quilt the feeling
a guide on how to move through your emotions
“Be with the emotion, offer it space so it can be metabolized, processed, moved through,” the co-facilitator of the yoga therapy group I hosted last week said, as she led the group through their next sun salutation. That’s it! I thought. This succinct sentence so beautifully put into words what I have been doing with my own emotions - and encouraging with my clients. To be fair to myself, I had most of it captured already - the emotions part, the sitting part, the metabolizing part - but moved through - that’s the phrase I’ve been missing.
In the yoga therapy group, we focus on a different emotion each week, learn about it, explore with each other how it shows up for us, feel it in our bodies, and then - we move through it. In this scenario, we physically move through it with yoga, but there are so many ways you can move through an emotion.
Personally, I find myself moving through my own emotions with clay or textiles, hiking or yoga. Lately it’s been quilting. The medium feels extra sentimental for a particularly emotional time in my life - choosing fabrics with meaning and stitching them together.
Every evening this past week I curled up in my studio as the sun set over the mountains and stitched together what I’m calling my healing sunset quilt. Layers of fabric, each with different meaning - a pink pillowcase my great grandma May would rest her head on when she visited Arizona, a yellow linen napkin my kin would use when they gathered around the table, a sandy brown dress thrifted in Joshua Tree, a sherbert orange cloth found in my tiny Arizona town - stitch, stitch, stitch, while my pup gently snores on the bed next to me.
The thing I’m noticing is - I don’t particularly like the quilt I’m making. The colors aren’t what I’d normally gravitate towards and the stitches are wildly nonlinear - even for me, who leans into imperfection in my art. But something is telling me to keep going, keep moving through it, and so I do. A radical trust in the process, a letting go of the outcome, a faith that the healing lies not in the final product but in the act of creation.
So, as I’m wont to do, I encourage you to find an awareness in your emotions (I like to share this emotions wheel, if you’re having trouble with naming them - as we all do sometimes!) and then, find a way to physically move through it. Be it running or yoga, quilting or pottery, writing or acting or dancing or embroidery or tattooing or weightlifting or cooking - find what connects with you and your body. Allow space and give yourself grace. Most people spend their lives trying to avoid painful emotions, it takes strength to feel through it - I’m proud of you.
And remember, just like my wonky healing sunset quilt, the process is not meant to be perfect.
PS - you can order a piece of my healing quilts - a tote! with a mini quilt pocket big enough for a book! - to have and to hold and to carry with you right here :)
⋰ book a creative coaching session with me
⋰ order a quilt tote of your own!
⋰ my website
⋰ instagram
⋰ grace@gracecady.com