Unhome has been a profound inspiration and reflection of both my current way of life and the path life has taken me on. What a pleasure it has been to connect with and hear from artists across multiple continents and cultures, each bringing their own unique perspectives, experiences, and creative voices to this journey.

—Lauryn Kai

Unhome is a zine about displacement, belonging, and the spaces we carry within us. Through words, images, and personal reflections, it explores what it means to feel at home, out of place, and somewhere in between.

This is the first digital zine being shared here on Substack, complete with a readable link: UNHOME e-Zine, where you can view and experience all of the works submitted for this open call.

A heartfelt thank you to all of the featured artists whose creativity, generosity, and participation made Unhome possible:

Aino Ellis — Helsinki, Finland
Kelly R. Baum — New Jersey, USA
Ava La Compasseresse — Paris, France
Mau Kolaz — Poland
Lauryn Kai — Europe
Ottavia Marchiori — Italy
Rozali Mascuri — Singapore
Sarah Merton — Wales, UK
Shannon Nahara — Missouri, USA
Nastya Orydoroha — Warsaw, Poland
Gabriela Paludi — Buenos Aires, Argentina
Adriana Pardo — Lima, Peru
Deepa Patil — Mumbai, India
Zainab Rangila — India
Diane Reynolds — Shrewsbury, UK
Shloka Shankar — Bangalore, India
Stephen Tomasko — Akron, Ohio, USA

Your contributions have helped shape this collection into a rich and meaningful exploration of home, displacement, belonging, memory, and place. Thank you for sharing your work and for being part of Unhome.

To stay in the loop with us for upcoming open calls, write-ups, daily collage inspiration, and monthly collage themes, follow us here on Substack and Instagram @lwnsloveanthology for updates!

Thank you for all the love and support we’ve received so far in developing this wonderful collective of artists.

Until next time,

Letters We Never Sent, Love Anthology

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Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicidal thoughts.

Felicia Kelly is, first and foremost, a human being. Everything she creates is made by hand, either by her or with help from her husband, another human being. All of the materials are sourced by their hands, and all of the ideas originate in her brain. Her main inspiration is other humans—usually women, typically ones who have been silenced in some way.

Her hands typed these words, and her heart thanks you for reading them. You can find her in her 1920s home studio, creating collages, drawing flowers, stitching fabric, painting dreamscapes, and caring for the wild birds in her backyard.

Q: Describe your artwork in relation to the theme of Sacred Rage. What inspired it, and how does it explore anger, justice, or transformation?

Felicia: “Everything I create comes from some form of rage. I’ve tried to create from a place of joy and peace, but as someone who rarely experiences joy and peace, I find them difficult to express. Everything I create requires some form of discomfort. My emotions are very large, and my artwork comes from the place inside of me that wants everyone else to feel as much as I do. I hold my rage as sacredly as some hold their religion. It’s part of my entire existence.”

Q: What does Sacred Rage mean to you personally? How do you experience or honor this energy in your life or art?

Felicia: “As someone who experiences obsessive-compulsive suicidal ideation, I’m pretty much only alive out of pure spite.”

“These pieces were all created as statements of grief. As a child growing up in the United States, I often saw cracks in the stories I was being told and asked questions I was told not to ask. I’ve always been the kind of person who looks in the dark corners and exposes the ugliness. I’ve been angry for most of my life.”

Q: Was there a specific moment, event, or feeling that prompted this work? (Optional: a brief story or context that shaped it.)

Felicia: “This work was created from a desire to see better and do better. I challenge those of us who live in the United States to look at ourselves, our stories, and our own personal histories in order to make change. It’s only by acknowledging the harms we ourselves have committed and working to right our wrongs that we’ll be able to make any progress in this country.”

Q: How does your medium or technique help convey the intensity or subtlety of this theme? (For example: collage, color choices, composition, materials.)

Felicia: “When I was a child, the United States was sometimes referred to as the Great American Melting Pot. Schoolhouse Rock, a children’s TV show, even had a song called ‘The Great American Melting Pot.’ In a way, collage is also a melting pot. Bits and pieces from different sources come together to create an entirely new story. When I was a child, I thought the Great American Melting Pot sounded like a fondue pot, and all of us were floating around in it like little chunks of bread. ‘America’ sounded delicious.”

Q: Do you see Sacred Rage as destructive, healing, or both? Please explain.

Felicia: “I see Sacred Rage as neither healing nor destructive. Sacred Rage is the energy which flows through me. Some people might call it source, holy spirit, divinity, etc. Sacred Rage is that which moves me to pursue truth, justice, and action.”

