Leo Sunshine's Broken Hearts Club Band

Am I grieving right?

2012-01-27T15:31:00.001-08:00

Was turned on to this article by a good friend of mine. It totally relates to yesterday's post about APA talking about redefining grief as a form of depression....

“Am I Grieving Right?”

We pay a price when labeling grief as an illness.

Grief Could Join List of Disorders

2012-01-26T14:22:00.000-08:00

An article in yesterday's New York Times really gave me pause. It's about reclassifying grief, or ongoing grief, as a form of depression in the new version of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Having suffered from depression all my life, and having struggled with ongoing and complicated grief from multiple losses, I'm really conflicted about this. Read the whole article here....

Grief Could Join List of Disorders

I do know that I'm against prescribing medication, at least anti-depressants, for people dealing with grief. People need counseling. Someone to talk to. They don't need to line the pockets of big pharma just because their heart is extremely broken.

Fall, Brian's death, and back in black...

2011-09-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

Hello Broken Hearts Club Band, it's been awhile.

Well, it's really Fall in Portlandia. It's a time of hard transitions, challenging anniversaries, layers of grief, emotional pain, increasing darkness, and challenging myself to be more open to the love and support of my community, as well as asking for that love and support. It's also a time of receiving all sorts of signs for me; signs of support from friends and support from Spirit. Some of those signs are pretty obvious. I made a pilgrimage to Ravenna Ravine park in Seattle and picked up litter to honor the Goddess. While doing so I found a silver ring that fits my pinky and says in Chinese characters on the front, "I Love You" and inscribed inside, it says the word "LOVE". Thanks for that Spirit.

I started this blog as sort of a record for myself, as a resource for myself, and as a way for me to process my own grief and broken, rebroken, healing heart. I realize now, even more than ever, that "this", the writing and sharing of this process, is a part of my process. What a web we weave. There are soooo many spiders in the garden this time of year. Every morning I walk through a web when I leave the stairs to my house. The veil is thin and the web is thick.

I'm going to the memorial for a beloved friend this weekend. He was an amazing man, loved, admired, and appreciated by thousands and the best barista on Capitol Hill. He died in a bike crash at age 51. I don't know why, but for some reason, having born witness and felt the social and cultural impact over the past 30 years from the premature deaths of 300,000+ gay men in this country from the plague, I feel especially challenged by the "normal" early, premature, tragic, unfortunate, deaths of other gay men I know. I want a "get out of grief" free card, or I want "frequent griever flyer miles" or something. I don't just feel my own grief when these tragic events happen, I feel the grief of the community. A community that already deals with such layers of "complicated grief," "unresolved grief," "anticipatory grief," "survivor guilt," and untold cases of undiagnosed, unrecognized PTSD. I don't even ever really try and talk about this with my heterosexual friends and if I talk about it with queers under 40 it feels like I have to make it a "teachable moment."

If you want to know more about my friend, the fabulous Brian Fairbrother, here is a link to his obituary in the Seattle Gay News. The picture above is from the early 90's when Ti and I were having a big "Chroma" party where everyone was supposed to dress up colorfully. Brian was always colorful, and loved being contrary, so he work black of course.

I'm off to the cutting wheels to spend an hour shaping some lingam shaped jet mourning pendants. That's a part of the process too. I guess living our lives in spite of the process is also part of the process.

Warm regards on this windy day, Leo Sunshine

Genuine Jet Broken Heart Tasbih Prayer Beads

2011-08-03T16:53:00.001-07:00

This is the third set of prayers beads I've made. Stella has the first set and Wallowa has the second set. Prayer beads have been on my mind and heart a lot ever since I used Jamshed's altar tasbih to say 99 prayers for him as he lay dying last October. I'm making them with a lot of intention and it's been pretty challenging work. I use each set for awhile before I let them go...

Here's the link to the eBay listing for DVH Real Jet Tasbih Prayer Beads Broken Heart Necklace

REGRETS OF THE DYING

2011-06-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

A great post from Inspiration and Chai

It's about the regrets that the dying have by Bronnie Ware....

