Dear Somebody: More Than Machine.

January 30, 2026

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

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

MONDAY

I sit on Zoom with three friends, all of us hoping to connect after the slog of winter holidays and time away from ourselves. I look forward to our monthly calls—we are all four South Asian, all four book-makers, all four interested in bringing our identities to the forefront of an industry that, with all of its promise, still resists a bend towards change.

One friend lives in Minneapolis. Her life is grocery deliveries and running escort for those too frightened to leave their homes; her life is organizing and comforting her community; her life is checking social media to see where it’s safe to go; her life is trying not to fall prey to the horrors of social media; her life is carrying her papers on her person, though she is a US citizen, though she knows her papers may not spare her. When you look eye to eye into a gun, it’s a roll of the dice. How generous or angry or sad is the gunman today?

Another friend lost a parent swiftly, unexpectedly, during a personal season reserved for joy. Our hearts explode with the conflict of emotion. Our faces contort with grief while we listen to her story. I feel tiny muscles in my face move involuntarily. For hours, we listen. We speak sparingly, holding space for each other to exist in this liminal space between the reality of our lives and the memory this call will soon be. The tears fall rapidly.

I cry for two days after. I am not unfamiliar with death. It is not hidden in our culture: We hold the bodies close, we help the spirit go on. Still, the sadness I feel seems to double in size. The anger burns me up inside. I call my parents and ask them to explain Hindu death rituals to me, why the dead are cared for more lovingly than those who are still alive. I can’t stop thinking about violence—in life, and death, and then again while we escort the dead to the afterlife. Why I am so shaken? For a few days, I interrogate myself for my weakness. Why am I so affected by another person’s pain? Why can’t I let it go? How will I ever handle this grief when it is my own?

It’s a few weeks later now. My mind is beginning to sing, rather than scold, as I have instructed it to do. I do not feel shame for my sensitivity; rather, I recognize the barbaric nature of having ever asked myself to detach from another person’s grief. From a community’s grief. From our country’s grief. My children are five and two. Already, they feel the discomfort of observing pain in each other’s eyes. They ask questions. They move towards each other. They try to help. Though they feel discomfort, they do not avert their eyes. They do not look away.

I stretch and check the walls of my body, the home that houses this mind. I exercise to keep my head on straight. I draw so that I can care for my children and husband. I sleep so the anger doesn’t burn me up from inside. I call my representatives. I donate to the cause. I chisel away our resistance towards change.

T opens the back door to collect N, and the cold air soars into me like a stone. It is six degrees this morning. I shake the cold off and head upstairs to write, to call, to help, to do whatever I can to keep the lights on inside this home of mine.

TUESDAY

*A photo of my essay and illustration, “*More Than Machine” for Issue #68 of Uppercase Magazine *(2025)*

I wrote about making art when it feels hopeless to do for my column, Being, in the current issue of Uppercase Magazine:

“It is easy to criticize your role in society as an artist—to say that your work is less urgent than that of someone who works in medicine or education. It is artists, however, who have sparked change in every single generation, through the books they have written, the paintings they have created and the music they have played. Writer Ursula K. Le Guin said, “Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” Many people believe that art is separate from politics, but who you are and what you believe in fortifies what you create. What you create can make someone reconsider their own actions and thoughts, so clarify your values and pour them into your work.

Part of your role as an artist is being able to imagine a world that does not already exist—a society that responds differently to the needs of those living within it. If you lose the ability to imagine, you lose the opportunity to create a sense of possibility within your work or ignite it within others. Imagination requires hope, not only the belief that something new is possible—but that it is worth working towards.”

*A photo of my illustration and essay, “*More Than Machine”*, for Issue #68 of* Uppercase Magazine (2025)

*Issue #68 of* Uppercase Magazine (2025)

You can read the entire essay, More Than Machine: Guidance for Creative Resistance in Issue 68 of Uppercase Magazine.

P.S. As for resistance on a more personal level, I wrote about how creating this illustration helped me understand and process my own life in last week’s letter.

WEDNESDAY

Monarca offers training in becoming a legal observer; Publishing for Minnesota is offering original art, manuscript crits, and business resources and more; Immigrant Rapid Response Fund from the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota will direct your money to where it’s needed most. Stand with Minnesota. Call your representatives.

THURSDAY

“To draw yourself back into being” by Charlotte Ager.

FRIDAY

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman’s silence
receiving the river’s grace,
the gardener’s musing on rows.

I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.

—The Want of Peace by Wendell Berry

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

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

Dear Somebody: New beginnings.

January 23, 2026

*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.

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.

xx,
M

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

Dear Somebody: Taking creative inventory.

November 21, 2025

Three Sisters Make a Wish *for* Uppercase Issue #67 (2025)

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

MONDAY

For my current Being column, I wrote about taking creative inventory. I make an effort to do this at the beginning of ever quarter, in order to re-align my creative work with my evolving values. An excerpt is below; the entire article is available for reading in the current issue of Uppercase Magazine.

Three Sisters Make a Wish, *published in Issue 67 of Uppercase Magazine (2025)*

“On a rudimentary level, this means disengaging with behavior where other people’s lives and work stamps out the value of mine. I stop scrolling Instagram, where it becomes easy to believe that everyone else is better at everything—from parenting to painting—than me. I stop reading books by artists I love if I find that I’m comparing my voice to theirs. Instead of turning to Pinterest—or even the books in my studio, for inspiration, I head to the library. I turn back 100 years or so and usually find the most exciting inspiration in work that was created prior to the Internet’s existence—before the allure of someone else’s life and creativity became more important than my own.

On a more conscious level, this work means recognizing my true voice—my values, stories, and desires, deeply enough to separate it from the rest. When self-doubt creeps in and tells me my work isn’t good enough, I recognize that it’s the voice of my fear, who can’t bear to see me fail. When the pressure of producing more work than is sustainable grinds at me, I recognize that it’s the voice of my immigrant upbringing that tells me I must succeed to be worthy, even of my own love.”

—from Creative Inventory: Going Back to the Basics for Issue 67 of Uppercase Magazine

TUESDAY

“My grandmother says that mango trees used to belong to everyone”; tracing the removal of Confederate monuments across the American south; the principles of patience.

WEDNESDAY

*The cover of* LEARNING TO LET GO, published by Michael O’Mara Books (2025)

The UK edition of LEARN TO LET GO, titled LEARNING TO LET GO, came out this week! I’m thrilled to have this edition available for overseas readers, and very grateful to Michael O’Mara for supporting this book.

If you’re in the UK or overseas, please support this edition of the journal buy purchasing directly through Michael O’Mara, Amazon UK, Waterstones, or at your local independent bookstore.

For a limited time, Bookshop.org is offering 10% off with the code LOVEBOOKSHOPS — it’s the perfect time to pick a copy or two for the upcoming holiday season. Thank you, always, for your support and encouragement.

THURSDAY

Some of you may remember that I painted Tony Hoagland’s Reasons to Survive November during my MFA program three years ago. I was introduced to the poem by Laura Olin and from the moment I read the first line, the poem has never left my brain.

To me, the mark of good art is if it propels the reader to do something. Hoagland’s poem did that for me; it inspired me to pick up a paintbrush and create something new. The poem itself speaks of an enemy, and in my early years of motherhood, the enemy felt external: the many obstacles that stood in between me and the art I so desperately wanted—needed, to make.

