Dear Somebody: The many lives inside us.

The Wedding Sari for Issue 65 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)

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

MONDAY 

Paul Simon at Stifel Theatre in Saint Louis (2025)

For the first time since 2019, T and I go to a show. The last time I saw a musician play life was six years ago, in Nashville—before the pandemic, before lockdown, before two children and graduate school and all of the rest. I was a different person then, carrying different dreams and hopes and worries. 

I’m rarely in a crowded room anymore. I barely remember what it’s like to be part of a collective movement—to be collectively moved, to collectively move alongside hundreds of other people who are listening to the same music that I am. I’m so used to making art alone, within the privacy of my own studio that I often forget what it’s like to witness someone making their own right in front of me; a special kind of bravery.

We settle into our seats at Stifel Theatre and watch Paul Simon walk onto the stage. It is strange to see the person who created the soundtrack to my life. No other musician has taken me from childhood to having children of my own, no other musician who has a song for every moment I remember most. He plays his latest record and I’m flooded with my own past: the many Novembers spent deep in conversation on park benches; the hundreds of letters we wrote; the long drives to Atlantic City, salt water taffy and ankles in the sea; the friendships I believed would follow me to the end of my life; the friendships that haven’t lasted long enough to see me to my forties. 

Paul plays and I remember exactly where I was when the Twin Towers fell; watching the dawn chase the night over the Atlantic; years of loneliness and years of being known; running to catch the SEPTA train to Philadelphia; the many New York City winters bleeding me; the gold bracelets I gave to my loved ones on my wedding day, and the one I’ve worn on my right wrist, each day, for the past six years. He plays and I listen to the many people he has been. He plays and I remember myself. After all of these years, after changes upon changes, I am more or less the same. 

Ben Kweller at Off Broadway in Saint Louis (2025)

The next day, we see Ben Kweller in a small, crowded space that transports me to my teenage years. It’s a stark opposite to the evening before: the sound is too loud and the floors too sticky. Hundreds of us smushed together, faces full of earnest eagerness, waiting for a 43-year old man play the songs we love most. It’s a stark opposite to the evening before: we jump and we dance and I don’t look backwards once. I’m having fun, something that the seriousness of me doesn’t say or feel that often but that I want more of. That’s what good art does: it wakes the sleeping parts of you. 

Ben plays Thirteen and I think of what love used to be, he plays Family Tree and I think of Dorian, the sweetness of a young child finding his way; he plays On My Way and I’m out of my head now, finally in this room, with the music in me. He plays Lizzy and I’ve got T’s hand in mine. We’ll keep love alive, even on Texas time. 

TUESDAY

The Wedding Sari for Issue 65 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)

The Wedding Sari for Issue 65 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)

“The more intricate and ornate a panetar is, the more status the bride’s family was believed to have. The panetar symbolizes marital bliss and prosperity; historically, it also promises fertility—a blessing seen not only for the bride herself, but for the family she was marrying into.

At the time, it felt romantic to wear a garment previously worn by two people I loved, on their wedding days, on my own. As much as it connected me to my mother and her sister, my aunt, it also connected me to a longer tradition of compromise and, hopefully, continued compassion between me, my chosen partner, and the family we formed. Now, years later, my wedding panetar means something different to me. It doesn’t resemble prosperity or fertility or wealth, but choice. I consider what marriage meant for my mother and my aunt—and, because of their choices, compromises, and triumphs, what it is now allowed to mean for me. Like any piece of art, each sari is created, painstakingly, by a specific set of hands, guided by certain techniques and traditions, for a specific purpose. However, it’s story and meaning is created by the person who wears it.”

—An excerpt from my latest essay, The Wedding Sari, for Issue #65 of Uppercase Magazine

WEDNESDAY

I can’t believe I haven’t shared Dear Bookstore with you yet! This picture book about the importance of bookstores was written by my dear friend Emily Arrow and illustrated by my friend Geneviève Godbout. 

It’s such a gorgeous and sweet love letter to bookstores, the third place they’ve become for so many of us, and the community they foster. Please shout about it, purchase a copy, and request it at your library. 

