Mari Andrew - My Inner Sky: On Embracing Day, Night, and All the Times in Between

PRAISE FOR MY INNER SKY

Theres something about Mari Andrews words and illustrations that make you feel at home. My Inner Sky reminds readers of the shared grief, joy, and sorrow that we experience throughout lifeand how to cope with it.

Marie Claire

To say this year has been challenging is an understatement and its easy to despair at the scale of the loss we are collectively experiencing across the globe. This book is a reminder that healing is humbling, that resilience is beautiful, that there is joy in choosing yourself, and that life is made of little moments worth paying attention to and celebrating. Mari makes no grand pronouncements and doesnt offer any easy advice. Instead she shares with us one word and one illustration at a time why being alive is so damn worth it.

Aminatou Sow, author of Big Friendship

Mari Andrews words and artwork in My Inner Sky are exactly what the world needs now: hopeful, uplifting, and healing. This book is for anyone who needs an infusion of light in their life.

Ally Love, founder and CEO of Love Squad, Peloton instructor, and host of Basics of Bossing Up

Mari Andrew is so relatably thrilled, frustrated, and fascinated by lifeso recognizably humanthat its impossible not to root for her, and in doing so, root for all of us. My Inner Sky is the deep, peaceful exhale everyone needs right now and always.

Mary Laura Philpott, author of I Miss You When I Blink

Mari Andrew has a jewelers eye. She teaches us to look at the world, and then to look againto make a scared ritual of the ordinary, to search for magic in the mundane, and to excavate beauty from pain. Her collection of essays, My Inner Sky, is an enchanting, big-hearted study of how to navigate the in-betweenness of grief, illness, love, and, ultimately, of healing. Through Andrews stories, we travel through her innermost thoughts, the turbulent passages of her past, and all around the worldSpain, Greece, Australia, France, and the streets of New York City. At each turn, she uncovers hard-earned coins of wisdom in the most unlikely places. This book is a wonder, and a must-read for the heartsick, the suffering, the lonely, the seeking, which is to say: All of us.

Suleika Jaouad, author of Between Two Kingdoms

A timely and modern prompt to allow, even celebrate, the full spectrum of emotion and experience into our lives, the pain, the splendor, and the many, many nuances in between.

Zo Foster Blake, author of Break-Up Boss

PENGUIN BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright 2021 by Mari Andrew

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Andrew, Mari, author.

Title: My inner sky : on embracing day, night, and all the times in between / Mari Andrew.

Description: New York : Penguin Books, [2021] |

Identifiers: LCCN 2020041571 (print) | LCCN 2020041572 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143135241 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525506928 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Life cycle, HumanSocial aspects. | Life cycle,

HumanPsychological aspects. | Maturation (Psychology) | Emotions. | Conduct of life.

Classification: LCC HQ799.95 .A565 2020 (print) | LCC HQ799.95 (ebook) | DDC 155.2/5dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041571

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041572

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

For the Wong Family

H umans have rituals for beginnings and endings. We get all dolled up for New Years Eve, throw retirement parties, buy gifts for both engagements and weddings, and send graduation announcements. We ritualize the beginning of a day with a morning routine that we probably copied from someone else, and mark the end of the week with a Friday margarita. Were good at starting and were good at finishing.

But we dont know what to do with ourselves in the in-betweenwith the melancholy as we wait to fall in love, with the frustration of infertility, with the hope of a job interview, with the worrisome boredom six months in once we get the job. Our culture just isnt set up to support it.

In other words, we are just really bad at waiting.

One creature thats very good at waiting? The lobster. About twice a year, lobsters begin outgrowing their shells. The signal that theyre growing: they get really uncomfortable. But they know what to do when their shells begin feeling tight and their limbs get awkwardly long.

They go into hiding.

I imagine a lobster saying to its friends, Hey guys, Im going to be out of the office for a couple weeks. Busy growing a new shell, nothing personal. And then it goes into a burrow, puts up a Do Not Disturb sign, and, I dont know, catches up on all five seasons of The Wire or something. The lobster knows its going to be vulnerable during this time, unprotected and getting used to a new shape. The time hiding by itself is not only a poetic period of self-reflection, but necessary for its survival.

I think humans might be so uncomfortable with transition periods because we dont give ourselves the right to be lonely and uncomfortable like lobsters do. Were so often told, Focus on the positive. Choose happiness. Good vibes only that we feel like something must be wrong with us when were not a living, breathing inspirational cross-stitch pillow.

Im not irritated by cheeriness (in fact, my worldview skews canary-yellow-level optimistic) but I dont like emotional binaries: the idea that youre either happy or sad, positive or negative. Think positive gives us only one option, out of a vast and fluid range of perspectives, for experiencing whatever were going through. It implies that anything less than the nebulous positive is undesirable, and that it should be fought against. If were not happy, we must not be making the correct emotional choice.

Two years ago, I received a book deal, which made my life seem a million times brighter and more glowy than ever. Making a book is the only dream Ive ever had for myself, and it came true. So I decided to make that dream-come-true even dreamier and write my book in a foreign countrywhy not? I googled most bohemian cities in the world to help me decide on a place to be a real writer for a few months. After getting a few cosmic, or totally coincidental, signs pointing in the direction of Spain, I decided on Granada. It sounded pretty nice: