Dear Somebody: Knowing I have enough.

Princess Cake for Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE Magazine (2026)

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

MONDAY

After a week of hosting and another of travel, the ladies and I head to the supermarket to fill the fridge.

These days, grocery shopping makes me feel scummy. Avocados are $4 each and the $8 strawberries spoil within days, but I can buy both if I want to. Having enough—and the guilt of knowing I have enough, spills over into the aisle and joins F where she dances with the vegetation and sprints toward $6 yogurt pouches. I want to yell yes so she delights and no so she understands her own luck, her own privilege—and I want to yell both at the same time—but instead, I walk over to the tomatoes.

It’s only June, but the tomatoes already resemble candy, like giant caramel apples waiting for us to bob up and down and when I raise one to my nose, it reeks of summer. I put several in the shopping cart and move onto the arugula, and afterwards, when I’m already in the cheese aisle, I turn around and go back for more.

We finish our shopping and the ladies help me check out. N scans a peach and I think of the children; she scans a bunch of bananas and I think of the guns; she scans the tomatoes and I think of the scorching heat; she scans an entire chocolate cake and I think of who gets away with what, and why.

When we get home, both ladies help carry the groceries inside though each child could easily fold and fit inside the brown paper bags themselves. I unpack the items; I put them away. Later, when the house is finally quiet, I slice a shockingly red tomato and sprinkle it with salt. I count the forgotten seeds and with each bite, I see how it is sweet and bruised on the inside, too.

TUESDAY

Earlier this year, I worked on an assignment for Kitchen Table, and I’m so excited to finally be able to share it!

The printed illustration in Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE (2026)

I was immediately excited when Editor-in-Chief Brett Warnock reached out to me to illustrate Princess Cake: A Fairytale, written by Carla Crujido, about the origins of the Swedish princess cake (originally known as grön tårta or green cake, and later renamed prinsesstårta, or princess cake).

I had a few ideas for how to illustrate this story, which follows a princess on her journey to discover the origins of princess cake and learn more about the trio of princesses for whom it was originally created.

The one I liked most (Idea C) was inspired by a very old Ovaltine or Bournvita label I’d seen when I was a child. In it, a gorilla holds a Bournvita bottle boasting a label of a gorilla holding a Bournvita bottle, and the pattern continues until the bottle and label and gorilla all become so tiny you can’t see them any longer. I liked the endless loop, the idea of generational continuity—how something that is beloved during its time will, eventually, be loved once again.

I handed in 3 concepts:

Concept sketches for Princess Cake / Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE (2026)

Both Brett and AD Katrina were supportive of Idea C, but worried the details would become too minute at our half-page scale. After trying to sketch it out more clearly, I realized they were right. They leaned instead towards Idea A, where a layered princess cake features each of the original princesses engaged in their craft at their Husmodersskola, or Housewives’ School, where the cake was born.

With Katrina’s encouragement, my illustration evolved into a contemporary retelling of the original princess story, where global women are shown excelling at their chosen crafts (literature, archery, and the culinary arts) despite the expectations, constraints, and boundaries of their societies.

The printed illustration in Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE (2026)

My final illustration for Princess Cake: A Fairy Tale for Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE (2026)

Issue 08: The Baked Issue of KITCHEN TABLE

You can read all about the original princess cake—and see my take on it in print— in the latest issue of KITCHEN TABLE magazine. Many thanks to editor Brett Warnock for the assignment, and AD Katrina Clasen for her patience and gentle direction.

WEDNESDAY

I’m listening to A Wonder is What It is, Nick Offerman’s audio series dedicated to poet Wendell Berry, in conjunction with NPR host Alison Stewart.

I’m also listening to Us Against You, book #2 in the Beartown series by Fredrik Bachman, and so far, I love it even more than the first.

THURSDAY

“…That which is muscular does not mean that it is always strong. It means it has strength, but it doesn’t mean that it is always strong, right? And there will be moments where I will have to take a beat, and I’m going to be sad, and I’m going to feel hopeless, and I deserve the opportunity to feel that, knowing that there are people around me, strategically put there, people who love me, who will carry me on until I can catch my breath and continue on with a hopeful life, right?