Q: Who or what do you dedicate your work to, or who does it speak for? (This could be a personal, communal, or societal audience.)

Felicia: “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. (The Lorax by Dr. Seuss)”

Q: How do you hope viewers will engage with your work and the theme of Sacred Rage? (What do you want them to feel, reflect on, or be inspired to do?)

Felicia: “I hope viewers feel moved to take a look at dark, ugly truths, especially the ones they themselves have perpetuated. I hope viewers feel moved to take action towards injustice against others and the planet. All we have is each other, so I also hope viewers feel seen in their rage, fear, and confusion. Deconstructing the stories we’ve been told and the systems that were put in place long before most of us were even born is a lifelong learning process. I can’t help looking in the ugliest places. Thank you for looking there with me.”

As always, we thank you for reading our publications, and to the artists who take the time to submit to our open calls and answer the prompts so vulnerably, we thank you!

If you enjoyed this read, please consider supporting the artist Felicia Kelly on Instagram @feliciakellyart and exploring her other works at Auric Gallery.

If you’d like to stay in the loop with us, feel free to subscribe

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here on Substack and follow us on Instagram @lwnsloveanthology.

Submissions for the Sacred Rage open call will be accepted until February 24th! You can find the submission Google Forms via the link in our Instagram bio.

Stay tuned for the next few submissions exploring this theme.

Until the next one,
Letters We Never Sent, Love Anthology

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Nettuno states:
“I began creating these collections to confront the quiet erasure happening all around us. Working in AI consulting, I find myself at the center of a system that promises progress while simultaneously accelerating obsolescence. Entire ways of making, using, and valuing objects can vanish without notice, swept aside by algorithms and automation. My art serves as a counterweight. By collecting, reusing, and re-contextualizing discarded objects, I aim to preserve traces of human intention and touch—fragments of memory that technology cannot replicate. These artifacts, once ordinary, become vessels for reflection, offering a pause amid a world hurtling toward irrelevance.”

We asked Studio Temet…

Describe your artwork in relation to the theme of Sacred Rage. (What inspired it, and how does it explore anger, justice, or transformation?)

and they answered:

“These works emerge from a moment of quiet excess. As artificial intelligence absorbs, abstracts, and optimizes the world’s accumulated knowledge, entire archives of human effort; medical imaging, textbooks, diagnostic references begin to lose their practical authority. What once required years of study can now be retrieved instantly. What once trained the human eye is increasingly relegated to datasets. This collection asks: what becomes of knowledge when it is no longer needed? Rather than treating these artifacts as obsolete, the work recycles them—X-rays, microscopy slides, parasitic forms, cellular structures—into new arrangements. Removed from their instructional purpose, they are allowed to exist again as matter: texture, pressure, color, weight. Knowledge is not discarded here; it is recomposed. At its core, this collection is an act of honoring. It treats displaced knowledge not as waste, but as residue worthy of attention. In an era where meaning risks being flattened into efficiency, these works insist on slowness, friction, and the dignity of looking. They do not attempt to explain the future. They stand with what remains. This work stands against erasure. Against the logic that names the human hand inefficient, the human eye redundant, the human body replaceable. What is called obsolete here is deliberate. What is slow is chosen. What is imperfect refuses optimization. This rage is sacred because it defends the made thing, the touched thing, the knowledge that lives in muscle, in time, in error.”

What does Sacred Rage mean to you personally?
(How do you experience or honor this energy in your life or art?)

“To me, sacred rage is the honorable act of using justified anger to create something new—something that stands against an injustice. This collection marks my first body of work born entirely from the injustices AI has brought to art and to the world. By taking objects and knowledge that have been diminished in value by these tools, I give them a new pedestal—one where their worth cannot be captured or replaced by the artificial. In this space, they reclaim their true value: in art, in expression, in the human hand.”

Was there a specific moment, event, or feeling that prompted this work?

“I work in AI consulting, and one day I was discussing with a colleague how information-heavy jobs—like those of lawyers or doctors—will be profoundly impacted by AI. We reflected on the vast amounts of data and formats that will be used to train models and then, once processed, effectively discarded. This idea—that knowledge once essential for training the human eye could become obsolete—immediately captured my imagination. Thinking specifically about medical scans, imaging, and the study of bacteria, I saw the potential for these tools to be transformed into something entirely new. That moment sparked this collection: a way to reclaim, re-contextualize, and honor the knowledge and labor embedded in these objects.”

How does your medium or technique help convey the intensity or subtlety of this theme?

“Collage is recycling as honor.”

Do you see Sacred Rage as destructive, healing, or both? Please explain.

