“The one thing you cannot take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

—Victor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning

Greetings Dear Ones!

I’ve been asked to do a lot of Inner Work recently—replacing bombed out linings on jackets, cloaks, and vintage dresses. The outer layers still look good, especially in the case of one woman’s much-beloved beloved leather jacket, but the linings are shot, with insides hanging in vertical tatters. What goes up against our skins is generally not as robust as the outer fabric. It tends to be something softer, silkier, able to deal with friction. Because it is more fragile it wears out faster. One man wants me to replace the lining in his sleeves with the same warm woolen I am using on the body of his winter coat. “I can’t,” I say, “You would never get your arm in and out easily. Sleeves must be slippery.” Friction on the inside creates a lot of unnecessary wear and tear—on both people and garments.

A person brings in a costume for some Great Event that needs to be altered. Being a “costume” and not a regular garment, the inside is just hacked and patched together with big stitches. It looks great on the outside (apart from the fact that it does not fit) but inside, it looks as though it was assembled in a blender. How many of us are in that kind of shape right now? I know I am having days like that! Are you? My inner linings are ready for the rag bag.

It’s the dog days of summer and I am wanting to lie panting in the grass under the coolness of a fully-leafed Oak, digesting the latest sweet corn bones I have been gnawing on. I want to swing in a hammock and ride the puffy white clouds with my eyes, dreaming wide awake. I resent the fact that I have to deal with a mountain of thigh-sized zucchini that seem to have appeared in the garden without me noticing. I’m not kidding. They were all hiding under very big leaves, silently plotting their invasion. Who did this to me? Who planted all this stuff? I have cucumbers the size of shoes. Spring Nancy (that meddlesome cow!) “wanted a garden.” She planted a ton of stuff, piled a bunch of composted poopy on it, and then disappeared, leaving me, months later, to deal with this bionic explosion. Pumpkin and squash vines have escaped their fenced area and are now roaming the earth like a teenager’s closet full of clothes throwing up all over the floor.

August Nancy does not want this garden. She is sick of laboring-- first over coats, pants, and wedding gowns, then over mountains of garden produce. A blueberry patch is a relentless mistress. The tomatoes are an impenetrable jungle. We haven’t even started on the orchard yet. Apples, peaches, and pears are hanging like sweet time bombs on every branch. The steer are standing on tiptoes, leaning as far over the fence as they can manage, hoping for “drops.” Fall. Fall is coming. And all this work is “Summer.”

A woman comes in with a bridesmaid gown. It’s burgundy. This is for a wedding in October, which seems to be sometime next week. She wants me to hem it and cut the strings off at the back of her neck. The dress plunges to her navel in the front and to her thong the back. She has to use body tape to keep her breasts covered. These “strings” are ties that hold the shoulders together. If I cut them off, there will be nothing to hold this dress up. The sides will fall asunder like a freshly cleaved zucchini. I explain that I cannot cut them. She does not understand why the dress will not stay up without these ties. I can tell she thinks I am being stubborn. She bites her lip and looks down and sideways at the mirror.

I have a similar conversation with a bride who wants all the boning removed from her strapless gown. “It digs in,” she grumbles. “It makes the dress feel way too tight.” I tell her I can let the dress out but I cannot remove the boning, at least not all of it. “You need internal structure. We build a strapless gown upward by balancing it all off the hip. It must be tight and it must have boning or it won’t support you.” She looks sad. Internal structure does not seem to be her thing. She wants a wedding gown that feels like her yoga pants. I get it. I am in the mood to rebel against all Imperatives.

Things that look effortless on the outside often take a lot of work on the inside. We need structure. What the world sees is not what we live with on the inside. I think often about the quote from William Arthur Ward: “Happiness is an inside job.” (Sometimes, I interpret that as “happiness is getting to work indoors during a heat wave, especially when you can avoid looking at zucchini.”) I sit indoors on bright, cloudless days—days I want to spend swimming in a waterfall—with my needle and thread, picking through and mending the inner workings of people’s garments and think about Inner Work. It’s definitely time to do some.

Inner Work is savage stuff.

But we need it. We need an inside to comfort and support the outside just as much as we need a Left to support a Right (and all rights!) and vice versa. We need what comes close to us to be soft, resilient, supple, and supportive. The inner work is what holds it all together smoothly. Just ask any woman who has forced her torso into some excruciating version of gut-be-gone “foundation wear.”

I think about how we torture ourselves with thoughts and undergarments…how we compare ourselves to Others instead of who we used to be or might be yet. Happiness is not in the having or not having of zucchini but in how we accept responsibility for our own experience. We can pause and notice what is magical all around us—how a few seeds and dried cow poop can create so much nourishment in just one season. And we can choose to share, rather than grumble.

A new acquaintance asked me recently “Do you ever think you actually Change? Or do you just remain the “You” you always were?” I think seasons change, gardens grow, and the fruits of our dreams and labor develop. As people, we are a mix of all—seasons, dreams, growth, development, and also the shear wear and tear of Time. Courage enables us to reveal and mend what it is we hide within. It brings me back to linings. What do we carrying next to our skin, where only a seamstress can see it? Are we like medieval saints with hair shirts on beneath our summer frocks? Are we giving off the aroma of freshly-roasted martyrs?

I realize I have been creating too much drama around all the “work” I have to do. Work is just a nasty word for stuff you have to do anyway, but without the joy of it. When I accept who I am and The Way Things Are—I accept the things that are out of my control, the Things I Cannot Change, I get a tiny bit happier. This (current stress) is not all MY fault. (Let’s blame Former Nancy. That little trollop was a Nice Person who said “yes” to way too much and thought the back yard might look nice slip-covered in pumpkins.)

When I need to make a lining fit—I measure it against itself. I take out the old lining and use it as a pattern. I don’t just randomly make a new lining that has no context to the former. The other thing that is important about linings is that they need to have “give.” They need to allow for ease of movement. Often, they are looser, designed to float and adapt within the main outer shell (unless that outer shell happens to be strapless. See above). We need things just a little bigger on the inside than the outside.

Likewise, we need to upgrade ourselves by comparing ourselves to who we were yesterday, not anything (or anyone) else. Otherwise, we won’t get a precise fit, tailored properly to our own unique proportions. The more desperately we try to be “something else” the more uncomfortable and unworthy we will feel. The more we try to force ourselves to be what we are not, the lonelier life becomes. When we say “I want to be exactly as I am, only better,” that’s like getting a brand new inner lining that feels good next to our private tenderness, without changing what others may see. We are just quietly, secretly, lovingly, gratefully Happier. That’s the most rewarding kind of Inner Work of all.

After all these soothing thoughts and insights, yesterday, after a long hot day in the shop, I came out to my car and just about split my pants. There, on my car…you guessed it…a ZUCCHINI! Someone at the mill had put one on every windshield in the parking lot. Talk about letting our Good Intentions (and zucchinis) get so out of control we feel compelled to inflict them on others. Yikes! I had to drive the whole way home with that thing taunting me.

Well, I guess it’s time to close this off for now. I need to do battle with at least twelve zucchini. If you don’t hear from me next week, they won.

Keep up your Good Work! May your inner linings be Soft, Supportive, Gentle, Free, Joyful…

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy