In 2016, I made myself a merit badge.
Not a quirky craft project. Not a Pinterest moment.
A literal survival marker.
I was suicidally depressed — the kind of depression where getting out of bed and putting on clothes felt like dragging a dead planet behind me. My marriage was an emotional minefield. My stepdaughter was in peak hostile-teen-girl mode with medical fragility that prevented any real accountability. My family of origin had shattered in every direction:
– my older brother swallowed first by cocaine and alcohol, then by AA jargon that replaced real conversation with sponsorship-speak,
– my sister vanishing into identity politics while I fought her instead of hearing any wisdom her perspective might offer,
– my baby brother dissolved in addiction,
– my father had loudly declared I would “never see [him] again without Ma”. Translation: unless I welcomed his wife into my world. The woman who beat me and molested my brother. I was sorry to see him go but would not put myself or any child in such company.
I was so alone, orphaned. Tired. done.
And in the middle of that psychic ice field, I made a badge that said:
GOT OUT OF BED ANYWAY.
The stitching is uneven. There are stray threads everywhere. The little figure looks lost, confused, and stitched by someone operating on 3% battery. Which, again, is exactly who I was.
It wasn’t beautiful.
It wasn’t expert.
It wasn’t “craft.”
It was creative rebellion on a day when brushing my teeth felt like defying gravity.
I didn’t want to sew.
I didn’t want to do anything.
But something in me knows that Creative Energy is Source Energy.
It’s the original movement of the universe.
It is the pulse of Life itself.
I needed that current so badly
I was frozen.
Stuck.
Pinned to the floor by a depression that wanted to calcify my soul.
So forcing myself to create anything, even a messy, crooked badge — was the tiniest act of remembering:
Creation is how to plug back in.
I put the badge in a drawer after that because it was too intimate to put on display.
I understand now that was the first flicker of life returning.
Not the glamorous kind people put on Instagram.
The real one:
a tiny flame that begins with survival-level creativity.
The flame that comes from choosing a single spark when everything looks dark.
And now – almost a decade later – I’m sharing this because:
If you are depressed, create something.
Not a masterpiece.
Not a project.
Not a “new hobby.”
Just something that didn’t exist five minutes ago.
Make a crooked badge.
Sketch a flower.
Scribble on scrap paper.
Or make a really good peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
(Seriously. That counts.)
Because creative energy isn’t dependent on the output.
It’s about the flow.
It’s about movement where there was none.
It’s about reminding your system that you are not frozen, not finished, not gone.
That badge saved my life not because it was well-made — it wasn’t —
but because it got me unstuck.
It whispered,
“You made something. Keep going.”
I got out of bed anyway.
I made something anyway.
I lived anyway.
And if you’re in that place:
make something.
Anything.
Let it be uneven.
Let it be ugly.
Let it be small.
Just let it be yours.
That’s how the flow returns.
That’s how you slowly start to live again.