I Guess I Had to Feel the Feels

I have an upcoming trip to California for my niece’s wedding and that has been taking up a lot of my mental and emotional energy. Not that I've been thinking about the warm weather or walks on the beautiful Santa Barbara beaches. No. I've been focusing on the outfit I needed to put together for the wedding. For months.

I went shopping for an outfit and didn’t find one thing that I would consider wearing. My only option was to take the tea-length dress I bought for another niece’s wedding, that I didn’t end up wearing because it made me look like a moose, and use the fabric to make a skirt.

Easy enough, but first I had to find a skirt pattern and purchase some elastic for the waistband. Got them – no problem.

But still, the dress hung on the closet door for another month. Meanwhile, I was getting annoyed at the thought of having to go to Santa Barbara. Can you even begin to imagine? Because of a dress. It's true.

After realizing how ridiculous this whole scenario had become, I woke up one morning and told myself I was not going to bed that night until the skirt was made.

I went into my sewing room that afternoon. I looked at the dress and decided I didn’t want to cut it up and found a nice piece of linen in my stash that would work. I ironed the linen, laid out the pattern and uncertainty stepped in. What if it doesn’t fit and I’ve just wasted a beautiful piece of linen?

In a moment of what I can only call divine intervention, I folded up the linen, laid out the dress, cut off the bodice, trimmed up the sides, sewed them and put in an elastic waistband. An hour. It took me an hour and three seams to make a skirt that’s adorable.

I was beaming from ear to ear. It’s the first time since I started sewing at the age of ten that I haven’t used a pattern, I just winged it. I sent pictures to everyone.

For me, this is a story of trusting my intuition. It felt very strange to cut up a $200 dress, but as my sister said upon seeing the picture I sent her, “…great use for a dress that didn’t work.”

When something’s not working, are you willing to listen to your intuition? It’s there guiding you 24/7. If I’d made the skirt when I first thought of it, I’d have saved myself months of angst, but I guess I had to go through the process of feeling the angst, becoming aware of the feeling, and then listening once again to my intuition. I had to feel the feels.

It does feel important to have gone through this - to become aware of and able to identify my feelings, and having gratitude for the experience. That’s how we transform and evolve. This may seem like a mundane example, but in truth, it’s how life works.