Stillness

After completing the last Oracle Deck wall hanging, Interconnectedness—which took a long time and was incredibly complex—I found myself wanting something simpler. A word that’s been coming up for me a lot lately is stillness. Or maybe quiet. Or pausing, or space. Any of those, really—something that speaks to a softening, a quieting of the mind, body, and just... everything.

I tend to be someone who’s always moving, always doing, always running some kind of story in my head. But over the past few years—especially in the last few months—I’ve been working to create more space for stillness. More moments of quiet, of pausing between actions, between thoughts, between moments.

And oof. It’s hard.

Stillness stirs up a lot in me. But when I can move through the initial waves of restlessness—or even panic—it often (though not always) leaves me feeling more centered and more aligned with myself.

When I started brainstorming ideas for the “Stillness” wall hanging, my first thought was of a night sky or a calm lake. But when I sat down to cut fabric, the image that came to me was of a pile of rocks—just on the edge of toppling. Teetering. But for one brief moment, they are balanced. They are still.

They might collapse in the next breath. Or they might hold steady a while longer.
But in this one moment—they are still.

That feels a lot like my experience of stillness. My mind is often a precarious stack of thoughts and emotions. But sometimes, just for a second, everything pauses. Maybe that pause stretches out longer. Maybe it doesn’t. But even the smallest moment of stillness feels like enough.

When it came time to photograph the piece, I had this vision of serenity. I imagined taking it to the beach—thinking, Yes, the photos will be so peaceful. So calm.
Which is hilarious, in hindsight. Because if you’ve ever been to a Northern California beach, you know: the waves are always crashing, the wind is wild, and the sand gets into everything.

Sure enough, when I arrived, the waves were roaring, the wind was whipping, and sand immediately flew into my eyes. To top it all off, there was a group of about 120 middle schoolers in bright purple tie-dye running around, screeching and bumping into everything with zero awareness of personal space.

It was perfect.
The irony of photographing a piece titled Stillness in an environment that was anything but still.

And yet, it was also the most fitting reminder: that even in the chaos, there are always small pauses. Tiny invitations to breathe. Little spaces where stillness lives—if only for a moment.

Stillness

The quiet between notes. The pause between the inhale and the exhale. The space between the waves.

It might be minuscule, but it exists.

In a world that’s constantly go-go-going, stillness can feel almost impossible to find. Moments to pause and breathe. Times to be quiet and notice what you notice. Or simply let it all slip away and rest in that liminal, in-between space.

The buzz of the world and its relentless drive to do more can be energizing—and exhausting. It becomes hard to tell what’s truly yours and what you’ve picked up from everything around you. But in those rare, quiet moments, there’s a soft opening. A chance for a sliver of clarity to emerge.

To pause. To feel the ache in your chest and breathe into it.

To notice the flutter in your belly and let yourself revel in that excitement.

To witness your feelings without needing to fix, change, or act on them.

Stillness creates the space to simply exist.

And then… notice what arises from the quiet.

What is stillness teaching you?

What is that silence saying?

What lives beneath it all?

Creative Prompts:

• Don’t create. Don’t do anything.

• Sit under a tree or in a quiet corner of your home, soften your gaze or close your eyes and try to find the spaces between your thoughts. See if you can expand them even just a little bit.

• Take a brief pause before your next act and just notice what arises.

Thank you for being a member of Gathered Threads and for following along with my Oracle Deck Wall Hanging Project! If you like this project and/or my work, I’d really appreciate it if you shared this post or anything I have made or done with someone you think would like it!

xoxox

Justice