Each Day

Cloaked in black, I looked in the mirror and smiled. I remembered that my mom used to only wear black. “I really am the continuance of my mom,” I thought to myself.

For the first three decades of my life, I followed a path that was driven by my dad’s approach to the world. Achieve, master, win. I was a successful tennis player, helping my college team reach the NCAA DIII tournament and a top 20 national ranking. I attained Ph.D in sociology at a nationally recognized program, co-authoring a peer-reviewed journal article from my dissertation. I worked at a research and consulting firm, flying around the country helping governments document discrimination in their contracting. It’s only looking back now that I can see how my objectives were so driven by an approach I first learned from him: suffer to achieve.

With my mom’s death, the inadequacy of this approach became readily clear. I tried to suffer my way through the grief quietly, returning to teach a class the day after she died. I continued to suffer quietly, only twisting my mind deeper into the grips of OCD to cope. I was functioning, but living a life in search of a respite from the anxiety and fear. I couldn’t just suffer my way through this. I couldn’t just grind or hustle. I broke.

In this crucible of breaking, I started walking down my mom’s pathway of magic and fiber art. Some four years down this path, I stand in the position of power of having built my fiber practice on my mom’s foundation. I went to therapy and went on anti-anxiety medication to heal. I gave myself the space to heal and grow. From that healing space, I was gifted this fiber death work path where I can merge the worlds of fiber and magic, just like my mom. I found the spirituality of my ancestors, druidry, and sit with my mom and other ancestors in the Otherworld in my sacred grove each day. I chose connection over achieving.

Each day when I put on my black jeans, T-shirt, and hoody, I smile. I know I have chosen my mom’s path of magic, writing, and fiber. I have chosen wisdom and not achievement. I have chosen healing and not breaking. I have chosen the connection of magic over the dissection or reason.