Fabric Meditation Books

I created these fabric meditation books during the beginning of Covid in 2020 and continued to make them for the next couple of years. The process began as a playful exploration of textiles, slow stitching and gathered nature and slowly grew into a deeply transformative art practice that helped me process grief and unresolved emotions inside my heart.

I was intuitively guided to bury some of the books in my yard and unearth them after 30-45 days. I grew to become connected to the experience of placing the book in the dirt, saying a silent blessing for it and covering it up to rest within the earth until I knew it was time to dig it back up. As I waited, I sensed there were things changing down there inside the fertile darkness. I felt no urgency to dig them up sooner, something in me knew they needed time to go through the process of alchemy for the book to become something new.

When it was time to dig up each book, I stepped outside and slowly walked to the burial site. I kneeled down on to the soft ground and took my hands to the soil and began to dig with my fingers. I eventually felt the soft fabric and carefully pulled it up, then either walked with it to the lake down the street or to a puddle in my yard to give it a blessing of renewal with the water.

The whole experience taught me that I was revealing a new part of myself to myself through the creative process of making these books. The old me was dying in a sense so that a new part of me could be born. That touched my heart in ways I can only describe as transformative and beautiful. I noticed that my intuitive ways of creating were actually deeply metaphorical for my own inner life. I was burying so much emotion inside myself that needed to be unearthed and honored. The burial process of release was a way for me to go to the earth and ask for support to alchemize and transform the pain I felt inside. The earth gave me the gift of reconnection to what I had forgotten-a sacred relationship with the natural world again.