“Both. Sacred Rage marks a necessary break and sparks action. It destroys what is unjust or stagnant so that healing and transformation can begin.”

Who or what do you dedicate your work to, or who does it speak for?

“Dedicating this work to Medical Professionals.”

How do you hope viewers will engage with your work and the theme of Sacred Rage?
(What do you want them to feel, reflect on, or be inspired to do?)

“I want people to be inspired to repurpose pain or injustice for newness and growth.”

We hope you enjoyed this perspective on our “Sacred Rage” open call!

A special thanks to Studio Temet for sending in their wonderful works and sharing their sacred passion on this topic. You can follow their work on Instagram at @studiotemet.

Be sure to also follow us on Instagram at @lwnsloveanthology for monthly challenges, open calls, and other inspiring artists. Submissions for our open call ‘Sacred Rage’ will be open till February 24th, be sure to get your submissions in for an exclusive feature here on Substack!

Until next time, Letters We Never Sent, Love Anthology

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‘I am a collage artist based in India, working primarily with analog collage for the past four years. My work is inspired by both current and historical events that shape our world, as well as by nature, tradition, and the cultural lives of communities.

These works were created in direct response to ongoing global events—particularly wars across different countries, often fueled by dictatorial rule or by the invasion of neighboring nations.’

— Zainab Rangila

We asked Zainab...

What does Sacred Rage mean to you personally?
(How do you experience or honor this energy in your life or art?)

‘I experience rage as something collective rather than personal. It is shaped by worldly events—by political tensions that impact specific communities, and by the exploitation carried out by those in power who act with the knowledge that they will not be held accountable. This shared anger is what informs my work.’

Was there a specific moment, event, or feeling that prompted this work?
(A brief story or context that shaped it.)

‘Because I often work in direct response to current events, this body of work emerged from a convergence of my emotional state, geopolitics, and the geographic conditions present in that moment. It reflects what was unfolding around me as much as what I was carrying internally.’

How does your medium or technique help convey the intensity or subtlety of this theme?
(For example: collage, color choices, composition, materials.)

‘The details I choose in my collages—and their colors—are essential to the work. I believe these small elements come together to reveal the full emotional landscape of the theme.

To express feelings that are too raw to be contained by paper alone, I sometimes incorporate thread, black pen, or pencil to build texture. I work with great intention when placing and arranging each fragment, while the process of adding texture remains freer and more instinctive.’

Do you see Sacred Rage as destructive, healing, or both? Please explain.

‘I believe rage, to a certain extent, is necessary—it brings us into contact with our conscience. For me, sacred rage is both destructive and healing. It becomes destructive when it is held inside, but when we find ways to channel it, it can heal not only ourselves, but also others who encounter our work. When art is born from truth, that healing can extend beyond the artist.’

Who or what do you dedicate your work to, or who does it speak for?
(This could be a personal, communal, or societal audience.)

‘I dedicate my work to everyone who feels that their stories are not felt by the world, or that they are not cared for deeply enough—especially those living under oppressive conditions.’

How do you hope viewers will engage with your work and the theme of Sacred Rage?
(What do you want them to feel, reflect on, or be inspired to do?)

‘I would want the viewers to be more aware of what is going on in the world in general. Sometimes people usually respond in such situations that life goes on but that is not how a society deserves to be treated in general. As it is said we are in each other’s lives for a purpose and what happens in some part of the world could be experienced by us one day and the feeling of helplessness is the worst feeling to have felt.’

‘The final work responds to the rising global tensions driven by climate change. It imagines the earth itself expressing rage. Every few days, we are confronted with news of fires or floods somewhere in the world. I titled this work Water and Fire, depicting a human figure at the center, seemingly unaffected—reflecting how we have distanced ourselves from nature despite its escalating distress.’

‘As an artist I wrote this poem as a practice just to vent my frustration as everything seemed pointless because we say that art has the power to change and shape the world but when a war breaks out or something unpredictable happens somewhere and people are truly dying that is when one feels the most helpless.’

A special thank you to Zainab for sharing their perspectives with us, and for their humbling, beautiful, and raw work.

The Sacred Rage open call is accepting submissions until February 24. We invite you to share your responses to this call, including up to five works that confront anger, injustice, and the raw forces shaping our inner and outer worlds.

We invite you to share you fury with others through the means of art!

Selected submissions will be shared right here on Substack. Also, Follow along on Instagram at @lwnsloveanthology for more daily updates.

