With Her Own Hands by Nicole Nehrig - a personal reflection

Ever since I was a child, I have turned to needlework to help me find calm, to unwind in moments of anxiety, and to provide an outlet for creative impulses. I was, therefore, drawn to Nicole Nehrig’s book, With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories, and found much that moved me in her beautiful words, these stories and explorations of the ways in which women have found meaning, strength, and a creative voice through textile work. 

I read With Her Own Hands in the first month after giving birth to my baby girl, the book balanced on my knees while nursing. It was, I felt, a special time to be reading this book because of the way Nehrig gives space to the value of work that is traditionally seen as in the domain of women. It was also special because I was finally able to start cross-stitch again after carpal tunnel syndrome during my pregnancy stopped me from being able to use my hands for delicate work. In the moments when my baby slept, I slowly began work on a cross-stitch bookmark, the pattern and fabric gifted to me by Nicole. I made many mistakes, some of which I unstitched and some I decided to keep, a testament to my sleep-deprived and unfocused state in the first weeks postpartum. But that, for me, is part of the joy of cross-stitch. It doesn’t matter if I make a mistake or if a thread gets tangled. My needle work doesn’t need to be perfect, and it is liberating to allow this area of my life to be free from expectations and control.

With Her Own Hands is a fascinating discussion of the importance of textile work for women as an outlet for creativity, a way to tell stories that would otherwise go unheard, or to find psychological healing. There is a fascinating section on the tension between creative freedom and restraints, drawing parallels between the parameters of weaving and the challenges for parents when trying to continue their creative pursuits, something I have begun to experience for myself in the small fragments of time I have to read and write while my baby naps. 

Nehrig writes about textile work as a means to support psychological healing, as a form of meditation, and to activate the release of serotonin. This particularly resonated for me: I know that I instinctively turn to needlework at times of difficulty. The rhythmic, quiet, gradual act of creation, the colours of the bookmarks I make growing and merging as my work continues, brings peace to my anxious thoughts. 

I was particularly moved by the chapter on ‘Falling to Pieces and Unraveling.’ Nehrig writes that ‘so much of textile work is in a constant state of transition between integration and disintegration,’ and that ‘if we don’t fear the experience of coming undone, we can embrace the creative potential of deconstruction and disintegration.’ She tells the story of a woman in treatment for an eating disorder using the unraveling of her knitting and leaving the yarn loose on the table as a way to help her let go of her defenses, to lose control, and to allow her knitting to take up space rather than tidily packed away in a neat ball. This reminded me of a therapy session of my own where I told my therapist that I arrived at his sessions feeling like a badly knitted jumper, and that I left feeling like an unravelled and chaotic tangle of wool. It took me a long time, however, to be able to embrace this entangled ‘letting go’, to feel safe in a therapy space, and to find creativity in the process.

With Her Own Hands is a remarkable and important book about a subject close to the hearts of many women. And now, as my baby wakes from her afternoon nap, I will close this reflection with a thank you to Nicole Nehrig for writing a book that has moved me so deeply.

Out now in hardback wherever books are sold.