small town stuff...

As you know, we have goats. Three goats who are almost a year old now, and who make a lot of ... compost! Our neighbor, Kathleen Brennan, is also a talented photographer, cuts our hair in her lovely studio, and raises chickens in her yard. Most people in Taos do more than one thing to get by, and Kathleen does it most gracefully. Barter is also a big part of small town life, so Rick wandered down the street the other day with a wheelbarrow full of goat poop, and returned home a while later with a nice stinky load of chicken poop, plus some really beautiful fresh eggs. These more than make up for the Easter Eggs I didn't dye this year! Funny, the things that please us so much these days...

with the flow...

My best ideas always hit me first thing in the morning. Today it was a doozy. I totally misunderstood a sentence I read in a magazine, and out of that, came a great idea for a book. I'm writing it. I started today, by the river at Embudo Station, with Rick, good food, and a nice bottle of wine. I had Rick snap this picture because this is the visual I want for this year of writing. Me, in the sun, by the river, relaxed and happy. It will take a year. It's about a year, so it has to take that long.

Now I need to get organized with the day to day stuff. I'm smartest in the morning, so I'll do the writing then. Email has to be answered of course, but it might be less chatty than usual. Then there's the blog. I want to keep it up because it's totally different from The Book, and it's good practice. I might have to get up earlier, get moving earlier, make longer days somehow... it seems somewhat insane, but when the gods plop a Good Idea in your lap, it's considered very bad manners to ignore it.

I'll keep you posted, of course. More details in a while. And beads too. Always beads. Beads are life as I know it. Stay tuned... I think things are going to get kind of interesting.

We have two cats who live in the studio. Jerry, the orange one, is a mighty hunter who loves to bring mice inside and let them go. Not very good for pest control, but at least he's generous about sharing his toys...

Yesterday morning I saw Jerry on point, and heard something rustling behind the display case. "Rick! We have a mouse!" We both grabbed leather gloves and started moving furniture, and there he was, the cutest little bunny in the world. Rick caught him, and we headed out across the road to the open field to let him go, but quickly realized that his family wasn't over there, and dogs or hawks would get him in no time. So back home to find a big plastic box to keep him in while we figured out what to do next. We made him a bed from some clean straw we keep for the goats, picked some fresh alfalfa from the yard, filled a little bowl with water, and got a baby carrot from the fridge. Here's a picture of Bunny and Rhino, sharing a carrot...

I kept him in the studio with me all day, making sure he wasn't injured, and waiting for evening, when we feed the cats and lock them inside for the night. Then I took him out and let him go. There was no sign of him this morning, so I have to believe that he found his mommy. As for Jerry - I made him a nice new necklace, complete with beads and three bells!

Know any good chants?

I was sifting through a big shelf full of CDs yesterday, looking for something I hadn't heard in a while, to inspire me - or at least keep me awake - while I made beads. I was tired and sort of lazy, so I really needed a kick in the pants. One after the other, I passed up old favorites because I'm just bored with all the same old stuff. Someone recently recommended Orient-Occident, which I ordered, and have been listening to a lot. It's ancient music from Afghanistan and Turkey, from 1200 to 1700. Old! Cool! Wonderful! I added it to my "yes" stack. Then I found a quirky one by local Santa Fe band, Busy McCarroll. Another "yes". I needed one more to fill the cheapo CD changer I have in the studio. Then I spotted one I knew I'd never listened to before. It was the Dalai Lama, chanting... given to Rick, because he meditates, and he would "get it". But I know he had never listened to it either. So I took it with the others, and loaded up the CD player, with that one first.

Have you ever heard this kind of chanting? It' hard to describe. It's low and droning and circular and soothing and energizing. Eventually, even though it was the same thing over and over for almost an hour, it became something like melodic to my western ears, and I began "humming along". I started to feel lighter somehow, and happier. My beads took that on too, and when Rick came home with armloads of groceries, he looked at me, listened to the chanting for a minute, grinned, and just said, "hm!". Later he told me I was sort of glowing... maybe he made that part up.

A few years ago, we saw the Drepung Loseling Monks from Tibet perform here in Taos. They were wonderful. A little different from what I was listening to yesterday, but I recommend seeing them if you get the chance (chants!). And if you're already into this stuff, and have some favorite chant CDs, please share them with us here. I'm ommmmmmm my way to the studio now!

yes it IS spring!

