I was recently talking with someone about the meditative qualities of stitching, creative work as healing, and how making something brings us into the present moment. As life gets busier and the news challenges my mental health, it is always helpful to remember this!

Our conversation led me to the work of an occupational therapist named Ann Allart Wilcock, PhD. Dr. Wilcock studied the relationship between occupation and health, focusing on creating health rather than treating medical disorders. She emphasized the dynamic balance between doing and being, how the proportions of each create wellness, and how our relationship to our work or whatever we do affects who we are, how we feel, and how healthy we are. In the occupational therapy world, she coined the equation, "doing + being, becoming, and belonging = health."

Doing + being, becoming, and belonging = health

We are always being, becoming, and looking for a sense of belonging. In creative practice–embroidering, sewing clothing, or making art– we can find our place here in this moment and a connection to creative community and the lineage of makers, artists, and ancestors who have come before and will follow.