It started with a project. One singular desire, pulled from the ether, coaxing me back to my sewing room, back to my machine.
It had been ten months since I'd last stepped foot into this room, with it's stifled, summer heat and ceilings so low I often bumped my head against them in passing. It had been ten months since I'd felt anything akin to desire for creation calling to me at the top of those stairs. But slowly, over several weeks, the desire did return. The call grew louder and louder until it sat thrumming in my chest. A steady thump, thump, thump in tune to my heart, a tiny wondering whispering to me in the spare moments throughout my day, asking if it might be alright, just this once, to sew something for myself and myself alone. Maybe? Possibly? Please?
I'd never had any intention of turning my back on sewing. It wasn't a thought I suddenly woke up to one day, the decision having landed in my gut solid as stone. It crept up on me, slowly, then all at once.
Sewing had been the primary craft that had remained steadfast, stitched to my skin, for nearly twenty years. I'd turned to it as one might turn to hope or faith or a trusted friend. Sewing grounded me. It brought me back to myself when I got lost in the tangle of my own thoughts. It tested my patience and my skill and demanded my focus, sharp and whole, each and every time I threaded my machine. And in return, it bestowed many gifts upon me. The gift of knowledge in this dying art. The gift of expansion in my skill set and my ability to problem solve. The gift of expanding my creativity in ways I hadn't thought possible.
They say too much of a good thing can prove detrimental, and perhaps that was the case with regards to my sewing practice. We'd had a good run, sewing and me, for the better part of twenty years. And don't all good things come to an end eventually? That's something I've heard before, too. Ten months ago, when I'd thought I'd closed the door on my sewing practice for good, I figured our time together had simply come to a natural end.We'd had so many good times, but things had started to turn sour, to curdle in my mouth, in the shape of my spine, in the pang of my hips, in the creep of my shoulders skywards.
Did you now that certain fig trees require that you prune them back in order for them to set fruit the following year? Not all figs. Only some.
I planted this fig tree many years ago as a baby bush, nothing more than a bundle of twigs jutting out from the earth with leaves that appeared too big in comparison, like gangly teens. In time, the fig grew, almost instantaneously. One day there were just those lost looking twigs, skinny and bare, and in a moment they had developed a strong core, some verifiable heft, and had risen high above the roof of our home.
For years our tree remained strong and sturdy, its last leaves falling long after others in the garden had succumbed to the first frosts of winter. It's long branches—no longer thin or spindly—hung heavy over the oath leading into the back garden. Every summer, we'd inevitably grow frustrated at having our path from front garden to back so rudely blocked, so out the loppers would come to trim back the obtrusive branches, only to reappear the following year. But other than the annual path clearing, we left our fig well alone to grow and expand, all the while, eagerly awaiting the appearance of a singular fig. It was bound to come any day now.
During those years of patiently waiting for the first flush of figs to arrive, I—much like those branches we abhorred—was weighed down by the very life I had been striving to build. I was running around with a never-ending list of tasks that I felt needed to be completed RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND OR ELSE THE WHOLE WORLD WOULD FALL APART. In what way, I had no true sense or idea. But the super-charged, electric feeling that permanently lived inside my chest said that it would be bad, all would be lost, and I'd somehow show everyone what a fool I'd been all along. But at the same time, I couldn't seem to let go. Let go of the steady status I'd been building; let go of the identity and the stories I'd attached to myself; let go of everything I'd ever truly known for two-thirds of my life. It was all too much, too big, too scary.
So the universe did the letting go for me.
Much like with sewing, it came on slowly and then all at once. It started with something small, like a bit of burnout that made it difficult to garner the energy I'd once had for the very things I'd loved. My voice and reason for doing things began to falter and a cloud descended where once there was clarity. Things began to feel so much harder and take so much longer than they ever had before. And when I didn't heed the warnings, chronic pain took root in various parts of my body which ultimately resulted in surgery and physical therapy and an on-going route back to wellness that often feels shaky. Shortly after, a depression fell heavy on my shoulders and wrapped me in its warm embrace of lies, coloring the world with shades of grey. It was something I hadn't experienced since my time spent living in New York. The worst year and a half of my life, by far. And that feeling I'd had then was there, pushing past me without so much as a knock, settling in on the couch and asking for a spot of tea.
So, I began to let things go. One by one. Relationships that no longer served me or actively hurt me. Overstuffed schedules that only led me towards feelings of resentment and anxiety and overwhelm. My old sense of self that I'd carried with me since my pre-teen years, including sewing, including the labels that sewing had provided me, including the business I'd built solely around that singular identity. In the past ten months alone I've let go of nearly eighty percent of the items I'd once coveted for my sewing room. I've said goodbye to machines and scissors and fabrics and handmade items I'd poured my entire heart in to.
And through it all, I was scared. Absolutely terrified. What if I'd cut too much out? What if I'd let go of the wrong things or the wrong people? What if I was getting life wrong somehow?
This fear has lived side by side with me throughout the years. Sometimes I feel secure in the knowledge that I did what was right for me at the time in which I did it. Other times I wonder if things might have been different, if this was simply a form of self-sabotage, if maybe I hadn't tried hard enough and that was really the issue. Not that I should have let go of the things weighing me down, but I should have tried harder to carry them all, and maybe even add something new to the pile, just to test how strong and capable I truly was.
This fear has been a constant companion for me, like a shadow trailing in my wake, everywhere I go.
Until this year.
I've no idea what the exact species of fig is that I grow, but this year I learned that it is one of the species that thrives when all of its branches are cut down in the fall and allowed to regrow in the spring.
When we set out to prune our fig, it wasn't because we wanted to test that theory. It was simply because it had grown too large and all the figs that it had grown seemed to be located near the top of the tree. I figured it was because of the amount of sunlight up there. If anything, I honestly assumed that our pruning of the pathway branches had led the lower half of the fig to stop producing fruits altogether. But after climbing the tree to harvest the figs of 2025—and subsequently shearing an entire branch from the main trunk under my weight—I thought something ought to be done to bring the figs closer to us. Even if that meant no harvest in 2026. It wouldn't be fun, but we'd gone so many years without figs, I didn't think much of an additional year or two.
So we set out to prune the tree, and my gosh, was that a scary task as well. All the same questions began to arise for Arlen and myself: What if we cut too many branches? Is this the right branch to cut, or should I cut this one over here instead? What if we cut the tree wrong and it somehow dies?
As of August 1st, 2026, we have harvest over eleven pounds of figs. Eleven beautiful, glistening, plump, sweet-as-can-be pounds. More than we've ever seen on this tree at one given time before. More than we rightfully know what to do with. More for us to share with the people that we love so that all can delight in the magic that is a freshly picked fig.
So my question to you, dear shining soul, is this: What are the parts of yourself that you are desperately holding on to for fear that shedding them would cause you to unravel your built sense of self? What parts are you struggling beneath the weight of because it is all you've ever known? What would happen if, like the fig, you allowed yourself to let them go, to remove them from your being? What fruits might you bear in their absence, and how sweet might they taste once they've arrived?
This is not to say the journey of dismantling an identity is ever easy, nor is it to say that what you choose to shed today won't find a way back to you tomorrow. Some things return when the timing is right while others are lost forever, and that is bittersweet to acknowledge. But if you are honest with yourself and brave enough to take a leap into the unknown, well then, you might just arrive at the other side of it all lighter and freer and with the taste of sweet figs coating your tongue.
Keep shining bright, like the beautiful fragment of the universe that you are.
