How to Make Friends with a Passion
Rebecca Green and her Passion for Illustration
“It took all this time to arrive and feel like I know what I’m saying.” — Rebecca Green
Most people think of passion as a lightning bolt — an intense, all-consuming moment of clarity. But what if that’s not how passion works for most of us? What if, less like falling in love at first sight, passion often begins as a quiet spark, a subtle pull toward something intriguing but incomplete — growing slowly, piece by piece, until it becomes part of us?
For illustrator Rebecca Green, that’s exactly what happened. From a young age, she loved to draw. One of her earliest memories of creative success was in kindergarten, when her teacher published her drawing rendition of the Little Mermaid in the school newspaper. Her mom saved the clipping, and years later, Green still has it— a reminder of the first time she realized that her art could be shared with the world.
“I didn’t know what an ‘illustrator’ was,” she reflects on her website, recalling the experience. But the joy of seeing her work in print stayed with her. “It felt,” she told me, “like something I wanted to have happen again.”
Still, her path to becoming a full-fledged illustrator — a medium that, unlike fine art, is typically created for practical uses like books, advertisements, or storytelling — wasn’t straightforward. Years later, Green would go on to create the popular children’s book How to Make Friends with a Ghost, but the journey to finding her voice as an artist was a long one.
As Green moved through school, the quiet pull toward art strengthened. She spent countless hours in her school’s art room, surrounded by classmates who shared her love of creating. The more she learned, the more she fell in love with drawing.
“I remember feeling like it was something I could do,” she tells me in our interview. “I could be good technically. I understood the rules, and I liked the learning aspect of it.”
The passions that last are the ones that leave room for growth. They’re not something we master overnight, but instead, something that invites us to keep learning, keep refining our craft. Green recognized this with illustration — each new skill she learned left her hungry for more.
Still, Green initially resisted the pull of illustration as a career. It didn’t seem practical. “I didn’t think it was viable,” she says. “It didn’t seem like I could make money at it.” So she chose graphic design — considered the safer, more reliable path for artists. But halfway through college, she noticed that the designs she was creating were more like paintings — they weren’t digital. So she went back to illustration, reassured by the understanding that there was a way to make a living doing what she had loved since the moment she could first hold a pencil.
After college, Green found an agent and spent her days doing what she had always wanted to do: illustrating. She illustrated for magazines, newspapers, galleries, murals, and picture books like The Unicorn in the Barn, Becoming a Good Creature, and Loujain Dreams of Sunflowers. At first, she was content — working on fun and challenging projects, all while continuing to grow her technical abilities. But despite making a living doing what she loved, something felt off. An interview question forced her to reconsider her current trajectory: What kind of stories did she want to tell?
“I literally said to them, I have no stories,” she recalls. “I’m just going to illustrate other people’s ideas.”
But that answer didn’t sit well with her. So Green began exploring what it might look like to create something of her own. She took storytelling workshops and worked with a coach until she realized that, much like drawing, storytelling was a skill she could develop. One class assignment on world-building captured her imagination: “There were prompts like, ‘If you were to plan a party for your work, what would it feel like? What food would you serve? What music would be playing? What colors would be there? What textures? What does the invitation look like? What are people doing?”
Suddenly, her mind lit up. To tell her own stories, she had to trust herself enough to believe she had something to say. And for the first time, she felt like she did. So she took a leap — quitting her agent and focusing on projects that truly excited her, from prints to her first solo books. Through this process, she discovered her voice. As she did, she fell even more in love with illustration. It was as if an entire world of creative possibilities had opened up to her, and she couldn’t wait to dive in.
“I found that there was this thread of celebration and ordinary moments and reverence,” she says. “If you look at my books, they’re really about small moments, friendships, and celebrating the everyday.”
