Grief Poppets for Samhain

Without death, there would be no Ancestors to revere. With death comes grief. Ancestor practitioners spend so much time playing crossing guard and messenger that we need to have a tool box of ways to work through, accept, and integrate grief.

At Samhain, I tell people not to call on those who have not been gone for at least a year. That is partly so we do not hold onto spirits who were ready to move on. But it is largely an act of self-care. We humans need time to process our grief before being able to experience our friends as part of the slipstream of Ancestral Dead.

Some people need less than a year. Some people need more time. There’s no golden rule. It’s natural to fear and struggle with death. Humans cling to our science for answers to give us comfort. Death is perhaps the ultimate mystery for which there can never be any concrete veritas Truth. So we gather our personal truths and experiences with death in an attempt to flesh out the hidden image.

I have a simple but potent magic I use when I have a personal grief that sits heavy in my heart. I make a Grief Poppet.

They are not Voodoo dolls, although I consider Voodoo dolls to be a kind of poppet. Use of poppets in folk healing is old and crosses cultures. When I make a poppet for healing, I make the figure of it similar to the being it is meant for. They’re usually human silhouettes but I have also made cat-shaped dollies.

I always use cotton fabrics, something that can be burned or buried without further harming the Earth. I cut two shapes and put them wrong-side together, hand stitching them. While sewing, I focus my thoughts on happy memories of the one I grieve. I leave an opening in the head so I can fill it, then turn it inside out. This is poppet magic 101, for all poppet workings. Now I have a shell for the magic.

I use flaxseed as the base herb for grief poppets. It adds a weight to the fetish that feels good in my hand. I add lavender and rosemary internally for scent. I recommend investing in lavendin for grief purposes (not to be cooked with). It is a hybrid of two strains that produces more essential oil and has a potently soothing aroma to it. If my grief has sharp edges I add some nettle for protection.

The key piece of magic happens when I add the heart stone. I often use a piece of resin incense, sometimes a lotus seed, sometimes a small bean, or a small chip of a gemstone. The important part is that it is meaningful to the person I am crafting the poppet for.

Then I finish it off with an invisible stitch. I make it small enough to fit into a pocket but large enough to be weight in my palm. I carry it around with me for as long as I need. It is not a cure for grief. Grief is not a thing to be abolished or denied.

The depth of our grief is a reflection of the depth of the love we felt, lived, and lost.

Part of what makes the emotion difficult is the intangible quality of it. The poppet is something I can finger in my pocket. It’s less permanent than needing something to remind me of my lost loved one on a daily basis. It becomes a conduit for that grief. It becomes a container but it does not contain it. It takes in the excess but does not retain it. I use copal for grief poppet heart stones because it is a cleanser and purifier.

The nature of time is to lessen the hurt of grief. I will carry the poppet through my workings this Samhain, and burn or bury it at the next one (if I am ready), sending the remnants of that love back out into the world. Love is something death cannot take away.

Love is something death cannot take away.

When grief ebbs at your heart, feed it love.

Feed the world love that none will be hungry for it.

Honor the dead by caring for the living.
Be a good ancestor now.

The Christmas Orange

In celebrating Christmas, my favorite family tradition involved the mystery of the orange in our stockings. While we waited for my Grandpa to drive over to our house to be with us while we opened presents, we would empty our stockings, filled with little toys and candies… and an orange. The memories are so strong that every time I hold an orange in my hands and smell the citrus fragrance of the rind, I think of Christmas morning, when I would peel it open and gobble the fruit down. There was an orange waiting for us every year.

My mom remembers having one some holidays, but not always. It was my dad who had an orange in his stocking every year. He said it sat on top of his stocking, hiding what was beneath it. And our oranges served the same purpose, to better hide the surprise of what prying eyes peeking around the top of the stairs would soon find inside.

