"What inspires you to create?" This is a personal question, but we found clear themes in the answers we received from family to nature to life's stressors. Entries consisted of beautiful poems, videos, collages, photos and more. We will share many of these in the coming weeks including the winning entry by Miriam Perry, which you can also find at the bottom of this post.
Congratulations to Miriam and thanks to all of you who entered!
Dear Mom,
It’s been awhile since I’ve written you a letter. I want to thank you for something and I want to get the words just right. It's something that has added so much to my life. No, not your secret lasagna recipe, though that pink sauce is amazing. It is something that provides, in equal measure, zest and peace to my life: your creativity gene.
Over the years, I have made jewelry (with beads, clay, and metal), greeting cards, mixed media art, and most recently, hand embroidery/slow stitching. It is this last one that triggered an epiphany — that my artistic journey is a legacy, of sorts.
As I stitch the felt heart I’m making to put out in the world as a random act of kindness, there’s a rhythm that becomes a language that echoes back through time.
I thread the needle — and I am transported to our living room in the summer of 1970-something. An afternoon breeze is gently blowing through the open window, billowing the white lace curtains you made. You are in “your” chair, a glass of iced tea on the side table, a crocheted doily (that you also made) catching its beads of condensation. You are relaxing — after a full day of housework, cooking, and being a mom to ten-year-old me and my five-year-old brother — by making a counted cross stitch sampler. “That looks like a lot of work, Mom,” I said to you. “To me, it’s relaxing. This is how I unwind,” you said.
I backstitch along the border of the heart shape — and you are embellishing a tunic you made me for my 14th birthday. After transferring a pattern onto the mauve cotton fabric, you’re embroidering my zodiac sign, the stylized M symbol for Virgo, framed with tiny white flowers (I now know they are French knots). “It’s beautiful, Mom, but you could have saved a lot of time by just buying my gift.” You peer at me above your eyeglasses and ask, “Doesn’t this mean more to you than a shirt everyone else can have?” I say that it sure does. “Then it’s worth it,” you say.
I add a blanket stitch along the border of the heart — and we are sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and chatting about what plants I should put in my garden. You’re knitting a hat for outpatients of your local cancer center. I nod to the soft brace you’re wearing on your right arm. “Should you be doing that with your arm hurting?” You glance up, smiling. “It hurts no matter what I do so I might as well do something I enjoy. And, anyway, it takes my mind off the pain.”
As I add a string to the little heart, I realize that so much of how I know you is framed by all the things you have made with your hands. And so much of what I create comes from this artistic spark you have passed on to me.
You’ve been gone more than six years now. I miss you. At the same time, you are here with me as I finish this little felt heart and as I make everything I will create for the rest of my life. I am a maker. I make to bring joy to others, to find sanctuary from the noise of the world, and to forget my own aches and pains. I make because I am your daughter and just as you left me your secret lasagna recipe, you left me a legacy of creativity, which is about the most bountiful inheritance I can imagine. Feeling this connection to you is my greatest source of inspiration.
Thanks, Mom. I love you always.
Written by Miriam Perry for the 2025 Mirrix Inspo Contest
