26 Years of Beginning Again

June marks twenty-six years since I launched WindHorse Arts, although the story itself began a little earlier with a lost earring, a growing dissatisfaction with the life I was living, and a nagging sense that there had to be another way to move through the world.

After losing one of a pair of earrings I loved, I set out to discover what it was made of and whether I could make a replacement myself. What began as a simple curiosity eventually led me to glass and, quite unexpectedly, to an entirely different life. If you've never heard my full founder story, I've shared it in a short video here. It remains one of my favorite stories to tell because it reminds me how often a loss, arriving at just the right moment, can open a door we never knew was there.

When I left banking, I wasn't looking for a jewelry business. What I was looking for was a way of living that felt more aligned with who I was becoming, a life that allowed for creativity, curiosity, and a deeper sense of connection to the work I was doing each day. Looking back now, twenty-six years later, I can see that I found much of what I was searching for, although not always in the ways I expected and certainly not without a few lessons along the way.

One of the things I understand much more clearly now than I did at the beginning is that every life comes with trade-offs, and that the lives we admire from a distance almost always contain challenges that remain invisible to the casual observer. This life has given me an extraordinary amount of freedom. It has allowed me to spend my days making things by hand, tending gardens, caring for animals, swimming in oceans and quarries, learning new skills, reading books in the middle of the afternoon, and following my curiosity wherever it decides to wander. It has also required sacrifices, particularly when it comes to financial security, because the reality of a small creative business is that fulfillment and financial abundance do not always arrive hand in hand.

I wrote about some of this previously in my essay inspired by Annie Dillard and chopping wood, where I reflected on the difference between choosing a life and romanticizing one. The truth is that I love this life, but loving something does not make it easy, because every day arrives carrying its own collection of responsibilities and unfinished tasks, from gardens that seem to grow weeds as enthusiastically as vegetables and animals whose care shapes the rhythm of the day, to jewelry that must move through every stage of creation before it can find its way into the world, all the while house projects continue to multiply faster than I can complete them and new ideas appear with such regularity that there will never be enough hours to follow every one of them.

Even so, I rarely think of myself as busy.

Busy has become one of those words that has been stretched so thin through overuse that it has almost lost its meaning, and while there are certainly days when the list of things demanding my attention is longer than I can reasonably accomplish and the hours seem to disappear faster than I would like, what I experience most often is not a sense of busyness but a deep feeling of fulfillment that comes from being actively engaged with the life I have chosen. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by activity for its own sake, I find myself continually interested in the things that fill my days, and deeply grateful that so much of my work feels connected to a larger sense of purpose and to a way of living that remains meaningful to me.

As I write this, I am sitting in my meditation corner, which is the most peaceful corner of my home right now. Just beyond it the bed is unmade, the laundry needs doing, the kitchen is in a state of renovation upheaval which has cascaded to the rest of the house and I have a long list of projects that will almost certainly remain unfinished by the end of the week. In other words, this is not a perfect life. It is simply a real one, filled with the same mixture of beauty, disorder, gratitude, frustration, joy, and uncertainty that most lives contain.

What makes it meaningful is not its perfection but the fact that it is chosen. At the same time, I would be dishonest if I didn't acknowledge that some of the freedom I enjoy exists because of the particular shape my life has taken. I do not have children or grandchildren depending on me. I do not have a partner whose needs and schedule must be woven together with my own. Those realities create space that allows for certain choices and opportunities, even as they come with their own forms of longing and absence. Life is complicated that way, and I have become increasingly wary of presenting any version of it that suggests otherwise.

And yet, despite spending much of my life independently, I have never lived it alone. Family, friends, customers, neighbors, fellow artists, and collectors have all shaped what WindHorse Arts has become over the past twenty-six years, which brings me to the second reason for writing this anniversary reflection.

Recently, in one of the many classes I seem incapable of resisting, we spent time talking about impact reports and the ways organizations measure success. Nonprofit organizations are often very good at documenting how they fulfill their mission and serve their communities, while for-profit organizations tend to focus more heavily on revenue, growth, and profitability. What struck me during that conversation was that both matter and that perhaps we would all benefit from talking more openly about both.

The word nonprofit sometimes creates the impression that money is somehow unimportant, when in reality sustainable organizations require resources in order to continue doing meaningful work. At the same time, many small businesses quietly contribute to their communities in ways that never appear on a balance sheet, donating products, sponsoring events, supporting causes, volunteering time, creating gathering places, strengthening local economies, and helping sustain the organizations and institutions that make our communities stronger. These contributions often remain largely invisible because many of us hesitate to talk about them, worried that drawing attention to this kind of work may feel uncomfortably close to bragging.

I have come to believe that there is a difference between bragging and accountability, and that sharing the impact of our work helps tell a more complete story about why that work matters.

