What a strange time to be alive. On one hand the world may be crumbling. There is a concentrated effort to take away our rights, for women, for LBGTQ, for POC, for humans. But our voice is strong. Our community is strong. Our love and support for each other is strong. We are kind. And we will take up space.

Obviously earrings have nothing to do with any of this. But my goal is to challenge the status quo, and sometimes that just includes looking authentically myself.

After almost a year of wearing nothing but sweatpants, and a lifetime of trying to blend in and be courteously small (success with blending? Maybe not. But is was the effort bud), emerging post pandemic was weird.

Thanks to a touch of the nurospicy, a natural predisposition to social anxiety, and a religious bordering on cult-like upbringing (and how are my homeschool kids doing?), for me, being a pandemic shut in was (aside from the devastating and incredibly scary bits) kind of a bit of a relief.

For a time I never had to mask. With restaurants and tours (my main source of income) shut down, I went from working 7 days a week to just having… time. I got used to being myself. I had space to go back to the thing I most loved, making stuff. Making kind of weird stuff. Decorating my body in ways that felt authentic to me.

And when it was time to reenter society, I came back different. I think we all did. I couldn’t go back into the little box that I had created for myself. Too much had happened. I still wanted to express myself. I was ready to but my weird on full display. I wasn’t interested in blending in. I wasn’t interested in being quiet. I was ready to take up space.

And that’s what I hope to do with Iskra Made. We’re all weird. People are weird little meat sacks. Our existence alone is pretty strange and improbable. Each of our little quirks and tendencies make our world so much more interesting. So I hope that we all give up on any impulse to fit in. I hope we all take up space and express ourself in our world.I hope we all speak up, even when it’s hard, because our voices are valid and the world needs us.

Be yourself. Speak up for what’s right. Take up space.

I love you, and I’m very glad you’re here.