I Have Become a Woman Who Makes Things

There is paper everywhere.

Not everywhere in the way people say it when they mean there are a few scraps left on the dining room table. I mean everywhere.

There are stacks of patterned paper, old book pages, envelopes, ribbons, tags, stickers, fabric scraps, tiny paper flowers, and pieces of things I saved because I might want them later. There are scissors in more than one room and glue in quantities that suggest I am preparing for some sort of national shortage.

Somewhere along the way, I became a woman who makes things.

I do not remember deciding that this was who I was going to be.

There was no announcement. No carefully planned reinvention. I simply started making things, and then I kept making them.

I began collecting paper. I learned about pockets, tuck spots, belly bands, signatures, altered paper clips, hidden journaling spaces, and all the wonderful little secrets that can be folded into a junk journal.

I joined swaps with women I had never met. We exchanged handmade journals and small pieces of ourselves through the mail. I began making pages that someone else would eventually hold in her hands.

There is something beautifully intimate about that.

You choose the paper. You think about the colors. You add a pocket and tuck something inside it. You wonder whether she will notice the tiny detail you almost left out. You hope she understands that it was placed there just for her.

None of it has to be useful.

That may be the part I love most.

For much of a woman’s life, usefulness is treated like a requirement. We are supposed to make meals, make appointments, make money, make decisions, make people comfortable, and make everything work.

Even rest is often expected to accomplish something. We rest so we can be more productive. We take care of ourselves so we can continue taking care of everyone else.

But a page covered in old lace, a faded photograph, and a ticket to a place I have never visited does not solve anything.

It does not improve efficiency.

It does not make the house cleaner.

It does not check anything off a list.

It exists because I wanted to make it.

There is freedom in creating something that does not need to earn its place.

I can spend an unreasonable amount of time deciding whether a scrap of blue paper belongs behind a label. I can move a tiny butterfly from one corner to another and then move it back again. I can build an entire page around a woman in an old photograph whose name I will never know.

The decisions are small, but they belong completely to me.

Maybe that is why making things has become so important in this season of my life.

Midlife has a way of making you look at who you have been and wonder who you are becoming. Some identities begin to loosen. Roles change. Children grow. Bodies change. Careers shift. The things that once filled every available space no longer fit in quite the same way.

Then, if we are lucky, something new begins to take shape.

For me, part of that something has been creativity.

I am still learning what I like. I move between soft florals, old Paris, bees, vampires, strawberries, Halloween, and anything else that catches my imagination. There is no obvious thread connecting all of it except that it delights me.

For years, I thought having a creative style meant choosing one thing and staying there.

Now I think my style may simply be curiosity.

I like seeing what happens when I follow an idea.

I like beginning with an empty page and ending with something that did not exist before.

I like belonging to a community of women who understand why a tiny envelope is exciting and why pretty paper can be difficult to cut. We send one another journals, ephemera, supplies, ideas, and encouragement. We admire the work of someone else’s hands while quietly becoming more confident in our own.

Sometimes I still hesitate to call myself creative.

The word can feel as though it belongs to artists, people who studied technique, or women with beautiful studios where every ribbon is arranged by color.

Meanwhile, I am surrounded by scraps and trying to remember where I put the good scissors.

But creativity is not a title someone else has to give us.

It is not measured by whether we sell what we make, whether it is displayed somewhere important, or whether anyone besides us understands why we love it.

Sometimes creativity is simply choosing to make something because making it brings us back to ourselves.

I am learning to let that be enough.

I make journals. I make pages. I make small, unnecessary things from paper, glue, imagination, and whatever happens to be scattered across the table.

Not everything turns out the way I pictured it. Sometimes the glue shows. Sometimes the paper tears. Sometimes I make something I do not particularly like.

Then I cover it with another piece of paper and keep going.

There may be a lesson in that, although I am not sure every hobby needs to become a metaphor.

Perhaps this one can simply be mine.

I have become a woman who notices texture and color. A woman who saves envelopes and sees possibilities in discarded book pages. A woman who sends handmade things through the mail and waits to see what another woman will add.

I have become a woman who makes things.

And I think I have been waiting for her for a very long time.

With Love and Gluey Fingers,

Brandy