Right in the middle of that first wave of Covid — when we were speaking to family through windows, wiping down the post, wearing masks, and standing in those perfectly spaced two‑metre points in a line (unsurprisingly, something us Brits seemed to be strangely good at) — something shifted in me.
It was a time when we weren’t allowed to go anywhere. A time when people weren’t allowed to be with their loved ones as they passed. A time when final goodbyes happened through screens. And although virtual connection became a lifeline — sometimes even the very last lifeline — it still felt painfully impersonal. It wasn’t the same as holding a loved one’s hand tight and whispering your last “I love you.”
During those months, I began receiving more and more requests from families who had lived through this surreal version of loss. Funerals were small, distanced, quiet. Grief felt suspended in mid‑air, with nowhere to go.
One day, I had just finished a keepsake for a customer who had lost someone during that time. She came to collect it. She didn’t say anything — she didn’t need to. The moment she saw it, her reaction brought tears to my eyes. It was as if I had felt her pain through the making process, stitch by stitch, and this moment — handing it back to her — was the final step in helping her make something right again.
Having their garments transformed into a bear she could hold was the closest thing I could offer to that final farewell she never got to have. And that was the moment it truly hit me.
My work meant something.
It wasn’t morbid. It wasn’t strange. It wasn’t “just sewing.” It was a way — however small — of helping people navigate a tiny corner of the gaping hole that is loss.
The whole process matters: feeling the fabric, touching it, learning the story behind it, understanding who wore it and why it mattered. There is a tenderness in that. A responsibility. A privilege.
And I know now — and I think I always have — that if I can offer even a moment of comfort, even the smallest sense of closeness, then what I set out to achieve is worth every second. Those months taught me that even in the hardest times, love finds a way to be held.
And so, stitch by stitch, I found myself drawn back to the place where every story begins — my little sanctuary I call Narnia.