There was snow on the ground this morning, and it's been raining buckets all day, but you don't want to hear that, do you? Here's a picture of me and the goaties on Sunday, back when the sun was out and the tulips were singing.


I've been at the bleepin' computer for two days straight, so I'm not particularly inspired to write. I will, however, urge you to visit my website, where there are beads to buy, HOPE Bracelets too, and a Good Deed Auction just because I didn't have enough going on already. See you back here in a day or two. And now, as my darling Granny always said when she walked in the front door, "Where's my drink!?"

In our hands...

I found this on Virtual Tourist, posted by a Russian-Cuban guy who lives in Mallorca.
It's One World y'all... Happy Earth Day!

I saw an article on "how to find seven extra hours a week" - or something like that. I didn't actually read it, because that would have taken 10 minutes that are already missing. But I think I've found a better way of getting more out of a day... Insomnia! It's amazing how wide awake and full to the brim with thoughts one can be at 2AM... I know because I've been doing this all week. From now on, I'm going to leave my laptop in the living room, so I can quietly catch up on email, surf, research, shop, and write until I'm empty, and can sleep again...


Happy Earth Day tomorrow! I remember being at a celebration of the very first Earth Day, in San Jose, in 1970. It was inspiring and fun. Now it's just flat out important. We're not happy hippies, romping in the park anymore. We've made a lot of messes, and it's time to get serious and clean up.

There are so many small things that will help hugely. Look around. The information is out there. If we all make some small, easy changes, the results will be big. We might even get to keep living on this planet. Wouldn't that be nice?

In our house, we already have low-flow shower heads, recycle (though New Mexico is pretty behind the times on that), use refillable Nalgene water bottles, take our own washable to-go containers to restaurants, use cloth grocery bags, and have changed almost all our light bulbs to the super-efficient compact fluorescent ones. Today I joined GreenDimes.com. For a pee-wee $36 a year, they do all the busywork of taking your name off junk-mailing lists, and plant a tree a month for you too. What a great idea!

I hope you'll do a little something in celebration of our beautiful shared home. Hmmm, I might even go pick up beer bottles from the side of the road and see if I can make some beads out of them!

Happy Earth Day to you!

there's HOPE!

Bet you could use some good news, huh? I find it swirling all around me this morning, but I'll start with one little bit... I'm going to be selling the beautiful HOPE Bracelets on my website soon! Until now, all the bracelets made each year in Yetebon, Ethiopia were only sold at a couple of places in Denver. No one really knew how to make them available online, so I decided to add another little bit to my Job Description and volunteer to handle the web sales. These bracelets are all gorgeous, one-of-a-kind, and hand made by the folks participating in the HOPE Project in Yetebon. The beads are mostly donated by U.S. beadmakers, but there's now a studio in the village, where they're learning to make their own lovely beads, and eventually become self-supporting.

I love this project. It's all about "teaching people to fish", but because it involves beads, it's very dear to my heart. This is what I mean when I say "Beads for a better world"!

I should have about 25 bracelets in my hands in a few days. Once I photograph them and post them on a new page within my website, I'll put the word out that they're ready to go. This year's bead roundup is about finished, and the beads we're collecting now will go with volunteers to Ethiopia in October, to be made into more bracelets. I think it will be great to give you all the opportunity to buy these without having to travel to Denver! They aren't just beautiful jewelry. They're changing the world!


To learn more about the HOPE Bracelet Project, visit my HOPE CHALLENGE PAGE.

almost all I have to say... tonight...

... the picture (if it comes through - which is in question as I write this) is worth way more than so many words, but it's a start. It's happy, and hopeful, and present. Thank you, Cato, for the lovely daffys!

To follow my own advice (to make something beautiful every day), I ordered 12,500 CZs... that's a lotta sparkle, baby! I know I can make something beautiful with that.

No more tonight... it's been a helluva week so far.
I remain hopeful.
Carry on my friends!

What's Your Job?

"Summer" by Phill Singer

I've been struggling lately, trying to figure out just exactly what my "job" is. Sure, I'm a beadmaker, I support my family with my work, I'm a mom and a wife. But those are more what I do than what I am. Those are tasks within the bigger job of being human. I'm talking about "Job" as in Higher Calling.

