Wade, a 28-year-old artist, pours love into her work, which largely consists of handwritten poetry dispensed on social media. The comment sections below Instagram posts of her self-affirming mantras — such as “Maybe don’t be the one you are waiting on” and “Don’t let your heart get in the way of new love” — are littered with heart emoji and grateful messages.
Somehow, Wade avoids coming off as superficial to her audience of mostly millennial women. It’s a seemingly miraculous feat most of her generation’s “Instagram poets” have yet to master.
“[With] anything online, if it’s used as a starting-off point and not an answer, you really understand how it can be a tool for connectivity and not a weapon against our humanity,” Wade says, obliquely explaining her approach to sharing her work on social media.
The often disdainfully uttered “Instagram poet” label is one that former Teen Vogue editor in chief Elaine Welteroth emphatically rejects on behalf of her good friend.
“I actually think it’s reductive to call her an Instagram poet, because if we were to think of what Maya Angelou would look like, how her work would move through this world in this day and age, it would probably look like Cleo,” Welteroth says.
Wade’s artwork first appeared on Instagram in 2014. She had been working in the fashion industry, supporting herself as a consultant while creating art.
Her simple prose surged in popularity after the presidential election, soothing anxious minds and popping up on protest signs ever since. She had set up an outdoor booth in Manhattan that summer with signs that asked “ARE YOU OK?” and promised “peaceful and loving conversation.” Last month, she did it again, chatting with passersby from 11 a.m. until 8:30 p.m., when she got kicked out of the park.
Wade shares a memorable encounter with a deaf fan named Jonathan. He brought a notebook to the booth and the two exchanged handwritten messages, leading Wade to realize that her tour hadn’t been accessible enough. Two days later, after much scrambling on her part, a pair of sign-language interpreters came to her book tour stop at Politics and Prose in D.C.
An ability to build meaningful relationships has broadened Wade’s network. She hobnobs with celebrities such as Katy Perry, activists such as DeRay Mckesson and fashion designers such as Prabal Gurung. She gets asked to speak at national conventions and on a TED Talk stage; appears alongside Fashion Week runways and in fashion magazines; and writes colorful messages that have appeared outside the Beverly Center and in Times Square.
Wade didn’t grow up wealthy or especially well connected. She says she was raised by three parents who indulged her creative side: her chef mother, Lori; her artist father, Bernardo; and the vibrant city of New Orleans.
Bernardo and Lori Wade divorced when their daughter was young, and she wandered the French Quarter’s lively streets when staying with her dad. At 12, she began to work at local boutiques and developed a quirky style by pairing discounted items with hand-me-downs. Instead of attending college, she landed an internship with M Missoni in 2006 and moved to New York.
“I had an amazing mentor there,” Wade recalls. “I used to sit with her and write those press releases, and she’d be, like, ‘You’re really good at writing these things.’ It’s strange how much we bury our dreams.”
Jenna Barclay, who provided feedback on many drafts of “Heart Talk” and made sure it would appeal to a wide variety of readers, met Wade in 2007 when the two worked as fashion assistants at Halston. She notes Wade’s “ability to really put her finger on the pulse of what people are feeling and so concisely express it in a way that’s sometimes disarmingly simple, but in a way no one else would be able to boil it down. She doesn’t use an unnecessary word in her poetry at all.”
So brief are Wade’s words that four separate aphorisms fit on the back cover of her book:
“You are more okay than you think.”
“Not every ground is a battleground.”
“Know the value of knowing your value.”
“Baby, you are the strongest flower that ever grew — remember that when the weather changes.”
