Digging Deeper: Uncovering the Inspiration for Brave Like Fireweed
When I was little, my mom and I used to go on walks through the forest around our house in Silk Hope, North Carolina. She called them “woodsy walks”. What I remember most is stopping to look at all the different plants. We’d bend down and gently rub our fingers across a wild ginger leaf to smell the sweet, spicy scent and peek underneath mayapple leaves to find the little buds before they bloomed. Each walk felt like a big adventure, full of magical discoveries.
As I’ve grown up, I’ve remained fascinated with plants and all of their different, interesting characteristics - especially those that seem to mirror aspects of our own emotions and personalities. I love asking: What might we learn about ourselves by learning about the natural world?
This question was the starting point for a mural I created for the City of El Cerrito in 2020 while I was living in Oakland, California. The site for the mural was a utility box located at the entrance to a greenway, so I saw the project as an opportunity to develop a piece that would spark curiosity about the natural environment. The mural was completed at the height of the Covid pandemic, so I also wanted it to serve as a tiny beacon of brightness in the midst of a difficult time, while acknowledging the grit it's taken us to move forward. For the final design, I paired images of kids with images of local plants to create messages of affirmation, such as “We are brave like the sword fern”.
The initial version of Brave Like Fireweed grew out of the El Cerrito piece; I took the general theme of the mural and built it into a written narrative. It was a humbling experience! I minored in poetry in college (a part of my background that I leaned into a lot for this book) and have always loved writing informally but this was my first experience crafting words for a real live picture book. Writing for kids is, I think, even more difficult than writing for adults. And crafting a picture-book-length narrative is a challenge I am still learning so much about.
While difficult, I really enjoyed the drafting and editing process. And throughout that time, as I learned and evolved as an storyteller and artist (still learning and evolving over here!), both the text and visuals for Brave Like Fireweed changed quite a lot as well. In the end, while some of the general themes are still closely connected to the El Cerrito mural, the narrative is much more specific. AND it has some fantasy woven in, which I was (of course) very excited to add!
Some of this evolution is a result of me digging more deeply into the different layers of inspiration for the book and in turn, discovering new connections and ideas. During the writing process, I thought a lot about how the walks I took outside with my mom when I was little followed me into adulthood. I still take walks (and runs!) outside and now, as a grown-ish human, I’ve only just started to fully explore and understand the powerful impact they have on my mental health, clarity, and confidence—not to mention my creative process. And I love that it’s possible to gather that strength from the natural world through a simple stroll in my neighborhood. It’s important to note that access to green space varies—but often, you don’t have to travel somewhere new or different in order to build and maintain your connection to nature. I won’t spoil anything by saying much more, but this little (but big!) realization may or may not show up in the book.
My experiences working with kids also helped guide and enrich both the text and illustrations. When I was an art teacher, it wasn’t always possible to go outside for extended periods of time, so I found ways to bring nature into the classroom. I’d collect natural objects to arrange into pictures and patterns on the tables and floors, then we’d use those arrangements as a starting point for a project. Once, we hosted monarch butterflies and drew their different stages of development. In my current role as an instructor at Learning Outside, we spend all of our time outside, which is unusual and incredible. But what I’ve noticed is that regardless of what environment a kid is learning in, they have an inherent curiosity and love for nature. That connection is magical and important, and it’s something I reflected on a lot as I created Brave Like Fireweed.
It’s fun to look back at all of the different puzzle pieces that came together to inform a piece of art (books are art!). But one of the things I love most about art is that it isn’t just the sum of its pieces; it continues to evolve and grow as different people engage with it. They bring their own experiences, perspectives, and ideas to the work and it takes on new meanings, new purposes. Once Brave Like Fireweed is released on August 20th, I’ll be so curious to hear what you see and discover inside.
Brave Like Fireweed is available for pre-order now!
You can order a signed copy from Letters, my local indie bookstore.