Another task is to talk. We all share that one - the need to communicate, to share, to help each other. I use my blog here to tell you about things that seem important to me as I travel the internet. Read it or don't, it's one of my tasks. The latest bit is that it seems the FDA is quietly trying to control our ability to purchase vitamins and herbs, by requiring them all to be labeled as "drugs", which would then make it possible for the pharmaceutical companies to make even more money than they already do. I haven't had time to dig deep and find out how likely this really is to happen, but I think I'd better do it soon - like today. There's a sneaky deadline coming right up, and I sure don't want those greedy buzzards telling me I need to go to a doctor and get a prescription for my vitamin C! I'll let you do the digging for yourself this time, since I know it's not really my job... check it out at NewsTarget.com. We have only until April 30th make our thoughts known to the FDA.

After learning about that one yesterday morning, I was kind of disturbed, and decided to keep myself of disconnected for a while, ignoring email, playing CDs in the studio, and leaving the local radio and TV off. At 3:00 I decided to watch Ellen for a little outside company, and clicked the TV on, only to see Charlie Gibson reporting the news about Virginia Tech. So much for disconnection... Suddenly I was swamped with sadness and just stood frozen to the studio floor, weeping for those kids, their families, the whole sorry world...

And then I realized I had to snap out of it. It's not helpful to anyone for me to take on the world's pain. It occurred to me that it would be much less self-indulgent, and much more of a community service if I did my best to float on top of it, stay positive, and keep doing what I do best - make beads. I'm pretty sure that it's my Job to make beautiful things every day, adding light to a dark world. Making a living is one thing, but it's my Job to make beauty.

The rest is busywork. But interestingly, one person's busywork might be another person's higher calling. So talk to me here. Talk to each other. What's your Job?

A Day Off

I took yesterday off. It didn't look like a day off, because I was making jewelry all day. But it wasn't work. It was just for me. I left the computer off. That's important because it always means work. So I ignored it completely, even though I heard it whimper a few times as I walked by the office. I took some tools and beads and silver out to the patio, and made earrings all afternoon. Nothing I really intend to sell, but just some things I wanted to try for myself. I have a current obsession with one-piece earrings. I didn't want to make a doo-dad to link to an ear wire. I wanted a single piece, and I like the way these came out...

They're big faceted turquoise drops that I bought in Tucson last year. I used fat 18 gauge sterling wire, and wrapped, draped, looped, and hammered it into this "silver ribbon" design. I think I'll see about making some glass beads to use in something similar. Go ahead and use the design if you like it. I'm not going to mess with written directions though. If you make jewelry, you can figure it out. If you don't...well, maybe I'll come up with a few to sell if anyone is interested.

Consider The Yurt

The talking, exploring-of-options, research phase of our next move is well under way, and has sort of a life of its own. Tiny Houses still seem interesting, but we need to stay open-minded at this point. This morning the idea of a yurt was plopped literally in my lap, as I sat in bed, reading the paper, and watching the snow fall outside... again... We have a friend here who lives in a yurt - or more accurately, a "ger", but I'll use yurt because it fits better in my mouth.

(I'm going to wander off for a moment here, for a side story... When we had the pizza shop in Seattle, the owners of the Chinese restaurant next door had a young daughter, who often came over to visit us. She was trying to teach me how to say her name, which was spelled "Shu Yu", but pronounced more like "Sue Yee". I mangled it beyond recognition, and she finally threw her little hands in the air and gave up, saying, "Oh! You just don't have a Chinese mouth!")

Anyway, my friend Jill bought a yurt some time ago, to live in while she builds her real house. It's beautiful and cozy, but I always felt it was too small for full-time living. Now I'm discovering that yurts come in all sizes, so we could actually have room to twirl around if we felt the need. Other encouraging points are the cost, which is a lot less than even the tiniest of tiny houses, and the fact that they built to stand up to hurricanes, earthquakes, and heavy snow.

A couple of good resources to get you started on your own yurting adventure:
YurtInfo.org, and the book, Yurts: Living In The Round, which just happens to be written by a Taos woman.

I'm off and running, but my mind is running even faster...

On The Record

We've been listening to records lately. Not CDs, but the old vinyl records we've both hauled around for more than 30 years. We have a turntable, and a good size collection of stuff we bought mostly in the 70's. With all our talk about downsizing and moving to a new town and a new tiny house, we're starting to have to decide what we want to keep, and what we can live without. At first we thought the records would be one of the easy things to part with. Now I'm not so sure...

