Calm with Yarn

Content note: This story includes a brief mention of self-harm thoughts.

I'm not really sure where to start with this, so I'm just going to start typing and see where it goes!

I'm Sarah, and I'm the founder of Rainbow Dandelion Crochet. I'm neurodivergent, and although I didn't set out to build a business around that, my neurodivergence has shaped everything I do.

For most of my life, I've been really good at looking like I'm coping. I've worked for more than 20 years in mental health and community settings. I've been a healthcare assistant in mental health, worked in a homeless hostel and worked for Citizens Advice. I've supported people through some incredibly difficult situations. So you'd think I'd be brilliant at recognising when I needed help myself. Oh, absolutely not! I spent a huge part of my life believing that being strong meant carrying on. You get up, you go to work, you look after people, you sort things out, you smile. You just carry on. But I learned that being able to function isn't necessarily the same as being okay. Being strong doesn't mean ignoring your feelings; it means honouring them. I knew I could become overwhelmed by things other people seemed to cope with easily. Justice sensitivity was a big one for me, and I could not cope with unfairness at all. Busy environments completely wiped me out. I needed time to process things, and I could become intensely focused on something and then be absolutely exhausted afterwards.

But I didn't always have the words to explain how I was feeling. So I carried on, until I couldn't.

That's where crochet came in.

I found myself picking up a hook and some yarn, and something happened. The repetition helped my brain slow down. The counting helped block out some of the thoughts. Having something in my hands gave me something else to focus on when my brain was overwhelmed. At times when I was struggling with thoughts of harming myself, having something safe and repetitive for my hands to do helped me get through those moments.

I started teaching people, and that's when I began to notice just how much crochet could help.
People would come to me saying, "I can't do this," or "I always get things wrong."
And I'd reply: "Right. Okay. Let's get it wrong. We are allowed to make mistakes."

And that was surprisingly freeing for people.

I realised I didn't actually want to teach people to crochet perfectly. I wanted people to feel safe enough to get it wrong and be themselves. That became a really important part of Rainbow Dandelion Crochet, because I know what it feels like to be told, directly or indirectly, that you're doing something wrong. That you're too sensitive, you're too emotional, you're too caring – from a mental health nurse, no less! I started thinking about how many neurodivergent people spend their lives adapting themselves to environments that weren't designed with us in mind. We learn to mask. We learn to push through. We learn not to ask too many questions. We learn to tolerate things that are actually overwhelming us. Then someone comes along and tells us how strong and resilient we are, and we just want to scream, "Noooo! We aren't! We need you to see the real us!" They bring toxic positivity into the conversation, thinking it will help. It doesn't.

Sometimes you don't need somebody telling you that everything will be okay, because sometimes everything isn't okay. Sometimes you just need someone to sit beside you and say, "Yeah, this is really bloody hard."

So I decided I wanted to create that space.

In my one-to-one lessons, I don't assume everyone learns in the same way.
If something doesn't make sense, we try another explanation.
If one way of holding the hook hurts, we find another way.
If someone needs to slow down, we slow down.
If someone needs to ask the same question five times, they can ask it five times.
If they make a mistake, we don't make it into a big deal.

If someone turns up having had a really rubbish week, they don't have to pretend otherwise. If you haven't managed a shower all week, that's okay. If you need five minutes to cry, that's fine. Let's work on a project and figure out what's really going on. There doesn't always need to be a positive spin put on everything. Sometimes you just need someone who isn't going to sugarcoat the difficult stuff. To help reduce overwhelm, I've created resources that reduce the need to use screens. I also think about how intimidating it can be to walk into a new environment and not know what's expected of you. That's why I send a pre-lesson questionnaire asking about sensory preferences, pronouns, disabilities, allergies and anything else someone feels I need to know to help make the session work for them. I send videos of the room and how to find me. I try to remove as many unknowns as I can before someone even walks through the door.

My business has become a place where I can use my own experiences to make things easier for other people, and that became the basis for my Calm With Yarn work. I wanted to explore whether what I was seeing in front of me was reflected in other crocheters, so I carried out a survey of 840 adult crocheters.

• 95.95% reported feeling less stressed after crocheting.
• 95.12% reported improved wellbeing.
• 92.96% reported feeling physically relaxed.
• 85.45% said their mind slowed down.
• 80.59% experienced flow.
• And 66.35% said they crocheted for stress or anxiety.

I'm very careful about what those findings do and don't mean. I'm not saying crochet cures anxiety. I'm not saying crochet treats trauma. And I'm certainly not saying someone experiencing serious mental health difficulties just needs to pick up a crochet hook. Life is much more complicated than that. But I do think we should listen when hundreds of people tell us that something helps them feel less stressed, more relaxed, more present or more connected.

Building a business while being neurodivergent has taught me an enormous amount about myself.

I learned that being recognised by awards isn't necessarily the same as being supported.
I learned that I can love my business and still find running it incredibly difficult sometimes.
I learned that I can want it to grow and still need boundaries. And, probably most importantly, I learned that being able to do something doesn't always mean I should. I'm still learning that.
I haven't suddenly become brilliant at boundaries because I run a wellbeing-focused crochet business. I still overdo things. I still say yes when I probably shouldn't. I still have days where my brain needs to buffer.

But I'm learning to listen sooner.

I don't want Rainbow Dandelion Crochet to be a business that teaches people to fit in. I want it to be somewhere people can belong without having to become less of themselves. That includes neurodivergent people, Disabled people, LGBTQIA+ people and people with mental ill health. Actually, anyone who has ever walked into a room and wondered whether they were going to fit. I spent a lot of my life trying to fit myself into spaces that weren't designed for me. Now I'm trying to build spaces that don't require other people to do that.

I have built a business that requires me not to pretend to be someone else, and that is so freeing.

If you need support

If anything in Sarah's story has brought up difficult feelings for you, you don't have to deal with them alone.

• Samaritans: call 116 123, free and any time, or chat with a Samaritan online
• Shout: text SHOUT to 85258 for free, confidential text support, 24/7
• NHS 111: call 111 and choose the mental health option if you need urgent help but it isn't an emergency
• Mind: information and support at mind.org.uk

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999 or go to A&E.