Welcome to Writing in Company. Each week I share some words and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points for you to write about what matters. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft thoughts for your own writing project, as meditation or prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. You can always look back through the archive for more ideas. Grab your pen and paper, and let your words loose on the page.
I’ve become a little obsessed with wearing wool. Not the heavy scratchy kind. I’m much too sensitive (in all the ways) for that. But how did I not know until my 50s about soft, lightweight merino wool that you can wear for days, in all kinds of weather?
Growing up in Florida, wool was not a well-known commodity among my family. We did have a cedar-lined closet, up at the top of the third-floor stairs, that held a rickety fold-up mattress and random clothing items including the few wool items we owned and seldom used. Blankets for camp in the mountains of North Carolina. Fair Isle sweaters from the 80s worn in the mountains of North Carolina. The kilts my sisters and I wore one Thanksgiving, also in the mountains of North Carolina. (Can you tell we were the flavor of Floridians that vacation in the mountains of North Carolina?)
Now I live in North Carolina, but until recently, I didn’t understand wool. Last year, an attempt at minimizing and eliminating fast fashion led me to a 100-day challenge to wear one merino wool dress. Since then I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of literal wool-gathering, replacing some items in my closet with versions that should last longer, if cared for properly. A thrifted red wool sweater with a small hole near the cuff pushed me to read about mending and darning techniques, and the differences between them.
I’ll completely over-simplify and likely misunderstand the craft as I explain why I’m reminded of grief.
Mending is repairing. You replace a broken zipper, sew on a missing button, patch a hole with fabric, and try to get the garment back into serviceable condition.
Darning is rebuilding. You weave thread into the existing fabric, invisibly or not, as you recreate stitches and fill in the hole with familiar materials.
The process of grief is more darning than mending.
The world, and even those closest to a grieving person, want to mend the pain of loss. They offer patches and prayers and hope for our return to something resembling normalcy sooner rather than later.
But deep grief work is slower than that. It is painstaking, like darning. It might mean more unraveling before we have the raw edges needed to start weaving together the remaining threads into something that—while not quite recovered—is being restored.
As I prepare for a webinar tomorrow about writing and grief, I’ve been focused on how transformative writing has been in my own grief work. The writing group of bereaved mothers I’m part of reminds me of a sewing circle. Each of us brings our own project, and we sit and stitch, alone and together. We learn from one another, listening, nodding, and slowly, slowly, slowly over time, we tend to the ragged holes in our hearts.
Writing, with others or alone, is a way to examine the raw edges of our grief, and begin to weave something new across the gap. We get acquainted with the hole—writing about what is lost, torn, flawed—and then someday we find ourselves experimenting with words and stitches that might cross the divide between what we’ve lost, and who we might yet become. Word after word, stitch after stitch, we rebuild. It can take a long time. We’ll drop stitches, rip some out, return again. And even when we’ve managed to darn the hole enough to keep it—and us—from completely unraveling, there will never not be a reminder of our loss. Grief leaves a raised nubby reminder behind that keeps us connected to what once was, even as we wear our warm, worn, wool sweater into the future.
Maybe that’s as far as I can push this metaphor…
a writing prompt
What about you?
What’s your experience with wool? With mending and darning? Or with grief?
Find an idea or image to begin, then put a few word-stitches down on paper, and see what happens.
November Writing Hour - this Saturday, Nov. 18 at 4 pm Eastern
My next live writing hour on Zoom for paid subscribers is this Saturday at 4 pm Eastern. If you want to write in company with others, you are welcome to join us. You can upgrade your subscription for a month ($7) just to try it. A separate email to paid subscribers will go out with the link, or you can find it on my Substack tab called Writing Hours. Let’s write together.
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tomorrow’s webinar on writing and grief
I’ll be in conversation with Teri Ott, the editor and publisher of The Presbyterian Outlook about using writing as a way to carry grief. There will be some writing time, too. Whether you are in a new season of grief, are long-acquainted, or want to add to your toolbox of spiritual practices, you are welcome. There is a minimal cost for individuals or groups to help support the faithful work of the Outlook.
Register here:
A committed wool& stan here! Have replaced much of my wardrobe with their pieces that will last years. And am culling a lot.
Ah, Julie, what a carefully, well-crafted examination of quiet tasks of caretaking the outer parts of our inner lives. A sock, a sweater cover a frame that carries the who of our beings. The effort to pay attention to a hole in a sock can maybe open the opportunity to gaze at the unseen chasm grief can be. It’s a metaphor beautifully opened by your words. Thank you.
Shannan