Season 2 Reintroduction & Trash Mittens

In this episode, I talk about how I'm handling my fear about the state of the world by reminding myself of all i've learned during the past two years about knitting with confidence and hope through times of fear. It's a kind of reintroduction. I also talk about how I am learning to read Selbu mitten charts by knitting a "trash" mitten. 

Music credit: Ketsa, "Day Trips"

Transcript

[upbeat intro music with bells and trills]

Holly 00:30
Hi! I hope you’re well. It’s Saturday morning. It’s very quiet. I thought I would jump on and say hi. It’s scary right now in the world and if you and your family are directly impacted my thoughts and prayers are with you. I’m just focusing on one day at a time and i am hoping you find some serenity. It’s also about to be the two year anniversary of this post. I started this podcast in March 2020 and at that point of time everything felt really really hopeless. I thought maybe I should talk about a reintroduction because so much has changed. There is some scary news that threatens changes that would impact families like mine and it has me thinking of fear.

Holly 02:15

I thought I’d talk about–and remind myself–about what’s possible when you focus on taking care of yourself and not focusing on the overwhelming fear that can take over So I think I’ll talk about that today. And of course it’s always about knitting here so I can also talk about what I’m making and small wins that I've had during this really stressful time.

Holly 02:40

The small wins are mittens. I’ll start with knitting. Knitting is fun and easy. I’ve made some dk weight nordic mittens. I’m taking this online class. Online classes remain a gift for me. I had made a plan to take an in-person class. And it involved travel. And it was a knitting friend. It was going to be so great. I was going to be one of those people who gets to go to a knitting event. But I forgot that my family and my circumstances are different. And all my childcare options evaporated. It was very clear that I couldn’t travel. It has me thinking about who I am and how I move through the world and how I tell other people this information. So I thought I’d practice here. When I started this podcast, I had just separated from my partner of 12 years. We have two kids together and he has addiction issues, specifically with alcohol. Things were bad. Things were really ,really bad right before covid.

Holly 04:20

 That start of 2020 was bleak. He had come home from rehab and we were trying to make it work but it was very clear that he was not sober and that it was getting worse and it seemed that the only option I had was to keep my family safe was to separate from him and for him to leave our house. And that was incredibly stressful and scary. It was scary to think through what it might mean I couldn't picture what was coming and what my life would look like. And ironically that’s what’s really emphasized to me in what happened. I think I met with my divorce attorney about a week before the shutdowns started and I remember that he didn’t want to shake my hand and I remember thinking , “Well, that’s excessive.” and then a week later (laughter) it wasn’t excessive. It was completely appropriate. No touching back in those early days. 

Holly 05:29

So the shutdown happened and suddenly I was a single mom with two kids with a partner who was spiraling out of the house and out of contact. And I didn't know how I was going to survive. I just didn’t. I couldn’t connect with al-anon. I was trying to keep my job going. I was so worried about the financial implications. I work in a sector–I teach in higher ed–and the financial implications are so overwhelming. It was so scary. How was I going to keep this house in this very expensive place where we lived and how was I going to make sure my kids were okay who were understandably traumatized by what was happening to our family and what was happening in the world. So one day at a time got me through that moment. (laughter). I’m laughing because I’m uncomfortable. It wasn’t funny. But I don’t know how to talk about it and I still kind of don’t.

Holly 06:37

One thing that was striking to me as I look back on that year. The covid restrictions were pretty heavy where I live–the kids were doing virtual school and I was doing virtual school and the restaurants closed and it gave us a kind of cocoon and that gave us shelter to heal. And it’s making me think of all the families who have to shelter in place or who can’t shelter in place. Our home finally felt safe and that allowed us to heal over time. And find serenity And what I couldn’t imagine in that moment is where I am now. Which is that things are not terrible with my partner. I really thought that we wouldn't be able to have him in our life. I thought we had lost him to addiction. It was that bad. It was really scary. And it wasn’t overnight and it’s a journey but just for today we’re okay. He is in our life. He is doing so much better. And I don’t obsess over his health. I let him take care of him. And I take care of myself and the kids and that has made a world of difference. And that has opened up so many mind shifts and allowed me to focus on things in my life that I hadn’t been and I needed to. Both the mundane, like taking care of the house. (Laughter) We just had squirrels in our attic. And two years ago I wouldn’t have known how to deal with that. But I do now. (Laughter.) 

