Boys & Bacon

When you think of "Emotional Trauma" what do you imagine? Someone who has lost a close friend or family member? A victim of poor circumstances? Abuse?  I want to delve into crochet and similar art forms to understand how they help people cope and recover from events or occurrences that have caused seemingly irreparable emotional or physical damage. Recover and coping are often thought to come from a counselor and a prescription bottle. But it can also come from the creation of new things, and the pride in that creation.  For me, "Emotional Trauma" says "Patchwork of abuse and self-hatred". It also says "Ignored" and "Distrusted" and even "Pathological Liar". It screams "Denial".  My emotional trauma, like with so many others, begins in my childhood. Memories I'd suppressed for years came bubbling to the surface when I was in my late teens. Memories I'd been called a liar over, memories ...

I write. Professionally I write blog posts, and product descriptions, and website content. I get paid for it. But I struggle to create original content for my own blog. Sometimes, it's a time management thing, sometimes it's that I'm expelling my creativity in other avenues. But most of the time it's anxiety. Not over anything in particular, just general-creativity crushing- motivation zapping anxiety. And people don't generally talk  about mental illness . But when you suffer from it, and those around you suffer because of your illness, and your work suffers from your illness, it's hard to keep quiet. Sometimes, you begin to feel like Anxiety is what defines you. The way that people say someone IS diabetic, rather than they have diabetes. Other times, you feel like you're forgotten in a world that just keeps churning one without you. Like you can't get a grip on anything around you. You're floating away, sinking out of sight, and no one s...