Dear Somebody: I am not a machine.

A page from my sketchbook (September 5, 2024)

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

MONDAY 

N and F both started school this week. For N, it was after 18 weeks at home; for F, it was for the very first time, after nearly 18 months at home with me. I’ve missed my work, time, and space immensely, but a sense of overwhelm still lingers. I’m working on a few projects that I’m really excited about—illustrating a beautiful picture book manuscript, developing a few other proposals, and beginning a new accordion book—but nothing much has gotten done this week.

I sink into my ennui, hoping it will lead somewhere. Almost entirely present, I shop for groceries, enjoying the quiet of the empty early morning aisles. I go on a walk around my neighborhood and adopt a leisurely pace. I catch up with an old friend and marvel at how wonderful conversations are without a toddler shouting in my unattached ear. Sometimes I miss the girls, and sometimes I don’t. At 10:30 in the morning, I sit on the couch and read my book because I want to. I say nothing aloud for hours. I answer to no one. 

I think about what I want, and how it isn’t to be an artist on demand. It’s to be an interesting person, one who reads books and poetry, who speaks when it’s necessary and not only to fill the absence of something, even if the absence is a place inside myself. I think about what I need, and how it isn’t to be lauded for what I do or do not make. It’s to breathe air and have space. To move my body. To let that be enough.

Instead of starting on my next round of picture book sketches, I make a very messy painting in my sketchbook. I write my needs down so the pages can remind me when my mind cannot. The painting is garish, even to me, but something about it—perhaps the honesty—feels sweet, and I like it. 

Everything I make doesn’t come out beautifully—mostly, I make mistakes. When something works out, it’s usually because I worked hard at it. I am tough, but I am not a machine. 

TUESDAY

Thanks to the internet, I am painfully aware of what others are accomplishing, and it’s often a constant reminder of what I’m not. When I feel guilty for not working—for relaxing, pursuing hobbies, or simply feeling content (!), I ask myself the following questions.

• What is the source of my self-worth? My insecurity is at its highest when my self-worth is linked to something outside of myself: career success or achievements. I feel guilty if I haven't worked a certain number of hours because I believe my worth is intrinsically linked to my productivity. I believe I must earn my value as a human being.

• What if that source disappears? There is always the possibility of losing your job, being unable to pursue your goals for, say, health reasons, or simply being unable to meet your own expectations. Ensuring that your self-worth is internally rooted is necessary for enjoying yourself and your life, guilt-free.

• What do you value about yourself? For me, it is my discipline, my thoughtfulness, and my ability to empathize with other, helping them feel seen. Valuing myself for existing as a unique being in the world allows me to seek validation and self-worth from myself, rather than from others.

Society is designed to feed off our output; feeling content despite my fluctuating productivity is a continuous work in progress. I regularly remind myself of my inherent value, finding that when I do, I no longer need to frantically goal-seek to feel worthy.

—Excerpted from How it Feels to Find Yourself: Navigating Life’s Changes with Clarity, Purpose, and Heart, my book of illustrated essays

WEDNESDAY

We spend a few days in Kansas City doing the same thing we do wherever we go—finding the best playgrounds and taco shops. 

Among my personal highlights was visiting The Rabbit hOle, an immersive museum celebrating children’s literature. I’ve been wanting to go for a few years now, since I learned of the initial idea for it, and it was just lovely to experience so many beloved books brought to life.

Every exhibit we saw was beautiful, but I was especially taken by the Strega Nonaexhibit, one of the stories I read most repeatedly as a little girl. 

Outside Strega Nona’s house at The Rabbit hOle museum

Inside Strega Nona’s house, saying hello to Tomie dePaola

These photos are just less than, but inside Strega Nona’s house were several dioramas built into the wall, each one—complete with working mechanics—playing out a scene from the story, from the time Strega Nona hires Big Anthony to work for her to the very end, where the never ending pasta overthrows the entire town. N was mesmerized, watching each scene on repeat until I pulled her away to explore other exhibits. I am married to books, but I'd love to create sets for plays and exhibits one day, too. 

Related: Phoebe wrote about the depiction of Strega Nona in her Fat in Picture Books section of her newsletter last week. 

Related: one of my favorite Tomie dePaola books for artists (and their self-doubt), is The Art Lesson, gifted to me by T a few years ago. 

THURSDAY

F & N, entirely too comfortable in someone else’s studio (2024)

I also had the chance to finally visit fellow artist Sarah Walsh at her lovely studio! Sarah was gracious enough to accomodate my two tiny monsters and gifted N some gorgeous puzzles from her line with Eeboo. I haven’t been able to meet very many artists over the last few years, and it was a breath of fresh air to talk to another working mama about the mechanics of building a creative life and staying honest with ourselves, in our work and in our lives. 

If you aren’t familiar with Sarah’s work, I recommend checking out her latest zine, Horse Girl, and her latest book, Rainbow Science. 

FRIDAY

Bring me all of your dreams, 
You dreamers. 
Bring me all of your 
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them 
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world. 