Over the past handful of years, I’ve worked myself up into a fever trying to make emotive work—not work based on an emotional subject or experience, but work that made the viewer feel. How can I use colors to better express certain emotions? How can I use texture to create an emotional landscape? How can word and image come together to create something otherwise inexplicable? How can I make a simple drawing that beckons a feeling otherwise unseen, a feeling that can only survive deep inside the heart?

Years later, the questions above are still the questions I ask myself each time I sit down to make. And years later, Hoagland’s poem still inspires me to take action: to pick up a paintbrush and create. But as I grow as a person and as an artist, my enemy looks less like someone or something outside of me. The more I make, the more deeply I understand that my biggest obstacle isn’t balancing motherhood and career, finding clients, or growing an online platform: it’s reducing the volume of the voice inside me that says I’m destined to fail.

Reasons to Survive November hanging in our mudroom (2025)

This painting now hangs in our mudroom; N refers to it as The November Poem. Most days, I walk right past it in an effort to tidy the mountain of shoes, pack backpacks, or shove tiny feet into even tinier socks. But when I do look up, I see much more than a strange painting laden with young brushstrokes and skewed perspective. I see myself in a kaleidoscope, through a million different lenses, every version of myself eager to help the next survive.

FRIDAY

November like a train wreck—
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

The sky is a thick, cold gauze—
but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.

—Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.

I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.

—Reasons to Survive November by Tony Hoagland

See you next week!

xx,

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

Dear Somebody: N turns five years old.

October 31, 2025

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

MONDAY

When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, the morning is ready. The sparkly lights have been hung, dangling over the bannister. The pom poms have been hung, twirled around the sparkly lights and the felted banner that reads happy birthday. The gifts are piled on top of the squishy yellow chair, waiting to be opened. The flamingo cake is baked and assembled, waiting to be eaten. The birthday breakfast is cooked and plated, a tiny candle on top, waiting to be blown out.

When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, her sister is ready. F follows her around with arms outstretched, longing to place them around her big sister. Happy birthday, N. Birthday huggie time! she screams over and over again, in the only pitch volume she knows: loud. F follows N from room to room, struggling to hug her while N struggles to walk away, struggling to hug her while N brushes her teeth. That’s enough hugs! N says, annoyed, and F, finally giving up, turns to me and says: I want my birthday to come out now.

When N wakes up on her fifth birthday, her father and I are ready. We’ve been talking about it for days now: how it’s been five years since we first became parents, how five is a milestone, how five means something. I recall every moment in the past five years when I have faltered under the weight of parenthood, and wish I’d been more present for the sweet child in front of me. I remind myself that all I can do is offer N who I am; give her the space necessary to dissent, grow, and learn; and to try—genuinely try, to live a little more graciously. A little more in the present.

When N climbs into bed on the night of her fifth birthday, her bedroom is ready. The ceiling fan whirls. Her sparkly canopy gently sways. The stars on her walls twinkle and swirl. When I tuck her in, she asks me to stay and snuggles into me. She clutches my body like a toddler during drop off, so closely that I forget she’s five years old. So closely that I forget that next year she’ll be six, then twelve, and then out of my arms altogether. N is quiet. Her eyes are closed, but I know she’s awake because her hand moves so closely in mine. Quite suddenly, I don’t feel ready anymore.

TUESDAY

*N’s flamingo cake, on her fifth birthday* (2025)

N requests a flamingo cake for her birthday and although I fret about it for weeks, it comes together quite nicely and with little difficulty. Five years into making birthday cakes for my kids, I feel something I rarely feel, which is pride: for taking on a task and accomplishing it, for making a young kid’s wish come true, for enjoying the process and letting the mistakes show.

*N eats a flamingo on her fifth birthday* (2025)

Past cakes include F’s bluey cake, F’s rainbow cake, N’s rainbow cake, N’s painted cake.

WEDNESDAY

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin

THURSDAY

To celebrate the 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 New York Times Bestselling Author, wellness educator, and Restorative Writing teacher Alex Elle. Alex is also the author of How We Heal, a practical and empowering guide to self-healing.

I’ve known Alex since my Brooklyn days, and it’s been stunning to see her growth over the years—as an author and artist, but also as a mother, partner, and friend. I’m so happy to share this space with her today.

What have you let go of?

AE: I’ve let go of the belief that I have to prove my worth through overextending myself—creatively or personally. I no longer chase validation by saying yes when I mean no, or by holding onto relationships and projects that no longer align. Letting go of people-pleasing and performance has made space for deeper honesty, more intentional work, and a steadier connection to my own voice. What’s mine won’t require me to betray myself to keep it.

What did you gain when you released it?

AE: I gained a grounded sense of self-trust and the freedom to create, connect, and care from a place of alignment—not obligation.

What are you letting go of?

AE: I’m learning to let go of urgency—the need to have all the answers, fix what’s broken, or rush my healing..

What are you learning from this process?

AE: I’m learning that the more I unfurl, the more I bloom.

Many thanks to Alex for sharing a little bit of her journey with us. You can learn more about Alex’s work and subscribe to her newsletter, Gratitude Journal.

P.S. Past interviews include Carolyn Yoo on letting go of artistic identity, and Malaka Gharib, on letting go of yes.

Learn to Let Go came out last week! Thank you to everyone who has bought, shared, and celebrated the release of this special book.

In case you missed it, I spoke about acceptance, letting go, and making books with Radim Malinic on the Daring Creativity podcast. I joined my friend Kena Paranjape for a really lovely conversation about the book in the Supernova community. The book is featured in the latest issue of Uppercase Magazine (thank you, Janine!), and I joined Jessica Swift for a conversation about letting go in our creative practices at her Art Oasis retreat.

As a reminder, Bookshop.org is offering a 15% on all orders with the code LTLG15 for a limited time. This is a good time to grab a copy or two or five, especially for upcoming holiday gifts. 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

On the bridge
A village witch
Tells me

You see nothing
Clearly, since in all your eyes
A fog gathers generations

—The Witch by Ye Hui

See you next week!

xx,

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

Dear Somebody: On this side of the lake.

July 25, 2025

Yesterday, I wrote to my representatives and senator requesting we shut the Everglades detention camps—you can, too.

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

MONDAY

Lake Michigan on the Milwaukee side (2025)

We pile into the car evenly—three children and three adults, a dozen books and crayons shoved into backpacks, grocery bags of assorted snacks. We sing songs and have nonsensical conversations; we count how many hours, then minutes, there are left. W cries from the numbness that settles into her unused limbs, F cries that my hand is too far away to hold. From her perch in the third row, N watches with detached amusement. Nearly seven hours later, we arrive in Milwaukee. Though K and I have been friends for 30 years now, this trip together with our young children is our first.

After unpacking and settling in, we feed the restless children and tuck them in. The next morning, we head to the beach. On this side of the lake, the cold water is clear. I wade in after N and look down at my toes. Though they are two feet below water, I find them easily. I don’t know if the water is clean, but I pretend it is, the transparency of it inviting me to look more closely. My toes curve over hundreds of stones, mostly Basalt and Septarian, smoothed over hundreds of years in the sea. Each one is the perfect shape. It’s easy for me to love—to seek out, even, the blemishes in natural materials. It’s much harder for me to accept the flaws in people, the flaws in myself—but I am working on it. I look for Yooperlites, but find none.