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone's capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn't work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

Grief, Unedited

2011-02-15T11:52:00.000-08:00

New research on how most who are widowed recover relatively quickly from their acute grief. My heart goes out to folks with complicated grief or chronic grief or grief from multiple losses, all of which pose unique challenges.

From the New York Times Op-Ed page.... here's the link...

Grief, Unedited By RUTH DAVIS KONIGSBERG

Published: February 14, 2011 and here's the article itself...

EVER since Joan Didion’s book “The Year of Magical Thinking” began its long run as a best seller in 2005, a number of first-person accounts of losing a husband have been published. Among them are Kate Braestrup’s “Here If You Need Me,” Anne Roiphe’s “Epilogue” and Kay Redfield Jamison’s “Nothing Was the Same.” This week, they are being joined by Joyce Carol Oates’s memoir “A Widow’s Story,” which recounts the death of her 77-year-old husband, Raymond Smith, from complications of pneumonia in 2008. While these memoirs are often moving, they are also highly subjective snapshots that don’t teach us much about how we typically grieve, nor more important, for how long.

In the past decade, social scientists with unprecedented access to large groups of widows and widowers have learned that, as individual an experience as grief may be, there are specific patterns to its intensity and duration that are arguably more helpful in guiding the bereaved in what to expect. They have found that most older people who lose spouses from natural causes recover much more quickly than we have come to expect. In fact, for many, acute grief tends to lift well within six months after the loss.

This discovery and subsequent work in the field has been driven primarily by George Bonanno, a clinical psychologist at Teachers College, Columbia. Before he began his research, few bereavement studies had looked at what percentage of widows and widowers recovered quickly, and what percentage were still mired in sadness years later. And none had managed to evaluate the respondents before their loss to get a sense of their overall emotional well-being.

But by tapping into an existing, long-term survey called the Changing Lives of Older Couples Study, done at the University of Michigan, Professor Bonanno was able to obtain baseline measurements of more than 1,000 married individuals. Participants in the study who subsequently lost a spouse were then invited for follow-up interviews at intervals of 6, 18 and 48 months after the death.

The single largest group — about 50 percent — showed very little sign of shock, despair, anxiety or intrusive thoughts (the hallmark symptoms of acute grief) even six months after their loss. Those subjects were also screened for lethargy, sleeplessness, inability to experience pleasure and problems in appetite — the classic symptoms of clinical depression — and came up clean on those as well. That didn’t mean that they didn’t still miss their spouses, but that they had returned to somewhat normal functioning, contradicting the popular maxim of widowhood that “the second year is harder than the first.”

Professor Bonanno summarized the surprising phenomenon in a 2004 article in the journal American Psychologist: “Resilience to the unsettling effects of interpersonal loss is not rare but relatively common, does not appear to indicate pathology but rather healthy adjustment, and does not lead to delayed grief reactions.”

As for the remaining participants, about 15 percent exhibited grief symptoms that were moderately high at 6 months but almost completely gone by 18 months. For an additional 10 percent, those who were still having problems at 18 and 48 months, grief had become chronic.

There were two additional groups that had never been considered in the literature: people who were depressed before and after their loss whose troubles seemed to be a pre-existing condition (about 10 percent), and people whose depression improved after the loss (also about 10 percent), suggesting that the death of a spouse actually alleviated stress.

Loss is forever, but thankfully, acute grief is not. Yet we rarely come across books (or plays or movies) about women who begin to stabilize after six months and start dating after a year or so because, perhaps, that narrative conflicts with our romantic fantasies that each of us is meant to spend our time on earth with only one soul mate. Ms. Didion’s situation was highly unusual, with her husband’s death compounded by her daughter’s fatal illness, but Ms. Oates’s followed the more common trajectory, and in 2009, she remarried, although that event is not mentioned in her book.

When Professor Bonanno published his findings, they were initially met with disbelief, along with criticism that his sample had simply not included the worst cases. But he has since replicated the results in other data sets of bereaved individuals and gradually, his trajectories have become the standard among clinical researchers who measure how people respond to loss compared with the statistical norms. Perhaps we will begin to update our own popular notions about grief as well.

Ruth Davis Konigsberg is the author of “The Truth About Grief: The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss.”

