Collage of various photographs of people including a young girl on a horse, children making duck faces, a sleeping dog, a woman and a young girl, a parent and child. There are decorative elements like butterflies, lace patterns, a camera illustration, and text that reads 'About Mansi'.

I’m Mansi (pronounced maan-see).

The script you see at the top of this page is my name in Devanagari.

I chose to begin here, in a language not everyone can read, because it holds something essential about how I move through the world.

If you’re curious, you can read the story behind that choice here.

Since 2018, I’ve been building a practice rooted in small, intentional acts of presence: the RIPPLE Practice™.

It’s not a framework I designed. It’s a pattern I finally recognized. Six movements I keep returning to—when I make, when I write, when I gather people.

Reflect,Identify, Play, Personalize, Let Go, Embrace.

This is the way I live. There is no persona and no performance.

How I Found My Way

A watercolor painting depicting a tropical riverside scene with palm trees, houses on stilts, a boat, and lush greenery.
A cartoon illustration of a sophisticated anthropomorphic black and white cat in a tan suit, red bow tie, striped pants, and colorful sneakers, holding a cane with a pearl handle, and a small mouse in a pink jacket holding a top hat with hearts around it.

I wasn’t always able to work this way. For a long time, creativity was something I had to set aside in order to survive.

I used to watercolor as a child in India. Dreamy landscapes. Family portraits with happy puppies. Things I didn't have. It was my escape — my way of coping with a household that was loud in all the wrong ways. I would paint what I wished was real.

When I was 19, I applied to a design institute. A panel of celebrated creatives flipped through my portfolio and told me I had no originality. That I clearly would never be an artist.

They saw my poetry sitting alongside the watercolors and said: maybe there’s something there.

It stung. It felt true. And it set the direction for the next twenty years of my life.

Decorative paper flower with red, pink, yellow, and green accents.

I packed up my brushes. I pursued writing instead — because that's what they said might have potential.

I moved to the United States, earned a master's in journalism from the University of Iowa and built a career in strategic communications. I wrote for and edited alumni magazines and annual reports. I was the ghostwriter for CEOs. I worked in healthcare, philanthropy, higher education.

It was a comfortable career. I earned well. I had time off. I married a wonderful man. Life was okay in every sense of the word.

But art was no longer a part of my life. The wounds from that rejection were so deep that I just didn't feel courageous enough to open them again. It was easier to shove it all down and pretend like it was never a part of who I was.

A woman and child taking a selfie, smiling, in a close-up shot, with one woman’s arm extended holding the camera. The woman has short hair and the child has curly hair and glasses.

Two decades into an accidental career, I became pregnant and quit my job. I wanted to enjoy my pregnancy because I had this feeling that life would change once the baby arrived.

And it did — in ways I didn’t expect.

My daughter had allergies, so severe I couldn’t put her down. We couldn’t go to the park. We couldn’t go to the library. We were practically under house arrest for three years, and I was having an identity crisis.

“Just a mom” wasn’t a title anyone had prepared me for. I was drowning.

Close-up of a weathered, painted leaf with orange and red and green.

One afternoon, as I was cooking, my then-two-year-old spilled some Tempera paint on the floor. And instead of shouting at her, I found myself dipping my fingers in that wet goop. She started giggling. I dropped more paint, purposefully this time. Our hardwood floor disappearing under the circles of mixed colors.

Mud.

The one thing most of us dread making in art. But it was in that mud-making moment where I forgot I was a mother carrying more than I could hold. We were just playing. That hole I had been carrying for twenty years felt non-existent.

That’s the day I realized what I needed to do to save myself. So I reached for my paints.

Watercolor illustration of a bouquet of six roses in shades of orange and pink, with green leaves and stems.

I didn’t plan this path. I just kept showing up. Every day, in my makeshift one-table “studio,” making things with my hands — messy, imperfect, alive.

I started handing out small mixed-media pieces of art as tokens of kindness to grocery clerks, crossing guards, delivery drivers — everyday invisible workers who rarely receive appreciation.

It became a practice before I had a word for it.

Over the years, my daughter and I have handed out thousands of these tokens in our community and in our travels. In August 2025, I set up a Ripple Station™ by my mailbox as an experiment.

It’s a small wooden box where neighbors take a token, add their own words, and pass it on. I replenish it every week.

What began as a personal ritual has slowly, organically become a kindness movement.

The art has done something I couldn’t have planned. It has loosened the grip of that old rejection. And in doing so, it has helped the words come back. This time, the voice is mine.

My personal essays about identity, inherited patterns, what we carry and what we choose are being published in literary journals. I was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2025. I’ve signed a book deal with Schiffer Craft.

The panelists in 1997 didn’t end my creative life. They split it in two.

It took twenty years of writing in other people’s voices and a decade of making with my hands to put it all back together.

Collage of people holding and displaying handmade tokens of gratitude with floral and thank you designs.

What Emerged

Decorative floral and brick pattern border
A woman with short gray hair smiling at the camera, sitting at a table covered with colorful cards that say "Thank You" with a shelf of books and items in the background. The right side of the image features the text "Where I am now..." over a black background with a watercolor flower illustration.

That return hasn't resolved me into a single identity.

What it has allowed is for the different parts of me to coexist.

The making lives alongside the writing. The quiet noticing lives alongside conversation. The former communications strategist lives alongside the woman who chooses not to optimize.

The mother, the facilitator, the ripple-making neighbor, the essayist — they are no longer in competition with one another.

I left social media in 2024. I send one thoughtful email each month. I don’t manufacture urgency or rely on the fear of missing out. I trust resonance and I trust timing.

I’m practicing integration — daily, imperfectly, and without judgment. Letting the work move where it needs to, and trusting that coherence comes from owning my multitudes.

A colorful row of leaf stickers on a black background.

If something in this resonated with you, there are a few ways to stay close to my practice. You don’t have to decide now. Just follow what feels like a natural next step.

Be With Mansi is a monthly live gathering on Zoom.

No agenda. No performance.

Just a space to sit, create, reflect, or simply be—together.

If you’ve been craving connection without pressure, this is where we meet. Come when it calls to you. No need to commit.

$10/sliding scale

Inside the Studio is where the work between the work happens.

The beginnings, the experiments, the things that don’t quite work—but matter anyway.

If you want to stay close to my creative practice, you’re invited in.

$10/month or $108/year

Colorful collage spelling out "HELLO" with decorative hearts and torn paper edges.

Sometimes this work moves into rooms I didn't expect — organizations, schools, community centers. I take on very few of these. If something comes to mind, I'd love to hear from you.

Working Together