Tag Archives: jeanine payer jewelry

the opposite of survival – part TWO

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Screen Shot 2014-04-23 at 7.22.17 AMSee part 1 – here

The story didn’t end there? Why? Because I was not ready for abundance – YET.

With my necklace clasped around my neck – shouting, but delicately shouting, because I was not yet ready to be shouting anything so life affirming: “I call for your abundance like an armor of ships.”  ~ Leonore Wilson

I wore it everyday. So proud. I also wore it next to my other Jeanine Payer necklace: “She looked at her own Soul with a Telescope. What seemed all irregular, she saw and showed to be beautiful Constellations: and she added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds.” ~ Samuel Coleridge

I wanted abundance, there is no doubt about that, but I was still looking inward. WHY? Because I needed to make some changes to be able to BE in abundance, but I didn’t make many changes when it came to abundance. I went back to doing what I was doing. And THREE times that necklace broke. And I could say it was just shoddy workmanship, but I have other Janine Payer pieces and none have ever broken, only abundance.

Life’s metaphor for me. Abundance – kept breaking. As beautiful and horrible as it was there I was breaking abundance. I didn’t get it.

The first time the necklace broke, I was miserable. What is the meaning behind this? I thought to myself and I discovered, I was not living in abundance, I was afraid of what bad thing might happen, I was worried about worry and still trying to protect myself from being hurt, killed, or fail – old habits die hard.

I was surviving. So, I continued to look inward. Things don’t change until they change, so all I could do is keep looking. I got the necklace fixed and it broke again.

I left it broken for almost a year.

Each time it broke, I had it repaired by Jeanine Payer’s studio in San Francisco. I’d send it back to them. They’d repair it and send it back to me.

This time, I put it back on and it broke almost immediately, within minutes. This was too delicate of a subject for me. Man, what is the lesson here? What do I need to know about myself that will allow me to believe in abundance and not fear it. To live it?!  I was in a miserable job, I was not living the life I really wanted to live, I needed to change, but I was stuck.

I sent it back again and after a few weeks, it came back to me and I wore it carefully. This time, I also removed the other necklace – the looking inward necklace. I stopped wearing them together.

It’s not that I stopped looking inward, but I stopped dwelling on the looking inward. Something shifted, it always does, but it took time, took patience took me doing the work to get there, shifting my thoughts from surviving to abundance. Not standing still but GOING and DOING looking to change. Not at a frantic crazy pace, but at the pace I could do it.

Sometimes your friends push you to be a better you, like my friend pushing me to get that necklace and sometimes, most times – you have to do the work yourself to actually live what you’re pushed to do. When you’re ready. You’re ready. Don’t stop trying.

Boom. Again. A message from the universe. The necklace has not broken since.

The opposite of survival

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I used to live for survival. To scrape by. To make it.

Heart-Diamond-LI never realized what I was doing until a friend pointed it out. Good friends do that for you, they point out the thing you don’t want to see the most, in a gentle way, when it’s the right time.

I had gotten a Christmas bonus, not a large bonus, but an unexpected one.
I was telling my friend how excited I was and how I had not expected a bonus. My friend says “What are you going to do for yourself with it?”
“Pay some bills!” I say. I love getting things accomplished, paying things off, even though that might mean I have to charge them right back up.
She turned her head away from me, pausing. “What is it? Out with it.” I said

She says “I asked what you are going to do for yourself and you didn’t think about yourself first, you thought about money.”

Boom. Head-exploding advice right in the moment.

Have I been doing this? Surviving? Not taking care of myself first? Thinking of money instead of what’s right for me? Some might say the opposite of SURVIVAL is DEATH. It isn’t. In my case, it’s abundance. Survival is one step away from death in my book, not at the opposite end of the world. Survival is a hard habit to break, but an easy pattern to keep recreating in my life. Over and over.

She then said “I want you to leave here and head to Twist (one of my favorite jewelry stores) and buy yourself something. Right now.” Good friends do that too, they gently nudge or SHOVE you in the right direction when the time is right.

Could I? Should I? Shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I?

I walked into Twist and headed directly to a jewelry case that I know has the work of Jeanine Payer in it.  Classic, simple jewelry with poetry inscribed on it in the tiniest letters, so small that they are sometimes hard to read, but you always know it’s there.

The first necklace I ask to see, has a slim curved silver pendant, about a half-an-inch long and a red jewel stone hanging next to it. It’s delicate. I hold it up in the light to read it. On one side it says, “I call for your abundance” on the other “like an armor of ships.” ~ Leonore Wilson.

Boom. Again. A message from the universe.

Be on the lookout. The words always come, right when you need them, but you have to be listening.

*disclaimer – the photo of the necklace here is similar to mine, but the one in the photo has a diamond, not a red jewel.