The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown

2010-12-28T19:28:00.001-08:00

This 20 minute video is a WONDERFUL lecture by an amazing woman. She talks about the importance of whole heartedness and vulnerability. This is totally worth a listen. Watch it with a loved one. Watch it with someone you want to be more vulnerable with. She explains why we numb and how it affects us, how we try to make uncertain things certain, and how we try to perfect everything in our lives, even when it's things that are fine the way they are. I learned so much from this video and have watched it several times....

The Heart of Humanity: Sitting with our Sadness

2010-12-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry it's been so long since I posted! I need to use this blog more, both to share information AND as a tool to help me structure myself around this important work.

My Daily Om today speaks again to the Heart of Humanity and sitting with our sadness....

December 28, 2010
The Heart Of Humanity
Sitting With Our Sadness

When we are dealing with sadness it is important to really sit with it and have to courage to do so.

The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.

The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand.

Another teaching of sadness is compassion for others who are in pain, because it is only in feeling our own pain that we can really understand and allow for someone else's. Sadness is something we all go through, and we all learn from it and are deepened by its presence in our lives. While our own individual experiences of sadness carry with them unique lessons, the implications of what we learn are universal. The wisdom we gain from going through the process of feeling loss, heartbreak, or deep disappointment gives us access to the heart of humanity.

Embracing Grief Because Grief is Important

2010-08-27T13:23:00.001-07:00

THis was my "Daily OM" that I received on my birthday. Somtime's they're spot on. I hope it touches you the way it has touched me.

August 19, 2010
Embracing Grief
Grief is Important

Giving ourselves permission to be with sadness actually creates space for us to begin the healing process.

Change is something that happens each and every moment in our lives. Since nothing is constant, it may sometimes seem as if we are losing something whenever things do change. Understanding that this is part of our daily existence and that there will not only be gains but also losses in our lives can help us more readily accept and deal with whatever happens.

Whenever we lose something or somebody we love, it is important for us to take time out for ourselves and truly feel the weight of what we are experiencing. Although it may seem that doing so will push us into a deeper state of sadness, truly giving ourselves permission to be with whatever arises actually creates space for us to begin the healing process. This is because the act of grieving is a natural process, allowing us to sort through the range of emotions that are present in our everyday existence. Even though it may sometimes seem easier to involve ourselves in activities that take our minds off of our sadness, this will only make the route to healing more difficult. Unless we listen to where we are in the moment, the emotions we experience will only grow in intensity, and our feelings will manifest themselves in more powerful and less comfortable ways. Once we consciously acknowledge that these emotions are present, however, we are more able to soothe the sorrow of t! he moment. In so doing, we become more open to our natural ability to heal ourselves.

Grieving doesn’t have to be a process that keeps us rooted in our thoughts of fear and sadness. For the moment we might feel despondent, but by expressing and coping with our true feelings, we face the sadness head-on. When we allow ourselves to accept and deal with our loss fully, we will then be able to continue our life’s journey with a much more positive and accepting outlook. This will make it easier for us to see that our grief is ephemeral and, just like our moments of happiness, it will also come to pass.

Good Grief and stopping the medicalization of grief

2010-08-14T19:05:00.001-07:00

There's a great op-ed in the NYTimes called Good Grief about the importance and the normalcy of the grieving process. Check it out!

Back in Black, Again...

2009-09-05T17:40:00.000-07:00

Good Mourning Broken Hearts Club Band,

I'm finally getting back to this blog and feel I need to start using it regularly! I haven't been too active in the studio. About 5 weeks ago, one of my housemates, Sil, died of a heart attack. He was 78 and had been diagnosed with heart failure earlier in the month, but he was still active and had traveled to visit his kids when it happened. It was unexpected but not shocking. We all miss him a lot as he was a wise and fabulous man. Here's a link to a great video montage of images of Sil taken a few years ago, with him reading a poem he wrote in the background. It's called "Running, Running, Running"

Somehow I THOUGHT I would throw myself into my work and make mourning jewelry as a way to process the grief buttons that this pushed. That hasn't happened and I've had a tough time focusing in the studio. I'm finally feeling the call (and the money pressures) to get my self in gear and get busy again. I've been dabbling in jet and metal minerals, as there's lots of alchemy going on there for me personally.

