Just a see ya later
Good morning! I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday. We’re enjoying our new home while moving through the flu. It’s been tiring in tandem with restful.
Between running up the stairs to comfort our little one back to rest, quilt puzzles in the library, holiday movies while wrapping gifts, reading in the sauna, sleeping in, staying up late, and eating leftover desserts — I’ve had clarity.
This hazy week between the holidays finds me organizing pictures, year-in-review reflections, sketching loose intentions, and writing in my planner. Pairs well with bubbles. Writing it all down centers me. It distills what needs continued nurturing and what’s headed for the compost pile.
This newsletter is headed for the compost, friends.
Last year, I closed my decade-long blog. The release made the necessary space for me to focus on book club, my design studio, our new home, and Fridays with my daughter — basically, more presence in my ACTUAL life.
And I, without any paper to hide behind. Sidney, in these past two or three years, I have become better at writing than living… On the page, I’m perfectly charming, but that’s just a trick I’ve learnt. It has nothing to do with me.
— The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
The creative life is a constant checks & balances. I’m powering down some apps to get my power back. How did I get to tracking my drinks, walks, and books anyway?! My interview for VoyageMichigan reminded me of my long-term goal:
My work aims to have a common thread of historical reference + intentional symbolism. I enjoy working in mediums like watercolor, black ink, and minimal linework. My preference is print + traditional design as I prefer the tactical & analog nature of paper and print resources.
My goal is to answer the question, “How can I maintain being a designer while reducing screen time?”
It’s an odd challenge, some may say it’s a losing battle, but one that I *hope* keeps my work genuine with the imperfection of human touch.
It’s not only an effort to reduce screen time, I’m honing in on what I need and want most for 2025.
Coming Winter 2025
Looking ahead, my subscriber list (all 94 of you, thank you!) will operate through my website; a studio newsletter of current projects, studio merch, and product + tool lists I use in my studio.
This transition takes place over the next few months. You always have the option to unsubscribe from my emails but if it already sounds uninteresting, I recommend unsubscribing now to reduce any unwelcome inbox surprises.
Drop your physical address
I hope to write more physical letters in 2025. A few of you consistently respond to these letters which I LOVE. If you’d like to continue the conversation in a pen pal capacity, reply to this email with your physical address. Or you can email me directly at emilygracebode@gmail.com. I’m already excited to pick out special stationery for the endeavor!
New Moon in Capricorn
Very fitting for today’s New Moon in Capricorn:
How can we approach our goals with more care, resisting the pull of urgency in favor of deliberate, sustainable effort? The answer lies in Capricorn’s steady climb, reminding us that mastery isn’t about getting there fast — it’s about getting there with integrity. — New Moon in Capricorn reading by Magic of I.
Advice a blogger gave me years ago that I think of every time I rearrange my creative outlets: your website is King [Queen]. Free apps are not ours, meaning they do what they want with our content, our attention spans, how we scroll, what we buy, etc. It’s an uncertain fate on purpose. But your website, the URL you pay for, YOU own that online space.
Not goodbye, just see ya later.
This was a space in the margins during my early years of motherhood. This blog-like framework comforted me because it closely resembled blogging efforts in my 20s.
As I look to the year I turn 35, I’ve grown towards more fulfilling avenues.
Quote via Poetic Outlaws
Thank you for reading these letters. I appreciate you holding space for this spin-off the last couple of years; for witnessing the garden grow, tracking the moon in her ancient cycles, and listening to a Mother with a lot to say about these early years.
The next time you read a long-form essay from me, I hope it’s in physical book format and you’re preordering it. 😉
All the very best,
Originally sent to Substack subscribers in December 2024.
Solstice Blessings
My walk on the trail today with the sun reflecting off fresh snow, making Winter Solstice shadows brighter. I walked to our old house, honoring the whirlwind between solstices when we closed on a new home and moved out of our old one. The compact cottage that held us, unlike the one we’re in now that still feels like someone else’s.
Merry Christmas, Moon Lodge.
I whisper as I pass her. I cry; for Tiger & Belle, for us, all ghosts of a place that was ours for 10 years. It was time to go but the memories were so good there.
I’ve been unhappy the last few years. I hesitate to admit that one of my saddest seasons parallels River’s arrival into this world. I never want her to combine the two if she reads her mother’s words someday. I longed for her with an aching only mothers know. I waited impatiently for 3 years at least. Depending on her age and the state of our relationship it’s a toss-up I won’t have control over.
If happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.
— Wintering by Katherine May
However, avoiding the sadness may be more detrimental to the journey required to move out of this wintering space.
Last Christmas we were in the Moon Lodge cramming my family into the kitchen nook for dinner as we’ve done for years. It’s a quaint cottage that nudged us outdoors in all seasons. What once was quaint turned cumbersome.
It magnified my discontent.
In a home we’d long outgrown with the ghosts of our animals, coming out of isolation as a petrified stay-at-home mom when we couldn’t afford me to be one, after a horrific first-time foray into motherhood in a pandemic — I don’t visualize forthcoming decades but my early 30s wasn’t it. I was depressed. Depression is a fraught word in my family which may be why it took me this long to admit that I was.
