Crafting linked to improved mental health
I didn’t set out to write about mental health or crafting. I set out to understand why making things by hand kept bringing me back to myself.
Growing up, creativity became my way to quiet the noise - a place to rewrite the story around me with color, pattern, and a bit of magic. Over time, I realized it wasn’t just escape; it was transformation. Making things by hand showed me how joy can bloom from even the hardest chapters.
Showing up day after day - with quiet grit and a clear vision - reconnected me to balancing big-picture work with bite-sized craft projects. As I built Mercury Mosaics, I found myself craving projects with a simple beginning, middle, and end. Cooking, something I avoided for most of my adult life, unexpectedly became part of that rhythm - alongside smaller mosaic work.
Mosaics remain my favorite way to decompress. I'm drawn to hand-cutting tiny pieces and outlining simple patterns. The ritual of arriving to the work brings the greatest satisfaction. In recent years, the process itself has become more fulfilling than finishing. It's the rhythm of making - the repetition, the focus - that I return to.
Somewhere in that practice, I found what's often described as a flow state.
Finishing still matters. But learning to balance starting and completing has become part of the work itself. As I revisited projects I had left unfinished and began completing them - one by one - I noticed something shifting beyond the studio. A sense of lightness returned. A quiet dignity resurfaced.
It wasn't dramatic. It was steady.
And it made me curious.
Over time, I became curious about why this practice felt so grounding.
Flow state and artistic practice
I started to wonder if mosaic - at any stage - could help someone else feel this way.
Later, I learned there was a name for it: flow state.
Could small mosaic projects open that door for others? I believe they can. While crafting may not land the same way for everyone, what I experienced - again and again - was this work carried a depth I hadn't fully understood at first.
I kept returning to the same setup: a simple dedicated table, a playlist, an apron, tools laid out with intention, a beverage within reach. Over time, the ritual itself became the entry point. Cutting tile, arranging pieces, adjusting compositions - these simple, repetitive actions created a space where the outside world quieted.
That's where flow lives.
It didn't require travel or escape. It was available right where I was - at home, at the table, in the work. Sometimes I found it in ten minutes. Sometimes I stayed for hours. The duration didn't matter as much as the shift that happened once I arrived.
In recent years, life asked more of me than I thought I could hold. I lost my mother and stepfather. My childhood home was gone. My aunt faced a near-death health crisis. My husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
There wasn't a clean way through that.
I found myself repeating the advice I'd given so easily to others - never give up, keep going, it's a new day - and realizing I didn't always want to follow it. Still, I chose to show up. Not out of inspiration, but out of practice.
This became the real lesson: learning to work in the middle. To keep going when I didn't feel like it. To build a habit that could hold me when motivation disappeared.
Craft became that place.
Slowly, without urgency, something began to shift. The heaviness didn't vanish, but it softened. A sense of lightness returned in small, steady ways. I started to recognize that these moments - these stretches of focused making - were doing more than passing time. They were helping me rebuild.
For awhile, I lost my space to make at home. When I finally restored it, I felt the difference immediately. Even a ten-minute session held value. I had to unlearn the "all of nothing" mindset and remember that small acts of making still count.
Sometimes, that's where the work begins.
That understanding carried me into a deeper realization.
Making Through It
I found my way back to my own art - and, with it, a voice that felt distinctly mine.
It wasn't something I set out to define. It emerged over time, through the work itself. And it taught me something I hadn't fully understood before: creativity isn't always polished or easy.
Before any studies & statistics, I have my own lived experience. Mosaics became a way to process emotion - to make sense of what I was carrying through different chapters of life.
More recently, as I navigated significant change within my primary business, the weight of it was constant. Leading a creative manufacturing company - keeping everything moving, aligned, and intact - was demanding in ways I hadn't yet experienced. There were long stretches of uncertainty, and more night than I'd like to admit where self-doubt kept me awake.
I didn't want to let my team down.
So I turned to making.
Evenings, weekends - whenever I could find space - I returned to the work. Not to create something perfect, but to move through what I didn't yet have language for.
Looking back, I can say this clearly: without that practice, I don't know that I would have held through the pandemic.
Craft gave me a place to stand.
And over time, something deeper took root. Not just a return to making, but the emergence of a personal body of work - separate from Mercury Mosaics, yet shaped by everything I had built there.
It wasn't forced. It wasn't planned.
It was formed.