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We are endlessly grateful for your willingness to open your hearts, to trust us with your stories, and to let your creations speak in the spaces between grief and beauty. Thank you for allowing me, as a writer, artist, and curator, to breathe life into and through your artworks — to hold them, interpret them, and share them in a more expansive way.

Your presence and vulnerability continue to shape this community.

—LWNS Love Anthology

We hope that you enjoy these open calls and consider submitting your work for future ones. A few things to remember: for exclusive artist features, please submit 4–5 pieces of your work to be considered for your own dedicated feature. If you submit a single artwork, it will be included in one of our group features on Instagram.

We look forward to sharing, exploring, and celebrating your creations with our community.

— Letters We Never Sent, Love Anthology

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I introduce to you Maryna Siliakova, a Ukrainian collage artist based in Warsaw, Poland. She works with both analog and digital collage, combining archival cut-outs from forgotten black-and-white magazines with painterly acrylic textures. Her work explores memory, the fragility of experience, and both personal and collective strategies for coping with crisis. Her artistic practice often intersects with social and educational work, where collage becomes a tool for dialogue, reflection, and art therapy.

‘The series is based on a personal memory of an image depicting a girl with a swan by a lake, which in my childhood became a symbol of an ideal of beauty and a space for imagination. This image was kept in my grandmother’s room. In 2025, she passed away, and due to the war in Ukraine, I was unable to attend her funeral. In response to this loss, I began creating new worlds with the swan in my works — as a way of preserving memory, maintaining an inner dialogue, and continuing the imaginative space connected to childhood and closeness.’ —Siliakova

While viewing Maryna’s collection of works shared for this theme, I was brought back to the idea and the totem of the avian, specifically the swan. The swan is a powerful symbol of grief, peace, love, resilience, purity, and quiet strength. While the swan may appear elegant and silent, it takes great effort for it to remain afloat. Feathers are what fall away without sound. They are the evidence that a presence was once near, even when the presence itself is gone.

The appearance of feathers in relation to grief and grieving, even for those who have passed, can feel like a gentle visitation as we move through different states of loss. These avian symbols become a silent conversation with that which we cannot see. In Maryna’s artwork, I’m drawn to the presence of the swan. Whether large or small, it is a presence that always seems to be there, perhaps even always alongside the subject, the viewer, or the one who mourns.

Even encountering the death of a bird can carry a strong message of transition and transformation, a symbol of impermanence in life and of the seasons we move through, including those that feel heavy or unbearable. These symbols can remind us that everything has its time, and while grief may never fully go away, it becomes a little lighter to carry. Its voice grows softer, more distant.

In Maryna’s pieces, there is a journey you move through alongside the avian spirit, in its subtlety and in its loudness, in the moments where it is barely present and in those where it takes up space. It becomes a companion in mourning, guiding the viewer through layers of memory, loss, and quiet resilience, and through it all, its beauty shines.

For me, the avian, the bird, has been a great healer, and still is, throughout my life and through different aspects of grief. While viewing Maryna’s work, I pose these questions to you: How, and in what ways, do these works speak to you and your own relationship with grief? Have there been any avian totems that have revealed your strength to you through different stages of mourning?

As always, if you’ve read this far, thank you for being here. If you’re interested in following Maryna’s work, you can find her on Instagram at @siliakova_m.

Thank you to all of those who have shared their precious work to be featured. The next open call will be presented closer to the end of January, so stay tuned. Until then, feel free to also follow along with us on Instagram at @lwnsloveanthology.

Until next time,
Lauryn Kai
of Traveling Easel

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This January, we’re moving slowly and intentionally through a 31-day analog collage practice guided by daily words (or short phrases). Each word offers a starting point—not a prompt to solve, but something to respond to in your own way.

There are two ways to approach the practice:

1. One piece per day
   Create a separate collage for each word, allowing each day to stand on its own.

2. One evolving piece
   Work on a single collage throughout the month, adding to it daily in response to each word. If you choose this approach, you may layer up to three scraps per day.

   

Guidelines

• Analog materials only

• No cutting—use scraps as they are

• Take it day by day, without planning ahead

Whichever approach you choose, please remember to tag #lwnsloveanthology and/or @lwnsloveanthology in your photo or caption so we can see and share your work.

This practice is about accumulation, attention, and letting meaning build over time—one word, one day, one layer at a time.