A little note of serendipity from the universe is also prompting me to jump back into the jet grind. This is my Real Astrology Horoscope by Rob Brezny for this week..."LEO: No one knew there was coal in the United States until 1790. A hunter who was wandering near Pennsylvania's Broad Mountain stumbled upon it accidentally when his campfire lit up an outcropping of pure anthracite. That discovery was both a blessing and a curse; since then, the mining of coal has yielded abundant energy but also environmental degradation. I predict a metaphorically similar event for you in the coming days, Leo. You will inadvertently find a potentially enormous source of valuable fuel that will, like coal, present you with both rich opportunities and knotty dilemmas." So I figure the best metaphorically similar event for me to find my enormous source of valuable fuel is to get busy with the fossil fuel jewels that I'm already working with and find my abundance there! I've been on this lignite black strewn path for several years now. There are several ways I can travel this path and I'll keep ya posted.

Here's some new work in Tennessee jet...The bottom heart, with the rough faces and rounded edges, is not drilled as a bead, but is meant to be a meditation stone to hold in the hand or put on an altar. Thanks for reading and looking!

2009-03-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

The heart shape continues to be full of so much metaphor for me. I got news recently that my brother's mitral valve has torn and gone from just a regular old leaky valve (like mine) to a SERIOUSLY leaky valve. They're monitoring it but he'll need surgery some day in the not so distant future. In the meantime, it certainly gives my heart pause. My late father had a mechanical valve put in his heart and the manufacturer recalled it 4 years after he died! Thus, I'm back to the old grind...I continue on my heart worn ways. I just did another series of my gemstone jet, contemporary mourning beads in my "broken heart" series. The rough is all from Tennessee and all have 3mm drill holes so they can be worn on a thick chain or a cord...and I took this one heart and made a "keyhole" through the center and a 2mm drill hole that goes down the cleft into the keyhole. I envision some beader or jeweler making a necklace chain that would come up out of the cleft and 24 inches or so later connect with the key. The key fits ALL the way through the keyhole, so that it could dangle through the jet heart, creating a centerpiece clasp. Would that be what they call a "y necklace"? They key is from an old key collection that my late grandmother kept. One of these days I'll get off the grinding wheels and the computer long enough to make finished jewelry, in the meantime, I just continue making these goodies for all you beader and jewelery peoples out there....

I also made this nearly 700 carat "green" moonstone heart stone out of a single big chunk of rough moonstone from Tanzania. It's got an amazing, lightning like, schiller that is unrelated to the light blue adulaurescence that is the hallmark of classic moonstone. When I saw the piece of rough I knew I would make a "broken heart" out of it and leave the natural points with the cleavage planes of the feldspar crystal poking out the bottom. This is NOT A BEAD, but is a really fabu meditation aide or shamanic tool for scrying and healing work. That's it for now. I'll certainly be making more hearts and I would LOVE to see what kind of hearts others are making! Share your pics or your links.

Change Your Focus

2009-03-02T13:27:00.000-08:00

Good Mourning Broken Hearts Club Band!

Many exciting things are happening with our Band! I'm thrilled to announce that MEMBERSHIP CARDS have arrived and are being dispersed! If you would like a membership card just request one and if you would like to recruit for the BHCBand, request a bunch! More on Membership cards later...

TODAY I will share with you the Daily OM Leo Horoscope, which is about our goals, our hearts, and ambitions...

March 2, 2009
Change Your Focus
Leo Daily Horoscope

You could notice a single-minded focus regarding your ambitions today. It might seem that accomplishing your goals rather than addressing the concerns of others is your most immediate priority. Perhaps today you can think about redirecting your go-getter energy to develop deeper, more long-lasting, and compassionate goals. One way to utilize your focus could be to create a greater awareness of the power of your heart center through meditation. You might consider bringing your attention to the area near your heart. As you inhale and exhale, send your awareness into this area and feel it expand with each breath. Concentrate on being present in the moment, and try to let the notion of reaching a final outcome dissolve with each breath. As you feel your heart opening, you may find that attaining your goals becomes less important then the journey you take to accomplish them.

