Healing Handcrafting

Tag Archives: Grief


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Letting Go of Normal

“I just want things to go back to normal.”

How often have you heard this refrain, or uttered it yourself when you’ve just wanted to put a pause on having new information or issues to respond to? I’ve been thinking about our relationship with normal. It’s like a thick, strong, orienting rope that runs through a life and culture, and where we are in relation to it is always up for evaluation. We talk about physical health in terms of normal. Behavior, psychological functioning, intelligence, too. And then there’s the social norms that dictate so much of how our school years and work and social lives go. Oh, and then there’s what many pay attention to as parents when kids are going through developmental milestones. Music, weather, animal behavior, family functioning are all up for grabs in the context of normal comparisons. Really, is there any part of life that is not subject to an almost immediate assessment of how it does or does not relate to normal?

Such a bland word that elicits a broad range of reactions from people packs quite a punch and I think it’s worth looking into a little bit.

From Merriam-Webster, normal means: “conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern : characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine; according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, procedure, or principle; approximating the statistical average or norm occurring naturally; generally free from physical or mental impairment or dysfunction : exhibiting or marked by healthy or sound functioning; not exhibiting defect or irregularity; within a range considered safe, healthy, or optimal.”

Like any concept, it’s the case that normal is not all one thing. It is not all good, and it’s not all bad. What’s good about normal? Why do we need it and rely on it so much? Seems to me like the opposite of normal is chaos, and chaos is, taken in extreme form, the primordial ooze from which all things began. It’s unpredictable, unstable, volatile and confused. It’s the seat of creation and true creativity. It erupts and changes things. It can be exciting. It can be terrifying. It’s necessary and feared.

Chaos knocks things into a new trajectory, but then guess what? An ordering principal takes over and helps the effects of chaos fall into a pattern. Patterns are stable and predictable. They can be known and understood, unlike their birth mother, Chaos. This must happen. I suppose that normal lives in patterns and normal dies in chaos. Chaos and Normal dance and work together to keep things moving. They are both necessary.

In life, people can deviate from the mean of normal in either direction. Further away from this mean is when we start to experience some things that are different from what everyone hanging out in the middle are experiencing. Bowing at the altar of normal can stifle the emergence of any new or unexpected material in an evolving system. This leads to the death or oppression of anything that is novel, creative, and life giving. Yet, diving full-bore into the waters of chaos and staying there for too long can mean that nothing is able to materialize into creative expression. It takes discipline to make creative energy bear fruit, and discipline does not live in chaos.

You can see the tension here. This is some dynamic stuff.

But here’s the rub as I see it: We do a miserable job as a culture allowing ourselves and others to be changed by what happens to us. Let’s take the pandemic. Rest assured, the amount of times I’ve longed for things to go back to normal cannot be counted. But even with less restrictions and people getting back to life as it was before, it’s not “back to normal”. We are changed and we will never be, as a whole, like we were before. The pandemic was a long-term, slow motion perturbation to our system which created chaos and confusion. We are still experiencing the natural inclination of a system finding its new orbit around this new reality, yet I see more and more a distancing from viewing it this way. I am longing for a greater dialogue about how we are changed and what that means not from the point of view that we have to get back to where we were, but more that we need to understand more fully where we are.

Where are we? I’m not the same. Are you?

I think the urge to get back to normal when the landscape that existed before doesn’t exist anymore causes tremendous pain and anxiety. We can’t go back to something that doesn’t exist anymore. But we can try to more fully understand where we are.

This is true after someone we love dies.

This is true after having a baby.

This is true after falling in love or breaking up.

This true when childrens’ parents separate.

This is true after losing a job or relocating to a new place for a job.

This is true after receiving a life changing diagnosis.

This is true after war, natural disasters, or exposure to and experience of violence.

This is true after experiencing a spiritual awakening.

Can we let ourselves be changed without judging it, hiding it, or stunting it? Can we let ourselves just be with what is true and talk about it all, and let others talk without pulling the “normal” card out of our back pocket? Life systems naturally organize themselves into new, mostly stable patterns. We can trust that this will happen, so we can relax and be more gentle on ourselves and each other and not force the issue. It’s okay if your best friend seems different now and doesn’t want to do the same things they did before. Be curious about it instead of judging it. It’s okay if you look different after grief. Look at yourself and be curious and loving and notice the hard earned scars of living a life that is filled with so many things. It’s okay if something big or little shifts in your psyche and you find a new and unexpected road to walk down. Check it out and see what’s there. It became visible because something changed.

