Written by Lori Cook...
There are moments when life draws us inward, when we sit with its weight, with loss, with longing. In those times, it can feel difficult to lift our gaze. And yet, there is something deeply restorative in being gently reminded of the beauty of simply being present, and in discovering ways to express what words cannot hold.
In 2021, two days beforeF my birthday, my 37-year-old son passed away.
This is the story of how I began to emerge from my own deepest grief.
At first, I was adrift. Fortunately, circumstances allowed me to retire from my work as a nurse. In those early months, I moved through a blur of obligations, appointments, paperwork, and the closing of a life as it once was. Small routines helped. So did having something to hold onto.
For me, that was quilting.
I first learned to quilt in 1996, after my son attended a birthday party. His friend’s mother was a quilter, and that introduction opened a door I would continue to walk through for years. I became absorbed in the process, cutting fabric, piecing it together, stitching something whole from fragments. While my children were growing up, I was active in my local guild, and those were good years.
Life changed in 2013 when my mother came to live with me with dementia. She passed away on January 1, 2020. Then came the pandemic. But it was my son’s death that altered everything most profoundly.
Grief shifted my reality. I found myself wanting to express something larger than technique or tradition could contain. I began trying to convey my feelings about the enormity of life and loss, but what I wanted to create with fabric and thread now felt more like art. Something more searching.
With a background in scientific disciplines, I did not have a roadmap for this kind of creative expression. So I began to look for one. I joined organisations, watched videos, read widely, and asked questions. But these were the pandemic years. There were no opportunities for in-person learning, and even counselling took place through a screen.
Then, one day, I came across a beautifully filmed advertisement. After some reflection and research, I enrolled in my first Take Two course, studying with Cas Holmes.
Although restrictions had eased by then, the online format proved unexpectedly powerful. It offered access to a master tutor across the world, and a thoughtfully designed learning environment. I was introduced to techniques and materials I had never explored before, but more importantly, I found I was enjoying myself.
That surprised me.
The sense of connection within the student group was equally important. There was encouragement, generosity, and a shared enthusiasm that helped ease not only the physical isolation of the previous years, but the emotional isolation of grief.
I continued. I studied with Wen Redmond, Debbie Lyddon, and Claire Benn. Each course opened a different pathway, including mixed media, eco-printing, and new ways of thinking about materials and meaning. Through these experiences, my work began to shift. So did I.
Learning within a supportive creative community helped me navigate the most difficult aspects of loss. It gave me a sense of momentum, and a renewed understanding that I was not alone.
Out of this period came a piece titled Vilomah (The Void), a thread-painted work combined with my own digital photography. It was created directly from grief, and in 2025 it was accepted into the Sacred Threads exhibition.
Around the same time, I completed My Texas Spiny Lizard Muse. This piece emerged alongside new skills I had developed, including thread painting from a guild workshop, combined with monoprinting and collage techniques explored in Cas Holmes’ course Making Connections. Entering the International Quilt Festival in Houston had not been part of my plans, but I submitted the work. It went on to receive a blue ribbon in the Animal Kingdom category.
Now, I find myself in a different place. I do not yet have a website, and my Instagram presence is still developing, but that no longer feels like a limitation. Instead, it feels like a beginning.
There is a sense of possibility.
What might the next piece become? Where might it be shown? What else is there to learn? Recently, through studying with Karen Olson, I discovered I could make paper from the yucca growing in my own yard, something I had never imagined before.
Each time I log into a course, I step into something new. My creativity continues to be supported, expanded, and challenged. There is still so much to explore.
And perhaps that is what I hold onto most now, the understanding that I am not finished. That even after profound loss, there can be movement, curiosity, and moments of unexpected joy.
For that, I am deeply grateful.
- Lori Cook