Breathe In, Breathe Out

Breathing and drawing with guest artist Carissa Potter

Hey there, wonderful humans. So happy you’re here.

This week I’m excited to share with you the work of my drawer-friend Carissa Potter. While I’d known her work for ages, Carissa and I first met IRL through our mutual friend and one of my favorite humans, illustrator Julia Rothman. Then, recently, we ran into each other a mutual friend’s life drawing class. Two mutual friend run-ins = one real friendship.

“Things Will Work Out” by Carissa Potter (aka People I’ve Loved)

Carissa is a thoughtful and prolific artist and writer whose drawing and painting based work explores connection, emotion, and that wee topic of "being a human with a body in the world”. She’s the founder and artist behind her art-company People I’ve Loved, creator of the substack conversation series Bad at Keeping Secrets, and author of five books including It’s OK to Feel Things Deeply. Her drawings often involve some poetic text, and they are smart, relatable, and comforting. A sweetly drawn hand on your shoulder.

“Lady Hug” by Carissa Potte (AKA People I’ve Loved)

Her latest book is Breathe Through It, which she co-wrote with Vera Kachouh. Inside you’ll find a beautifully-drawn collection of breathing activities as well as their insights into facing life’s challenges. We have one book to give away — more details below!

Left: Carissa Potter, Right: Vera Kachouh

This is a tough time for everyone, inside and out. And with everything going on in the world and in our lives, we need to remember to take care of ourselves and each other. This book offers a simple, concrete, approachable foundation where we can start.

Carissa and I had a really sweet conversation about the book that I think we can all learn from. I’m excited to share the conversation we had with you as well as some excerpts from the book!

Q&A with Guest Artist Carissa Potter

Wendy: How did you and your co-author come up with the idea for this book?

Carissa: Right before the pandemic, I had a child who was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. All parents want their children to be healthy—if nothing else. We say it all the time: “It doesn’t matter what they are, as long as they’re healthy.”

I’m an atheist, but I started to pray. I prayed to a god I wasn’t sure I believed in. I begged: if you make this not real, I’ll believe. Just undo it—make it a mistake, a bad dream, a joke.

I knew I needed to de-stress. I knew I had to calm the fuck down to advocate for my daughter. But I didn’t know how. Everything felt too overwhelming to begin. I needed something simple, something doable.

Then the pandemic hit. Then George Floyd. Then the wildfires. And somehow, time kept going.

I had to start somewhere.

So I made a small kit for Robin Wright’s publishing company RITE Editions. In it was a zine titled “HOW TO BREATHE UNDER WATER.” That’s what I needed at that moment: a way to survive. Something that felt possible. The kit was designed to help you ritualize and embody the exercises in the book.

After that, I asked my dear friend and collaborator Vera Kachouh if she’d help me expand the book into something more. And that’s how BREATHE THROUGH IT came to life.

Wendy: Why is this book important right now?

Carissa: It feels like humanity is stressed on a cellular level. So many of us are stuck in self-destructive loops—scrolling, numbing, escaping—while traditional spaces for connection, like community centers and churches, feel increasingly out of reach or obsolete.

This book isn’t meant to replace those spaces. It’s meant to lower the barrier to entry—to gently remove the friction that keeps you from starting a meditation or reflection practice. It meets you where you are, with the time and energy you actually have, and helps you explore what works for you. From there, it invites you to design meaningful, personal ways to cope with reality.

Wendy: What did you learn that you were surprised about? I know you did a lot of research, so is there something you’d want to share about what you learned?

Carissa: I’ve learned there’s no one-size-fits-all way into breathwork.

For me, it often starts with movement, like cat-cow pose in yoga. I also love the “5 Beautiful Things” practice, and box breathing. Simple tools that gently bring me back to the moment and help me locate joy.

I still have not given myself the time and permission to rest near a body of water. I wonder what that would feel like - but I think I would like it.

One of my favorite longer practices is the Happy Memory exercise. I find a time when I felt truly joyful, and let myself rest there. Afterward, I’ll write or draw about it. Sometimes I change the details, alter the past just a little or a lot. But I always come away with my sense of what’s possible stretched open, softened, expanded.

Wendy: Have you had any stressful moments in your life when drawing saved you?

Carissa: Drawing (really, any creative act) saves me every day. It helps me understand my relationships and make meaning from them. I think of it as a tool for connection, for shaping the chaos in my mind into something I can hold.

Sometimes everything feels like a mess in my head, and drawing is the only way I can make sense of it. It’s also a deeply human way to communicate. there’s an immediacy to it, a way of saying: “This is what it felt like.” It allows us to share experience, to be in our bodies, and to regulate them.

I draw to remember what it felt like to be alive. I’m scared to forget—and some days I can feel that forgetting creeping in.

When my daughter was born, I told myself I’d draw her once a month. I didn’t keep it up. But I want to draw more—because I know how good it makes me feel.

And yet…why is it that we can know things are good for us and still not make them a priority?

Wendy: Thank you, Carissa! And thank you for Breathe Through It (Buy your copy here, friends!).

Alright GUT community, I have a wonderful drawing assignment for you based on one Carissa’s breathing exercises. And it also brings to mind some of the artwork in the SFMOMA’s Ruth Asawa exhibit. The most beautiful worlds often collide. :)