Take the pressure of “getting back to normal” off yourself because, that normal? It’s gone. There’s a new normal to explore and it’s got a whole lot of new terrain for us to get to know.

That’s interesting, isn’t it?


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All of it is Always Happening

I’m having a moment of just sitting for a bit and wanted to document here in this special place to me all of what is happening in my own little sliver of life that is housed in the much bigger picture. But first, I have to send out a deepest call of love to all of those in Turkey and Syria whose world literally just opened up beneath them, creating chasms of pain, fissures of searing heartache, and images of the most incredible grief, courage, love, determination, and exhaustion one can see. Nothing seems all that relevant in the face of that except love. It’s really the only thing that matters at the end of the day.

Actually, I think I’ll just leave it at that.


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The Long Grief Journey

I can’t believe it’s finally happened, but this week I received a box of books, all of them The Long Grief Journey: How Long-Term Unresolved Grief Can Affect Your Mental Health and What You Can Do About It. In spring of 2020, my friend Pamela Blair who co-wrote I Wasn’t Ready to Say Goodbye and is the author of several other titles, asked if I’d be interested in writing a book about long-term grief. I wrote about that moment here. And now, a month before its release (on February 14, 2023), I get to hold it and read it and show it to people. Wow. What a trip!

It’s been a long time since The Long Grief Journey was picked up by Sourcebooks and I owe a debt of gratitude to the wonderful editor who saw the value in making our work available to people and helping us to shape it and edit it well- thank you Erin! In the last year, the waiting for the book to come to print was starting to make it all feel a little bit unreal, and a little scary and then a little disorienting- wait, we’re almost at the release date?! I need to get a new outfit or something! But now, holding the book in my hands, I remember it all: the first invitation to join Pam in the project, the jumping into researching and brainstorming and writing, rewriting and collaborating, submitting and waiting and hoping and praying and now… here it is. And I am proud. Grateful and maybe even a little bewildered, too. To be able to use my own grief experience while being honored by so many people sharing their stories with us has in many ways brought an intimacy and more open heart to my day to day than ever existed before. Maybe the word is humbled? My heart feels tenderized.

If you end up reading the book, I hope you find it useful. We really are all walking this road together.


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What Color is a Temper Tantrum?

Well, hello… it’s been a while. How do we catch up after so much time? My last post was in July of 2020. Since then, I’ve become a homeschooling mom, I’ve started co-writing a book about grief that lingers beyond the time our culture demands is appropriate, I’ve barely knit or woven a thing except for a sweater, hat and booties for a soon-to-arrive little baby niece (oh, I cannot wait to meet her), and I’ve been riding the wave of pandemic life that is really pretty goddamned grueling.

Today at the store, I was double-masking it because I <heart> Anthony Fauci and he says it’s a good idea in some instances. But the second mask I had on was too big and every time I looked down into the bag I was filling, it would scooch up into my eyes and I couldn’t see a freaking thing. This was after I couldn’t help my son with his math because maybe I skipped that class? And, it was after I took a good look at what’s happened to my hair since my last real haircut & color about a year and a half ago, maybe two. So… the mask thing almost, almost made me have a temper tantrum right then and there in the middle of my neighborhood grocery. Why? Not because that’s been the most stressful thing to happen of late. Not even close. Like any good old-fashioned tantrum, they are born from buildup. An accumulation of things that exceed the nervous system’s capacity to metabolize stress. Finally there is the last straw. Usually that poor straw is puny, so to the casual observer, it just looks like someone is losing it over the “dumbest thing”. But it’s never like that. It’s just a dumbest thing that tips the scale too far into Freakoutsville. Today, my last straw was having a mask on my mouth and on my forehead at the same time. Thankfully, I did have enough self-control left in my un-Buddhalike-self to realize I could not handle an embarrassing scene over the decision I myself made about my own mask attire. Maybe it was the dude giving me side-eye as I kept adjusting and readjusting the civic duty gone wrong on my face. “What? Didn’t you see this is how we’re supposed to do it now, bro?”, I imagined challenging him while he slowly and cautiously unloaded his groceries onto the conveyor belt. As much as I wanted to blame some concrete thing, or even Side-Eye Guy for my situation, I knew there was no one but me who could pull it together. After I fumbled through the credit card machine process and then remembered to be grateful for what I have, I gathered my bag of frozen corn and peas and package of chicken, and made my way home.

