By Nicole K. //
The Tapestry Project began in 2014, about eight years after I was diagnosed. Never did I imagine that this small passion project would find such resonance amongst our readers who have since become our writers, volunteers and fellow mental health advocates – all of whom I’m proud to call my friends.
Running an organisation remains a steep learning curve for me, and I try to be mindful that I need to manage my own recovery. Sustaining the work is only possible because of our amazing team of staff, volunteers, board members and partners.
I believe that every story we share can bring hope to those around us: the burnt-out employee, the overwhelmed parent, the student wondering how to seek professional support, the person wondering if there’s even a light at the end of the tunnel, or if life is even worth the effort. These are the people we write for, and oftentimes, they are the ones who use their stories to pass on their hope.
New Seasons of Growth
Tapestry is undergoing many changes in its journey to becoming a formalised non-profit organisation.
Our direction for 2023 will focus on building communities that allow space for stories that not only strengthens others, but also ourselves; to tell our stories in ways that empower growth.
Empowered storytelling is for everyone, not just simply for people with a diagnosis. This is why we are bringing our narrative journaling workshops, like the Re:Story programme, closer to the community. We will also be running regular in-person sessions of Sojourners – our journaling club for all who wish to set aside an hour or two for a mental breather. We’re also rolling out our Crossroads workshops which aims to facilitate workplace mental health conversations through choice-making storying.
To achieve all these, it means we need more dedicated manpower and funding, which is why I’m thrilled to announce that we have a new editor, Karen Zainal! A seasoned writer and educator, Karen has been editing our articles for the past two years with a unique sensitivity and nuance that can only be cultivated through lived personal experience, humility and compassion. I’m proud that she has taken up this mantle to lead and grow the editorial arm of Tapestry.
I am also excited to share that our Tapestry team has grown with the addition of our first full-time volunteer-turned-staff, Clara Lim! As a counsellor in training and a writer herself, Clara will focus on building our Tapestry community through various programmes and collaborations together with me.
Personally, I’ve embarked on further study into narrative therapy as I grow in my role as Tapestry’s executive director. The narrative journey has been an illuminating one that satisfied my curiosities about narratology and solidified my convictions about Tapestry’s future directions:
- There is a danger in just telling a single narrative – the “rags to riches” narrative arc for someone with mental health struggles. Doing so excludes and invalidates journeys that may not necessarily follow the same path. Our mission is to allow for more textured and nuanced stories that interweave diverse story threads.
- Instead of placing the onus of the struggling person to get “professional help”, perhaps we need to explore other systems that impact mental health, like family and social support — how does support look like before, during and after the person receives “professional help”? As a society, how do we listen and speak with one another in ways that show support? What if we focused our attention on flawed structures instead of on flawed people?
- People do not exist in a vacuum – we exist in communities and systems. It therefore makes sense to examine mental health embedded within systems in education, employment, family structure, and religious beliefs. When we locate the problems of mental illness in a person, we end up seeing the person as the problem. Doing so risks obscuring the deeper societal issues and structures that entrench mental health challenges.
- Like physical health, mental health exists on a spectrum. There are no binaries in the world – no one is perfectly resilient or perfectly un-resilient; well or unwell, strong or weak, diagnosed or undiagnosed. There is neither hero nor villain in our stories. Oftentimes, we are a blend of both, sometimes, simultaneously. That is part of the complexity of being human, one that interacts with the world through the lens of their life’s experiences. As Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani once said: “We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
- The power of story lies in the beauty of collaboration and hope. Sharing our story is a collaborative affair between writer and reader; storyteller and listener. There is an element of translation, transmutation and interpretation. In an oddly comforting way, your story is never fully about you. It is about how a person perceives and receives your stories. Their response is their responsibility, not ours.
Perhaps you might feel like your story might not resonate with everyone (there are after all 3.2 billion people in the world), but Hope knows at least one person in the world will not have to feel alone because of your story.
We’ll be introducing the Writers’ Circle so that all our Tapestry contributors know that they have a place here with us where hope is contagious.
In the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s 1982 short story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Red, the narrator says to his prison cellmate Andy: “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” He was telling Andy to just give up on hoping for a release from imprisonment, and the hope to return to normal life. Andy ignores this and continues scraping on the stony prison wall with a fork, eventually creating a tunnel that led to his escape to freedom after 25 years. Towards the end, Andy says to Red: “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
So here we are, after eight years, once again armed with a dangerous hope and a chance to try again. Welcome to 2023.
Nicole K.
Founder, The Tapestry Project SG
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