When Your Yarn is Tangled (And By Yarn I Mean Life)

I have incredibly crafty sisters.

It’s not quite as Machiavellian as it sounds, although they very well may be knitting in code. My sisters make things. They embroider, bake, crochet, knit, and decorate.

I decided to join their ranks and learned to crochet, with the ambition of making blankets as gifts.

Creating something by hand can be relaxing and rewarding—or just downright frustrating. It requires patience to slow down, discover the snag or mistake, and keep going.

There have been times when I’ve had to unravel an entire project and start over, and hours spent trying to untangle the yarn in my craft bag.

Once, when I realized my stitches were wrong, I had to unravel twenty-eight rows of a blanket while the woman next to me on the plane watched in horror.

“Why are you doing that?!”

Sometimes I have to set it aside and come back to it. Sometimes I want to chuck the whole thing across the room. Sometimes I need help.

My latest project is a blanket for my daughter.

I feel fairly capable now, and the process is more enjoyable than exasperating. There are far fewer knots and snags.

I was so close to finishing this blanket—on the second-to-last color change—when the ball of yarn I was using turned into a tangled mess.

I had to slow down and painstakingly pick it apart. But as I sat there, I found myself grateful for the mess.

Here I was, chugging along with a vision of a beautiful outcome, only to be pulled up short by a complete tangle—and the parallel to life jumped out at me.

We all have a vision in our heads of the beautiful relationship, marriage, family, or life we hope to create.

It starts shaping up beautifully, and then—bam—we lose a loved one, and our life’s work feels like a disaster.

There are too many snags to unknot. The pattern we wanted to achieve seems ruined. Sometimes we are at a complete standstill—unable to keep going, unable to see the potential, unable to imagine how anything beautiful could come from the wreckage in our hands.

If you, too, have lost someone you love…

If the pattern of your life has been disrupted…

If it feels as though someone walked by and threw a gallon of paint on your canvas, smashed the clay you were sculpting, or took scissors to your tapestry—

First, I want to say: I am so sorry.

I know how this feels, and it is devastating.

There is no handbook for how to keep going.

But you do not have to clean up the mess by yourself.

You do not have to stay silent because everyone else is tired of hearing your story.

You do not have to untangle the yarn alone.

✨ I would be honored to help pick apart the knots—laughing and crying with you as we go.