A Seasonal Knitter's Repair
I like to knit. I'm what I call a seasonal knitter. From Labor Day to Memorial Day, fibers of various color, weight, and texture feed through my fingers, taking shape on my needles, stitch by stitch, into one-of-a-kind garments.
This year, I'm knitting a sweater that caught my eye last November, in London, at a gathering of the world's foremost management thinkers and leaders.
Before the first stitch was even cast on, this garment already held something reparative.
Being invited into that room — for my work in somatic awareness and nervous system regulation — repaired a gap in my heart that had been open for fifty years.
That gap formed in the public school system. I was "smart" at home and at Sunday school. Why wasn't I smart enough at school? Year after year, self-doubt frayed my confidence until it wore through completely. Public school wasn't a fit for me, and I wasn't a fit for it. I spent decades afterward unlearning what I call my invisible "Masters in Self-Doubt." Last November, in that room in London, I finally got to knit a new story.
Stitches We Inherit
We knit our lives out of stories. Some are true. Some we made up to survive something. And some have been worked into the pattern so long we can no longer tell which stitches are which.
Certain patterns serve us for a while — they're coping mechanisms, and coping mechanisms keep us safe for a season. But a pattern that gets us this far isn't necessarily built to get us the rest of the way. Caring too much about what other people think, for instance, can hold together for years — until the day it doesn't, and you feel yourself stretched thin, stitches straining, ready to give.
The Sweater You've Outgrown
That old, well-worn sweater doesn't protect you the way it used to. The sweater didn't change. You did.
Your body knows this before your mind catches up. The tightness, the ache, the sense of having shrunk into something too small — that's the body calling for a different pattern. Until mind and body agree on that, there's rupture: one part of you is still wearing the old sweater, the other already outgrowing it.
Notice, Name, Knit Again
Wholeness takes shape in three moves:
Notice what the body is already saying — the tightness, the ache, the pull — before the mind has language for it.
Name it. Give the sensation, and the story underneath it, actual words. An unnamed pattern keeps repeating itself.
Knit again. Bind off the stitches that no longer serve you, and cast on new ones — rows worked in a sturdier, more regulated story, one that won't unravel the way the old one did.
I'm still working on that London sweater, row by row, this season. And every time I pick it up, I'm reminded: the garment isn't just yarn taking shape. It's proof that a story, however old and frayed, can be reknit.
An Invitation
If any part of this — the frayed confidence, the sweater that no longer fits, the sense of thinking differently than the room you're in — sounds like your own pattern, I'd love for you to join me.
This September, I'm opening Creative Genius Lab, a small six-month cohort for visual and kinesthetic thinkers, makers, and creatives who've spent years being quietly brilliant in spite of systems that couldn't see how they work. It's twelve seats, meeting monthly, starting September 16.
We'll do exactly what this post is about: notice what the body already knows, name what's true, and knit something new — together, one row at a time.
You can read more and claim a seat here: somaticallyaware.com/creative-genius-lab