THURSDAY

“Imagination—not intellect—has saved my life. It has saved the lives of the people, animals, and lands to which I belong, those I hold most beloved. Imagination, I believe, is the way we dream into the future—futures that can’t be defined by any paperwork or bullet or algorithm or machine. Imagination brings us into abolitionist practices, into the pu’uhonua (places or people of refuge) we’ve yet to meet. As scholar Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio reminds in her work: there is no ‘ōlelo word for rights, only kuleana—our responsibility.

Making nonsense of the story, of our collective stories, is a weapon. I was a child magician, and what I’ve learned from sleight of hand is that the eyes will follow an arc or shape made, from beginning to end. But if the hand moves in a straighter line, our eyes look back to the beginning, to the source of that movement. This is the objective—to keep our eyes fixed forward, bracing and bracing for what’s next, instead of allowing the space to look back, or around, to what we know. Our work, then, becomes mending the stories. Tying those strings back together.”

—T. Kira Māhealani Madden on Listening to the Past, from 100 Days of Creative Resistance

FRIDAY

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls

And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England, where my heart lies

My mind’s distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you’re asleep
And kiss you when you start your day

And a song I was writing is left undone
I don’t know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can’t believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme

And so you see, I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I

—Kathy’s Song by Paul Simon

See you next week!

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Lost in a field.

Wedding invitation (watercolor on paper, 2019)

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

MONDAY 

I walk the girls to the post office box a couple of blocks away; N has written her very first letter to her beloved cousin. A queue of cars stream down the street, and one finally waits while we cross. The driver slows down as he passes us, rolling down the window. I stiffen and prepare to ignore him before realizing it’s T, my husband. 

I don’t recognize him despite the fact that he looks exactly like himself and is driving my car. He rolls his eyes, used to my oblivious nature, and I laugh. I have an embarrassing habit of not recognizing anybody, including myself. I have an even poorer sense of direction; T regularly jokes that when we’re older, I’ll be lost in a field somewhere and he’ll have to come find me. I always laugh in response—after all, what would I be doing in a field?

He parks the car and comes to join us, and as the four of us walk together to mail one letter, I think about how often I’ve lost myself over the past six years of marriage. Not once have I wanted someone else to find me. I’ve only ever wanted to find a better version of me—to cast a sharp line into the deep blue sea and reel in the person I love and recognize as myself. 

T has always come looking, though, even when I haven’t wanted help—or when I believed I didn’t need it, or when I knew I did but had too much pride to ask for it. We took the hard risks early on in marriage—the farm renovation; the pregnancy-and-first-child-in-Covid; Covid isolation itself; moving to a state without community or support; running two small businesses without child care; graduation school; a second child. With all of those risks came stress, boatloads of it—and we were a young couple who barely knew each other. If marriage is a job, we had no previous work experience. There was misunderstanding, confusion, large triumphs, terrible arguments. There was silence.

Letter writing is a risk. You pour your heart onto paper and walk it carefully down to the post office box. You watch the letter sail off into the great unknown. You hope it arrives safely. Each night, you wonder if it has. Your letter might be misplaced. It might be handled carelessly, dropped into a puddle. The ink smears, the love inside it lost. Or, it might arrive but be forgotten, placed on top of a to-do pile that never gets tended to. But, if you get very lucky, the person you wrote to will write you back. 

Writing is reflective: the more you write, the more it reveals to you about yourself. A relationship worth having does the same. 

It’s our sixth wedding anniversary today. I’m beginning to believe that my future does hold a field, and that I will someday lose myself among the cattails and willows, moon rising high above me, not knowing where I am or how I got there—and T will come looking. 

If I don’t want to be found, he will keep a fair distance, making no sound, and when I’ve had my fill of solitude and quiet and pleasant loneliness, out of the darkness he’ll come, pretending he’s only just arrived. And, although I will always be someone who wants to find her own way home—I’ll be glad that he did. 

TUESDAY

In our dining room hang a few paintings from grad school—paintings I made for a book I wrote and hoped would be published one day. The book was rejected by every publisher it was sent out to, which now feels more relieving than disappointing. It wasn’t ready; neither was I. What can I do? Try again, if I have the fire in my heart required to do so—and I do. 