In researching the tradition of the Christmas orange, the only thing that was clear was that its direct origins are still a bit of a mystery. Laura Ingalls Wilder references getting an orange in her stocking as a child in 1880, noting that it was a special treat. According to the Food and Nutrition Encyclopedia by Audrey Ensminger, with the advent of the new rail system, and the abundance of ripe oranges out of Florida and California, there was a fair supply of them available to the public in the 1880s.

What a special gift at a time of year when there isn’t a lot of other fresh fruit available. Lucky for us, winter is the peak of harvest season for citrus. In England, I found that putting oranges in the toes of stockings pre-dates World War II, but became a common tradition during the war. It must have been an especially delicious treat during rationing.

I found correspondences of the orange to the mythology of Bishop Nicholas, better known as Saint Nicholas, but nothing I could cite as factual. Nicholas was a good, wealthy man born in Turkey in the fourth century who spent his life helping the poor. Folklore says that he secreted money into three stockings of three daughters of a man who could not afford a good dowry and feared he would not find them good husbands. In the story, the gold melted inside the stockings where they hung over the fireplace and the young women pulled out three golden balls in the morning. It’s true that statues of Nicholas often show him holding three golden globes, but any claimed similarities to the Christmas orange as a symbol of Saint Nicholas’ generosity have been recently made.

I hold one in my hand and I smell Christmas kindness. I think any Santa or Saint would approve.

Making Decorative Pomanders

Pomander balls go back to the 15th century, used as natural air fresheners. To make them, you need oranges, a lot of whole cloves, and something you can use to pierce the skin like a toothpick, pin, nail, or wooden skewer. You can also use citrus fruits like clementines, lemons, limes, tangerines, or kumquats (kumquats make adorable tree-sized pomanders).

Some people like to make designs with their cloves and others cover it with them like a second skin. For best results, I recommend covering as much of the orange with cloves as you can as the clove oil acts as a preservative. Use your pointy thing of choice to poke in holes before inserting cloves (or your fingers will soon start to hurt). If you need a guideline for your rows, you can wrap a rubber band or masking tape around the center to get you started. Leave room in your pattern to tie ribbons around the orange for hanging and display. I use cotton cording that I can weave around the cloves. Then hang the pomander in a closet for a couple of days to allow drying time, as they can get moldy (one woman on-line said she puts hers in her fridge, but I’ve always shut them away in a closet). Scent-wise, these will last a few weeks.

If you want them to last through the season, you can coat your pomander with powdered orrisroot to help preserve it. For pomanders that both last longer and spice up your home, you can coat your pomander in a mixture of ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, and powdered orrisroot; three tablespoons each.

            If you hang stockings, will an orange wait within it for you? Maybe another festive fruit? Or some tradition unique and special to your family?

Blessings to You and Yours

As part of my spiritual practice I celebrate Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, which falls on December 21. I grew up Catholic, celebrating Christmas with my family on December 25. As an adult, I observe both holidays. I still celebrate Christmas, just a different kind. I love Christmas. I am full to the brim of Christmas Spirit.

Happiness. Peace. Kindness. Compassion. I celebrate Christmas as the holiday of family and humanity. I light candles to honor and revere the goodness inside each and every one of us. I wish for peace on earth, that the good will shine through, that light will win out.

This is the year for compassion.

When someone wishes you a Merry Christmas, say “You, too.” If someone wishes you a Happy Holiday, say “You, too.” If someone wishes you a Happy Kwanzaa, say “You, too.” If someone wishes you a Merry Solstice or a Happy Yule, say “You, too.” It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s something you celebrate.

People are wishing you good tidings in the spirit of brotherhood and joy as dictated by their faith. Return the favor. Don’t be a Scrooge. Who can’t use more joy and light?

[Adapted from a post originally published December 11, 2013.]

Recipe Scrapbooking

2x Great-Grandma Emma's recipes.

While I was in college, and trying to learn to cook for myself, I started collecting recipes from my friends and family, ones they had prepared and used many times, so I could get tips they don’t tell you in a form recipe. As someone who was least comfortable in the kitchen, things that were common sense to others were not for me.

