Mary Heim

I think I had shared with my previous friends.

couple of kind of back to back pregnancy losses at the end of last year that I'm just kind of starting to feel my brain click back on in a way.

And I found I was kind of reflecting on this time for me.

And if I am going to sound like such a broken record here, but my beloved Lightfall trilogy graphic novel series is

I sprinkled a little bit of this earlier on to say, right, that I think a graphic novel can be a really nice way to give your brain the feeling like of, yes, I am reading a book and you are reading a book, but also you're not having to do a ton of mental labor to get there or even get into the book, right?

I know for me, starting a book is the hardest thing about my reading life.

And if I am, if anything else,

is taking up my mental and emotional energy.

I absolutely do not feel like I have the energy to give to starting a book well.

And so something else I love about a graphic novel friends is that like the world is literally painted for you.

You do not have to even do the work of imagining.

And this particular series is that it's just that good.

You can read that there's four of them out now I have actually just recently reread the first three to prepare for the fourth with our friend Betsy, you can read a most graphic novels in an hour or two, cover to cover.

These books in particular in Lightfall are, they're gentle and they're quiet until they're not, but they do this really beautiful thing in taking some really hard struggles that I think most of us could project our own experience onto in some way in the world right now.

This feeling of kind of being in the darkness, not really seeing the light yet.

Whether you're feeling that on a global or a personal level,

These books also don't solve that.

These graphic novels don't solve that issue simply in one volume.

They make you stay with it and they make you sit in silence.

The darkness feels some of the discomfort, the despair, never overwhelmingly so, but all kind of while holding onto the hope that like, yes, of course, we will eventually come out to the other side.