Dealing with endings

When something you relied on goes away

I’m going to assume I’m not the only person to whom this has happened. We form attachments that meet our needs, hoping the attachment will last as long as our need lasts. It doesn’t. It isn’t our fault; we didn’t do anything wrong. Sometimes something we come to rely on just goes away. This is about my traversing the path between the ending and the new beginning.

Five years ago, right after I retired in the middle of the Pandemic, I started paper crafting. It was one of those meandering discoveries that moved from a bullet planner to a digital planner to an art journal to a junk journal in a way that can be described best as expensively accumulative. I always start my description of how I got to be a person who makes greeting cards for the sole purpose of donating them by saying “my first hobby was buying craft supplies, so now I have to use them”. I left all the junk journal fun behind because I was purchasing and scrounging for items to create something I had no use for and for which there was no market I could seem to access. A friend turned me on to making greeting cards, primarily because she was in one of those pyramid scheme crafting institutions I knew not to fall for having helped my sister pack up the massive amount of supplies she had bought when she was part of the same group, and my friend enticed me by pointing out cards made great gifts. Hours of watching YouTube videos later, I stumbled across the idea that it was possible to donate the cards to organizations that would distribute them and spread the joy. I made my choice based on the organization that gave me the most options for the least effort - a statement I’m not entirely proud of but it’s the truth - and I was all in. By the time I hit the current year, I was mass making cards from a stash of craft supplies that will probably outlast me and donating upwards of 2000 cards a year as one of around 10,000 volunteers committed to creating whatever was needed.

I had just packed a box with 180 holiday themed cards to get a jump on the September 30 deadline, when I discovered the product donation button was not accessible on the webpage. I had read the message posted there about a change in how the organization was going to work starting in 2026. Okay, I had skimmed it because I saw 2026 and figured I’d deal with whatever was going on later. There was a donate button, which I clicked expecting to get my product donation form that I would fill in and print and tear in half and put half in my box which I would then tape shut, taping the other half to the outside and then purchase my mailing label and take the box to the post office after which I would stop by Starbucks and reward myself with a coffee. That didn’t happen. That day there was no coffee, no trip to the post office, no purchased mailing label, no taping a label outside, no putting a label inside because the only thing I could do with what the donate button gave me was donate cash.

I immediately went to the Facebook group page because where else would I go to find out what was going on, and the page was paused. I had no idea what that meant other than there was no access to asking a question. There had been a strange ad for the organization a day or two before, so my first thought was it had been hacked, and my second thought was I’d check back in a couple of hours, and my third thought was I was really upset that I wasn’t going to get a coffee. By the end of the day I had figured out, after rereading the message I had skimmed before, that I was going to have to at least temporarily find somewhere else to take what I systematically created to satisfy my card making obsession. I sent a couple of messages to the only person I had access to, which coincidentally was the person who had deleted a couple of my posts because it had been determined I was self-promoting my non-monetized YouTube Channel where I put in a plug for the organization in every video and included a link for the product donation page that was now a link to nowhere, but I digress.

By noon the next day, a subsidiary group had been formed, I had been invited to join along with I don’t know how many other people, and the situation became painfully clear. The organization had fired all of the people who managed the department that covered my handmade donations, and that department had been dissolved. I stood somewhat quietly and watched as each person moved through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief - Denial (this is temporary), Anger (how can they do this to us), Bargaining (maybe we can make them change their mind), Depression (I can’t even stand to go into my craft room), and Acceptance (so where are you sending your cards). I watched as the person who set up the Facebook group - the same person who thought I was self-promoting and the irony of that did not escape me - tried to introduce some sense of organization that quickly took on the semblance of herding cats. I took a step back, took a deep breath, and poured a cup of warmed over coffee as I started removing the link from my videos because I did not want anyone to end up what I now thought of as the link to nowhere.

I felt like I was exactly where I had been five years ago - I was obsessed with a creative activity that produced a product, and I needed somewhere to send it. I felt trapped between my wants and my needs. After a couple of days of reading the exact same posts from one person after another, I realized what I didn’t need was the Facebook group. So, I sought out a button that did work. Leave Group.

