This has been sitting in my drafts for months now. I feel like so much of my life has been sitting in drafts lately. Such is the ongoing struggle with a brain that’s just different. I’m still learning to navigate this unknown and care for myself with compassion and grace now that I’m beginning to explore ADHD through the lens of possibility. So here it is (better late than never, right?) — the caption I started writing way back when and just finished today:
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I’ve been spending time with the piece I made in @heyheyshauna‘s workshop last week. My stepmom gave me one of her embroidery hoops. I don’t think she or I could have possibly known all that this hoop was about to hold. I stitched a paper heart onto a pair of barely-worn jeans my baby brother gave me for my art-making. Baby! Ha! It’s funny how I still think of him that way. He’s not a baby anymore (he’s in his twenties), but our relationship is still very young as we search for the common threads of our shared humanity, detangling traces of trauma’s tough edges. Who we are. Who we were never allowed to be. It all comes to an unravel as the prickly point of the needle guides me home — home to the familiar and sometimes forgotten fire that burns within me. Watercolour wounds that wait patiently in the periphery for silence to strip me down to dawn, where worries wander off to catch the first breath of beauty’s blush. How do I learn to hush the noise just long enough to exhale and hold all that is here…and now?
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It truly doesn’t matter how many times we’ve been wrong or right or ready to fight. What matters is that we weave wonder into the white spaces that invite us to reignite our longing so we can slip into the soft spaces deep in the hearts of those we might one day call home. 🙏😭🫧💞
