Hope is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

--Emily Dickinson

Greetings Dear Ones!

A man came into the shop recently, asking to have his daughter’s dress hemmed for graduation. It turns out he works for an organization that is the parent company managing the building where I rent space for my wee shop. He asks how the organization might help me. “We want to support small businesses in town, especially those devoted to services like yours. We need you. How can we help you? What would make a difference to your business?”

I stare at him in surprise for several moments then look around the shop slowly, as if seeing it for the first time in a while—the way one looks at a room one is about to clean and suddenly realize it looks like there’s been an FBI search only you hadn’t noticed until now.

“You look busy; do you need to hire someone?” he asks.

“There’s no space to have another worker in here. It’s too tight.” I say. (The place is like a galley kitchen with huge windows.)

“Would you like more space?” he asks quickly. “We have bigger studios upstairs…”

I shake my head No. “I can’t afford more space—you guys have jacked the rent again and my dear customers would struggle even more if there were more stairs. Some of them struggle as it is. Those stairs are steep for those with bad hips or knees.”

He nods thoughtfully.

After several minutes of silence during which I am thinking, he finally says “Do you even know what you need?”

“I do need support,” I say. “I need a peer group of fellow solo-entrepreneurs, especially women who deal with the general public. I need people with whom we can co-affirm our worth so that when some jerk forgets to pick up his own damn pants and comes in here yelling at me, I have the guts to make him pay for the pants, instead of guiltily letting him take them for free because he had to buy a new pair of pants when he got to Miami for the destination wedding he didn’t even want to attend. He had three weeks to pick up his clothes and he didn’t, so why did I feel like I owed him something just because he was mad? I can’t imagine him treating a male tailor that way, or even behaving that way in front of a another witness.”

“I was thinking maybe you want to tune up your website,” says the man, shifting uncomfortably. “We just got a grant to help new businesses with websites.”

“No, thank you,” I say suddenly feeling slightly irritated and defensive. “My website is the best thing about this whole operation. My friend set it up for me. I like how folks are able to schedule their own appointments online. It’s simple and works great.”

“How about advertising?” he asks. “Do you need help advertising?”

“What? So I can get more work?” I ask incredulously. “The racks are full. I can barely keep up as it is. I’m at Capacity. But I can’t hire anyone; I can’t afford to pay anyone; I can’t afford more space. I am literally hanging by a thread. People are delighted to find me, delighted to have me do their work, NOT delighted to pay as much as a hamburger to have a gown altered. People literally come in here every day, put on an outfit, ask how much it will cost to change, then decide it’s too much and leave. Often, the next person in tells me I’m way under-priced. It’s hard to know what to charge. I suspect this is true for most solo female artisans. Customers are all very nice about it but the fact is clothing is cheap; labor isn’t. They don’t understand that I can’t stay here, helping all the people who need help, if my work is not genuinely valued. I will go under and yet another small business will fold. It’s not that I need a better website or more advertising, I need help charging what it REALLY takes to pay the rent and buy my own groceries. I’m NOT their kindly aunt or mother they don’t value enough. I’m a working woman. This is why, as so many people say, ‘No one does this any more…’ A lot of people assume that women do this work as a side-hustle, as a second income in a home where another bread-winner is supporting us. This is not true! Their grannies and mothers did it “for nothing,” I can’t!

He sighs, looked defeated, and turns to go. I tell him his daughter’s dress will be ready the next day.

Teaching solo female entrepreneurs to value themselves, to give them the emotional resilience to deal with rejection and to persist in their dreams is not something that is taught in most business schools, if anywhere at all. The only time you hear about it is in four minutes of a graduation speech. LIVING those ideas for the rest of your life takes courage, perseverance, and the ability to manage adult beverages responsibly. And if you need courage to do what you are doing, chances are parts of it are not fun, possibly even dangerous. It’s really fun to put twenty-five hours into making a wedding dress someone’s dream come true. It’s really scary to charge them five hundred dollars at the end. But it shouldn’t be. Sometimes us little Hermit-granny types like me gotta be Fierce! Our hearts pound like we have loose mice in our bras. We are not responsible for other people’s bad choices. We must claim our value.

Everyone needs Courage to stay in business.

We all need Hope to stay in Love.

I think about Hope—that thing with feathers—and take a visit to the Hope Coop in my heart. Some of the birds are looking kind of ratty, like they are going through molt. There’s the hope that my dog would live another year—she’s looking better than she did last time I checked. The Hope that Otie’s scratched cornea heals quickly is also looking sleek and plump. (He’s doing much better, though keeping the bra-pads on his eye got to be an enormous challenge as the week progressed.)

“Hey!” I say suddenly, looking around, “Where’s the Hope that I would have a beach body by summer?”

“Oh, she died,” croaks one of the bedraggled Hopes at the bottom of the coop, “almost immediately, as soon as you put her in here.”

“Which one are you?” I ask.

“I’m the Hope that your car makes it to December.”

“You don’t look so good,” I say.

“Well, have you heard that funny rattle under the hood?”

“Yes,” I say. The little Hope turns a shade grayer and coughs a tiny cough for emphasis.

“How about the Hopes for World Peace?” I shout. “For Isreal? For Palestine? For the Release of the Hostages? For all children to have full tummies? For Justice? For Democracy? For Clean Elections that are respected by all parties?” A bedraggled band of inmates shuffles forth from the shadows. They are smaller than hummingbirds.

“We’re still here,” they say quietly. “We’re not dead yet… We could use some Good News and maybe a little mending.”

I gather them up and hold them in hands shaped like a nest of twig digits, skin, and bones. These heavy hands have work to do and the Hopes feel so frail and downy light.

“Please don’t leave,” I whisper. “I need you.”

I think about the Greek Myth about Pandora’s Box. All the evils are loose in the world. We cannot lose Hope. She is the thing that remains, that helps us Continue—when the sewing machine breaks, when the car won’t start, when your own hair looks like feathers rubbed backwards, when you shouldn’t have eaten so much emotional support cabbage if you wanted to fit into a swimsuit before October, when the news pundits have nothing but fear to sell, when the bills need to be paid, when you feel depressed, alone, and up against it all…

Hope sings: “Tomorrow is a new day!” To Commence is to Begin. There are fresh, sleek and sassy Hopes to gather. The community we need most is within our own hearts, telling us “What you Do MATTERS. It has value. DO IT. COMMIT. It’s worth it in the end. Just because some crabby, disorganized bloke yells at you, it’s not the end of the world. It’s the Beginning.”

A new generation of graduates is taking its place beside us to help us continue The Great Work. Some will want to Farm, or Sing, or Sew. We must welcome them all and teach them their Value. This is what Hope is for.

Keep mending my darlings! Feed the Hopes! Keep them alive and singing in your soul.

I love you Sew Much,

Yours aye,

Nancy