Skinned Knees

March is National Craft Month and seeing as the beginning of it coincides with Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I wanted to expand a little bit on something that has been incredibly healing for me and a big focus of my recovery.

Now I know some of you don’t consider yourself to be crafty or creative – that’s cool. I don’t necessarily think you have to be an “artist” to create something neat or learn a new skill. I’d also like to point out that creativity comes out in so many different forms and they all apply more or less as a potential healing process.

Crafting can be a tangible example of creating with your hands. It’s a visceral extension of your body and self as an art form. You are literally putting a piece of yourself out into the world, giving it existence. This is a beautiful thing. For people struggling with hating their bodies or themselves, this can be a way to love something about yourself, something you made, that extension of yourself.

For so many people, including myself, creating something is a catharsis. It can also be incredibly relaxing as well, especially if your craft process is based on methodical movement (like knitting, crocheting, hand-sewing, painting, etc). This type of relaxation is useful in taking you out of your head for a bit, in allowing your mind to concentrate on something repetitive or consistent. In essence, crafting provides your mind and thoughts with room to breathe.

Going back to crafting being an extension of the self, a powerful connection is formed when you create something for someone else, with them in mind. One of my favorite things to do is to make something for friends – be it knit a phone cozy for someone, make a bow-tie for a genderqueer friend (or just a stylish one!), or sew up some random little stuffed animal/object/zombie. The gift recipient will have that piece of you, that little piece of love that you created with your own hands. So profound!

Speaking of making things for friends, crafting opens up an opportunity to share and exchange art, craft, love, and goodness with friends or even strangers. It’s a networking opportunity that allows for tangibility and growth. Imagine being able to show someone else what you know how to make or being able to inspire someone to make something because of what you created. It lends another purpose and importance to what you’re doing and how you spend your time.

Crafts, and other forms of art, are great for healing because there are so many ways to create something. You can make something small that takes an hour or you can make a commitment to create something that takes you weeks. A new project can give you a reason to plan ahead or to manage your time to allow for the time you need to make it. Small time commitments are great when your mental health is not doing so well. It won’t take a lot of energy to make something small or not too involved, which is a blessing when you don’t have a lot of energy to give. Planning a project or being in the process of one can also be a small commitment (or a big one!) to keep going and to keep trying.

And really, that’s what recovery is all about.

All of the images in this post are crafts made by me. You can click on each one to go to it’s Flickr page for more info, including sometimes links to tutorials I used to make them.  ♥

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