How My Journey Began with a Hook and some Yarn

It was my first semester of college.  I'd moved into a sweet little apartment with two dear, childhood friends.  We were playing house and spreading our wings...my feet were still swinging from a cloud somewhere and it was just as it should have been.

Kendra was crocheting a blanket for her mom, I think, and suddenly, the lessons I'd received from my Aunt when I was 8, and all the attempts I'd made to make things with a hook and some yarn over the years came together.  With a little coaching from Kendra, I was off.  It's been a love affair ever since.  

It started with afghans...I wish I had pictures!  I've lost count of how many afghans I've made in the past 8 years, but it's in the thirties somewhere.  I made hats for my nieces and nephews, then sweaters and booties and blankets for my first little babe.  I caught the amigurumi wave, sold on etsy, made sweet little booties for a baby we were never to meet that hang with the photos of our girls beside my mirror, and made nearly everything we used for our littlest baby.  By then, I was also knitting, but when I picked up a crochet hook I could cruise through a project without ever glimpsing at a pattern.  

With hook and yarn in hand, over a 5 year period, I explored creativity in a way I'd been, literally, terrified of before.  My creative nature was a source of fear for one particular person from my childhood, who told me that it could be dangerous, and that I should capitalize on my intelligence instead.  I should do something practical.

I tried.  I really, really tried.  It was abysmal.  Truly.  All the way around. 

By the time I was 21, I was so lost I didn't know what to do with myself.  With a baby on the way and little money, I picked up the hook and knocked on the locked door of my creativity without even knowing it, out of sheer necessity.

As I began to realize how not dangerous my creativity was, I started tiptoeing around my other fears, poking them with my hook, testing them, wondering why I'd been taught to be so afraid.  Wrapped in the warmth of the blanket I'd just finished off, I'd crack a book I'd never have dreamed of reading before.  I'd paint, and explore.  It was the beginning of my religious and spiritual transformation which took me from a path of fear, to a path of creativity, boldness, true faith and humility, and grounded awareness.  

I can see why people are afraid of creativity, intrigue, curiosity.  I can see why were taught not to ask certain questions, befriend certain people, or explore different ideas.  Once I did, it was like a house of cards fell down all around me.  The only thing I lost, though, was a fear based tradition.  I gained all the real stuff I'd been hoping for all along.

It makes me wonder, what are the things I continue to fear?  How can I approach them in a way that might lead to more freedom and deeper understanding?  

As I've sat with that question for the past several weeks, I've come to the conclusion that there is still a lot to wade through, but my approach has changed.  It's less abrasive, more curious, and I am more invested in being gentle with myself.  I have better tools to address the remaining issues with than the steel wool I was using to scrub my Self with, and I have a new point of view from which I can view and then dismiss those issues that need a fond, but firm farewell.  It still gets painful, but in a different, more productive than destructive way. 

And what fuels this walk?  Humility....faith.  I am being made keenly aware of my humanity.  It feels so good, embracing the fact that I am a human-being and releasing the rest...

It's like being at home with myself.  In my hooked and needled nest.