My Story
I've been pregnant for seventeen years.
For seventeen years, I was in God's waiting room, carrying a promise.
How many of us have waited for something, an answer, a new beginning, the manifestation of a dream long held?
I carried the hope of meeting my birth mother. Waiting without knowing can feel exciting and confusing, raising many questions, but even in the unknown, faith remained the constant thread guiding me.
Sometimes the wisdom we carry isn't ours alone, it's imparted to us, thread by thread.
In February 2024, I visited the Black Woman Genius: Elizabeth Talford Scott, Tapestries of Generations exhibit at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore, a celebration of Black women fiber artists of the Chesapeake. It wasn't until days later, while I was still reflecting on what I had seen, that the realization settled in me: everyone carries a life quilt, one made of many threads, some inherited and some gathered from our own experiences. I called the process of weaving mine The Woven Journey.
I didn't yet know how to quilt, but I was ready to learn. I wanted to create my own life quilt, one that holds how my journey sits at the intersection of two women's lives, divine timing, and a belonging that goes beyond biology.
That same year, after seventeen years, I finally met my birth mother's side of the family, my aunts, my uncle, and my grandmother. I had long desired to meet them, and yet I was already whole, blessed with an amazing adoptive family. Meeting them only added more threads to my quilt.
For months, I carried the idea of creating my life quilt but didn't know where to begin. Then, one evening in December 2024, tired and hungry after work, I almost skipped my building's holiday gathering. Before I left, I prayed: God, I'm tired and I don't really feel like going. But I'll go, please make it worth it.
I went. I checked out the food selection and, not seeing anything I liked, started making my way to the elevator. That's when I caught the eye of an older woman and stopped to say hello. We talked, and somewhere in the conversation she mentioned that she was a quilter. I nearly fell out of my chair. Only then did I tell her about my quilt project and my idea for The Woven Journey, and we talked for hours. God made it worth it. A neighbor I had never met became a divine connection: she opened my eyes to view quilting as an art form, not just a decorative piece for a bed, and she introduced me to the African American Quilters of Baltimore, the guild where I'm now learning the craft and its history, surrounded by women whose own life quilts are full of wisdom, creativity, and grace.
This is The Woven Journey, a movement that uses the metaphor of weaving to honor how the threads of a life come together into each person's unique story. It inspires adoptees, and all people, to embrace the many threads that make them who they are, and who they are becoming. Wherever your journey has taken you, a thread runs through it. Mine was gold, the thread of faith, there all along, even when I couldn't see it.
My life quilt holds my adoptive family, my birth family, my faith, my chosen family, and love.
