Introducing the Soul Talismans

  

The Soul Talisman is a one-of-a-kind necklace made just for you in my little studio in the Pacific Northwest. The intention behind this offering is that it will become your companion as the gemstones chosen just for you support what you most need. 

While I create your necklace, I will be holding you in my heart and blessing your stones and your stories. Your necklace will be infused with love and light and will be cleansed with sage before it is packaged up and sent to you.

I think of each necklace as deep soul work that I create the foundation for here in my corner as I gather and wire wrap and sing in my studio, and then I send it off to you as a reminder to begin tending to the seeds of that soul work in your corner.

Here's how it will work. You answer a few questions about where you are on your path right now along with a couple of style questions.

I was amazed that you could know me so well having only the few questions/answers.  It was wonderful to know the meaning behind why you chose those specific components for me and my necklace and showed exactly how much care and intention goes into your work.

- Deb

I light a candle in my studio and read your words. Then I sit in the quiet thinking about what you've shared and gather the stones that will support you.

Your chosen stones then sit on my altar overnight soaking up the blessings and wisdom that space holds. 

I set aside another block of time just for you where I bless the stones in light and love and then hand wire wrap them and create your special necklace. Then I handwrite a letter that shares the story behind your necklace, why the gemstones were chosen and other good things.

I cleanse your necklace with sage and choose an additional larger gemstone to include in your package that you can sit on your altar or carry with you in your pocket.

Then I gather it all together, along with a few other surprises, and send it off with love to you.

Please note: I will be choosing these gemstones for you from my collection in my studio. They will be stones that connect to what you've shared with me in our email exchange. I will also ask you a few style questions (such as length) but this offering invites you to trust what I'll create for you.

"The packaging and care that went into it was great. The handwritten note explaining the process and the stones chosen has already been read and reread several times. Love love love it! The amethyst and the note have been added to the alter I keep right in my closet so I see them at the start and end of each day."

- Kirsten

Sizes: There are two sizes to choose from with this offering: Small and Medium.

The smaller necklaces will have daintier gemstones and the entire pendant will be smaller in size. The smaller necklace is $115. Here are some examples. 

The medium necklaces will be larger with slightly larger gemstones that create a larger pendant. The medium necklace is $135. Here are some examples. 

To start the process, please choose which size you'd like and pay via PayPal below. The prices include US shipping. International customers, please choose international shipping, which is an additional $7.

SPECIAL HOLIDAY PRICE: As a gift from me to you, the price below reflects a 15% off holiday special. This price will be available through December 5. If you'd like to receive your talisman before Christmas, please order by December 5. Orders placed after the 5th will begin shipping out around December 31. 

Sizes and Shipping

Small with US Shipping $97.75 USD Small with International Shipping $104.75 USD Medium with US Shipping $114.75 USD Medium with International shipping $121.75 USD

After I receive your order confirmation, I'll email you a questionnaire (at your PayPal email address) so we can get started. (If you want me to send it to a different email address, please email me and let me know.) Because of the special time set aside with this offering, your custom necklace will take 1-3 weeks to create.

If you have any questions, please email me.

here

Here we're cuddling on the couch watching holiday movies and hoping her cold doesn't get worse.

Here I'm getting into the picture even when I don't have on make-up and my dirty hair is every which way and I look as weary as I feel.

Here I'm listening to Anne Lamott read Help Thanks Wow and feeling gratitude.

Here I'm wondering if my uncle feels peace a year after his death.

Here we're crafting and art journaling and making Christmas gifts and listening to Taylor Swift on repeat.

Here patience is waning and I'm trying to remember the ways I used to be able to find the day's last thread of it all the way down in my toes.

Here I'm excited about twinkle lights and Christmas music.

Here I'm hoping a Trader Joe's turkey breast will be enough this week. 

Here I'm excited about this new necklace.

Here I'm looking forward to hearing my brother's laughter at my table this Thursday.

Here we're practicing kinder words and softer voices.

Here I almost ugly cried out loud sobbed during Hook tonight. (First time I watched it since he died, maybe even since Ellie was born. It is a favorite favorite favorite.)

Here I'm wearing this sweater almost every day.

Here there will be scones tomorrow.

Here I'm so in love with this post from Hula.  

Here I'm wondering about what my word of the year might be. Nothing has come to the surface yet. My ears and heart are open universe.

