Dear Somebody: A Love Letter to My Creativity

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 

For Issue #62 of Uppercase Magazine, I wrote a love letter to my creativity. I’ve wanted to write this for years, inspired by an old friend who wrote a letter to her own, but I never did. I didn’t make time for this beautiful exercise, and I know why now: I couldn’t write a love letter to my creativity because I didn’t have love for it. Where there should’ve been a commitment to nurturing and protecting my creativity, there was resentment—for the artist I wasn’t, and the art I didn’t allow myself to make. 

The past few years have been clarifying. Instead of burying my creativity six feet under, I used them to hibernate—to practice listening instead of talking, observing instead of performing, and exploring instead of sharing—to practice practicing, for myself, for my craft. For my creativity. 

The reward is a diamond. It isn’t flashy. It doesn’t look like a glamorous, shiny gemstone I can flash around or make reels about. I have less to show, there is less garnering of attention, and not much of me is left at the end of each day—but the diamond itself is real. It took years to unearth, and now that I have it, I know I’ll protect it. The diamond is greater confidence. The diamond is a belief in myself, in a knowing that I can create my dreams out of whatever I have around me. The diamond is a genuine love for my creativity—one that makes the process of writing and drawing fun, challenging, and, quite plainly, delightful. 

TUESDAY

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

“When I first became a mother in 2020, I was enveloped by the notion that I shouldn’t lose myself to domesticity: to motherhood, to my family, to my home. I didn’t want my creativity to evaporate; I loved my work and career. I wanted a clear work-life separation, I wanted a studio where I could deposit my thoughts, I wanted a room of my own. I felt a stark separation within myself—one where the artist in me perpetually fought to step out from under the shadow of the mother in me. As a tide slowly retreats from shore, my creativity, too, waned—but with no promise of return.

When I decided to have another child, I knew I’d have to approach myself differently. I couldn’t carry the resentment of not being enough—or the self-imposed pressure of keeping my career life cleanly separate from my life as a mother. I needed to redefine what my work meant to me, and I needed to redefine where creativity lived. Instead of seeing my work as a vessel for my creativity, I spent the year shaping my creativity into the vessel itself: I wanted it to live everywhere.”

—An excerpt from My Year At Home: A Love Letter to My Creativity, published in Issue #62 of Uppercase Magazine. The 12 lessons I reflected on are available in the full essay, available online and in newsstands everywhere.

WEDNESDAY

We’re in Michigan for the week, and it’s exactly what I was hoping it’d be. 

Blackbirds chase falcons in the clouds; the water chases the sky, F chases N across the sand and state lines. Every so often, N turns me to me and says, Mom, I’m so happy we’re here. 

We eat waffles on the beach, we climb rainbow stairs, we move through each mess more quickly and cleanly than before. We’re learning; we’re living; we’re all together—and not just in the physical sense of the word.  

THURSDAY

Michigan is on repeat all week, of course—as it should be—and it led me to discover the artwork of Brooklyn artist Laura Normandin, who is responsible for the album’s artwork, and who, quite frankly, I should have known about much sooner. I like her painted bottles, this woven enclosure, and the fact that it appears she’s managed to escape the internet. 

FRIDAY

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.

Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.

—Midsummer, Tobago by Derek Walcott 

xx,

M

---

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

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.

---

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

---

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.

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

---

To sign up for my weekly newsletter, Dear Somebody, please subscribe here.