Start date: January 1, 2026 - January 31,2026

Jan 1 — Suspended

Jan 2 — Flicker

Jan 3 — Uncertain

Jan 4 — Softening

Jan 5 — Awake

Jan 6 — Letting Go

Jan 7 — Held

Jan 8 — Drift

Jan 9 — Yearning

Jan 10 — Sharpen

Jan 11 — Endure

Jan 12 — Anchored

Jan 13 — Attune

Jan 14 — Decide

Jan 15 — Unfold

Jan 16 — Risk

Jan 17 — Claim

Jan 18 — Devote

Jan 19 — Rebalance

Jan 20 — Ignite

Jan 21 — Linger

Jan 22 — Stretch

Jan 23 — Steady

Jan 24 — Build

Jan 25 — Align

Jan 26 — Fortify

Jan 27 — Trust (Again)

Jan 28 — Open

Jan 29 — Lightness

Jan 30 — Intend

Jan 31 — Onward

Thank you for participating. I can’t wait to see what you all create.
Happy collaging.

As always,
Love, Lauryn Kai
Traveling Easel

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I’m pleased to introduce this week’s featured artist, Canadian multidisciplinary artist Robin Rivers, whose work centers on cultural memory-keeping and technologies of circulation—how stories and images move between people and across generations. Based in Vancouver, BC, Rivers’ practice spans writing, found and original photography, and mixed-media collage. Through these forms, she examines how documented archives and personal interpretation shape our shared understanding of the past, while also exploring how preservation itself is influenced by power, privilege, and historical upheaval.

Rivers shares that she began creating these works as a way to process and grieve the loss of her dad this year, in 2025. I find it incredibly special and heartwarming to share Robin’s work, as I empathize and share a similar understanding of using our art practice to transmute, process, or even make sense of such a profound loss.

Within the works I share with you today, Robin combines her own imagery, vintage ephemera, archival pieces, and handmade papers with actual street photography from the period to create fragments of memory. While this artistic practice evokes a sense of time travel, connecting us to moments of the past, it also creates an unseen dynamic of memory preservation—one that is deeply tied to grieving and processing loss.

By preserving fragments of another’s history, the artist not only honors and sustains those memories but also reflects on the passage of time and the impermanence of life, allowing personal reflection on one’s own experiences of loss and remembrance.

What we choose to preserve images, objects, stories—shapes the way we remember. In the context of grief, this act of preservation becomes a way to hold onto what feels lost, to give form to absence, and to create a space where memory can live. The act of creating—even if it is not drawn from our own direct memories, allows us to see our own lives reflected in the work, echoing outward into a resonance with those who encounter it. That connection may not be immediate, but it exists—in our “why,” in the imagery, in the process, or simply in the act of expression itself. Through this, grief is transformed, carried, and shared in ways that are both personal and collective.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. If you’ve enjoyed this artist feature, consider subscribing.

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And if you’re an artist yourself and would like to submit your work for our latest open call, please feel free to do so before January 3rd via the submission form here. You can also check out my art print shop here.

Stay tuned for the next upcoming artist features continuing to explore The Shape of Grief.

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This first submission begins that exploration.

Introducing the Artist

Zainab is an artist based in India whose practice centers on collage and mixed media. Her work draws inspiration from elements of nature, historical moments, and cultural narratives, weaving them together into layered visual expressions.

‘This collage depicts a woman in grief, though we cannot know what has caused her sadness. She lies in a pool of water—likely filled by her own tears—as a metaphor for her emotional state. The work is partly inspired by the painting of Ophelia and draws on elements of magic realism.’ —Rangila

‘In this collage, I have not indicated a specific time of day. Soft light filters in, yet the overall atmosphere remains very gloomy. Even the flowers in the vase appear long dried, and the muted color palette reinforces the emotion conveyed.’

—Rangila

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‘I have tried to capture the feeling our body, especially our heart, goes through when we hear news of innocent people being attacked and killed, and the destruction it brings. Red is used as the main color to represent bloodshed. The work was inspired mainly by attacks on Lebanon by the IDF army.’ —Rangila

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‘I wanted the viewer to be impacted by the mass starvation of children in Gaza by the IDF army and the pain it brought to the parents, especially mothers. On the border, I have used details of food items and bills, but there is no money or resources for the people to end the hunger.’ —Rangila

On the Shape of This Grief

These works are delicately strong in the grief they express. While most artist features lean toward analysis, I would like to leave Zainab’s work to speak for itself—to allow air and room for you, as the viewer, to feel into how these artworks resonate with you.

What I enjoy about the works Zainab submitted for The Shape of Grief is how they touch on worldly events and the personal emotions that arise when we connect to the world around us. Though the works may appear effortless, they ask us to pause and notice the grief we carry on a worldly level, and to consider what that grief might look like, and what it might feel like, when we allow ourselves to sit with it.