Here I'm really thankful for my dad's sobriety.

Here I'm considering rereading the Chronicles of Narnia.

Here I'm thinking about how just showing up as me is the path to joy.

Here I'm trying on setting down the desire to know all that is coming next when it comes to a few things over here and trusting that the next step will appear soon. Or at the very least, I'm believing that just sitting still will be okay for a little while.

a big dose of self-compassion

I've been looking for a necklace to honor the self-compassion and self-love we need to support us in the beauty and the grit we experience each day. Something that I could wear that would actually feel like a huge dose of love. Something I could hold onto in those moments when I take my five deep breaths. Something large enough that I'd be basically saying to myself, "I'm not kidding. I'm inviting in love and deep, wide self-compassion today."

And I found exactly what I wanted in these large rose quartz gemstones.

They symbolize the hug you need in the middle of your day, the compassion you can extend to yourself just by noticing what you need, the wisdom that rests around your heart that is just waiting for you.

My hope is that as you wear your rose quartz necklace, you will feel loved and remember that you're not alone.

Each of these stones is very unique. They're sitting in a bowl on my studio altar right now soaking up some love. It makes me so happy to think about the people who will order them. I will hold their name in my mind as I choose one just for them. 

I love this job.

a new collaboration

I'm excited to announce that I'm collaborating with eBay for the next few weeks, and this post is part of that collaboration.

So often, we think of eBay as a place to buy things we might not be able to get anywhere else. For me, this has meant searching for and scooping up a vintage Strawberry Shortcake lunch box like the one my mom gave away that I now use for sewing supplies, discontinued favorite Dansko shoes, vintage pink buttons that look like flowers, a stuffed animal for Ellie to replace one we couldn't get anymore, and even some jewelry tools I use in my studio.

You might not know that eBay is also a great place for information, and I've begun sharing some guides about a few of my favorite topics over in their guides section. I've also started putting together a few collections of things that are catching my eye as I explore eBay.

Today, I want to share one of my guides that is all about self-care. It has some great ideas for you to tuck away as we get ready to move into the holidays. And these ideas are about self-care moves you can do when you only have five minutes. Read it right here.

Over the next few weeks, from time to time I'll be sharing other guides you here. The topics will vary from curvy girl fashion to other self-care moves to DIY and craft ideas for you to do with your little ones. I'm so excited about this collaboration and so grateful to you for coming along!

The photo above was taken by Vanessa Simpson of Focus in Photography. Earlier this month, we had a fun day taking photos and sharing stories as we styled some photos for these guides and blog posts and tried to dodge the Pacific Northwest rain. So grateful for this blossoming friendship and how it's becoming a creative collaboration kind of friendship too. She has two little ones, so it is also fun to be able to swap mama stories + have playdates with the kids. 

from revolutionary lips

I often say that poetry saves me. It gets under my skin and into my bones and pushes me to pay attention. It opens a door for me and I suddenly find myself in a room surrounded by others who want to talk about the unexpected beauty found in the messy, gritty, grief-filled moments that happen in a life. 

Poetry has helped me find a home inside myself where I know I'm not alone.

Reading Amy Palko's new poetry collection, From Revolutionary Lips, was like opening that door again and stepping inside a candlelit room filled with women who aren't afraid to tell it - the real, the sexy, the gorgeous, the messy truth inside them.

Over the last few years, I've been walking a path of women mending after going through trauma when my daughter was born. And this mending has been slow and hard and beautiful and painful and confusing. This mending happens in the space between moments as I move from mother to wife to entrepreneur to friend... and try to remember I'm always me even as the roles topple into one another. 

The grief mingled in all of it catches me off guard at times. I find myself taking a step forward with shaky vulnerability and then whoosh! I'm discombobulated and simply sad and unable to say aloud what my heart, what my body, most needs.

Reading Amy's words, being ushered into the door that her poetry opened, has felt like someone has held up a mirror to the swirling feelings inside me. This collection is sexy and raw; it's full of the stories women grasp inside fists while thinking "no one else must feel this way."

Amy's words will remind you that you aren't alone in your desires and the mysterious longings inside you. They are an invitation to freedom. And she weaves her gorgeous self-portraits between the poems so you remember that she's walking this path alongside you.

Yes yes yes.

Here's one of my favorite poems from Amy's collection paired with her self-portrait.