The morning passes easily. The sun is hot; the lake is cold. The girls oscillate between joy, fatigue, and hunger. N and I build a sand castle; F knocks it down. W has a qualm; no one knows what it is. The children cry and then move on. We do, too. When it’s time to pack up and head home for lunch, all three girls protest, having fallen in love with the lake. My heart is close to bursting, for all I want is for my girls to love the water, themselves, and each other. We’ll come back tomorrow, we promise, brushing the sand from their bodies. On this side of the lake, multiple friendships are forming.

On the deck of our rental house, I hang up our wet things. Our three girls sprawl over the wooden slats and eat. It’s odd to see how much F and W resemble the younger versions of K and I—how these incarnates will have their own chance for a lifetime of friendship with each other. How N, maybe, will look after them the way my own sister does. Long car rides, conversations late into the night. Tears, arguments, the inevitable periods of silence. The first phone call after. The acceptance of each others’ flaws. I hope they will take turns holding on and letting go, but mostly, I hope, they’ll spend their time making each other feel known.

We spend a few more days at the lake. Our three girls play and chatter, sometimes together, sometimes apart. Like the stones I reach for, each is strange and wonderful. We build more sand castles, and this time, it’s the water that knocks them down. On this side of the lake, we don’t mind, because the water teaches us about friendship: it ebbs and flows, but always, in the end, it goes on.

TUESDAY

For Issue 66 of Uppercase Magazine, I wrote about my recently revived journaling practice, and the effects it’s made on my life and creative work.

A photo of my latest essay for Uppercase Magazine on daily journalling

A photo of my latest essay for Uppercase Magazine (2025)

“Over the past 8 months, I’ve changed how I approach journaling. This desire sprang from a cycle of emptiness: I found my attention was compromised, tired of being pelted by constant news, memes, and even the latest popular works in art and literature. Perhaps most alarming, I felt an uncomfortable urge to adopt whichever creative trend was flavor of the week. To challenge myself, I began writing daily in one of the many blank notebooks I’ve acquired over the past decade. I kept my expectations low to guarantee success: write about anything I want, for any amount of time, every day. There was no minimum page or word count (I’d fallen out of the morning pages routine years ago), no restrictions on content or format (I could vent, make lists, or write poetry), and I had little expectation of where this practice would lead me. The satisfaction was meant to be found in the act of writing itself—and it was.”

—from Daily Journalling: A Practice that Forever Altered My Work (and My Life) for Issue 66 of Uppercase Magazine

WEDNESDAY

I’m excited to announce that now, when you pre-order Learn to Let Go through BuyOlympia, you’ll receive this limited-edition LETTING GO art print, too! Get yours here—and consider ordering a few for some friends, too. We could all use a little encouragement in the places we feel stuck.

Many thanks to my friends at BuyOlympia for putting this together.

THURSDAY

While in Milwaukee, we spend time at the Grohmann Museum. Surprisingly, it is a place where all four of us fall in love. The museum showcases the evolution of labor and work throughout history and it was easy to see that nearly everything is possible using the two hands in front of me. Writing about it now, I see—again, quite easily, how much good it would do for me to remember this.

I was surprised by how N gravitated towards the depictions of household labor: how she seemed enchanted by skilled trade as much as I am. Some of our favorite pieces showed ordinary people transforming ordinary materials into something more: cork shaped into stoppers, glass blown into bottles, chemicals mixed into medicines.

The Happy Gardener by Hermann Kem (oil on panel)

The Breton Spinner by Eugene Feyen (oil on panel)

Although I’ve always been a crafts person, age encourages me to learn as many skills as I can—to be less reliant on corporations for my needs, to spend more time creating the objects that surround me. They are usually less beautiful, and sometimes less useful, but they mean more—and these days, meaning goes a long way.

FRIDAY

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass.
And as he stares into the sky, there
are twice as many stars as usual.

—The Two-headed Calf by Laura Gilpin

See you next week!

xx,

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

Dear Somebody: The car ride home.

June 27, 2025

*A glimpse at some of the finished and in-process paintings on my desk (watercolor and ink, 2025)*

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

MONDAY

My new commute to pick both girls up from school closes in on an hour and forty minutes. I was sour the first week, grumbling about my shortened workday, grumbling about the traffic, grumbling about the other drivers. I worried about N sitting for such long car rides, I worried about her falling asleep, I worried about both of us surviving F’s relentless car screams.

A couple of weeks in, N and I have settled into our new rhythm. She slowly climbs into her car seat and asks if I brought her a snack, knowing I did. I drive, she eats. Sometimes she tells me about her day and asks about mine; sometimes we call my sister and N chats with her cousins; sometimes we listen to whatever book I’m listening to until N asks me to turn it off. Nearly everyday, we call T and ask how long until he’ll be home.

Today, N is quiet. I dodge drivers who shouldn’t be on the road, and N dodges the sunlight searching for her eyes. She asks for penny on the train tracks and we both sing to ourselves. I watch her eyes close in the rearview mirror, her head drooping like an overgrown flower. She falls asleep with a sigh of relief, soft and inviting, a strawberry still in her mouth.

I drive along the strip malls and sun-bleached strips of grass. I’m driving through the suburbs of St. Louis, my four-year-old daughter in tow, but all of a sudden I’m the four-year-old, nodding along to sounds of a rolled-down window while my dad drives, falling asleep the instant the key hits the ignition. I am filled with nostalgia for the feeling of absolute safety one feels as a child being driven around by someone who loves her most.

On these drives, I feel solidly like a parent, able to give my daughter a feeling of security and trust. My past becomes my present, and my daughter’s future—and I find myself comforted by the continuous cycle of life, by the mundanity of parenting and all of its tedious chores—which gives me one long drive, every day, with someone I love most.

TUESDAY

100% of sales from Little U, Uppercase Magazine’s books for the young at heart, are donated to UNICEF for humanitarian aid in the Gaza crisis; the new Asian American Literary Archive; risography for Gaza; the surprising ways siblings shape our lives; call it fate, call it karma.

WEDNESDAY

“HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.

HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.

HELPED are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.” —from Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar

THURSDAY

I originally bought Elizabeth Haidle’s Drawing is… as a fun book for me and N to work through together. After reading it on and off for the past few weeks, however, it’s found its way out of N’s room and into my studio, where it sits next to my drawing desk as a symbol of encouragement.

I write about my experience as a working artist often: the process, the sound of my creativity, the small joys, the breakthroughs. The feeling of being forgotten. I’m not sure what I expected Drawing is…to be, but I’m surprised by what it actually is: a thoughtful meditation on discovering the creative, imaginative artist hiding inside you. It has plenty of technical information to help N (and me!) experiment and use different materials, which I expected, and plenty of prompts and exercises for thinking more deeply about your art-making, which I’m excited to try.

What I was most surprised, however, is how Haidle corralled all of this information under the umbrella of a very healthy artist philosophy: that every step you take as an artist—however messy or seemingly insignificant, will lead you somewhere new—somewhere, certainly, worth going.

You can purchase Drawing is… and learn more about Beth’s work.