In order to move past my own feeling of loss, I then forced myself to make a video of me making a card, in which I did a little whining as a part of the process of dealing with unexpected change¹. I had essentially firmly landed in the middle of acceptance. It was time to move on.

I then had a long conversation with myself to remember what was really important to me, so as always I made a list in my journal. First, I wanted to be able to paper craft to my heart’s content. Second, knowing I was going to make more than I needed, I wanted to be able to donate said paper crafted items to an organization that would distribute the items to the places who would then pass them along to wherever they were needed. Third, and most important, I did not want to start driving around to distribute bundles of cards to senior centers and nursing homes and hospitals. I then backtracked to the organization that was my second choice all those years ago. I already knew they were still in existence and were reliably ranked as a donation site. The parameters were similar to what I had been doing. Two emails, and I was able to determine that what I had already completed would work for them. The boxing and mailing process would be as simple as what I had been doing. At that point, I could have simply called it all done and picked up my glue bottle as if nothing had changed. But there was one more issue. I no longer had a group. While they were cursory, social media structured relationships, they were my cursory social media structured relationships, and I was feeling lonely. At the end of my journal list, I had written ‘do I need a group’?

As I had been processing all of this, that was a reality staring me in the face. I had allowed myself to become attached to a Facebook group along with approximately five thousand other people. You don’t really have conversations with five thousand people at a time. The interaction within that group often took on the tone that we were all in it together and, in many respects, we were. Most of us were not what would be considered friends although there were names that seemed to always be popping up. Many of us were merely observers of the frequent contributors. Many of us just mailed in our boxes full of handmade items, occasionally posting a picture of said items just before mailing, and then went back to gluing paper to card stock or knitting or crocheting. New people wandered thru, always asking the same questions, and someone would answer. We watched the posts mostly to find out if there was something specific needed, like Thinking of You cards, or red scarves. It wasn’t a friendship building arena, at least for me. It was, however, a kind of touchstone so I didn’t overwhelm my ‘in real life’ friends and my Facebook friends with posts about my crafting.

So, I searched Facebook and found a card making group with a lot of people. There was no underlying cause this time, just a substantial group of people who appeared to enjoy making cards. They called themselves a community. To be accepted, all I had to do was agree to not discuss politics and being nice. I joined and posted a picture of some of my cards. There was an overwhelming response because these folks absolutely loved commenting on whatever was posted; there are 9,000 subscribers and I got over 400 likes on my first post. I added a link to a video showing me making the cards in the picture and over 200 people watched it because no one cares if someone is self-promoting. I envisioned a hoard of lonely national and international crafting card makers, pumped up on glue fumes, surrounded by piles of patterned papers moving from card making to scrolling the Facebook group to see what new pictures were out there. I even recognized a few names from people I’d met in virtual workshops because, apparently, us crafters are all out there just trying to find someone who understands why it is important to know what weight card stock to use for an A2 card and where to find a couple of card sketches to switch up the next batch of cards.

Not that you asked for it, but here is my advice: When a door closes, look for an open window. I realize what I truly have come to rely on is my ability to find that open window. I’m obsessed with making and donating cards, and it appears that, for now at least, I’ve found my tribe. If these folks wander off, I’ll find someone else. Who knows. Maybe I’ll even go with them. Not that I can currently envision doing anything but card making, but we never know; as long as there’s coffee, I’m in.

NOTE: The organization I was connected to was Operation Gratitude. It is still a wonderful organization, however, it appears it is going through a transition that I hope will continue to support sending care packages to deployed service people, as well as to first responders, and veterans. I have disconnected from them at this point because the donation hub I’m moving to has a broader scope. There are several organizations that do what Operation Gratitude does. If you are someone who wants to create handmade items and donate them, it really does make sense to start locally as the cost of shipping is increasing. Research reliable donation sites. I’m currently working with Cards for Kindness, and my crocheted items will be donated to a local homeless shelter.

1. The video can be found on my YouTube channel. Random Crafty Acts.