So I asked for recipes that they enjoyed making and eating, not necessarily ones that were made-from-scratch or fancy. And the project got bigger. My folder started to fill with recipes that reminded me of people and places from my past.

One of the first recipes I collected was the cut-out cookie recipe we used at holiday time. Along with the recipe came the memories I have of decorating the iced cookies on our table. For every ten cookies everyone else frosted, I would do one, so slowly, to give the Santa cookie a red suit and green bag and belt, my tongue sticking out of my mouth in concentration.

I have a good recipe for pork chops with stuffing and apple slices- cooked in the same pan (oh the horror for me then!). It was a dinner my sister-in-law made, one of those first grown-up moments I had where someone cooked a meal especially for the occasion of my visit. I quickly got over my no-food-touching rule because everything was touching and everything was delicious!

One of the things I remember about dinners at my grandma’s house was the casserole she always made. We loved it. When I first started cooking, it was a list of ingredients I could handle. Frozen hashbrowns, cornflakes, and cream of chicken soup, along with a few others.

One of my more recent acquisitions is a delicious recipe for a spinach and tortellini soup from my best friend. He made a big dinner for us, including mustard salmon and mock potatoes, which were really good. It was part of a holiday gift in a rare chance to spend the holidays together.

Another favorite that I make all the time is the tofu, lettuce, and tomato sub roll. It tastes like everything that is good about bacon. It came to me from a beloved friend, a part of our UU congregation before we moved away. It was a dish she brought to every one of our pot lucks, and I regret every dinner that passed by without me trying it.

In my mom’s recipe box, I uncovered a card for swiss steak, written out in my great-grandma’s handwriting. It prompted a conversation with my parents about her swiss steak, my dad raving about it. And then we talked about her again.

Another recipe makes me laugh every time I make it, the sausage gravy recipe I have from college. My other kitchen-challenged housemate had some fresh sausage and we were inspired to make dinner together. But first, we had to call my mom for directions. A moment of gratitude for that phone plan that allowed me to call them for free whenever I wanted to (I think it was some 800 number).

I have a chicken cordon blue recipe from a friend who came over and taught me how to make it while we waited for the results of a presidential election. I even kept the sour cream coffee cake recipe that I learned to make in eight grade home economics. It was the first thing I baked that came out perfectly.

One Yule, when we were snowed in from our community gathering, we held an impromptu one in our apartment for those few within walking distance. My good friend brought this delicious stuffed apple recipe with oatmeal and dark chocolate. Every time I make that dessert, I think about snow drifts and candlelight, about friendship and laughter.

There’s a pear and walnut salad, made by a professor friend of ours for one of my first adult fancy-dinner invitations. The instructions for the best bacon-wrapped scallops in the world, using horseradish, include memories of weekends spent with an old and beloved friend. And I have a recipe for ambrosia salad, a cold dish with fruit, pasta, and marshmallows. It was one of the first things I ever made on my own, taught to me by a friend’s mom in middle school, and my preferred dish to bring to pot lucks for many years.

Best of all, is the trove of recipes discovered in a water-damaged tote, some of them dating to the turn of the century (1900, not 2000). They were hand-written by my 2x Great-Grandma Emma, who lived in Lockport NY, and some by her daughter, my Great-Grandma Minnie. The earliest recipes are for chicken croquettes, Danish and suet pudding, cabbage salad, sour apple cake, catsup, canned beets, curing pork in a barrel, marmalade, and pickles.

I enjoy receiving recipes, and will often request specific ones that remind me of special occasions. And then comes the fun of trying them out, and sharing in a taste of that moment of friendship. The bits of my friends and loved ones in my recipe scrapbook also serves as a timeline of my life, and all the love that has rolled through it.

May Day Baskets

For many years now, I have woken on May Day morning to find a small basket on my stoop. It’s often filled with flowers, stone, chocolates, and fruits. It is the sweetest gift from our anonymous May Day Fairy, and I found that I didn’t care who delivered it. I was able to accept the generosity with simple gratitude. And I felt compelled to gift that quiet joy to others in return, to spread happiness and human kindness. 

