Finding Peace in Making
This week, while trying to pick up basket weaving again, it hit me how deeply I connect with creating and crafting. I came across two people on social media who put into words how I feel when I make something with my hands or write. It quiets the monkey mind, grounds me, and brings a simple kind of happiness. It’s a happiness where I don’t have to perform. I can just show up and be me. And if I make a mistake, it’s okay, I can just try again and do better each time.
Thank you @Samlee3333 and @ngumpie_weaving for your words and presence.
Sam Lee said it beautifully:
“The gift of art is that we get to get out of our head and be in our bodies and use our hands, and, you know, make things that allow us to process and heal… to just exist, and be in that flow state — where we just are.”
It’s about showing up as we are….sad, happy, peaceful, or somewhere in between.
The Sacred Nature of Weaving
Weaving reminds me of the interwoven nature of life itself. All the threads come together, each holding space for the other. It mirrors our relationships, stories, and the connections we share with those walking beside us or those who came before us.
Though I’m still a beginner at basket weaving, every time I practice, I feel a quiet remembering….a connection to my ancestors, to the hands that wove before mine, and to the wisdom they carried. It’s a gentle tether back to earth, to the motherland that gave us the materials, rhythm, and the sacred act of creating with care.
Weaving becomes more than a craft; it becomes communion, a reminder that nothing in life stands alone. We are all woven into something greater.
My Lola and the Banig
The thing I love most about weaving is how it connects me to my Lola’s beautiful smile and to her. She makes Banigs, which are traditional woven mats. I remember one visit to the Philippines when she patiently tried to teach me. Despite a huge language barrier, she never got flustered. She just smiled that big, beautiful smile…. the kind where her eyes smile too, sparkling with a twinkle (my mum has the same smile). Lola gently showed me the steps again and again. It was me who eventually gave up, frustrated, while she just kept smiling.
Resourcefulness Rooted in Ancestry
I also love how weaving makes use of available resources. That resourcefulness feels deeply rooted in me, something I inherited from my ancestors. It’s why I taught myself to weave with pine needles, because we have five large pine trees on our rural property in Australia and many more lining our street. It just felt right, like something coming full circle.
Weaving: An Ancient and Universal Craft
Weaving is one of humanity’s oldest crafts, dating back over 10,000 years. While most ancient woven items haven’t survived, their legacy remains in pottery impressions and stories passed down through generations. It has been a way to connect to land, lineage, and spirit.
More than a creative outlet, weaving is being rediscovered around the world as a therapeutic practice, offering mindfulness, grounding, and connection in an increasingly fast-paced world.
What’s amazing is that basketry developed independently across every continent, using local natural materials. And as people seek to live more intentionally and harmoniously with the earth, weaving’s resourcefulness and beauty offer an inspiring path forward.
Finding Movement and Flow: A Personal Reflection
I remember a time when I was knee-deep in raising a baby and toddler, and my body quietly yearned for movement. I didn’t always have the capacity to get to fitness or yoga classes, so my mother-in-law gently suggested trying home exercise videos while the kids watched or played around me and sometimes they copied me.
That was when I stumbled upon Qigong. Soft, flowing movements that opened something ancient within me. Learning about the body’s meridians stayed with me.
Hands, Heart, and Healing
When I sat down to write this, I was drawn again to the knowledge of the meridians in our body and the subtle, sacred connection between hand and heart. How making with our hands tends to our inner world as much as the outer.
In traditional Chinese medicine, the hands are seen as extensions of the heart. Not just anatomically, but energetically. The heart meridian flows from the chest down through the arms and into the hands, carrying the essence of spirit, emotion, and presence.
I remember when my husband and I got married, our celebrant spoke about the ancient belief that a vein runs from the wedding ring finger straight to the heart, symbolising eternal love.
This leads me to believe that when we work with our hands, we aren’t just creating, we are communing. Each movement becomes a quiet offering; each gesture a way to connect, stir and soothe the heart’s energy.
Creating as Heart Medicine
Creating with our hands isn’t just physical, it’s heart medicine. When we cook, weave, thread, draw, paint, write, play music, or offer healing touch, we’re not just making. We are remembering.
Remembering something ancient and deeply human: that the heart longs to express, to connect, to breathe life into.
Writing, Speaking, and Finding My Voice
This week, I reflected on why writing often feels easier than speaking for me. When I try to express myself out loud, I sometimes stumble. I know part of that is needing to build confidence in public speaking, but there’s more to it.
Writing and creating feel more tangible and truer to how I process the world.
In a podcast I listened to this week, Nuri Muhammad mentioned how:
“Speaking gives you a degree of accuracy, but writing makes you even more exact.”
That deeply resonated. Writing gives me the time and space to shape my thoughts and feelings in a way that makes sense to me.
It’s not about perfection; it’s about being accurate to who I am and how I express myself.
When I speak, I’ve often felt misunderstood, opening the door to self-doubt. But when I write and create, I don’t feel that same fear of judgment or misinterpretation.
For me, there is freedom in it and a quiet confidence.
A Lineage of Hands and Hearts
Through the simple acts of weaving, writing, and creating, I feel anchored in the now — while reaching across time into a lineage of hands and hearts before me and those yet to come.
When we shape something with our hands, we’re not just making; we’re connecting to something spiritual and deeply heart-centered.
Maybe it’s not about finding the right words or the perfect weave.
Maybe it’s about letting our hands guide us back to the heart.
Because in the quite act of creating, whether through thread or thought. We remember who we are and who we come from and maybe that’s enough.
I want to take this moment to give glory to God, always. Thank You for allowing me to be a conduit for these words, these reflections, this offering. May it reach whoever needs it, and may it serve something greater than me.
Home to Heart 
Leave a comment