ABout Mari
Mari Andrew is a New York Times bestselling author, artist, and speaker, who has gained an international reputation for joyfully philosophical illustrations and essays that meander between deep and light, bitter and sweet. Mari is in the business of paying attention, and her work reflects her specific observations turned into universal life lessons. As writer Suleika Jaouad says, “At each turn, she uncovers hard-earned coins of wisdom in the most unlikely places.”
Mari Andrew didn’t formally study writing or art, but her fabulously strange life path filled with stints in food service and retail, working multiple jobs in foreign countries, profound grief and heartbreak, mental health struggles, lots of solo travels, and a very odd serious disease, has prepared her well for a lifetime of appreciating and documenting each moment with equal attentiveness.
Mari currently lives in New York City, which is where she finds both creative spark and inner peace.
From Mari’s latest book, My Inner Sky, whiCH is basiCally her mission statement:
I love positive affirmations and intentional candles as much as the next millennial, but after a couple of years coming up heartbroken or just bored after striving for unsustainable happiness, I looked inside and thought, “Isn’t this all beautiful too?” When I finally gave up positive thinking for present thinking, that’s when I really began not only to get comfortable with this transitional period, but to see the beauty in it.
Giving my transitions as much attention and curiosity as my brightest after- noons has helped me appreciate the inner sky I’m continually trying to make more colorful. Who wants a sky that is blue all the time?
Give me some clouds, some rain, the occasional crazy lightning storm that makes your cat hide in the pile of socks in your closet.
Give me a night so dark it looks like a wall finished with black lacquer—the perfect backdrop for stars, an outdoor dance party, or an existential cry.
Give me early mornings where I’m rushing to the airport, to work, or to get coffee before the Sunday morning crowds, where I’m taken aback that the light is still pink and I think of the day as a newborn
Give me breezes, still air, rainbows, and those giant cumulonimbus clouds that look like friendly ancient grandfathers.
I want the full menu, everything available to me in this life: dark, bright, that purply-pink weird twilight color, and golden.
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In the past couple years, I’ve had a lot of fear around MY NEXT CHAPTER and how I was going to make it bigger and better, adding more and more and expanding in all directions.
As soon as my ego gave up on that story (it only took a few panic attacks!) I learned that all I had to do was make my next chapter more TRUE.
I was just reading about a fig tree in South Africa whose roots are 400 feet deep (!!) because it took that much underground growth for the tree to secure a water source.
All of my growth since 2020 has been underground. From the outside, it may even look like my work is growing in the wrong direction (my IG following shrinks by the moment, my events are smaller 🧘🏼♀️) but I am committed to growing toward what’s life-giving, just like the fig tree who journeyed 121 meters underneath to find its source of energy.
I just spent a week at @kripalucenter, teaching self-endearment with one of my greatest teachers @ruthielindsey, whose integrity and brightness blow me away.
After our program I stayed at Kripalu and I made all my nervous system’s dreams come true, with yoga and walks and lovingly-made food and craniosacral therapy and journaling with bright colored markers. And my soul grew leaps and bounds in directions that no one will ever see.
My next chapter is so small and lovely, restful and restrained. My circle is smaller, my days are lighter, and my goals are tinier. And it feels so true and so right.
Thank you @kripalucenter for showing me what the ideal version of that deeply-rooted life can look like, so I could become clear about which thoughts or habits I can shed in order to become the truest, deepest-rooted Mari I can be.
And thanks so much to the gorgeous group of “students” we go to “teach” (or, teachers we got to learn from 🙂 who attended our retreat. It was such a special, relaxing, nourishing time and I am watching my roots erupt in joyful growth. 🌱
💥 Kripalu Presenter 💥
“Self love” can be a…daunting concept. When you have a lifelong, complicated relationship with someone (like yourself), you don’t just love them: You also like them. You also get annoyed with them. You have honeymoon periods and rough patches, and a responsibility to show you care.