That feels more human to me than the idea that I’m supposed to just be a beacon of hope all the time. I don’t have it in me. I’d like to believe I do, but I’m a person and life is hard; beyond politics, life is hard, right? And I think that’s where I am, and I deserve that amount of grace, the grace I give these kids as they learn to live as … as they learn to be human, as they learn to be whole, as they grow into adults, as they learn, as they activate their egos, as they learn humility, all the things that we need them to be in order for us to continue on with the world in which we live in a better version of it. I also deserve the same amount of grace. I deserve to give myself the same amount of grace in the moments in which I need it.”

—from Jason Reynolds’ conversation with Krista Tippett on hopelessness, the virtue of stamina, and showing grace to ourselves

FRIDAY

Two snails were going to the funeral of a dead leaf.
Their shells were shrouded in black,
and they had wrapped crepe around their horns.
They set out in the evening,
one glorious autumn evening.
Alas, when they arrived
it was already spring.
The leaves who once were dead
had all sprung to life again.
The two snails were very disappointed.
But then the sun, the sun said to them,
“Take the time to sit awhile.
Take a glass of beer
if your heart tells you to.
Take, if you like, the bus to Paris.
It leaves this evening.
You’ll see the sights.
But don’t use up your time with mourning.
I tell you, it darkens the white of your eye
and makes you ugly.
Stories of coffins aren’t very pretty.
Take back your colours,
the colours of life.”
Then all the animals,
the trees and the plants
began to sing at the tops of their lungs.
It was the true and living song,
the song of summer.
And they all began to drink
and to clink their glasses.
It was a glorious evening,
a glorious summer evening,
and the two snails went back home.
They were moved,
and very happy.
They had had a lot to drink
and they staggered a little bit,
but the moon in the sky watched over them.

—Song of the Snails on Their Way to a Funeral by Jacques Prévert
(thank you to Wendi for sending this poem to me!)

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

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

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: Confronting your inner critic.

From The Worst Boss I've Ever Had, a comic about confronting your inner critic.

Hello, everyone! I know it's been awhile. I'm navigating some unexpected personal news and health changes, but things are finally beginning to finally shift to a manageable place. Though it's freezing here in St. Louis, I'm enjoying the seasons' transition; I hope brisk air is sweeping you into its arms wherever you are. 

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

MONDAY

I don't often feel like a mother. Two years into being one, the title continues to feel like a pair of too-big shoes I'm eagerly waiting to grow into. What does a mother feel like? I have my suspicions, certainly. A mother is calm. A mother is well-assembled. Someone that knows what to do. Someone who has answers, and a medicine cabinet full of tried-and-true remedies. A mother knows their way around the kitchen, and a new city, and the inner workings of their own mind. A mother is someone who knows. Someone whose heart has been split open, as I hear so often, by their child––a heart that's now grown so large there's barely enough space for it left in their chest. Is this me? I don't know. My heart seems well-adjusted to its cavity. 

N wakes up sobbing lately. Her cries are like a siren; she sits up and wails with such alarm that I wonder what terrors visited her young mind. When the crying doesn't stop, I go in and pick her up. We move to the light that slips in between the closed blinds. I sing Carole King until she says Mama, no, putting her hand to my mouth. We sit in the big chair, her face buried in my chest, my cheek resting on her head. Already she's so tall, legs like a ballerina jutting out from my either side. Her breath becomes deeper, steady. She is asleep and my arms are full of her. She is asleep and I feel strangely settled. She is asleep and I am someone who knows how to soothe. For her, I figured out how. My medicine cabinet is empty, but my heart is full. I am a mother––this I have known, but for these few minutes, I begin to believe it, too.

TUESDAY

For the WORK issue of The Nib, I made a comic about the worst boss I've ever worked for: myself. You can read the comic here on my blog and order a print issue of the The Nib – please help support this wonderful indie publication!