There’s a long history of gifting May Baskets to friends and neighbors, though it has mostly fallen out of fashion. In her work Jack and Jill: A Village Story, published in 1880, Louisa May Alcott wrote: “The job now in hand was May baskets, for it was the custom of the children to hang them on the doors of their friends the night before May-day.”

If you are reading this blog and thinking that sounds like a wonderful idea, but tomorrow is May the first, these little baskets can be as simple as a paper cone filled with wildflowers or candy with a note that says “Happy May Day!”

You can recycle baskets, tins, planter pots to make baskets. Or you can make them out of construction paper, weaving strips together. You can fill them with whatever small treasures you have or can find- things to just brighten a friend or neighbors day: small potted plants, flowers, flower seeds, candies, fruit, small gifts, candles, homemade items, etc. The only limitation is your imagination.

Blessed Spring!

Happy May Day!

Crafting Spirit Stones

Early in my practice, I relied heavily on the use of tools to connect with the larger natural world. Without them I wouldn’t have evolved such a deep understanding of the interconnected web. When I was learning how to trust my intuition, I used divination as a means to verify what I thought I was sensing. In the pagan world, we often use divination as a means of interacting with the spirit world to help clarify events and situations.

In our daily lives, it’s difficult to be in a situation and see it clearly, so we seek advice from friends or mentors to help us gauge how best to proceed. When we’re asking for guidance on the human plane, the best place to look for it is spirit world. For me it’s almost a therapeutic interaction. In Psychology, Cognitive Touch Therapy is used to help your body ferret out truths your mind is trying to keep you from. Your muscles betray your subconscious lies. Just like that, divination helps me tap into my intuitive body and see more clearly things I already know.

I am not psychic, not at all. But I have a high-sensitivity to the spirit world, which is why I have the interactions with ghosts that I have. The spirit world is active around us all the time and the more closely you vibrate in accord with the natural world, the more you will see some of what remains invisible to others. Divination acts like a translation tool between the energies you tap into and our own human language.

No one can say for certain if the energy used for divination comes from an external spirit world alive around us or whether it’s from an internal ancient knowledge that lives within our bloodstream. I believe it’s both. We humans are the conduits between earth and sky, the vessel that meets within and without. In my practice, magic and science are close relatives. I see divining as a gift of guidance, accessible when our intuition is finely tuned to the natural world.

I spent years looking into and studying different forms of divination: tarot, runes, ogham, scrying, obi, palmistry, reading tea leaves. The more help the divination tool used to speak to me, with the use of elaborate visuals or concrete definitions, the more unsure I was as to what I was intuiting versus what I was interpreting, so it was clear that for me, a simple casting method would work best. I began to understand that the way I was intuitively communicating with the spirit world was not represented well enough with any divining medium I learned. The spirit world I interact with and the work I do is not bound to a specific culture. My own ancestral lineage spans multiple cultures. I needed something with both an ancient history and a broad scope. I had to find my own language.

I found myself drawn to the form of casting lots. Many cultures throw bones as divination. It was a simple enough concept and memories of childhood games of Yahtzee made it an enticing one. As far as connecting to spirit, stone pulls me in best and helps me reach that vibration. To me stones are the bones of the earth, the layer where the ancestors are buried. It is that layer within and without I am trying to contact so I looked to throwing stones instead.

I chose to throw seven, as it is a magical number for me and one that resonates with my ancestor work. One stone would represent the intention, situation or question. Then I chose six stones, three of one kind and three of another, two sides of a coin. I used snowflake obsidian for my intention stone, which I used for meditations often, and snow quartz and black obsidian as the six vibration stones.