FRIDAY

I am pulling myself together.
Don’t want to go on a trip.
I have painted the living room white
and taken out most of my things.
The room has never been so empty.
Just now a banging thunder
and suddenly falling rain.
I leave the typewriter and run
outside in my nightgown and take
the cotton blanket off the line.
It is summer and I am in the middle
of my life. Alone and happy.

—Grinding the Lens by Linda Gregg

See you next week!

xx,

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

Dear Somebody: When all is quiet.

June 20, 2025

*A recent sketchbook page* (watercolor and ink, 2025)

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

MONDAY

I sit on the front porch eating a sandwich slapped together with whatever is left in the fridge. I need to go grocery shopping, I need to unpack my kids’ summer clothes, I need to clean the kitchen, I need to take a shower. I’ve been working nonstop towards my current picture book deadline. I’m rewriting a manuscript I care deeply about, I have a new journal coming out this fall, I’ve begun strength training. This fall, I’m determined to learn how to sew. There is so much I want to make, but I am so slow. One day flickers into the next, and then the next, and still, it feels like I’m going nowhere.

My friend Dan Blank calls me to catch up. I confess, with embarrassment, that I don’t have very much to share: life is quiet, almost entirely consumed by my young children, and work is, too. It’s been a few years since I’ve quit the game of social media, and my world feels much smaller because of it. Quieter. I don’t receive many work inquiries because I don’t share as much online. No one can hire you if they don’t know you exist, I tell myself before emailing editors and art directors to remind them. I hold my breath and wait; I listen to the familiar song of crickets. Everyone I know is worried about work, so when my ego flares up in front of me, I stamp it out. As any artist knows, the ongoing quiet can feel suffocating. It plays tricks on you, messing with your sense of worth. It causes you to lose sight of what’s important. It is strong enough to crush your spirit.

When I hang up the phone, I sit still, sifting through this quiet. I feel ashamed of my embarrassment, for several reasons I can’t separate, quite possibly because there is no separating them. Continuing my career at the same pace, with the same fervor postpartum was simply not a viable option for me. I made conscious decisions to restructure my career and life in a way that made healthier, more meaningful sense. Yet, at times, I feel shame for not barreling ahead at the same pace—for not being able to, for not wanting to, for not wringing myself out in order to simply keep going. Though I know it’s a symptom of the culture we live in, occasionally, I still feel shame for how much I’ve changed.

Though lonely, the past few years have been good for my brain. Instead of documenting every step of my process for social media, I sink into my craft, remembering why this is the life I chose for myself. I’ve grown and solidified. I am more capable, I require less from others. And inside me, life continues to hum steadily. Joyfully. I feel far more grounded in my creative values. I’m proud of the work I make, however slow the progress is. I’m more present with my children, who, for now, still believe that their inherent worth isn’t dependent on what or how much they produce. I’m beginning to believe I’m a good mother.

On the other side of worry, I divert my energy towards developing a trust between myself, my work, and the world: things will work out. I can move towards my goals andbelieve they will be achieved. I can build creative growth and hope. I can feel forgotten and be excited to one day reemerge. I can choose to feel good—and the more I do, the more meaningful my subsequent choices are.

Back on the porch, I chew slowly. A small breeze comes along and my napkin flutters, a thin pair of two-ply wings. The tulip poplar tree across from our front yard has grown so large in the few years I’ve lived here. Now, green leaves burst forth, invigorated by our recent rains. The branches stretch towards me like the future does, like the past used to before I closed the door on it. In a few hours, my kids will thunder down these sidewalks, begging me to jump rope with them. We’ll walk down to the nearby bridge, press our faces through the windows in the cement walls, and wait for the city trains to rush by. It doesn’t matter if the conductor looks up or not; we always wave.

On this street lined with grandparents, grandchildren, and shiny blue grackles, there isn’t a single soul who cares what I look like or what my next achievement is, including me. I love living on this street instead of on social media, so I give myself over to the silence. I am grateful for my sandwich, the porch I sit on, and every small, quiet breeze.

TUESDAY

“In its simplest form, a whale’s death becomes a source of life for years beyond its time. It is a transformation that turns death into life on an almost incomprehensible scale. Beyond its biological importance, the concept of a whale fall also holds a poetic significance. It reflects themes of loss and renewal, reminding us that even in its most tragic forms, what’s happened in the past can sustain life in the present in ways we are only beginning to understand.

This haunting question reframed my understanding of land and sea as intertwined repositories of history. The ocean, like the soil, bears witness to lives lost and transformed. It warranted asking: What happens to our bodies, to their essence, when they are claimed by the ocean? How do we reconcile the ocean as both a site of loss and a source of life?”

—Omnia Said on contemporary American artist Ellen Gallagher’s Accidental Records series in Atmos

WEDNESDAY

The extremely unassuming frame I ordered for The Wedding Sari finally came, so I framed this piece and am shipping it to my aunt this week. The Wedding Sari is an essay and illustration I created for my column, Being, in Issue #65 of Uppercase Magazine. It explores the history of the Gujarati panetar, or wedding sari, and the one I wore on my wedding day, which was previously also worn by my mother and her older sister, my aunt.

Three prints of this piece exist: one hangs in my home, one hangs in my mother’s home, and now, one is somewhere on its way to my aunt’s. An excerpt of my column was included in a past letter.

THURSDAY

I’m reading: Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, an excellent novel-in-verse about the choices we make and the choices we’re taught to make; I finished listening to Solito by Javier Zamora, a heartbreaking tale of a young child’s migration to the States; I began The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate; I began My Friends by Hisham Matar.

FRIDAY

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

—Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

See you next week!

xx,

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

Dear Somebody: The many lives inside us.

May 2, 2025

*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 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,

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

Dear Somebody: In the dead of winter.

March 7, 2025

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

MONDAY

The work I’ve done all week has amounted to nothing, nothing I am proud of, anyway—but each morning, in the dead of winter, while the snow bares its teeth, as the light trickles slowly onto my desk, I sit and think of the hundreds of tulips we planted last November; the hundreds of snowdrops, too, and how one day soon will be the day that each bloom stands and turns its shining face towards the sun.

The work I’ve done all week has amounted to nothing, nothing I can show or use, anyway—but each morning, in the dead of winter, while the snow bares its teeth, as the light trickles slowly onto my desk, I sit and do my best to order a feeling that sits inside me into sentences or pictures that another person might one day find comforting or clarifying. It doesn’t always work out, but what one thing always does? I stand and turn my shining face towards the sun.

TUESDAY

Does It Honor Life? in Yanyi’s The Reading; Krista Haston’s board of cutaway houses; Thelonious Monk’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960.

WEDNESDAY

“Clarifying the why behind the work you make, and the work you wish to one day make, is necessary for maintaining creative longevity on a small and large scale. Artists who pursue their craft for internally seeded reasons, such as a sense of personal satisfaction or because it aligns with a personal value, will persist in circumstances where those who are achieving goals for external reasons will not.They will be able to endure disappointment and discouraging circumstances because there is meaning behind their pursuit. Their creative practice is steady, unwavering, and often leaves them with little choice: It is something they must do because it reflects the person they wish to be and the person they believe they are.”

—An excerpt from my latest essay, Finding Your True North, for Issue #64 of Uppercase Magazine

THURSDAY

“To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron: it burns into you and that is very painful.