My beloved friend and life-changing teacher @ruthielindsey have been on the self-love journey for A MINUTE. We have both done so much healing and learning and un-learning, and now we have affection for ourselves that even rivals our affection for the birds in our backyards 🪺
So we’re teaching a retreat called BECOMING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND from March 3-5 at @kripalucenter (in Western Massachusetts, close to Upstate New York).
When Ruthie and I first talked about this retreat last summer (!) we kept using the words JOY, PLAYFULNESS, DELIGHT.
Let’s hang out with our inner kid, inner teenager, inner 20-year-old, and fall in love with every version of ourselves ever (even the ones with the worst hairstyle of our lives/all time).
Ruthie and I have both done a lottttttt of self-work and a lot of it has been hard. And tough. And involved getting extremely lost in the woods looking for a shaman along with the most confused Uber driver ever. Just two white ladies looking for a yurt, what else is new.
But this time we want to bring some of the lightness, sweetness, sensuality, and smiles we’ve enjoyed in the past couple years. Growth doesn’t have to be so TOUGH. It can also be gentle, lovely, skippy. It can take place at an EDM concert or an empty cathedral, a movie theatre or on a date. It can happen through reading, steam-room-ing (my new thing), rollerskating, or sitting on your couch.
I haven’t been to Kripalu yet (!!), but I’ve heard AMAZING things. Soul-shaping, mind-massaging, body-revitalizing things. Apparently the food is bomb, the land is sacred, and the massages are out of this world.
Doesn’t that sound nice?!!
Registration: Link in my bio or at kripalu.org.
Ruthie and I are going to lose our minds when we finally meet you! Let’s get endeared to ourselves, together.
Photo by @carolwildphotography
About my “writing” “process,” from my latest newsletter
OUT OF THE BLUE, VERSION 2:
My newsletter, Out of the Blue, moves to Substack today! If you’ve been reading Out of the Blue over at Bulletin, think of this as a move across town, from one home I really loved to a new one that I’m just beginning to decorate.
Here in my new Substack home, I’m envisioning bringing in a big old farmhouse dinner table into the dining room with enough seats for whoever wants to join.
Think: clattering of dishes, bottles and bottles of your favorite beverage, side conversations, hearty laughter, a tear here and there, flattering candlelight, and more than enough to go around.
All of my new plans for this community will be possible because of the new paid subscription option. Imagine! You! A patron of the arts! The option will include lots of fun bonuses and experimentation that remind me of the early days of starting this IG account 🐣
Join me if you love candlelight!!! mariandrew.substack.com
Or link in bio 🤗
📸 @carolwildphotography
To find the answer, change the question ✏️
It makes me want to buy school supplies 🍂
I used to get nervous before teaching a workshop or leading a retreat because I thought that I had….anything to do with it.
The ego attaches quickly and easily to external crap like numbers and names and false possessiveness.
But the soul knows what’s really going on, and the retreat at @artoflivingboone last weekend was a radiant example: The experience is all about the community that forms together when folks are bold and wholehearted enough to fully show up.
It’s a sacred synergy that can’t be created by any one person, and I suspect it has something to do with something beyond us…like that grandiose full moon on Saturday, perhaps??
I remain in a state of wonder as I reflect on what these precious beings shared and how they supported each other as we wrote and created and walked and emoted together.
Here are a few photos from a stunning weekend in a gorgeous place (did you know that the Blue Mountains are really blue? I thought they might have been called that just for drama).
There will be more retreats to come (I will try to keep the moon phases in mind as I schedule them in the future), but for now, I’m basking in what was: and I’m watching out for every one of these humans who are about to break open hearts around the world with their transformative creations.
