It all started a crocheted pair of titties and some gooey butter cake and a dream. How’s that for an opening line? This week I’ve been working at my shop, yes, my shop. It all feels so stunningly unreal.
I’ve had my crochet and knitted creations in a vendor mall for a few years now, all the while dreaming and manifesting a place I can call my own. When in St. Louis for a family function, I was sitting there, talking to my aunties about the possibility of one day owning a shop, when a message appeared in my inbox on Facebook, telling me that a very coveted and cheap space was about to be available. I was, of course, at that moment, financially completely unprepared. However, I couldn’t get that feeling out of my soul. My heart kept fluttering, my brain kept buzzing, and I kept designing that space a million different ways to fit my vision. Chad and I talked about it and decided that if we could possibly make it happen, then we absolutely should. I contacted that landlord and soon paid the deposits and signed the paperwork. Panic set in briefly, but I decided to just be brave and lean into the journey. This is what I had been working on, and I felt strongly that this is what I was called to Snyder to do.
The first time I set foot in Snyder was for a funeral. My very dear friend had passed away in a tragic accident. When I crossed the Scurry County line, I felt cosmically called to this town. I tried to shake it, but it stayed there, like a nagging little voice beckoning me home. I went back to my life in Arkansas to finish a personally important mission to help bring a bone marrow transplant unit into fruition. When that project reached its completion, we decided to just take the leap. The rest is history.
I’ve talked a lot about the complicated arc of the hero’s journey. There have been times when I regretted answering this call because the pain of the losses seemed to be a high price to pay for the peace I was seeking. I remember a session with my friend Caralyn ( a brilliant energy worker and healer) where she was trying to infuse some spiritual healing and hope into me, and I was absolutely undone by what was happening in my life. It felt so raw and unfair, and the universe could not convince me in that moment that the destination would be worth the journey. I sent my guides to the periphery and made a stand that if they were not here to help, they could find a new charge. Fear set in, and all of a sudden I was embroiled with resentment and rage because I felt the universe was trying to steal my helpmate through the cruel joke of alcoholism, the same disease that destroyed so much of my childhood. It felt cynical and quite frankly super fucking rude. For three years, I stopped listening to spirit. I just felt they had nothing good to say. It’s a hard thing to have to reconcile with yourself what alcoholism is and what it looks like. Growing up, alcoholism had a very distinct and violent face. It was heartbreaking to realize that the sweetest and most caring person I had ever met was fighting this battle. To me, this just was not what alcoholism looked like. I felt guilty and partially responsible for not noticing the signs. I felt guilty for drinking myself because I felt it was permissive behavior on my part. Now though, on the other side of the crisis, my husband is three years sober and no longer in the throws of liver failure. I see it as a necessary dragon that needed slaying. I needed to see that recovery is possible. I needed to feel chosen through this process of reconciliation. I needed to see that my pain mattered, even when he was still struggling with his. I needed to know that even on the hardest days when I felt so out of step with what I had set out to do, that he was still there fighting, staying, believing that not only could he heal himself from the struggle that destroyed his childhood and mine, but that he could also support me through the process of figuring this whole mess out. It hasn’t been easy for either one of us. I’ve had to sit with myself quite a lot to work through the many triggers that come along with this territory. I’ve seen so many relationships dashed on the rocks of illness and torn down by the stress of it, and here we were both fighting for our lives, me with constant pain and a brain tumor, him with liver failure and facing the possibility of a transplant. All of a sudden nothing else in my world mattered but saving him.
