My reflections on doing hard things.

I love describing what we do as “directly employing” artisans around the world to support fair wage jobs.

This wording is powerful to me because what it means is that we know the impact of your purchases on each individual artisan we partner with.

When you purchase a Pom Pom Keychain you are directly supporting Gloria, who hand makes each and every pom & tassel - starting with sourcing the colors of thread at the local market.

This seasons color ways are a beautiful celebration of joy, of being grounded & of choosing resilience in the face of hard times.

Earlier this year, Gloria had to shut down her market booth for several months, which also meant that she wasn’t able to get more thread to make our poms.

But Gloria is resilient!

She’s back up & running and I couldn’t be more excited to share with you what she’s made.

One of the joys of working directly with artisans like Gloria is how I get to learn to notice & celebrate resilience in my daily life & am learning to embrace the discomfort.

My 5 year old was in swim lessons for the first time last week.

The first day she was SO excited.

Thirty minutes later on the way home from the first session she said, “Mom, that wasn’t really that much fun.” She said it was really scary.

The next morning when it came time for swim lessons again, I was already prepping for the pep talk I was sure I was going to have to deliver.

But she surprised me (as my kids usually do) & said, “Mom, I’m scared to go to swim lessons today, but I want to go - because I can do hard things.”

She asked me if I’ve ever been scared.

It made me realize that I’m actually starting to feel scared for my first International trip in 5+ years.

I have the amazing opportunity to go to Bali, Indonesia with an incredible group of likeminded business women to really rest & focus on myself and on Purse & Clutch without my usual family responsibilities.

I actually get on a plane later this evening.

If you’ve followed along on my personal journey the last few years you know my family has needed a lot from me after a surprise Down syndrome birth diagnosis of my now 3 year old.

And y’all - I’m tired.

I can't believe I’m actually going to get to take a trip to recharge!

But I’m also feeling scared.

Naming it feels good.

How will I react flying across the world away from my family?

Will I be able to get the meaning out of this trip to be able to really scale the impact of Purse & Clutch on our artisan’s lives?

I’m so grateful for the reminder that I can be both scared AND excited.

Because as I have written on the wall of my studio:

I can’t wait to share with you my experience!

In the mean time, I’ve got an idea:

Let’s sell out of Gloria’s incredible Pom Pom Keychains so we can immediately send her more work.

Because while we can all do hard things, sometimes it’s also nice to have things go your way : )