Oct 8, 2010 | My Life in Jewels
I made carrot cake to celebrate our daughter’s first birthday. We all lined up for a taste of sweetness fed by her little hand. I received the necklace four months prior, a gift to mark my first Mother’s Day. Though being a mother was enough–enough of everything but...
Oct 8, 2010 | My Life in Jewels
Holy to Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, pilgrims ascend Sri Lanka’s holy mountain Sri Pada in the darkness of night to pray as the sun dawns above the Indian Ocean. While the trail up Sri Pada was clearly defined, my life’s path was at a crux. I had...
Oct 8, 2010 | My Life in Jewels
I was crisscrossing the country, bounding to build my business. I felt like “Run Run Rudolph” in the Chuck Berry song, tearing up the highways and “reelin’ like a merry-go-round.” When I became too frazzled from the frenzy during those years, I gave myself the pep...
Oct 8, 2010 | My Life in Jewels
In 1990, soon after I started Cynthia Renée Company, I met some friends to celebrate an engagement. I wore a small, yellow gold brooch of Marie Antoinette hand-painted on ivory accented by natural pearls. I was in the office of an antique jewelry dealer friend when I...
Oct 8, 2010 | My Life in Jewels
I was twenty-six and guiding a group of geology professors through the Himalaya Tourmaline Mine where I was doing my undergrad thesis. One of the professors was Dr. Brian Mason, a geochemist who authored the mineralogy text most universities were using, including...
Oct 1, 2010 | My Life in Jewels
I told my friend Clare I was going to Sri Lanka to explore; that by going “something would happen.” I was feeling drained, missing my softness, the juiciness I needed to nurture creative life. Traveling someplace new sometimes shakes things up providing fresh...
Oct 1, 2010 | My Life in Jewels
I learned shorthand, typed 120 words a minute and got an A in Bookkeeping Fundamentals. Make way world – here comes nineteen-year-old Cynthia! I was singing another tune after two years as a legal secretary. I thought, “This is for the birds; if I’m going to do...