You can’t just get stones and cast them and expect answers. You have to create a relationship with them first. I spent a moon cycle with the snowflake obsidian, wearing it in trance as a means of harmonizing it to my frequency. I spent a moon cycle with the snow quartz, charging them with clarity, with yes, with light and harmony. I spent a moon cycle with the obsidian and charged them with confusion, mystery, chaos and caution. Then I spent one last moon cycle charging them with the energy of web and interconnectedness, dedicating them to my ancestors. I made them all equal parts of importance in a hive mind.

When I cast them, I ask yes or no questions. I chose to interpret them in a common way, similar to obi (divination with coconut or cowrie shells). The closer my question stone is to more white stones, the more favorable/true/positive the answer. The closer my question stone is to more black stones, the more unfavorable/false/unknown the answer, with all the myriad of uncertainty in between. It suits me and allows me to trust myself.

I make petitions of my ancestors, when I need guidance from them, when I need them to send energy to a specific situation, and I use the stones to speak to them. What do they need from me? What do they ask of me? Am I doing enough to honor them? Do they hear me when I can’t hear them? Just like my candle is the lighthouse I burn to call on them, the stones have become the medium I use to hear from them. It works for me, part of the path I have built for myself. It’s important to me that everyone finds their own way to meet and engage with spirit. It is the experience of working on your spirituality that builds trust within yourself, so that you may learn to trust in what you are experiencing.

Stitching in Time: In Step with Minnie



Crafted by Minnie Estelle (Wicker) Ruston 1890-1964.

One of my favorite childhood books was Halfway Down Paddy Lane by Jean Marzollo, the story of a 15 year old girl who takes a bad fall and wakes to find herself in 1850s America, in the home of an Irish immigrant family, all of whom work at the local cotton mill (who she later discovers are her ancestors). One scene in particular has always stayed with me. One night, after working a long day in the factory, the matriarch sits out on the porch with her daughters, making lace. Not darning it, but making it. It was the first time I realized in my childhood that even the things I thought were complicated to make were, in fact, once crafted by human hands.

I am reminded of that book when I take sewing work into my lap at night. I love to hand-stitch. I enjoy the discipline of learning to sew in a straight line without a guide, and the body memory I learned that ensures my stitches will be of even size and space between them.

In the bin of my father’s family belongings, I pulled out a small quilt sampler. Based on the other mail-order patterns addressed to her, my best guess is that the sampler was made by my Great-Grandmother Minnie Estelle (Wicker) Ruston. It was loose in the bin and has some color-bleed from basement water damage over the years, but besides suffering two pinprick moth holes, it is otherwise perfect and the stitches are unmarred.

I turned the sampler over in my hands to see how it was sewn. Such tiny stitches stared up at me and I was momentarily overwhelmed. I was holding a piece of family history that spoke to something I do to calm my thoughts, something I enjoy in my time. To better reach out and connect to Great-Grandma Minnie, I set out to recreate the pattern she made, to walk in step with her.

I tried to keep to her pattern without undoing her piece, imagining that her fabric choices were probably made up of leftover scraps she had from other projects. The small pattern I drafted was made up of a circle in the center, 12 inner petals and 12 outer petals. Ten of the inner petals were paired, two of the same with two extra individual ones. I kept the same pattern for mine, with scraps I had in a drawer. Minnie’s color scheme was more white, linen and brown, while mine was white, purple and green.

There were 25 pieces in total. As I worked them together, stitch by stitch, I quickly grasped that there is artistry to this kind of piece-work. After sewing, my pieces seemed smaller than Minnie’s and it is far from a perfect replica. But the spirit of the design holds true and the intention of sharing her work ended in creating a thing of beauty I might not have endeavored to make otherwise and might never have learned how capable I was to undertake it.



Crafted by me, February 2012.



What was more wonderful was finding that the areas I had to fudge due to my inexperience were almost twin to her own sampler, ways of pulling the fabric in when there is a tad too much. And my center piece was smaller than I intended it to be, but in the making of it, I remembered how a dear friend used to make quilt circles during our U.U. services and once that memory bloomed, I figured out how to make it work (and that I should have cut it much larger).

