Those Stitches Make a Blanket

Early May, 2020

“I gave birth once to my children,” P. shared, “But they give me life every day.”

All of us women knew exactly what she meant, all mothers except for young M. who, wise beyond her years and fiercely connected in the most mutually inspirational relationship with her own mother, understood anyhow.

We sat around a fire that MJ had started and tended. Now and then, she would add additional logs, or sage, holy basil, and lavender, all dried and saved “from spring cleanup.” We ate homemade soup, drank wine and prosecco, and enjoyed other shared offerings. 

In chairs at a distance in the open air, it still felt like we were boldly breaking a taboo by being together, as if a delicious and perhaps reckless blend of defiance and courage were necessary after more than two months of social distancing. Most of us had, until that night, only socialized with our families, and all of us had been previously stringent about wearing masks. Still, only one of us wore a face covering. To me it felt safe to be outside, all of us healthy and seated many feet apart, having only been around healthy people, extra careful of our movements when we have had to shop or go out. 

Still, we all expressed how complex it felt to be together, and agreed it was the psychological impact of distancing, especially from those we love and for so long, that we foresaw would have the greatest impact on our health, society and families. It seems common knowledge now that, in addition to the soaring unemployment rates, that suicides, domestic abuse, alcoholism, and drug abuse have also markedly increased. And what of the mind-body connection–– those getting sick because they just so desperately long for connection and mutual understanding? Especially those who had already previously felt so alone…

We came together to discuss future plans for Circle Creative, our craft collective that celebrates and shares traditional skills, processes, and wisdom. We came together to dream up how we can continue to bloom as a non-profit business during this time of going inwards, when classes still cannot be held in-person, the mainstay of our work thus far. We were braving the new morés of social distancing to make a solid plan on how to grow Circle through technology and other safe means. But secretly, more importantly, we were friends longing for connection and the sharing of stories. 

I was surrounded by six women working so hard to balance and honor love/family, community, earth, creative expression, a sense of service, and financial responsibilities...these are women with whom I have the honor to co-create regularly, deepen friendships, and widen our circle to include anyone else who feels called to join us for classes, events, and community projects. I feel so lucky to be in their wise, cackling, eloquent, visionary, howling, hilarious, heart-felt mix. To be fair, seven women who hadn’t seen each other or much of anyone else would be hard to keep fully on a focused trajectory of an agenda. 

So many things were shared that night beyond ideas and practicalities about how to grow our business, that pre-Covid, was based mostly to-date on a model of in-person classes. Creative outlets are so urgently needed though--perhaps more now than ever-- to reduce anxiety, and provide a sense of support and healthy outlets for grief and stress. 

Stories would get interjected–– about female circumcision finally being outlawed in Sudan, and how it had only been outlawed in the US in 1996, and our own hypocrisy as a nation. We spoke about the endless variations of the rags-to-riches story of Cinderella around the world (this most retold, adapted, and ancient tale) which led into the Droit du Seigneur- the “right of the lord” that I had just read about earlier in the day, that royal men hid behind in the Middle Ages to justify having their pick of any young maidens that pleased them “to have sexual relations with subordinate women, in particular, on their wedding nights.” 

Soon other stories were shared about women living in a culture of complicity, acquiescing to men’s demands because they didn’t want to be destitute or be killed, shamed, have harm come to their families, or lose the rights of their own children. P. shared that her mother had been forced on occasion to have sex with her father during their marriage—that she would have sex “even if she wasn’t in the mood. Yet out of all my siblings, I am the only one who saw it in retrospect for what it ostensibly was: rape.”

P.’s European mother, like uncountable women globally have endured and even justified their acquiescence because of her sense of duty to her husband. “And what could she do?” P. asked rhetorically. “She felt she had no choice, as so many other women have.”

My friend J. had told me a similar story years ago about her best friend’s mother and told the others. “That poor woman was expected, without fail, to give her husband a blowjob every day when he returned home from work,” J had said. “This was in Brooklyn, but the parents spoke little English.” 