There's something different, more personal, richer, better about those old black records, spinning, crackling, sometimes skipping along on the turntable. It's so wonderfully retro to sit and actually listen to half a record, holding the well-worn cover, seeing the art again with new eyes, reading the liner notes, singing along because we know them all so well, even after all this time. And when it finishes, and the arm hits center and then bounces up and out of the way, clicking itself off, someone gets the pleasure of saying something we haven't said since we were kids, a phrase our own kids don't even know the meaning of... "Flip it." And then the other person gets to slink off the couch and turn the record over, careful to touch only the edges, turning it sideways to scan for warps and scratches, and blowing the dust off before gently setting it on the turntable and pushing the button that starts it spinning again.

Last night we played Joni Mitchell's Hejira, one of Rick's old favorites, and fast becoming one of my new favorites.
Then I flipped through the stacks, enjoying the soft foop foop foop sound, and found Bonnie Raitt's Streetlights. I went all mushy inside. I played that record to bits, but it still sounds great. Two of my favorite Bonnie songs are on it. Angel From Mongomery, and That Song About The Midway. After all these years, I finally realized last night that Midway was written by Joni Mitchell.

And so we'll keep circling back and taking another look, another listen. Maybe we'll decide to buy CDs of our favorites at some point, but for now, the whole experience of sitting around and playing records is one worth holding on to. Tonight? Hmmm... maybe David Bowie, ELO, Stephen Stills...

Wind Season

We came to Taos, six years ago, from Seattle. We were excited at the prospect of having actual seasons, rather than the drippy, grey gloom that hangs over the northwest most of the year, with a three-week sunbreak in August. After living in Taos for a while, we discovered that it does have seasons, but not the ones we were expecting.

We got here in April, which turns out to be Wind Season. Mud Season is just before Wind Season, and then comes Dust Season. Later in the summer, we have Monsoon Season. Fall and winter are more or less normal, with changing leaves, cold temperatures, and snow. We need the winter snow, of course, for water the rest of the year. So in a good year, there's lots of snow, which makes for a very healthy Mud Season, and so on...

Yesterday was the kind of windy day that actually frightens me. It started blowing in the morning, and didn't stop all day. I asked Rick to turn on some music. Loud music. I was hoping to drown out the wind noise. I spent the whole day in the office, at the computer, hiding in this little, windowless room in the center of the house. It's the best place to be if large objects start to take flight outside.

We had made plans to go out in the evening, so I braced myself, and acted brave. When we got out the door, all the chairs on the patio were upside down, and all the fences and trees in the neighborhood were filled with fluttery new "Taos Prayer Flags"... plastic grocery bags that seem to be in constant supply along the roadsides. They get kicked up in the wind and attach themselves to barbed wire and budding tree branches. I've started calling them Prayer Flags because it makes me less cranky than calling them "Garbage In The Trees".

We went into town for music and a little get together, but the music never showed up at the Taos Inn. Probably got blown off course... We hung out for a while anyway, and then took Kit Carson road home. It's the "back way" home, small and twisty, and lately, kind of cursed with bad juju. There have been some freaky accidents there in the last few months, and people killed. We've sort of jokingly said we think we should avoid it all together. Now I think we mean it...

We were driving along, and I hollered for Rick to stop, turn around, go back. I was digging for my camera, which I like to carry at all times, just in case something interesting turns up. And there it was, a huge, old cottonwood tree had fallen onto a motel. Right next door, another huge tree, a piney type, had snapped in the middle and fallen on the roof of a real estate office.

That wind! That blasting, nasty wind! It's the same mean wind that knocked me down three weeks after we moved here, and dislocated/broke my shoulder. Since then, I fear, respect, and hate wind. I get upset if I get in the path of a ceiling fan. I don't think I'm being silly to hide out in my office when the wind starts to rip through town. And I really think I'll stay off Kit Carson road for a while too. If you visit Taos during Wind Season, watch your backs, my friends. Sure, the weather is warming up, the leaves are budding out, the willows are drapey and yellow, and the daffodils, tulips, and lilacs are beginning to show their pretty faces, but I'm here to tell you, it's a lot more dangerous than Mud Season...

Take me out to the ball game...