A special thank you to Zainab for being the first feature of this theme and for sharing their beautiful work. If you enjoyed this artist feature, be sure to follow Zainab on Instagram @color.brush.paint.

Stay tuned for the next artist feature next week.

The Shape of Grief submissions are open until January 3, 2026.

Submit Here

Until next time,

As always, love

Lauryn Kai of Traveling Easel

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Introducing the Artist

It’s a new month, which means a fresh write-up — and at the end of this one, I’ll be sharing our new Open Call for the Letters We Never Sent Love Anthology.

But first, I want to begin with this: how extraordinary the medium of collage truly is. Collage composes fragments of memories, places, people, and the small stories of life we sometimes can’t articulate. It gathers what feels scattered and reshapes it into a new visual language — one that expresses what the heart often struggles to say. It creates connection. It creates community. It reminds us that even what feels broken can belong somewhere.

This week, I’m excited to share the work of Marina Neri, an artist based in Europe — moving between Belluno, Paris, and Berlin — who is also a poet and screenplay writer. Marina practices analogue collage, incorporating elements of mixed media: letters, maps, fabrics, and discarded materials. She collects the overlooked and fragile, transforming them into narratives of resilience and visual healing. As she says, “I collect what is fragile, and I give it form, so that stories too easily erased can remain visible.”

I will be sharing four of Marina’s artworks with you here today. Each piece is a gentle exploration of memory, vulnerability, and the everyday traces of emotional life. They are both intimate and universal — reminders that even the smallest fragments carry weight, meaning, and the capacity to connect us with ourselves and others.

Her work embodies collage as emotional archaeology: a delicate excavation of lived experience, stitched together in ways that honor what might otherwise be forgotten. Each fragment carries its own history, and together, they create something larger than the sum of their parts — visual narratives that speak to resilience, healing, and the enduring human heart.

An Invitation Into the Pieces

What I enjoy most about Marina’s work is that it acts as a kind of time capsule, transporting you back in time and inviting you to imagine the stories of the people captured in the imagery. What are they saying? What do the small fragments reveal? Where did they come from, and what was their setting? Each piece encourages curiosity, reflection, and a sense of connection across moments, places, and lives.

What does this have to do with love?

Marina’s collages, at face value, may seem to be just about memory, fragility, and piecing fragments together, but they are really about love — the quiet, tender love we carry for ourselves, for the lives we’ve lived, and for the stories that might otherwise be forgotten.

Each fragment she gathers carries the traces of care, attention, and human experience. By rescuing what is easily overlooked or discarded, she is practicing a kind of love: for the stories, for the people behind the materials, and for the emotional lives they represent.

Her work asks us to consider our own love — not just romantic love, but the love we carry for ourselves, for the past, for the small and fragile moments that shape us. In piecing together these fragments, Marina reminds us that love is often quiet, tender, and found in the things we preserve and honor.

As you view Marina’s work, I invite you to reflect on the fragments you carry:

memories, objects, feelings, or stories that have shaped who you are. What would it look like if you gave them form? What might emerge when you arrange the pieces of your own life into a visual story, even just for yourself?

Your Turn: Create with Fragments

Inspired by Marina’s work, I invite you to gather something fragile — a letter, a scrap of fabric, a note, or a found object — to incorporate into this prompt below and create a collage or visual piece. Let it be a visual narrative of your own memories, resilience, or emotional traces.

You can tag us on Instagram under #lwnsloveanthologyprompts, or email creations to us for reposting on Instagram.

For More of Marina’s Work:

You can explore more of Marina Neri’s collages and creative projects here:
Instagram: @_marinaneri_

Open Call: The Shape of Grief

As we move into a new month, I’m opening submissions for the next installment of the Love Anthology: The Shape of Grief. This call invites you to explore what grief looks like, feels like, or even sounds like through your creative practice — whether that’s writing, collage, photography, music, or mixed media. You’re welcome to submit poems, letters, visual work, or any artistic expression that gives form to the tender, shifting nature of loss.

Deadline for submissions: January 3.
Link to submit is found here

I look forward to seeing the ways you give shape to what the heart carries.

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In this week’s Substack, I write about how this collage awakened the familiar, fragile bond we hold with our inner child—— the first keeper of our wonder. I’m sharing artwork from an artist based in South Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose work is wonderfully abstract and thoughtfully incorporates up-cycled materials.

Maggie Carter creates pieces that, to me, speak deeply to the inner child — carrying a sense of playfulness, curiosity, and wonder.

Her works are anything but conventional, in the best way possible. They embody the essence of collagé — evoking feelings, colors, memories, or even fleeting images from one’s life.