I pantomimed the taking out of false teeth, unzipping the man’s pants. It was truly awful but my instinct was to make a joke, to diffuse the impact.  Our laughter was our way of releasing some of our collective fury and sadness for all the women who have not felt they have self sovereignty. 

“She must have had strong neck muscles,” MJ said, shaking her head, laughing. 

“Or a strong jaw,” someone else said, laughing sheepishly too.

“Well in any case, one day, the daughters somehow eventually found out and were furious and disgusted,” I offered. “They coached their Italian elderly Italian mother to claim her sense of personal power. “Mom, you do not have to do that! This is America! You’re not in the old country anymore! You can do what you want! Tell him you’re on strike! You’re not cooking anymore!”

This story was tragic and hilarious at once, and riled up the lot of us. We spoke more of motherhood, of projects we were working on and ideas we had for Circle Creative, and then the powerful mask making initiative, which brings me back to H. who until late into the evening had still said very little and whose body language seemed uncharacteristically reserved, and even protected. H. had been the most productive of the mask makers, “But we all constantly devised new and more innovative designs to make the process more efficient,” she said. “The outpouring of love, dedication, and service were remarkable. We were in a playful kind of contest to make as many masks as we could. Then I started cutting and sewing assembly line style which really helped. And then...I bought an industrial sewing machine, a Juki, and it made all the difference!”

We were still all still sitting around the fire, and as the night descended and the temperature dropped, we moved in closer to the wood stumps closest to the flames, then back out for a while, and back to the deeper warmth when needed.

H. had been quiet most of the evening, quietly tucked behind the handmade fabric mask she had made, one of many hundred she sewed as part of the mask initiative she also helped spearhead with Circle Creative. Finally, she began to share too.

H. has a careful, deliberate way of speaking, each word a careful stitch. “My boyfriend is from Iran and his mother doesn’t speak English. I am trying to learn Farsi but it’s slow going so when we communicate, my boyfriend translates. The other day I showed his mother my new industrial machine, this woman who had been a seamstress. Do you know she had exactly the same machine? It totally bonded us! Two women from such different cultures and generations connected through stitches. 

Many powerful and moving stories were shared that night but one story in particular stayed with me and seemed to shake all of us.

 “It’s just amazing how many you sewed,” said someone in the circle.

H. took a deep breath, the sadness she holds leaping forward, making her wince. “Sewing those masks saved me in a very difficult moment- and I’m not just talking about Covid, but sure, that created another layer of vulnerability. It’s interesting actually how everyone has spoken about this “crisis”: as in the “isolation” or “loneliness.” I haven’t seen that personally. 

“I’ve witnessed extraordinary resourcefulness and a global movement of mostly women to respond and help through mask making, coming together through sewing...all those stitches making a blanket of love across the earth, one mask at a time. Thanks to the internet, women have been sharing innovations, new designs and materials, and helping to build an efficient effort to gather materials of distribution that was akin to the effort during World War 2.

“I would not have made it through the months of social isolation and distancing without the connections I’ve made, the distraction, sense of purpose, and the meditative, healing work that sewing provided. But again, it was the trauma I was carrying and moving through and that wasn’t because of Corona but my ex-husband who has been trying to take my kids, attempting to prove me unfit and unstable. It’s been awful, not to mention my son doesn’t even want to leave my house to go back to him. He weighs 200 lbs at 13 years-old. I mean how do you force him to go?

“For their dad, it’s all about control. He’s a pastor who married me when his homosexuality needed a cover. As soon as clergy could marry within his faith, he not only divorced me and came out, he immediately wanted to take my kids from me and have them live with his new partner, as if I am superfluous. Now he tells me he received a message from God that I am unfit and could be harmful to our kids. But I’m crazy?!

“After weeks and weeks of sewing in this global effort, getting stronger through that process,  and receiving a sense of purpose to support others, my kids’ dad and I crossed paths one day. I said, “I wish you could just recognize that while we disagree on things, the truth is, we are both good parents. Still, without the space that this custody battle has forced between us, I would not have been able to co-admin Circle’s initiative, acquire materials, mobilize sewers, and help get over 6500 masks to our first responders during the PPE shortage.” I was actually, sincerely, thanking him for being so disgusting, letting him know he couldn’t take my power and light away or my sense of purpose.