Paintings I’ve taken down and put away, for now (graphite on paper, 2023)

In the meantime, I’m also switching out the art in my home. As much as I loved these paintings when I made them, I’ve outgrown their presence in my daily life. So in a box they went, off to the basement they went, replaced by this burgeoning series of my three favorite girls:

Stay Golden or Three Sisters Establish Rule (2023) 

Finding Your True North or Three Sisters Guard Their Treehouse (2025)

Maybe one day I’ll write a book about these three sisters, maybe I won’t. What I do know is how much fun it is to chronicle their growth through these paintings—and how gratifying it is to see that I’m growing, too.

WEDNESDAY

“I walk our Labradoodle, Molly, at around 4 in the morning. It’s just a habit I’ve gotten into, and the hour works well for my writing schedule. Miguel, a doorman in my apartment building, works the night shift. Dressed in his grand quasi-military uniform, he greets Molly and me, holds open the large, heavy door of the building, then stands outside in the open doorway as I walk Molly to a nearby patch of grass. I’ve never felt any danger at that hour because Miguel—who stands 6-foot-5 — watches where we go, in any weather, and waits for our safe return.

One morning, coming out of the elevator, I heard an exquisitely beautiful baritone voice singing “One Love” by Bob Marley. Not Marley’s voice but something its own. I thought the voice must be a recording, but there was no instrumental accompaniment. When I saw Miguel, I asked him, “Did you hear that singing?” He blushed and turned his big face to the side. “That was me,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was here.” I told him, “Don’t be sorry. You have a wonderful voice.”

There’s nothing more to the story. Miguel and I have not mentioned his singing again. But it was there, you see. The secret being inside the doorman. The other self, who sang like an angel. I hear it every time Miguel holds open the door and watches protectively. And the big man is bigger still.” —from Roger Rosenblatt’s How to Be a Happy 85-Year-Old (Like Me)

THURSDAY

Our House (2018)

A photograph from one of our early days at our farm outside Nashville, in 2018. 

One of the anniversary gifts I received from T this year: Our Miserable Life by William Steig. I already loved Steig for his wonderful picture books, especially Doctor De Soto, which I love reading with N—and I’m excited to wade into his greater depths, including cartoons and musings on the human condition, which, to Steig, is usually despair. 

As Molly Young writes in this article, where she paid homage to his work with a work of her own:

“Strife was Steig’s subject. When he had trouble sleeping, he envisioned himself the owner of a magic long-range dart that he could use to destroy enemies. That’s the man in a nutshell: hellfire fury and imaginative splendor.” Indeed. 

FRIDAY

Sometimes, I think you get the worst
of me. The much-loved loose forest-green
sweatpants, the long bra-less days, hair
knotted and uncivilized, a shadowed brow
where the devilish thoughts do their hoofed
dance on the brain. I'd like to say this means
I love you, the stained white cotton T-shirt,
the tears, pistachio shells, the mess of orange
peels on my desk, but it's different than that.
I move in this house with you, the way I move
in my mind, unencumbered by beauty's cage.
I do like I do in the tall grass, more animal-me
than much else. I'm wrong, it is that I love you,
but it's more that when you say it back, lights
out, a cold wind through curtains, for maybe
the first time in my life, I believe it.

—Love Poem with Apologies For My Appearance by Ada Limon

See you next week!

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Tiny joys.

A few pages from my 100 Day Project (2025)

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

MONDAY 

Week of March 9, 2025

Two sketchbooks open at a coffee shop (2025)

After a long night of not-sleeping, I take a shower and walk myself to our local coffee shop to meet a friend. We’re going to draw together, something I haven’t done since I lived in Nashville nearly four years ago. Our conversation meanders naturally, and I watch where it goes with interest, each turn leading to a fork where both roads seem equally worth the stroll. I spend 3 hours unregrettably, using my hands in the way I prefer. The time together is easy and sweet; a tiny joy. 

