The rituals I share on this website and the items you’ll find in my shop were all created with magic in mind. Some were created from the magic of love. Let me explain.
For seven years, I devoted myself to caring for my husband. He had Alzheimer’s. Our journey came with the heartbreak you might imagine. It also came with surprising joy and expressions of deep and tender love. My husband died on July 19, in our home, in my arms. We’d been married for forty-one years and eight days.
In the three years before he died, my husband slept a lot. I used that time to create items I hoped to sell. I made linen shawls and scarves trimmed with lavish lace. I made fully lined drawstring bags in a variety of sizes. I beaded some of them. I made handfasting cords for wedding ceremonies, each end fringed with hundreds of crystals. When it came to jewelry, I let my imagination run wild in a treasure chest of gemstones, beads and crystals. Creating helped me cope with the cruelty of Alzheimer’s.
I painted river stones with images of owls and trees and the Celtic rune for love. I beaded keys, one of the symbols associated with the Norse goddess Frigg who could unlock wisdom, the Greek goddess Hekate who could unlock magic, and the Greek centaur Chiron who could unlock the secrets of healing.
Inspired by my Norse and Celtic roots, I wrote rituals that could be used with those keys and stones. I created ritual items that could be placed in those drawstring bags and given as gifts for the magically minded.
My small dining room proved the perfect place to set up my sewing machine and jewelry tools. Most of the time, my husband was only a few yards away, asleep in his recliner.
The energy of being so close to a man I loved proved powerful. I made hundreds and hundreds of items. But taking photos, writing descriptions, setting prices, calculating shipping – necessary steps in the selling process – were not creative. And as my husband disappeared into the fog of dementia, the act of creating became key to my survival. I mean that literally…because approximately 40% of family dementia caregivers die first. Let that statistic sink in.
I kept creating. I survived. Now I’m building a new life. I have bins, bags, and boxes of treasures for others who are magically minded, who appreciate the energy in an item that has truly been inspired by love. Might that be you?
While my own shop is under construction, I’m uploading items to my shop on Etsy. <https://etsy.com/shop/moonriverrituals> Take a look around.
