Is grief like a baby, in that once you hit the 3-month mark you stop counting time in weeks? I’m not sure if I can stop counting that way. Every Thursday marks another week without my mom, another week of getting further away from her death, further away from her life. Today it’s been 13 weeks. It has also been exactly three months. Am I ready to stop measuring time by weeks? I don’t know.
Lately, I’m also marking time with slow stitches, and not the knitting kind. With my broken hand keeping me from knitting, I have been pushed to find other outlets for my impulse to create. And so it is that I found myself digging out a little cross-stitch project I started five years ago (can that be right? I just checked, and it’s right.) I bought this pattern from sewingseed on etsy, on Black Friday five years ago. I promptly got to stitching, but only sporadically. I lost it for awhile, then found it again the following November. I made some more progress and then put away again, until a year ago, when I picked it back up right after Thanksgiving. I had gotten this far:
I think I worked on it for another day or two at that point, and then put it back down again for a year. I guess when given a choice between cross-stitch and knitting, I always pick knitting.
But during this time without knitting, I’ve picked it up again, and I’ve made more progress:
I just need to finish the snow and then I get to do the deer. The strange thing is, as easy as cross-stitch is, I have found the stitching lately to be very slow-going, especially those white stitches. I feel clumsy and slow and frustrated. It gives me lots of time to think and to breathe.
Despite some of the frustration involved, I’m going to keep going this time. The progress is painstaking, but, as is often the case with my crafting, it is reminding me that, if I just keep stitching, no matter how slowly, eventually something beautiful will emerge.
I am choosing to keep believing that this will be the case with grief, as well. It is painfully slow stitching, y’all, and I can’t see the whole design of it from this point. But I trust it will yield its gifts, its wisdom, and its beauty, if I persist.
earthchicknits 
Everything takes time. Give yourself permission to slow down and enjoy these moments. Your body is asking for slowness, and so is your inner Self. Listen closely and breathe. The stitching is so pretty. 🙂
This is beautiful. Count however you want/need to. Or don’t. But keep paying attention. It will take you where you need to go.
So sorry for your loss. Don’t know if this will help, but my mom died when I was 8 1/2. I’m almost 62 and I still miss her, but the pain stopped being that dull ache many many years ago. I think it just means that we each had amazing moms who blessed us with love. My mom’s life ended at 27, yours a bit later, so the losses are different, of course. Take your time. She is worth it.