To mark National Embroidery Month this February, I've teamed up with two of my fellow embroidery babes 𧔠(Jess of Threadbabe and Rebecca of Stitch Ambition) to create Pockets of Peace â a month long Instagram challenge with a prompt for each week to bring us all together and share what brings us creative calm...
The Prompts
Week one: Identify what stresses you out and share this with your community.
Week two: Share what you do to feel calm when youâre feeling anxious or fearful.
Week three: Whatâs your personal mantra? Do you have a saying that you live your life by?
Week four: Share your happiness! What makes you feel your happiest?
Itâs taken me a long time to figure out what really brings me my own moments of calm. I used to live in a world of panic attacks and trauma, and thought the answer was in finding what brought me out of that chaos when I was in the heart of it. That was, until my lovely therapist at the time explained the concept of the stress bucket. As the water, or stress and anxiety, fills up your stress bucket, there are holes in the bottom of it that allow the stress to seep through, emptying it from the bottom. These holes represent things like engaging in your hobbies đ§¶, spending time with people you love đ©ââ€ïžâđ©, getting out into nature đż, talking openly with people you trust đŹ etc.
Creativity has always been such a huge outlet and a vehicle of meditation for me, fibre arts especially! Embroidery, knitting and weaving can put me in a trance like nothing else can. In the exact same way that you can be reading a book and get lost in the pages, not realising how many you're turning over, as you watch the story unfold in your head, no longer seeing the words in front of you.
So this month, we invite you to consciously identify the things that empty your own stress buckets, join in the conversation and share your Pockets of Peace đ«
