Magnetic Mary, who can be found on her blog as well as on Facebook and Instagram, says she’s, “just somebody who enjoys crochet, yarn and hooks” and adds, “crochet and amigurumi keep me grounded and happy”. She writes:
“I think I found Wink through Ravelry, while browsing for mandala patterns. That’s how I found her blog and got to see her fabulous work, that she so generously shared. I decided to contribute to MandalasForMarinke because her death struck a chord in me. Her life, also. I hope this way I can merge these chords together and turn all these feelings into something bigger and even more beautiful to help, inspire, relieve and give strength and hope to anybody affected by depression or mental illness. Love and light.”
I love the silver that adds sparkle to this beautiful, colorful crochet mandala. MagneticMary is a fabulous maker of amigurumi crochet dolls, and I was thrilled that she included one in her package. It’s a special gift for me for now but I have a feeling that there will come a day when the exact right person comes along who needs it to brighten their day and if that happens I’ll be passing it along!
Today I wanted to share with you a little bit about a book I just read by Joanna Connors called I Will Find You: A Reporter Investigates the Life of the Man Who Raped Her
In this book, she mentions various forms of depression and anxiety she dealt with over the years. She talks about how her first son was born less than two years after the rape and she was constantly terrified, describing a form of anxiety-ridden post partum depression.
In a chapter titled, Once In Awhile I Think of Things Too Bad To Talk About she writes, in part …
“I had a pattern. One day, for no reason I could ever discern, I would awake filled with foreboding. A gloom would slip over my spirits – just a shadow at first, easy to deny. Over the next few days, the shadow would grow deeper. I would carry on, acting as though all was well. But all was not well. …
When I admitted to myself that I was depressed, again, I would find a therapist, go for three or four sessions … In between therapy attempts, I pushed against the depression with restless activity.”
She goes on to describe the many ways she would keep herself overly busy, “until the next depression arrived, the next thee sessions with the next therapist, the next time I had to tell the story for someone new.”
This pattern really resonated with me. It’s not the same thing that I go through in my own experience of depression, but it was many years ago before I even called what I was in depression. And I still live with cycles, where I don’t always know at first that the feelings I’m feeling are another round of depression until the shadow has gotten a little deeper. It doesn’t always happen this way, but it can, and I find it important to learn and know my own patterns so as to live better with them.
See all Mandalas for Marinke
Every cloud has a “silver lining” as they say — the mandala is quite lovely as is the sweet little doll. Sounds like an interesting book. It is true that we all have a story to tell. Best wishes, Tammy