The Healer’s Bracelet

This is some writing I made into a little book in 2017. At the time I was working on the idea of writing a longer book about minerals that was based on my relationship to them through my mother, who was a jeweler and died in 2007, and stories that I made up based on legends and lore and that details in the story would demonstrated the properties of the mineral.

This first piece of writing here is the story of how I understand my connection to minerals. I re-read it for the first time since 2017 before publishing it on this page. My writing, and personality, has changed so much since, I have become much more direct and less sentimental, which is an interesting observation to have. It stood out as being really personal, I think I am not used to sharing such personal writing here, or really writing such personal things any more anywhere. But, I have found over the years that it is when we are the most personal that we have the ability to connected more deeply to others and experiences we might both share. I share this all in that spirit of faith.

The Healer’s Bracelet

My mum used to tell me this story that her mother told her. She used to tell me that her great grandmother was a healer with her hands. I don’t know anything else about her, except that I think she came from France. When I first heard this story, and ever since then, I think about this woman and the way she looked. In my mind she is almost gypsy like, traveling through France under some other occupation or for some other reason, but also with the gift of being able to do healing work with her hands. 

In my lineage that gift has presented itself in various ways in all the women, mostly through their ability to provide an enigmatic or hidden kind of healing through what they created. This healers daughter was a quilt maker and seamstress of some kind. Her daughter was a dressmaker and a painter. Her daughter a silversmith and jewelry maker. And then there is me, an artist. 

It was when my mum was dying that I first became aware of some kind of special power in my hands, and I couldn’t help but feel a direct link to this line of work and this line of women. The week I laid in bed with her I used my hands a lot as my mum slowly drifted into a sleeping state and communicating with words was not possible or as necessary. She would still make sounds in her sleep, and I would take them as signs that she was going through a process emotionally or spiritually and getting ready to die. At times these sounds felt like they were related to pain or fear and that’s when I would place my hands on her body, letting her know she was not alone, trying to help her move through that energy, and letting her know it was ok to let go, it was ok to die. 

I had left graduate school to fly home and be with her in her last days, bringing with me a heavy bag of beads and stones from a mineral show. A week earlier I had a long list from her of what she wanted and needed and it was my job to source it for her because she was too weak to do it herself. Despite her body being ready to die her spirit was not ready to stop creating. The night I got home the first thing she asked was to look at what I had picked out for her. We spread everything out on her bed where she was laying. And for a brief time she was not sick, nor was she dying. She was creating. Creating in her mind as she ran her hands over certain things, picking them up, and studying them. I would watch her do this incredible thing where she would pick something up and hold it in this certain way, moving her thumb over the surface and facets, feeling the edges and looking at how it played with light. It was as if she was feeling into the stones, asking them what they wanted to be. She co-created with all the stones that became her jewelry. There was one time where she did say to me that the stones would tell her what they wanted her to do with them, and she listened.

This was one of the incredible things about my mum. For her whole life of being a silversmith, which predated my being born by over a decade, she used her craft to heal her life, in whatever stage she was in, whatever she was facing: being a young woman just out of college, being a new mother, her own mother’s death, going through a divorce, fighting cancer. She never left the studio. She had an innate wisdom in her about how to use creativity to heal her life, and a natural ability to use the power of beauty to heal others. 

Women would stop her on the street wanting to buy one of her creations right off her neck, and in the last year of her life she had such a following among friends and fans that it would create a frenzy whenever she would have a sale of her work. At her funeral there were hundreds of women, and every one of them had on a piece of her jewelry. It was so incredible to see pieces from every decade, dating back to the late 60’s all the way to right before she died in 2007. Each woman told me a story about their piece, I got to learn more of who my mum was through what she created and gave to the world. I think women were so drawn to her work because each piece held some of the innate healing that my mum held and used in her own life. It’s not just the story the piece tells or the stones it is made of, but I also believe there is some kind of magic in them. And certainly now that she has died I feel that magic whenever I put on something she made. 

I had brought home with me a selenite wand and also a strand of incredibly stunning aquamarine beads for her to make into a necklace someday. She was holding these constantly once she totally slipped into her unconscious sleeping state. And I had to remove them from her hands so my brother and I could each hold one of her hands in those last moments before she died. 

I remember in that moment, sitting with her, alone, still holding her hand, but feeling her presence clearly in the room around me and no longer in her body. My eyes were closed and I felt this domino effect of energy falling down into the top of my head, as if lifetimes of our linage’s wisdom was being bestowed upon me. I know part of this wisdom has to do with healing. And it also has to do with stones.  

I have this bracelet that my mum made me when I was around fifteen. Part of the amazing thing about having a mum that can make things is that I got to create with her. I have a series of pieces of jewelry that I designed with her, since the very young age of six when I first had her make me an opal ring. Most of my creations came from an attraction to certain stones, wanting to wear them or have them near me. I always had a fondness for putting together a collection of stones that seemed mismatched, or leftover, an act of gleaning. I had a small box that I had been putting various stones in when they would catch my eye, and once I had enough I asked my mum to make me a bracelet, a silver bangle that was a little larger so I could push it up my arm and wear kind of high up on my forearm. It has fifteen stones of various sizes placed in a sporadic looking order. There are round and oval cabochons made of topaz, tourmaline, peridot, aquamarine, onyx, turquoise and of course a small opal, a larger cut pink tourmaline and a round cut ruby, and one large raw pearl that is silvery in color. She even surprised me and added a small diamond with a gold tube setting, which is very special. I always think of this piece as the “healers bracelet”, in the way that a medicine man would carry many tools and remedies in his pouch. Because there are so many different stones if feels like it holds the full spectrum of healing for a modern healer. 

