writing.

Things other people have written.

Finding Your Anchor(s).

| Betsy

Some days you need to find your anchor(s).

Today, mine are the past (a photo of girls from my great-grandmothers’ Domestic Service class, that says “Don’t they look happy?” on the back) and the future (going forward despite trepidation or uncertainty with a quote from the epigraph of Smile at Fear: Awakening The True Heart of Bravery by Chogyam Trongpa).

past

future

As I move forward and agree to take on things I’m scared about (as we all are with new big things!) these are the reminders that I need today that everything will be okay and that the past and the future both began with the same stitch. So we continue stitching and threading and weaving our way forward, strengthened by all that has come before us.

May you find your anchor(s) today, too.

Forging Your Own Path In the Forest

| Betsy

When I was little, my grandmother used to tell me about Joseph Campbell. I’ll admit, I never quite got it; however, I kinda got it, in a that-sounds-cool-you-can-live-your-life-how-you-want-to-no-matter-what-anyone-says kind of way.

Lately, a reminder of this message has popped up in my inbox twice. Once via an email newsletter from Danielle LaPorte and then again via a daily quote sent by email from Elephant Journal:

The Danielle LaPorte post arrived in my inbox yesterday:

When the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, there is a stage in it’s metamorphosis where it is completely liquified. It is a “nutritive soup of enzymes.” Entirely unrecognizable. You can’t tell what it was, or what it will become. Soup.

Many of us are familiar with Joseph Campbell’s metaphor of “the hero entering the darkest part of the forest, where no one has entered before.” But what’s often left out of that teaching is this: “…and the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms.” More soup.

There will be a time, a passage when you don’t really know who you were, or are, or can be. It’s natural, it’s divine, and it’s the chemistry of beautiful, awesome change.

This passage can happen in big dramatic swells, as years of not quite knowing what you want to do; or seasons of confusion that aren’t quite depressing, but confusing enough to invite sadness in. This can happen in compressed bouts of uncertainty before you do something new or monumental.

While the full quote by Joseph Campbell referenced by Danielle Laporte actually had arrived in my inbox via Elephant Journal a few days earlier:

“You enter the forest
at the darkest point,
where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path,
it is someone else’s path.

You are not on your own path.

If you follow someone else’s way,
you are not going to realize
your potential.”

~ Joseph Campbell

And it reminded me of what happened when I started writing about craftivism. I thought I was bat-shit crazy. Like, seriously. I mean, really, comparing (at the time) knitting for charity in your house to activism where like people are yelling n’ stuff? Of course, as we all know, it wasn’t too crazy, and in fact, been done by people for many years.

However, at the time, I thought that using a new term to explain this was unnecessary as there were already plenty of new words in the English lexicon, who needs another? But, what I was missing was that there wasn’t a term that specifically embraced (and explained) this type of activism. That was what people caught on to, not the existence of something, but the naming of something.

So, when people contact me and ask, “How can I be a craftivist?” I generally have two answers:

1. The answers are already there. On Google. In history. You don’t need me to tell you. Not because I don’t want to tell you, but because you’ll be more fulfilled if you find your own path. If you find the best way that craftivism speaks to you. I want you to be excited to make and do and create and use your creativity to foment change. Your change, not mine.

2. See #1. Then ask yourself a few questions: What craft do I like? What cause do I feel strongly about? How can I use my craft to show people that this cause is important? Write these answers down on a Post It. Post it near your craft supplies. Have a think. Find your path.

Part of my path I think is to help you find your path. To help you see that you have all the answers, you have complete permission to make whatever you want, you have permission to make positive change. It’s part of my path not because I have all the answers, but because I don’t. Part of my path is to remind you that change is waiting for you to make it. Maybe we’re on the same path but in different woods. Maybe we’re on paths that will cross. (I hope so! Mayhaps then we could stop for a rest, make some cool craftivist work and meet for tea!)

But I do know one thing, that when we follow our own paths and go where there is no path before us, we become who we are meant to be. We just have to have the courage and the joy and curiosity to walk into the woods where currently there is no trail of breadcrumbs, where there are no footsteps to follow.

