✌🏾Takeaways: Peace Is A Practice
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
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
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
Nichols’ signature means of storytelling through courageous vulnerability takes readers on an intimate journey to finding peace in moments large and small.
Practicing peace is an intentional effort to letting go of the weighted burdens of unhealthy control, the unrealistic expectations of self and society, and pain.
Understanding our connection to the natural world and our innermost feelings and thoughts is a critical pathway to finding peace within ourselves and our surroundings.
🎨 Impressions
Initially, I was a bit uncertain as to whether I would like this book as much as I did How Far You Have Come, because the structure and layout is very different. Instead of poems and narratives carefully laid out with vibrant art, this book features a cerulean palette with a blend of nonfiction, narrative, and illustrative structures to guide readers through the understanding of peace as a practice. Each chapter begins with a connection to a significant, relatable memory or experience of Nichols which bridges the author’s life to an element of peace. The chapter concludes with practical summations of key ideas and a strategy for extension. The book as a whole concludes with a lyrical poem that reiterates the key concepts shared in previous chapters.
🤔 Who Should Read It?
This book is a recommended read for the overwhelmed. Collectively, it affords the reader with a solutions for obtaining peace both internally and externally.
💡 How the Book Changed Me
How my life / behaviors / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book
I have learned to start paying closer attention to my breathing patterns, particularly during high-stress life events. I have noticed when my heart rate has increased in rapidity and intentionally forced myself to pause, reflect, and recollect myself in these moments. I haven’t “perfected” this practice, but I’m proud to say that I engage in it more frequently than not.
My appreciation for journaling has grown now that I have freed myself from the rigid expectations of sequence and schedule. One of the practices I would like to engage in walking away from this book is keeping a journal at my bedside to prompt self-reflection, record my dreams, and list out my hopes.
As Nichols shared, “Silence…teaches us to listen, observe, pay closer attention.” I have grown to appreciate the comfort of silence and all the gifts (creative expression, rest, idea formation) that emerge from it.
✍🏾 My Top 3 Quotes
“…whenever I’m stuck and don’t know what to say, write, or paint, it’s time to listen. Its time to inhale. It’s time to pay attention to someone else’s story instead of my own. Sometimes that story will be shared in conversation, but often I read a book, watch a documentary, or listen to music in the background…most of the time, inspiration comes from taking in real life. Real experiences. Real moments of connection with other people” (p. 96-97).
“I also want to live in a world where people like me are acknowledged for the hard work they put in to survive in a society that isn’t always designed for those who aren’t ‘normal’” (p. 58).
…”making a plan is a bridge to figure IG out the pulse of what you want to do. A plan helps you identify motivations and think through ways forward, but that doesn’t mean you have to attach your identity to it…A plan is just a plan. That’s all it is” (p. 163).
