11 oz. mug with

Monsters are the canaries in our psychic coal mines, alerting us to unseen dangers. Popular movie monsters have always lurked adjacent to cultural anxieties, and our personal monsters are equally as telling. The things we’re most afraid of (or afraid of doing?) reveal the true obstacles to our growth and evolution. Artist Yumi Sakagawa writes and draws extensively about having tea with your demons—sitting with your fears in order to learn from them. (What conquers this beast? What tool can I cultivate from within that will dissolve the power it has over me?) And poet Amanda Gorman believes that terror “is trying to tell us of a force far greater than despair” and that fear might sometimes be “love doing its best in the dark.”

It’s in this spirit that I offer you monsters (on mugs and bandanas); so that you might bring yours a little closer to you and embrace them—or at least what they have to teach you about growing beyond them.