Wounds
by Amy Palko 

Grounding in the bowl
of my pelvis, feeling
the rub, that place of pain
and discomfort, that red raw
weeping wound bleeding
rust coloured tears…

She says stay with me.
She says stay with the discomfort.
She says stay with the pain.

Don't try to escape it.
Don't try to remove yourself, transcend
in any way from the experience
of this moment,
and the next,
and the next.

She says just be with.
She says just be with and receive
receive
receive.

She says see -
This is where the light gets in.
And out.

You can read more about From Revolutionary Lips and buy it (plus the audio and hear Amy's gorgeous voice read these poems) right here.

Amy Palko is the creatrix of Red Thread Voices - a publishing house that aims to offer a home to the voice of exiled feminine, She is also a goddess guide, poet, photographer and lecturer whose work has been featured internationally. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland with her husband and three teenage children, in their home that overlooks the deep harbour, and the wide mouth of the River Forth as it opens up to swallow the cold waters of the North Sea.

fireflies {a poem}

Watching My One-Year-Old Daughter

Her upturned face takes in each flake of snow.
Giggling, she looks at me as though saying,
“Can you believe this is falling from the sky?” 

One-year-old joy is like a jar of lightning bugs.

*

When will it begin to fade?

At three when she loses her favorite stuffed baby panda.
At ten when her best friend refuses to talk to her.
At thirteen when words I don’t ever want to say hang in the air.
At seventeen when she watches the one she loves with someone else.
At twenty-two when unexpected grief becomes her companion. 

In a moment I cannot prevent,
her heart will crack;
the light will flicker.
And today, I ask all that I reach to believe in
to be there to catch her. 

*

Her feet crunch the white with each step.
She stumbles but reaches toward the sky,
catching wonder in her palm. 

Her one-year-old wisdom teaches me 
to resuscitate each firefly buried within.

*****

This week is all about poetry here on my blog. I wrote this poem a few years ago and haven't yet shared it here. Finding it again has me building a bridge between what I felt in that moment to what pushes and pulls on me in this one. I'm reaching out my hand to her and saying, "Thank you for reminding me of what's true."

You can read more of my poetry in Five Days in April.

It's a collection of poetry for the times when your own words fail you. For the moments that leave you wondering if you're alone, in the missing and the hoping, in the falling apart and putting the pieces back together. It will invite you back home to yourself.

Available here in my shop.

female poets: a place to begin

Yesterday, I shared that I'm thinking about the tables I want to sit at when having conversations about the beautiful questions (as David Whyte calls them), and one part of this is sharing more about poetry here on my blog and reading and sharing more female poets.

So here's a list of just a few to get you exploring. Because poets tend not to have personal websites, I'm linking to Poetry Foundation for you to learn more about these female truth tellers and adventurers and read more of their poems. Please feel free to share other female poets and your favorite poems in the comments. I'd love this post to become a beautiful resource for all of us.

Naomi Shihab Nye: Her poem "Kindness" is one of my favorites. I also love her collection Red Suitcase. What Have You Lost? is often by my bedside; it's a collection of poems by others she gathered on that topic. 

Marge Piercy: I remember the first time I read "The Day My Mother Died" and stood rereading it again and again, my mouth agape with that "I'm not the only one" kind of feeling swirling around me. I also love the poem "Colors Passing Through Us." And her collection The Moon Is Always Female must be mentioned in this week's poetry conversation.

Sharon Olds: Her poem "I Go Back to May 1937" was the first poem that caused me to say "Oh shit" out loud (there have been others). I've written about it several times (including here), but I have to mention it today because of the way it tells a story so many of us touch around the edges of but seldom have words for. Her collection "The Father" is about her father's illness and death and her reflections on all of it. It is gritty and masterful. In other collections she writes about the real stuff of motherhood and holds nothing back. Here she is reading "The Clasp." (Wow. Just wow.)

Jane Kenyon: I have Kenyon's Collected Poems. I pick it up, read one maybe two poems, then try to catch my breath and put it down for two to four months, then repeat the process. I could probably devote an entire blog post to explain why, but part of me really wants you to discover her on your own and begin your own conversations with her. A few for you to begin with: "Let Evening Come," "Happiness" (you can hear her read it), and "The Shirt," which might just surprise you and make you laugh out loud.

