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.