Therefore, to love somebody else in the first place is always an escape which we all hope for, and we all enjoy it when we are capable of it. But in the long run, it comes back on us.” —Carl Jung

FRIDAY

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was living it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

—Vacation by Wendall Berry

See you next week!

xx,

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

Dear Somebody: Nothing, nothing.

February 14, 2025

*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

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,

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

Dear Somebody: Like a cloud.

November 4, 2024

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

MONDAY

T and I voted early last week, with N in tow. We talked about the election and voting process, but mostly we talked about why your voice matters—why you must believe it does, and act as though it does—even when it feels inaudible. Even when you feel invisible. So much of life is comprised of pretending, of doing before believing. Of doing the thing your future self would do so that one day, eventually, you become your future self.

As I cast my ballot, I thought about all the things that can go wrong between my filling out a very paper ballot and it actually counting: so many things. Elections are fragile. Ours are increasingly so, bitten through with voter restriction and misinformation, but the fact that no one other than me wants my vote to count just makes me want it more.

This morning, I read about Craig Mod’s experience of casting his ballot from Japan:

I slammed my ballot down and shoved it into an EMS international airmail envelope and gleefully paid thirty freggin’ bucks or so to get that sucker to my utterly blue state knowing damn well that that vote won’t tip the scales in any meaningful way. And yet. And yet — AND. YET. — I wanna be on that ledger. Goddamn, you bet I want to be on that ledger. What else is there but the ledger in a moment like this? Pull the lever, cast your tiny pebble into it all and hope things add up. De minimis? Hell no. At the very least, you’ll be present on the cosmic scale, a little number at the end of a bigger number — one that wouldn’t have been quite as big without you. That’s not nothing, and when your grandkids asked what you did right now — in this mythic time of madness and infinite resources all seemingly used in the wrong ways, facing the wrong directions, directed at the wrong people — you can at least say you were present, doing the smallest of things you could in whatever way you could.

Freedom doesn’t usually feel like freedom until it’s taken away. In 2024, I’m still allowed to vote in an American presidential election. I did, and I will, until I can’t. There were many things my family did last Thursday that were meaningless, that genuinely did not matter—but casting a vote and reminding myself and my kid that what we domatters, that who we are matters—was not one of them.

TUESDAY

“In the past, I’ve been perplexed by artists who work intuitively–artists who say they simply knew to use a certain color or to make a specific mark. A fear of failure, compounded by a mountain of self-doubt, led me to believe these artists possessed an innate talent I didn’t have. For years, I attempted to use logic and reason to convince myself of this self-sabotaging belief because it relieved me from the responsibility of accepting the truth: that intuition in craft develops through years of regular practice.

In Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland address this very idea: ‘For every artist who has developed a mature vision with grace and speed, countless others have laboriously nurtured their art through fertile periods and dry spells, through false starts and breakaway bursts, through successive and significant changes of direction, medium, and subject matter. Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won’t count for much.’”

—An excerpt from my latest essay, Intuition and Your Creative Voice: One Leads to the Other, for Issue #63 of Uppercase Magazine

WEDNESDAY

“There’s no shortcut. I’m no accident. People like to say it’s natural. It’s not so. You have to practice and you have to study.” —Miles Davis

“…I personally have been focused on changing my own negativity bias. And because our brains have plasticity, we can actually change this. I’ve spent the past two years trying to unlearn a focus on the negative all the time as the main thing. And because a focus on all our problems is draining, and it is super depressing and sometimes actually is debilitating. And something that organizing campaigns taught me early on was to focus less on problems, but to turn those problems into issues that people could maybe actually find a way to engage in to transform and change. And this has really kept me going over the years. I think oftentimes about, if I hadn’t been involved in organizing campaigns, what my life would have looked like, how much I probably would have been so depressed, you know, more depressed. Because I just think having a way to be able to see a way forward to transform and change my conditions is such a huge part for me of being able to live in the world.” —Mariame Kabe, in conversation with Kelly Hayes, on their book, Let This Radicalize You

THURSDAY

As a longtime reader of Modern Love essays, I enjoyed learning a little more about how illustrating the column for so long has affected Brian Rea.

As a longtime admirer of printmaking techniques, I’m working up the courage to make some Tetrapak prints—has anyone done this? Does anyone still have or use their Gocco printer?

As a longtime fan of all sky-related matters, I was initially perplexed (“…a cloud?”) and ultimately renewed (“…a cloud!”) by N’s request to be a cloud for Halloween this year. I made two costumes out of paper mache, but when they didn’t work out, I turned to newspaper print and cotton batting.

I constantly use my voice to tell my children to be who they are—to go against the grain if the grain doesn’t suit them, and to listen to themselves, even if it’s a little lonelier when they do.

On Halloween, in a sea of glitter and color and power, there was only one cloud. Steady and sweet, if a little unassuming. Flying under the radar, certainly, but unreplicable. Irreplaceable. Like a cloud. Like freedom. And I was proud.

FRIDAY

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

—The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye

See you next week!

xx,

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

Dear Somebody: A Love Letter to My Creativity

July 5, 2024

*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

“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,

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Dear Somebody: Being here.

April 12, 2024

An illustration for my column, *Being*, in Issue #61 of *Uppercase Magazine*

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

MONDAY

When T pulls handfuls of weeds away from our hydrangea bushes, we discover a mourning dove sitting quietly, her back against the brick of our house. T stops pulling weeds; N stops eating; I stop talking. Is she nesting? Is she hurt? How can we help? We didn’t mean to expose her, but we have. We go inside. From the window I watch her two small eyes blinking in the sun.

When F contracts an illness, I know the week ahead will be gutted, and it is. The sitter is canceled, my work is placed on hold indefinitely. The deadlines pile up, as does the laundry, the dust. My inbox groans; my daily poem practice falls further behind.

I don’t optimize. It doesn’t make sense anymore. In the past, I have worried, having convinced myself that worrying is doing something and therefore, at least, still productive. Of course, I was wrong; each day, I continue to be. If there’s a purpose to life, maybe this is it—to constantly unlearn until, at the end, I am stripped of all belief, leaving the way I came in: honest, unharmed, full of possibility.

I don’t optimize. I have worked too hard at letting go. There are no to-do lists in my head. I don’t write poems while F takes her bottle, I don’t clean the house while she eats oatmeal. I spend time leisurely, as if I have boatloads of it, as if someone out there is making more of it for me. We sit outside and listen to the world. I ask F if she remembers the eclipse and the way the sky moved like a movie. She wails in response. She cries a lot. She coughs a lot. I sit with her and together, we do nothing. I am here.

More than once, she crawls into my lap, buries her face in my shirt, and falls asleep. I wish I had my phone, I think to myself, so I could do something. Old habits die hard, but I recognize the impulse, however warily. I don’t retrieve my phone. Instead, I do what I am doing: I sit on the second-floor landing and rub F’s back with my hands, staring at our hallway walls. I am here.

I rock F to sleep, something I haven’t done for the past 8 months, and in this act, she feels like a baby in my arms once more. I admit, I am nostalgic. Maybe it’s because she’s turning one next week, maybe it’s because I am turning decades older than that. Maybe it’s because there is no match for a moment sweeter than this one, where a child sleeps safely in my arms. Maybe it’s because there’s safety in these moments for me, too. I am here. From above I watch her two small eyes blinking with sleep.

