The Black & White (with a twist) Collection is the first group of pillows I’ve released post 2020. When I started weaving this batch, I didn’t realized how much releasing this group would mean to me. Last year was HARD. If you’ve been around here or have followed me on Instagram, you’ve seen a few posts here or there but, man, was it hard… more than a photo and a caption on social media could ever portray.
I didn’t weave much at all last year. With the loss of my dad and grandmother last May and news of the failing health of my grandfather who recently passed, I just couldn’t bring myself to make anything. I felt hollowed out, like an old tree that might fall at any moment. There was no strength for creativity because my mind and body were just trying to hold itself together to get through each day.
I don’t know when things changed. I guess it was a slow progression. A slow climb out of the bunker I’d built to protect myself from everything 2020 had been throwing at my family. I’d like to think of it as a cocoon and that I’ve returned as some form of butterfly but in reality it was more like a bunker or safe room that I’d built myself.
I can’t remember an exact moment but I know that at some point I realized that I was the only one who would be able to climb out of the cloud of grief I was surround by. The very loss that caused this cloud was the same reason I decided to try to climb out. I realized that even though I have a huge hole in my heart, I am still here. I am still breathing. I am still alive. I decided the best way I could honor the lives of the loved ones I had lost, was by living mine as fully as I can. That doesn’t mean there can’t be hard days- there definitely are hard days. To me, it means leaning into the bad days as well as the good. Its about feeling ALL the emotions that run through each day, each week, each month. Its about doing the things I’m nervous about or scared to do. Its about looking my daughter and my husband in the eyes and really seeing them. Its about taking in my surroundings and nature more. Its about appreciating each breath, each good cry, and each good laugh.
I eventually started weaving again. I told myself I would make whatever I felt like making. I wasn’t going to try too hard to be ‘on trend’ and I wasn’t going to make pillow covers that I thought people wanted me to make. I was going to create from a place that was strictly my own. Maybe you would call it my heart or my intuition? I don’t know where it came from but I started weaving and things started to just come out. I wove my way back into the world and into my life. The Black & White (with a twist) Collection helped me realize that if we find ourselves in the dark, eventually, there will be light again.
The Black & White (with a twist) Collection is coming to the website shop Friday (April 9th)!
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