Having a rough week? These uplifting comics are your chicken soup.

Michael Calcagno
10.13.16

Leah Pearlman finds inspiration for her comics through friends, teachers, and her own heart.

She is the artist behind the popular Dharma Comics, which explore love, life, and our connection with the world.

Her comics are simply drawn, but that’s only on the outside.

They are a refreshing reminder of the struggles we all deal with every day. Each panel holds a mirror up to our imperfections and reminds us that it's OK.

Excerpted from "Drawn Together: Uplifting Comics on the Curious Journey Through Life and Love" by Leah Pearlman. Reprinted by arrangement with TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. © 2016 by Leah Pearlman.

Leah has always been compelled to draw. Her journey to Dharma Comics started in 2010 when her father's cancer went into remission. She drew a simple cartoon with the text: “Thank you, Cancer!” and shared that drawing on Facebook. It had an immediate response online, and Dharma Comics took off from there.

"My experience is that through my art, I am healing."

"But I didn’t get here by pushing any pain away," Pearlman wrote in an email. "I got here by moving toward it. By admitting it, by exploring it, by sharing it, and by allowing myself to be helped."

The comics are full of depth, meaning, and complexity about the human experience. They reach out through the lines and grab the reader by the heartstrings.

“The essence, whether it’s anger, or loneliness, or adoration, is something everyone can relate to. And often, because we do get so tangled in the daily dramas of our circumstance we can all have trouble finding the essence. I think when people see my comics, sometimes they’ll [breathe] a sigh of relief and say ‘YES. That’s exactly how that feels,’” she wrote.

Get inspired by these 10 drawings from her recent book, “Drawn Together: Uplifting Comics on the Curious Journey Through Life and Love.”

Don't these comics make you feel great?

They're having a huge impact online and the book is finding a new, unexpected audience: children.

"I never drew these for kids, except perhaps my own inner child," she wrote, "and I’d love to connect more with [them] around the topics of self-love of welcoming emotions and whatever else they’re finding in the pages that move them."

These comics are an inspiring reminder that there is joy in everything. And that's worth celebrating.  

art comics dharma comics leah pearlman drawn together: uplifting comics on the curious journey through life and love web comics
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