Hand-sewing is a meditation I love, folding fabric, like time, and binding it together in the shape you desire. Hands have been stitching longer than we can remember, where men at sea and soldiers were often more capable darners and menders than wives and mothers, before sewing was ascribed a gender role. These meditations through time layer the past onto the present. I am sewing a pattern that my Great-Grandmother sewed. I can feel her hand over mine, more sure, more used to the rhythm of it.



Minnie (left) and me (right), folding time in one pattern.



To create my sampler, I used the same stitch that my Great-Grandmother used. That her Great-Grandmother used. That all those who have come before and taken a needle into their hand have used. The needle separates the edges of threads and weaves in, through the threading, the fabric, and weaves out to take breath on the other side, before diving back down again, into the earth. I am sewing and weaving the earth and sky together. I am creating.

Working on my family tree, I realized that I was meditating on the backstitch in my head. Emma Whitcher was born and died. I slid the needle into the fabric at her birth, and moved it to the left, slipping out at her point of death, life’s beginning and end. But then I move the needle back to the right, halfway, to the place where Minnie, Emma’s daughter, was born, sliding the needle in at her birth, and then all the way to the left to Minnie’s death, coming back out of the fabric. And then halfway to the right, when her daughter Ruth was born, then out to the left, where Ruth died and halfway back to where my dad was born. The rhythm repeats, through those still living and those who are yet to be, so that someday a descendant- though not mine- might find my sampler and wonder at the stitches and endeavor to step into my shoes and take a needle into their hands.

Creating Constellations



A map of stars of where my loved ones live.



I do a lot of work with mythic symbols: runes, cave paintings, indigenous drawings, the Nazca lines, Pictish symbols, etc. I like how symbols distill the larger picture down to a single silhouette, outline or image. As someone who tends to get lost in the bigger picture, it helps me better understand the essence or spirit of the thing.

It’s the same idea as taking your genealogy and creating it into a visual tree, with names as leaves, where the oldest known homelands as roots burrowed into the ground, your foundation. It’s a beautiful thing that art does. It shows something outside of its expected interpretation, offering another dimension of context by which to view it.

In the deep winter, when the trees are barren and naked, I look to the stars. I imagine how the oldest ancestors studied their patterns and trusted their fixed points enough to navigate the world. They used the stars in the sky as a compass to explore previously unknown terrain, to aid their exploration. Our ancestors ventured into water that had no visible end just to see what was on the other side. How powerful the stars are, that their constancy made man put faith in them.

I study constellations as a hobby. I am no master of names or places in the sky but I can recognize my old friends and I look to the summer sky for friendly faces, gazing at them as I used to do on camping trips with my family: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Cassiopeia, Draco. Those nights around the fire with my parents and my siblings are some of my fondest memories, just us immersed in nature, a glittering starry sky above us. It’s a reminder I carry with me now, that they are still above me, even when the sun obscures their view…like those we love are still with us, even when death has claimed them.

When we are small our lives revolve around our immediate parents and grandparents, including our childhood playmates. As we grow older, our worlds and our circles expand. We know people who live in other cities, we grow closer to distant relatives. Our web gets larger and we begin to collect people important to our growth, our chosen family. No matter where we travel, they remain a part of us, a fixed point in our lives, and that love and gratitude never tarnishes or fades. Even when our friends and family are separated from us by geographical distance, the love we feel for each other exists as something solid in us.



My starburst.



Even still, it’s hard to hold that image in the isolation of the winter months. A few years ago I wanted to make a visual representation of the web of people in my life. To start, I took a map of the world, and put a dot where I lived. Then I charted a dot in every city where my loved ones and chosen family lived. Some dots became larger than others, in areas where my roots were deeper, becoming brighter stars on my map of my sky.

When that was done, I drew lines from each dot into the one that represented where I lived. What I found was a wonderful image, a starburst, light blooming out into the world that represented the landscape of loving energy I had created. It was as if the dark gloom of winter melted away beneath its image.



