Hair-bows and healing

I love to create something beautiful.  It gives me the greatest satisfaction in life.

When I was first battling depression in college, I wrote poetry, stories, and essays.  I didn’t know I had depression, so I didn’t know I was healing myself.  I wrote about my roommates, about my lost love, about  running, about Marge Simpson.  Beauty can be found everywhere.

The greatest paradox is post-partum depression. Beauty and depression.  I have just created the most beautiful thing a person can create, another little person; and, yet the sinking feeling of worthlessness and overwhelming inadequacy to the task accompanies the beauty. So strange.  It feels so unnatural.

Can I tell you what I did after my first baby?  Before I knew that beauty healed me?

I made hair bows.

Isn’t that so simple?

My sister-in-law and dear friend Audrey lived an hour away from me in El Paso while her husband was doing his medical residency, so we were both alone-ish.  We became friends and she taught me to make hairbows for my sweet baby girl.  We would make them for hours, and watch movies.  They started off so simple, just a ribbon looped twice, secured with string, and hot glued to a barrette.  They have become more elaborate over time.

My baby girl with her bows.

Hairbows.  So simple.  So healing.

 Now I find little things. It is maybe the reason I like to water the flowers, it is my part of the creating process.  I water them, and God lets them grow.  That divinity within them since they were seeds can take root, take light, and become beautiful.