My Embroidery Journal Experiment

Journaling has been my absolute favorite since I was old enough to keep a diary. I’ve filled many journals in my 44 years and left even more unfinished. The ADHD trait of unfinished projects is definitely one I am familiar with. Still, the need to process and track life’s events is something that brings joy and emotional clarity, even when I don’t complete them. In December of 2022, I ran across a picture on Instagram of someone’s embroidery journal and instantly fell in love! Now that I’m more conscious of my tendency to not finish projects, I immediately got anxious at the the thought of doing one myself because I would hate to not finish it. Not finishing brings with it a lot of shame and nobody needs to carry more of that around. So, I ruminated on the idea for a few weeks, still unsure if I would commit to something like this.

During this time, I was also growing more and more aware of my stress levels being too high and needing some better ways to cope. From an ADHD perspective, any kind of hobby that involves the hands is really great for using up extra mental and emotional energy. I’m not a seamstress by any means, but I’ve embroidered a few quilt blocks so I had a some leftover supplies. As 2023 was about to begin, the novelty of the idea sucked me into diving headlong into the project. I went to Walmart for some material, new colors of thread, and a larger hoop. I downloaded a blank template from Embroiderers’ Guild of America and copied it onto my material.

The purpose of any journal is to document events to varying degrees. For this embroidery journal, it still helped to write down things that happened or people’s birthdays I wanted to include. In my head, I imagined I would sit down regularly and draw or embroider in entries, but that happened only for a week or so. Real life included recording interesting things in the back of a notebook under the title of each month. I also imagined that I would do a lot of this work at home in the evenings. It actually was mostly done during church services or large social events. Having something to do with my hands helped my focus and listening attention increase drastically while also soothing excess emotional energy. A typical ADHD struggle is emotional regulation where emotions don’t come in small steady flows, but huge blasts of tsunami proportions. For me - and my daughter - keeping the hands busy helps to manually support that regulation. My daughter has learned to crochet over the last year and she has learned to bring it with her anytime she expects to be sitting for a while.

The experiment in all of this was whether or not I would actually finish it. Since I was really afraid I wouldn’t AND I wanted to prevent being discouraged that it wasn’t perfect, I told myself there were no rules. I could put whatever images I wanted that meant whatever I wanted them to mean. Some of them are obvious like fireworks in July or a pumpkin in October, but many of them you won’t know their meaning unless I explain it to you. I think those are my favorite. A friend was looking at the finished product and asked me what something meant and I had to think about it for a second. So, maybe writing up a key would be a good idea! The other aspect of not worrying about it being perfect came in the timing of it all. Truth be told, I finished half of September and all of October, November and December over the course of 5 days in December. Which, to the ADHD community, makes perfect sense! That deadline is often the last minute push we need to cover all the ground we could have gradually covered over the past several months if procrastination hadn’t reigned supreme yet again. Still, no rules except for the 2023 label meant that it didn’t really matter how and when as long it pertained to 2023.

Now that it’s a week into January, I can officially call the experiment a success! I completed all 12 months and I have already cut out and penciled in the months for a new one. What I will do with the completed journal is still up in the air. It could be turned into a pillow, put in a quilt or just tucked away in hiding, I guess. I’m leaning towards finding a great frame and putting it up on the wall somewhere. If I continue this, I might store the past years in a large scrapbook or journal, which feels redundant and ironic, but feels right just the same. Whatever the case, we’ll just wait and see. What would you do with it? I’d love to hear some alternative ideas!