And we need to walk forward safe in the knowledge that we are making (literally and figuratively) our own paths because just as much as it may be scary, it’s also breathtaking as you can hear the crunch of the leaves under your feet, the sound of birds chirping, and feel in touch with who you truly are from the inside out.

Unpacking Kafka and Why Your Creativity Needs You (Sometimes) to be Still.

| Betsy

Related to my post yesterday about why taking a break is okay (and so is re-entry), I found this quote by Franz Kafka.

Because in order to “remain sitting at your table and listen,” you have to first, be willing to sit at that table and then, gather your easily distracted mind enough to listen. Easier said, than done. Especially when Kafka wrote it, pre-internet!

And then once you’ve done those 2 things, you then realize that you don’t even have to listen! You can just wait, if you so desire. Waiting?! We hate waiting! Waiting is the worst!

Except when it isn’t.

Because, as Kafka notes, you really don’t even have to wait, if you think that’s stupid and (literally) a waste of time. Aha! You can have it all if you only… only… “be quite still and solitary.”

Still. You want me to be still? I have ADD. I’m like that small child that can get into trouble in an empty padded room so is my crazy monkey mind. This is a bad idea.

…

When you find yourself doing the above. It’s time to take a break. And breathe. Because, as I tweeted yesterday “Our #1 job as crafters/artists/makers [is] to be permission givers. To make freely and bravely, inspiring others to do the same.”

And how in the hell can we do that if we can’t settle our minds enough do what Kafka (ultimately) asks and “be quite still and solitary?” Because once we can do that, “the world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

And it will.

But only if we remember to give ourselves permission to take a break, just like we need to remember to give ourselves permission to freely create.

But only.

Sounds simple.

Except when it isn’t.

So, just a reminder today, to think about where you need to be: taking a break or willing “to be quite still?” And a little nudge that, whatever you decide, it’s okay, it’s natural, and it’s just where you need to be.

“Why?” or “What Works?”

| Betsy

This morning I woke up wondering lots of “WHYs?” Why do/did people agree with the idea of craftivism? Why do people read what I write? Why do people like what I make? Why do I want to share their thoughts and essays in a craftivism anthology?* Why, why, why, and so on. Let be said, even I felt like a beleaguered parent after awhile after my proverbial inner 5 year old just would not stop with all the “Whys.” The cat was little help, the birds that visit the bird feeder outside also didn’t seem to have any pertinent suggestions, although I swear they did eye me more inquisitively this morning than they usually do.

And I think we all ask ourselves questions like these more often than we admit. But, why don’t we admit it? (There I go again, another why question!) After finally getting diagnosed correctly for the first time in over 30 years, it’s like all these questions no longer linger, they instead serve their true purpose, which is to find the real truth behind the matter, instead of making me want to hide underneath the covers all day and eat biscuits.

In re-discovering the wonderful book Art and Fear this morning, I think I have found an answer. All these “whys” (and the proceeding “What works?”) come because you can never truly pinpoint when the moment is that there was connection of your work with others’ hearts, minds, or other parts. Because that moment exists in another place behind now, which is where you’re working as you’re typing, stitching, painting, drawing, quilting. “Why” is for now, “what works” is for later, but they’re both still not present in the moment of creation, where new things are springing from your hands right now. In creation, we drop the “whys” and the “what works” and are left with what is. And once what is is in the hands of others, we can start to question ourselves (and possibly our sanity) again, but that moment of creation, we continue to come back to, because that’s where all the questions stop and we can truly bring ourselves to the present moment.

From Art and Fear:

In following the path of your heart, the chances are that your work will not be understandable to others. At least not immediately, and not to a wide audience. When the author fed his computer the question, “What works?,” a curious pattern emerged: a consistent delay of about five years between the making of any given negative, and the time when prints from that negative began selling. In fact, one now-popular work was first reproduced in a critical review to illustrate how much weaker the then-new work had become. Performing artists face the added, real-time terror of receiving an instant verdict on their work in person- like the conductor being pummeled with a barrage of rotten fruit halfway through the Paris premier of Rites of Spring, or Bob Dylan being hooted off the stage the first time he appeared live with an electric guitar. No wonder artists so often harbor a depressing sense that their work is going downhill: at any given moment the older work is always more attractive, always better understood.

