of work long enough, you start to sober up about what really matters to you, what you are really made for, and what you want to spend your precious energy and time on. You understand that the deepest sense of self-realization doesn’t come through paychecks or titles, but through genuine, intrinsic pride that you have done something you are delighted by with people who delight you. Midlife is a moment to seek a more finely calibrated understanding of all of this and start advocating for yourself within work settings (whether that means joining a labor union or saying no more to freelance work or not tolerating assholes). Of course the most insecure your financial situation, and the less lucrative your life’s work, the more constraints you face on living into these truths. Which is why economic disparity is about so much more than “food on the table,” but people’s ability to give the world their best gifts and live their fullest, most realized lives.

—An excerpt from Grow Bigger Not Bitter by Courtney Martin 

THURSDAY

A simple photograph to celebrate this week, this book, and a vow to be less measurably productive:

FRIDAY

My shadow said to me:
what is the matter
Isn’t the moon warm
enough for you
why do you need
the blanket of another body
Whose kiss is moss
Around the picnic tables
The bright pink hands held sandwiches
crumbled by distance. Flies crawl
over the sweet instant
You know what is in these blankets
The trees outside are bending with
children shooting guns. Leave
them alone. They are playing
games of their own.
I give water, I give clean crusts
Aren’t there enough words
flowing in your veins
to keep you going. 

—The Shadow Voice by Margaret Atwood

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: It's publication day!

Hi, friends.

I’m sending out a special note today because it’s publication day for How it Feels to Find Yourself!

This book is a hard won piece of my heart. I wrote the proposal and sold the book to my publisher during my first, extremely difficult pregnancy, while isolated on our farm in Nashville during the beginning of the pandemic. I then wrote the book, while still isolated on our farm, throughout the pandemic—this time with a tiny, crying newborn by my side.

The various sunrises I captured from our Nashville farm, while writing before the baby (and the world) woke.

I often woke up at 4:30 am to write in the darkness before the baby woke, watching the sun creep up over the tree line. I wrote in the bathroom, my laptop balanced on the vanity, wearing the baby while the exhaust fan hummed her to sleep. I wrote in a room full of unpacked boxes and utter debris during our move from Nashville to St. Louis, desperate to finish the manuscript before beginning my first semester of graduate school—which I was unable to do. I wrote the book in the mornings before and the evenings after class, while T took N to the zoo or the playground. I wrote on the weekends, around my homework and N’s nap schedule, wishing I had a little less on my plate. Like all good things, the writing in this book grew from a combination of determination, persistence, many tears, and a lot of support. 

I could not have written this book without my husband, T, who helped make it a priority for me to write, even when it came at the cost of his own work and ambition. I could not have written this book without my parents, who put their lives on hold to live mine with me throughout graduate school. I could not have written this book without N, who was with me first in my belly and then in my arms, and about whom so many of these essays are written. 

Early mornings with N on the farm, after I’d spend a few hours writing while she slept.

Purchase HOW IT FEELS TO FIND YOURSELF

“The book that we all need…It reminds us that regardless of the day we’ve experienced, we are still beautifully and devastatingly hopeful and human.”

–Cyndie Spiegal, best-selling author of Microjoys

HOW IT FEELS TO FIND YOURSELF is a collection of paint palettes and short essays. Together, they work harmoniously in offering guidance for navigating the most important relationship in our lives: the one we have with ourselves. The book is full of thoughtful reflections on parenthood, friendship, love (for others and ourselves), family dynamics, and the larger questions we carry about finding our place in the world. Each essay is accompanied by a vibrant paint palette designed to help you find your way through the moment you’re in. 

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, this book is for you.

Purchase HOW IT FEELS TO FIND YOURSELF

Because of the year I’ve had (pregnancy, graduate school, and now a newborn), I’ve decided not to commit to my usual book events, interviews, or in-person signings. Instead, I’m hoping those of you who are really interested in my work will choose to support this book—and I hope that it will help you find a part of yourself that’s been hidden.

Here’s how you can support How it Feels to Find Yourself:

• Order a copy (or like, five) of How it Feels to Find Yourself

• Forward this newsletter to someone who will appreciate this book!

• Ask your local library to carry the book if you can’t afford to purchase it—knowing that your entire neighborhood will now have access to it!

• Ask your local bookstore to carry the book. I love local bookstores and want to support them as much as possible throughout this launch. 

• Write a review on Amazon so more people can find this book

• If you want to review or write about How it Feels to Find Yourself (or know someone who might), feature it in your publication/podcast/etc., or interview me — just reply to this email to reach me. Every little bit helps.

Purchase HOW IT FEELS TO FIND YOURSELF

THANK YOU for reading and for all of your support and encouragement. It means the world to me. 

See you on Friday with a new edition of Dear Somebody, where I’ll go a little bit deeper into the making of this book.

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Preserving the humanity in our work.

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

MONDAY

Last week, Dan Blank asked me why I decided to make elegy/a crow/Ba into an accordion book. He wanted to know why I would spend precious time gluing and assembling 50 accordion books when I’m: 9 months pregnant; in the middle of writing my Master’s thesis; finishing my Master’s thesis project—my first picture book pitch; promoting my upcoming book of illustrated essays; preparing for baby’s arrival in 4 weeks; and, you know, keeping atop of my regular work load, toddler, and home life. 

