All families staying at the Ronald McDonald House have a story to tell. Interwoven into their stories about their child or children, come the stark realities of the magnitude of their situations.  They begin to use words like “overwhelmed”, “falling apart”, “coming undone” and “unraveling at the seams”.  In the art room, these words are heard.  Therapy happens in the listening and art therapy happens in the doing. 

Tucked in a corner, sitting quietly and unassumingly next to a basket of yarn and strips of fabric, is a loom – brought to the house through the Art Therapy Program. Families use it one by one, creating a piece about the community of healing that happens here in ‘the house’. It is there because a loom allows families to weave the fabric of their lives back together. They weave in messages of hope and of perseverance.  Intertwined between the yarn and the messages are named ribbons of why families come to the Ronald McDonald House. There are bows tied like reminders, cloth remnants, and soft yarns all woven together into a message of healing; of coming back together; of telling their story in the gentlest of ways. Families come during art therapy time and they come in the middle of the night, to weave on the loom.  They weave, “Cherish every moment”, “One day at a time”, “Never give up on hope”, “I love you”.  Slowly, quietly, softly, and with great thoughtfulness, mindfulness and care, the loom fills and the weaving grows and the families feel a little bit better, having woven back together a part of them that felt like it was coming undone.

The success of the loom is exhibited in how quickly it grows and when it grows the most.  The loom is there when a mother can’t sleep because her child is ailing.  She weaves to calm herself at three in the morning.  The loom is there when a father struggles to find the right words to share with his child. He weaves to express himself as day settles into night.  The loom is there for the sister, who by day might punch her medically challenged brother in the arm, but on the loom she tells him she loves him. She weaves to honor him whenever she has the chance.   The weaving grows most readily and steadily between the hours of “I can’t sleep” and “I have to get up”.  There are six weavings completed at RMH and the call has been heard to bring another loom to the hospital for the parents who spend the night there. Ffamilies work to weave it all back together, as they weave through the medical journeys they are all on.