Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.

The words of Ellen Glasgow—“Women like to sit down with trouble—as if it were knitting”—carry the flavor of wit, but within the jest lies a thread of truth. Glasgow, a writer who pierced through the illusions of her age, observed that women, long accustomed to endurance, do not flee from trouble. Rather, they take it in their hands, as one would take yarn and needles, and they work it patiently, loop by loop, until chaos is shaped into something that holds together. Her image is not one of weakness but of discipline, not of fragility but of the quiet heroism that meets pain with endurance.

The origin of this truth lies in the long history of domestic life, where women were often bound to labor unseen, carrying burdens unspoken. While men were taught to meet trouble with force, battle, or denial, women learned another path: to sit with sorrow, to turn it over slowly, to weave patience into despair. Knitting itself is an ancient craft—slow, repetitive, demanding both focus and acceptance of imperfection. By comparing this to trouble, Glasgow reveals the wisdom of those who transform suffering not through avoidance but through the quiet act of living with it until it becomes manageable.

Consider the story of Florence Nightingale. In the Crimean War, she was surrounded by misery, disease, and death. Many would have fled or collapsed beneath the weight of so much trouble. Yet she, like a woman with her knitting, sat with it. She walked the wards, night after night, tending to wounds, soothing fevers, recording statistics, turning raw suffering into a fabric of reform. Out of darkness she wove hospitals, systems, and methods that endure to this day. Trouble was not banished—it was transformed.

Or remember Harriet Tubman, who could have surrendered to the chains of slavery and the despair of her people. Instead, she sat with the trouble of her time, studying its patterns as one studies a tangled skein. With patience, courage, and relentless faith, she unraveled the cords of oppression and led her people to freedom. Like knitting, her work was repetitive and dangerous, requiring return after return into enemy ground. Yet from this labor came a legacy of liberation that cannot be undone.

The lesson of Glasgow’s words is clear: trouble cannot always be conquered in a single stroke. Sometimes it must be endured, shaped, and worked upon with steady hands and unwavering spirit. To run from it is to remain forever tangled; to sit with it is to find the rhythm that untangles knots and brings forth order. This is not passive suffering but an active engagement with life’s hardships, a form of courage often overlooked because it does not shout or strike.

Practical wisdom follows. When trouble visits you, do not rush to despair nor to hasty solutions. Sit with it. Examine it. Break it down into loops and stitches, small steps of action and understanding. Surround yourself with companions who can share the weaving, and do not scorn the slow process, for it is in patience that strength is born. Like the artisan, work daily with your challenge until it becomes something you can hold, something that no longer controls you but is shaped by your own hands.

And so, let these words be remembered: women have long carried the art of turning sorrow into strength, of transforming trouble into a tapestry of endurance. To honor this wisdom is to learn from it, regardless of gender. For in the end, life will always bring tangled threads. The question is not whether they come, but whether you will pick them up, sit with them, and patiently weave them into something of worth.