Paper Ghost: Musings of a Restless Girl

BloodMilk is releasing a special series of rose quartz jewels today. Rose Quartz has always resonated with me, though when prompted to explore my connections to it, I could not pinpoint anything beyond associations with my birthday and my grandma.  I know that RQ is symbolic of love, but I wasn't sure what else. BM's post and collection has led me to begin exploring my associations a little deeper. My immediate connections are as I said, my grandma. She loved pink and she loved roses, she loved jewelry and stones. She gave me a bracelet with large rose quartz stones on it one year, a bracelet that I have brought out numerous times to wear with me on days where I felt I needed her strength. 2018 marked the passage of ten years since her death, the bracelet broke during this year as well. I was devastated. I have always read that rose quartz is a birthstone for October as well, my second association with the stone. My closest friends have October birthdays as well, as does ...

When I was little, my grandma and I would perform what I now like to call a ritual, called "cut and paste."  We would cut up construction paper and glue it in different ways to make bookmarks and other little pieces of juvenile art.  With the passing of Valentine's Day, I specifically remembered how we would cut different colored hearts in a distinct way so that each side was even and symmetrical.  We would then glue the hearts onto different colored rectangles made of construction paper to make little bookmarks. I also had this porcelain teaset that she made me that included little tea cups with blue flowers, and a tea kettle shaped like a cat with a fish being held at its chest for a spout. We would sit at my little craft table and she would make us real tea to put in the cat kettle and we'd have a tea party.  Usually, this included homemade sugar cookies with pink homemade buttercream frosting.  I never liked Valentine's Day when I got older, and this memo...

When I was a kid, my grandma gave me brief snippets of what her life was like before I knew her.  I wish that I could still ask her to go into more depth.  I want to know what she would have thought of today's election.  I think she would be proud of all the women standing up.  My grandma was born in 1928, eight years of the passage of the 19th Amendment. She was a firecracker.  I think, in her own way, she was a feminist.  She may not have called herself one, though I really don't recall if she did or not, but her actions and words that I remember lead me to believe that she was a feminist. It's a shame that many of us don't think to ask the important questions until we're older and it's too late. My paternal grandmother passed when I was 19, thus, it's been over ten years.  Though she was aging, it was somewhat unexpected.  We always think we have time, and we really, truly don't. I was different than a lot of kids my age, around me at lea...

I've been having some strange dreams and most of the time my strange dreams are just strange nightmares about nothing that seems to mean much of anything, but these felt different. Last night, I dreamt that I was at my grandma's house.  I have dreams that take place at her house fairly often but in most of them, I can't find her.  There's a feeling that I just missed her and she never comes into view. But this one was different as she was actually there and I could see and hear her voice.  We were getting ready to go somewhere with my grandpa and there was a strange dog outside, it was starving, its hair was falling out, and its skin was red.  Somehow, it had gotten into the backyard and was waiting at the door to be let into her "Florida room" as we called it. But of course, all the pekes were out there and that wasn't going to happen. A very strange person showed up all of a sudden and seemed very ominous and threatening.  I can't remember if he...