TUESDAY

I read Go to Sleep (I Miss You) and Kid Gloves by Lucy Knisley; I read Tokyo These Days by Taiyo Matsumoto (that cover!); I started Sunny by Jason Reynolds. I am re-reading James Marshall’s eulogy for Arnold Lobel, one of my favorite children’s writers and illustrators, and a fellow devotee of friendship.

WEDNESDAY

For my latest Being column in Issue #61 of Uppercase Magazine, I wrote about how the themes in our creative work change shape and expand, evolving as we do, but ultimately remain the same—they are fragments of our foundational selves that we will always explore.

I touch on the importance of revisiting past work, even if it’s difficult to do so:

“Revisiting old work is clarifying. It brings you closer to the person you were at that time—the person who felt pulled to capture a feeling, thought, or question through their art. It’s also a chance to notice how much you and your work have changed—a chance to acknowledge the creative obstacles you’ve puzzled through and the personal ones your artmaking pulled you through.”

—from The First Work I Make is the Last Work I Make for Uppercase Magazine #61, available now.

THURSDAY

Today, it was pointed out to me that my emotional vocabulary is pretty limited(!). I was both bowled over and energized by this comment. I’ve spent the past decade helping others identify and process their own emotions, only to quietly realize that my knowledge has plateaued. I am humbled and, quite honestly, enthused by how far there is to go.

I am reading How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett in an immediate effort to remedy my own cause. I welcome further reading! If you have a book recommendation, please do share.

FRIDAY

Years do odd things to identity.
What does it mean to say
I am that child in the photograph
at Kishamish in 1935?
Might as well say I am the shadow
of a leaf of the acacia tree
felled seventy years ago
moving on the page the child reads.
Might as well say I am the words she read
or the words I wrote in other years,
flicker of shade and sunlight
as the wind moves through the leaves.

—from Leaves by Ursula K. Le Guin

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: Paying attention.

January 12, 2024

*An illustration for Issue #60 of* Uppercase Magazine

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

MONDAY

I bundle F up into a navy blue sweater onesie with a giant yellow smiley face on it, Mulan socks that are too big for her tiny rabbit feet, and a white snowsuit. She’s wailing, already, and we haven’t yet left the house.

After a leisurely fall season, which is, hands-down, my favorite part about living in St. Louis, it’s finally cold. Uncomfortably so. I remind myself that the discomforts in life refresh us in all the ways a new year only promises to, and zip my coat up to the throat.

It’s 8:30 in the morning and I haven’t had coffee, but as soon as the icy wind smacks me in the face, I feel invigorated, even giddy. To me, the most beautiful part about nature is that she doesn’t coddle. She can’t wait for us to keep up; she has far greater things to do. She thrashes and stomps and lingers. She doesn’t stop to think or wait for a better time. She heals herself the best she can. She considers the larger picture. She goes on.

F’s protests have quieted, subdued by all there is to digest. She looks at the bare arms of maples, dogwoods, and elms; she stretching her own. Branches scrape against buildings and the sky. The wind whistles as it passes through our clothes and hair, searching. Birds rummage against the wind, finding their way towards food or home. We listen to them sing while they work or play. Song is something that has a place almost anywhere. I want more of it.

When I turn the corner towards our little free library, I feel a bolt of panic. Sharp and quiet. Since the first of January, I’ve noticed it more and more: the way the years are running away from me. The way they look back at me and laugh, remembering that I once worried that things would never change.

N rides a bicycle and takes showers. She strips off her coat and sweaters to be closer to Sister Winter. She’s learning how to manage her own temper; I’m learning, too. She’s not in any rush; she takes a long time. She is quiet, observant—but now and then, she steps outside of herself to dance and laugh maniacally. In these moments, she is so uninhibited that my heart splinters.

In the fall, she’ll start at a new school, maybe, and F will, too. They will reach for each other; I will have more time for myself. I know that this is what I’ve looked forward to, but it doesn’t feel satisfying. Raising children is such a mournful affair—a rush of head and heart, a constant coming up for air. Other than affection, what I’ve felt most over the past few years is internal conflict and a desire for solitude. Now, for the first time since becoming a mother, I feel a little lonely.

The robins sing. F waves at them, then becomes distracted by her own hand. I see the miracle of song and wave. I see the miracle of ten tiny fingers on two tiny hands. I see the old years and the new years chasing each other, faster now, and then a blur.

I see the entire world standing before me. She says the same thing she always says, the same thing I know she’ll always say: I hope you’re paying attention.

TUESDAY

“This practice of rewriting my personal color story is useful in a few ways. I am more intimately privy to the inner workings of my own mind, able to discern why an individual shade, or an entire spectrum of a single hue—affects me in the way it does. I am able to pair and detach certain colors with specific memories, and therefore, emotions. I also find myself largely immune to the effects of commercial color marketing. Rather than feeling agitated by the color red, for example, which is routinely found in conjunction with extreme feelings of stress and urgency (stop signs, red lights, sirens, and all combinations of warnings), I feel interested, almost eager. All three of these emotional states—agitation, interest, and eagerness—are based in excitement, but only agitation (which is the combination of excitement and anxiety), has a negative effect on my body and mind.”

—An excerpt from “Emotional Color,” my latest Being column for Issue #60 of Uppercase Magazine

WEDNESDAY

I had the joy of speaking to Andrea Scher on the School of Wonder podcast, where we discussed confidence, creativity, and courage. This episode is available for streaming here.

THURSDAY

I am: re-reading A Separate Peace, enjoying this artwork—especially as N learns her letters, watching Reservation Dogs, and thinking about love.

I can’t stop thinking about this cover artwork, created by Tolkien to accompany a series of letters he wrote for his children.

F and I listen to Joni Mitchell during breakfast.

FRIDAY

The world is not simple.
Anyone will tell you.
But have you ever washed a person’s hair
over a tin bucket,
gently twisting the rope of it
to wring the water out?
At the end of everything,
dancers just use air as their material.
A voice keeps singing even
without an instrument.
You make your fingers into a comb.

—Tin Bucket by Jenny George

xx,

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Dear Somebody: The start of something.

January 5, 2024

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.

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

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

xx,

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Dear Somebody: Inyeon.

October 6, 2023

An illustration from my latest *Being* column for *Uppercase Magazine*

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

MONDAY

“Drawing—or mark making—has been a space for me to explore concepts without committing—before language, there were images,” writes Caitlin. After a few months without drawing, I feel bewildered, unsure of how to begin. I decide to start small to avoid overwhelm, choosing a pencil and a post-it note as my tools. I draw a small line and then another. As I layer them on top of each other, I realize I am drawing my infant daughter in stitches, the way a needle does with thread. This is the first spark—a signal that I’m on the right path. The tangible act of mark-making unlocks inspiration the same way somatic movement unravels anxiety: you must do to change how you feel. I decide to make an embroidered painting—a long-term project I’ll work on throughout my year-long maternity leave, to aid me in processing this season I’m in.

I choose it deliberately for the tedious, meditative nature of the work involved, and for its tactility. I need to feel the thread and needle; the drape of the linen as it pours over my knees. I need to feel the rhythm of my days without letting the movements mindlessly wash through me. I need to feel the frustration and monotony—and the sweetness and joy, without minimizing the weight and value of either.”