By altering the nature of our focus, we become more open and have greater tools for reaching our goals. We might find it easy to become so involved in our goals that we forsake things that are most important—the lessons we learn along the way. But when we allow our determination to soften, we create space for a greater awareness of ourselves and the world around us and transform the way we live our lives. We engage in the progress of life and are not simply wrapped up in its outcomes. Placing your focus on your heart center today will allow you to work toward the goal of being present in your life.

I will be posting lots more regularly, so join the band, follow the blog, and let's get this show on the road (from a loving heart space, and letting go of our ego, of course!)!

Always,

Leo Sunshine

2009-01-18T14:57:00.000-08:00

Death, Suicide, & Faerie Elders...

This is an article I wrote for RFD, "a reader-created quarterly celebrating Queer diversity," for the Death and Suicide Issue that was pu7blished in Fall 2008. The theme was "Death, Suicide, and Faerie Elders" so I wrote and submitted an article that encompasses all three subjects for me. Click on the image to enlarge it so you can read the text. The editors published it as a letter on the opening page of the issue. I blacked out the opening letter from a NYC Hells Angel sentenced to life in prison for privacy reasons!

RFD is the second oldest continually operating queer publication in the United States. It's been around since 1974 and only the Advocate has been published longer! Find out more about RFD and subscribe today!

Breakfast at Tiffany's

2009-01-13T12:54:00.000-08:00

Good Mourning Broken Hearts Club!

I'd like to take a moment to remember Richard Waugh, my dear friend, occasional sweetheart, and biggest fan. He died 8 years ago this week and I miss him much. Richard was my studio assistant and he was always after me to cut my stones and beads into heart shapes. I never would because I thought heart shapes were too "contrived" or whatever. He finally convinced me. I relented and I told him that when I got back from a show I was going to that we would cut a bunch of "hearts of stone" beads to get ready for Valentine's Day. I got back and Richard was found dead in his apartment, at age 41, from a massive heart attack related to a side effect from his HIV meds. Fat in his body had migrated to his heart and the autopsy showed his heart twice the size of normal. Even though it's been 8 yearsI miss him terribly and I have been making ever increasing numbers of stone hearts and jet mourning jewelry ever since. I make beads in the shape of hearts that are broken and have started up Leo Sunshine's Broken Hearts Club Band as a place for the broken hearted to gather. I miss ya Richard and will always remember you.

I finally learned to embed videos in blog posts and the first video I'm going to post is related to Richard's favorite song, Breakfast at Tiffany's by the band Deep Blue Something. Whenever I was going to put 5 cd's into rotation while working in the studio I would ask Richard if he had any musical requests. He would also rasp, "BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S!" Sometimes I would put in the compilation disc that had the original on it and sometimes I would put on the cd that had the disco re-mix version and sometimes he got neither! While looking at various versions on youtube I found this comedy-theatrical version. It's funny and the theatrics of the lead singer (who is obviously a comedian and not a professional singer), well he reminds me a bit of Richard, who was a pretty funny and theatrical guy himself. I think he would appreciate this...

Much love, David Leo

P.S. ...and we here at the Broken Hearts Club Band have a nice selection of new jet broken hearts as we lead up to Valentines Day! Check them out in my eBay store....

Inside the Grieving Brain & Complicated Grief

2009-01-02T18:11:00.000-08:00

Good Mourning Broken Hearters and Happy New Year! I'm just wanting to make sure that I get here/hear to Band practice on a regular basis. While looking for a lapidary catalog I found this Newsweek article I had been saving and meaning to post and share with folks.
It's a short and fascinating article about what researchers are finding from doing brain scans of bereaved people while they look at images of their lost loved ones. It's from the section "HEALTH MATTERS" by Jerry Adler...

Inside the Grieving Brain

Memories of the person they missed prolonged their grief, giving them pleasure as well as pain.

Mourning the death of a loved one is about as universal a human emotion as exists, and it's not even confined to humans; there's evidence of it in other primates and even elephants. From its beginnings, psychotherapy has recognized the special challenge of grief and its relationship to depression (or, as Freud put it in the title of one of his best-known essays, "Mourning and Melancholia").....

