About

Settle in folks, it’s a long story.

I’m Tresa Edmunds. I have been blogging in one place or another since 2002, having all my 20’s and 30’s while writing about them publicly. It’s been messy.

When I started this blog I was 25, doing my darnedest to be a Righteous Mormon Woman, disabled by endometriosis and desperate to become a mother. I was working as a freelance craft designer and the biggest, grandest  vision I had for myself was to have a crafting show on HGTV. 

But simultaneously, I was also a feminist and gay rights activist pushing for a more inclusive version of Mormonism. I just tried to keep that last part quiet. And when I failed at that, I tried to compartmentalize it by keeping my activism separate from the blog. But I failed at that too. At a time when Mormons dominated the craft industry in the scrapbook world, and also the Mormon Mommy Blogging world, my big mouth held me back a lot. Even as hard as I tried to keep a lid on it, I still lost jobs, book deals, brand opportunities, networks, friends, and so much more. But dammit, I tried so hard to keep a smile on and keep moving.

I left the LDS church in 2014 when they started excommunicating activists. Once I had too much experience to deny any longer – that the way things were was the way the church leaders wanted it. And I knew that they did not represent the God I have known. I still consider myself a person of faith, but my faith is in so much more now. And crucially, tempered by humility. I am thoroughly comfortable in the uncertainty. Maybe I’m talking to ancestors, maybe I’m carried away in a particularly powerful Internal Family Systems meditation. I’m not threatened by either one. I think of things in a dual approach. I’m a skeptical mystic.

I became a mom in 2008 with the very sudden and exciting arrival of my son Atticus, born at 27 weeks and weighing 2 lbs 3 oz. Before he was home from the hospital we knew he had cerebral palsy, and later in his childhood we discovered he is also autistic. After a grand total of 16 years of wrestling with endometriosis and fertility, we made peace with the fact that we won’t have more kids. Which means my only experience with motherhood has been in uncharted waters with milestones that look very different from what I expected. It isn’t disability that has made that challenging, it’s the isolation. It’s having to constantly reinvent the wheel, alone, because the “What to Expect When Raising A Child That Isn’t Perfectly Typical” book doesn’t exist. And usually what happens is you only talk to doctors or clinicians dealing with what’s “wrong.” Nobody is telling you what is right. 

I’ve been lucky to have adults with disabilities in my corner who have taught me how to be the kind of parent I want to be to Atti. In our house we celebrate our differences and use them to be a stronger team. We believe in biology and that every human has unique strengths and limitations. That disability designations are just rooted in capitalism and the worth of every human lies in their innate human dignity. We celebrate autism as just another way to be a human, with its own challenges but also its immense gifts.

I took a big blog break in 2016 when I could no longer keep up with the demands of a compartmentalized life. I couldn’t write one more friggin craft tutorial while I was fighting to stay alive. I went on a deep dive to figure out what I could do about my health once and for all and had to confront a lot of things I was working very hard to ignore. Trauma therapy has changed a whole lot since the last time I gave it a sincere try. It actually does something other than desensitize you now. It’s been brutal, but I feel like I actually have reason to hope for a future free from the past.

Now that my health is improving and it looks like I’m just some physical therapy away from being healthier than I’ve ever been, I’m entering my 40’s without any vision of what my future will look like. Everything I imagined for myself up until this point has failed spectacularly and rained down with ash. But, like Janis sang, Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. Which means that failure brought me freedom.

Now I’m trying to reclaim all the dreams I set aside in my quest to be the Righteous Mormon Woman, and I’m working up the courage to believe they could still be possible. I don’t want to settle for the slivers of artistic expression I can cram through the loopholes. I want to make what is in me.

This section from one of my earliest blog bios still seems to apply all these years later:

So much of my life has not been fit for public consumption. This blog is my attempt to communicate with the world despite the messiness of infertility, premature babies, unemployment and other ridiculous bad luck. It helps not having to witness immediate reactions. I write about my journey into a different kind of motherhood, all the stuff I make, and trying to create a life of grace amid the temptations of a suburban California life. I want to be a more peaceful person, more grateful, more appreciative of every moment, with a clearer vision for the direction of my family. And yet at the moment I’m a bundle of neuroses and contradictory ambitions. There’s a whole lot I want to do in this world. I wonder if I ever will.

8 thoughts on “About

  1. Actually a question. I am an oil artist and jewelry designer and recently started moving toward all Christmas items – beaded ornament covers, holiday earrings, other ornaments. I am getting to the question…….. I recently started quilling for cards & ornaments and have made a snowflake ornament. Looking at some web sites I see that mine is similar to one of yours. Mine is made with heavier paper, about twice bigger, I will probably work some beads into some of them and I would offer a year & name tag for a keepsake ornament. Now the question -can I sell mine or will that violate your copyright?

    1. Kathleen, I love you totally for asking. If you change the measurements at all or add anything else to it, then it’s a new creation and you can sell with all my wishes for the best of luck.

  2. I give up!!!!! In case you got my 2 mis-sends, I still think of my sons as my little boys – the youngest will soon be 38….
    Kathleen

  3. My name is Lillian, I live in Blue Springs Missouri. It is a suburb of Kansas City.
    I am so glad I found you last week. I was researching mercury glass when I came upon your tutorial. My little jar turned out perfectly.
    I subscribed to your YouTube channel and started nosing around. I watched your video on bipolar 2 disorder. I am you, you are me. Treasa, thank you for being a voice about mental illness. It is a silent disease and a deadly disease. There is such a stigma upon mental illness. Most of the time I feel like I need a tattoo across my forehead that says “I AM BROKEN”. My family pushes everything under the carpet, and it is never talked about. They do not want to educate themselves on how my brain works. I’ve tried to involve them in my therapy but they want nothing to do with it. I am now the “crazy” one. However, I attend group therapy three times a week, see my psychiatrist and therapist every other week. I am at least trying to be normal. I get very angry and lash out because of the frustration. I have been left out of every family function since January of 2013. It hurts me.
    Do you know of the organization “bringchange2mind”? Also, I know Atticus has CP, when you are in your dark place how do you force yourself to even get out of bed? Do you have to take a plethra of medication too? I am in hypo stage right now and can run many different circles and not finish one thing. I have a TBI that I am trying to come to terms with. Self inflicted carbonmonoxide poisioning. I was at the lowest of low. I just celebrated my 2nd birthday August 7th. I had two attempts. On my way home from my group, “A Women’s Path to Hope”, I had the thought of failure. I failed twice at trying to end my life. I am still trying to find my purpose. I am so thankful I found and sibscribed to your channel.
    I had so much hope today of finishing one craft project, then I saw in my mailbox a new video post from you. It is the only thing that has made me have a genuine smile today. I’ve accomplished nothing all day as I have been watching all of your videos and getting to know you. You inspire me and made a difference in my life today.
    Thank You,
    Lillian Kenney McDonald

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