Impact by the Numbers

So, for the first time, I am sharing an impact report alongside this anniversary reflection, not because numbers tell the whole story, but because they tell part of it, and because I have come to appreciate that what we measure often reflects what we value.

Over the past twenty-six years, my kilns have been fired more than 3,600 times, and each firing has represented another experiment, another lesson, and another opportunity to discover what can happen when heat, color, and curiosity come together in unexpected ways. Along the way, I have developed more than 530 colors, not all of which have made their way into a finished collection, although that has always seemed beside the point to me. Exploration has value even when it does not result in a finished product, and some of my favorite discoveries have emerged from ideas that ultimately became something entirely different from what I originally intended.

During those same twenty-six years, I have created 10’s of thousands of pieces of jewelry, each one reflecting a moment in an ongoing creative journey. Some pieces found homes almost immediately, while others were reworked and transformed into something new as my ideas evolved. Still others remain tucked away in boxes, waiting for the right moment to reveal their purpose. The creative process has never followed a straight or predictable path, and over time I have learned to stop measuring success solely by what leaves the studio and instead appreciate the value of the work, learning, and experimentation that happen along the way.

More than 4,500 customers have supported my work over the years, and among them are well over 2,000 collectors whose continued encouragement has made this business possible. Some discovered my work recently, while others have been collecting for decades. Several families now span four generations of collectors, a fact that continues to astonish me every time I think about it, and one of my oldest collectors will celebrate her one hundredth birthday this year.

The numbers themselves are meaningful, but what moves me most is what they represent. They represent conversations among strangers, friendships that grew out of chance encounters, gifts exchanged between people who love one another, and countless moments in which a piece of jewelry became part of someone's story. Over time, I have come to understand that while I make jewelry, the work has never really been about jewelry alone. It has always been about connection.

That same desire for connection has shaped the way I have tried to participate in the communities that have supported me.

Over the years I have donated more than $30,000 in products, fundraising support, sponsorships, and direct contributions to organizations and individuals working to strengthen their communities and care for one another. Those contributions have supported organizations including Vinalhaven Community Outreach, Eldercare, the American Legion Hall, the Vinalhaven Celebration Committee, Island Institute, Finding Our Voices, WERU, Maine Craft Association, OutMaine and many other organizations, events, and many individual fundraisers that have crossed my path over the years.

Some of those contributions helped celebrate milestones and accomplishments. Others helped people navigate illness, hardship, grief, or unexpected challenges. Some supported causes that align closely with my values, while others simply reflected a desire to contribute to the place and people that have given so much to me. Together they form another part of the story that often remains hidden behind the day-to-day work of running a small business.

When people talk about business success, the conversation often centers around revenue, growth, expansion, and profit. Those things matter because without a sustainable business there would be no business at all. At the same time, I have become increasingly interested in a broader definition of success, one that includes not only what a business earns but also what it contributes, what it supports, and how it participates in the world around it.  For me, that has become one of the most meaningful lessons of the past twenty-six years.

The jewelry matters, and the craftsmanship matters as well, because both are central to the work that I have devoted myself to over the past twenty-six years. The ability to earn a living doing work that I genuinely care about also matters, and I do not take that privilege for granted. And equally important are the relationships that have been built, the causes that have been supported, the opportunities that have been created, and the sense that my small business has become woven into something larger than itself. 

WindHorse Arts has always been an extension of my values, my interests, my curiosity, and my desire to create connection through handcraft. The longer I do this work, the more convinced I become that the most meaningful things we build are not measured in dollars or units sold. They are measured in trust, in relationships, in shared experiences, and in the ways we show up for one another over time.

Because of that, I have decided that this will not be the last impact report. Going forward, I plan to share an annual impact report, both as a way of letting you know what your support makes possible and as a way of reminding myself that this work extends beyond the walls of my studio.

After twenty-six years, I remain grateful for the unexpected path that began with a lost earring, and even more grateful for the people who have walked portions of that path alongside me. Whether you have been here for twenty years, twenty days, or are only just discovering my work, your presence has helped shape what WindHorse Arts has become.

Anniversaries naturally invite us to look backward, but they also encourage us to look ahead. While I have no idea exactly what the next twenty-six years will bring, I do know that I will continue to make things by hand, continue to follow my curiosity, continue to support the communities that matter to me, and continue to do my best to build a life that feels aligned with my values.

And perhaps that is the real anniversary worth celebrating. Not the number of years themselves, but the ongoing opportunity to begin again each morning, to continue building something meaningful one day at a time, and to participate in the beautiful, imperfect work of creating a life.

So here's to all of us who continue to show up, to do the work in front of us, to support one another, and to keep moving forward even when the path is uncertain.

To all of us who begin again.