🛣️Takeaways: How Far You Have Come: Musings on Beauty & Courage
About the Author
Morgan Harper Nichols is an artist and poet whose work is inspired by real-life interactions and stories. Morgan spent the first couple of years of her professional life as a college admission counselor, and then, as a full-time touring singer-songwriter and musician. It was on the road that she cultivated her curiosity and passion for writing, art, and design and slowly began to share her work online.
In 2017, Morgan started a project where she invites people to submit their stories to her website. From there, she creates art as a response to their stories and sends it to them before sharing the work publicly. All stories and names are kept private. The fruit of this project is shared daily around social media, in publications, and various creative collaborations and installations.
As an artist, designer, and author, Morgan’s work has been featured in collaboration and various places such as Target, Starbucks, Anthropologie, Athleta, Aerie, Barnes & Noble, TJ Maxx and more. Her book of poetry and art, “All Along You Were Blooming” made Morgan a WSJ Bestseller and has sold over 100,000 copies. She is on the board of directors at TWLOHA (To Write Love on Her Arms).
Morgan is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, and she and her husband Patrick currently reside with their son Jacob, in Phoenix, Arizona, where you can also find her studio and shop, Garden24.
Table of Contents
⭐ The Book in 3 Sentences
🎨 Impressions
🤔 Who Should Read It?
💡 How the Book Changed Me
✍🏾 My Top 3 Quotes
📘 Summary + Notes
⭐ The Book in 3 Sentences
The author takes readers on an aesthetic and metaphoric journey from the East Coast to the West Coast through poetic musings and anecdotes on life, nature, and growth.
We can learn much about courage and beauty from nature, but only if we take the time to absorb the knowledge.
The experiences of our youth play a major role in the happenings of our adulthood. Reflect on the patterns, identify what you want to change and what you want to remain the same.
🎨 Impressions
This is a beautiful book of vivid, earthy tones that mirror the landscapes and cloudscapes of Georgian clay, Texan wildflowers, Arizonan red rock, and the California coast. Throughout this piece, we see evidences of imperfection through scribbles and smudges of paint, we also see brave vulnerability through the stories of disappointment and shame shared by the author.
🤔 Who Should Read It?
Anyone who appreciates the beauty of art, nature, and our connection to the two will enjoy this read. I would also recommend this book to anyone who is struggling to contend with depression and/or just coming on the other side of a lifestyle change such as divorce. Although she doesn’t explicitly speak on these things, the messages of hope and grace were key healing and reflecting points for me.
💡 How the Book Changed Me
How my life / behaviors / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book
I take more time to reflect on how I’m feeling. I give myself the grace necessary to process my emotions.
I make space in my day to marvel at the beauty of nature around me. Sometimes, I pull my car on the side of the road to watch the clouds move across the sky, other times, I bask in the sun’s light.
I think in poetry. I yearn to move into expressive writing again.
✍🏾 My Top 3 Quotes
“…I’ve always felt that darkness is a prime opportunity for my imagination to light the way” (p. 65).
“…we can’t wait for perfect answers before we start doing good available to us. We have a choice to be present. We have a choice to write new endings, even for storylines we didn’t start. We don’t need to be powerful insiders before we show up for others living on the outside. We can serve and maybe no one will notice, but we can still act in love. In fact, we must. And when we do, we are made new” (p. 103).
“…I know in my core, we are all more alike than we are different…So no matter the stage of life – whether in open plains, valleys, or mountains – I believe we have a duty to connect, a duty to share, a duty to create in our calling, whatever that may be” (p. 127).
📘 Summary + Notes
“When we live with care for our neighbors, we find life” (p. 102).
