It's Okay To Cut the Fabric

...and other thoughts on unlearning scarcity.

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When I started sewing, I always feared I’d cut the fabric the wrong way or sew the wrong stitch. A few wrong-sides-together stitches and a few badly cut patterns later, I’ve learned I can fuck it all up and the world doesn’t come crashing down.

I scour Etsy to find different vintage fabrics, hoping I’ll find just enough to make a cute top or a matching set for spring. Recently, I came across some fabric printed with spices, jars of pickled vegetables, herbs, and lemons. It felt like the ode to spring I needed.

I waited weeks before I cut into it. I would go into my guest bedroom/sewing room hybrid, lay the fabric out on the bed, and imagine all the ways I could turn it into a top or use it as part of a quilt. Each time, folded it back up and laid it back onto the shelf, and awaited a day I felt like I could take the chance.

Failing is my new favorite way to learn. I think we’re taught to hate failure because we’re taught if we fail, we may not be given another chance, we may lose our community, or failure somehow corrodes our worth.

I grew up with a narrative that as soon as something good comes my way, I will lose it. I was not only taught this narrative, I lived it. When I was in the second grade, my mother told me and my father she was walking to the grocery store to get the week’s groceries – she didn’t come back for a year and a half. And when she did, there was no nourishment to be found.

When she came back, it wasn’t long after she left again. Instead, this time, she brought me with her. The moment I got used to having my full family again, she ripped it away from me and put me in a situation that left me unsafe, unnourished, and uncared for – an anger I hope one day learn to resolve.

I’ve failed more times than I can count. I’ve taken chances only to be welcomed with a deep shame that I will never get another chance or a fear that good things will not come my way again. I have failed to live in my values and, truthfully, long operated in a way where I didn’t even know what my values were. And even as I have cultivated those values, I have days where I fail at following through. But I return to the next day regardless.

I am terribly scared of death – of dying, the people I love dying. Every time my partner leaves, my brain comes up with every possible way he could die between picking up Target and coming back home. Every time I start to feel a pain in my chest, I imagine my heart stopping. If I don’t hear from my friends for a little too long, I ruminate on the grief that is soon to come. You’d think that with this fear, I would operate from a place where I live every day to the fullest. I’ve failed at that, too. Instead, I operate from a place of deep protection, a freeze response, that has left me in deep isolation. I am frozen in the fear that everything is fleeting. I am frozen in fear and do not cut the fabric.

My OCD tells me that everything will go wrong. My trauma history tells me that I will go without. But, a scarcity mindset does not serve me. So cutting into vintage fabric is exposure. It’s healing. It’s a way to tell my brain that, even if all goes wrong, I can survive it. It rewires my brain to believe that other good things will come my way.

I want to name that unlearning a scarcity mindset is a huge privilege and it’s been critical to my healing. Operating from a place of scarcity and fear only reinforces my obsessions and compulsions. It keeps me in that trauma response. The simple act of cutting into vintage fabric, cutting into something there is only so much of, is a somatic way of unlearning these things my body has understood as truth.

I finally cut into the vintage fabric a few weeks ago and almost everything that could go wrong with a top did. I cut the pattern too wide, sewed the hem crooked, and tried to fix the neckline by cutting a v-neck but cut it too deep. This top is now in my “fabric to cut up into quilt squares” pile.

This isn’t me saying that we have to find a silver lining to every bad thing that happens to us. This is me saying I have survived every failure I’ve come across yet. Every time I’ve gone without, I figured out a way to find the nourishment I needed, despite the anger that often follows. Every time I’ve been struck by the tornado of trauma, I’ve found shelter inside of myself. And every time I cut the fabric, I make room for something new.

I HAVE REALLY GOOD NEWS THAT I CANNOT SHARE YET BUT I NEED TO TELL YOU THAT A GOOD AND COOL THING IS COMING.

I planted flowers this weekend and even though I got a gnarly sunburn, nothing brings me more joy than flowers.

I get married in 11 days.

This NYT article about natural wine being self-care.

Cody gave me permission to not meditate. Maybe you need that permission too.

This post about slowness.

Reflecting on this essay about the writer as influencer.

Supporting SAGE.

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Love,

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