The following is a message I received through Facebook in 2025 from a person who would like to remain anonymous:
Hello! I wanted to reach out and let you know how meaningful your art has been to me in my life. In November of 2016 my children, ages 3 and 1, were kidnapped from me. Immediately after, I spent several months wandering through the world shocked and lost. As a result, my midwifery career fell apart and eventually in April of 2017, when I was able to work again, I took a nursing job working night shift at the Whatcom hospice house. Working with death changed a lot about how I viewed life. I got to see first hand, over and over again that 100% of the time, all we have at the end of our lives is the love we’ve developed with the people in it. During this time, I became aware of the Buddhist philosophy of attachment being the root of suffering. Never would I imagine that in my lifetime I would need to learn and live this philosophy in the most painful and difficult way imaginable. I had always thought that the bond between mother and children was an exception to the rule of non-attachment. Every night at work in the hospice house, I would visit the meditation/prayer room. Every night I would write a prayer for my children and spin the axis of hope for an hour or so at a time. I would let the patterns of mountains and birds flow under my finger tips as it spun, the rhythm lulling me into meditative prayer. It was so important for me to have a place for my prayers to go. Mostly my prayers were desperate and hopeful. Please God, if you’re listening, I’d love to hold my children in my arms again. Please God, let them be ok. And sometimes the notes would be angry. How could you allow this much pain in my heart? Why must we suffer in this way? So many tears fell into the prayer wheel. After the prayer note was secured in the beauty of the axis of hope, I would sit with it in its infinite rotations until I was brought to peace. Until I could accept that the children were not mine but they were Gods. I had to let them go and trust. The prayer wheel became a ritual that kept me hopeful and grounded for 13 long months until I was reunited with my children. I just want to thank you for your lovely contributions to the world by way of your art. I know that the axis of hope housed many prayers at the hospice house, not just my own. It was an anchor for me in the darkest moments of my life and truly brought hope and peace. Thank you.
Chris
Thank you so much for such a beautiful piece of art. As we have had so many life changes, I have wanted a place to keep my thoughts. Your prayer wheels are a perfect combination of art, meditation, and memory; a beautiful concept combined with a great aesthetic.
Thank you for your work. We love having it in our home and had been contemplating purchasing a piece for a while. We wish you continued success in bringing these beautiful pieces to life!"
-- Rebecca
"You have captured the sandhill cranes exactly as I've seen them and encapsulated the experience into a magic, eternal moment in time. It is a complete joy
Audrey & Jim