Your Thread Knows the Season—Do You?

I’ve known for a while now that there are a few simple rituals that keep me grounded. And it doesn’t take more than a couple days without them before I feel a little... off.

You might already know—I’ve been in the middle of moving apartments. In the chaos of boxes and bubble wrap, my husband and grabbed coffee outside for the first few mornings. It was fine. But by day three, I could feel the itch: I needed my rhythm back.

So I made it my mission to make coffee at home again, in my pajamas—just how I like it.

Except... we hadn’t done groceries yet.

No oat milk. No accompanying banana. No quiet corner of routine.But the coffee was already brewing. So I threw on a sweatshirt and ran to the nearest store.

Oat milk. Bananas. Greek yogurt, because why not.

When I got home, I changed back into my pajamas, poured that splash of oat milk, and took the first sip.

And just like that—I felt like myself again.

That small return to ritual reminded me of another practice that grounds me just as deeply: tatreez (obviously).

Stitching has a rhythm too. There are seasons when I’m bursting with creative energy and want to start something big. And there are seasons when I just want to sit quietly with what’s already in motion.

And the more I sit with it, the more I realize: tatreez itself has always followed a rhythm—a rhythm rooted in the earth.

The first thing I teach about tatreez is how it is rooted in the land (and of course it is a language that shares stories). 

But it's not just the motifs that are representing the land itself. 

The practice of tatreez is lived in step with seasons, with harvests and rains, with time measured not by clocks but by the turning of the sun. Palestinian women, like so many indigenous communities, practiced in sync with the natural world around them.

And it’s had me thinking...

And it’s had me thinking… What if we did that again?

What if we stitched with the rhythm of the earth? 

Not as a performance, but as a return. A remembering.

A quiet resistance to the pressure to produce. A way to be in sync with something older, wiser, and deeply ours.

I find myself drawn to exploring this concept: the rhythm of the earth. Of sunrise and sunset. Of resting in winter, blooming in spring, showing up fully in summer, and settling in again for fall.

I don't know what that will look like but one thing holds true: Tatreez was never meant to be rushed. It was lived slowly and in rhythm with the land. 

Question is, what might that look like in practice?