At Sew Positive’s recent AGM, one of our participants spoke movingly about the difference the charity is making to her life. Here is Lynn’s story:
I have been taking part in Sew Positive activities for around 18 months, having been referred by my surgery’s social prescriber. I have various physical and mental health problems, including fibromyalgia. I also support a neurodivergent son.
I was having a difficult time last year and saw my GP. They suggested that doing things that I enjoyed and reduced my anxiety could help my physical issues.
I have accessed many different NHS support services, had much therapy and various medications.
Sew Positive is different:
- It’s not online
- It’s sustained, not one-off or over in a few weeks
- Its staff and volunteers are genuine and see you as a human, not a patient
- It’s shaped by us
- Its projects bring not just practical support but joy.
Since becoming involved with Sew Positive, I have not needed to see my GP. I’m not cured – like many Sew Positive participants, I have chronic conditions- but I am more stable. I feel as though I have more resources to help me manage my health better and am better able to support my son.
Sew Positive is a welcoming and gentle community. I had become very isolated and the weekly meetings of the project I joined at Ross Street gave me an incentive to leave the house. They also gave me a reason to be more physically active to walk to sessions – a carrot to draw me out with thinking about the activity ahead to distract me.
Having a shared activity means that entering a group becomes easier. The sewing is our purpose and it gives us something we immediately have in common. However, I soon found that – although we’re all very different – Sew Positive participants have many experiences in common and quickly start to support each other.
Learning new skills is incredibly satisfying, especially when you’ve been so focused on what’s wrong with you, your brokenness and failures.
I’ve discovered that I’m more creative than I thought I was. I find engaging in sewing and textile art is a kind of mindfulness that works for me – any breathing and meditation I’ve tried has been overwhelmed by my anxieties. I’ve also learnt some practical skills that I had never been able to master. I can now thread a sewing machine, and thanks to the great patience of the volunteers I mastered – sort of – the French knot. Sew Positive doesn’t expect us to be perfect; we’re allowed to be perfectly imperfect. Doctors and therapists are good for me, but they put the emphasis on my problems.
Sew Positive helps me focus on what’s right with me – and see positives in the world and other people. I don’t feel like a burden, but a part of something. I feel seen and heard. And as the world burns in a thousand different ways, i’m part of the solution – keeping fabric out of landfill, reusing, mending.
Organisations like Sew Positive that support people facing social isolation and mental health problems play a vital role in our community. From my own experience and what I’ve seen, they definitely help individuals and take pressure off the NHS and other statutory services. They help people to live, to live well, to re-engage in community, education, employment, life. They give people the energy to support those they care for.
We’ve been working on a quilt, members of our community making patches that reflect our feelings about Sew Positive (images above):
- Stitching ourselves together – we accept each other and our imperfections and we use our Sew Positive activities to mend ourselves, embroider over the holes and frays
- Blooming – sew Positive helps us to create and to become fuller versions of ourselves.