Week of March 23, 2025

Key Biscayne, Florida (2025)

We take the girls to Miami for a couple of weeks and it doesn’t go as expected. Though full of sea, sunshine, and new adventures, it’s also sticky with resistance, sleeplessness, and many more meltdowns than I’d been prepared for. 

I find myself more tired than I usually am when we travel—vulnerable, even, as if I’d foolishly let my guard down. Had I fooled myself into thinking our family had become good travelers? Why am I so surprised by the inconsistent nature of young children? I try to stay in the moment, but I fail. 

Back at home, I wince at how poorly I’d handled the trip. I wish I’d been steadier—the consistent one, the dependable one. I wish, I want, but all I can do is try again—so I don’t dwell, knowing that that in itself is progress. In a couple of months, we’ll go to the lake, and I’ll breathe as I swim through those waters, and I’ll breathe as I help my sweet kid swim through her endless tears, too: a tiny joy. 

Week of April 1, 2025

The first of Spring’s tulips (2025)

On the walk back home, the morning doves commune. Clusters of grackles scavenge the dumpsters, the deep peacock blue of their feathers glinting in the sunlight. The tulips we planted last November peak through the soil, their leaves sturdy and true. N runs ahead to count how many faces are turned to the sun. Later, when the sky opens up to let the thunder through, she watches the tulips button themselves up again, dozens of soft leaves bracing against the sudden wind. I watch her, and this is a tiny joy. 

TUESDAY

“I tell my students all the time that all writing makes a thematic argument with the reader. Even the writing that seeks not to, that’s still a stance. The stance that says “escape is a worthy cause.” That means, according to my own rules, this piece of writing is making an argument with you. What could it be? I’m never sure at first. And this is supposed to be about writing and I’ve jumped the shark. But I think if I analyze my argument here, it would be this: there are different flavors of privilege. There is the kind of privilege that, when you use it, takes something away from other people. And then there is the kind that, when you use it, doesn’t. It just—is. And then there is the kind that, when you use it, actually makes it easier for other people to use their privilege, too. Escape is the last kind, when used in particular ways, at least, and at particular times. But you have to escape and also stay for it to remain the last type of privilege.” 

—from “Escape” by A.E. Osworth, author of the forthcoming Awakened

WEDNESDAY

A few pages from my 100 Day Project: poetry and collage (2025)

I joined the 100-day project a few weeks ago, as always, encouraged by my friend Margaux Kent. For it, I picked our daily poem project back up and added a bit of collage, a bit of sketch, and every week or so, I mail a stack of them to her home.

There are many reasons why daily habits are nearly impossible for me to implement, both logistically and practically. Strictly emotionally speaking, perfectionism rests at the heart. I have an unfair expectation of progress—that if I do the same thing everyday, I’ll eventually master it. A fear of failure, the dreadful sense that I might not get better, even if I keep at it, leads me to stop before I start.

I’m on day 40 of the daily project now. I’ve missed days here and there, but I’ve always caught up. I don’t like what I write or draw 99% of the time, but I do it anyway, and the next day, I do it again. I haven’t progressed in any of the ways I’d anticipated—I don’t write better poetry and my sketchbook isn’t full of beautiful drawings—but I have noticed small, unexpected changes that feel even more fruitful: 

• I have ideas. I write them down, and I find I have even more the next day. 

• I feel less emotionally-indebted to my work or myself, less tied to what I produce or how much of it. 

• I like writing to another person daily, even if they don’t write back. The unrequited nature of this project makes it feel even more powerful, like I’m corralling my own attention back. 

• I am proving myself wrong. I am changing, developing discipline, and determined to complete the challenge. 

Are any of you doing the 100-day project? If so, let me know in the comments — I’d love to follow along

THURSDAY

Reading artist Julie Benbassat’s illustrated 7-year eulogy for her father, David, brought me to tears. This walk through David Benbassat’s life, and Julie’s remembrance of their time together, reminded me of how little so many of us know about our parents, and who they were before they brought us into the world. 

FRIDAY

The man I married sat next to me
after our wedding, October light pouring in
over dusty pews as he loosened his tie
and sipped from a cup of apple cider,
closing his eyes to savor the taste.

