Dear Somebody: Nothing, nothing.

Finding Your True North for Issue #64 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)

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

MONDAY 

It’s been awhile since I wrote. There was some travel, some sickness, some coming back to life. I’m still figuring things out; I’m still dedicated to the daily task of figuring things out. What else can I do? Nothing, nothing. 

Failing friendships, abandoned resolutions, the agonizingly slow crawl towards progress: these were all things that clawed at me a few months ago, seeping into my brain in-between my dreams and demanding more of my time, more of my efforts. Now, I let them fall away with ease. What can I do? Nothing, nothing, so I pour the skeletons out my window and raise the blinds to the morning ahead. 

Each day feels less like it’s getting away from me, and I feel less like I’m trying to get away from myself. Somehow, the smog has lifted. My brain is less dreams-and-pollution, more dreams-and-strangeness. I am reminded of time’s simple magic: its ability to transform a dilemma so magnificent into a pebble, into a not-problem so small, so ordinary, that I forget to think of it.

I slip on my shoes, small cloud-like things, and head out the door. I listen for the cardinals and the mourning dove; I follow the clouds through the sky. I like my little walks—to the corner coffee shop, the neighborhood library, the community garden. To nowhere at all. 

I walk to the library, but it’s closed. I walk to the coffee shop, but it’s closed, too. My timing is amiss or the world wants me to stay still—what can I do? Nothing, nothing. I turn around. A mile away, my sweet little family breathes childhood into our sweet little house. Quite happily, I take the shortest way home. 

TUESDAY

Meera Lee Patel x Biely & Shoaf: SO MUSHROOM IN MY HEART FOR YOU

Meera Lee Patel x Biely & Shoaf: MY HEART IS WITH YOU

Meera Lee Patel x Biely & Shoaf: HAPPILY EVER AFTER

I have a new collection of cards out with Biely & Shoaf, and I’m especially charmed by how the gold foil on these turned out! All of my new cards are available on the Biely & Shoaf website and at stores throughout the country. 

WEDNESDAY

Sisters celebrating a birthday (2025)

I flew to my sister’s for a quick few days to celebrate her birthday. It was a sweet treat to sit around a table with a very large martini and so many wonderful friends who love her as much as I do. 

THURSDAY

There are many versions of Conference of the Birds, a 5000-line Persian poem written by Sufi poet Farid-ud-din Attar; I treasure the edition I have, illustrated by the skilled Peter Sis. 

Serendipitously, I stumbled upon this article by The Heritage Lab which summarizes portions of the poem and distills some of the symbolism within it—but what I love most are the many included paintings, many dating back to the mid 16th-century, all inspired by this classic poem . 

FRIDAY

My husband and I held the films up against the sliding glass door in
Oregon the summer it seemed my sadness might never go away, trying
to make sense of whatever illness swirled there in black and white and
gray, so terrible the river winding through me seemed more real than I
was, somewhere beneath the Douglas fir's shawl of liquid silver, the
grape leaves unfurling their fuzz of green.

Here were thought and memory, feeling and dream. I stared into those
transparent sheets of myself my husband traced with one finger as I'd
seen him trace our route across a ten thousand foot mountain, follow-
int the convoluted folds and cross sections as patiently as he followed
the slow lines of elevation.

And I thought, This is what matters--the transparent mind that lets the
world through like a window, one we can open any time, whenever we
want, the wind in our hair, mysterious, fern-delicate, human. Or is it his
standing beside me that I remember, ready to remind me that what felt
crazy was only a matter of degree, my footing on that mountain easily
recovered by reaching my hand out to his as he balanced, just a few steps
ahead, impossibly steady before me?

—Looking at MRI Scans of My Brain by Alison Townsend

See you next week!

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: For the love of sisters

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

MONDAY 

I was able to speak with the wonderful Margo Tantau on her podcast Windowsill Chatsabout building a life of creativity and purpose. We also discuss living according to your values, being dedicated to your vision, and what I believe most holds us creatives back from success. You can listen to Episode 146 here. 