So why am I gluing and assembling and folding and mailing? The answer is that I've been trying to figure out how to get back to myself for a long time now. I want to pay attention to the artist and the creativity in me, which has taken a back seat to the business of being a brand and artist. As I told Dan: This accordion book brings a lot of humanity back to the art I'm interested in making. This book isn’t about making money or sales or generating publicity — it’s simply about writing a story from the heart and putting it out into the world to connect with others. 

For our full conversation and more of Dan’s thoughts on the power of handcrafted, read the latest edition of his newsletter here. 

TUESDAY

A song: One of my favorite covers is M. Ward’s take on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance — on repeat in my studio these days as I draw, draw, draw.

A picture: I recently bought this print for N’s room from Anna Cunha’s shop. Her work is poignant and pure, often capturing the simplicity of childhood and living with the land. I was surprised to learn that her gorgeously textured work is mostly illustrated digitally. 

A book: I’m almost finished with María Hesse’s illustrated biography of Frida Kahlo, which is devastating, mournful, and, of course, beautiful. 

WEDNESDAY

An excerpt from Before and After the Book Deal that really hit home this week, as I do what feels like even less for my family and home, while juggling a million other things and preparing to give birth:

“I feel badly that my daughter feels bad about me missing today’s performance, but I don’t feel guilty. It took me decades to be able to live off my own creative writing, and in those decades I learned that I have to fight tooth and nail to defend not just my writing time, but my identity as a writer, because most people will want/need me to do something other than my art. From the minute I was presented with my long-legged, super sucker newborn, I realized that I now had the world’s most precious time suck in my arms. There would be no end to this baby’s needs, no end to the things she would want from me, expect from me, forget at school and need. Nina gives me a hard time about it, but I refuse to hide how important my career is to me. In the domestic framework I’ve set up and continue to fight for, my writing and my daughter are both tied for first.

But getting my daughter to understand that this framework is built from love and respect is a long, long game indeed. I believe if I model the example of a working creative who defends her time, sets boundaries, and is honest about what she wants and doesn’t want, then long-term, my daughter won’t be trampled by people who want to take and take from her, ask for favors that turn into unpaid labor, see her negotiating like a lamb when she should be negotiating like a lion. This will probably take two decades, or maybe it will take my own daughter one day having children to realize the values I’m trying to impart. Or maybe it won’t work.”

—from Can You Be a Good Mom and a Great Writer? by Courtney Maum

THURSDAY

The world has graced us with the most excellent weather this week—warm breezes and open windows, too early yet for mosquitos or sweat. We’ve gone on many walks, watched the grackles bathe in the alleyway puddles, filled the hummingbird feeder with simple syrup, and did lots of laundry. 

N wore her yellow dress with flowers for the first time this spring and looked like a doll from somebody else’s drawing. I didn’t take a picture but I’m writing it here, now, to remember.

FRIDAY

in the dream of foxes
there is a field
and a procession of women
clean as good children
no hollow in the world
surrounded by dogs
no fur clumped bloody
on the ground
only a lovely time
of honest women stepping
without fear or guilt or shame
safe through the generous fields.

—A Dream of Foxes by Lucille Clifton

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: How to keep going

The final essay from my upcoming book, How it Feels to Find Yourself

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

MONDAY

For a limited time, my friends at BuyOlympia are giving away a free, 5”x7” limited edition print of my How To Keep Going paint palette with every pre-ordered copy of How it Feels to Find Yourself. 

This palette, in particular, is special to me. It accompanies the final essay in the book and is a daily reminder and source of encouragement to find the inner strength and commitment to keep going. 

This illustration outlines the steps that I’ve always relied on in moments of hopelessness and discouragement: accepting life’s duality, finding meaning in the difficult and joyful, keeping what’s useful (while discarding the rest), letting go of “should”, making peace with change, and beginning again. 

Pre-order your copy and complimentary art print here.

TUESDAY

“What do you think an artist is?…he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.” 

—Pablo Picasso

WEDNESDAY

“There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.”

—from The Notebooks of Raymond Carver by Raymond Carver

THURSDAY

“Don’t wait for someone to tell you that your project is worthwhile. If you’re moved to write, draw, create, produce something, that’s all the permission you need to devote some time and energy to it. Make a commitment to yourself. Some of my most rewarding collaborations over the many decades have been totally homegrown, grassroots situations (like the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy) that ended up reaching really wide audiences because—in part—they were unfettered by “too many cooks in the kitchen” bullshit or the bad advice of supposed experts.”

—10 Thoughts on Building a Life You Love by Courtney Martin in The Examined Family

FRIDAY

I.
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.

And the name of every place
is joyful.

II.
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities

III.
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping -
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
    over the surface of earth;
who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.

IV.
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?

V.
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,

VI.
and probably
everything
is possible.

—Worm Moon by Mary Oliver

xx,

M

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