Lily first came through to me in March 2015.
There’s only so much I want to say about this.
Someone I loved, Little Bird, had called and told me she was sick, and deep into treatment. I came to the hospital to see her. We hadn’t seen each other in six months. The last time I saw her, she was herself in full, all of her. When I saw her in the hospital, all of a sudden, she was a skeleton. How that feels is my business, and hers, but that’s what happened.
That first night, I sat in her hospital bed with her and she asked me to tell her a story. That’s when Lily first appeared. I started talking about a girl born on a frozen boat who only knew the cold, but traveled to a cave and found fire and learned of warmth for the first time in her life.
I had never seen or known of Lily before, I had never thought about this character or this story in even the smallest amount. Not even a single little thought or glimmer of her, or her story, or her world. Lily came in that night, herself in full, seemingly out of nowhere.
I went home a few days later and started to write down Lily’s story, one chapter at a time. I emailed the chapters to Little Bird, then to her and her mom, then to her, and her mom, and a few friends as well. I started to draw a little as well, to make a little sketch for each chapter.
The first time I drew Lily she looked exactly how she looks now. Like I said, she came through in full, as her full self, from the very beginning.
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What more is there to say about all this? I got about halfway through writing and sketching this first book. Little Bird got better and began to recover. I don’t want to say much more about all that. It’s between me and her and no one else.
But Lily carried us through those years in her own way, popping in and out. I finished writing this first book sometime in 2017, sometime after Little Bird’s remission began. It was warm out.
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Lily first came to help Little Bird that night in the hospital.
Over the last nine years she has continued to come through to help me, to teach me, to guide me, through difficult times and mundane. She still does, with each new book.
And now Lily is here to help a whole lot more people — anyone and everyone who needs her.
Lily has a good heart, beneath it all.
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I don’t like writing about these things.
In part because it hurts and I don’t like going back there.
In part because it’s so personal for myself and others.
In part because I don’t like to take credit here, for this book, for any book I write really, but for this one in particular. Lily was always there, somewhere, waiting, it just took this moment before I could begin to see her, and speak for her.
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To me, Lily is a real person, and her story covers real events that happened somewhere, in some way. That’s how this feels to me — like a channeled work, and I am just a vessel she’s telling her own story through. Her translator.
My only job in all of this is to see and hear and feel clearly. Then, to do my best to put it all on paper, to bring it all into this world, and this weight, as best as my abilities allow.
So if Lily feels familiar to you too, maybe that’s why. Maybe you have your own connection with her, or your own memories and glimpses of the histories I’m recounting here.
These are stories that have been told many times before, and will be told many times again. I’m just the one carrying the water for this turn of the wheel. And it’s been a true honor.
-Craig, 05/16/2024
