Crafting as Ritual and Manifesting My Fears

I've been working on making jewelry for the upcoming Tulsa Pagan Pride and I wanted to take some time to write about it.
For me, crafting - macrame especially - is borderline transcendent. It's soothing. I feel empowered and powered up, like I'm in a liminal space, a transcendental pocket dimension that neatly enfolds me. I am here but not here. I am nowhere. And it is in this space that the "magic" happens. As I entrance myself, the motion, the rhythms, pull me simultaneously deeper into myself and outside of myself. I feel like I am torn and floating, encapsulated in a strange vortex of my own making.
As I weave my fingers and cords, creating something so much more than the sum of its parts, I create, breathing life into something entirely new.
Even if I rely on someone else's tutorial to start with, once I work through the creation, problem-solving, I create something entirely my own.
And it is that, this ME thing, that I can bestow onto others.
That anyone would want some piece of myself that I have imbued, created, crafted, is at once thrilling and terrifying.
To think that there could be a quantifiable value to my work. That it is real. That, by extension, I am real. And what I craft is now tangible and other people like it and want to pay for it? That's power.
(Insert Luke Cage speech about money equaling power here.)

"Stillness is power? No, money is power. That's what flows. That's the one thing they respect." - Luke Cage

In a followup email to my application to Pagan Pride, I described the creation process as well, which ties into what I had previously said about me being a "bad" Atheopagan.
Here's what I wrote:

It was important to me to not invoke Goddesses from closed cultures of which I am not a part, so I chose Goddesses from Celtic traditions. I'm of Irish, German, and Welsh descent and my mom, siblings, and stepdad live in Ireland.{And I do feel as though I invoke the Goddesses in my craft. When I'm making jewelry, it's as though I transcend reality, and it is in that liminal space where I feel like I have some power; power to do good, power to improve my life. And that's very impactful, especially for those of us who are disabled and feel otherwise powerless. I won't say creating jewelry is always *easy* for me, but it soothes me and grants me confidence that I'm otherwise quite lacking.I can't say my work is blessed and consecrated, or that I'm better than anyone else; I just know that I feel most myself, most *in the flow* and thus most receptive to otherworldly energies, when I am working on something I can consider beautiful.} 

I showed them a few photos of my triple Goddess wrap bracelet for the Morrigan that I made for my mother-in-law, who's grieving the loss of her husband (more on that later).

Made with gorgeous mystic aura quartz beads

I started thinking about the nature of the Morrigan when I reviewed my photos of the bracelet. I noted the date on the photos, Friday, September 6, one day before my mother-in-law's husband died. (It was awful, tragic, and unexpected, a freak medical incident that was the direct result of a doctor's negligence.) The more I read about the Morrigan, the more I see the same things repeated: She's a Goddess of transformation, endings, and new beginnings. She'll burn down your world so that you can build it anew. And then I thought about how much pain MIL is in right now, how devastated she is. Can she emerge anew from the ashes? I don't know, but I worried that my dedication in its own way influenced the outcome of this tragic situation. I know I'm not responsible for his death. I just can't shake this feeling that I invoked the Morrigan (a Goddess who is known for being difficult to work with, for answering "prayers" in unexpected and Earth-shattering ways) and that I had some part to play in this. 

Is it possible? I think I'm learning not to discount anything as impossible. Is it likely? Not at all. This was an avoidable medical accident, something I had nothing to do with. But I can't stop thinking about his voice, the last time I saw him. He always said goodbye with a hug and, with a chuckle, "We'll see you later". I don't remember the date, the last day I saw him. I do know I didn't go see him while he was ill. I do know that the last time I had spoken to my MIL, we discussed his health and how he was working too hard. I do know that I had repeatedly harbored thoughts that he wouldn't be okay, that he might not make it, that something terrible was happening and about to happen. This sense of impending doom has led me astray before, but what if I somehow manifested it? What if my worrying while creating a bracelet dedicated to the Morrigan, made real those worries, invoked her to realize my worst fears? What if that impending sense of doom combined with my dedication, my "prayer in action", somehow brought about this terrible event, wove some kind of terrible spell?

I can't stomach the thought and yet it persists.

As my MIL mourns, she wears the bracelet, worrying it around her wrist, almost like rosary beads. Is she invoking the Morrigan, too? She takes this much more seriously, more literally, than I do, of that I am sure. I'm afraid of bringing this up to her, afraid she will see this as real, be repulsed, and blame me. I can't handle that. 

And so I worry more, allowing creating more bracelets to distract me, help me focus and unfocus again and again. (I've also been indulging in playing video games but that's nothing new. What is new is my approach to my jewelry-crafting and how I need to make a TON more pieces to be ready for Pagan Pride, and that I owe it to my MIL to succeed.)