Beautiful friends and sewing enthusiasts,

the instruction booklet for my really old egg-blue Brother sewing machine, bought secondhand in Edinburgh 20 + yrs ago

My dear stepmum died peacefully at home yesterday evening, with my dad and her family all around. She was young, 65, and had been diagnosed 3 years ago with blahblahpharmaceuticalsacrilegeofthehumanintegralmindspirit...I'd been advising and helping her navigate Gerson therapy, but her heart wasn't in it, and she never really got into it enthusiastically enough to have a sufficient impact on her declining health.

the sweetest small book on over-loved old childrens' toys and their life stories - amazing and moving book!

Her illness, and my family far away in Scotland, have been on my mind as I gestate a child also, and have lost another close friend (ex-partner), suddenly, recently. Too many emotional and psychological adjustments trying to happen, whilst my already very-igh-sensory-sensitivity has been super-heightened by pregnancy... The past 2 weeks have been completely overwhelming, and I went into a spiral where it felt like I couldn't see anything positive coming from it, and concluded that I am most likely mis-carrying... This all eased hugely since the actual passing of Margaret yesterday, and the consequent realisation that I'd been deeply bracing myself for her going, and deeply stressed within my body--mind-spirit, around losing her and being estranged from the family.

a gem of a buy from the used shop recently!

All this has led to a lot of catharsis and letting go... And as she was leaving, a lot of confrontation with my perception of mortality and my commitment to my own life dreams. The latter feel freed up significantly right now, and one of the big dreams I've felt I couldn't embark on, is a 'Masters Degree' in sewing: I don't want to study outside of my own practise, but to intensively revisit, research and study MY OWN mastery of materials, tools, skills, fabric, tailoring, etc.

As I received the bad news yesterday evening, I sat with my big red notebook and listed a very rough structure of the kind of Masters Degree that I would choose to do, if one were available: Basics, Classics, Materials, Big Projects - and all the branches, from book-making to basket weaving to embroidery, macramè, quilting... my list keeps getting longer!

a great charity shop buy from years ago too, which I have still not used - knitting is an area I've struggled to get back into: looking forward to changing this, and maybe setting up a weekly sewing meeting for women here in Guardia Sanframondi!

The basics I started already this morning: looking at books I already have, and looking up online, stitches - turns out that though I never studied any stitches, and only learned a basic running stitch and back-stitch via gran or mum, I nevertheless know and regularly use all of the basic stitches listed on the Martha Stewart website! Isn't that something to be proud of: there I was, assuming that I know only one stitch, back-stitch, because that's the main one I do, BUT I didn't think of any of the other stitches that I intuitively have just found my way to, because they are how the material is best held together in the specific places and moments that it is needed: i.e. whip stitch, ladder stitch, catch stitch.

a favourite staple of my sewing learning journey: got it cheap in a charity shop but know that these can sell for a good price on ebay, etc, now: I ADORE how these older books shine through the years - that we're appreciating the older values of skills like these!

I love that we learn from doing, and don't even need a teacher or coach if we have a strong passion for finding ways to make things work by using the deep, wholistic intuitive. Self mastery...

I actually am pretty well-skilled in multiple areas of hand-and-needleworks: book binding I've learned to a fairly professional standard - but I want to revisit it and make my own sketchbooks

Which brings me back to the catharsis and gifts of losing particularly a matriarchal figure in the family: though of course I feel the loss of my beautiful step-mum, and all our shared love and connectedness, I also feel the gifts of her taking with her a LOT of limiting conditioning/ patterns, around what we are capable of in our lifetime. I felt a great deal of processing of this profoundly-held limitation especially in the final week of her life - literally feeling strong phrases flow through my mind and body, of having given up, and having never pushed myself to grow, do what I love, or flourish autonomously in my career.... I felt the rigidity of my body too, especially my pelvis, which I had strong symptoms around this week - feeling like there was such huge pressure on my cervix and womb 'floor' from the inside, that my child must be wanting to exit early (I am at 6 months now): the deeper sense behind that being my feeling of not-being -strong-enough-to-gestate - of having a terribly weak pelvic floor and not having the power to even physically hold a pregnancy.

this book is very dry and technical - I'll approach it very tenatively and see if I can glean something from it without it suppressing my sewing passion!

My step mum never acknowledged my pregnancy, though I told her and my family a few weeks ago - the very last time we have the opportunity to speak, she was asking my advice around how to do enemas and balance them with the organic juice shots (as per Gerson therapy), and the subject of my gestation was just absent from the discourse. I felt a significant denial from her about many aspects of the power of the feminine which I embody; a strong need to look the other way when I was expressing my strength of thinking for myself, feeling emotional, or being autonomous in any way around health and female vitality: this was HER stuff, but I felt it as my own, and this feeling of that limitation of disassociation became very tangible in the past few days in particular - it felt like my own 'stuff' and yet the whole neurosis seems to have shed like an old skin, as Margaret left....

my dearest friend's beautiful book on recycling fashion - such an ongoing inspiration to me

I wake up feeling motivated and a wide, spacious panoramic view in front of me. My womb has settled and I know I am capable on every level; that all is well, and that I am an inalienable part of that whole being well, of the wellness of it all.

I recognise that I have let go of a lot these past months, years, decades, and that these blessed and precious moments and days are saturated with the merit-and-skills-gained from all my making do and mending, my quiet adventures and intensely-focussed experimentation, my visioning and willingness to make mistakes. This all makes me who I am and makes me very very happy and fulfilled in my life: I can move forward following the death of my step-mum and allowing all that she was to both be a gift to me where appropriate WHILST ALSO falling away where necessary. I am embarking on this Masters/ Mastery as a dedication to Margaret and her beautiful Gift of domestic alchemy, care and mothering that she gave to my dad and us, all the decades. I can build a significant 'legacy' by finding profound meaning in her life and death, and my relationship with her - rather than simply having the baggage of unconscious influence keeping me in negative patterning: very metaphorical for learning how to expertly make my own clothing, etc.

💝

Love to you all, and to all that inspires you in your sewing, and I look forward to sharing lots about my enormous #bucketlist of #sewingmastery with you all, as I advance!

www.claregaiasophia.com