Most challenging is that I can’t blame anyone for this wintering.
I resent the pandemic. It took the first tender moments celebrating our daughter with loved ones away from us. We can never get those firsts back, even if we have another child. It’s the cause of many strained relationships that will take years to repair. I became unrecognizable without anchors of physical support and shared wisdom.
A pandemic parent knows what I mean. Those who didn’t become a parent in the pandemic struggle to empathize with why the weariness still lingers. In return, I envy that they get to bring their babies around to be cuddled with and cooed over as all babies truly deserve. They are pure light emanating outward.
I’m surprised I didn’t turn to religion or some other obsessive stronghold, a lifeboat to keep me afloat amongst the raging seas within me. Or maybe the words I wrote and the books I read were my stronghold. Joel’s surely in recovery from being my life raft. The man is a Saint, please Venmo him for his service; $Saint-Joel.
You weren’t expecting gift-wrapping advice or last-minute gift ideas were you?! You’ve had quite the treat if that was the expectation!
Here is another truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us. It’s an exchange of gifts in which nobody loses out.
— Wintering by Katherine May
I don’t have wisdom to share yet — I’ve only just acknowledged the poor state I was in — but if any of this vent sesh strikes a chord you may enjoy Wintering by Katherine May as much as I did.
PS: Did I lend this copy to one of you? I genuinely cannot find mine!
In other news
refers to her substack as a piecemeal memoir. aha! yes, that’s what I’ve been doing online for 10 years, just crafting my piecemeal memoir as I go.
How many more words I may have written, art I may have created, if I knew this:
“That’s my mom,” said Riv, clad in light-up & jingly reindeer horns, to her friend in line to go outside at preschool. I saw her mouth the words in surprise and look at me with pure happiness as I waved from the car. Proudest moment of my life.
The Nutcracker Ballet 2024 | Thanks to my mom for snapping.
I’m signing off for the year. My studio technically closed on Thursday, but there’s spillover this weekend with more tasks than time and a sick little one to boot, as well as this Voyage Michigan interview about my career.
Light mixes with dark every single day, the way nature intends. Pause to see the lessons in it. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
xo,
Originally sent to Substack subscribers in December 2024.
Unicorn!
If you are seeking disagreement, you will find it.
If you are seeking similarity, you will find that too.
Hello!
Doozy of a month already, yeah? I won’t pretend that the current state of American politics isn’t affecting my life, but I’m also not staying there in this letter. I’m sure you have more than enough sources at your disposal.
It’s been a year since my last letter to you, not counting this letter.
wearing more color these days! River is 100% responsible.
I had a vision while running in 2019 that I’ll never forget — a little girl giggling on a wooden floor. Her laugh echoed in the empty room. I wasn’t pregnant but I knew it was our daughter.
I didn’t understand the room. Why was it empty? I didn’t know if I could be pregnant let alone knowing the babe’s gender.
Not the point — I held that little vision close & kept it to myself all these years.
This August, there she is. A dream in solid form on a wood floor in an empty room. Head full of glitter sparkles, unicorns, butterflies, & fairies.
The vision came to life. Thank God we kept believing in it when nothing about our life lent itself towards making that dream come true.
A new chapter — messy, intangible, a new host of challenges.
But pause. Remember the dream that came true. That once didn’t exist, and now it does. Hold on with all your might. There are no endless possibilities, that’s why they’re so special. That’s why we give our lives to them.
2024 has been the sweetest amount of chaos; big changes all at once after a few years of zero momentum, stagnant energy.
The page must turn. The story must continue.
Wrapping up my Fall 2024 book list.
Books | Book Club is next week at a cider farm. We’re reading I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys. It’s almost 2 years of gathering every month to chat about books & all the things we care about with one another. I intentionally do not repeat the inner workings or chats of book club online. It’s a private, in-person space & we must keep it that way.
I recently started a bookstagram though to connect with authors, book artists, & fellow book lovers if you’d like to follow along there. I’m also happy to chat about how to start a book club if you’ve been wanting to do something like that! Getting I Sang You Down From the Stars by Tasha Spillett-Sumner & Michaela Goade (Illustrator) for Christmas.
Art | The design portfolio brand I teased in last year’s November letter has come to life! If you’re seeking design-related work, I’m taking paid gigs or valuable trades at the moment, $500+. I have a slot for 1 non-profit project in 2025 (2024’s non-profit was The Aspen House website + newsletter). Reply to this letter if you’re an interested business owner.
Sunday Linen Vintage is really a deeper story about my family history + lineage that I’m slowly, painstakingly piecing together.
Vintage | The vintage shop is sadly on pause because damnit I only have 2 hands at the moment. Ha. But I’m still perusing estate sales & antique shops as meditation, sharing snippets here and there at Sunday Linen Vintage. Do you have a handmade quilt in your family that your Grandma, great aunt, or the like passed down to you? I’d love to chat with you about it, coffee’s on me. Please reply to this letter if that’s you.