I miss my people. It hurts something fierce. And my heart is breaking for the millions who are grieving those they lost in this last year. Whether loved ones died from COVID-19 or from something else, no doubt about it, the rituals and rhythms that are built into the fabric of who we are, and which hold survivors in their grief, were experienced very differently because of the pandemic. No matter where we live, what we believe, and who we wish to when we ask for anything in our quiet moments, all who have lost someone are part of a new group. This group has its own stories, memories, symbols, anguish and wisdom that are making up history as we live it. I guess it’s easier to get wicked mad at a mask poking me in the eyes than reckoning with global pain sometimes.

Anyway! Sorry to be a downer, but this is why I haven’t written! Who needs more people talking about how much things have sucked? I do want to share some things though, to cross the bridge back to my love of all things yarny, wooly and textured. I have a new studio space where my looms and most of my yarn reside. This development came to be after I had to close my tiny office in Burlington in the spring. I realized pretty quickly into the pandemic that it’d be a good long time before anyone would be wanting to meet in person again, at least in the space I had, and serendipitously, an opportunity arose at the Shelburne Pond Studios that was basically completely perfect for my varied needs as a therapist, fiber artist/crafter, writer and now momentary homeschooler. It has also allowed for me to unclog parts of my home that housed all of what I’ve collected for my fibrous passions over the years. Blessings on many fronts with us home all the time. I am starting to imagine spring, summer and fall there, and all the sorts of things I might be able to do inside and out with other “masked” people who want to create and play with yarn. I can feel the energy coming back and that is exciting. There’s going to be a lot to weave out of our bodies and our nervous systems as we try to make sense of all that has happened and continues to unfold.

I wonder what a woven temper tantrum looks like?


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The Great Thaw

I think the last time I posted here was in November. It’s not been for lack of things to say, ongoing projects or a deep interest in what all of my blogger handcrafting comrades are doing, that’s for sure.

In the time that has passed, I’ve completed a few knitting projects, learned how to knit cables…

 

bought a used floor loom from a friend and completed the Weaving A Life certification…

I’ve moved my office & studio space to downtown Burlington and am learning how to tapestry weave…

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I think, truly, I just had to collect myself and take stock in what I am doing and get clear on a few things.

You know what is a deep relief? Yarn and all things fibery and textural remain a passion, a preoccupation and an inspiration for deeper living, more grounded contact with the people in my life and with myself. The more our world is automated, made visible and social, the more I find it to be an absolute requirement to turn off, sit down and touch materials that are, by their very nature, organic, raw and useful. Also a deep relief? The ever-encouraging community of handcrafters, who seem forever gifted at making learning a deeply ingrained part of life, in tangible terms.

Over this last year, handcrafting and learning new skills in knitting, weaving and spinning has happened in tandem with learning how to grieve, face-life in the aftermath of loss, and carry on. I’m not sure how it would’ve been for me without having all of those projects to keep me grounded. Making cloth~ it’s like making life. You know?

So, after a long winter that I guess technically we are still in up here in Vermont, I can see the green peeking through under the brown grass. The smell of mud is gathering it’s pungent power. The frogs will start singing again soon.


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Some Images From Recent Days

I watched my sister’s dog the other day, while she was out with my littles. A trade. With my furry niece, I sat under a tree. Pitch got stuck on my fingers. I realized I need to sit under trees with my children more. 


Pumpkins…

And their seeds…

A misty river visit on an afternoon drive. Here, I felt close to many in my family who have passed away. Touching the cold, clear water, I told them all I miss them. 

We drove up a mountain. I live in Vermont but I don’t go up very high most of the time. Scared the hell out of me. Not gonna lie. 

Wisdom is everywhere. It does pay to go up high every now and then. 

A doll I made. It’s me, when I’m old. 

Off to a lecture at UVM, and in between events today I’ll work on finishing the second sleeve of my sweater. 

Car knitting is the best. 


