My Story

Enchanted Reverie quite literally means “magical daydream.” A respite from the weight of the world and the goings on of everyday life and political affairs. It’s built out of a desire to be in a place of wonder and beauty and not one of suffering, mirroring my own story for why I started Enchanted Reverie.

For years I worked in Animal Welfare where I poured my heart out for animals in need that ended up in shelters. Daily I was asked to make difficult decisions that weighed on my heart heavier and heavier with each passing day. I cherish the days I spent in the shelters making a difference for animals that found themselves in those situations. But eventually, it took its toll on me.

I left animal sheltering in 2022 after a mix of the COVID-19 collective trauma, the emotional trauma of my work, and the physical demands and injuries of working with scared and untrained animals, COVID infections, and a new diagnosis of EDS became too much for me to manage. I still mourn the work I did because truly, it was my dream job.

I spent quite a bit of time allowing myself to reorient and find a new direction. I learned that it’s no small task changing careers while learning new limits to your emotional and physical capabilities while having a skill set tailored to the opposite of those. Because it was adjacent to my previous work, I began going to school for social work with the goal of becoming a therapist and after two semesters of that I ran into the same wall that stopped me from being able to continue my work in animal welfare. One of emotional exhaustion and struggling to regulate it.

Because I had worked in social fields whose goals were to make change and played against the capitalist system, I struggled with the idea of going into a more traditional job. It did not feel like me and felt like a betrayal of the work I had done up to that point. As I explored what I wanted to do, I began to understand the importance of adding beauty when you can’t change the bad.

That’s when I began making jewelry. I used it as a way to express my emotions and desires, and learn about how jewelry and art as a whole connect people together through time. This became my escape from the undeniably bad things that were happening directly and indirectly that had taken its toll on me.

Through this endeavor, I learned that though we should not ignore the real world, it’s important to also recognize and create beauty and send a message with the very real connections we make. But also, that it’s important to just take a break, and so Enchanted Reverie embodies that desire to find a magical escape, but also to create your own little safe haven to carry around with you.