Marathon for Every Mother Counts

by Kristen DeLap


This year is a milestone birthday for me. So when Every Mother Counts asked for team members to join Team EMC at the Chicago Marathon, I decided this was my year. I’m a longtime supporter of Every Mother Counts, an organization dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother, everywhere. And I’m thrilled to be supporting them through running my first ever marathon.

Please help me reach my fundraising goal if you are able. Donations go toward Black and Indigenous community-based organizations in the U.S. and abroad to eliminate racial disparities in maternal health, as well as to help fund original, accessible content, tools, and resources for people to share and raise awareness in their own communities.

Please donate if you can.


Looking for myself

by Kristen DeLap


Last night I had the pleasure of attending an event for You Could Make This Place Beautiful, the newest book by Maggie Smith. Maggie is a poet, and this memoir is the most poetic prose. The epigraph is the quote below by Emily Dickinson. And it very much sets the stage for her writing - both the story and the framework.

My Goodreads review for the book reads: “Raw. Beautiful. Like the quartz stone she rolls around in her hand rubbing with her thumb, this memoir takes a series of moments and rolls them around different metaphors and frameworks. A very engaging structure of vignettes and poems and snippets of thought. Though unabashedly (actually almost belligerently) an incomplete story. Clearly prose written by a poet.”

At last night’s event, Maggie was interviewed by my favorite local author, Megan Stielstra. Megan is a master writer, editor, educator, so hearing her thoughts on the book and its construction was enlightening. I was also able to reintroduce myself to her, as my book club once invited her out to drink and talk books with us - it was unforgettable!

Quote by Emily Dickinson

Myself, Maggie Smith, and my best friend since childhood, Abby, who is the best partner for all literary events.

Selfie with Megan Stielstra.


Tis the Season

by Kristen DeLap


I love traditions when they help create or reinforce community. One of my favorite traditions is holiday greetings in the mail. I especially like reminiscing about our year to find what might be worth mentioning in the couple paragraphs. Now that I have kiddos, I like thinking about how they’ve grown or matured over the year, and how to sum that up to our family and friends. And I like the connection that a holiday card can bring - a warm greeting to our elderly recipients, an affirmation of a new friendship, a welcome viewport into the lives of those we don’t get to chat with enough.

This year I went with a more traditional 4x6 card, with images on the front and our message on the back. We were fortunate to have some professional photos from a charity event over the summer, that both featured heavily and created the color palette for the card.

Everything was created in Procreate on the ipad, which is my favorite app for lettering digitally. Neon envelopes were a fun find! And of course I used vintage stamps whenever possible.

Stack of neon envelopes. The top one is addressed with black lettering.

I hope everyone who received one felt a bit of the cheer my family was sending. It was such a pleasure to receive so many this year.