I immediately quit my job at the nursing home to find better insurance. Everything I did from that moment on became about making sure I didn’t end up a widow. The whole trajectory of our story changed, and it all felt so incredibly lonely. Then, a friend of mine, sad from a double mastectomy and removal of her uterus and fallopian tubes, lamented to me that she no longer even felt like a woman, that everything that defined her had been taken from her. To cheer her up, I made her a pair of crocheted titties in soft velvet yarn and gave them to her as a gift. I had gotten the idea from my friend Kae, who had crocheted some for her shop. Then suddenly everyone wanted a pair, and I ended up making several for a breast cancer fundraiser at work. I tweaked the pattern and the scale to make it my own, then I rented a space in a little vendor mall and started MoonChild Haberdashery. Over the last few years, it has had many iterations, but it all started with wanting to create something funny to deal with something tragic. Affirmatitties were born through that dark humor and sarcasm. Each set contained a nipple tag with a positive affirmation. I have always been good at making a life around the crazy, and piecing together a little levity from my creations. Who would have thought something so silly could change so much?
Sometimes I was down so low trying to figure out the war going on in my body that sitting in bed making something with my hands was the only balm I could provide for my soul. My little crochet and knitted creations gave me both a smile and a purpose. I would barely get through my three shifts at work, then crash out at home. I couldn’t keep up with my house or farm obligations. Chad was also battling his own health crisis. I felt terrible all the time for not being able to be the mother or partner I wanted to be. The hormonal swings of perimenopause, versus a pituitary tumor, brought this disconnected feeling into my everyday reality. I felt like I was constantly floating above myself, never grounded. It all felt so out of control. Sometimes I even felt quietly suicidal, knowing that as a healthcare professional, saying that out loud to anyone would be a potentially career-ending disaster. Asking for help has certainly never been my strong suit. I kept on though. The dream of owning my own little place and trying to make a living from my art kept me going. Chad even started a food business that has been pretty successful. We talked about a joint venture as we both healed our bodies and continued to figure out the new rhythms of our life.
When I got the keys in my hand finally, something shifted. I thought back to that rainy day on the farm when I walked my little infinity path around my fire pit, manifesting what I wanted my life to look like. I said to myself, let me embody my hippie soul, give me long dreadlocks, hippie skirts, and hell, if we are dreaming, how about I get skinny. I dreamed of weaving a shawl and knitting a hat in community with others trying to find a little peace and healing with the work of our hands. On the eve of my fiftieth birthday, I headed to the space and was stopped in my tracks by déjà vu. That girl I had envisioned was about to leave the house to film content in our shop.
I didn’t know at the time of my manifestation how I would get here. I didn’t know that skinny would come on the heels of a life-altering diagnosis, and dreadlocks would be born out of losing my hair due to the treatments. The universe always seems to have jokes. But hey, skinny is still a pretty decent consolation prize.
It’s also crazy how everything else seemed to fall into place. I got free or very cheap shop furnishings to fill out the space, and a very sentimental gathering of relics from my own life. I have finally been able to tackle the box of doom ( my storage container with all of my mother’s things). I found a collection of vintage Vogue prints depicting magazine covers from the 20s that had belonged to my grandmother. I found comfy furnishings to flesh out my dream of having a shop that felt like Grandma’s house. I collected a table that made me feel connected to the women in my family who gathered around kitchen tables to craft or cook and share our lives with each other. A wish list is set up with the urging of my friend, yielding gifts from all directions. Then the stove out of the childhood home of my very best friend, who tragically passed away in an accident prior to me moving to her hometown to start my life over, arrived like a most sacred gift. It will become a very cool coffee bar, by the way. A complimentary installation that will hold the gifts of caffeine and the wonderful and tasty offerings from the heart and hearth of my husband. We are both very much still standing, still healing, and still dreaming. Our very own soul kitchen. The content on this journey will be shifting back to creating through the chaos and telling our story through the art we create. I’ll continue to chronicle the very real and human experience with a no-bones-about-it attitude just to prove that dreams really do come true, even if the pathway is a lot more twisty than you expected. You just have to keep going. You have to put one foot in front of the other and just keep dreaming. It all sounds so much easier said than done. My only advice is don’t give up on yourself. Stay the course and just keep going. Thank you for staying with me on this epic adventure that is my crazy life. I finally feel like I can truly create again. I can’t wait to get back to the heart of where this all started with my little farm dreams. As always… Thanks for stopping by.
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