In 2019, I walked away from the creative world—not with a dramatic slam of the door, but with a quiet, aching pause. It didn’t feel like burnout. It wasn’t a failure. It was something more….something like a slow unraveling of joy.  Back then, my art felt more like a performance than an outlet. Every stitch, every brushstroke, every weave, every pixel was weighed down by a heaviness of expectation—mine, theirs, the algorithm. I had built a rhythm of producing, posting, perfecting, however somewhere in that cycle, I lost the pulse of why I started creating in the first place. 

I remember staring at a half-finished weave, surrounded by materials I adored, and feeling… nothing. No spark. No curiosity. Just a hollow echo of “should.” I should finish this. I should post it. I should be grateful. But I wasn’t. I felt nothing but expectation and even anxiety. So, I stopped. I didn’t announce it. I didn’t make a farewell post. I just let the silence settle. I focused on other parts of life—on healing, on listening, on being more than a creator. And in that stillness, I began to understand that I wasn’t alone in leaving. SO many makers were leaving the creative world. It was a necessary exhale collectively for a lot of creatives. I then made the decision to move across the country to be surrounded by family. Nothing like absolute extremes in my decisions. 

Immediately I threw myself into the family and made as many memories as I could. For 8 months I went to every apple orchard, every handmade market, antique stores, family adventures, and then covid happened. The world shut down, and I was just trying to figure out where I could feel safe from such a chaotic world.  So many of us got lost in the epidemic and many of us came out the end of that whole debacle a different person. I came out even more discombobulated. I had no idea who I was and was hitting my mid 30’s more confused and feeling more like a failure than ever before.  

2023 was the hardest year of my life. The people closest to me decided to move all over the country and everything felt so foreign. I was alone in a place I loved but wasn’t exactly familiar and had to figure it all out. Without getting into too many details, I had a sort of an extreme awakening. I met someone who believed in me and pushed me to get better. Someone who challenged me to get out of my own way and wanted nothing more than to protect me and build a life with me. Now, a few years later, I’m making a return to the creative world—but not to the same creative world I left. I’ve built something new. Something playful, tactile, bold. My art is no longer a performance. It’s a conversation. A wink. A kiss of color. A stitched rebellion. Leaving in 2019 gave me the space to rediscover my voice. And today, every piece I make carries that truth: sometimes, stepping away is the most creative act of all. 

XOXO,

Savi Monroe