Now I think I didn’t marry him so much
as his amazement for the everyday,
the way he still gasps each time we see
something new—baby painted turtle
plodding through a stream in the quarry,

or a neon-orange caterpillar inching
across crisp leaves on the trail,
how he kneels to film it from every angle
while I crouch beside him, in awe
of his awe, learning all that I can.

—Married to Amazement by James Crews

See you next week!

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: You are spring.

A small peek into my latest drawing (mixed media, 2024)

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

MONDAY 

When the first snow of the season slowly falls, I wake up before the world and climb down the stairs. I press my nose against the cold windows of the front door and watch the drifts settle on the dark streets. A lone car whistles down the street, its headlines waving like a ribbon through the snowfall. After that, it is quiet, and I feel lucky to be alone.

Before the snow begins, T salts a hundred houses where his family doesn’t live because someone else’s does. I read the news gingerly, like a child checking to see if the burners are still warm. Dead children, wildfires, disease, manhunts. Hopelessness is not helpful, but actual food and water is, so I donate everywhere I can and feed my own girls. It feels like so many direct their own pain onto others, but I feel lucky that so many do not. 

Before T salts a hundred houses, we spend a few days in Nashville. We celebrate friends, visit their children, see how we’ve all fallen and mended. We sit around the table in a friendship that feels more comfortable each year, and I eat a meal that someone else lovingly cooks for me. I see each person’s heart growing wider, more open, pumping blood, struggling as it reaches—but always reaching anyway. I know how much mine has struggled to stay open this year—but it has, it does, and I feel lucky to know each open heart at this table, especially my own. 

TUESDAY

Jo Nakashima’s beautiful and strange origami; the right of return (100% of proceeds directly aid the people of Gaza); Einstein time; this gorgeous edition of The Complete Tales by Beatrix Potter, which I was thoughtfully given to borrow by a friend. 

WEDNESDAY

I am reading many interesting picture books while I rewrite a manuscript I began a few weeks ago. The manuscript itself is simple, which gives me the ability to push the envelope further with my drawings. The question I keep asking myself is: How can I tell multiple stories at once?

A few books that do this well are: 

The Midnight Fair by Gideon Sterer and illustrated by Mariachiara Di Giorgio, a very enchanting, completely wordless book about forest creatures visiting a fairground. 

Crushing by Sophie Burrows, which really illuminates just how deeply emotions can be communicated in only two colors. Another twoc-olobook that does this beautifully is My Best Friend, written by Julie Fogliano and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki. 

Small in the City by Sydney Smith, which utilizes panels to draw the reader closer (or push them farther away) from the main character’s world. 

THURSDAY

A few days late to share this, but still remembering my favorite November poem and the painting I made for it a few years ago.

A small peek into my latest drawing (mixed media, 2024)

FRIDAY

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.

You need not die today.
Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.

—To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks

See you next week!

xx,
M

Dear Somebody: Living with a duckling.

My latest illustration for Issue 62 of Uppercase Magazine

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

MONDAY 

I wake to the sounds of a duckling quacking. I’m in bed, staring at the ceiling. It’s midnight; there are no bodies of water nearby. After a minute, I realize it’s F; the sounds are coming from my child. On the monitor, I see her balled body rolling around the crib, quacking. The quacking continues, then becomes laughter—until finally, it’s tears. I change her diaper, I sing her a lullaby, I crawl back into bed and wait for her to sleep. When she finally does, it’s 4:30 in the morning. 

The quacking has gone on for weeks now. I stand at the kitchen island, too tired to think. Instead, I give myself over to the mechanics of morning routine, grateful for a chance to turn my mind off. When I decided to become a parent, I never thought I’d find myself caring for a duckling—but here I am. This is what commitment is: caring for the one you have, regardless of whether they are who you imagined them to be.

I’m smearing sunbutter on toast when N runs into the kitchen. She’s having breakfast on the porch with T, watching rain fall from the open sky in sheets. Mom, she says, do you want to join us? I do.

