My beloved Mother passed unexpectedly in 2018, and I entered great turmoil and grief around her transition, followed by a year of grief, sadness, and depression. One of the most difficult moments of my mother’s death was that her mother, my Grandmother Lillian, was still alive. My grandmother was a force to be reckoned with; however, this shook her to her core, as no parent should have to endure the loss of a child.

My Grandmother Lillian and I held on to each other tight through the final days of her own life. She was a deeply religious woman and believed in the afterlife and that spirit lived on. We often had conversations about what signs she would send me after she left this earthly plane.  

One day I asked her what sign she would send me.

“Trees”, she said.  

“How are you going to send me trees?” I responded.

“You will see”, she replied.

I had forgotten this conversation until the morning of her passing. She did send me trees, as I had started making the tree pendants during the time of her transition, around Christmas of 2020. 

The global pandemic brought me great healing and massive paradigm shifts. It hasn’t been an easy path for me to create a jewelry business out of the ashes of a pandemic. I lost my Uncle Jerry ( my mother’s only sibling and Lillian’s son) in 2021; my life partner, Steve, suffered a mild heart attack followed by the loss of his own father to a massive stroke nine-weeks later.