Knitting in the Middle: Color, Mental Health, and Holding On

There’s a line in The Middle by Jimmy Eat World** that has stayed with me for years:

“It just takes some time, little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride.”

Knitting, for me, is what I do in the middle.

In the middle of grief.
In the middle of burnout.
In the middle of waiting.

For a long time, my life moved in sirens and adrenaline. Clear beginnings. Urgent middles. Hard stops. You show up, you act, you stabilize, you transport. There’s protocol for almost everything.

But when I stepped out of that rhythm — out of the back of the ambulance and into quieter hours — I realized something unsettling:

There is no protocol for the middle.

And most of life is lived there.

The Middle Is a Process, Not a Place

When you cast on a project, it’s awkward. The yarn feels too tight or too loose. Your hands don’t quite know the rhythm yet. It doesn’t look like anything recognizable.

It’s not a sweater.
It’s not a sock.
It’s just… stitches.

That transition out of EMS felt like that.

I wasn’t in crisis mode anymore.
I wasn’t running calls.
But I also wasn’t entirely sure who I was without that identity.

It was just… stitches.

Mental health works the same way. Healing rarely looks dramatic. It looks like choosing a normal bedtime. Setting one boundary. Taking one deep breath instead of escalating. Picking up yarn instead of picking apart your own thoughts.

Stitch by stitch, something forms.

Color as Emotional Language

When you work in emergency medicine, you get very good at compartmentalizing. You have to. There isn’t time to process every call in real time.

Color became the place I let things surface.

Deep teals and stormy purples for complexity.
Moody plums and layered blues for grief that didn’t need a name.
Unexpected flashes of chartreuse when I needed proof that brightness still existed.

Dyeing yarn taught me something I never learned in a trauma bay: colors can coexist without canceling each other out.

Dark does not erase light.
Light does not deny dark.
They blend. They shift. They make something richer together.

Watching a dye bath clear is one of the most satisfying things I know. The water that was once saturated releases its hold. What remains is set. Stable. Transformed.

There’s a metaphor in that somewhere.

Repetition as Regulation

There’s science behind repetitive, bilateral movement calming the nervous system — but you don’t need a journal article to feel it.

Knit.
Purl.
Breathe.
Repeat.

After years of responding to chaos, knitting gave me something radically different: predictability.

No alarms.
No tones dropping.
No one needing me to move faster than my body wanted to go.

Just the steady rhythm of hands doing something useful and gentle at the same time.

I didn’t have to save anyone.
I just had to finish the row.

And sometimes that was enough.

You’re in the Middle of the Ride

One of the most comforting things about The Middle is that it doesn’t promise immediate resolution.

It doesn’t say, “You’ll wake up tomorrow and everything will be different.”

It says:

“Everything will be just fine. Everything, everything will be alright.”

Not because it already is — but because you’re still moving.

Knitting teaches the same thing. You can’t rush a sweater into existence. If you pull too hard on the yarn, you distort the tension. If you try to skip the middle, the whole structure weakens.

Transition — whether it’s leaving a career, redefining yourself, or simply learning to exist without constant urgency — takes time.

You’re allowed to be unfinished.

Softness Is Strength

There was a time when competence and control defined me. Now I measure progress differently.

• Did I choose calm?

• Did I allow rest?

• Did I create something instead of bracing for impact?

• Did I let color into a day that felt gray?

Knitting isn’t an escape from who I was. It’s an integration.

The same hands that once secured airways now wind skeins.
The same focus that once ran algorithms now counts stitches.

Nothing was wasted.
It just changed form.

If you’re in the middle right now — of transition, of grief, of reinvention — maybe you don’t need to sprint toward the end.

Maybe you just need a project.
A skein.
A color that feels like hope.
A song reminding you that this stretch isn’t a mistake.

You’re not behind.
You’re not broken.
You’re in the middle.

And the middle is where resilience is knit, quietly and on purpose.

Reimagined

There are seasons in life when words don’t come easily. When explanations feel too heavy, and even naming what hurts feels like too much. In those moments, creativity can become a language of its own—one that doesn’t require clarity, only presence.

For me, healing didn’t arrive all at once. It came slowly, through color. Through fiber soaking in dye. Through the simple, repetitive act of working with my hands when my mind needed rest.

Color has a way of meeting us where we are. Some days it’s bold and energizing. Other days it’s muted, quiet, and steady. There is no right palette for healing—only the one that feels honest in the moment. When I began dyeing yarn, I wasn’t trying to create anything profound. I was trying to feel grounded. To anchor myself in something tangible when everything else felt uncertain.

Creativity doesn’t fix things. It doesn’t erase grief or smooth over change. But it does offer a place to land. A space where you can move at your own pace, make mistakes, and let things unfold without judgment. In the dye studio, I learned to trust process over perfection. To allow color to bloom and shift instead of forcing it to behave. That lesson quietly carried into the rest of my life.

Working with fiber taught me that transformation is rarely instant. It happens gradually, often invisibly at first. A skein submerged in dye doesn’t reveal its final form right away. It takes time, heat, patience, and a willingness to let go of control. Healing works much the same way.

Creativity can be a form of care—not productivity, not performance, but care. The kind that asks nothing of you except that you show up. The kind that reminds you that making something, even something small, can be enough for today.

Drops of Jupiter was born from this understanding. Every skein I dye carries that intention: not just to be beautiful, but to hold space. To remind us that softness and strength can coexist, that change doesn’t have to be rushed, and that creating with our hands can help us find our footing again.

If you’re in a season where things feel unsettled, I hope you find comfort in color, in creativity, or in whatever quiet practice helps you breathe a little deeper. Healing doesn’t always look like progress. Sometimes, it looks like making something simply because it brings you peace.

Small Steps Create Big Shifts

Confidence doesn’t always arrive with a bold entrance. Sometimes, it builds quietly, step by step, as we show up for ourselves day after day. It grows when we choose to try, even when we’re unsure of the outcome. Every time you take action despite self-doubt, you reinforce the belief that you’re capable. Confidence isn’t about having all the answers — it’s about trusting that you can figure it out along the way.

The key to making things happen isn’t waiting for the perfect moment; it’s starting with what you have, where you are. Big goals can feel overwhelming when viewed all at once, but momentum builds through small, consistent action. Whether you’re working toward a personal milestone or a professional dream, progress comes from showing up — not perfectly, but persistently. Action creates clarity, and over time, those steps forward add up to something real.

You don’t need to be fearless to reach your goals, you just need to be willing. Willing to try, willing to learn, and willing to believe that you’re capable of more than you know. The road may not always be smooth, but growth rarely is. What matters most is that you keep going, keep learning, and keep believing in the version of yourself you’re becoming.