On the other side of the front door, the earth takes a long bath. The air is pleasant, cool. Lightning flashes; I close my eyes and see its brightness through my lids. N counts the seconds until thunder follows. Mom, she says, I love sitting on the porch. I love watching the rain. I’m sitting in the middle so I can be next to you and dad…at the same time! Isn’t this air is so fresh? It’s my favorite thing. It’s my favorite thing, too— being a witness to the earth. Seeing her recycle whatever resources are left, beginning again.

In a past life, I’m still in the kitchen. Still making lunches. Still stewing in my own tiredness. Still longing for silence. In a past life, I opt out of this moment entirely. How lucky, then, to be in this life instead: one where there is a porch and it’s covered. One where the rain perseveres—is relentless, even—and I, with my two very good friends, get to watch the world as it is reborn. 

One floor above us, while the rain drapes her in its song, a little duckling quacks in her sleep. 

TUESDAY

Dear Library deal announcement. Note: this artwork isn’t from the book!

I feel so lucky to share that my debut as a picture book illustrator will be DEAR LIBRARY, a love letter to libraries--and a celebration of the possibility that lives inside books. As a child, I went to the library multiple times a week with my family. My sister and I would lay on the floor of the children's section, reading, for hours. Every now and then, my mom would come collect us and we'd send her away. We were never ready to leave.

I still go to the library a couple times a week, now with my own little gremlins in tow. We come home with a big stack of books and read wherever we can: at the kitchen island, at the dining table, on the living room floor, in bed. We read in the car. We read while walking. I tell N that possibility lives inside books: a book can change your whole world. It can free you from much of what restricts you—especially your own mind. 

Emily and I at The Bookshop in Nashville, a place where we’ve sang many songs, welcomed many books into the world, and made many memories (2024)

Emily and I at The Bookshop in Nashville, a place where we’ve sang many songs, welcomed many books into the world, and made many memories (2024)

Emily and I first tried to make a picture book 6 years ago, but it didn't work out. Sometimes that's the way things go. I didn't want to admit it, but I wasn't ready. I had a lot to learn, mostly about myself. I needed to be real about what I was willing to change—and what I was willing to lose—in order to create the work I wanted to make. I've spent the last few years focusing on myself and my craft. I have a long way to go; I think every artist feels this way—but now, I've got my head on right. I listen to myself. 

When this project came along, I knew it was a sign—life’s way of confirming that if I stop ignoring what’s inside my heart, I’ll be all right. And what a dream project it is: A book about books!—About libraries!—Written by my dear friend! I'm so grateful to Emily for keeping our dream alive, and I couldn't be more thrilled to work with the wonderful, gracious team at Candlewick. We're making a beautiful book together…and this time I'm ready. 

WEDNESDAY

I’m almost done with Laurie Frankel’s Family Family, a beautiful novel that asks the reader to reimagine what a family is and how a family comes to be. 

I’m listening to a lot of compositions by Joe Hisaishi while working on concepts for Dear Library and while writing. Hisaishi is best known for scoring almost all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, and his music elicits feelings of mystery, contemplation, and peace.

I’m studying the composition and light value in Kaatje Vermeire’s gorgeous work, especially in De Vrouw En Het Jongetje (I have the French edition). I find her work astounding. It encapsules all of the dualities I admire in life—beauty with darkness, deep emotion and deep voids, danger and light. 

THURSDAY

On the value of creative suffering:

“I used to really believe in the creative value of agony and I don’t really know if I can subscribe to that anymore. That old idea that if it wasn’t painful then it wasn’t meaningful.

It’s a stereotype that we’ve been sold, even in the history books. The anguished genius. We’ve been conditioned to believe that there’s some kind of relationship between the creative life and dysfunctional mental health, that somehow there’s kind a correlation between the two. I don’t subscribe to that anymore because it’s just too exhausting. I’ve become really good about delegating and organizing my time. When you’re just an artist floating out there in the ether you’re made to believe that you have to create great art through pain and suffering. It isn’t true.” 

—from a The Creative Independent interview with Sufjan Stevens

FRIDAY

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

—Meditations in an Emergency by Cameron Awkward-Rich 

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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