As I’ve noticed across now nearly a year of interviews with the world’s most passionate people, this process of finding our voice is crucial to passion — whether as artist, writer, or entrepreneur. When we trust ourselves enough to realize we have something valuable to say, our passions can deepen even more, going from an initial spark to something that is deeply ingrained into who we are. Often, it’s only by looking back that we see the thread we were trying to follow. This happened for Green: “I look back at my work from fifteen years ago,” she says, “and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s what I was saying. But I didn’t know that then. It’s sort of a beacon… everything sort of evolves around that.’”
After years of illustrating other people’s ideas, Green now feels her passion is fully realized as she creates from her own vision. “I feel like it took me all this time to arrive and know what I’m saying,” she says. “If you ask any illustrator, I think the biggest thing they’ll ask is, ‘How do I find my voice? My style?’”
For Green, the answer has been to lean into what feels indulgent — trusting her instincts and creating the work that excites her most, even when it doesn’t feel trendy or cool. She describes her work as “timeless but also current, with a lot of emphasis on shapes, texture, and muted colors.” She’s currently working on a series of four children’s books, set to come out next year (“I’m just so, so excited about them,” she tells me.)
Would she have preferred to find her true path sooner and skipped some of those early jobs? “Maybe,” she admits with a laugh. “But I do think they made me stronger. I think they made me faster. I think they made me have to problem solve in ways that I wouldn't change. And I'm really happy with where I am here now… a little older a little bit more wisdom under my belt.”
That spark that she felt when she first put pencil to paper on that Little Mermaid drawing? It’s only intensified.
“I’ve always loved art,” she says. “It’s a massive outlet for me. It’s a way for me to connect with people. I can’t imagine doing anything else. I’m immersed in it. I just geek out about texture and color and paint and lines and all the ways you can manipulate things and use different tools. I love it. I guess there’s never been any other option… but the way that I interact with it has changed.”
How?
“I think if you asked anybody in my family or in my world if I’ve always been passionate about it… they’d say 100%,” she says. “I’ve been doing it forever. But the ‘why’ I love it has changed. I feel it’s a part of me.”
The lightning bolt of passion, it turns out, may not function like a lightning bolt at all. It’s more like a dim light that brightens the more we trust ourselves — until it’s so bright that others can’t help but see it too.
Takeaways
Here is one big thing I learned this week about passion, one exercise you can do to stoke your own inner fire, and one aspect of Green’s intense enthusiasm that rubbed off on me — and that I now want to learn more about, too!
One Lesson: Create the Work You Want to See in the World
Rebecca Green realized that no one was going to ask her to create the work she was most passionate about. Instead, she had to take control and create it herself. She stopped waiting for others to define her projects and began developing her own ideas—building worlds and stories that spoke to her personally. The takeaway? Don’t wait for permission or for someone to hand you the perfect opportunity. If there’s something you’re passionate about, create it yourself, and the right opportunities will follow.
One Exercise: Follow the Spark
Take one area where you feel a small spark of interest — whether it’s a hobby, skill, or creative pursuit — and think of ways to fan that flame. Could you take a class? Read a book on the subject? Find a mentor or online community? Like Green, who took storytelling workshops to develop her voice, you can deepen your connection to your passion by committing to learning and growth. Pick one action to dive deeper into your area of interest and see how it strengthens your passion.
One Curiosity: Appreciating the World-Building in Picture Books
After learning about Green’s enthusiasm for world-building and the tiny details she pours into her work, I’m excited to revisit picture books with a new perspective. Her stories aren’t just about characters; they’re filled with thoughtful layers — hidden details, poems, and meaningful objects, like her grandmother’s kitchen cabinet in her latest project. I can’t wait to explore her upcoming four-book series and start noticing the incredible care that illustrators like Green put into every page!
This is a beautiful interview. I've followed her work for years, and she truly is a phenomenal illustrator. Thanks for sharing this wonderful interview. I feel inspired! x
I absolutely loved the article, and have had experiences of sparks of passions and the more long-run passion, that slowly develops. Thanks ❤️