A Place to Be Held

Elin Johansonn at The Living Room Collective. Photo credit Mark Amudson

On Loss, Hands, and the Return of Community

Some creations begin with inspiration.Others begin with absence.

During the pandemic, many of the quiet structures that once held women together—pregnancy groups, craft circles, spaces of shared learning—simply vanished. Not dramatically, but quietly.

They were there one moment, and gone the next.

For Elin, who had recently moved to Barrington and was expecting her son Reed, that disappearance became deeply personal. Searching for community, she discovered something unsettling: the networks meant to support women through pregnancy and early motherhood had largely dissolved in 2020.

So she did something simple and radical.

She created one.

The Livingroom Collective began as a space for women’s health and connection, but it quickly revealed something deeper: the healing power of making things together.

For thirteen years, Elin had worked with leather—cutting, stitching, shaping handbags by hand. Yet somewhere along the way, the craft had become transactional. Orders piled up. The work lost its quiet refuge.

Only when she stepped away did she rediscover what hands know.

That making together—cutting, stitching, shaping materials—can restore something conversation alone cannot.

Inside the Collective’s marina-side studio, women gather not just for workshops but for something older: shared creation.

A room where the outside world pauses for a few hours. A place where the noise softens.

Where women, often accustomed to holding everything together for everyone else, are allowed—perhaps for the first time that week—to be held themselves.

In our conversation, Elin and Sarah speak about motherhood, craft, community, and the delicate work of rebuilding rituals that quietly disappeared.

Because sometimes the most meaningful spaces begin with a simple question:

What was lost—and what can we build in its place?

→ Read the full conversation on Khiton

Sarah Vincent at The Living Room Collective. Photo Credit: Mark Amudson