A new bud

"They come through you, but not from you"

For those of you who need straight to the point emails (I see you) I’m here to share a new and limited edition sunflower linocut print with you. You can shop it here.

However, as so happens with art making, it has stirred up a lot of thoughts and feelings! So here I go, sharing my heart below, for anyone interested.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting lately.

Our kids start pre-school next month (I act as if it’s not a mere 3 days away) and I desperately want to make sure they (we) feel prepared and confident and safe and loved and all the things we think about when sending our little humans out into the world. We also are tentatively moving back into our house this weekend (or next, let’s be real*) and all the transitions have me, again, desperate to find routine and order amidst chaos and disorder.

*To bring you up to speed, I’m now at peace with the fact that we likely won’t move in this weekend and our kids will likely start school a week or two late (perhaps an unintentional hack to miss the first week or two of drop-off tears anyways). And yet again, I am humbled by the lack of control we have in life!

I’ve also been back and forth from Frankfort and Traverse, painting at the mural, and painting at our house. To do the math on the hours of driving, painting + podcasts I’ve consumed is daunting. Maybe it’s this back to school season, or maybe it’s just life with a 2 and 3 year old, but I’ve found myself gravitating to parenting episodes more than usual. Emily Oster’s Parent Data, Dr. Becky’s Good Inside, and this episode of the Huberman Lab with Dr. Jonathan Haidt recently have been so helpful.

All of these feelings reminded me of this passage that lives rent free in my mind by Kahlil Gibran:

“Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.”

― Kahlil Gibran

“They come through you but not from you” - this has become a mantra for me. A reminder of how important it is to raise my kids to discover themselves, and to then share that discovery with us and the world around them.

And finally, this brings me to the inspiration for the sunflower print!

My younger sister and brother-in-law are expecting their first baby this October and I had the privilege of designing the invitations for their shower in July. I’ve been wanting to try linocut printing for a long time and this was a perfect opportunity. I was pregnant with my daughter in 2020, which also was the year my sister got married - needless to say we were thrilled to host a shower not on Zoom, so we went all out! The print served as both the invitation and the favor and depicts a mature sunflower growing a new bud - like a mother growing a child, connected but apart, observing the bud bloom “…through you but not from you.”

I see these 5x7 prints as a sweet celebration of life, growth, transitions and seasons. I think they would be a thoughtful gift to someone with a thoughtful note written on the back, perhaps a mom sending someone off to school next week if I could think of one example.

I printed 75 for the shower and have 28 left and of course wanted to share them with you.

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I almost forgot to mention, in a rare moment of not listening to parenting pods, I found myself enthralled with Wirecutter’s debut episode on laundry - riveting, I concede, as laundry is of course parenting adjacent.

As always, please comment if you have any thoughts, questions, or further podcast recs! Sending lots of love and strength to the fellow parents out there this week!

Thank you for being here.

x

Katherine