Holly 08:40

Some of it was also just the work of parenting, especially when you have someone in your life who is unpredictable and who has a pretty serious disease that makes it hard to pay attention and participate fully in the lives of others. That’s just the reality of my life. So I made this knitting friend and we were going to take this class together but I had to explain my situation. Which is that I want to do this and it’s important to me but I’m the primary parent for these two amazing kiddos and I don’t have a lot of support and my life changes pretty quickly and I have to adapt to it and that’s my life right now. So when the childcare fell through and when it became clear that my partner was having a hard week and needed to focus on taking care of himself and couldn’t really be a parent I just had to say no. My backup child care plan failed and my second one failed but I also just had to accept it. I was so mad and sad. But i was also so grateful that I am in a place where I could take care of my kiddos. And I know that so many of us right now are dealing with some really big stuff and it’s really hard to accept it and it’s hard to take care of ourselves and our loved ones in these moments. 

Holly 10:11

I was able to take care of myself even though I was sad. I took care of my work and the kids, I took care of the house… and I treated myself to an online knitting class. (laughter) And it was on nordic knitting. It was super fun. I feel like I finally had a breakthrough on selbu mittens. I talked about the mittens I made last year. It totally flummoxed me. I think I knit the thumb six times. Of course it was fingering weight yarn, it was super complicated (sigh) and I just signed up for a goofy online class on a whim. It was run by a teacher who is way younger than I am. I’m gen x, I’m in my forties. (laughter)  I’ve been knitting forever. And this was a gen z approach. And the teacher just kept telling us that the mittens were going to be trash. That the first mittens you knit are going to be trash. Embrace the trash mittens. This opened everything up. I have my trash mittens. I can knit the thumbs! I’ve figured out how to read the thumb chart in selbu mitten patterns. If you haven’t seen them, they’re these amazing patterns that are basically just a chart with minimal directions. You pick up and knit the thumb and you have to read the thumb chart in a particular way because at one point you’re kind of knitting upside down. And so all the knowledge I had about how to read a chart wasn’t working. And it’s very easy once you have someone explain it to you. Especially if that person is a delightful gen Z teacher (laughter) it was fun and easy. There was this minor miracle in my week of disappointment.

Holly 12:45

I don’t mean to be disrespectful in applying this to what is happening in the world. That is not appropriate. Things are so big, so very scary and real. But it reminds me of the miracle of recovery and that is appropriate. If I could time travel back to 2020–and this podcast is a record of it–I could listen to those early podcasts and for me that scared person who was talking to you all in 2020 and creating a record of how I navigated those early challenges of becoming a single mom of grieving my marriage and loving someone who was very very ill and not clear if he was going to make it and surrendering to the unknowns of that year both in my personal life, my professional life and in the world. I feel stronger now I feel healthier. The gift of recovery I can–in even in these moments this week when it feels like there’s no way out, where it’s only going to get worse, and there are these voices in my head telling me that things are going to get worse for my family in terms of laws and for the world things are looking so scary and I just remind myself one day at a time and that the universe has answers that I can’t conceive of and that I just have to find the courage to change what I can. 

Holly 14:30

This is a brief reintroduction. And I want to thank you. This podcast has been a record of a tremendous moment in my life and I have knitted my way through it. Laughter. I have made some ugly, weird things, my friends. Laughter. Like my trash mittens. Laughter. And they have given me a lot of joy. With that I’m going to end. I’ll keep it short. 

Holly 15:05
Thank you. Hopefully I’ll be back soon with some updates. Take care. Bye!

[Music outro: same upbeat song with extra bells and trills.  Music credit: Ketsa, "Day trips"}