Many of us have grown up and grown older with her work, either from the Girlamatic days or when Smile went into print, or after. Telgemeier has been seen in a more casual way for a while now. It was the first time other people could relate to what my life had been like for so many years, and I felt very seen!' 'My stress levels plummeted as soon as I went into lockdown, while pretty much everyone I knew was freaking out. I did targeted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to address it in 2015 (which ended up being a huge asset in writing Guts), and interestingly, all of that work proved useful in combatting Covid anxiety!' Telgemeier shares. It was the first time other people could relate to what my life had been like for so many years, and I felt very seen!'Anxiety has been with me most of my life, specifically fear of germs and illness. That being said, Telgemeier shares that some of the mental health work she did concurrent to her work on Guts ended up being useful when lockdowns began. 'Maybe in another ten years I’ll feel like writing about this recent chapter of my life, maybe not. 'I usually take at least a decade to process experiences before I write about them,' she says. Telgemeier says it's premature to think about her chronicling her time during the pandemic for a story. I drafted and pitched a couple of projects that didn’t get the green light, and that’s okay!'

'I don’t have a ton to show for myself work-wise from 20, but I did life-stuff. 'The short break turned into a longer break,' the cartoonist reveals. But then, as she puts it, 'the world went pear-shaped.' 'Other friends dove deep into projects as a means of escape, and now at the two-year anniversary of the pandemic, they’ve got finished books! My hat is off to them!'Īt the end of 2019, Telgemeier had just wrapped up a long book tour for Guts, and her plans for 2020 were to take a short break before diving into her next project. At a certain point, burnout hits,' Telgemeier tells Popverse. 'Some of my cartoonist friends tried to journal their feelings during lockdown and isolation, but I could tell it was hard to sustain that practice with no end in sight. With that in mind, we reached out to the successul cartoonist to talk about how she's doing as we go through this communal tragedy and anxiety-ridden era together. But to write and draw these stories, Telgemeier had to live through those harrowing events. Telgemeier's books have all been about finding humanity in personal experiences, and how those experiences can be relatable beyond just you and those close to you. The last few years have been a lot to deal with, even for someone like Raina Telgemeier- especially for someone like Raina Telgemeier, as we know her from her hit graphic memoirs Smile and Guts.

Smile comic book