Rick and I went to Albuquerque this weekend, to spend some time with Lauren, do a little shopping, and see an Isotopes baseball game. The visit was fun. The weather was cold, but we bundled up and went to the game anyway. The ABQ Isotopes are a minor league team with a really nice ball park, because New Mexico doesn't have any big league teams. I actually like the farm teams a little better. They're more personal and connected to the local community. There's room for silliness, and it's not so important to be great. They bring a lot of kids out on the field for various little contests, they give stuff away, and they have good food. Plenty of options beyond the standard hot dogs and beer. The pizza is good! The beer is good. And next time I'll see if the fish tacos are good.

It was a 7:00 game, so we had all afternoon to go shopping first. Lauren took us to the new "Uptown" - an outdoor mall with some beautiful stores. We had lunch at the Elephant Bar, and then wandered around. Lauren is looking for the perfect Spring Formal dress, and found two... I think her dad is buying them for her. I don't do that. I co-sign the student loans and pick up all the other financial slack that seems to come up pretty consistently. I've never had a wardrobe remotely close to what this girl requires. We're so different... I'm the aging hippie mom, who didn't shave my legs or buy lipstick until I was almost 22 years old. I've never had a floaty formal dress, or a place to wear one. I live in jeans and black shirts, because it simplifies my life. I never have to worry about what goes with what. It all goes with beads.

Lauren is much more fashion conscious... more "normal" really. She's tall and thin (I'm... not), and can wear just about anything(I can't). She always looks great(I don't). So shopping together could be kind of comical, and was, until I hit Fashion Overload...

We had been through all the shops at the la-dee-da, trendy, "new" outdoor mall (I remember when all malls were "open air"), and decided to drive over to the almost obsolete enclosed mall to visit Dillard's. The shoe department was fun. Lots of shoes. I understand shoes. We didn't buy shoes, but moved upstairs to the clothes. That's where it all went south.

I used to go to Macy's in Reno for retail therapy, back in my Nevada days, when I was married to the wrong man, and my kids were small. I'd take off on Sunday morning, and drive an hour to spend the day in blissful shopping solitude, usually not buying much, because were were broke all the time. But I was so content to just be alone with all those beautiful things, touching the fabrics, trying things on... I liked clothes then. I dressed better then. OK - I was younger then. Everything was different. But at least there was that fearless understanding of how to wear the latest styles without needing some kind of instruction manual.

So we wandered, we looked, we touched, we critiqued. Rick was a very good sport. Lauren kept saying, "Try this on", and at some point, I just fell apart. I burst into tears and said, "I just have to get out of here."

I think I know what happened. There I was, looking at new clothes, when I haven't had the time or interest for that in some twenty years. I have no idea what to do with clothes like that, and really no place to wear them. And then there's the "turning 50" thing... I realized that all my best clothes-wearing years got behind me, without my noticing it. It was like a blast of wardrobe mourning... crazy really, but there it was. My sweet girl took me by the hand and led me back down the escalator to the handbags and cosmetics. We found purses we loved but didn't buy, and then lipsticks we loved and did buy. (Paraben-free Guerlain KissKiss. Nice.) I finally caught my breath, and felt like we deserved a reward for getting through my burst of whacko-ness.

The baseball game, though totally an out-of-character thing for me to go to voluntarily, was literally a breath of fresh air. But to be honest, the game was not all that interesting. Once we'd had our fill of pizza and Cracker Jacks, we got cold and decided to leave early. Our team hadn't scored, and we were kind of bored with the whole thing. But wouldn't you know it - as we were walking through the parking lot, we heard a loud cheer come from the crowd inside. A home run, I think. And we missed it. There's some kind of metaphor for life in there... a reason to just stay alive and keep going from day to day... a reason to hold on for what comes next... because if you leave the game early, you'll miss something good around the next corner.
Play ball!

Happy Easter!

If you happen to be in Sydney, Australia this weekend, you might find my friend Carissa Lake at the local market, selling her beautiful cupcakes. She can be reached at carissallake@hotmail.com . Her business is growing, so find her now, before you have to wait in line for three hours to get one of these sweet treats!


I'm outta here until Monday. Happy Easter everyone!

Good Friday

Devout Catholics might want to cover your eyes for this segment. I'm about to tell you about my childhood experiences of Good Friday. I never intend to offend anyone, especially in matters of faith, but I sometimes do it anyway, because I'm honest...

