Hope first started weaving for us in the fall of 2000,” Lynn Bryant says. “I can still see her sitting in the courtyard of Magnolia Market. It was a cool November day. I kept going to check on her. I was afraid she’d bolt and try to go back home.”
Hope isn’t the woman’s real name. If I use her real name, her husband may kill her. Those are her words, not mine, dramatically portraying what some individuals deal with long after they’ve fled a domestic-violence situation.
Enter Lynn Bryant.
Bryant, a faculty member at VCU’s College of Humanities and Science for 15 years, relocated to North Carolina’s Outer Banks in 1986 after an early midlife crisis.
“I planned to work at the community college, live by the sea and write murder mysteries.”
Instead, Bryant applied for the executive director’s position at Outer Banks Hotline, a crisis-intervention center that includes a women’s shelter.
“I’m an educator,” Bryant adds, as if that explains 17 years of 24-hour on-call duties and unimaginable patience. Statistics reveal that individuals, male or female, usually leave domestic-violence situations an average of six times before they actually do so permanently.
Bryant has stories that would break your heart, but she prefers to focus on what she calls “dazzling successes,” like Hope, whose husband finally agreed to move and stop badgering her.
“Well he didn’t,” Hope says quietly. “He banged on my door at 4 a.m. every single night, stalked me, came with a gun. That was probably after the fifth time I had gone back to try and live with him. When that happened and I realized the police could not, would not protect me, I decided to come to Hotline and let them lead me in a different direction because I couldn’t help myself. I knew if I stayed there I’d probably die.”
Eight months later, Hope was still deeply depressed. Bryant felt compelled to act and suggested she weave.
Enter Rabiah Hodges, the weaving director and founder of Endless Possibilities, an intriguing shop located in Manteo, just a stone’s throw from the Roanoke Sound. Hodges used to work near a Hotline thrift store and noticed that discarded clothing from the store was filling up Dumpsters.
“I thought, ‘Weaving classes and their materials can get very pricey. What if I use a rag-weaving concept to lower the class fees and help Hotline recycle some of the clothing they can’t sell?’ ”
Hodges experimented with cutting clothing into strips and weaving rugs, among other things. Thrilled with the results, Bryant could foresee Hotline developing a cottage industry and establishing a safe environment for clients — the perfect way to recycle discarded clothing along with people’s lives. The weaving project began in February 2000 in a warehouse behind a Hotline thrift store located in Kill Devil Hills, with all proceeds going to support the intervention programs. Hodges explains the shop’s name: “One day I said, ‘In weaving terminology, one yarn is called an end. So what about Endless Possibilities?’ It brings the whole pun of weaving in with the concept that we can make anything with the stuff we’re getting.”
Enter Malcolm Fearing, an entrepreneur who offered space in Magnolia Market and now in the Fearing Building on Budleigh Street, both for nominal rent. A huge storefront window, flanked by two wooden chairs with rag seat covers hanging on entry posts, entices curious shoppers. Inside, the tall ceilings, cedar walls and soft track lighting show off woven wares — hats, pillows, scarves, rugs, carryall bags, table runners and more in a stunning array of colors and designs. Between five and 55 volunteers, men and women alike, some from Richmond, donate their weaving talents to the shop each week. Standing among the beautiful byproducts of 16 looms gave me an overwhelming sense of well-being. An almost palpable calm settled over me. My experience, I’m told, isn’t unusual.
“People in the Richmond area have a fondness for the Outer Banks,” Bryant says. “Vicki Powell, a wonderful woman and huge supporter of ours, offers our work on consignment at her shop, What’s in Store [at 5706 Patterson Ave.].”
Like Hope, a few of Hotline’s domestic-violence clients have become paid staff as weavers, instructors and seamstresses at Endless Possibilities, where classes are offered for free or at very reasonable prices.
Hodges even set up a program in Cape Hatteras Secondary School in which students, including a child with autism and children with other disabilities, are weaving. Their material is turned into products at Endless Possibilities, taken back to the school for “show and tell,” and often sold there. Hodges also shared her expertise for similar programs in Virginia and elsewhere in North Carolina.
Still, the economic struggle is nearly as tough as the emotional one.
“This whole project of programs, recycling, renewal is hard to market,” Bryant explains. “We’re very successful with getting grants for other things — but not this. Domestic violence is so powerful, so prevalent. It’s hard to put something so wonderful and positive together with it; it doesn’t seem like a good fit. ... It’s almost like bad manners to be happy when you’re in the middle of being sad.
“What our clients had before may seem torn to shreds and broken, but there’s always a possibility of remaking that into something else. It may not be the same, but it can be more beautiful and more useful. That’s the image of this organization. It was like that with Hope. She was this big, empty shell, but as the rug grew that first day, so did her self-esteem and determination. ... This is such an important project, because it heals.”
“Lynn forced me to come over here,” Hope offers. “I was like, ‘Weave, what are you talking about, weave?’ I was so sad, depressed, angry, disappointed, grieving. I came because I didn’t know what else to do. I just fell in love with it. It made me calmer, slowed down my thought process, made it orderly. It was instant gratification to see something beautiful being made by my own hands, out of something old that was going to be thrown away. I felt like I should be thrown away, hopeless, useless, torn apart. This project saved my life; Lynn saved my life. … She was my divine intervention.
“I have seen miraculous things happen here. People feel the wonderful energy in this place. Now I feel like a whole person, like I have something to give. I think I was brought here in this place for a reason, and that was to help and to share.”
Enter Hope.
©Nancy Wright Beasley 2004. All rights reserved.