—The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: A Simple Hello.

A page from my sketchbook: Lisle Sur Tarn, France – reimagined with N

A quick note: Tonight I'm leading a Time Capsule workshop with the Summer Writers Institute at Washington University, where I'll teach you to make an 8-page zine that captures this moment in time––using a single sheet of paper. Join me if you wish! This virtual workshop will be casual and reflective.

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

MONDAY

I've been home for nearly a month now and things between me and N have improved, although she does still ask for dada while I put her to bed, help her get dressed, or do almost anything. I smile and nod along while it's happening, saving my grimacing for later––for when I am alone or on the phone, or with T, who speaks to me sympathetically, albeit with the security of someone who is loved.

It's nearly 5:15 in the evening and N and I are coloring together, bright green silky scribbles on the paper that reach for the wooden floor. She makes marks the same way a dancer leaps across the stage––deliberately, with strength, using her entire body. I excuse myself to start dinner and she follows me into the kitchen, urgently shouting to be picked up. She wants to play with the upper cabinets, where we keep the cocoa and coffee, bags of sugar and corn starch, tins of assorted mushroom teas that I impulsively bought and will, really and truly, never drink.

“I have to cook, Naddo, so I can't watch you while you play on the counter,” I say. “It's not safe to stand up there alone.” She stares at me blankly and then resumes shouting, choosing not to understand the plight of a person who can't be in two places at once.

I want to be loved, so I pick her up and put her on the counter. She opens the cabinets and grins at the assortment of powders and potions inside. She laughs maniacally––with satisfaction, I imagine, at both the scene stretched in front of her and the agility with which she controls her mother. I turn away from her, leaning against the counter so she can't fall, but she shouts “Mama!" so loudly I spin back around.

N kneels down on the counter and takes my face between both of her hands. Her eyes are open wide, studying me intensely, and I unexpectedly feel…seen. Like I am a person in the world. Like I am someone special. Like in this very moment, all N wants is for me to be here with her. She leans towards me until our noses are touching and takes a deep breath.

“Hi," she says, exhaling the word deeply. Hi. A one-syllable meditation. The most beautiful word I've ever heard.

TUESDAY

“Writing, like all art, can be a site of safety, freedom, imagination. It can hold futures and dreams, our best memories, our worst. But because we deal in language, it seems inevitable that each writer, at one time or another, must confront other uses of writing, its place in a larger structure of power, and that structure’s hold on our social hierarchies. How we take in these moments, how we react to our knowledge of them—that is what makes the difference in the kind of writing we can hope to do.

The nice thing about going your own way is that you’re already “wrong”—but in your wrongness, in being off the map, you can stay free for a little while longer. To become that writer requires a radical act of imagination. More than one. And then the courage to choose yet another path. To keep moving, and know that there is truth and strength in that.” –Yanyi, on Justifying Your Writing

WEDNESDAY

"In the early 1940’s, abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko began pushing artmaking into uncharted territory: they sought to create works that resembled their internal sources of being—their spirit or consciousness. The abstract artists of this time rejected traditional images and visual realities in favor of walking freely into their own untethered imaginations. They were explorers of their own consciousness, interested in understanding (and reflecting) the vulnerable and often unseen sides of themselves.

I often wonder why I am so interested in my own feelings. I occupy a large amount of my time with emotional sorting: sitting with, identifying, and then categorizing the various heaps of daily emotion that pile themselves upon me. It’s only later, when I finally sit down to work, that I recognize the environment that begins to build from layers of paint on paper. It is my own emotional residue, transferring itself from my hand onto the painted page. Any powerful piece of art creates an atmosphere—a feeling of sublime that transports the reader or viewer out of their own world and into another." –An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #53 of Uppercase Magazine

THURSDAY

My new 2022-2023 weekly planner with Amber Lotus Publishing is now available! You can get a copy in my BuyOlympia shop, through the Amber Lotus Publishing website, and in bookstores everywhere.

FRIDAY

When you come, bring your brown-

ness so we can be sure to please

the funders. Will you check this

box; we’re applying for a grant.

Do you have any poems that speak

to troubled teens? Bilingual is best.

Would you like to come to dinner

with the patrons and sip Patrón?

Will you tell us the stories that make

us uncomfortable, but not complicit?

Don’t read the one where you

are just like us. Born to a green house,

garden, don’t tell us how you picked

tomatoes and ate them in the dirt

watching vultures pick apart another

bird’s bones in the road. Tell us the one

about your father stealing hubcaps

after a colleague said that’s what his

kind did. Tell us how he came

to the meeting wearing a poncho

and tried to sell the man his hubcaps

back. Don’t mention your father

was a teacher, spoke English, loved

making beer, loved baseball, tell us

again about the poncho, the hubcaps,

how he stole them, how he did the thing

he was trying to prove he didn’t do.

–The Contract Says: We'd Like the Conversation to be Bilingual by Ada Limón

(our 24th Poet Laureate of the United States!)

xo,

M

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