It started with stress cleaning a closet during the pandemic

We do not give our childhood dreams enough weight. As soon as you can talk, the world starts asking you: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Without a moment of hesitation or fear, we confidently shoot for the moon and pick an occupation among the stars.

With every passing year, the pressures of our environment, society, and expectations slowly chip away at our most pure dream.

I have come to the conclusion that the 7-year-old version of me instinctively knew how to create my own happiness better than any other version of myself. If you had asked 7-year-old me what I wanted to be when I grew up, without hesitation, I would pause from drawing to tell you: a fashion designer. I would proceed to show you my fashion sketchbook dedicated to drawings of dresses and shoes. Then, I might have tried to sell you a custom bookmark I made out of my mom’s fabric scraps (which subsequently caused quite the arts and crafts black market to arise in my 2nd-grade class and the principal to ban selling products at school altogether).

As the years went by, I abandoned the idea of pursuing fashion, as one does with childhood dreams, because it was not the supposed “pragmatic” choice. However, I did acquire the pursuit of social entrepreneurship - using business as a sustainable mechanism to help people. I went to college, studied business, and took every opportunity to learn how to pursue social entrepreneurship responsibly and not cause more harm than good.

Enter March of 2020. It was the last semester of my senior year of college. I went home for spring break, COVID-19 brought the world to a halt, and I never went back to campus or that life ever again. Take the stress and uncertainty that exists when one graduates from college and enters the real world, then multiply it by a factor of 1000 to graduate college and enter a world brought to its knees by an international pandemic. Not only have you lost your bearings, but the ship has capsized, and you have no tether.

I moved back home to my family’s farm in rural North Carolina and did the only things I could do: think and clean.

On one particularly tough day, I decided to clean out my parents' linen closet. I filled our hallway with stacks of sheets, pillows, and blankets my mom has saved throughout her life. In the bottom corner of the very last shelf, a vibrant orange caught my eye. I slowly unfolded an incredible orange handwoven wool blanket with black birds woven onto the surface and white tassels framing the sides.

A dry cleaner’s tag yellowed with age clung to one corner.

When I saw my grandpa’s name handwritten on this tag, it took everything in me not to burst into tears, but still a few managed to escape. His prominent presence throughout my life made his passing the year before all the more difficult for me. I immediately wrapped the blanket around me and happened to glance in a nearby mirror. Instantly, the wheels in my head started spinning. I envisioned a long wool coat made out of this blanket. This textile was too beautiful to spend its life in the back of a linen closet, and I wanted a piece of my grandpa back.

When I went to ask my mom for permission to cut this blanket, she told me the story behind it. In the 1970s, my grandparents went to Mexico. My grandpa saw an artisan on the side of the road with a wagon laden with handwoven wool blankets. He told their cab driver to stop and pull over next to the wagon. He bought as many blankets as his luggage would carry. My grandpa was a man who loved people and adventure.

In 2020, sixteen years after I had declared to the world that I wanted to be a fashion designer, I dusted off my mom’s old sewing machine, sketched out a coat, and watched tutorial after tutorial until I had made the coat of my dreams (and bound all of the seams with bias tape).

This coat, besides being my favorite piece of clothing, was my tether used to scale out of the mire of living during COVID-19. It was a symbol of hope for my future and the first of many upcycled, vintage textile creations in 2020.

Flash forward to now. I am working a demanding marketing job, and I am trying to learn how to balance everything in my life without burning out. I asked two women who I greatly admire about how they balance everything on their plates and still remain sane. These women hold multiple titles as business owners, mothers to several young children, and wives. They spoke to me about how we are the ones responsible for our own happiness - no one else - and the importance of rest. They told me that rest does not have to be physical rest but anything that restores your soul.

Sewing restores my soul. To choose to cut and sew is a choice to rest, to restore, and to create my own happiness.

My 7-year-old self knew instinctively what I was made to do. At 23 years old, it only took an international pandemic and my world falling to pieces for me to rediscover this passion.

The wonderful thing about dreams is that they should expand and refine with our life experiences if we take time in self-reflection. I mentioned that I have dreamt of pursuing social entrepreneurship for many years. I have learned as much as I can about business and worked for mission-driven companies that have fought human trafficking and child hunger. These experiences have shaped my worldview and, in turn, my vision for sewing.

COVID-19, whether you have battled the actual virus or not, has been a particularly harrowing life experience. Isolation and fear have been at an all-time high - especially among the elderly community. People were not meant to live in isolation.

At 23, my dream is to start a sustainable custom clothing line out of heirloom textiles and work to employ elderly women in my area who love to sew and are looking for community. They can sew these pieces at their own pace in their own homes. I want to create a community for these women, give them a positive daily purpose if they are looking for one, and cultivate a community of friends who meet regularly once COVID restrictions are lifted. I plan to donate a percentage of profits to my local human trafficking and domestic violence shelter to help give women who have endured heinous abuse a safe place to rest and to restore what has been taken from them.

My brand will be called Gentle People.

I chose the name Gentle People because of my core beliefs that will form the foundation of this company:

1. To be gentle with people, because as my grandma says, you don't know what battles people are fighting.
2. To have a gentle and quiet spirit - To live with humility and meet people where they are. My hope is that these clothes remind the wearer of these two precepts each day.
3. To be gentle with the planet - It is the only planet we have. I love heirloom textiles because they are both wonderfully sentimental and sustainable.

To me, there is something magical about heirloom textiles. You can feel the lives and stories that have brushed against them. I love finding family treasures and breathing new life into the things forgotten and discarded. To be able to wear a beautiful piece of my grandpa that feels like a warm hug from him and serves as a reminder of his life is priceless to me. These textiles were not meant to live in the back of linen closets.

Sewing has brought me back to my first dream and a forgotten part of me. Sewing connected me with my family and created a world of opportunity for discovering the love and stories behind the families of others. Sewing breathed life into a dream I had laid aside on the grounds of “practicality” and “pragmatism.” It began with a simple pair of scissors cutting into a rich history - a woven tapestry of love - and ended with a bold dream for the future.

Gentle People’s custom pieces will be heirlooms for a new generation. Crafted with love, for love.