Our Communities Matter

In life, words, phrases, and expressions accumulate in our lives. Guiding us, encouraging us, these small summations of language greatly impact an individual. Over the summer, I added another expression to my personal collection.
My grandma and I were having a conversation at her kitchen booth about the turbulence I’ve had in my life this past year. As she earnestly listened, I began to lose my composure and teared up. I’ve never cried in front of my grandma and I wasn’t about to start then. My spine slumped and I exhaled slowly admitting to her I was becoming emotional about it all. As her eyes softly touched mine, she shared with me, “Life isn’t a piece of pie for anyone, you know.” She expanded sharing her own ups and downs with raising kids and staying married for over 50 years. She showed me there’s always give and take, but no one really leaves this life having won every battle.
The idea is so simple. Some might even say cliche with how it is commonplace enough to be taken for granted; yet, hearing it from someone so dear to my heart and in her own words, the expression has remained with me since. Several occasions have arisen since our conversation where her words have rung true. I’ve recently heard people’s’ stories, people that I had once passed by in the halls of school with no names to put to their faces. Slowly getting to me, all of them revealed personal hardships of divorced parents, financial issues, toxic relationships, and frequent moving. Grandma was right. No one lives without experiencing their own personal, often kept internal struggles. But, when we hear people’s stories, a bond is crafted. We no longer feel so alone. We no longer feel as if the world rests solely on our backs. We soon come to realize that everyone, I mean everyone, has their own struggles.
Community is built by sharing. Sharing words, sharing time, sharing physical things, it all highlights the interdependent nature of humans. At Threads of Care, we recognize, in some ways, that we are all in this whirlwind of life together. Although we are individual, unique people, we all can come together over shared hardships in life. For this reason, we make it our mission to reach out and touch another person through the basic necessity of clothing. Through Threads of Care, a platform is created to share our words, share our time, and share our clothing. Community starts at Threads of Care.