“‘Well, that’s good,” was all he could say,” she added as an afterthought.

The rest of us listened, pulling in a collective breath and deep exhale of empathy, and another, while Helen released her story to the night. Then we went round sharing our own, stories of other women we knew who had children taken away, or struggled to keep theirs and spent years in and out of courts in hopes of maintaining even co-parenting rights, not to mention others’ perceptions of their sanity.

I know two women personally who, twenty-five years ago, were put in mental institutions because their male partners couldn’t handle their emotional and intellectual liberation that motherhood actually ignited. Both of them gleaned inspiration from books like Women Who Run With the Wolves, wanted to nurse their babies, have home births, not circumcise their sons, and question the constructs of a patriarchal Western society and even their families. In both cases, they were considered “crazy” by their conservative husbands and parents and thrown into asylums.

“Nothing like taking a baby away from a mother whose full breasts are still flowing with warm milk, her womb still aching with the knowing of truest connection and purpose, and see if she won’t start acting fucking insane. And how is that not a healthy response to that?!” I said, my stomach feeling tensed from touching in to so many unnamed losses, the grief so many women have carried too often alone.

Of course there are unfit manipulative mothers who also torture men that embody all the best qualities of responsible, loving, generous fatherhood, but here was our creative and caring friend steeped in sadness, powerlessness, and repressed fury. We all know how devoted she is to her children, in fact to all our children, yet all she can do, as rationally and calmly as she can, has been to work to prove her stability and the merits of having access to her own children. 

H. finally began speaking again. Soft, carefully chosen words, her eyes shining in the flickering light. She took long breaths, each of her hands finding comfort in the other, braided in the nest of her lap. “When I was a child, about six, my mother had an emergency hysterectomy and had to be rushed to the hospital where she stayed for many days. My grandma came to take care of me and stayed for some time after my mom returned home. 

“I didn’t know what was wrong with my mom exactly but I knew it was serious and it scared me. I found comfort, as my mother did, in the way my grandma soon got to work to teach my mom the art of quiltmaking. There was a soft rug in the living room upon which two saw horses were placed and the layers of fabric draped across them. 

“My favorite place was sitting beneath all that in what felt like the safest place in the world to listen to my grandma, aunt and mom talking, guidance, instruction and stories being shared...my mom’s voice getting stronger each day. I remember the hands of these women I loved holding the soft fabric, the needles passing under, over, under, over. This is still the memory I go to when I feel small and need to feel nurtured- I return to lying on my back on the carpet watching these mamas’ hands create a covering for me stitch by stitch. Still to this day, we all sleep under handmade quilts or crocheted Afghans with blessings of love and protection.” She was smiling gently, her body language much more relaxed than before she had shared, as if in her story’s telling she had uncoiled, laid down some weight. 

“Recently as I joined the mask initiative, I thought of all the women throughout time and cultures making things together, mending great wounds of the body and the heart, one stitch at a time.”

It wasn’t just H.’s mother who had received support and mending through those many days the women spent together in that quilt making circle. Your healing is my healing, and mine is yours. All the women helped nourish and heal each other, though H.’s mother’s may have needed it in a more overt way. The experience provided a mutual sense of purpose, compassion, shared skills, safety, and the importance of connection. All that in turn gave young H. a lifetime awareness and appreciation for the healing of craft, of women coming together, of the capacity we carry to transform our pain, and the introduction of skills to do so. That is the incredible power of such “women’s work” that has so often been under or de-valued on so many levels. 

H. paused, deep in thought. “That is what craft is, what circles are,” she finally added.

Her story left us all silent at first, our skin and hearts vibrating with the power of such a visceral, healing memory, and that story, out of all we shared, resonated most loudly. Such a deep offering was a great gift and also proof, yet again, of the importance of what Circle Creative Collective has been offering up to the world. 

-end-

Written by Jenny Wonderling. All images thanks to unsplash.com