Broken Crayons Still Color

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This Strap was originally released in 2022 as an Artist Spotlight where if it sold out of the original 1,000 blue stitched pieces, we would remake it. This, my friend, is the remake, finally available for more people to enjoy. Below is the original post about it: Happy Thursday! Can you believe that tomorrow is the first day of October? We're getting into Spooky Season, which is rather exciting, in my opinion. When I was in school, as Halloween approached, we would break out the arts & crafts and start creating decorations. I remember fall being one of my favorite times to be at school because I got to create my own art. However, unless you brought your own art supplies, you had to share from the communal box of crayons & colored pencils. (I learned rather quickly to ask my mom for my own 24 count box!) While we should all learn to share and play nice, the classroom's box of supplies always had broken crayons, which made coloring a bit hard, but the good part? They still got the job done. They still provided the color I needed. Color Me Healing Pardon my not-so-smooth transition, but I want to get real for a second: we've all felt like broken crayons, have we not? We begin whole, colorful, vibrant, and new. But as life goes on, we experience wear and tear, use, cracks, and breaks. Experiencing a breaking point is inevitable. It can come in the form of an emotional breakdown, heartbreak, or years of putting up with the wrong thing.  because we form an emotional bond of love to situations, people, and items. At our cores, we are relational beings. In other words, we thrive on connecting with others. Whether we're forming a connection with someone over coffee or buying a journal to begin documenting our innermost thoughts, we create links between ourselves, our hearts, and another entity. And when those links are broken, we experience the repercussions internally. When we choose to invest our time, efforts, and attention into things, we're bound to endure the hurt of breaking from it because we've placed so much of ourselves within it. Whatever your "it" is, if you have been broken and hurt, you are not alone. The beautiful thing about broken crayons is that they do still color. And so do you. Putting the Pieces Back Together When you adopt a mindset of failure, you're going to be convinced that you are bound to fail. It's just the truth. Why wouldn't you believe what you constantly tell yourself? But when you shift your mentality to accept that getting back up from falling down is an option, you can make the conscious effort to do so. What's the best part of hitting rock bottom? The only way left to go is up. Of course, it's painful after recognizing the hurt that exists within us, but it's always wise to take small steps before leaping into the unknown. Here's where to start: recognize that you aren't broken. You may feel broken, but I promise you, the hurt that you've experienced does not define you. Experiences shape us, yes, but the feeling of brokenness won't last forever. You're human. Your feelings are valid. You are growing, and friend, you are not alone. Here are some helpful practices hat may be what you need going forward in putting your pieces back together again: Take deep breaths Allow yourself to feel Identify your strengths Practice gratitude Develop a support system Seek professional help Be gentle with yourself Think of healing as doing a puzzle. You don't immediately put all of the pieces in the right place, do you? No! Unless you're a puzzle-whiz, which... if you are... that's awesome. BUT, a majority of us take a good while to figure out where things go and how to make the scattered pieces resemble the picture on the box. It takes time, effort, focus, and patience. Eventually, the whole picture will form, but the beauty of it never disappears – even when the pieces are broken apart. Breaks don't rid crayons of their usefulness or vibrancy, and they don't rid you of yours either. Here's a note from our Spotlight artist, Mark Horne: I am a secondary school teacher in the UK and teach a large number of pupils who come from challenging backgrounds. One of my pupils was having a very difficult day, and whilst discussing ways they could de-stress (creative coloring, amongst other things), the idea for the strap came to me. Be bold, Landri Artist Mark Horne

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