Dear Somebody: New beginnings.

A completed exercise from LEARN TO LET GO: A JOURNAL FOR NEW BEGINNINGS (2026)

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

MONDAY 

This year, I didn’t do any sort of round-up: no list of achievements to close out 2025, no more/less lists to begin 2026, no resolutions, no catalog of what went right or wrong. This is a break from my usual tradition: I love taking inventory, assessing which path led to where, considering how to build a different future than the one hurtling straight towards me. 

Despite all of the good reflection does, I feel tired of, and from, looking back. I want to look forward, I only want the light of what can be…to be. 

A few days ago I received Issue #68 of Uppercase Magazine in the mail. I love writing and illustrating for this magazine, and year after year, I feel lucky that I get to. When I opened the pages, a smile rang in me. This illustration is one of my favorite drawings I made last year, to accompany an essay I wrote titled More Than Machine: Guidance for Creative Resistance. It might not be the best thing I made, but it is the most meaningful because it is proof of self-doubt and personal growth. It is a sharp claw towards hard change; it is finding a light in dark times. I am deeply connected to it, and by making it, I processed tough experiences and saw myself more clearly. 

“More Than Machine” for Issue #68 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)

I love that art can help us chronicle, understand, and heal. For me, it is a medicine I take as often as I can. It requires no skill or prescription, and asks nothing of us other than our willingness to take a look inside. For this, I am grateful. 

TUESDAY

This week, through Nicole Cardoza’s newsletter REIMAGINED, I learned that in 1980, Stevie Wonder wrote Happy Birthday to promote the establishing of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday. The song became the anthem of the movement led by Coretta Scott King, and Wonder joined her at rallies across the nation. 

WEDNESDAY

Sometimes I forget the magic of it all. 

My mind is on the pink soccer jersey we’re searching for. While T tries them on, I keep the girls occupied, pushing the red Target cart down the shiny white aisles. No, we have enough toys, I say; No, we have enough clothes, I say; No, no no. The girls are whiny. I am, too. 

We turn the corner and there it is: the new Wellbeing Reads display, and there I am—or a little part of me, at least—on the bottom left row. I beam, wishing I looked more human. The girls squeal and pick up copies, they attempt to take selfies. T arrives a few minutes later—nothing having fit correctly—and takes photos of a wintering me, and then a few more with the girls. 

Me kneeling in front of Target’s WELLBEING READS display, holding a copy of LEARN TO LET GO (2026)

The Ladies in front of Target’s WELLBEING READS display; N holding a copy of LEARN TO LET GO (2026)

I sit at my desk for hours on end, painting or writing or throwing drafts in the trash. The days turn into weeks, then months. The years peel by. A book comes into the world years after I’ve first sat down to write it, years after I’ve learned enough to put the words to paper. A book comes out into the world and slowly, caught up in the details of everyday life, I forget the magic of it all. 

A book comes out into the world, and months later, as I shop with my small family, we run right into it—and I remember, once again, how magical it is to make something that someone else can hold. To make something that my own children can hold, and read, and one day write in. 

One of my completed exercises from LEARN TO LET GO (2026)

I’m working through my own copy of LEARN TO LET GO at the moment. I haven’t worked through one of my own journals in a very long time, and I’m eager to plant new seeds for change in the pages of this book. 

One of the reasons I make these journals is because there is no end point for personal growth. It is with humility that I complete the exercises that I long ago wrote, seeing how far I have come—and how much further I still have to go. 

“Helped are those who are content to be themselves,” Alice Walker said. “They will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.”

Each day, when I open a new page, I’m reminded by the magic of it all. 

THURSDAY

Ruth Franklin writes about Paul Simon and the horrifying state of our country; my very favorite New Year’s poem; Judit Orosz makes paper poetry; I’ll Try Anything by The Strokes; Denny’s in Japan. 

FRIDAY

I remember all the different kinds of years.
Angry, or brokenhearted, or afraid.
I remember feeling like that
walking up the mountain along the dirt path
to my broken house on the island.
And long years of waiting in Massachusetts.
The winter walking and hot summer walking.
I finally fell in love with all of it:
dirt, night, rock and far views.
It’s strange that my heart is as full
now as my desire was then. 