The collage Maggie shared with us for this week’s anthology write-up reminded me, at first glance, of a childhood book I once read.

The subtle, sweet wording she incorporated into the piece made me think of the term bond — not only the bonds we form with others, but also the ones we carry within ourselves. The quiet bonds that live inside us and fuel our creativity, our passion, our dreams. The bond with the inner child.

The Bond as a Quiet Line of Thread

For some reason upon my first glances of Maggie’s piece ‘Bond’, I got teleported back to my childhood and reminded of Dr. Seuss.

While enjoying every moment of it — it struck me that this weeks write up should be about the thread that attaches us to our inner child, a bond that through time may grow thin, but never severed.

The bond we hold with our inner child is quiet but ever-present. We easily recognize the other ties in our lives — romantic, familial, platonic — because they often demand the most from us. But the inner child asks for nothing and yet shapes everything. They live in the soft crevices of our being, quietly influencing the ways we navigate the world and the ways we show up within it.

When we allow ourselves to move freely — to create without inhibition, to follow curiosity, to reach toward color, passion, and desire — something buried and joyous rises to the surface. It is the inner child returning, reminding us of the wonder we once carried so effortlessly.

While viewing this week’s collage, I felt that familiar tug — that intuitive sense of knowing that awakens when we are creating from instinct rather than hesitation. The kind of feeling that lets us choose color, shape, texture, and meaning without second-guessing why.

As I spent time with the piece, it led me into my imagination. I found myself journeying through a landscape that felt both new and deeply familiar — a reminder that I was never walking alone. That throughout every version of myself, there has always been two of us: the person I am now and the child who has been with me all along. Our bond may be silent, but it has never been severed.

If you’ve read thus far, I invite you to turn inward and consider the bond you hold with your own inner child. The one who once created freely, who dreamed boldly, who loved without hesitation.

What might they want to show you now?

What colors would they choose?

What shapes would they reach for?

What stories would they tell if you let them speak again?

To help you explore this connection, I’ve included a simple visual prompt below — feel free to collage over it, draw into it, tear it apart, rebuild it, or let it inspire something entirely unexpected. Allow your inner child to lead the way. Let their hands guide yours. And notice what comes alive when you give them room to breathe.

I’d love to see what you create.

Link to visual prompt

You can tag us in your creations on Instagram under #lwnsloveanthologyprompts or email them to us here !

Final Message from the Artist

“Love is everywhere.” — Maggie Carter

You can explore more of Maggie’s work here:
Instagram: @incognitomaggie

✨ Next Open Call

We’re excited to announce that the next open call for Letters We Never Sent: Love Anthology will launch at the beginning of December. Keep an eye out for the theme and prompts — we can’t wait to see the ways you explore love, creativity, and the bonds within.

As always,

thank you for reading, x

-Traveling Easel

aka Lauryn Kai

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Today, I’m honored to share the first submission to the anthology: a poem by Kristina Wheatman that reached straight into the center of what this series is about.

About the Love Anthology Series

This series is an open, evolving exploration of love — its tenderness, its ache, its memory, its transformation. I want to investigate love as it exists between people, between cultures, within identity, and within the self.

The anthology is meant to be communal, layered, and textured, much like the collage work I create: fragments of emotion, memory, and experience held together in a shared space.

That’s why your submissions matter so much. They turn this project from a monologue into a collective archive.

“To Love Deeply”

by Kristina Wheatmen

To love deeply is to open one’s chest and say,
“Yes, this is my heart. It may be worn, and rusty and weary,
but it doesn’t cease. It doesn’t betray itself.
It is steady & it is yours until it no longer pumps and beats and sputters.
Until the steam is all but gone.

These are my lungs—my wings—
that keep me afloat when the pace of this existence
dares to pull me under.

They make the breath that you take away every day
simply by the beauty of your existence,
and I could seek no other to take my breath as you.

This is my mind, fraught with its worries and frenetic energy
and so blazingly alight with colors and music and ideas.
You hold space there until the lights dim and the music fades.
Until the final thought has been thought
and the curtain draws at last.”

Reflections

Kristina’s poem resonated deeply with me because it captures the courage it takes to show up and love fully, even when our hearts are battered, bruised, and weary. It reminds me that love is an act of radical presence — choosing to give and to be vulnerable, despite the scars we carry. This idea mirrors my own creative process in the Love Anthology series, where I collect fragments of emotion, memory, and experience from myself and others. Just as the poem layers intensity, vulnerability, and beauty in words, I layer textures, images, and materials in my collages to explore the depth and complexity of love. Sharing this poem as the first submission feels like opening a door — inviting others to contribute their voices and create a shared space where love, in all its forms, can be celebrated, examined, and honored.