Diane Ackerman: I'm a big fan of Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses and have had A Natural History of Love on my shelf for a long time. It's now in the pile of books I'm hoping to read this winter. With these books though, you get more of her naturalist/poet self; they aren't filled with poems. You can dive into her poetry in Origami Bridges. And here's one for you to read right now: "We Are Listening."

Elizabeth Bishop: Her personal story just really captures me. She is now recognized as one of the great American poets, but she wasn't well known while alive. So many of her poems rhyme, which is also intriguing to me. Here's one for you: "Full Moon, Key West."

and of course, Mary Oliver: She's my favorite poet. The one I turn to daily. At retreats, I will often pick up one of her books from the basket of poetry I have beside me and just turn to a poem. It is almost always the one the group needs to hear at that point in the retreat. Magic. Her poems often chronicle the walks she takes each day. And they just tell the real stuff about life...about being a human in this beautiful, heartbreaking world. I'm so grateful for her. I pretty much recommend every collection, but Red Bird is a great one to start with. And here's one of her poems, "Breakage," for you to read aloud again and again.

And then there's Nikki Giovanni and Kathleen Norris and Marianne Moore and Susan Howe...there are so many others. Please do share your own favorites in the comments.

Tomorrow our week of poetry continues, so please do meet me back here.

beautiful questions

 

Here, a woman stands at a seat between Rilke and Heaney, across from Whyte, and wonders if she can sit down.

These are the words I wrote while listening to poet David Whyte speak earlier this month.

I'm a big fan of David Whyte's work in the world and his poetry. If you've been at one of my retreats, I've probably read you a few of his poems. Kelly Barton has a great story about me reading his poetry to her while a storm pounded down outside the house we were staying in in Manzanita, Oregon. His words opened her up to poetry in a new way; little did she know I was reading to keep myself centered because the storm was pretty much freaking me out as we were on the ocean with floor to ceiling windows as the sea and sky raged all around us.

Over the last nine years, David Whyte's words have become talismans I carry with me to remind me that I'm not alone.

But while listening to him speak for two days, my friend Bridget and I noticed one glaring omission: the poetry of women.

Whyte is a storyteller and philosopher who uses his own poetry and the poetry of others to share what he believes about this awesome, sometimes heartaching, gorgeous life we all live. And I love this approach. Sharing a story and the poem born from that story. The audience hopefully spends some time reflecting on their own lives and how it all connects. Alternatively he shares a poem by someone else who connects to his story or a poem by another that prompted a response of his own poem. There is a rhythm to his storytelling that often feels like home to me.

I use a somewhat similar approach when I teach at retreats. I love to share a story that will hopefully invite the women I'm teaching to open their hearts up just a bit more and then I invite them to share their own stories and put pen to the page. I also love using the poetry of others as an entrypoint to our own writing; I want my students to be able to nod along as I read poetry and see themselves inside the stories, even if they've never had the experience the poet is sharing. 

While listening to Whyte this time, I struggled to find a way to see myself in the stories and poems he shared. Women made appearances in the typical forms of daughter, mother, lover, but they weren't seen as hero, deep thinker, person who might change the world, or even person struggling with life's big "stuff."

And this has me pausing over here. I'm actually not in deep judgement of Whyte's work. The reality is that I'm a big fan and at the two other events I attended with him over the years, I didn't have this reaction. Most observations are more about how his omission brought up some "beautiful questions" as he calls them that have me asking: What tables do I want to join? What stories do I need to tell? What poems are waiting to be born inside me? What female poets should the world know more about?

As I dive deep into gathering stories and beautiful questions as I work on a new offering I want to share with you next year, I'm heading to my bookshelves and starting with Sharon Olds, Madeleine L'Engle, and Diane Ackerman. They feel like old friends who have a seat just waiting for me.

Today, think about the tables you want to sit at and the stories you want to help tell in the world.

And tomorrow come back as I've decided to make this a week all about poetry on my blog, and I'll be sharing some of my favorite female poets and few other fun things this week!

*****

As I think about the need for female voices at tables around the world, it feels pretty awesome to share that my ecourse Poem It Out is now available as an ongoing offering. This means you can sign up at anytime and you'll have access to the full course so you can dive into the world of poetry. This course includes four weeks of poetry and creativity prompts taught with both written material and more than two hours of video. To learn more about it and read testimonials from those who've already poemed it out, head over here.