I was raised Catholic. My mother and her mother were Catholic - mostly on Sundays and holidays - and pretty much Human the rest of the time. My father was a Union Man, which seemed like more of a calling than Catholicism to me as a kid, but my sisters and I were raised Catholic, because my father of course was required to agree to that before he was allowed to marry my mother.

Easter was a basically fun holiday for three little girls in a middle class neighborhood in San Jose. It meant new matching dresses, which Mom sewed for us, white gloves, white patent leather shoes, and hats with ribbons hanging down the back. Later, as we got older, the gloves were rejected, the shoes were upgraded to go-go boots, and the hats were traded in on groovy little triangle-shaped scarves that matched the dresses. We were cute, no denying it. We'd parade like three little ducklings to church on Easter morning, wishing like crazy the puffy old priest would hurry up already so we could get back home to Easter baskets full of jelly beans and chocolate bunnies. Dad was home through all of this, making sure the Easter Bunny had properly hidden the eggs in the back yard, and probably snitching a licorice jelly bean or two...

... But I'm hippity hopping ahead of my story here. In order to get to Easter Sunday and all the fun and fashion that went with it, we first had to endure the long afternoon of Good Friday. Mom had a macabre streak that showed up annually, not on Halloween, but on Good Friday. School was out for "Easter Vacation", so the whole neighborhood would be home, hanging out in each other's back yards, enjoying the California spring weather. Then at some point after lunch, Mom would call my sisters and I in, close the drapes in the living room, and in the false darkness of an otherwise beautiful spring day, she'd tell us the story of Jesus-On-The-Cross, and find some dismal religious radio station to make us listen to. We were supposed to be quiet, solemn, thoughtful, and if at all possible, thoroughly depressed. It might have lasted only ten minutes, but it seemed like all afternoon. It was torture. The only thing that got me through was the promise of the Easter Bunny. I knew HE wouldn't make me sad, and he always brought me cool toys too. Poor Jesus didn't stand a chance against the Easter Bunny.

I stopped "being Catholic" the day I turned eighteen, and never looked back. As one of my current favorite Holy Men, Michael Franti says, "God is too big for just one religion." I'm good with all of them. I even think there's still a place for organized religion in this world. Without it, a lot of people would be in deep trouble. But personally, I don't want to join any of those clubs. I take the pieces I like from all of them, especially the ones with good food, and weave them into a fabric that fits me. Nobody else has one just like it. Not even my sisters. And this year, I'll turn on all the lights on Good Friday, play some loud music, and make beautiful beads. And for Easter, Rick and I are going to Albuquerque to catch a baseball game with Lauren.

Happy Spring to you all. Happy new life, new beginnings, new hope. Now please pass the jelly beans.

Vermillion Lies

We saw this ever so quirky, twisted-folk sister act last night at the Taos Inn. Highly recommended for those who have a bit of a humorous, dark, circus freak side of their own, or wish they had one... Check out the Vermillion Lies website. You can see a video, order a CD, donate to the "banjolin fund", and even purchase ruffled panties and striped, thigh-high stockings. Man... all I have is beads... HA! But guess what! I ordered some really great Beadist Stickers today. If you like 'em, I might get Beadist Thong Undies next!

The hearts are still talking to me. I know... these are kind of edgy and intense coming from someone who usually does happy flowers and cupcakes...

I seem to have a "gift" for literally feeling other people's pain. Lately it's been coming at me relentlessly from all sides - from people I know, and also from the world as a whole. There's an awful lot of pain in the world these days. We're living in hard, harsh, and still beautiful times. There's so much possibility to make things better. But first it's important to shine a light on the dark places, so we know what we're dealing with. I needed to find a way of directing what I was feeling into something positive, and for me, that almost always means my work. Paul Stankard told the members of the ISGB last summer that we are all holy people, and that our work is our prayer. Yes.

Two songs were in my head as I made these...
Michael Franti sings, "I let go of a broken heart. I let go to an open heart." And Leonard Cohen's "Anthem" brings me to me knees every time I hear it... ..."there's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in...". Click the links on the artist's names to hear the songs. You'll see what I mean.

And so, these hearts begin my "Broken Heart" series. They're my prayer for the broken hearted people of the world, whether I know them or not, and whether they ever see these or not. A broken heart is also an open heart. Once the light gets in, amazing things can happen.