We’re Erica Ando and Michelle A M Miller
We honor the life you’ve built and the strength it required.
We’ve built full lives that required self-override. Then we started asking different questions — about worth, identity and what it’s like to live a meaningful life.
Erica grew up as the child of immigrants and learned early to set the bar high and keep raising it — through owning a design business, solo parenting and now caring for aging parents. Chronic health issues made the old pace impossible.
Michelle is the daughter of an immigrant mother and an American father. She absorbed early the pressure to excel at everything — work, studio practice and years of caregiving — until her mental and physical health nearly gave out.
When our bodies stopped cooperating with our ambitions, we had to ask deeper questions.
Not about productivity, but about conditioning.
About how immigrant striving, cultural narratives and nervous system adaptations shaped the way we worked and lived.
Erica draws on decades of somatic study and mindfulness practice to understand how striving gets wired into the body — and how it can be unwired.
Michelle draws on decades of journaling, meditation and training as an End-of-Life doula to ask what actually matters when time is finite — and what is simply inherited pressure.
We stopped overriding ourselves and began building lives that didn’t require self-abandonment.
That's the work we now do with others at INTERVAL PAPER.
About Us
Erica Ando, PhD (she/her) is a coach and writer who works with women at consequential moments in their lives. Her approach is shaped by three decades of study in somatic learning, Buddhist meditation, and a background in art, design and writing.
Earlier in her career, she owned a design business whose clients included the MoMA Design Store, Takashimaya and design galleries and boutiques across the U.S., Asia and South America. Her writing has appeared in more than 20 international publications, including artpress (Paris), Aesthetica (London) and BOMB (New York). She has worked with more than 1,000 people across nine countries, primarily business owners, consultants, creative professionals, and women with years of work behind them. She co-founded INTERVAL PAPER and co-created The Good Enough Guide.
Michelle A M Miller (she/her) is a coach, interdisciplinary artist, writer and End-of-Life Doula whose work explores memory, mortality, and meaning through somatic practice, mindfulness, and reflective inquiry. Drawing on decades of meditation and journaling, she helps thoughtful people engage life's hardest questions with greater presence, honesty, and care.
Her artist books are held in 20 public collections, including Harvard University and the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Her creative work has been supported by the Puffin Foundation, Women’s Studio Workshop and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Through her project Room for Dying, she has guided more than 100 community members in death awareness conversations exploring our finite lives. She co-founded INTERVAL PAPER and co-created The Good Enough Guide.