before my husband died we were mooching around a craft fair and there was a lady there making rag rugs - we got chatting and i asked how she got into it - her husband had died, and she was having one of those nights wondering aimlessly round the house trying to find something to occupy her to fill the empty void and decided to clean her loft out (as you do) - she came across her grandmas old rug making stuff and a half finished one and decided to learn how to do it and then finish it -but then found doing it quite soothing, so made more.
She had a son living abroad and on visiting him and taking a rug found his maid intrigued by it so promised next time she came she would bring some stuff and show her how to do it. By the time i met her she was going out there once a year and running classes for girls in the poor villages around his complex - she said she found it wonderul how when they were mostly employed in that country in sweat shops making cheap clothes which were exported too us, she was taking them back too the girls in her suitcase and they were being used again and some of the girls were able to work independantly and get more for those clothes in their rug form than they ever got in the factory .Some they sold locally,to the people working in the complex or tourists -and some (those that would fit in now empty luggage) she bought off them herself and they were there on her stall in the craft fair.
I never forgot that becuse the sheme itself made so much sense to me, and even though i didnt have a handy half finished rug in the loft, when my husband died, her story was one of the things which gave me some strength,knowing that we can find a way out of the pit of despair, and even if we come across it by accident,it can help us begin to create that new life, not leaving them behind but taking them forward with us.
Mine wasnt a handy rug in a loft but also, by accident of a free on-line course i did to fill empty time, discovering i had the skills to support from here, a school gardens project in Africa - which means those children not only get a more balanced meal in school but take those skills and replicate them back in their communitys -and instead of learning from shared and out of dateold books in stifflingly hot classrooms they have outdoor classrooms within those gardens, where the skills of food growing and the gardens themselves extend their education into just about every other area,engineering,(water in particular ) - biology,maths, book -keeping,Literature and Art - its not them trying to turn the children into peasant farmers, although growing food is still a valuable skill where there is such poverty, - but everything that goes with it, is experience for all those other subjects.
I have visited one of the projects since, and they are amazing - my part is very small - i do graphics and writing for their marketing/money raising - but still it makes me part of something i think is worthwhile - and i know my husband would have too as he did a project teaching engineering in Egypt years ago and taught deprived kids over here too - it doesnt take away grief, but it puts a smile on my face to see the smiles on those kids.
I,m not some-one who joins things tried and failed and to be fair to those organisations , it was at the behest of others and not things i found very interesting plus the clicks of those people were already well established - there is nothing here to join that does attract me, but even from that lonely place and an online course, i have managed to find something where i can fit, and it makes life better
That lady has no idea how, what she did in her grief influenced me to do something as well, but both of us have gone from that lonely place and feeling of pointlessness to becoming more confident and more active.
It takes time though to find that thing and sometimes we might think we found something and find it is a dead end - so we have to look for something else - but Sandra is right when you do find anything at all which can take you somewhere outside your grief for a while, it makes such a difference,and you will find something, maybe nothing like Sandras or mine or the rug lady,but eventually something that grabs you.
