My Dear Friend, Before I ever picked up a paintbrush, it was pens. I was obsessed with pens. In third grade, I had a pen pal at a neighboring school. We wrote to each other all year, back and forth, pages crossing between buildings like small, shy bridges. At the end of the year, we finally met. I remember standing there, holding all those words we had already shared, now suddenly attached to a real person. It felt like something in my imagination had taken shape. It wa

Hello my friend, Last week it hit me that this is my routine now. The band around my wrist and the question I can answer before they finish asking it. ‘What’s your name and birthday? How is your appetite ? Have you had a fever, cough or mouth sores ?..”Different nurse but the rhythm is the same. It comes out like a rap verse I already know, the kind people lean in for when someone hits every word from Eminem's "Lose Yourself" at Karaoke without missing a beat. I posted a ph

Dear Friend, This retreat began long before anyone packed a bag or boarded a flight. It started with a friendship. With art. With conversations about what it means to show up for each other in a real way. Over time, those conversations turned outward. What would it look like to create a space where other creative women could experience that same kind of connection? For a year and a half we planned it. Not just the schedule, but the feeling of the room. The kind of hon

My Dear Friend, Well, it’s a new year. It still feels strange to say 2026 out loud. I went down a YouTube rabbit hole recently trying to remember what year "Back to the Future" traveled to. October 2015. They jumped from 1985 to 2015. Flying cars, Hoverboards and video glasses. We are eleven years past the year that once felt impossibly futuristic. That made me laugh. Time feels different when your life is measured in scans and infusions. It’s been a couple of months s

My Dear Friend, All my life I’ve been told I’m different. Growing up, adults said I was "unique", other kids used the word, "different" or "odd". It was meant as a compliment from some but not always, and it didn’t feel like one. To me, it meant separation, that I didn’t quite belong where everyone else did. Sometimes, it wasn’t said kindly, it came with condescending eyes and tilted heads. "What are you?” As if a mixed race girl was some kind of anomaly in California?!

A living memoir of illness, love and everything after. My Dear Friend, Every time I sit down to write you, I imagine you across the table, with a cup of coffee that's still hot or depending on the day, a lemon drop martini, palm on chin, not flinching at the weight. Tonight’s letter is another chapter I never wanted to write. It’s about waiting, and what waiting does to a body. About denial, grief, and the strange places where the dam finally bursts. The truth is, when

My Dearest Friend, This year marks ten years since I picked up a paintbrush and unknowingly started building a life out of color, chaos, and connection. Ten. Years. Picking up that brush—with zero expectations—sparked what would become the most surprising, wild, painful, magical, exhausting, and sacred thing I’ve ever done. Ten years of making art. Ten years of building a business that would go on to generate a million in print sales. Ten years of surviving a body tha