My 2023 calendar and planners are also now available, through Buyoly and Amber Lotus Publishing. These are excellent gifts for the upcoming season, and a great way to encourage my little business.

*Support more BIPOC makers this year! I love these hand-poured candles by Golden Hour Co. in rainier and oakmoss. 

WEDNESDAY

“You have consented to time and it is winter. The country seems bigger, for you can see through the bare trees. There are times when the woods is absolutely still and quiet. The house holds warmth. A wet snow comes in the night and covers the ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white. For a while in the morning the world is perfect and beautiful. You think you will never forget. You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise.” 

––Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

THURSDAY

All through autumn I wish for my body to become something new. I want my body to be stronger, less sensitive to these invisible, internal changes. I want it to be stoic, indifferent to the weight of its responsibility. I want it to perform flawlessly. I disregard the fact that it completes thousands of tasks to keep my heart beating and lungs full of air, without my knowing when or how. I am grateful, I think, but I ask it for more. I want my body to be decent. I want it to look beautiful though I know it is doing too much. It is tired and needs rest, but there are books to write and school to attend and so many to care for. 

For months, I offer my body no grace. I shroud it in resentment. I criticize it and wonder why that doesn't amount to change. Why it won't simply be better, the way I imagine other people's bodies to be. I speak to it like I would never speak to another; I allow my imagination to make me even more cruel. After months of sickness, when I finally come to my senses, when I remember how love actually works, it strikes me that I have never taken my body into both arms, never voiced the words buried beneath my anger: Yes, it is you. It is you that I choose over and over again.

FRIDAY

she told me then
that they
"the slaves who were ourselves"
searched for one another
tried to get back
to places they had been before
to them that they had known
needed and loved
to them that knew

she told me then
that this searching
was hard journeying
harder even than
moving over water
than finding strange language
and people with nothing under their skin
hard journeying she told me
this way back to ourselves

––exiles return by bell hooks

xo,

M

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Dear Somebody: Together at last.

From Three Shooting Stars, a tiny comic about the life of an artist. 

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

MONDAY

When we board the plane to New Jersey, a switch goes off. I don't know where the switch was, or is, but it must exist because something flips it from ON to OFF. 

I refer to it as The Sea Switch. This switch controls the space between me and N, a swath of distance that rose between us when I crossed the Atlantic for France back in June, and has remained between us for the 8 weeks since. This sea is full of rocky waves. Thrashing storms. A constant swallowing of debris.

When the plane begins taxiing, N‘s eyes open wide. She immediately shuts the window shade and crawls into my lap. I’m wedged into the middle seat, a sleeping stranger to my right, T to my left. N takes my hand in hers and burrows her face into my neck. I’m surprised by the intimacy in her actions: something so traditionally mother-and-child, that for us, has become foreign. Forgotten. I’m so pleased that I ask T to take pictures of us, and he does. 

When I send the photos to my sister later that evening, she tells me I’m beaming, the light shooting out of my face. I study the photos and it’s true: mother and child, in each other’s arms, together at last—even, if only, for a little while.

TUESDAY

"A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.” 

––Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

WEDNESDAY

For those wondering if art school is necessary, I enjoyed this series of interviews:

“I think college is important if you want to learn specific skills. But later I prioritized making art — I didn’t go into an M.F.A. program after I got my bachelor’s degree, because I really wanted to think about what I was doing. That’s when I made a U-turn — I stopped taking assignments, decided to make use of what I had learned, went home to Jamaica for a while and began making work about the Caribbean, a marginalized place, but a place of opportunity nonetheless. And that’s what a lot of my work still deals with: Caribbean ecosystems, their issues, what’s beautiful. School taught me to write down my dreams and attack them, that they turn to dust if you don’t.” ––Paul Anthony Smith, from Art School Confidential by Noor Brara

THURSDAY

A simple ink-on-bristol comic titled Three Shooting Stars: Chronicling the Life of an Artist, now up on my blog.

FRIDAY

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

––The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

xo,

M

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