The Gift of Starting Again

The Gift of Starting Again

September always feels like a false new year to me. The air turns cooler, the light shifts, and there’s a whisper of sharpened pencils and clean notebooks. It’s a season that invites us to begin again.

I was three years old when I first picked up knitting needles. Patience wasn’t in my nature, I rushed, tugged too hard, and wanted it all to be finished before it had even begun. My mum, however, had patience in spades. She sat with me, unpicking, showing, guiding, and showing again. I don’t remember what those first rows looked like, but I do remember her presence: steady, kind, and unflustered.

When I was five or six, she knitted me a snake. It wore a bow around its neck, - made unknowingly by me - which, she told me, was my contribution, my first “finished” piece of knitting. The bow has long since disappeared, but the snake remains, a funny little reminder that beginnings matter, even if the results are lopsided or imperfect.

I often think that what my mum really gave me was not the skill of knitting, but the practice of patience. It wasn’t something I had naturally, but something she grew in me, stitch by stitch. And isn’t that the truth of so many beginnings? We’re not born ready; we become ready through gentle repetition, through trying again.

This September, instead of charging forward with grand resolutions, I’m reminding myself that beginnings don’t need to be perfect. They only need space, a little patience, and the willingness to start again.

Nessa