—Arriving Again and Again Without Noticing by Linda Gregg

• Dear Somebody: Should I Be Doing More? (January 24, 2025)

Of all the things you can put in front of your eyes, I’m grateful that my little letter is one of them. 

If you’d like to support me, please buy my books. My art prints and line of greeting cards make excellent gifts for yourself or a friend. You can also hire me for your next project—I’d love to work together. 

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: The anchors we carry.

Moon Man and the five children (sketchbook, 2025)

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

MONDAY 

For the second time since N was born, I board a plane and travel with my children alone. We embark on a surprise trip to my sister’s, and none of us can wait. For N, it’s her cousins and all of the treats she doesn’t receive at home—but mostly, it’s her cousins. For F, it’s her cousins and the acrobatics—three flights of stairs to climb up and down on—but mostly, it’s her cousins. For me, it’s all of it: me and my sister and our five children, all corralled under one roof, a tangle of limbs and tears and, of course, indoor hide-and-seek.

Now and then, it pokes at me that the places most comforting to me are the ones where I’ve spent my formative years: by the water, on the east coast, near my sibling. Will I always turn towards the anchors of my childhood? Will I always feel the tug, known deeply by younger siblings—of reaching, wanting more? Of forever feeling two steps behind? 

The thoughts tumble in my mind while I stand at the kitchen island, watching my nephews play Madden on the living room floor. The oldest offers to teach me, but I love him too much to disappoint him by actually playing. N and Z are in the playroom, concocting meals out of pretend ingredients. They feed their dollies, they feed each other. They yell to see if anyone else is hungry; we all yell back that we aren’t. Only F feels out of sorts, clinging to my legs, wailing for something she doesn’t have the language to express. My sister scoops her up and carries her outside.

I smell the snow before I sense it, before I see the soft clumps accumulate on the back steps. The kitchen window isn’t cracked but the sharp, dampened scent of winter leaks in anyhow. I’m going to watch the snow, I announce. No one responds. 

In my sister’s arms, F is quiet. She’s listening to the snow, or maybe it’s very arrival is the world’s simple way of listening to her. Such is the strength of a young child’s heart. 

One by one, the rest of our band files onto the porch: first Z, who wants to see; then N, who wonders what Z is up to; then both boys, curious as to where everyone went. For this moment, Madden is on pause. 

The snowdrifts sort my thoughts and I know what I know: I don’t have an affinity for New Jersey or the east coast—or any particular nostalgia for the past. The only anchor I carry from childhood is my sibling, an anchor I’ll carry from house to house, shore to shore.

Our five children are cousins: together and sweet. The snow is the snow: always a pleasure. And I, so far removed from the roof, roads, and city that I call my own, feel perfectly at home. 

TUESDAY

“There’s one ceramic piece, by my daughter — my wife and I are super sad that we lost that. It’s an image of her as a 12-year-old holding a globe with the world on fire on top of her head. And it’s her in her overalls with her striped shirt on and brown hair. It’s an interpretation of an image I made after the fires in Malibu. She was becoming this awesome artist, interpreting the world through her art just like I do. To me it was an image of uncontrollable powerlessness — that feeling you know everyone shares, but through a kid’s eyes. My daughter’s sculpture was a symbol of someone becoming who they are in a moment of time we’ll never get back to.” —Cleon Peterson on what they grabbed.

I found these resources for LA from Nicole Cardoza’s Reimagined to be really helpful. Included are links to help organize, volunteer, and donate to aid those impacted by the wildfires. 

WEDNESDAY

The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood

The Census at Bethlehem (1566), oil on wood panel

These world landscapes by painter Pieter Bruegel which simultaneously evoke in me a sense of war and peace, storm and calm, winter and the first day of spring. 

THURSDAY

“Consciousness lives on. The body is like a car, and the driver is the spirit, the bit of consciousness, the atom, the soul, you could say. And so the car gets old and rusted and falls apart and the driver gets out and continues on.” —David Lynch, rest in peace.

“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish—a fragment of an idea—that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.”

—from Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch

FRIDAY

So after weeks of rain
at night the winter stars
that much farther in heaven
without our having seen them
in far light are still forming
the heavy elements
that when the stars are gone
fly up as dust finer
by many times than a hair
and recognize each other
in the dark traveling
at great speed and becoming
our bodies in our time
looking up after rain
in the cold night together

—January by W. S. Merwin

See you next week!

xx,

M

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