TUESDAY

My sister and her family visit for a couple days, a trip that comes and goes so quickly that it feels like a blur even while it’s happening. In tow are my two beautiful nephews and my niece, Z, who was born only a handful of weeks before N. The two girls are as different in personality and behavior as they are close in age: where N is cautious and meditative, Z is adventurous and impulsive. Together, though, there is some semblance of balance. 

Different doesn’t always attract. It was more than two decades before my sister and I discovered our own rhythm, mashed somewhere between college graduations, first apartments, and marriages. Each time I reached a life milestone she’d already passed through it brought us closer together. For awhile, we’d swim in the same waters, and then she’d go on ahead again. 

Our personalities follow traditional birth order to a certain degree. As the older child, my sister tends to be a bit of a perfectionist while I enjoy making a good mess with my hands. She’s conscientious and thoughtful, quick to say the right thing and mean it; I have learned how to be less judgmental, more vulnerable. I am confrontational, she likes keeping the peace. We’re both cripplingly self-aware. 

We take the kids to the City Museum, the emerald city of St. Louis. Z bounces off the industrial bridges and steel-roped ladders, climbing as quick as her agile little body allows. N clings to her dad hard. She doesn’t want to climb, she doesn’t want to run, she doesn’t want to try—or she does, but not now. I encourage her, and then fight the urge to continue. How often have I wanted the very same thing my parents have wanted for me, simply in my own time? 

Z and her brothers are out of sight, lost somewhere in the noise of Sabreliner 40 aircrafts and frighteningly oversized slides. Slowly, N begins to open. She walks across a four-foot-wide Slinkie and peers through each square window. She watches. She avoids the vertical tunnels, opting instead for the narrow stairs, and climbs to the top of a castle turret. I ask her what she’s thinking, as I often do, but she doesn’t answer. She watches. Eventually, she lets her dad’s hand go and climbs a half-dome gym on her own. Slowly, I see her unfurl. She’s a lily, blooming—not hesitantly, but with deliberation, the way someone who knows herself well does. 

After awhile, we all meet up and herd the kids inside for lunch. There, surrounded by half-eaten pretzels and hot dogs, ice cream cups and toddler water bottles, N and Z begin to run. They run back and forth across the 1870’s Vault Room, chasing each other with open arms. Z speeds across and N helps her up when she falls. N laughs hysterically, falling on purpose, and Z puts out her hand for the assist. They smile and hug, their faces full of childhood and joy. This is special, I think to myself, as I look at their eyes which are looking into each others’. 

I’ve spent my entire life counting the ways my sister and I are different, as if it matters, as if we’d allow the very things that make us who we are keep us apart. I know, with certainty, that this is driven by the fear that we one day will. 

I note this now, as I watch N and Z fall to the ground still hugging, still laughing, their arms braided together. At my age, it is obvious: the way sisters can fall apart if they’re not too careful, how all friendships—even those bound by blood—need nurturing, like young lilies waiting for bloom. 

To N and Z, it is far less complicated. As it should be. The afternoon sunlight streams through the second-story window. One child’s tiny hand prepares to reach out in anticipation, in knowing—before the other child falls. Slowly, my heart grounds itself. 

WEDNESDAY

On learning how to see in our creative work:

“I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world. They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes. To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things. This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them. At the beginning, they typically "see" things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all. Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become "old men with snow on their shoulders," or the lake looks like a "giant eye." The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness. And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck. But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeing—and the physical world pours in. Their journals fill up with lovely things like, "the mirror with nothing reflected in it." This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not looking—just as she must write when she is not writing. To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing. The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human.” 

—The Art of Finding by Linda Gregg

THURSDAY

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

—George Bernard Shaw

FRIDAY

Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as the years went their way
until it was home to bats and swallows
and still when spring climbed toward summer
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened
you and the seasons spoke the same language
and all these years I have looked through your limbs
to the river below and the roofs and the night
and you were the way I saw the world

—Elegy for a Walnut Tree by W. S. Merwin

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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