Creative Therapy

I began doing cross-stitch a number of years ago, when I lived in Russia. Long, cold, dark winter nights, small children and a limited budget meant many an evening was spent in front of a miniscule tv trying my best to follow the Russian tv shows. While watching, my spouse would regularly work on some type of needle-work project. I grew tired of sitting idly, so I asked her to teach me to cross-stitch. Besides being a way to pass the time, I wanted to take up an activity where I could express creativity and see the fruit of my labor. My various tasks at work provided little satisfaction in this area, as they involved pestering co-workers for reports that no one wanted to submit. I desperately needed an outlet where I had a definite goal and could clearly mark my progress towards it.

In retrospect, cross-stitch was a natural fit for my nature. At the time, those who knew I did it generally looked at me a little like they would a misfit child. I appreciate that my spouse supported me. She taught me the basics, then helped me when I’d get confused, or when I’d get a knot in my floss, or any number of other problems that I’d encounter. My early works were quite small. I eventually progressed to this somewhat larger, slightly more complex piece.

 

Completed somewhere around 2005

 My spouse bought me a kit that looked like an ancient world map. It took me a couple years to complete. I began working it in Tajikistan and finished it after returning to the United States. My daughter bought me this design, which took me over a year to complete. Both of those projects now hang in my parent’s house.

Creating beauty through cross-stitch has benefitted me beyond providing a way to keep myself occupied. As a recovering perfectionist, working cross-stitch designs has challenged me to let go of my intense desire for perfection in every detail. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a design without a single mistake. I won’t say it’s impossible, because maybe some other cross-stitchers can do it. But not me. I inevitably make mistakes. The more complex the project, the more mistakes I will make. I had to learn, and it took a lot of time to do so, that the mistakes don’t destroy the beauty of the pattern. In fact, the mistakes are what make my project unique. Otherwise my finished cross-stitch would look just like every other example of the pattern, since these are mass-produced and marketed. My mistakes take a generic product and make it personally my creative artwork, and that’s pretty fucking awesome. I will correct some mistakes, but many times they cannot easily be corrected without causing greater damage to the work as a whole. Sometimes I’ll leave them simply because they are part of my unique work.

March 2016

July 2016

October 2016

About the time I started my transition, I also began working on a new cross-stitch project, my most complex design to date. This project has become a very personal one for me, because of the specific design and because the process of seeing that design emerge from the canvas has paralleled my own journey seeing myself emerge. The blank canvas reflects the background of my life, out of which something amazing and beautiful is emerging. Are there flaws in this beauty? Yes, there are. Neither my cross-stitch project nor I am flawless. But our flaws are part of what makes us unique. I don’t have to be perfect, because I never have been and never will be. I still have to remind myself of this message regularly, because perfection has always been a piece of armor for me. On top of that, I came out of a religious background that told me simultaneously that I had to be perfect, but that I could never attain perfection, leaving me with a lifetime of frustration and self-disappointment.

January 2017

I’m not saying that I don’t strive to do my best in my life, just as I always strive to do my best work to realize the pattern in the cross-stitch. But I’ve made great progress in showing myself gentleness when I don’t succeed, when I don’t get the design just right or when something in my life doesn’t go just the way I wanted it to. Life is full of beauty, and part of that beauty lies in the unique imperfections of each person and situation.

March 2017

Just like my own journey, this project moves forward in fits and starts. Sometimes I make great progress. Then I have periods where I make very little. Sometimes this frustrates me, because I feel like I should be making steady progress all the time. But life’s not like that, whether we’re talking about a cross-stitch project or a major life transformation. As someone has said, life is a marathon, not a sprint. I have to remember that and allow myself the freedom to adjust to the rhythm of life, whatever it may be at the moment. I do look forward to completing this project. It’s going to take a while, since I’ve been at it over a year and a  half and still don’t even have it halfway completed. My own journey will never be fully complete. I want to always be growing, learning, emerging more into the woman I am, the woman I for so long didn’t recognize or accept, the one who is imperfect but beautiful nonetheless. 

June 2017