One Bead At A Time - From Self Healing To Purpose: A Journey Of Transformation

 11 Years ago I discovered beads, and they uncovered  me. I was led to them. I was guided to step into a magnificent limitless world that turned out to be my inner world and the entire Universe at the same time. One bead at a time I weaved my story, my life, my self. I cried, I laughed, I healed, I grew, I forgave, I inspired, I loved, I was transformed, I found my purpose.

Writing now, it’s difficult to find the starting point.

The starting point with my journey with beads - maybe it was in fact when my mom came home from Turkey, where she spent her annual leave working, with a bag of pearls and strings and clasps and other findings and I tried to play with them and combine them with beads from other broken strands of beads she kept. Or maybe it was in the way she always wore her beads with pride and joy, in a grey and confused world in the post-communism era in Romania. Or maybe it was when I finally discovered my voice, the way I spoke best, through writing the stories of my jewellery pieces. 

The starting point of my healing journey - maybe it was when I decided to go inside and do the work as I felt that there are hidden things inside me that don’t let me shine. Or maybe when I started (what later I discovered is called) the active meditation through drawing and designing as a child and then beading, crafts and intuitive art as a young woman. Maybe when I read religious and spiritual books ever since I was a child, confident that there is more than we usually perceive and curious about the immense astonishing love energy that created everything and that I felt with every breath. Maybe when I chose again and again not to let the world change me, to make me someone I am not when all the love I thought this world consists of was in fact suffering, and tears, and rejections, and wounding, and struggle, and anxiety - a world unsafe for a child, for a girl, for a woman.

The starting point of my story - maybe it was with the first unwanted intimate touch  from a man when I was a child, or maybe with the first man that abandoned me - my father, maybe it was with the first forced sexual experience - my then “liked by everybody “ boyfriend, maybe it was with the first violence against women I witnessed- my parents, maybe it was with the first abuse I suffered from a man in power- my teacher, maybe it was with the first man that hit me for not doing what he wanted, maybe it was in fact being born in a society that chose to turn a blind eye and treat everything lightly  when it came to women and their experiences.

Or maybe all. And maybe even before that, before me, before time.

I was raised a lioness and not a kitten, as my mom told me. I was raised strong and kind and forgiving and loving and caring and determined and ambitious and daring and purpose driven and mission oriented. I asked to be the light, the pen with which the creator writes his love story to the world. I prayed for the destructive process of being completely stripped of everything I was not, of everything the society and other people made me believe I was. And I was guided and supported with every step, with every bead I weaved my experience and my being.

Every single piece of jewellery I made talks about me, my stories, my experiences, my journey, my healing, my passions, my interests, my beliefs, my emotions, my darkness and my light, my transformation, my unbecoming, my love. 

I used art and crafts to heal myself, to free myself. But this chapter has ended. And a new one begins. A new journey of shining my light upon this world, using my knowledge, my passions, my skills, my interests and my experiences to be of service. I struggled for the past couple of years with finding a deeper meaning of my art expression, a reason to continue doing it that will make a greater difference. Beads will still weave my story, but this time they’re weaving MY path, my purpose, my mission. And it’s still about healing and freeing and unbecoming, but not about me anymore, but about others, about the world, about the children and women that are most vulnerable in one of the most unsafe countries in the world, Pakistan . 

My story is not MY story, it’s OUR story. It’s a story of LOVE, from suffering through healing to purpose.