I often think of how we carry memory—not just in our minds, but in our hands, our rituals, the objects we hold onto. The way we knead dough, string beads, dye cloth, or even bleed our emotions onto empty journal pages. The past lingers not behind us but within us, shaping the rhythm of our days.
Some memories are light. Others sink deep. Then there are those that arrive unannounced—the scent of rain at dusk, the way light spills across an old wooden table, the hush between two breaths. Perhaps memory holds us as much as we hold it. A living thing, shifting and shaping, allowing us to slip between times.
Last month, The Girl Gone Authentic Sunday Club gathered around the theme: The Weight of Memory— an invitation to observe how memory manifests. It was about how the past is held in the present and how we, as artists, writers, and makers, become vessels of remembrance. Just as a seed knows how to sprout, bloom, and bear fruit all the while releasing scents even our ancestors would recognize, I would love for us to notice the subtle shifts within us as we move from thought to sensation.
Let’s continue this exploration here at The Tea Garden. I offer a quiet reflection—“Reflection and pigment, a slow conversation”—arising from the practice of indigo dyeing. This ancient craft continues to stir a deep sense of remembrance across many cultures. In the stillness of the dye bath, memory meets material. What seeps into cloth is not only color, but story. A whisper from the past, held gently in blue.
Reflection and pigment, a slow conversation
I lean over the dye bath, the water still and listening.
My reflection hovers on its surface—blurry, uncertain, almost not there.
This is how memory feels. Present, but not fixed.
A suggestion more than a shape.
The fabric absorbs what I cannot name.
Color seeps in where words cannot reach.
There is no urgency here, only patience—
A slowness that stains everything it touches, gently.
I stir. The ripples erase my face.
But the dye remembers.
It holds onto things I’ve let go.
Old longings. The scent of my grandmother’s kitchen.
The weight of stories told in another language.
Craft, I’ve come to realize, is not only about making.
It is about listening.
About letting materials speak back.
About allowing pigment and fiber to teach you how to remember
without needing to explain.
This is a ritual.
This is a kind of prayer.
