Mary Heim

But we can't do that until we go through the dark night, right, of the soul or of the world or what have you in my own moments of grief and complexity.

Particularly, I was really feeling this in December this year.

I don't want someone to shuffle me along forever.

to pretending to be better than I am before I'm there.

I do not want the emotional or spiritual bypassing of, let's make meaning right away and make it all be fine.

There was something very comforting for me, and I think Pima Chodron does this really well too, of like, we're not going to pretend that this is all...

perfect and easy and that doesn't make it any less significant and powerful and human and transformative.

I just, yeah, I just want a safe place to feel in the darkness and allow it to be.

These graphic novels in particular, I think you could choose a totally irreverent graphic novel that has nothing to do with anything about feelings and have a nice little escapist time.

But if you want to like tiptoe, dip in and out, and also these books in particular, this series are talking about nothing that is

Like, it's only metaphorically related to what's happening in our world.

There is no way you're going to be experiencing maybe some triggers of, oh no, global warming.

Like, it's not making you contend with the real darkness and realities in our world personally or globally.

But they are just...

Really transportative.

Another reason I'm including them here is that if you're reading them on something with a screen, a phone, a tablet, et cetera, they have the really fun experience of kind of like immersing you deeply.

Have you had this experience with a graphic novel, Meredith, where you're like zooming in through the pages and it's focusing in on specific details?

That really felt like, oh, I can just escape.

Like I can dip into this world and be really in it in an immersive way.

That I think when I really stepped back and said, why did these books work so well for me when they did in my own challenging times?