When I finally did crack open the book, what I found were beautiful descriptions of how to find love and acceptance juxtaposed with some extremely serious subjects. “Usually, if someone is saying that, I ask if they’ve read a SARK book, and they confess they haven’t.” “I think SARK gets mistaken for being mindlessly positive, and that was never the case,” she told the Daily Dot. According to Kennedy, that’s the impression a lot of people get. When I first received Succulent Wild Woman, I figured it was just another New Age-y self-help book that might be good for a laugh. “Try: studying something in nature for one hour or longer: snails, ants, butterflies, leaves,” she writes, and reminds readers “your desire to feel creatively free is very important.” The book is splattered with rainbow watercolors of flowers and people and shapes, the kind of things you’d finger paint, if you had finger paint and nobody was looking.Īll of it looks a little woo-woo on the surface. The book was about “how to free your creative spirit,” a half-self-help-guide, half-journal, full of creative activities and exercises.

In 1991, she published her first book, A Creative Companion, as part of a brand to encourage self-discovery and self-acceptance. SARK, the name, was born in 1982, when Kennedy began selling artwork and posters under that moniker. It began with books and posters, and has expanded onto the internet, where she holds video classes and conferences, posts inspirational memes, sends a weekly newsletter, and has hundreds of thousands of people following her every word about life, love, and being a woman. And, according to her, the internet is allowing for emotional vulnerability on a scale we’ve never seen. Over the span of nearly 30 years, Kennedy has created an empire.

But SARK, aka Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, is no joke. There were tips on how to start journaling, and little sketches of hearts and stars all over the place.

It was colorful and slightly goofy and used words like “succulent” sincerely. That was my first impression upon receiving her nearly 20-year-old book, Succulent Wild Woman, a few Christmases ago.

Succulent wild woman by sark