The Power of Love

I received a mysterious e-mail the other day from a reader of my Heart Stones book named Jill.  She mentioned a miracle she wanted to relay to me.  I waited and waited and then finally received the story of her heart stones.  I include it here because it is inspiring and hopeful.  It also makes me realize the importance of opening up eyes and hearts to looking around us...really looking and paying attention. This can run the gamut from how we notice the stones at our feet, the hearts in our dogfood (a follow up e-mail informed me that Jill had just received her first "dogfood heart") to how we think and react to news or events. This is Jill's story:

 In the fall of 2009, an opportunity opened up for me to go to a new school and teach art again.  I was hired on a Friday and started that following Monday.  This school was a challenge for me.  I had only taught in a wealthy area before where the students had everything materialistic they could ask for and most came from happy healthy homes. My new school was low income, Title 1 school.  Many parents were in jail and education was not a priority to many.  Many of my students were homeless, living in shelters and 75% of the school was on free lunch.  I saw behavior I was not accustomed to.  What I learned was that these children needed love more than anything else. 

    I shared my collection of heart rocks with my students, telling them that there is love all over, all you have to do is look.  The next day, to my surprise my students began to bring me heart rocks.   They would pull them out of their pockets and backpacks and tell me  where they found them. Instead of keeping the rocks for themselves , they would give them to me.  Soon they came in in bags, buckets, old McDonalds wrappers, anything they could find to bring in the heart rocks.  This became an afterschool activity for them.

    On the last day of school, my student named Stormy, a little kindergarten girl, who was bald (mom shaved her head because she had lice) brought me the biggest heart rock ever.  My tiniest student brought me the biggest heart rock.  We painted it hot pink, and it now is in the collection outside of my art room door.

     The heart rocks continue to pour in everyday.  I put the children's name on the hearts and display them in the window sill.  Our count so far is 880 heart rocks.

My students have learned the act of giving.  It gives them something to do and something to hope for when times are tough for them. They have learned that a gift can be free and they don't need to "buy" anything at the store to make someone happy.  The joy in their faces is indescribable when they run to me with their new found heart rocks. They feel loved and special just holding a rock.

    This is a story about hope, inspiration, and miracles. 

What more need be said.

From Winter to Spring

Both these images are from Jonas and his mother in Norway.  Yes, hearts and heart stones are as potent everywhere, including Norway.  Jonas has a lovely habit:  when he finds a heart stone or finds a heart anywhere, he thinks a good thought about someone.  Maybe we should all be doing this.

Heart Stones in the Snow from Shiela Swett

These are lucky stones and scallop shells in the snow.  These icons of summer, found on a hot day along the water's edge, set up as the eternal symbol of love in the heart of winter. Seashells in the snow.  This is the kind of wonderful contradiction or dichotomy that is where powerful meanings lie.  Or where art resides.  Thank you Shiela.

I come back to the contradictions of being a mom.  My original book, Loving Blind, Seeing Red: A Mother's Decade was built on contradiction and dichotomy.  This will be the point of departure for further posts. And I love that each is inspired by the heart stone or beach treasure from some other stone collector out there.

I saw red the other day...for the first time in such a long while.

And Deedee and I saw lots of white. Snow that is, in the Sierras this past weekend...lots and lots of snow.  Skiing in knee deep powder was fun fun fun and physically exhausting.  We live in this pretty fantastic place where we can drive up into the mountains on a Friday night, need chains on our 4-wheel drive car, ski all day Saturday and Sunday in the blizzard (it was about 25-30 degrees out, ie not so very cold), have the highway closed down Sunday night so no coming home then, and then Monday morning, the storm abated,  it was crystal clear blue.  And those that had 9 am meetings left at 6 am and got there just a tad late.  Deedee and I left a bit later...had In N Out burgers at 10:30 am and she made it to her 1 pm science class, after popping home to print out her homework.

Moss of Love by Shiela Swett

What could be better than finding this on the forest floor. As I say: love is where you find it. Thank you Shiela.

Gaspe Canada Heart Stone from Gert Cote

Gert Cote, from Massachusetts, is a fellow lover of heart stones and other treasure. She found this stone in Gaspe and writes:



"My husband and I were searching for treasures in the "Baie de Chaleure" in the Gaspe region of Canada...New Brunswick can be seen on the other side. I spotted what looked like a heart stone, but could only see the light green moss just underneath the waters edge. Stepping on different rocks to retrieve it, it layed almost all submerged in the water and mud,( notice the outer dark edge of the stone,) it was one inch in mud, full of slime...but I could see a definite heart, just needed to rinse it off and to my amazement, a perfect "HEART" lay in my hand. My heart was racing and I called to my husband to come and see. To continue on my search for more stones, I placed this stone on a piece of drift wood that had washed up shore from the wood mining mills across the bay in New Brunswick. Even this wood had been weathered from years of being idle on the beach. It had been stripped of all its bark from the harsh winter that Canada has to offer. We continued to pick many stones after that one and have given most of them away to friends and family."



Gert, Thank you for sharing your treasure and initiating the ROCKSWAP that this blog will feature.



Feel free to send me your treasures with their stories and I will post. Lets grow a community based on heart stones!



Dont forget: www.josieiselin.com

Finding Love

A recently married couple I didn't know very well came over to pick up this print which was commissioned as a wedding gift by a mutual and very dear friend. We were hanging around chatting and I couldn't believe they were only just beginning this journey called marriage. We joked a bit and then they said that yes they were so happy and were also pregnant. Wow, starting another huge journey...I put my hands in my pockets(I happened to still have my jacket on)...and there was a heart stone--dark and smooth, left there from the last roam on the beach--and I just couldn't not give it to them right there. So they left with their lovely print titled: Love is Where You Find It and a lovely heart stone. Happy Journeys!