A stilt-walker creature from The Dark Crystal?



A winding path and journey forwards?



A diamond, opening like a box so the light comes out?



That starburst became my personal symbol of joy, a totem I burned onto a wooden disc to carry with me in my mojo bag. I created my own constellation, my own constant companion. Sometimes, as a meditation, I play with it, mapping out the cities and playing connect-the-dots in various ways to see what images I find, like the Big Dipper, the Bear or Cassiopeia’s necklace.

Now, unlike the fixed stars in the heavens, the ones in my life do move around the world and the shape of my personal constellation changes. But I have learned to accept change as the only constant I can count on. Some stars go out and people leave my life, either through death, a move or a falling out we can’t seem to come back from, which doesn’t negate the love we had for each other when we had it.

Every winter I revisit and reshape the stars in my universe, a reminder of how loved I am, and how far-reaching the web of friends has become. This exercise reminds me that I never truly walk alone. My feet walk the earth where others before me have walked, eyes tilted up to the same stars I see, the same stars those who come after will see.

Have gratitude for the love you have in your life, for the lives you have touched and the ones that have stirred your soul. Create your own symbol, whether it be a web, a starburst, a constellation, a collage. Make yourself something you can touch and hold that reminds you of your blessings and fills your spirit with peace.

Ancestor Prayer Beads

I am always searching for new ways to experience my ancestor work, physically, visually, energetically, artistically. I find that more experiences and points of view give dimensionality to intangible theories, which gives it more flesh and weight. One of the first things I learned about ancestor worship came from the Yoruban religion of Ifa, built around the core belief of ancestor reverence. They say that if you do not know seven generations of your ancestors- those who walk behind you and paved the way for you- then you cannot know who you are.

That is something easily done in a culture that prioritizes holding onto the names of ancestors past, but in Western culture it is easy to forget those who traveled before. It is possible to lose an entire branch of history in one generation; a forgotten sibling, the sudden death of a parent with no other family, adoption, etc. It is easy for facts to become lost. But we all come from somewhere. We all have histories that trace back to the first signs of life.

When my work deepened, I wanted to see how far back I could go. How much of my own history did we already know? That thought prompted me to look into the genealogy notes we had. There were very few names to my mother’s family, and a couple blocks we’d been stuck at in my father’s. I could only go back seven generations in one line and we had yet to verify if it was accurate. Thanks to the help of the information age, the improbable became more possible and I more discoveries were made.

So I have these names, interesting, strange and old and all belonging to people whose blood flows in me. I have sat and recited their names aloud, bearing witness to their place in the journey of our family. And recently, I found myself wanting something different, something fuller, something with a weight I could hold in my hand.

Prayers beads are used by many differing religious faiths as a means of repetitive prayer, chant or devotion: Buddhist, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Anglican, Islam, Hindu, Sikh- just to name a few. Having experience with both rosary and mala beads, I was drawn to trying to create something towards that purpose. I started simply, buying plain wood beads and hemp rope at the local craft store.

In the generation above me, both of my parents are still living so I started my prayer beads with the first generation of dead relatives, my Grandparents (both bio- and step-). I placed four beads for four Grandparents, tying a double knot afterwards. In the next section I put a bead for each name I had for my Great-Grandparents, and then tied a double knot. And I moved into the next section and so on, for 7 generations of dead. When it was finished, I had a necklace made of 120 names, long enough to double-wrap around my neck.

In my meditations I hold each bead in my hand and speak the name of an ancestor into it, learning their names, calling their memory into the wood and paying homage to them.

This necklace is another way to process what it means to have those generations supporting me, with that tangible weight upon my shoulders layering another perspective into my awareness. With every step of my foot and shifting of the wood around my neck, I am made aware of the presence of support I have gathered in the spiritual world and, if nothing else, I am humbled by the lives that gave way for mine and reminded that I am not alone. I am never alone.