Hello friends,
Rachel here. The one who draws the pictures for The Book of Belonging.
I’d like to say a massive thank you for all your love, prayers, and patience while I've been working on this massive storybook Bible.
Guess what? It's finally done! 288 pages. Finished! And I did not skimp. Every dang page has art on it. Preorders are open, please share with your friends!
I submitted final files on February 22nd and after a few rounds of edits, during which we perfected drop caps, double-checked that every disciple was wearing their sandals, made King David’s underwear more historically accurate and fixed an error that made it look like I’d drawn Jesus slapping around a businessperson in the Court of Gentiles, the book has now been approved and is off to the printers.
I say hooray! (and honestly a lot of relieved swear words that I won’t type here to keep it family-friendly).
Mariko and I are both so grateful and excited.
I know we’ve been quiet for a while, so now that the hard work is done, I'd love to share how my personal journey has influenced the artwork in The Book of Belonging.
When Mariko and I signed on the dotted line with Penguin, little did I know that alongside growing a book, I’d be growing a baby. I was utterly transformed by my path into motherhood, but it was not an easy road. Instead of a smooth ride, pregnancy stirred up old injuries and brought on dreadful morning sickness, leaving me drained and achy. I slept so much. Despite my plans to get ahead of schedule on the illustrations before Finn's arrival, my body had other ideas: physical problems, “baby brain” and a newfound ADHD diagnosis turned 2022 into a whirlwind of personal and professional challenges.
In December, Finn arrived safe and sound and stole my whole heart. I loved being a mom and felt as if something had been unlocked inside of me.
I’d hoped 12 weeks of maternity leave would be more than enough for me to recover from the birth and all the problems I’d encountered during the pregnancy. However, reality hit hard with a barrage of physical issues like neck problems, headaches, and vision changes, alongside postpartum depression and ADHD clouding my motivation. It became difficult to look downward, or to hold Finn, or to draw. The project became a grueling struggle, compounded by self-doubt and brain fog. In January of this year I met with a psychiatrist and was prescribed my first ever depression medication. I shared my difficulties with Mariko, our agent, Jonathan, and the art and editorial teams. I was overwhelmed by love and support. My art director said, “We’re mostly women, here, Rachel. We understand.” What a tremendous gift. Our editor prayed for me. The whole team was rooting for me. I felt so much less alone, and I wish I’d seen a psychiatrist and shared my problems sooner.
When I chose to become a mother, I decided that becoming a parent was a sort of vote of confidence in this world. I was choosing to hope. And in having a child, I would be binding myself to the cause of making a home, a family, and a world that they could thrive in. I would protect and prepare them. I would share with them each aching shard of loveliness laid out before us in this too-short life.
I chose to risk it, and instead of expecting all to go wrong, I would try to make things right.
There was more pain and fear than I’d expected. But I have watched myself become someone fuller and deeper. I have watched my partner change before my eyes, blurry edges sharpening into something splendid. I have watched my baby grow and grow into himself and I didn’t know I could love like this. I feel the brevity and beauty of life so much more keenly. I’m living the brutal truth that I can’t protect him from everything. Now, it’s my job to help him stay soft but resilient and to love this broken world for however long we might get to keep it.
And so even though most days I felt fear, guilt and anxiety about The Book of Belonging, deep down I remained committed to making this book and making a better world for Finn and other little ones, along with their grown ups. I can’t tell you how strange it was to be making drawings and feeling like such a stranger to myself. I just had to trust in that quiet voice inside, and lean on Mariko and my editor to let me know if I was making terrible art or not.
Mariko was my rock. She’d been a friend and mentor in motherhood all throughout my pregnancy and postpartum, but in those last weeks before our deadline she transformed into my manager. She blasted through my creative block, handled all organizational details and kept me on track. During a time when I’d expected to be at my lowest, I instead experienced a surge of productivity and joy in the work. And with Mariko’s organizational help, I was able to do this without sacrificing time to rest, heal and spend time with my family. We finished strong.
All of this was poured into the pictures of The Book of Belonging. My matrescence profoundly influenced the illustrations in our book. Mariko and I had always been committed to featuring women and children in her writing and my illustrations, but motherhood deepened that commitment. It was suddenly very important to me that you would find pregnant people and breastfeeding mothers within the stories.
And I felt a new compassion for these characters. Mary’s story was suddenly one of razor sharp love and grief. What had it felt like to hold her boy at the foot of the cross? And how must it have felt to hold him again, when he returned? Part of my contribution to this book was to tell stories beneath the stories, ones that weren’t included in the text, an act of sacred imagination. And in Mariko’s story of Jesus’s ascension, I included a small illustration of Mary clutching Jesus to herself, squishing cheek to cheek. The image feels almost prophetic, as I’d sketched it Finn was only a few months old. But now, as a little one year old, he loves to squish his face to mine. And I imagine, like Mary, that I’ll still want to hold him and squish him when he’s grown.
The prodigal son story went through a major metamorphosis. I connected so deeply with the father longing for his baby boy to return and wanted to tell the whole story of both the son’s childhood in a comic book style. This was one of the concepts that had to be cut back in those final weeks but I managed to keep the core elements that mattered most to me, depicting the love of a father for his son.
My journey through depression and grappling with difficult emotions brought new empathy and understanding to the illustrations. As I grappled with my own feelings of inadequacy and doubt, I found myself drawn to characters in the Bible who experienced similar feelings, depicted in scenes of waiting, longing, and uncertainty. In the midst of my storms, there were moments of brilliant joy and connection that also shone through in the illustrations: You’ll find many silly sheep, hugs and dancing.
I have so many more stories behind the pictures in this book I’d love to share with you, but I’ll save them for another time.
I want to thank you for supporting this project, and to tell all of you that this book has so much love and joy and fear and pain poured into it, just like the people in the stories, and it all belongs, just like you.
Thank you again for your support. Let's talk soon,
— Rachel (and Mariko!)
I just got my copy of the book last week. It was suggested to my by Amazon believe it or not and I'm so grateful. I have a 6 year old and a baby girl who will be 1 in just 2 weeks.
I'm so grateful for the labor of love you poured into this work during a time that was so difficult and beautiful in your life. That first year of becoming a mother changed me so much and to hold something in my hands that I can share with my Black daughters, and know that it came from your own experience of becoming a mother.....wow....it gives me chills.
Thank you thank you thank for such a wonderful gift
In my childhood it was basically sacrilege to “add” to the Bible by imagining anything that wasn’t on the page. In these updates you’ve described the deeply personal and heartfelt empathy you’ve found in the Biblical stories and how the events must have affected everyone around Jesus and others in such a way that I can’t wait to read and experience the Bible again through fresh eyes. It should be a personal book and I think your efforts will help make it personal to a new generation. I can’t wait to read it with my two kiddos.
So is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:11 NIV