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Soothing My Heart & Leap of Faith

It’s been a while, yet again, since I’ve written. I often feel like a hit a groove, a flow, get a taste of my ideal self for a few seconds, and then the proverbial other shoe drops. In this case, I’d started writing and crafting again following the heartbreak of my mom dying, But the end of the school year busy-ness, my own schedule and living with the weight of grief and stress caught up with me and I got wicked, wicked sick. I tend to be a “put my head down and get through it” kind of gal, with a finish line envisioned, fantasized about, planned with flourish. But in recent years, by the time I hit that finish line, I’m completely exhausted and often times very sick. So, this time, I realized that jam isn’t working for me anymore. It’s time to change.

As I started to feel better, I imagined self-care for what it really is. Deeply taking care of oneself and loving oneself as though one’s body and mind are precious and sacred. I forgot that. I think the term “self-care” has lost all meaning, has become stale and over-used. Like the word “inappropriate” in schools. Do kids even care if something is inappropriate? Is that word meant to land in some moral or self-conscious receptor site and then voila, said kid no longer wants to do x,y,z? No. It’s a catch-all word meant to say, “knock it off” or, “stop hitting Johnny with your fruit leather.” Whatever. Why can’t we just say what we mean?

That’s how I feel about the term self-care. I’ve had an attitude adjustment that I hope I can keep connected with as I start to regain strength and a can-do attitude. I want to get specific about what I mean when I think of self-care. Right now, for me, I need time for quiet reflection. I need family time, healthy food, calming teas and time to make art. I need to think before I say yes to things, and I need to be present enough in life so I can see birds I’ve never seen before (the American Redstart and the Eastern Towhee are recent new sightings for me!), and watch bugs and bees do their busy-work.

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And I want to devote my energies to practices and work that bring me peace. This leads to the Leap of Faith mentioned above. I’ve put together two summer camps for children to be held in July and August, a week a piece. One will focus on weaving, the other on making a book from scratch. The book will include paper we make ourselves and a wet-felted woolen cover. One camp is already full and the other is close! My children will be my assistants, and I truly feel so blessed to be able to do this!

I realized that in order to do the things I want to do, I have to take the first step, and then the next steps, to get there. It takes courage and hope, and for me at this time, it requires being really grounded and calm, states of being that for me are only attainable when I’m tending to myself as though I am one to cherish. Isn’t that what self-care is all about? Not ignoring the needs of the self?

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Those are my ramblings today. I look forward to sharing my crafting adventures with you this summer.

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New Sweater On The Needles

It hasn’t stopped raining in my neck of the woods. Not in any meaningful way. On this wet and gloomy Saturday morning, I don’t mind that much. Yes, my gardening tasks are so far utterly neglected that I’m feeling a wee bit embarrassed, but I’m not unhappy about getting to sit and knit for while, guilt-free. It’s been a hard week. Grief and all that goes with it really got me the last few days and I’m left feeling tired and waterlogged. You know? 

The sweater on my needles is called Amiga, the pattern written by Mags Kandis. I just made it to the part where I get to coast for a long time in stockinette stitch. I’d share the yarn I’m using but I forgot to save the yarn tags! That kind of carelessness is what makes life harder for me. What if I run out of yarn? Or if I want to use it again for another project. Pro-knitters, in my imagination, never do that. I have a goal to be more careful about things like that. I can tell you the yarn is so very soft and kind of a grayish purple. It’s a new batch of colors this season. I bought it in a wonderful little yarn shop called Yarn, in Montpelier, Vermont when I was down there for a conference. 


Ten or so inches of body~ the steady marathon part of the sweater. The part of the project I can easily take with me anywhere because I won’t have to keep track of anything, count anything. Beta wave knitting. Ahhh…


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Getting Back on a Totally New Track

Yesterday I started going through a box of things of my mother’s that I had packed after she died. There are many boxes my siblings and I will tend to in the coming months, but this one I packed just for me, with clearance from them of course. These things… fabric, pictures, her sewing basket and sewing boxes; some of these are my grandmother’s, too. It’s amazing, the little tiny sounds of rustling around safety pins and spools of thread, like the lilting music of a lifetrack. All of those taken for granted quiet moments when my mom or grandmother sewed something up and passed it along, or wore it again, or hoped for something more perfect but sighed and put down the needle anyway. Nothing is perfect.


This picture is of my mom sewing my wedding veil. We found the headpiece on a ridiculously fun shopping trip and she made it even more lovely, adding the flowing fabric and little beads. 


This is a needlepoint my mom made years ago~ I remember it from when I was very young. 


These are little bits of many things that will end up somewhere, somehow. 


