Story, Value, and Becoming More Real
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The neuroscience of kindness

January 20, 2025

Bethany Colas

If I remember rightly, 

you like to knit in your 

spare time, while on the train 

or watching movies from 

your couch, the needles 

in your hands turning 

yarn into soft blankets, 

much the way you take

your words and purl

kindness into the fabric 

of my mind—like the time

 

you came to our new city, 

our new home, bringing 

books with kangaroos 

and wallabies for our kids 

to read, then teaching them 

to bite the corners off a Tim Tam 

and drink hot chocolate 

through their biscuit straws 

until they fell apart. 

 

We talked in half-finished 

sentences punctuated 

by my children’s needs; 

you listened to me 

worrying those threads 

of motherhood, running 

my hand back and forth 

along the warp and weft

of one precious child’s mind, 

the complexity of neurons 

knitted together with memory 

and time, firing so fiercely 

I sometimes wonder 

if my unskilled hands have 

followed faulty patterns 

and made a mess of these 

delicate designs; 

 

your gentle words, 

like gentle hands, picked up 

the stitches I had dropped, 

threading through a vision

so benevolent—a mother

trying hard to reach her daughter, 

her daughter trying to respond—

mending my understanding 

of what it means to be 

restored, weaving words 

of praise with sorrow songs, 

covering us with salvation 

robes spun by the hands 

that knit us all.



The featured image, “Winter Stillness in the Garden,” is courtesy of Steve Moon and is used with his kind permission for Cultivating.



 

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  1. Carolyn says:

    Bethany… Again, your words themselves are full of kindness. You treat your subjects so deftly and yet with such tenderness… This one feels like a warm, knitted sweater wrapped around me. Thank you for the time you take to craft words so beautifully. It’s a pleasure to “triad” with you!

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