It’s a Full Moon in Taurus today. It’s also opening day of rifle season here in Michigan which means neon orange should be worn when walking in the woods, lest you be mistaken for a deer. My coworker told me a full moon makes the deer more active so maybe I have more in common with deer than I thought as my dreams last night were very active, & I’ve been a sharing fiend this past week. I’m sure I’ll putz out at any moment.
Taurus is a very earthy, grounding energy which aligns well with my plans for the weekend — continuing to observe how we move through our new old house, soup-making in the crockpot, Autumn jazz playlist surely, & prepping my fabric for a patchwork quilt stocking class I’m attending next week.
I hope your weekend is nourishing & full of belly laughter. Let’s also hope it’s not another year before you receive my next letter. xo,
🦄 Today’s title is brought to you by River. UNICORN! was her response when I asked her what the title of today’s letter should be. Like I said, she’s 100% responsible for the color in my life.
Originally sent to Substack subscribers in November 2024.
Argonauts
This week I randomly opened my copy of Gift From the Sea to the Argonauta, also known as the Paper Nautilus shell. An Argonauta shell is a home created by a female octopus to safely hold her eggs, unlike the outgrown homes of snails and mussels we’re more familiar with in the fresh waters of the Great Lakes.
It was meaningful to discover this chapter the morning of my 8th wedding anniversary, learning about the shell that isn’t really a shell crafted by an eight-tentacled Argonaut octopus for her future children.
8 years, 8 tentacles.
God I love it when that happens.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes Gift From the Sea in chapters organized by each shell she found while beachcombing on vacation with her sister in the 1950s. In the Argonauta chapter she explains how previous shells — the double-sunrise seashell and the oyster bed — stood for earlier learnings in a marriage. A double-sunrise being “only intimate and personal”. The oyster bed being “caught in the particular and the functional”.
Lately, our marriage is an oyster bed by Lindbergh’s definition, caught in the particular and the functional, but the Argonauta is something to aspire to is it not? Hopeful to know there can be another evolution forthcoming.
And is it not the swinging of the pendulum between these opposite poles that makes a relationship nourishing? Yeats once said that the supreme experience of life was “to share profound thought and then to touch.” But it takes both.
[…] the argonauta, should they not be able to swing from the intimate and the particular and the functional out into the abstract and the universal, and then back to the personal again?
And in this image of the pendulum swinging in easy rhythm between opposite poles, is there not a clue to the problem of relationships as a whole? Is there not here even a hint of an understanding and an acceptance of the wingéd life of relationships, of their eternal ebb and flow, of their inevitable intermittency?
The more I research the Argonaut (oddly researchers have never found the male Argonaut), the more they are the epitome of practical magic. Speaking of…
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman | My annualish viewing of the movie inspired this selection for September. I rarely watch the movie adaptation before the novel but I didn’t know there was a novel until recently. The biggest difference between the movie and novel is the setting; the story takes place in Sally’s home a few hours away from the Aunt’s home on the East Coast. The Aunts travel to Sally and Gillian, not the other way around.
Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies, for instance, and women who’ve been in love with the wrong man too often.
The wrong man relates to Gillian and her poor choice of men, particularly the one she killed and buried in her sister’s backyard. This quote resonates with me more deeply in relation to my journey of becoming a Mother. I keep wanting to go back — I want my hips back in the place where jeans held them more kindly, my breasts before nursing, my stamina on a 3-mile run, clarity of my mind to finish a thought and know it is a solid one. I want to go back to when basic activity didn’t conclude with an ailment each time. When my husband and I would widdle away a Saturday in bed until noon, only leaving each other’s side because we were famished and it was time to widdle away more time on the beach.
Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were.
In the celebration of having our daughter, having what I’ve deeply wanted with my husband, I’ve avoided my shadow feelings. They come out in all sorts of wonky ways if you don’t look them in the eye. Similar to the way Jimmy came out through the blooming lilacs. Then the thorns after Sally hacked away the lilacs. Only a healing ritual from the wisdom of the Aunts and support from other women could rid his ghost from Gillian’s spirit. She had to face it, you know, all those shadow feelings haunting her so she could trust good, good love. Sally had to also, as did her daughters.
After complaining I always get the urge to round it out with something positive. Are we never supposed to acknowledge things are hard? Sometimes they suck, even the dreams from those lazy beach days, hearing children’s laughter the next towel over and longing for a child of our own to laugh with. She is here. And some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were.
It’s ok to hold grief in one hand and joy in the other. The grief is stubbornly holding on, unwelcomed, in my neck today. It didn’t get the memo to place itself in my hand so I can chuck it out the car window later but whatever, grief is a real asshole.
Grief is also necessary to move through. At your own pace. In your own time.
From the very start, Sally has been lying to herself, telling herself she can handle anything, and she doesn’t want to lie anymore. One more lie and she’ll be truly lost. One more and she’ll never find her way back through the woods.
Practical Magic led the way for me this week.
I’m now cramming The Wedding People in time for Book Club tonight but wow, what a problem to have. Here’s what’s in between my bookends this season:
If you liked this longer book review you may like my short-form reviews & other bookish things on my Instagram.
✌🏼 In peace & books,
Originally sent to Substack subscribers in September 2024.