—Excerpted from A Season for Stitching, my latest Being column for Issue 59 of Uppercase Magazine

TUESDAY

“Wholeness isn’t something we acquire by stacking achievements or checking boxes or acquiring products or consumer goods. And I worry about this because I have two small children myself. They are five and six, and I’m thinking often about the world that they’re growing up in and what is that world telling them about who they should be and what success is. And what I worry about is that right now the world tells our kids and all of us that to be successful, you need one of three things: to be powerful, to be famous, or to be rich. But we all know people who have all three of those — who are wealthy, powerful, and famous — and profoundly unhappy, who don’t feel whole.

I think to truly feel whole — it’s not about acquiring something that we don’t have. It’s about remembering who we fundamentally are. Part of healing, to me, is about recognizing what we already have inside of us, coming to trust that, coming to rely on that, and ultimately coming to find fulfillment in who we are.”

—Vivek Murthy, in conversation with On Being’s Krista Tippet

WEDNESDAY

What I’ve been reading lately:

Matrescence by Lucy Jones, a beautiful part-science/part-memoir investigation into what happens to a person—spiritually, physically, mentally—during the process of becoming a mother.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, which I looked forward to reading each night for reasons I still can’t quite pinpoint. It’s an agonizingly accurate capture of high school anxiety and adolescence through the eyes of Lee Fiora, a protagonist I cannot stand and also identify with entirely too much.

A Frog in the Fall by Swedish illustrator Linnea Sterte, who has absolutely caught me with her line work and color sensibility. This gorgeous 300+ page comic is about a frog who “experiences everything for the first time”—full of humor and sweetness, totally mysterious.

THURSDAY

We watch Past Lives and I learn about the Buddhist philosophy of inyeon, which serves as an explanation for why certain people connect and reconnect in certain times and places over the course of their lives. If two people have inyeon, they will find each other over and over again, in the tiniest of exchanges—crossing next to each other on the street, their sleeves brush as they board the train, one hands the other their change, the other is a postman and delivers their mail—the tiniest of exchanges, yes, except they’re all adding up, they’re compounding, over and over again, throughout 8,000 lifetimes—until their fates eventually collide.

FRIDAY

I sit here perpetually inventing new people
as if the population boom were not enough
and not enough terror and problems
God knows, but I know too,
that’s the point. Never fear enough
to match delight, nor a deep enough abyss,
nor time enough, and there are always a few
stars missing.
I don’t want a new heaven and new earth,
only the old ones.
Old sky, old dirt, new grass.
Nor life beyond the grave,
God help me, or I’ll help myself
by living all these lives
nine at once or ninety
so that death finds me at all times
and on all sides exposed,
unfortressed, undefended,
inviolable, vulnerable, alive.

—Ars Lunga by Ursula K. Le Guin

xx,

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

Dear Somebody: Tiny miracles everywhere

July 14, 2023

*Girl and sitar*, in the latest issue of Uppercase Magazine

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

MONDAY

The past week has been full of it’s one of those days days—the kind where the baby cries until she’s sunset purple, my lower back begins to crumble, the toddler vomits at two in the morning, and all of my friends feel worlds away. I wake up at eleven o’clock, two o’clock, and five o’clock, finally getting up at six. When I look in the mirror, I feel detached or disappointed or maybe nothing at all.

It’s been storming for two days. Like the people in my home, the entire outdoors has been cranky or crying. Rain stamps out any lingering spark from the weekend’s fireworks and when we finally step outside, after wrestling with diapers and socks and rain boots and zippers, a fine mist cleans my face. It’s cold enough to need a sweater, which delights me more than most things can, and I’m irritable enough that my own delight surprises me.

We walk. The toddler sings to herself and the baby sleeps. In this moment, no one is crying or calling my name. I know this will change as soon as I allow myself to feel relieved, but I try to be in the moment anyway. I only sort-of succeed. I wish I had some time for myself, I think.

T notices, because he reminds me that gratitude cultivates joy. He’s already listened to me complain a fair amount, so I don’t push the lesson away. Instead, I make a list.

There is much I am grateful for: children who are beautifully healthy and strange; a marriage that has learned to rise rather than crumble; a body that shows up though the neck always grumbles, the bones feel emptied, and the entire thing is tired of being tired.

There is much I am grateful for: the turned leaves, freshly watered from days of rain; a pleasing lawn, freshly mown; the sprinkled song of flowers. Four birds on a wire, whistling.

Clouds that cover the ruddy clay sun in July, that’s what I’m grateful for. A thunderstorm that claps the house, the stony sound of summer hail. A late morning walk. A baby taking her third bath—only the third one she’s ever taken in her entire life—and seriously feeling the warm water run down her face. A baby who listens to the running faucet and hears a waterfall or sea lions playing or her sister splashing. The awe in her eyes. The small wonder of children. The wonder of small children. A young family stumbling to find their way. A young family stumbling, finding their way. The coolest, most welcome breeze. Tiny miracles everywhere.

TUESDAY

I’m currently reading This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel, on recommendation by a friend, and enjoying it very, very much. I’m not finished yet, but I keep thinking about the following conversation, which is similar to the one T and I have quite often, and the one I have with myself on a daily basis:

“Such a tough life. This is not the easy way."

"No," Penn agreed, "but I'm not sure easy is what I want for the kids anyway."

She looked up at him. "Why the hell not?"

"I mean, if we could have everything, sure. If we can have it all, yeah. I wish them easy, successful, fun-filled lives, crowned with good friends, attentive lovers, heaps of money, intellectual stimulation, and good views out the window. I wish them eternal beauty, international travel, and smart things to watch on tv. But if I can't have everything, if I only get a few, I'm not sure easy makes my wish list."

"Really?"

"Easy is nice. But its not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in," said Penn. "Easy is nice. But I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being."

"Easy probably rules out having children," Rosie admitted.

"Having children, helping people, making art, inventing anything, leading the way, tackling the world's problems, overcoming your own. I don't know. Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there's not much of it I'd trade for easy either, I don't think.”

P.S. Do you have any book recommendations? Please post them in the comments for us all to enjoy.

WEDNESDAY

The latest edition of my column Being was published in Issue #58 of Uppercase Magazine. I wrote about creative breakthroughs and how to cultivate them.

“A mistake I continually made throughout my career was expecting myself to produce work without rest or creative input. It’s impossible to evolve your work, or your voice, without allowing yourself to be inspired or moved by the environment that surrounds you. Although the foundation of my work is rooted in emotional well-being and healing, I found myself prioritizing work over friendship, production over creative intake, and relying on old skills over experimentation. As a result, my work remained stale, almost forgettable. Each painting was missing a spark, the essence that would imbue it with meaning. To light the spark, I had to first give myself room to breathe.”

—Creative Breakthroughs from Issue #58 of Uppercase Magazine, available now.

THURSDAY

We should be ambitious about our friendships.

FRIDAY

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

—Eagle Poem by Joy Harjo

xx,

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Dear Somebody: Should I be doing more?

June 9, 2023

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,

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Dear Somebody: Listening to yourself.

January 6, 2023

*from* Listening to Yourself *for Issue 56 of* UPPERCASE Magazine

A small note: next week, this letter will come from Substack instead of Flodesk. Please set your inboxes to accept email from meeraleepatel@substack.com to prevent your spam filter from intercepting them.

