Lovely Lovely Lepidolite
I think we are all keenly aware of the fact that the world shut down almost exactly four years ago. There are a lot of topics we could dive into as we examine how the past four years have shaped us. But one thing about me is that I’m a sucker for a full-circle moment. And that’s what I want to go into today.
I want to go back to a moment when everything seemed so strange and unpredictable, and I chose to make a choice that changed the direction of my business, come back to the current moment when everything seems equally strange and unpredictable, and I’m choosing to make a choice that will change the direction of my business, and the crystal that was exactly what I needed in both moments: Lepidolite.
First, lets get into the science facts: Lepidolite is an shimmery, Lithium-bearing Mica crystal that usually forms in flat slabs. It’s found all over the world, from the United States to Madagascar, and is not particularly uncommon. It is most commonly purple but can be pink as well. (source: The Crystal Bible by Judy Hall)
I first met Lepidolite in a third, previously unmentioned moment where everything seemed strange and unpredictable: at a crystal store in Hermosa Beach that I visited with my youngest sister and my two kids during the summer immediately after leaving my abusive ex husband. I was JUST starting to dip my toes into crystals, I don’t even think I’d started my jewelry business yet, and I had been on the hunt for some stones I had just learned about that were all about calming and cleansing. I remember one was selenite, one was black obsidian, and I got my kids their first crystals (clear quartz for my oldest, rose quartz for my son), and I’m not sure what else. I distinctly remember my oldest losing her shit because I said her dad was picking her up for the weekend (at the time this was a brand new development and she felt like I sprung it on her randomly) and my youngest offering to let her hold his rose quartz to calm down. It’s funny the things that stick with us.
What also stuck with me was the deep soothing energy of the little piece of Lepidolite that I bought that day.
It would be a few weeks (months?) before I started my jewelry business, and as I was adding new stones to my collection I knew that Lepidolite was a one that I NEEDED to get.
Because it literally contains Lithium (a common ingredient in psychiatric medication), Lepidolite is strongly associated with bringing a calming and stabilizing energy when life gets overwhelming. Lepidolite is the perfect stone for times of transition, because it reminds us that everything is ok, and is going to be ok. (source: Crystals - The Modern Guide to Crystal Healing by Yulia Van Doren) This was absolutely a top choice for my crisis-induced jewelry business.
The thing was, it took me a WHILE to find a strand of Lepidolite beads in the style that had become my trademark, so even though my business started in August of 2019 and I’d been looking for Lepidolite beads basically that whole time, I didn’t have any in my possession until early 2020.
And before we even get into the events of March 2020, I had my first major growing pain: because when I started my jewelry business, I had NO money to invest and honestly no plans on starting a whole BUSINESS out of that project… I had been making my necklaces from cheap, bulk silver plated chains from Etsy. This fit my ethos of bringing pieces to market FAST and at an accessible price point, but the reality was that they DID tarnish quickly and were not the kind of long-term wardrobe staple I was envisioning.
I really WANTED to switch over to solid sterling chains (my earrings were already on solid sterling since the wires cost much less than the chains), but I’d set a certain pace for the amount of jewelry I was making/posting for sale each week, and there was no way I had the up-front costs to continue that in solid sterling. The jump from paying $17 for 25 chains to paying $5-6 EACH was just too big to do all at once. I bought a few and offered sterling as an optional upgrade, which some people did take me up on, but that was a a somewhat clumsy process of getting an order and then re-making the existing piece on the sterling chain.
Fully switching to sterling would mean that I’d have to drastically slow my pace. And slightly raise my prices. AND I was a newly single mom on welfare with no child support in sight and I needed the money.
And then the pandemic hit.
I had no in-person markets to book (this ended up being only temporary), I had to shutter my private, in-home sewing lesson business (this ended up being permanent), and I wanted to make a change that would put a pretty firm cap on how much money I could make each weekend in online jewelry sales. But there was one bright spot that was the pandemic unemployment benefits. After a CAREFUL read over the rules and income limits and all that… I realized that it was time.
And I did my first all-sterling crystal drop.
Of Lepidolite.
Now I guess we’ll never know if people were drawn to the properties of the stone, or just that everyone was filling their time with online shopping, but what I do know for sure is that that first solid sterling batch of Lepidolite almost sold out.
SO obviously, every time I was shopping for new beads, I was on the hunt for more Lepidolite beads.
AND I NEVER FOUND MORE.
For years.
Until this past summer when I had fundraised for a big bead order to replace all of the inventory that was stolen out of my car (my entire box of backstock, close to $10k of jewelry and my insurance only covered $1500). And there they were. The Lepidolite beads I had been searching for, all that time.
And now they’re back, with a limited collection of one-of-a-kind pieces.
Just in perfect, full circle timing, for this new moment where everything seems strange and unpredictable, making a choice that will change the direction of my business.
I’ve been feeling for the better part of a year, that the way that my business organically formed over pandemic times was not working anymore. I knew in my bones that SOMETHNG needed to change but I had no idea what that something was.
I felt so much like I was working AGAINST my weaknesses instead of WITH my strengths. I invested SO much time, money, and energy into things that “made sense” as the next step and none of them were going anywhere.
I went back to school. I got an internship in an “adult job” field. I focused my energy on my own daily habits, on my kids’ self-sufficiency, on letting myself REST.
It took me months of failure and a complete financial and mental health collapse and a painstakingly slow recovery to peel away the layers of burnout and self-preservation to uncover that, in all honesty, what I do best when I’m most aligned with my zone of genius, is writing.
Which is essentially the long answer for why I’m here with a very long blog post, finally telling the STORIES that brought about the jewelry brand that has been struggling because I had been pushing down the stories in favor of trying to let the product “speak for itself.” Products can’t speak. But I can. And clearly, once I get started, it’s hard for me to stop.
This feels like a moment of stepping into a vast, uncharted new territory.
But I’m not stressing about it.
Because I have my Lepidolite.
(Disclosure: all images are my own unless otherwise specified, and I use Amazon Associate links to earn a small commission from purchases made through them)