The first time I was driving across the country, at the end of 2011, my mom drove with me. The road trip was years in the making, and the two weeks prior to our departure were packed full of a million tasks and zero down time.  

Talking about all the stress of getting out the door, I remember turning to my mom and saying, “I feel frayed. I feel like my soul has shriveled a bit—it no longer reaches all the way to the ends of my fingers.”

(Yes, I was that dramatic. I was a twenty-five-year-old writer. It’s to be expected. In fact, my dramatics could have been a lot worse.)

My mom paused. To her credit, she only looked mildly concerned. Then she said, “I know what you mean. I don’t feel that way right now, but I’ve felt that.”

The thing is: nothing really terrible had happened at that time. 

Instead, some really lovely, long-dreamt-of things happened instead—for example, turning in the final pass for my first novel, OF GIANTS & ICE, and finishing the first draft of my second novel, OF WITCHES & WIND. 

 It was just that A LOT had happened in the span of a few months, and trying to keep up, I had pushed myself so far and so fast that I felt like I’d left part of myself behind somewhere. 

Here’s why I’m bringing this up today:  

You may have felt this too, maybe even right this moment. 

“I feel like my soul is frayed” is probably a way more apt description of living these days than whatever I was going through ten years ago.  

Older now, I make a practice of watching out for that feeling. If I feel frayed, like my soul doesn’t stretch to the end of my fingers, I take some time to go find those frayed edges and to discover where the unraveling began. 

Usually, something happened. Sometimes, it’s a happy milestone; sometimes, it’s a painful event. Sometimes, it has only happened to me or my family. Often, these days, some event has occurred that affects many of us. 

Noticing where the fraying happened, I begin to reweave my unraveled self by asking: “What does this mean? How does it fit into my story, the one I’m creating by living my life?” 

Sometimes, it’s also: “How does this fit into the context of my family’s story? Or my ancestors’? Or my nation’s?”

Usually, words are involved in that process. I discuss with a friend, a mentor, or another adult processor. I write fiction driven by the same questions that trouble me in everyday life.

In this way, I integrate. I reweave the frayed threads until I have a better understanding of how my own life story is taking shape—and how that story, the story of a single person, fits in with the larger story we’re all writing together. 

If you’re feeling frayed today, I hope sharing this process helps, even just a little, so that you can reweave your loose threads back until you feel whole. 

Take care, sweet ones.