What plastic bags can teach us about self-care

An interesting side effect at my house of COVID-19 has been a growing collection of plastic grocery bags, not being able to use re-usable bags during much of this time. Prompted by my son’s interest in recycling and ‘turning something old into something new’, I started to consider if there might be a use for them beyond serving as garbage bags or simply going straight into the garbage. Sure enough, Google yielded a host of ideas, including weaving the bags into a door mat. So, after watching a very helpful YouTube video (here's the link for anyone who is curious), I started the process of cutting, braiding, and weaving.

However, after completing the first row of the mat, I had some serious second thoughts about the viableness of the project! The row was misshapen (what happens when you don’t pay full attention to the instructional video), had taken soooo much longer to complete than I had expected, and was not providing much in the way of gratification. But, I took a few breaths and decided to treat this like an experiment, and not draw any conclusions just yet. So I continued working on the mat little by little over the following days.

And an amazing thing happened: I started to enjoy the process. It was still slow going but I started to see progress. I started to have a sense of how to straighten things out, as well as how to turn the corners. I started to intentionally choose spending a few minutes working on a row instead of mindlessly checking email. And I started to feel this odd sense of connection to history, knowing that many women before me stretching back hundreds if not thousands of years had created woven rugs (ok, probably not using plastic bags from Superstore, but the process was the same!).

Even more importantly I started to feel a sense of connection to a previous version of myself. What began as an experiment in turning something old into something new, became an opportunity to turn something new into something old: to turn this seemingly unimportant recycling project into a chance to reconnect with a part of myself that loves creating things, regardless of the final product, and feels energized and inspired by the process. (And yes, that is the final 'masterpiece' in the image.)

How can you turn something new into something old?