Let’s Be ALL the Many Things We Are

Literally stitching my conflicting traits together into a self portrait puppet

You might not pick it out of a lineup, but this puppet is me:

Over the years, I’ve been unaware of, rejected, or just plain struggled to accept various parts of myself. This project (created for Neurokind’s “weave” prompt) is an attempt to incorporate them all into one place in some way. To accept myself with all my varied, seemingly-contradictory parts.

Made from the Actual Me, Not What I Thought *should* be Me

This puppet is made of bits and bobs— small pieces of fabric and felt that survived our downsize and bounced all around the country in our Airstream trailer home, a pair of my actual shorts, a piece of scrap wood from the furniture shop I work in part time, a bracelet I had on my wrist when I visited Kensington Gardens that wore down to nothing seven years later because I couldn’t bear to take it off…

Not every piece of material used is significant, but by using important objects and fabrics where I could, I was able to mentally and physically piece together parts of myself I already knew existed, and see them in front of me as one Whole.

I think sometimes we underemphasize the importance of physicality in mental health. We forget that using your hands, your body, and seeing and feeling things come together in the physical world outside of your own thoughts, is a powerful form of healing.

Celebrating the Contradictory

A lot of my traits and tastes feel like they just don’t make sense together. Just a few small examples:

• In many situations I’m meticulously organized (work, projects, lists), but in others I’m chaotic and forgetful (cleaning the house and social events).

• I loved theater and being on stage in high school, but I’m terrified of social situations and tend to avoid them.

• I love heartwarming, life-affirming stories and shows like Queer Eye and Somebody Feed Phil, but I also love morbid, weird humor and dark dramedies like Swiss Army Man, and The End of the F*cking World that are really honest about the pain of being human.

• I remember all the quotes from my favorite movies like they’re sound bites stored in my brain, but when it comes to filling out forms, I can’t remember my own address.

• I’m the quiet one in the room, but I listen to my music really loud.

• I can’t handle scary movies, but I love horror for how it can communicate so well what real fear and trauma and pain feel like through story.

• I come across as super shy and people-pleasing, but I get really loud, enthusiastic, and opinionated if you get me talking about stories—especially why something did or didn’t work in a show I just watched.

I think we all actually have a lot of these kinds of contradictions in us, but maybe hide them or de-emphasize them—contradictions don’t work very well as brands, and I think we all feel the pressure to present a very clear, organized image, especially online.

I tried to lean into these contradictions in designing this puppet, and not try to make them all shiny and clean and homogenous.

These bright and dark and ordered and chaotic parts all go together because they are together—whether or not they make sense from the outside, they are all part of a whole: Me.

Recognizing How Things Feel Matters

I’ve always known that in any stories I tell (whether that’s with words or pictures, or in this case, a puppet), I want to focus on how things feel. Those were the best words I could put to it for years. I didn’t realize until more recently, when I learned I was Autistic and ADHD, that this goes so much deeper than just a preferred storytelling approach—my sensory experience is a vital part of who I am, and how I see the world. I wanted to really celebrate that while making this puppet.

I mostly worked with what I happened to have on hand, but I made a lot of mindful decisions for which on-hand materials to use, based on my sensory experience of them. I’ve done this before subconsciously, but this was a new way for me to be thoughtful about what my neurodivergent brain’s response is to different textures.

Certain fabric scraps I had were maybe prettier or closer to the right color I had in mind, but didn’t feel right—so I put them back in the pile. I wanted this puppet to have a fullness to it, a shape that felt good in your hands—so I used foam leftover from the furniture shop I work in part time. Little decisions like these helped me not only create a final puppet that feels nice, but also learn more about myself in the process.

One thing I know I’d love to do for any future puppets is to try weighting them with beans or rice.

Working With My Brain, Not Against It

I had a bit of a plan—half a sketch, really, and mostly a list of contradictory traits and a few scribbled ideas for how to visualize them—but partway through trying to design the final look of the puppet I chose to listen to the parts of me that were just crying out to dump all my craft supplies on the floor and figure it out hands-on.

So my brain and I set the unfinished plan aside, and trusted my hands would know what to do.

This allowed my overthinking parts to take a step back and let some spontaneous play happen—which I find results in truer work that’s less stilted. It worked beautifully when I wrote the first draft of my novel, Things Not Said, for NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago. I had barely planned the story, decided to do it days before November started, and I shared each chapter with my patrons, totally unedited, as I completed it. It gave me a kind of on-stage energy I hadn’t felt since doing theater in high school, and I loved it.

I’m going to keep trying to use this minimally planned, hands-on, on-stage kind of approach to future projects—including a re-publishing of that same novel draft here on Substack in a few weeks, along with some exploratory artwork to see how it might feel as a graphic novel!

✨What are some parts of yourself that don’t seem like they go together? Let’s celebrate them!

Love,