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Writing · a Substack

Digital Widow

Designer, widow, and single parent exploring what falls away and what remains when change, grief, and technology collide.

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Why this exists

Part of my job is designing AI conversations. Grief taught me what conversations are for. Digital Widow is the convergence of these experiences.

JUL 2026 · ESSAY

AI Can't Fix the 6 Train

Back in New York with my son, wedged under a row of AI ads promising frictionlessness from inside the most friction-fraught system in the city. On mindshare wars, honest infrastructure, and why grief runs on the subway's schedule.

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FEB 2026 · ESSAY

From Letraset to LLMs: Curation is the Craft

From X-Acto knives to prompts: what a career that started in the paste-up era teaches about making with AI. The labor of creation has become the labor of verification, and craft lives in what you choose to keep.

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DEC 2025 · PRACTICAL GUIDE

Origin Stories and Final Words

AI prompts for when writing through grief feels impossible. How I wrote an obituary and a eulogy with a machine holding up the beams, and a step-by-step guide so others can do the same. The AI brings the frame; you add the picture.

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“The past needs a bridge, not a museum.”

© 2026 Marilyn Frank