Amanda Carter Gomes

I last profiled Seattle singer-songwriter, Shelby Earl, five years ago. Collectively our lives have changed so much since that spring day in 2019, but few more so than Shelby's. Since our last conversation Shelby has welcomed a child, moved into a new home, and experienced breathtaking losses in an intensely short period of time. Cumulative grief, as we've learned, is the definition of losing 5 family members in a very short amount of time, including her husband and her stepdad of 35 years.

It's a Monday morning and I have, through luck and circumstance, scheduled a call with New York Times best selling author and editor, Sloane Crosley. A writer whose books of personal essays (I Was Told There’d Be Cake, How Did You Get This Number andLook Alive Out There) I have long loved. As someone who has read almost exclusively memoirs by women for the past 10 years, when I first heard that Crosley was writing a book on grief, I was somewhat confused. "Grief?

It is a rare alchemy when, as an artist, you become close with another artist whose work acts as a north star for your own. This profound experience of seeing and being seen is unmatched by any other bond I have encountered. Painter Melissa Messer, an artistic firestarter and compass in my own life and work, and painter Ian Kurtis Crist, her brilliant partner in crime for their upcoming show, know this singular type of relationship well.