I’ve been a bit stressed and down lately. Nothing major, just working through changes and fear of the unknown. In my heart of hearts, I know that everything will work out right; but sometimes my heart and my head aren’t in synch. My heart’s in a good place, but my brain wants to over analyze everything and think me to death in the process.
At times like these, I instinctively reach for my beads. Creativity has a healing element to it, and of all of the crafts that I do, this seems most true of beading. It’s hard to explain, except to say that there’s this very zen space – a meditative place – that I go to when I bead. It soothes me and helps me to let go, and in the process I often find creative solutions. Last night as I sewed, I remembered this story that my friend Beki Haley tells about her Nana, which sums up that feeling so much better than I can:
My grandmother did almost every craft imaginable, knitting, crochet, needlepoint, tatting, shrunken apple head dolls, ceramics, watercolors, we even made toilet seats out of resin with seashells trapped in it! She was a very energetic and sometimes nervous woman who couldn’t seem to sit still or calm down. Until she picked up her beads. Then she would become very calm and quiet.
When I was about 8 I asked her, “Nana, how come when you play with your beads your leg stops shaking and you get so quiet”? She called me over to her chair and said, “See all these little beads in here? Do you see the little tiny holes?” I nodded yes while squinting my eyes to look into her metal cigar box lid that she used for her beading tray. She said, “When I bead I climb inside that little tiny hole and there is no room in there for anything else to bother me. No worries, no aches, no stress.”
At 8 I didn’t quite understand how that made her leg stop moving. But by the time I was an adult I fully understood and her words have never left me. I climb inside that little tiny bead hole whenever I need just a moment of calm.
Thank you Beki, for giving me permission to save and share this story <3