And some hearts I made for my mom and grandmother, and a bowl, and a picture of Swami Muktananda, with (I think) my grandmother’s sewing basket. 


I’m getting back to some making. The sounds of summertime are helping. I actually make more in the summer, when the windows are open and the air is warm, muggy, froggy and quiet. Summer vacation is around the corner and I am more than ready to fall into love with less pressure and clock watching. I can hear the tinkling of chimes outside, underneath the constant conversations between birds. In a little bit the frogs will start their nighttime melody and if I’m lucky, the coyotes will pass through in the darkest hours. 

Lifetrack: Song 44. 


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My Mom Died

During the weeks leading up to when my mom died, I was having a hard time writing here. I was having a hard time being creative in general. I felt really uncomfortable. I was having a lot of dreams that I could not figure out, and I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed with how busy I was. I prayed I wouldn’t get sick because there just wasn’t the room in my schedule to be out of commission. That’s so laughable to me now. The last email I ever got from my mom read, “OMG, you really are busy. I love you.” It makes me weep to write those words. Those words were in an email I received on the Thursday before Easter. I planned on talking to my mom on Easter because we love that day.

I found out my mom died on Easter. There’s little I can share here about the specifics because especially now, in the immediate aftermath of losing her, there are so many things that are preciously private, to my mom, my siblings and my relatives. The details, they feel so personal. But grief? Losing someone you deeply love? That is the shared experience. Sometimes, when someone asks me how I am who does not know my mom died, I just let myself say it. I don’t sugar coat it either. I don’t say, “passed away”, “went to a better place”, “is with God now”. I say, “my mom died and I’m so fucking sad I don’t know what to do.” I’ve noticed that people, in every instance, can totally handle that, and most often have their own histories of losing a beloved person to them, and then they get to say it out loud, too. And, I always welcome swearing. I’ve noticed in these last few weeks that even when the death of a loved one happened years ago, when someone talks about it with me, it feels like we are swimming in the same water, completely understanding one another, even if just for that moment. Amazingly, that helps me to not feel alone.

My mother: you should know about her. Even just a little bit. She was beautiful. Am I right? Really, she was, and I’m not certain she ever deeply knew it.

The world is hard on people. She was an artist. And she loved artists. As a young woman, before I was born, my mom worked for Vogue and Mademoiselle in their art departments. She spoke of those days very often, and told stories of wild and creative people. She often lamented that our society had not come up with job-sharing back then; it would have allowed her to keep working in an industry she loved without being away from her kids so much. She also worked as a hematology technician at New York University and in the offices of the American Medical Association. She loved looking at teeny-tiny little things through microscopes and I think it was that skill set that supported her tolerance of sewing little things, sculpting miniature faces, making intricate art pieces…

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She studied meditation with Siddha Yoga beginning in the late 1970’s and remained a lifelong devotee. She traveled to India in 1978 with my brother (age 3) and me (age 5) and we lived at the Siddha Yoga ashram in Ganeshpuri for 5 weeks. That took some serious balls. I can barely take my kids to their Oma’s house who lives less than two hours away by myself.

My mom lived differently. Hearing from so many people since she died, I’m getting to enjoy their descriptions of my mother. The following words have been used one or more times: vivid, magical, intense, creative, beautiful, status-quo defying, deeply loving, spiritual, unique, funny-as-hell.  She also loved her animal friends something fierce. She loved animals in general. In Florida in our little bayou home, we’d see alligators swim by and she’d wave to them and say hi. She let our iguanas walk freely around our house~ you know they can be potty trained? Our cats and dog had special seats at the table during holiday gatherings. The birds were our friends. Feral cats were always fed. Also, there was always incense, in the house, the car, the yard… thinking back, I see how cool that all was. I didn’t know it then. It was just home, and Lottieann was my mom.

I haven’t picked up the sweater I recently started since I’ve been home. I’m trying to find knitting again, the way I found it so comforting after my grandmother (my mom’s mother) died in February. It’s not clicking and I’m opting not to worry about it. It’s sitting there, waiting for me to pick it up, and I will. I have some wool soaking in soapy water. That’s about all I got right now. One of my biggest blog fans won’t be emailing me anymore after every post and goddamn that sucks so bad.

A promise I’m making to myself is to address a thing that I think made my mom really sad… how “busy” I always make myself. Too busy to make art, to meditate, to just be. Her last email was not a criticism, just a fact.

“OMG. You really are busy. I love you.”