Submit to the Love Anthology

I’m now accepting submissions for future editions of the series.
You can send:

poems, letters, journal entries, memories in the form of art,
photography, collage artwork, stories, confessions, music —
anything that touches your experience of love.

Any & all types of love are welcome:
romantic, familial, platonic, spiritual, cultural, ancestral, self-love, heartbreak, healing, longing — all of it.

You may submit with your name or anonymously

Send your in 👉 Submissions

This first open call will close on November 24th, after which a new theme will be presented.

What Happens With Submissions

Some pieces will be featured in the upcoming anthology posts.
Others may become inspiration or visual material for feature themes and posts. Everyone will be credited unless anonymity is requested.

This series is not about extraction — it’s about holding space for genuine expression and connection.

As always, if you’ve read this far, thank you. If you’d like to be featured in the next upcoming write-up, please send your submissions via the Submissions Form before November 24th, 12:00 AM GMT.

Stay tuned for future themes and calls for submissions — I look forward to seeing what you share.

And a special thank you to Kristina for being the first voice to shape this series.

For more of Kristina’s work visit her Instagram and Website

With love,

Lauryn Kai of Traveling Easel

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When I think of how love holds us, my spirit hovers over all the times an experience brought me back to loving myself. I often find myself frustrated with this new-age idea of “self-love,” because the phrase has become overused. Not in understanding, but in misunderstanding.

To love yourself has been watered down to a way of being that overlooks how difficult it truly is to love ourselves through our destructive tendencies, flaws, mirrored aspects, and the moments we fall short.

I find that self-love is often reduced to putting yourself before everything — and sometimes, there’s no thought beyond that.

While it’s true that part of self-love is putting one’s best interests above everything in a healthy way, there are also times when it means facing the aspects of yourself you try so hard to hide. Sometimes these parts meet you in the silence of self-critical thoughts, and sometimes they appear in others — as something you absolutely can’t stand to face.

I’m not exactly alluding to the saying that “people are mirrors of ourselves,” because sometimes mirrors are tests — invitations for us to rise above where we once were. And this, too, is an act of self-love and sovereignty.

Loving Oneself Through Descent

There is the mythological story of Inanna, a Sumerian goddess — one of the oldest stories of love, beauty, fertility, and war. She stands as a powerful figure embodying both creation and destruction.

Inanna decides to descend into the underworld, passing through seven gates where she is asked to strip away an item of her power and identity at each one, until she is left with nothing. There, she is hung by her own sister, the ruler of the underworld. Through divine intervention, her sister’s pain, and Inanna’s complete surrender, she is reborn as a new version of herself.

I share this story as a metaphor for what it can look like to love ourselves — even when we no longer know, look, or feel like who we once were.

The descent is about facing the ego and stripping away illusion. Descend. Die. Re-emerge. It is said that the astrological sign of Scorpio “dies” the most out of the zodiac — over and over again — constantly rebirthing into a new version of self.

This act of descent, or what some might call a dark night of the soul (which I believe I’ve written about here before), are one and the same.

To love oneself through this process — as many times as it happens in life — is always an act of radical self-acceptance. It has nothing to do with romantic love, but with the compassion and full embodiment of self: embracing all facets of who we are — the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The descent is also a powerful conduit for diving into the depths of the soul and bringing something beautiful back from that darkness.

And this is what I want this project to be about: to see how others can share their love with the world.

10,000 hours

“Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.”
— Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

As I finish this piece of writing—which has taken me about a week or so to complete—I’ve realized that, in my own writing practice, there are times when I return to pieces after losing steam, only to find more to add.

So, when you read these posts here, some have been written in one sitting, while others have taken me a little longer to fully gather my thoughts.

A song that just concluded in my headphones as I returned to this post is “10,000 Hours” by Ella Mai. The artist wrote it around Malcolm Gladwell’s idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill; in the song, she applies that concept to the time and dedication it takes to nurture a relationship.

And beyond relationships, at this point in my life, every day feels like one step closer to accepting and realizing that the same dedication must be given to the things I love in order to truly see growth.

This project is a new birth and while many new ventures can seem nerve racking. I am eager to see what can come of it, how you can inspire me and vice versa, how it can trickle into other aspects of life, and bring those who need it the most back to themselves and back to love.

If you feel so inclined feel free to respond the Open Call here:

LWNS: Love Anthology Submission form

I look forward to potentially hearing from you!

As always, if you’ve read this far.. thank you!

-Traveling Easel aka

Lauryn Kai