The Creation  of the Healing Heart

My friend Nancy and I met when we worked our way through a grueling ob/gyn residency. The four years of training is incredibly taxing, both physically and emotionally with thirty-six hour shifts, 120 hour work weeks, life, and death. Working in the trenches like this bonds people at the level of the heart. So even though that was over 17 years ago, and our communication had been reduced to Christmas newsletters, when Nancy confided in me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, I wanted to do something meaningful for her.

At this point in my life, I was making a transition from a career in medicine to my true avocation as artist/jeweler. My jewelry designs were evolving as much as I was. I began inscribing words and messages on my pieces after reading the scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto’s book The Hidden Messages in Water. Dr. Emoto exposed water to written words and then froze the water. He found the most beautiful crystals formed in response to the words "Love" and "Gratitude." He then pointed out that our bodies are 70% water. He wondered what effect words of love would have on the water of our bodies. Intuitively, we all know that words can heal. I felt that placing loving words on my jewelry could have a positive and healing effect on the person wearing the piece. I made a pendant for Nancy molded from a naturally occurring heart-shaped shell. On the back of the pendant I inscribed the word "Love." The physical presence of the necklace and the message on the back reminds Nancy that she is loved, supported, and held in my heart. Loving one another is all any of us can really do for each other, but it’s also all that really matters in this life.

Everyday in my gynecology practice I see women in all different phases of dealing with breast cancer. I see women who find lumps in their breasts, women whose lumps I find, women with abnormal mammograms, women who need referrals to breast surgeons, and women who receive bad news from the pathologist. I see women who’ve had lumpectomy, mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, nausea, vomiting, hair loss, recurrence, and death. But now, thankfully, with the advances in treatment, I also see perseverance, survival, triumph, and life!

One of the universal themes I see threaded through the lives of each of these women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, is that it doesn’t just affect them, it affects everyone who loves them as well. And those of us who love them want to provide support and want to let them know just how dearly they are loved. We want desperately to do something meaningful, but often feel powerless to do so. We also feel fear of our own fragile mortality. We know, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." We feel that one person can’t make a difference, but that’s where we’re wrong. Each person’s action has a ripple effect in the universe, such that each of those ripples acts synergistically to create a tidal wave of effect!

The Healing Heart necklace is the "pebble" that I’ve been moved to create. I now lovingly toss this pebble into the pool of the universe, to add my ripple to effect the greater good of humankind.