Trust the flow
I made a healing chime for myself. I became the person who needed it most I figured, after getting very sick in early October.
My idea for the healing chime started out very differently, though. I had a plan on how it would look, what materials to use, how to construct it. But it didn’t go in that direction and it was a challenge to make. I think it was the first one I made that was hard.
I had almost forgotten about the stash of natural-dyed silk threads I had picked up in Laos until I was rummaging through bins and discovered them again. The color of that glistening, angelic light blue and the cool, shimmery feel of the silk threads was irresistible. It reminded me ocean waves, water undulating and rocking, ebbing and flowing.
Water had become a thing related to having a kidney infection – don’t hold in my pee but go; drink lots and lots of water; and let the tears come, finally and often. I learned to cry for me this time, and bawled to my big sister during the worst of it. She cried with me, and caught me as I fell into her trusting arms, and held me from drowning in the undertow. Let go. Trust.
Using the silk thread was easier in some ways than the cotton thread I had become more accustomed to. It was easier to thread the needle and easier to hand-stitch on the woven cotton swatch, as it glided up and over and down, up and over and down again. But I was using it in a way that it sometimes frayed, got tangled, got caught on the leaves, and knots would slip out, and wrapping the stems wouldn’t stay put. Patience. Find another way. Flow doesn’t mean easy; it just has to find its way.
I had planned on three columns of simple hand-stitched columns. But it wasn’t enough. Proportionally it was way off. I ended up stitching seven columns and that felt like a much better balance. Fewer columns seemed to be that place of real imbalance, a vulnerable place of not enough strength.
In a way, I could say there was not enough to hold up my own immune system because of the kidney infection, and in that weakness, Covid came it to topple things over. So stitch by patient stitch, moment by patient moment I could only let my body and being heal, to let it regain some strength and stability to recover. I needed way more than I thought to feel some balance. I needed the support and love of family and friends, too. Trust others. Ask for support.
At first I thought the light sage eucalyptus leaves, with their silver dot-painted leaves would be perfect upon the light indigo fabric swatch. But no matter how I tried, it just didn’t look right. Again it was off, so clearly not what I thought, not what I imagined it to be.
Getting Covid made everything off, too, and it wasn’t what I imagined it to ever be. It’s a deceptive virus, just like my big sister said. Severe symptoms like confusion and disorientation; headaches that were deep; a pinching chest pain; emotions that cracked me open; and insights into my psyche that were clear and profound. I was humbled and bowed to Covid for all that it brought. Trust this.
I then switched to rust-orange leaves that fall in abundance in my back garden. Of course the leaves were from a tree named River Birch – reminding me of flowing water. I had painted the fragile leaves with white dots. I had to be careful because the leaves easily chipped. Wrapping the silk thread around the stems took patience, as strands of silk would get caught on the serrated edges. Knots wouldn’t hold so the thread would unravel off the stems. I had to redo several over and over.
Patience. Patience for two weeks of illness, slowly recovering, and isolation from my sweet husband for ten days. Patience. This takes time, there has been an unraveling. The knots I’ve tied are coming undone now.
The rust-orange leaves were exactly it against the light indigo fabric swatch – the color, the proportion, the shape – I could sense and see it feeling just right. I began to weave the threads through the columns. Sometimes the silk thread frayed. Sometimes the serrated leaves would catch on each other. Sometimes I was frustrated.
All this prevented flow. I’m learning, I thought. Healing is long. Be careful. Be patient. Be gentle with myself. Flow has begun, yes. But I’m still finding my way to recovery.
Finally I attached the stick on top – taken from the Heavenly Bamboo shrub in my back garden – tugging on the threads up and down the columns to align the leaves below just so, and then gently secured the threads around the stick.
The leaves go this way and that. They get caught on each other. Some are straight and others are curled up. They bump into each other and get turned around backwards. They seem to block each other from being themselves all together.
Yes, I do this too, I thought. Sometimes I do this to myself, or to another, and sometimes I don’t even know I’m doing it. But it’s so much better when I get out of my own way, and allow others to be, and allow things to be as they are. In illness, there’s no other way.
When I hung up the final healing chime, I played with each of the leaves one by one. They all need to be there. They all have their own energies and shapes and ways of being. One by one I acknowledged the leaves and helped them be arranged the way they needed, for themselves and for each other, so they flow together as a whole.
I think that’s what I'm trying to do now, to heal and recover in a way for my body and being to flow together holistically. To strengthen systems that were depleted and weakened, to harmonize them into the whole again, and to let things flow and energies and emotions move together in a new way. Trust the flow.
“Trust the flow” was originally published as an exclusive post to my Patreon supporters in October 2021. Now it's public and available to you, too!
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