Iara Lima

People who embroider often have an answer ready, and the vast majority will say it was to occupy their time, but there is a portion who will mention mental health.

I have the impression that embroidery has always been a part of me, not because someone taught me; sometimes I feel as if I was born already knowing how to do it. My mother doesn’t embroider, neither do my cousins. Only a small portion of the women in my family embroider; the others took up knitting, crochet, and sewing.

So I asked myself: why did I start embroidering?

Since I couldn’t find an explanation that satisfied me through rational analysis alone, I also turned to symbolic language. Yes! I opened the tarot cards. And the answer I received mapped out my journey up to this point. I want to share it with you because, like me, if you also find meaning in spirituality, perhaps it is suggesting that you should embroider too.

When I asked “why do I embroider?”, the cards that came out in sequence were: Judgment, The Hanged Man, Strength, The Chariot, and The Fool.

It all begins with a call (Judgment). It was an awakening! A desire to create, perhaps coming from my ancestry, since I was already studying that theme. The fact is that I recognized I was being called, because at that time my life was on pause (The Hanged Man).

There was a period when I had stopped, and I felt trapped where I was, prevented from doing what I truly wanted. Those were the moments when you weigh the life you have and reflect on the choices you made that brought you to where you are. I reflected on work, career, social life, relationships… and the desire grew to move from being someone who “only organizes memory” to someone who “creates memory.”

That phase demanded a great deal of courage, patience, and above all, resilience (Strength). The Strength card teaches us that true strength is not in never falling, but in rising every time it is necessary. It reminds us that courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act despite it. It was Strength that kept me going when no one was watching, sustaining me all the way to my first embroidery exhibition.

And from it came movement (The Chariot) and the conscious awareness that I was on the right path. Research blossomed, academic articles were completed, journals published my texts, the exhibition received visitors, and the knowledge I acquired was shared and began to germinate in other gardens.

Finally, embroidering for me was a leap into the unknown (The Fool). I started embroidering simply because I did! I didn’t know it would become research, that it would turn into an exhibition, that I would teach others to embroider. It was like throwing a backpack over a wall and then having to climb the wall to retrieve it.

Today, my “Fool” is pure becoming. But this story is not about origin, it’s about attitude! Every time I pick up a needle and thread, I begin something new, I strengthen a new cycle. It is a stitch that is never the last, because I always rebuild myself in this dynamic of being who I am in a new way.

Here I have not presented an objective explanation for embroidery, but an account of the symbolic way I understood this process.