Since my first opal ring I have had a special connection to opals, as well as other stones that have come into my life at key moments. I know that part of this bond to stones was solidified in my being able to trust my intuition and attraction to something and being able to within a day or two have a piece of jewelry to wear. Just as I was co-creating making jewelry for myself as a young girl I know now as a healer I am co-creating with my mum working with stones, minerals and crystals. I feel it partly developed over my lifetime of living with this stones in our home, as well as the wisdom I was gifted from the lifetimes of healers and creators that came before me in our lineage.

Opal

She was invisible to all except one. In the darken cathedral a beam of light cascaded down from the golden and rose colored alabaster windows. The light felt like it did not belong in this dark world, it looked so out of place there. To most the only thing it illuminated was the particles of dust that hung in the air, but to one this light fell over the most beautiful idol rendering it so brilliant it was almost blinding. For days this chosen one knelt in front of this idol that only they could see. The details of its carved silhouette made it feel life-like, but it was its eyes that demanded a devotional gaze. They held the milky blue of a lagoon, the violet of a sunrise, and the orange of a flame. Two opals had been carefully carved for the idols eyes and became the transforming power of this her gaze, which bestowed the gift of insight and intuition of waking dreams to it’s subject. These eyes held the power of the fire at to bottom of the ocean, and could ignite and cleanse away any sorrow. Using light of fire to bring great joy and magic wherever there was darkness.  

Inspired by Lady Hermione in “Anne of Geierstein” and the eyes made in the middle ages by Volöndr

There are many stories of lore about opals being used for both invisibility and to enhance ones eyesight. Regardless, it certainly is a stone that is a bringer of visions, even if of the more dream like world, as it helps to bring clarity and release any pain from past lives. No matter the color or country of origin it has always been revered as a sacred stone. Coming in many different varieties, each holding its own power, everything from black to blue opal, cat’s eye to fire opal, and from many different parts of the world, some include: Peru, Mt. Shasta, Australia and Zimbabwe. Despite it being a very fragile stone it has been long used for jewelry and ornamentation, in the most famous a princess wears an opal in her hair, which changed color based on her mood. Australian legend says that it is a large opal that governs the stars, human love, and the gold within the mines. Part of it’s magic is certainly because of it’s unusual and sometimes milky translucence, its mix of color, and flashes of light, known as “fire”.

The first ring my mother ever made me was one with an opal. I was around the age of six. The opal is large and oval, and the silver band very small, small enough that I can’t even slide it half way down my pinky as an adult. Just under this stones milky translucence you can see a speckled rainbow of blues and greens, and at its depth when the light shines in you can see an orange glow from within. When I was young, and even now, the opal is my favorite stone. I wish I knew more about this ring. Perhaps all I need to know is that it was my first.

Turquoise 

As the end of the rainbow fell on her back, she knelt beneath it and ferociously dug her hands into the wet earth. Dirt pushing deep under her fingernails as she scooped up handful after handful. The earth was slick from the rain with sharp pebbles occasionally scratching against the soft skin of her hands, each one of which needed to be examined. She wasn’t sure what she would find, or if someone else on the land had also seen where the rainbow ended. She picked up her pace. The smell of wet sage and juniper filled her lungs as she was still trying to catch her breath from running. With each handful of dirt she would scoop up she would sift through it with her thumbs and fingers, feeling around for this thunder-stone. Before she could even see it under her thumb she felt something large and hard. Moving away the dark earth she could see bits of blue shine through, as if the dark thunder clouds were giving way to the blue of the heavens. The legend was true, it was a piece of turquoise. 

Inspired by Apache legend 

It is said that there was at one time a lady in London who possessed the power of restoring turquoise to its pristine and brilliant blue. There have been accounts of pieces fading as a result of wears general state of health. It was once used for amulets for protection, especially for horses, preventing falls and injury caused by a fall. It’s been found at Native burial sites and used by the Navaho to summon the rain. It holds the power of the elements, bringing together the energy of the earth and the sky. I call it the “Friendship Stone”, as it both brings out your finest qualities, the way a friend would see you. And it is a stone that according to lore should only be given, “As the virtues of the turquoise are said to exist only when the stone has been given, I will try its efficiency by bestowing it upon thee”, said the Spanish emperor to his son. 

My grandmother was her own muse. A dress designer in the 1940’s and 50’s turned painter of flora and fauna in her later life. I remember her hands as having the softest skin, thin and loose as it covered the bones and knuckles of her hands. She was of French descent but her coloring looked more Spanish, or perhaps Mediterranean. She had arthritis and her knuckles were a bit knobby and pronounced, each finger was crooked in its own unique way. She loved color and adornment, and she used this to her advantage when trying to hide her hands, which she found unsightly and I found comforting. She would often wear a ring on every finger, large, sculptural rings. The funny thing was that these large rings were intended to detract people from her hands, though they were often so lovely and unusual that all they did was attract attention. There was this one ring my mother made for her out of a large chunk of turquoise. It wasn’t a piece that was meant for a piece of jewelry, but rather one that a collector would have, about the size of a large peach pit. It has crevasses like veins, both bumpy and smooth, with its beautiful blue green color that only turquoise can possess. A band of silver wraps itself around the rock, its edge folded over each curve to hold it in place. The ring itself is so large that it is even loose on my middle finger. I’m sure its large size was so that it would fit over her knuckle. I imagine my grandmother telling my mother that she wanted this piece of turquoise to be made into a ring, perhaps they talked about the design, perhaps not. Or maybe this piece of turquoise was laying around and one day it inspired this ring, and it was given as a gift.