2008-12-31T14:57:00.000-08:00

Good Mourning Broken Hearts Club Band and Happy New Year! I won't mourn the end of 2008 as there's a lot of icky stuff from this past year that I want to bury. Probably hardest was the loss of my dear retired racing greyhound, McGwire, who had been my constant companion and source of unconditional love for 6 years. I got a design idea in my head (and a sketch on the wall) of a jet "dog bone" with a heart on it. Maybe a better brooch than a pin. We'll see when and if it manifests here in the studio. Speaking of things that break my heart.....

I'm trying to break out some more of my classic jet broken heart beads as we see here, using material from Tennessee. I left both of these hearts with mostly "natural" faces as I was feeling particularly broken hearted over the holidays. This first one is drilled side to side....

and this other heart is drilled at an angle through the lobe so that it hangs off kilter....

My main grinder broke down a few weeks ago and the motor is still in the repair shop so I'm doing the best I can. I'm looking forward to heading to Tucson in a month and will be doing my best to keep on sourching jet rough and finished items. A bloke from Britain who is doing a University dissertation on jet mourning jewelry just contacted me recently and I'm curious as to what kind of information he has and what I can find out from him. I would really like to be able to source at least a small amount of Whitby jet to add to my jet black palette of lapidary materials!

I would also like to pick up some Asturian jet from Northern Spain as I have recently discovered a guild of jet workers based out of Oviedo.

HISTORY LESSON: In Northern Spain the use of jet is associated with the pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James at Santiago de Compostela. I have a booklet on jet put out by the Hispanic Society of America in 1930. It says, "Shells, the special badge of the pilgrimage, amulets, rosaries, and images of Saint James were the principal items.....The jet carvers formed a guild in 1443, but their period of greatest activity was during the 16th and 17th centuries....The amulets, for protection from the evil eye, take the form of the higa, a closed hand with the thumb held between the index and middle fingers." Here are two scans of an image of an higa in the booklet. It's from the 17th-18th Century and shows Christ Bearing the Cross carved on the "forearm" above the palm side of the higa, with a silver mounting to be worn as an amulet. The text says this is 12.5cm by 4 cm which makes it about FIVE INCHES long by an inch and a half wide! And people say *I* make big beads for big jewelry! Luckily jet is lightweight, similiar to amber, so you can get a lot of black bang for your buck with this material.

So while the "higa" isn't a broken heart, it has a rich history and can protect from the evil eye. I'm sure that the less evil eye that there is around the fewer broken hearts there will be!

That's it for now Broken Hearters! May 2009 bless you with lots of healing for your broken hearts and may any heartbreaks you receive in the new year not get infected and make you heartsick!

Regards, Leo Sunshine

Memento Mori: Mourning and Transformation

2008-12-18T15:04:00.000-08:00

NOTE: This is an article I wrote for RFD and was published in Fall 2006. Click on the image to enlarge it enough to read.

Adapting and Evolving

2008-12-15T19:48:00.000-08:00

Adapting and Evolving
I'm trying to figure out the in's and out's of blogging, so I went and read a friends blog. She doesn't have all that much there, but I saw that there was this entry on December 5th, which was my late father's birthday (1919-1984) and the anniversary of the day we buried my mother (1929-1987). I think a lot about my parents this time of year as they both died during the month of December when I was in college. The entry is just a picture of a red heart with words on it that say, "Sometimes you have to stop thinking so much and go where your heart takes you." Hearts have a special meaning for me, and to see this message on a heart on this date felt like one of those cosmic synchronistic messages from the universe. I don't believe in coincidences. Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous.

Leo Sunshine's Broken Hearts Club Band

2008-12-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

....now accepting new members!

Matthew 5:4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

I'm Leo S. Sunshine, Radical Faerie altar ego of David V. Horste of DVHdesigns. David makes gemstone jet mourning hearts and other heart beads, both broken and unbroken, and jewelry to help the brokenhearted and the bereaved. Leo Sunshine brings all the broken hearts together in this bloggy band. More will be revealed. Until then, I leave you with this picture of a string of broken gem jet mourning hearts, with one ruby red bowlerite heart, full of hope....