This weekly letter will continue to be free, but moving to Substack will allow me to foster community: you'll be able to comment on letters and engage in conversation if you wish. As I prepare to graduate from school this semester, I'm re-evaluating what I want my business and career to look like. Being able to offer a paid tier for my work (some possibilities I'm considering are process tutorials, personal comics, illustrated poetry, or guided journaling workshops) will allow me to sustain my business while stepping back from work that I've outgrown.

I've spent the past two years deep in transition and 2023 will include even more change, both personally and professionally. I'm strictly prioritizing writing and illustrating books, including a new beginning in picture books––and caring for my young family. I want to be more present; I want to continue growing; I want to uncover the work inside my heart. I imagine many of you share these same goals.

If there is an offering you'd like to see from me in the future, please let me know! Just hit reply to write to me. Thank you, always, for supporting me and my work.

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

MONDAY

When K, C, and their daughter M arrive to spend New Year's Eve with us, I am both excited and nervous. It's one thing to have a good friend visit, but another to mesh your families together for the first time. As an adult, long-term friendship requires more than the friendship of youth: more emotional investment, more depth and deliberation, more evaluation. I take friendship seriously; I cull my garden regularly; I become more protective of my heart and my time.

The days pass easily. Time slips by like water. We start each morning with a long, meandering walk through St. Louis, stopping only to grab coffee or watch our girls hold hands. The conversation dips between music, culture, and parenting before sloping into relationships, families, finances. Nothing feels too intimate to share. I watch our families lean into each other and feel my friendship with K widen.

The four of us sit on the couch long after December disappears into January, our laughter occasionally, slowly, shaping into yawns. The future is open; I watch the possibilities multiply; my heart swings against itself. I take note of how lucky I am.

TUESDAY

On listening to yourself:

"Over the last few weeks, I’ve prioritized myself again. I’ve begun meditating, spending time with a notebook and pencil, and consciously separating my own thoughts from the ones externally projected onto me. I’ve protected my vulnerability by only sharing myself with those I trust to understand and support me. I’ve begun writing, though it is difficult, and though the words come much more slowly than they used to. I paint for how it makes me feel, not for what the final image looks like.

I do all this with the understanding that learning to hear myself again is a continuous practice, and one that I won’t always be able to sustain with regularity. Life will happen, again—as it always does, and as it should. I will stumble again, possibly succumbing to self-doubt, much to my own disappointment. If I can continue to create, however—if I can reach down and discover what else there is inside me, to listen to myself more closely than I have before, and to write and draw what I believe to be in my heart, then there is a chance that someone out in the world will see it—and that it, too, will be what they need most in that moment."

––An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #56 of Uppercase Magazine

WEDNESDAY

A holiday gift to myself: surrounding myself with strong, unapologetic women––including this new studio inspiration from Her Name is Mud to guide me through this upcoming year of creating, transition, and challenge:

“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.” ––Georgia O'Keeffe

THURSDAY

“If we are sincere in wanting to learn the truth, and if we know how to use gentle speech and deep listening, we are much more likely to be able to hear others’ honest perceptions and feelings. In that process, we may discover that they too have wrong perceptions. After listening to them fully, we have an opportunity to help them correct their wrong perceptions. If we approach our hurts that way, we have the chance to turn our fear and anger into opportunities for deeper, more honest relationships. The intention of deep listening and loving speech is to restore communication, because once communication is restored, everything is possible, including peace and reconciliation.”

––Thich Nhat Hahn, from Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm

FRIDAY

you owe it to yourself to quit being the apology. to

hold your hand and sing your favorite song. to

love another and see how far that will go. to love

yourself and forget where you were headed in the

first place. love is a funny story. it wakes up and

builds a plot. it wakes up and shapes you into the

kind of woman your mother studies. i am not per-

fect in it. i am not even remotely articulate. but it

is big, this love. it is airborne and triumphant. i am

no easy show. i hurt like the climb of my lineage. i

hurt on purpose. i hurt to not be hurt. no, none of

this is an excuse. just a blueprint. a map. come

find me when the day is bronze and the sorrow is

full. i am building my poem in this here heart. all

of it is a working title.

––Until the Stars Collapse by Tonya Ingram

xo,

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Dear Somebody: How I give my thanks.

December 16, 2022

*From* Notes on Inspiration for *Issue 55 of* Uppercase Magazine

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

MONDAY

I step out into the evening and breathe it all in: the borrowed sky, the pinprick of star, your small hand lost in your father’s. I’m six paces behind. I follow your shadows like a stranger, I memorize each crack before you step on it, I see the uneven anger of sidewalk lashing against your toes. You talk in night voices, small but bright against the still air. I step onto the ending of each sentence—an eavesdropper, a passing thought, a pair of wings in the sky. A few maple leaves still hold onto the emptying branches above us, stout. Resolute.

For now, we are three. For tonight, there is only us. I give my thanks to whoever still listens, I gulp each stony breath more deeply than the last, I collect the cold like marbles in my lungs. I count how many evenings like this we still have left.

TUESDAY

"Inspiration propels us to act. Within the world of creativity, it is something that inspires us to create, experiment, or expand the way we think. While plagiarism merely replicates another person’s work, inspiration motivates us to thoughtfully collect elements of an artwork we resonate with, to create something new—something that previously did not exist. At its most genuine, inspiration guides us towards innovation and natural evolution.

When I’m drawn towards a particular piece of art, I study it and try to understand what it is I’m captured by. I consider three specific areas and mark my observations in my journal or sketchbook. What I’m looking for is a through-line—the line tying my sources of inspiration to the art that I’d like to create. Pinpointing this is essential in making work that is original and honest—that carries the spirit of you, despite who or what it’s inspired by."

––An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #55 of Uppercase Magazine

WEDNESDAY

“We seldom think of conversation as commitment. but it is. I find that expressing what I really feel and telling another person what is actually important to me at the moment is difficult. It requires a commitment on my part to do so, and I sense that this is true for most of us. It is equally difficult to listen. We are usually so full of our own thoughts and responses that we seldom really listen close enough to one another to grasp the real flavor of what the other person is attempting to convey. Creative communication in depth is what allows us to experience a sense of belonging to others. It is the force that limits the destructive potential in our lives and what promotes the growth aspects. Life is a struggle. Coping with a lifetime of change is a struggle, but through a lifetime of change we will experience ourselves as full persons only to the degree that we allow ourselves that commitment to others which keeps us in creative dialogue.”

––bell hooks on conversation as commitment.

THURSDAY

Last night, we watched The Snowman, an animated short based on the original children's book by Raymond Briggs. It was perfect in the way most movies from childhood aren't––that is, it stood up to the high bar of wonder and magic my 7-year-old self encased it in. Better yet, as an adult (and artist), I'm now able to fully appreciate the hundreds of hours that go into drawing and animating such a fantastic film.

Today, I listened to the soundtrack on repeat. My favorite track is, of course, Walking in the Air: gorgeously haunting piano music paired with Peter Auty's beautiful voice.

P. S. I'm also reading Grace Loh Prasad's The Orca and the Spider: On Motherhood, Loss, and Community. Have you read it? I'd love to hear your thoughts if you have.

FRIDAY

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

––Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

xo,

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