You know that crafting and sitcoms are near and dear to my escapist heart. So when I stumbled upon Sutton Foster's Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life, I thought, Younger's Liza Miller taking on her anxiety one paint stroke at a time? Yes, please! I could especially relate when she shared how cross-stitch helped her deal with catty chorus girls. Not that I've ever starred in a play. Or cross-stitched. But I'm no stranger to retreating to my own inner world.
"And so, in order to survive the tour, I needed something to do that would ground me. Something that had nothing to do with the show or its social politics. Something that I could be in complete control of. That was how I started to cross-stitch. I call it my gateway craft." (18-19)
There's an autonomy that comes with solitary pursuits, especially creative ones, that's very freeing. And I loved that Sutton had this tool in her self-care arsenal. As I read, though, I learned that the real source of her angst wasn't mean girls, but her agoraphobic mother. Although Helen Foster fiercely supported Sutton's career, she almost never told Sutton "I love you." It was very sad and often hard to read.
But Sutton's resilience kept me going. With each Broadway show, breakup, and roadblock with her mom, she finds joy and solace in a new form of artistic expression. She's so likeable and scrappy and vulnerable that you can't help but root for her to come out on the other side. And by the time Younger airs, she does, emerging as stronger than the mosaic glass girl she once made and then shattered.
Not unlike our intrepid Liza.