1. Group photo by @anusha_godavarthi
2. Wonder-full Harini @thehobbyistchronicles by @anusha_godavarthi
3. Gentle art by not-on-social-media-god-bless-her Sandy Potter
4. Collage Queen @m_serrano497 by @anusha_godavarthi
5. Books in gift shop @bymariandrew 🙂
6. Full moon sighting by @bulbashka
7. Marvelous monsters by @lisa.sinicki
8. Praying mantis by @god x @motherearth
9. Sunset on the retreat center by @dustyroseklass
10. Meeeeeee by 🍂🍁🍂🍁
Lessons from Octobers past 🎃🍁🍂
Today’s my birthday! And I’m at PEACE, baby!!!! 🤩
Swipe to see a letter I wrote to my adult self when I was 14 🥺 I try to read it once a year. Little does she know I can’t drive…
Photo by @carolwildphotography
Just human-ing 😌
Notes to self/you
Libra Season: a pearl earring dropped into the last morsels of the year, inviting us to seek out elegance, serenity, beauty, and juicy gossip.
My favorite thing about being a Libra is the sound of the word Libra. Which is probably a Libra thing to say.
Photo by @carolwildphotography
🌳 In this week’s newsletter 🌳
Thinking about the great Mac Miller today: profound being and forever inspiration!!! 🤍
From my August 24 newsletter 🐞
How’s your inner child doing?
Are they getting your attention? Are they TRYING to get your attention?
Next month, I’m teaching a retreat over October 7-9 in North Carolina @artoflivingboone called Creating From the Soul.
In order to do that, we’re going to be getting very cozy with our inner child: What did she love doing that you no longer do? What special spark did he have that you want to get back? Did they bring a playfulness and fearlessness to creativity that you wish you could channel now?
Bring your journal and/or favorite art supplies (a pen counts!) and LET’S CREATE LIKE KIDS.
You’ll participate in:
-creative exercises
-solo nature walks with prompts
-guided writing projects
-no-pressure group chats (this retreat is introvert-friendly!)
If you want to make time to work on a specific project, this is your weekend to do it. You’ll have guided time, free time, and meaningful time to enjoy the wonder that is the Blue Ridge Mountains in autumn 🍁🍂🏔
Go to aolrc.org/creatingsoul to learn more and register: I can’t wait to meet you! 🤗
For the past year, I’ve been creating off social media:
Writing (my newsletter), scribbling (early drafts of a book), dancing (jubilantly and ridiculously), and building (relationship, community, home).
This is the first week I’ve actually been on Instagram in a long time (a sweet angel posts for me so I don’t have to have IG on my phone!) and while this complicated app doesn’t feel like the right home for my creative work anymore, I’m back now with a different relationship to it:
As a kid, my bedroom was covered with photos and drawings and magazine clippings and moments (swipe to see!) and it was an ever-changing overspilling of my thoughts, values, and expression—a colorful landscape of whatever was going on in my baby head at the moment.
That’s how I’m thinking about this space now: an overspilling of expression, without any particular intention. And DEFINITELY no “curation.” :)
I might post art from time to time that doesn’t have anywhere else to go, I will keep you updated on my book-writing process, and I may share ideas or memories or experimental stuff that didn’t make it here years ago. I don’t have a plan yet, but if you’re cool with inconsistency and want to stick around through the evolution, I’d be delighted to have you!
And if you’d like to keep up with my work, please join me at my primary creative space: mariandrew.bulletin.com. I send out an essay once a week and it’s been a really lovely transition from fast-paced polarized Instagram to the slow algorithm-less email. 🧘🏼♀️
Thank you for being here! I love you, even if I don’t know you!!
Photo by @carolwildphotography
Celebrating my NYC-versary by wearing this extremely special frock made for me by @sweetcarolinestyles! She said she was making MARI AS A DRESS and indeed this is MARI AS A DRESS!!! Intense, fluffy, flowery, ribbony…the comparisons stop at some point…
(What’s YOU AS AN OUTFIT?)
Five years in, the thing I appreciate most about New York is that it reflects back to us who we are, because New York is a human city. Some days break my heart with their displays of tenderness, others bring out the most broken part of myself. Whatever is most human, you will find it here.
Another thing I appreciate is that I can stroll all around my neighborhood in a ballgown and apparently nobody is impressed?
Thank you for my gown @sweetcarolinestyles and thank you for these photos @carolwildphotography!!!