This is not good. After all, wanting to be understood is a basic need- an affirmation of the humanity you share with everyone around you. The risk is fearsome: in making your real work you hand the audience the power to deny the understanding you seek; you hand them the power to say, “you’re not like us; you’re weird; you’re crazy.”

So, I guess, after all, we should just be happy when we find ourselves asking questions like “why” and “what works” because that means we still care enough to be understood, relavent, connected. But, at the same time, we should also be sure that we let those questions go and just create after awhile, too, because they are just the framework that allow us the knowledge that our goal is to connect with others; the work itself is what allows us to actually do so.


*Yes! (And given the quote above, a good thing it takes several years to get these types of things together, no?) After wanting to do so for a long time, I’m finally announcing that a possible craftivism anthology is in the works. I want to share people’s definitions of craftivism along with their craftivist-related projects, especially from countries outside of the US and the UK. Want to share your story? English not your native language? Or worried that “writing just isn’t your thing?” No worries! All that can be fixed. First, I want to hear your idea of what you’d like to write about! Get in touch!

Bless This Mess.

| Betsy

This post is a weird one, admittedly. But, over the weekend, I wrote a short short story (yep, no typo) about an elderly Japanese woman who decided to stay in the 19-mile radius evacuation zone despite the warnings. The other day on Twitter, I tweeted about being messy, about scribbling in between the lines, spilling my tea, about breaking things. I am so sick of everything so perfect perfect everywhere online, perfect photos, perfect lives, perfectly-placed items, everything perfectly curated purposely to show the absence of mess, chaos, confusion, and in some senses, life.

To me it’s the imperfections that lead us to perfection. I.e., there is no perfection until we unleash and embrace and lay bare our imperfections. Perfection isn’t the lack of life, but the celebration of it, in all of its messiness, noise, stress, love.

It’s where it’s okay to miss a stitch, to have an imperfect seam, to have a hair out of place, to not know what to say. The other day I realized that after I had run an errand that my lipstick was totally on askew, and wondered what the people at the vet thought when I went inside. I sat in the car and in the tiny mirror couldn’t see much else other than my lips, the lipstick a little above my cupid’s bow, some had even slipped a little below my bottom lip. And I laughed at the part of me that was immediately horrified by two tiny smudges.

I’m always the one with slightly crazy hair or an earring half falling out or a laugh that’s too loud, never perfect, despite my best intentions. I’m clumsy, I can’t wear anything white due to my penchant for spilling my tea and coffee, there always seem to be some cat hair hitching a ride on the back of my skirt or coat. I once stained my entire face using a coffee scrub. And that’s okay.

I’m okay with that. Because it’s these little foibles that bring me back to the imperfection of life and the true beat of living. I don’t want to see your projected life or what you wish your life was like, I want to see your life. I’m not saying bring on the wreckage, I’m saying show me your messes. That’s where creativity lies.

So, in that spirit, I’m posting the story here. It’s not perfect,* or even necessarily good. But it felt good to play around with fiction as I haven’t in years. It felt good to stretch my brain even though the outcome wasn’t stellar. And it’s imperfect. I share it with you as a reminder that life is messy, our creations are messy.

Bring on the mess, bring on the scribbles, bring on the experiments, bring on what you really see, instead of what you wish us to see.


*I’m resisting the urge to edit the typo right now, though…


When I was a kid and wrote fiction, I used to write things like “This is not about real life!” on the cover of my notebooks so people wouldn’t think all the weirdness was autobiographical. This story is pretty much the same thing. I just started wondering, what if you couldn’t leave the area? Or had no reason to leave? How many people would that be? What would they be thinking? Doing? Seeing?